Washington and Caesar

1

New Jersey, April, 1779

Polly felt as if she had been walking for her whole life. Her legs burned at every step and only the fact that she was late for her rendezvous and had charge of Sam kept her at it. If she had been alone, she might have looked for a friendly farm and rested.

She had crossed the lines into the rebel-held area outside New York two weeks before. Her first contact had been away, and her second had changed the meeting place twice, scaring her and requiring her to stay close to the rebel camp for too long. The information he provided made the trip worthwhile, but she had walked a hundred miles in a week and she wanted to be home with her father and Caesar. And she wanted to live to be wed.

At first she was cautious, sending Sam ahead to run and play and tell her what the roads were like, but they were both tired and she grew sloppy when she thought they were clear of the last rebel patrol. Besides, there were other people on the road, farm folk, and that made her relax.

She came on the post suddenly at a turn in the road. It was new and unexpected, and Polly wanted to turn and find another way, but her rendezvous was just the other side of the lines here. Her news was too important to delay and she was late. In any case, they had already been seen. Best to brazen it out.

She noted that the men in the post weren’t regulars. They were Connecticut militia. That could be good or bad. The militia was notoriously slack, but their men were ill disciplined. She had been groped by militia men enough times to know the difference and prefer the professionals at the Continental Army posts.

She took Sam’s hand. Sam was just fourteen, stunted from a life of poor food and small enough to pass as her son or her brother. Polly used him to collect messages and run errands, and on trips like this he had become important for cover. She was afraid she was getting too well known.

There was a wagon and several men on foot ahead of her, and one woman with a basket on her head who immediately tried to sell them eggs. Polly bought one and gave it to Sam, keeping the egg seller in conversation. She hoped to pass the post with the white girl, chatting.

The militia began searching the wagon. Some of them were drunk, and the white girl gave her a worried look.

“I mislike these. They are no true soldiers,” she said.

Polly nodded. She took an apple from her apron, hard and wrinkled from a winter in the cellar. As she reached under her petticoat to find her clasp knife she used the movement to check that the ivory-handled dagger was still there. It had been Jeremy’s, and Caesar had lent it to her for luck. She touched it. Then she took her clasp knife, cut the apple and offered a piece to the girl. Sam finished the egg and looked at her with big eyes until she gave him a piece, too. The militia were still rifling the wagon, throwing things around, laughing. The farmer on the box grew angrier.

“You’s nothin’ but cow boys!” he cried.

All the smiles vanished. The militia began to look ugly, and one of them took an earthenware jug and smashed it on the ground. Cow boys was what the farmers called the Loyalist cavalry who stole their cattle. The name was beginning to spread to all the marauders who worked between the armies.

Polly looked at the white girl, considering. It might be time to cut and run. The militia were dangerous, drunk and angry, and she didn’t fancy getting a black eye or worse.

“They ain’t gon’ to let us cross easy, ma’am,” she said hesitantly, playing her part as a poor black from one of the farms.

The girl looked more scared. “My brothers wanted to come, but I said it would be easier for me.” She shook her head. “These eggs ain’t worth what they has in mind.” Two more soldiers came up from behind them. They looked different. One sat under the tree with his weapon to hand, watching the two girls. The other smiled at Polly. Polly felt a touch of ice against her spine.

Sam was looking at her. He was scared, and Polly was responsible for him. Sam made her trips easier but the responsibility weighed on her. In many ways, it was easier to travel on her own and she understood Caesar’s feelings for his company all the better. There wasn’t enough cover by the road to try and run. Even in petticoats, she could outrun most men, especially the lard-assed militia, but in open ground they could shoot her in a moment. And the two were watching her. They looked a little different, harder men altogether, like rangers or riflemen.

The wagon cleared the post, the farmer poorer by some silver coin that had probably robbed him of the whole value of his trip to the Continental camp.

“You pretty things have passes?” The sergeant had lank hair and his bad breath washed over Polly. The two rangers rose carefully and walked toward the sergeant, although both men were suddenly watching the distant woods on the British side of the lines.

“You got a picket out?” asked one, teeth gripping an unlit pipe.

“Jus’ my brother up the hill.”

“He awake?”

“What business is it o’ yourn? This be my post!”

“Not if them Tory horse ride you down. See ’em?” The ranger pointed with his pipe. His motion was very small, careful. “Don’t act alarmed or they’ll come at us. Maybe they’re just lookin’.” The ranger looked at the militia with contempt. “What are you boys doin’ this far from our lines? Besides stealin’ from farmers?’

The other ranger was smiling at the white girl. Finally he came over. Polly tried to listen to both while keeping her eyes down. Demure. Uninvolved. Her heart leapt at the notion that there were Loyalist cavalrymen just a few hundred yards away. They were probably hussars of the Queen’s Rangers, all friends of Caesar. They must be her rendezvous.

“I’d fancy one of them eggs, miss,” said the second ranger. The white girl smiled nervously and gave him an egg, for which he paid a hard penny. That was a high degree of honor for a sentry post, from Polly’s experience.

“Don’t you worry, miss. These milishee won’t harm you.”

The first ranger was still trying to stare down the sergeant. “Well?”

“Captain Bludner ordered us here. We’re lookin’ for Tory spies.”

Polly froze. Just the name Bludner was enough to panic her, but she looked at Sam and thought, If I lose my head, they’ll take Sammy, too.

The ranger looked at the militia sergeant, hard. “Bludner don’t run posts. An’ he ain’t much better ‘an a cow boy. Nor a cap’n, I reckon.” He looked at the whole group of men. “What the hell are Connecticut milishee doin’ in New Jersey?”

“None o’ your business.” The lank-haired sergeant spat.

“Bludner has his place up north o’ the river. Who sent you here?”

“I’m lookin’ for spies.”

Polly thought Bludner has a post, north of the river. That was news. She worked to master her fear. The sergeant was focused on the rangers. She thought she might play a part. After a moment, she snapped, “Then go fin’ some, an’ let po’ hones’ folk go work!”

The sergeant turned and glared at her, but the rangers smiled. The second ranger, the tall one with a fancy hunting shirt and a beautiful knife, was telling the egg girl how to find his camp. Polly was scared but she had gotten the line out with real anger and she was waiting for the verdict.

The first ranger looked up the road.

“Come on, Elijah. These folk is gon’ to get ridden down in a minute, an’ I don’ wan’ to be here.”

Elijah held up his hand and bent down to whisper something to the egg girl. He was good, thought Polly. The poor girl didn’t know what had hit her, she was so taken. She’d probably never been off her farm before.

The rest of the militia were looking all around them, on the edge of panic, but the sergeant wasn’t giving in.

“We can hold this post against some Tory horse, I guess. You walk off if you have a mind. I have orders.”

Elijah actually kissed the egg girl’s hand. Something about it broke Polly’s fear, the thought that here on the edge of violence a man was courting, or something like it, and she laughed. She decided to play the saucy maid to the hilt, since she’d started.

“You gon’ to defend us, Captain? Or jus’ flirt with the lady?”

Elijah laughed. “Always time for flirtin’,” he said. His friend had walked a distance off, along the ridge to their right, and now he was suddenly lying flat and readying his rifle.

“They’s a-comin’!” he called.

Elijah picked up the butt of his rifle and turned away in one motion, headed for the ridge and his partner. “You’d best clear the road,” he called as he ran.

Polly didn’t wait for more orders. She grabbed Sam’s hand and ran the other way into the field beside the road. The ground was still hard and the footing was good, and she ran easily. The further she ran, the more scared she was, waiting for a ball in the back.

There were shots behind them. She didn’t turn, and so she missed the flurry of fighting as the hussars swept down the road. She dragged Sammy into the cover of a shallow depression. There was still snow here, and it was cold. Her petticoats began to take water from the damp ground. She was breathing like a horse after a run, and all thought seemed to have left her. She rolled on to her stomach and tried to look over the crest of her cover, and the cold April wind took her straw hat, blinding her for a moment. And then she saw the huddle of men on the road and green coats all around them.

“See them, Sam?”

“Yes’m.”

“Queen’s Rangers.”

“Ones on foot be Loyal Americans.”

“Let’s go an’ let them round us up, then.”

Philadelphia, June 11, 1779

Riding was still a new adventure for George Lake, and he regarded the journey from the Continental army camp near Newburgh, New York, to the capital at Philadelphia with some apprehension. He had been sent carrying dispatches, at his own request, as he had his own agenda to follow in Philadelphia. But the journey was a labor.

He had a good horse, thanks to the marquis, who was now absent in France but had left George many of his belongings. He was well turned out, in a new coat and a proper greatcoat, and wore good boots and clean linen. Indeed, thoughout his journey, he was accorded a level of respect from innkeepers and fellow travelers that he had not experienced outside his own circle in the army. It pleased him, although he tried not to let it go to his head. At the ferry over the Delaware, the boatman’s daughter flirted to the edge of lewdness, which caused him to wriggle. She was pretty enough, but he was too close to Betsy to feel any temptation.

What he noticed most, besides the ache in his thighs and knees, was the change in attitude his uniform provoked. In the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, he was now treated as a figure of authority and respect, whereas just a year or two earlier he wouldn’t have been welcome under many roofs. The world was changing. People were finally choosing sides.

He saw other signs that were uglier. Everywhere he rode there were burned-out houses, and fields left fallow. Twice he met families on the road, refugees driven out by their neighbors for taking a stand opposed to the majority in their region. The war was hardening attitudes, causing longstanding disagreements to burst forth as violence.

Philadelphia looked prosperous. Even on the outskirts, there were new houses and a new tavern being built, and the river was full of ships. Even a Royal Navy blockade couldn’t keep the French out of the Chesapeake or the most ambitious Massachusetts men from trading. The shops were full of goods and the people in the streets were the best dressed in America, but they seemed surly. Perhaps they saw too many uniforms. His treatment was different here and people all but crossed the street to avoid him.

George took a room at an inn near the Congress and went to deliver his dispatches immediately. He knew the contents intimately: reports on the progress of General Sullivan’s expedition against the Iroquois, which George had viewed as a gimcrack strategy; reports on the movement of British ships and men in and out of New York; and a report on the state of the army near New York. Washington was not quite laying siege to the British forces there, but he had them under close observation while he sent many of his troops to face the British attacks on Charleston and other ports in the south.

The entry of France into the war had changed it profoundly and had other effects than just the return of the marquis to his homeland. With France in the war and the loss of Burgoyne’s army at Saratoga, the British were forced to place their main effort in the Caribbean to prevent the loss of their valuable spice islands to the French Navy. Both sides were now concentrating military efforts in the Carolinas, where a fleet avoiding the hurricane season could relax within easy covering distance of the rich islands farther south. And the British had discovered, perhaps too late, the wealth of Loyalist sentiment that existed in the southern back-country.

While armies and fleets skirmished for the possession of anchorages and bases in the south, the war in the north burned on as a series of raids and counter-raids. Loyalists and Indians attacked the Mohawk Valley to cut Washington off from his grain supply, and Washington sent Sullivan to drive the Iroquois from their villages in retaliation. Around New York City, spies and partisans fought a skulking war every day. The dispatches covered these new realities in detail and the logistics that supported them.

He handed his dispatches to a member of the Continental Congress who immediately encouraged him to comment on the papers he bore. George refrained. The army had already survived two periods of intense internal politics and General Washington had made it clear that he didn’t intend to put up with a third. George had little interest in such talk. He requested a signed receipt for the dispatches and found himself in the street, a short walk from his real destination. He was clean and neat, well dressed, and at the end of his duty, and yet he paused, going into a coffee house.

He hadn’t been to the Lovells’ since the day of the looters and despite many letters he feared to put to the test his resolve to ask Mr. Lovell for his daughter’s hand. He might no longer be welcome. Sitting alone in the coffee house, nursing a cup of bitter coffee, he wondered why the idea of being forbidden a house he had entered only once as a guest made so much difference. He thought it might be that he had spent so long imagining the house and its occupants that he felt a more frequent visitor.

To make matters worse, none of his letters had been answered in two months. It was the lack of letters from Betsy that had spurred him to action. Now that he had arrived, he feared to find out the truth. She had married. She had been forbidden to write. Anything seemed possible.

He stood once again in the street outside the coffee house before finally forcing himself to walk the two blocks to the Lovells’, whistling the “Rogue’s March” as he went like a condemned soldier. He walked up the steps briskly, his boot heels ringing against the brick, and tapped on the door with the force of nerves.

He knocked again a few moments later, louder this time. The door of the next house opened and a maid leaned out. She was pretty, and Irish, like most of the maids in Quaker houses. She ducked back as soon as she saw him. He knocked again.

A small boy was standing at the foot of the steps with a wooden hoop. He had been pushing the hoop with a stick, but now he just watched George.

“Are you a real soldier?” he asked.

“I am, lad.”

“May I hold your sword?” he asked, turning his eyes away as he spoke, perhaps ashamed of his own daring. George laughed and came down the steps.

“You can hold the hilt, but I’ll just keep a grip on her. There, isn’t she fine?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“So, do you live hereabouts?”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

“What’s your name?”

“Alexander Keating, if you please, sir.”

“Well, Alexander Keating, do you know the people who live in this house?”

“I used to know them, sir. Mrs. Lovell made the best orange marmalade and Miss Betsy was the prettiest girl on the street, or so my mama said.”

“Good for your mama. I can’t agree more.” George was wrestling with the construction “used to know”. “Where are the Lovells now?”

“They had to clear out. Mama says the Committee of Safety was wrong to make them go, but Papa says I shouldn’t talk of such things.”

“I imagine he does. Could you take me to meet your mama?”

“Oh, I haven’t been rude, have I, sir?”

“Not at all, Alexander. And you handle that hoop very well indeed. Now march me round to your mama. That’s the boy.”

In minutes, he was seated in another Philadelphia parlor, being fed coffee by the matronly Mrs. Keating. She clucked over the Lovells. It was some moments before George reassured her that he was a friend and not a servant of the committee. Wealthy Philadelphia had developed a distrust of uniforms and George resented it the more for the respect he had felt on his trip south from New York.

“They came several times. I’m not speaking against the government, you understand,” she said, almost in a whisper, and with a look over her shoulder that spoke volumes. “I’m not saying that Mr. Lovell wasn’t a little too loud in his defense of King George. He was arrested, and he paid a fine. An’ most of that fine lined the pockets of the ‘officer’ who arrested him, I have no doubt. My husband would scold me if he heard me talking this way, to an officer an’ all. But a person has to be heard. What’s this ‘freedom’ I hear so much about? The Lovells have none, I believe.”

George sat and drank his coffee silently.

“Oh, I’ve offended you, Captain. I’m so sorry. We’re good Americans, really. But the Lovells had always been our friends.”

“Ma’am, I’m an officer in the Continental Army.” George paused a moment, and then spoke his mind. “I’m a plain man, an apprentice when the war began. I’ve fought since ’75 an’ I reckon I’ll see it through to the end, an’ I don’t have any time for these Committees of Safety. In New York Colony, we had to use the army to suppress some of them. Mostly, they ain’t patriots. They are a vehicle for greedy, cruel men to tyrannize their neighbors. If they was anything else, they’d be in the army.”

He rose and handed her his coffee dish. “I won’t trouble you more, ma’am, with my own seditious talk.” He tore out a sheet from his pocket book and wrote on it in pencil. “This is my address in camp. If the Lovells come back, or you get word of them, would you send to me?”

“Of course I will! I’m a goose! You’re the officer Betsy was always on about, aren’t you?”

George frowned, then smiled. “I reckon I might be, ma’am.”

“Oh, goodness. Oh, of course you want to know where they went. Well, I suppose that all the Tories go to England or to New York. I think that Silas had a place in New York. So you and your camp are closer to the Lovells than I am.” She laughed, a little wildly. She was still very much on edge.

George didn’t ask for a second cup because he could tell Mrs. Keating was nervous to have him and unhappy to discuss the Lovells. He went back to his inn, claimed his gear and his horse, and set out on his return trip. He didn’t want to spend a night in Philadelphia if he could help it.

Betsy might be in New York, just nine miles from George’s camp. And only the British Army between us, George thought as he started north.

New York City, November 30, 1779

It was St. Andrew’s Day.

In the early afternoon the tavern hosted the party for Caesar’s wedding. This was not a common event in taverns, and the service itself, performed unflinchingly by the bride’s father, was held in an Anglican chapel up King Street a ways, so that the party had to squelch to and fro through the muddy streets. Caesar carried his bride, the length of his former master’s great cape wrapped around her so that her French silk gown, imported illegally and with a great deal of anticipation by mercantile connections of Captain Stewart, came through untouched.

Back at the Moor’s Head, all the musicians of the Guides, as well as the musicians of several line companies and two very tall pipers come early for the St. Andrew’s Day festivities, made themselves into a military band and proceeded to play with loud competence. The rafters echoed with songs both military and profane, but it was the dances that everyone would remember later.

Stewart enjoyed the rare pleasure of partnering Sally in public. He did not disgrace himself and she seemed transformed. He wanted her transformed. She spent too much time considering her shadowed future as it was. She had come in a simple gown, as if to keep her charms from rivaling those of the wedding couple.

Caesar was magnificent in a scarlet coat and half boots. He looked like a martial statue, except few statues laughed as much. The scars on his face were almost invisible when he laughed, and he laughed often. When it was his turn, he raised his glass and spoke of Polly and Reverend White, and then of Jeremy. Stewart, unprepared, could only weep. But it passed in a moment and he raised his glass, his tartan coat in contrast to the brighter colors all around him.

But it was Polly who took all eyes. The Hammond girls, the elder of them soon to be wed to Mr. Martin, arranged to arrive at a time where they might have been coming early for the St. Andrew’s Day party-a thin fiction to fool their parents-but even Poppy’s golden hair and fashion couldn’t compete with Polly’s straight back and the contrast of her complexion and the color of her gown. Polly was the most beautiful woman in the room, and perhaps in New York, and she and Caesar danced to everything, sang every song, toasted their friends and gave them something good to last the longest winter of the war.

Before darkness had fallen, most of the wedding party was back in the barracks across the street, many barely able to stand. Sergeant McDonald, who had struck up a friendship with the two pipers and felt obliged to stay for the second festivity, pronounced it the best wedding he had ever attended.

The Moor’s Head stayed full. There wasn’t room for another man or woman to fit under the rafters, and the din roared out into the street and across to the barracks there, and up to Mother Abbott’s and down to the docks. Men drank at their cards, a piper played an endless, complex pibroch while a critical crowd watched, and everywhere men sang.

Highlanders and Lowlanders and Scots by courtesy danced and sang, recited poetry or, if greatly daring, gave voice in Gaelic. Sgt. McDonald and the pair of pipers from Mull had seized the best table early and held it against all comers, proclaiming the superiority of Scotland, Alan McLean and the Hebrides to all who would listen. The eldest, a white-headed man named Cameron, declaimed from Ossian and challenged any man to tell him the great bard was a counterfeit.

After the wedding, the Scots had begun to arrive in earnest and the character of the place changed. Colonel Robinson was a late addition, along with his guest. Stewart laid himself out to be amiable, aware that he was just a shade short of drunkenness. Jeremy would have been leading him home, by now. Sally had given him a meaningful glance when she left, and that had been hours ago. He watched, and sang, and shouted, and drank more.

From time to time the door opened and brought cold and damp and newcomers, often couples coming from other parties. There were several St. Andrew’s revels in New York and it seemed that everyone in the town was Scottish.

Stewart heard the men from Mull singing “Come o’er the Stream, Charlie” and wondered how seditious the evening would become. Behind him, Robinson waved for a waiter.

“Some of your countrymen still want the Jacobite pretender, Captain?”

“Not really. Most think he’s a useless sod and a drunk. And Roman, to boot. But the resentment is still there. Aye, and some of the songs you’ll hear tonight are still illegal at home.” Stewart raised his glass. “But we were always Whigs, so I won’t drink to the King over the water. I was just born when the Prince came over and me Da’ stayed in his counting house like a proper Edinburgh gent.”

Robinson laughed. He was Virginia born, well bred, a former friend of George Washington, but he hated slavery and hated the Continental Congress, too. Some said he and Washington had fought over a woman. Whatever the truth, he had married in the north and stayed there, and now he commanded one of the better Loyalist corps. Stewart liked him well enough but he was no substitute for Simcoe, who was away in the south.

“You British make such an issue about counting houses and the like. No one in America cares. We’re all in trade.” He waved his wine glass at the room. “Could you have St. Andrew’s like this at home? No. Half these men wouldn’t be allowed in the same room as the other half.”

Stewart nodded his agreement and thought about Caesar’s wedding. He might have let the wine lead him astray, because when Stewart looked up he found that they had been joined by a family, a rotund man and his handsome wife and even handsomer daughter. The man bowed to Colonel Robinson, who rose from his chair and bowed in return.

“I took the liberty of inviting Mr. Silas Lovell, formerly of Philadelphia, and his wife to join us. Mr. Lovell is not Scots but something tells me his wife is.”

Mrs. Lovell made a face and tapped the colonel lightly with her fan.

Stewart rose to his feet and bowed.

“Mr. Lovell of the commissary, may I introduce Captain Stewart of the army.”

“Your servant, sir,” said Stewart, racking his brain for why the name of Lovell seemed so familiar.

“And yours, sir.”

“You are Scottish, Captain?” asked Mrs. Lovell.

“Born and bred in sight of Holyrood, ma’am.”

Mrs. Lovell smiled and nodded. “My family is from Aberdeen.”

Mr. Lovell winced at the pibroch, which had reached a level of intensity rivaled only by the complexity of the repetition.

“When did you come to America?” asked Stewart.

“I came as a girl, in one of my father’s ships. I’m an Ogilvy.”

Stewart bowed again. “I suspect I know your brothers, ma’am. My father is Kenneth Stewart, the Turkey merchant.”

In a moment they were off in a rush of reminiscence. Short of meeting a friend from Edinburgh or from his school days, Captain Stewart couldn’t have made a happier acquaintance. They spoke for several minutes, animated, exchanging names and laughing, until Mrs. Lovell noticed that her husband had gone off with Colonel Robinson and her daughter was standing by, somewhat listless.

“I don’t think my husband introduced my daughter, Betsy.”

At the name Betsy, the whole memory crystallized for Stewart and a shadow crossed his face.

Both women noticed the change. For a moment, he was again confronting the loss of Jeremy and the days just after. But he rallied quickly.

“Are you ill, sir?” asked Mrs. Lovell, looking for water.

“No, ma’am. Pardon this question, which might seem a tad brash, but do you know a Captain George Lake of the Continental Army?”

Both of them gasped, although Miss Betsy appeared the more moved.

“Captain Lake is getting missives from the enemy,” said Caleb Cooke, handing George a thick canvas wrapper. “This came through the lines for you from New York, and the whole staff wants to know why you’re so popular.”

Lake was sitting in the main room of his host’s farmhouse, trying to get his charcloth to cook right by tapping his tinderbox to make it heat more evenly.

“Have a pipe for your messenger boy?” asked Cooke when George continued with his task. George pointed to the mantelpiece, where two long white pipes lay alongside a brass tobacco box. When he had the tinder going the way he wanted it, George took the heavy canvas package and opened it with a clasp knife from his waistcoat pocket.

“Would the gen’lemen like coffee?” asked the farmer’s wife. Caleb smiled broadly.

“Damn, you have better quarters than I do. My proprietress speaks only Dutch.”

George grunted, still wrestling with the wrapper. When he had it free, he could read the inner envelope.

“It’s from Captain Stewart!”

“That fellow you had as a prisoner?”

“He’s the one. Fine fellow. I liked him. If the British were all like him, I reckon we wouldn’t have a war.”

He opened the envelope and the size of the parcel was explained. Twenty envelopes fell out, and a small package.

“I guess you two had a lot to talk about,” said Caleb, around his pipe.

George gave a shout and bounced out of his chair.

“Bless that man!” he said, pounding his fist in the air. “God bless John Julius Stewart and his family forever.”

Caleb watched his usually dour friend in amazement. George had tears in his eyes and he was laughing and then he kissed one of the envelopes. Caleb had to look away, it was so peculiar.

“Don’t you get it, Caleb? Stewart’s found my Betsy. In New York!”

Caleb sighed and puffed his pipe.

New Jersey, April 15, 1780

Sam had shot up over the winter. He was too big to be Polly’s boy anymore and almost too big to use as a child. Food and affection had changed him, too. He had a hard time playing at being a slave and he resented the slights he met with in the role.

Since she had married Caesar, Polly hadn’t wanted to spy much, either. Her own nerves were worn and now she watched his as she waited to leave. He began to quarrel with her father. He never told her that she had to stop spying, although she sensed he wanted to. Perhaps he knew she had her arguments ready, or perhaps he understood the game and the cost too well.

In April, she discovered she was pregnant, but she kept it to herself because she had miscarried in the fall and she didn’t want Caesar and her father to treat her as if she was made of porcelain. She took the mission when it came because she thought this baby was going to stick and she might not be able to go again. She wanted to do her duty one more time.

Caesar led the patrol intended to get her through the rebel lines. She had never done this with him before, but this time he insisted and his men treated her like a queen. They landed by boat from Staten Island and made camp. Caesar and his men were going to attack a mill the next day. She would return to New York through the landward side in a week.

They sat around a tiny fire, huddling close and holding hands until long after the other men were snoring. Only the sentry was awake, off in the dark in a hide made of fallen boughs. Their breath steamed in the cold.

“You know I’m going to worry about you every day,” said Caesar.

Polly pressed his hand tighter. “Don’t talk about it,” she said. “I’ll be back soon enough. Don’t you go and get shot.”

He laughed. “Not likely.” He pressed her hand back. “Ever wonder what we’ll do when this is over?”

She snuggled in closer. “We’ll be warmer.”

“Sometimes I think that there is a joy in this I might not find in peace.”

“Julius Caesar, you talk a lot of nonsense.”

Polly had no trouble on her rounds. She dropped three documents in three different places, all dead drops so that she wouldn’t know the recipient if she were caught. She had to meet one man in person, and he was dismissive of her as a messenger because she was black. He ordered her to send someone of higher rank the next time. She shook her head as she left him. Higher rank? As a spy?

Sam was more of a liability than a help. He made some of her drops and watched for her but twice he got into fights with white boys his own age. He wasn’t used to being called names anymore.

Their rendezvous for going back was in New Jersey, which meant she had to cross the Hudson. The ferry proved to be far more dangerous than it had ever been before, with guards who checked papers and were deeply suspicious of her, slave or no. She and Sam made it across, but she feared that the sergeant had sent a description of her ahead. She decided to keep to back roads and stayed with some Dutch negroes she had met before the war, hiding for a few days and missing her first rendezvous. Caesar would worry, and she wanted to go to him, but that was sloppy thinking, the kind that got spies killed.

She passed the rebel camp on the river, thinking that this was the home of Captain Stewart’s friend who was sweet on Betsy Lovell. So easy for her to stop and reassure him. So foolish to think that way. She passed well south of the big rebel post at West Point and cleared a drop there. She had no idea who the post was for but she thought he must be very important as his was the one post she was to clear regardless of her other circumstances. Her mission complete, she started downriver, looking for roads south and east into New Jersey, and began to use Sam the old way, sending him well ahead on roads she didn’t know to look for guardposts.

They walked for a day and then lay up in a burned-out house, sleeping in the cellar. She was a day early for her second rendezvous and she was a little lost. Her careful walking on back roads had taken an unfamiliar turn and she thought she might be near the old Day House in Bergen County, but the ground was steeper than she imagined. There were patrols out, soldiers moving in the cold before dawn, and she didn’t know which side they were on, so she and Sam huddled close. They had no sleep.

Finally they got up and started forward. Polly knew she looked poorly, and that might hurt her if she had to pass a post. She tried to straighten her clothes but her petticoats were soaking wet. She worried that she looked like a runaway. With his wild hair, Sam sure did.

It started to rain. That had benefits, and she determined to go as far as she could while it lasted. They trudged on, heads down, her straw hat pasted to her head. They were both soaked through. Polly’s stays began to bite her sides and waist and she thought she might be bleeding.

The morning passed and still the rain fell. Soon it was all they could do to put one foot in front of another. Sam hadn’t talked for hours, and she stopped sending him ahead because she couldn’t bear to stop walking. She knew they had to find shelter or they’d die in the open.

Just after noon her heart rose a little when she passed a big red clapboard house she recognized. They were less than a mile short of their rendezvous and although the road rose steeply, she started to walk faster.

“I don’ think mah legs will go any bettah,” said Sam.

“Better, Sam. Less than a mile to go.”

“You jus’ sayin’ that.”

Polly pointed into the wind and panted. “No, I ain’t. Over the crest of this hill…”

“What’s over the crest of this hill, honey?” asked a voice behind her.

She turned and saw four white men, two on horses, and more men behind them. They had guns, three of them rifles.

“Where you run from, honey?” said the voice. “Take ’em, boys. That’s cash on the hoof.”

Polly had never met Bludner but she had heard about him often enough from Sally to know the face and the manner. There would be no brazening this out. She picked up her sodden petticoats, summoned her tiny reserve of energy and ran, long white-stockinged legs flashing in the wet as she dashed up the road. She was past Sam before he had even turned.

“Slave-takers,” she said. At least it didn’t give away their real errand.

Sam didn’t hesitate either, but he didn’t run. As the horseman came up on him, Sam leaped on to the horse’s back, tugging at the rider.

Bludner lost a stirrup and got a fist in his mouth before he mastered his opponent with two brutal moves and threw Sam down in the road.

“Take him, you fools. Carter, you’re with me.” Bludner whipped his horse and it sprang forward.

Polly had no idea what Sam had done, or what the result was. She ran over the crest of the hill and started down the other side, where the road turned steeply. After the first turn there was a boulder, and she left the road and ran into the brambles beyond, tearing her stockings and her bare thighs and carrying on regardless. She heard the horses come over the crest behind her and she broke through the brambles and into some trees.

“Where’d she go?”

“She must be in them woods,” said another voice, and she heard horses’ hooves on the road. Then she ran again, spurred by pain and fear like a wounded animal, and she ran down the hill, making leaps from wet rocks that would have terrified her on any normal day. She landed badly at the bottom, turned her ankle and hobbled on, too scared to stop. But surely no man on a horse could come down a hill like that.

She smelled smoke. Not wood smoke, but smoke from a pipe, and she hoped it might be a party out for her rendezvous. The slave-takers’ horses were on the road, coming down the hill the long way, and all she could do now was hobble. She was sweating, warm for the first time in two days. She stopped behind a huge oak and looked for a place to hide.

She saw the Loyalist sentry at the same moment he saw her.

“Rebels on the road. They’re after me. They have my brother,” she panted. “Where’s the officer?”

It wasn’t Caesar. She’d asked her father not to let Caesar come out for her because he’d fret too much, but now she wanted him because he’d know how to save Sam. And then something snapped inside her and she sat down on a rock and watched the blood coming down her legs.

The patrol was from the Loyal Americans, with some Jaegers along for the fun, and they were on the road in a flash, but all their priming was wet and Bludner rode away.

Polly sat on her rock and wept.

“We lost that girl,” said Carter. “Sergeant at the ferry thought she was a spy.”

“She is. Why the British use niggers for spies beats me, but she is. We’ll have her the next time she crosses the lines, and then we’ll see some fun.”

“We got the boy, though.”

Bludner laughed and looked at Sam, who he’d already beaten so badly that Sam’s face was lumpy, as if made of clay. Bludner spat. “I don’t think he knows much.”

“You gon’ ta kill him, sir?”

“Kill him?” Bludner laughed. “Kill him? Carter, that’s why I’m a captain and you’re a corporal. I ain’t gon’ to kill him.”

Bludner looked at Sam and smiled, showing all his stained teeth, and spoke carefully, so Sam would understand.

“I’m going to sell him.”

Boston, April 28, 1780

The wharves of Boston stretched out into the distance so that the harbor seemed like a winter forest of bare trees. The British blockade was neither close nor thorough and trade was flourishing, although nearby Newburyport had as much or more because there was no British frigate to watch the entrance to the Ipswich River there. Most of the vessels in the harbor were local, although there were Dutch and Spanish ships, and a French warship just arriving, the Hermione, toward which George Lake hurried with horses and several soldiers.

George was no sailor, but he watched the great frigate come in with fascination. She had some way on her from a fuller press of sails she had worn in the outer roads, and now she ghosted along under just a headsail through a riot of small boats and other ships. It seemed a miracle that she hit nothing. As he watched, she passed the pier where he stood and turned suddenly up into the wind, so that the last of her way came off her and she stopped, the latest in a long row of merchants and privateers anchored just off the Long Pier. He saw her anchor come down with a splash.

There was quite a crowd gathering as George waited. When a boat pulled away from the Hermione, the crowd began to cheer. George cheered with them and then used his men to keep the head of the ladder clear as the Boston crowd pressed closer.

Lafayette came up the ladder with his usual energy and, despite the presence of several dignitaries from the local assembly and the sovereign commonwealth of Massachusetts, caught George in a hug and kissed both cheeks, to George’s intense pleasure and embarrassment.

It was hours before they could talk. Lafayette made several fine speeches and visited a number of homes. He gave another officer dispatches from the French Court at Versailles for the Continental Congress and he watched the landing of his new camp equipage personally. Finally, at the house of one of his many friends, he slouched down in a chair, watching a servant pull off his boots.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

George did his best-from the actions of the Congress to the successes of the British. Lafayette nodded along and drank wine. When George began to slow, Lafayette waved his hand.

“But how is he? The Generalissimo? How is he?”

George smiled. “He’s different, Marquis. Better with the men. He’s, well, more open, I think I’d say. And eager to see you, Marquis.”

“As I long to see him. I thought of him every day, my friend, while I watched the posturing of the Court. Ah, if you could see Monsieur de Maurepas, you would understand the intensity of my frustration. No ships, too few troops, no muskets unless I paid cash. Nonetheless, George, on my ship I have enough uniforms, helmets and muskets for a division. They are mine, you understand? I purchased them. And I will see to it your company is among the first to be uniformed.”

George laughed. “I can’t imagine how much money that would cost.”

Lafayette made a dismissing motion with his hand. “Nothing. Nothing that I will worry about. I wish to take these muskets and place them before the General. Has he met Rochambeau? But of course he must have done. Is all well between them?”

“I think they got along like good friends, Marquis. And I gather you have a son? May I congratulate you, sir?”

“Ah, you may. Very nicely put, George. Three years as an officer and you sound the gentleman, eh? My little Adrienne has given me a son and I have called him after the general, as George Washington, yes?” Lafayette had a light in his eye and his whole face beamed with pleasure. “And you? You are still a captain? That is because I have not been here to press your claim, my hero. And have you married? What happened to Miss Bessy of Philadelphia?”

“Miss Betsy, Marquis. And now she’s ‘of New York.’ We write, and I dare say we’re affianced, except no banns have been called. But I doubt we’ll wed before the war is over.”

“That is romantic, George. I hope it makes you concentrate on the matter at hand, so you desire victory above all things. But I wrong you. You were always a true believer, and you have already put the cause first.”

Lafayette looked at the earnest George, no longer quite so young. He had lines on his face and frost in his hair from five years of constant campaigning, and if he had more of the air of a gentleman than he had the last time Lafayette saw him, he had purchased it in blood. Lafayette thought George might be the archetype of the knight, the warrior who earned his name and escutcheon in the field and founded a great name.

A servant brought the marquis a lit pipe, which he savoured. “You know, I have not smoked since I left the field in America. And now I come back to it. Very pleasant.” He pulled his feet under him in the wingback chair and curled sideways so that he faced George, a silk brocade dressing gown pulled loosely around him. No one would have mistaken him for American. He was too small, his features too open and soft. A pretty female servant came in with a pan of warm water, which she placed by the marquis, who watched her with interest. He continued as she built up the fire, and she caught his eye, then lowered hers and smiled. She curtsied and was gone.

Lafayette smiled to himself. Then he looked back at George.

“I have missed this country.” He waved his pipe. “And not just the pleasures of it. Do you know if I am to have a command?”

George leaned forward. “I only know the rumor, but it is said you are to have a division of all the light troops in the army.”

Lafayette punched the air with his pipe and gave a little shout.

“It’s true, then. That is what I was promised in France. And, George, I will see to it that I have your company as well. We shall be the elite of the army, and we shall lead the way to victory.”

Tatawa, New Jersey, October 13, 1780

George sat in his tent, a fine small marquee he had inherited from Lafayette, and wrote his second letter of the day to Betsy, briefly describing his patrol and then transcribing a poem from a book provided by the marquis. George’s preoccupation with writing to Betsy and reading her letters had improved his literacy to the extent that he had been acting as Lafayette’s adjutant when Colonel Laurens wasn’t available.

His French was also improving. Throughout the summer he had moved between the American camps and the French camps, carrying letters for the marquis and answers from the French staff, all of whom he now knew with some degree of intimacy. He could conduct a conversation with Lafayette’s father-in-law the Comte de Noailles, although the content of such conversations usually made him blush. Indeed, Laurens often joked to George that he’d had to learn a whole new vocabulary to deal with the aristocrats. They wanted to fight, and sometimes fought each other, but when no fighting was available their every thought turned to women.

George finished translating the poem, wrote it out fair and then built up the fire in his brazier, but a soldier called out from the door and asked him to attend the marquis immediately. He picked up the book and walked out of his tent and up the hill to his general. When he saw that Lafayette was entertaining General Washington he turned away, but Lafayette beckoned to him before he could slip off. Washington still had the power of a god for George Lake. He stood at attention until Lafayette invited him to sit. Washington inclined his head in greeting and Lake feared that the great man was angry at his intrusion.

A servant poured George a Madeira in one of the marquis’s exquisite glasses, and George touched it to his lips while Lafayette went back to his story about Madame d’Hunolstein. George had suspicions, fostered by the Comte de Noailles, that despite Lafayette’s love for his wife, he and Madame d’Hunolstein were more than just friends. Washington apparently thought the same, because he tapped his foot as the story drew toward a difficult conclusion. Lafayette blushed at his hero’s discomfort and changed the subject abruptly.

“You know that General Gates has been beaten badly in the south?” Lafayette directed this at George, who shook his head.

“We have lost Charleston and now we look to lose much of the back country. That is not the worst of it, George. I don’t want this spread to the camp at large, but you read my correspondence and it is only fitting that you know.” He looked at Washington, who turned his head away. It startled George, the raw emotion stark and open on Washington’s face: rage and something else. He shrank back into his chair.

“General Arnold has attempted to betray West Point to the enemy. Having failed, he has fled to New York.”

“The wretched traitor,” said Washington in a whisper.

George gulped. He was adept at handling men under fire, but this was different. He now understood Lafayette’s story: he had been attempting to divert Washington from his rage. George searched for something to say.

“That’s terrible,” was the best he could do.

Washington drank off the rest of his Madeira, his head turned away.

“I am poor company, my friend,” he said bitterly, and there was a sharp click. Washington looked at the fine glass he had just broken by the pressure of his hand, and shook his head. He tossed the glass through the door of the tent.

“My cloak!”

“But, General. You mustn’t think to go yet. Let us entertain you…”

“My thanks, Marquis. Captain Lake. I’ll not burden you, gentlemen. Nelson and I will see the evening out.”

He shrugged into his cloak and gave a little bow from the door, stooping low to get his head through the tent flap. His leaving was as if a lamp had gone out, so intense was his presence.

“Bah,” said Lafayette angrily. “Arnold was never more than the sum of his ambitions. We are better without him.”

“He was at Boston with the general. I believe Washington had a feeling for him.”

Lafayette smiled at Lake. “You know, you are too good for this world, George Lake. Do you know that many of the generals hate one another, and all strive for his approval or that of Congress, or both?”

“Yes,” said George simply. “It’s all one to me, sir.”

Lafayette poured himself more wine.

“If he were less a god…”

“How do you mean, sir?”

“Oh, if it were the old Marechal de Noailles, I would send for one of the ladies of the camp, who would dance and laugh and take him to her bed and that would be the end of his rage. You Americans are not immune to the charms of Venus, but he is. He wants to return to Martha and only Martha. Would that I were so constant.”

“You want to return to Adrienne; you speak of her every day.”

Lafayette looked at George, hard, as if he feared to be made game of. Then he looked away, swirled his wine and stood up suddenly.

“This has affected me more than I realised. I am a bore. You think only of your Betsy, and perhaps you Americans are immune to Mademoiselle Venus after all. You are all great men.” The marquis sounded bitter, a side of him George had never witnessed before.

George took a deep breath. “I’m not a perfect man, Marquis. I’m a soldier. I’ve lain with other women an’ thanked ’em for it. But I wouldn’t ask one to go to the general. An’ he wouldn’t want it. An’ Betsy seems so far away, for all she’s just across the river.” He paused in thought for a moment, and then plunged on. “Think we’ll ever win this war? When we lost Charleston I thought of quitting. An’ you know what held me, Marquis? It wasn’t love of my country. It was the knowledge that there’s nothing else I’m good for. I’ve been a soldier so long I can’t go back, can I? I can’t make hats for the gentry in Williamsburg, although five years ago that was my only ambition.”

Lafayette looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.

“I’m not the perfect American, Marquis. Nor is the general.” George was no longer seeing Lafayette but the long marches of the last six years. He wondered how he had gone so far afield or spoken so much. He mumbled an apology, suddenly shy.

“I, too, have doubts, George. The general, he has doubts, or Arnold’s treason would not have him so angry. You know him as I do. He carries the weight of the cause on him and he can never appear to be weak or all of us will be afraid, yes? He is our Hercules. He carries the labours.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s just it, Marquis.”

“Go to bed, George.”

The marquis pulled his dressing gown closer about him. George wondered if he had a girl to warm his camp bed and decided it was better not to know. George had to write out the orders that drove the camp girls from the tents some mornings, and he wanted a clear conscience for his commander.

“Good night, sir.”

New York, January 12, 1781

The inn was cold, even though every one of the fireplaces was roaring. New York seemed empty, so many of the officers had gone home on the transports to England for the winter. Only those too poor to make the crossing or with nothing to go home to stayed behind. Even some of the Loyalists had left, looking for employment in the mother country.

John Stewart did not follow them. He had been mentioned in dispatches again for an action in New Jersey and he expected to be made major in his regiment in the spring. He’d already arranged the purchase. Major Leslie wanted to go home. And Stewart would stay. Until Jeremy was avenged, he thought.

Stewart had doubts aplenty. He felt that the war was lost, and his beloved was not growing any younger waiting for him. He had enough military glory to last him a lifetime and enough laurels to win his love and marry her. Each winter, Stewart told himself that this was the last, and then he stayed for another. Yet something kept him here.

One reason was Julius Caesar, who was sitting at a table playing whist with three other sergeants. Then there was Sally. He tried not to think of her, although she was often in his thoughts.

Jeremy, and Caesar, and Sally. And the war. He hated it, but not all of it, and when he thought of these things and then of Miss McLean waiting in Scotland, he felt a cold guilt in his stomach.

He shook himself and raised his glass to Mr. Martin.

“I thought you planned to move to the Queen’s Rangers.”

“I did, once. Now I wouldn’t leave the Guides for anything. Everything I know I learned here. And besides, the Rangers are in the south.”

“Which is damned far from Miss Hammond. I agree. Let’s drink her health, you and I.”

Caesar had appeared by his elbow.

“Captain? Lieutenant? Reverend White begs the indulgence of a word in the private room.”

Caesar was tense, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. The two officers rose and followed him into the relative warmth of the private room in the back, by the kitchen.

“If I’d known this place was so warm I’d have been back here afore ye,” said Captain Stewart, settling in a broad wooden chair by the fire. He started to see Sally sitting in the chimney corner with Polly, dressed modestly. She was mostly modest these days, although every month or so she’d kick the traces, drink hard and come back to his bed with a bruise on her face. He tried never to ask. He wanted to hit her, sometimes, but he had never asked her for faithfulness.

She gave him a nervous smile.

Reverend White shot Mr. Martin a look and waited for Caesar, who was checking up and down the passage. Stewart had a glimpse of his own Sergeant McDonald outside before Caesar shut the door.

“As snug as you could wish, Reverend. And no one the wiser but them that knows.”

Reverend White nodded sharply.

“Gentlemen,” he said to the two white officers. “I beg your pardon for dragooning you like this, but we have a matter of some importance to put to you and we require complete security.”

He looked around the room.

“We wish to make a plan to kill or capture Mr. Bludner and we need your help.”

Stewart nodded. “I would be happy to help. Why now? And what do the ladies have to do with it?”

Sally stood up slowly. Stewart could see she was very nervous.

“Captain Stewart…” she began. Tears rolled down her face, but she smiled and he smiled back. There was no one present who did not know he kept her, except maybe Martin, who would have had to be blind. And Stewart was not one to care particularly. He remembered Jeremy ordering him to see to Sally in the upstairs hall of this very building, and the thought made him smile the more.

“John, surely, Sally.”

She bobbed her head. “John. I have wanted to tell you this for a year. I am a spy, honey.”

Stewart nodded. It wasn’t that he had known, more that he had sensed that something wasn’t right, and this fit perfectly. He was even happy, for a moment, because it was so much better than what he had expected her to say.

“For us, I hope,” he said, looking around. Of course, Reverend White was a spymaster. Now he could see the whole thing.

“Not always,” growled Caesar.

“Bygones is bygones,” said Polly, and then she let her eyes fall.

“What’s past is over, and Sally has more than atoned for her sin. She’s doubled for me for two years, and she has led us to half the spies in New York. We feed them what we want. They run at our pleasure. And we have Sally to thank for it.”

White looked around the room. He had the attention of every man and woman.

“Bludner thinks he runs Sally. He sends a man to her every fortnight, who beats her and collects her reports. Now he wants her back in person. We are determined that she won’t go. When Sam was taken, we were afraid that Bludner might learn something from him, but Sam must have held his tongue until he was sold south. We honor that memory. When Major Andre was taken, we held our breath because he knew about Sally, but he has kept her secret so far. I hope he may go free or take it with him to the gallows.”

“Amen,” said Lieutenant Martin, who knew Andre.

“But Bludner keeps getting closer, and he’s foul. I don’t need to tell you, any of you, what we owe to Mr. Bludner. Jeremy. Sam. And he nearly had Polly.”

Polly smiled bravely. She feared Bludner, now, but not so much that she wouldn’t volunteer again. She hadn’t been pregnant since her second miscarriage. Caesar blamed Bludner.

“Thanks to something Polly heard a year back, we have one or two clues about where he might have his quarters. What I want to do is beat the bushes until we find him and then use his own messenger to get him into our grasp. Then I want to take him and all his men.”

Stewart nodded.

“We’re capable of that sort of action, Reverend. Do you know where he is?”

“Not yet. We have to do this so that his masters will never know he was betrayed by Sally, or they’ll never rest until they get her. We need to take all their men in New York in a single night and parade one as the Judas. Leave me to plan that aspect. I want you gentlemen to plan the military operation and find some way to cover it so that it looks like part of a larger whole.”

Stewart looked at Martin, and at Sally.

“Just so.”

Green Springs, Virginia, July 6, 1781

Captain George Lake watched General Wayne’s Pennsylvanians break under the weight of the British fire and retire. Some ran, some walked and a few units marched back smartly, but there were more than a hundred bodies left behind. The attack had been foolish and Cornwallis, the British general, had baited the trap and sprung it, just as Lafayette had said.

George waved his arms and blew his whistle, and his company broke into a run. The men at the back of the long files had to sprint to reach the new front, which George formed in the cover offered by a raised road.

“Five pace intervals!” he yelled.

Men began to space themselves out. In a few moments, his men covered almost two hundred paces of the front, and Caleb’s company were doing the same on his right.

Something reached out and plucked away his shiny leather helmet, which hit the ground well behind him. George crouched down.

“Rifles! Keep your heads down.”

Wayne’s Pennsylvanians filtered through his men and started to form behind him, temporarily safe from the fire because of the raised road’s embankment. As soon as his front was clear, he turned to his bugler.

“Sound skirmish,” he said.

The boy raised the instrument, a fine brass hunting horn bought in France with the marquis’s money, and sounded the call. File leaders leaned their heads up over the embankment, picked their targets and fired. The moment their shots rang out, they rolled on their backs and began to load while their file partners searched the ground ahead for targets. George leaned up against the damp earth and raised his head carefully, one hand over his gorget to hide the flash. He could just see some green-coated men in the field beyond the embankment, lying prone and firing carefully. They too had leather helmets with curved half moons as their insignia.

“Queen’s Rangers, lads. Always a pleasure to fight the best.”

His corporal, Ned Simmons, laughed and then fired, his French rifled carbine making a crack that contrasted with the softer bangs of the muskets.

George saw cavalry forming beyond the field at the edge of the woods. He looked behind him to see if the Pennsylvania men were rallied solidly. They were not, but behind them he saw General Lafayette and his staff galloping across the tobacco fields and he smiled.

He trotted over to Caleb, keeping his head well below the top of the embankment.

“Cavalry, Caleb,” he said by way of greeting as he dropped to the ground beside him.

“Whereabouts, then?”

George pointed to where the cavalry were trying to stay hidden.

“Colonel Simcoe hopes to keep us amused with his lights and his rifles until we are well strung out…”

“And then ride us over. Those Pennsylvania boys are done for the day, George. I’d say it’s time to get out of here.”

“Let’s hear what the marquis has to say.”

Lafayette dismounted behind them and handed his horse to an aide, who instantly fell wounded. The horse spooked and ran off in a long curve, looking for a place to gallop free. Lafayette shook his head and laughed and started to walk across the plowed ground as if unconcerned by the fire.

“Well done, George,” he called. When he was closer he condescended to crouch behind the embankment with the two light officers. “The army will thank you for getting here so quickly. General Wayne is rallying his men, and then we’ll be away.”

“So we are retreating?”

Lafayette laughed, one short bark. “You wish to attack?”

“Not in the least, sir.”

“Excellent. As soon as the Pennsylvanians begin to withdraw, you may move into those woods. You will be the rearguard. There will be dragoons to cover you…ahh, there they are.”

George nodded, trying to time the arrival of the friendly cavalry against the possibility of the enemy horse charging him.

Lafayette slapped his boot. “Come and see me when this is over. I have a job for you, as you Americans say.”

He rose and bowed, regardless of the bullets. George couldn’t help but return the bow.

Simcoe sat on his horse in the shadow of the trees with his black trumpeter, Harris, and his staff and watched the arrival of the rebel horse.

“The enemy have put their house in order, gentlemen,” he said, scanning the field under his hand. He made a clucking noise. He had been close to snatching away two of their best companies but the chance was gone.

One of his riflemen in the tree nearest to him called down. “Colonel? I have a good shot at a general who just stood up. Little fellow. Must be Lafayette!”

Simcoe made his clucking noise again. “Let him go, Dodd.” He turned his horse and motioned to his bugler, who immediately started to blow the recall.

An hour later, George and the marquis watched the end of the British column as they withdrew across the river toward Williamsburg. A shot rang out as one of their rearguard tried the range against Lafayette’s dragoons.

“They beat us and then retreat,” said George.

“General Cornwallis has limited supplies and quite a few wounded men. He is eager to secure his escape.” Lafayette mounted his horse, recaptured by the dragoons, and motioned to an aide.

“What’d you want me for, Marquis?”

“I want you to take my dispatches to General Washington as quickly as you can.”

George nodded, already worried about his company in his absence.

“It is essential that General Washington should understand the situation as quickly as possible, George. You know that the Comte de Grasse and his fleet are on their way?”

“I know they are coming this summer, yes.”

“They may come here. Perhaps they will go to New York or to Rhode Island, but they may come here. And George, if they do, you must tell the general that we will have Cornwallis like a rat in the trap.”

New Jersey, July 8, 1781

Caesar heard the shots off to his right and stopped in the trail. He had been ordering one of his men to collect all the carts from a farm, but foraging was no longer the primary mission. He turned and ran to his right, gathering men as he went. Across a field, he saw Major Stewart put his horse over a fence and wave his helmet.

Mr. Martin was standing in the farmyard, his whistle to his lips. Caesar waved his musket.

“Enemy off to the right, sir.”

“I’m with you,” said Martin, and they ran through the farmyard and up to a fence where one of the new men, Saul, lay slumped and moaning against the clean split rails. His red jacket glistened with blood from a wound high in his chest. Caesar knelt by him a moment and shrugged to Virgil, who was on the other side of him.

“Rifle,” Caesar said. He looked for Saul’s file partner, a veteran named Delancy after his former owner. Delancy was ahead of them in the fenced field, lying under a tree. His musket barked. Caesar tried to follow the line of the shot and saw several men in dirty gray shirts on a low rise to the east. Caesar looked at Martin, who nodded and blew his whistle.

“Form front on the center. Quickly, now. Odd files will cover. Even files advance on the whistle. Listen for it.”

Martin was encouraging the men, and then one of them fell and gave a scream. Far off, there was a tiny puff of smoke. Some of the newer men immediately crouched, and one fired his musket. Virgil cuffed him.

“Don’ be a fool,” he growled.

Faster, Caesar thought. We have to move faster.

He blew his whistle. Something hit the barn right next to his head and splinters pricked his face. He shook his head. Fowver was ordering the stationary files to start firing, and they did, slowly and carefully to avoid their own men. They weren’t likely to hit much with muskets against rifles at this range, but they had all learned that any enemy shoots worse when he’s worried about keeping his own head down. Caesar’s men began to trot.

He was reading the ground, looking for cover, when he saw the little fold off to the left. He angled that way and the line followed him. They were well spread out but he began to sprint, the full power of his legs carrying him ahead. There was a fence and he hurdled it, his whole body crossing in one fluid motion, and then he was over and running on the other side.

“Files from the center, follow me!” he bellowed. The men crossing the fence began to run to him. He kept going forward.

Off to his right, he saw Major Stewart moving his men through an orchard. Then he was in the little fold and hidden from the riflemen. He paused a moment to gather his men, few of whom had his turn of speed. There were shots from the farmyard, and then more shots from over his head.

“Ready?” he asked. They all got their breath back, safe in the dead ground and none too eager to leave it.

Martin drew his sword. He looked at it a moment as if it was unfamiliar and then held it up. “Charge!” he yelled and ran up the fold. Caesar followed him and the moment they came over the little crest they began to cheer.

The rebels didn’t wait for them. Surprised by their appearance so close, they bolted. Off to the right, Major Stewart’s horse crested the rise and one of the rebels paused and shot him. Stewart’s horse crumpled. Caesar bellowed. Virgil stopped for one stride and shot the man down, and Martin gave a cry and ran on, Caesar at his heels.

There was a long hill behind the rise where the riflemen had waited, and they ran up it as best they could, Caesar and Martin now well ahead. The rocks grew bigger until they could no longer see their quarry, and then they came around a great boulder and they were on a road. A big man on a horse fired a pistol and the ball went wide. Then he laughed. Another man turned his horse and tried a rifle shot from horseback.

Caesar aimed his fusil and pulled the trigger. Nothing answered him but the clatch of the cock hitting the hammer. The rifle shot ricocheted off the boulder and Martin took a pistol from his belt, raised it like a duellist and shot the man’s horse. The big man gave one glance at his partner and rode away.

Suddenly Caesar knew the big man was Bludner. He gave a wordless cry somewhere between pain and rage and ran down the road, brandishing his useless fusil like a spear. He ran with the full power of his legs, the iron horseshoe plates on his heels kicking up sparks as he went, leaping the downed horse and on around the bend.

He could see for a hundred yards, and there was Bludner going over the next hill, his horse at a gallop. Caesar put his head down and ran. At the next hill he abandoned his fusil. He ran until he could no longer see Bludner ahead of him. And then he turned and started to trot back.

Stewart was lying under a maple tree at the edge of the rise where the riflemen had been. He looked as pale as death. Caesar ran up to him and saw that McDonald was smiling, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He had been convinced that Bludner had killed Stewart.

Stewart had a bandage on his left arm and his shirt, breeches and waistcoat were as red as his coat. His horse lay dead.

“Sergeant Caesar?”

“My compliments on finding you alive, sir.”

“No compliments needed, Caesar. I told Mr. Crawford and Mr. Martin to see to the detail. That shooting will bring the rebels down on us.” Stewart tried to move and gave a little grunt. “I think it’s time I went home to Scotland, Caesar.”

“That was Bludner, sir.”

“Really?” Stewart winced and moved, winced again. “And we missed him?”

“We missed him.”

Stewart shook his head, but McDonald smiled.

“We missed him this time, Julius. But your Mr. Martin took one of his men.”

Caesar brightened. “Took him?”

“Shot his horse. Took him prisoner.”

“Think he’ll talk?”

Sergeant McDonald gave Caesar an ugly smile. “Oh, I’d say.”

Stewart wriggled again and closed his eyes. “I’ll stay a little longer, then.”

Dobb’s Ferry and New York, July 19 and after, 1781

Washington saw the courier arrive outside his window and signed a general order without flourish, then made a sign to David Humphreys, who was acting as his secretary, to hold his private correspondence. The courier was doubtless about to deprive him of his afternoon.

Fitzgerald leaned in from the common room. “Captain Lake from General Lafayette,” he said formally and withdrew.

Washington remembered Lake well, one of the companylevel officers who had been with the army for so long that he seemed to personify it. Lake saluted smartly. Washington bowed a little while remaining seated and held out his hand. Lake gave him a canvas packet.

“I am surprised to see you so far from your company, Captain Lake,” he said. The words sounded cold though he had meant them to be warm. He winced a little. The lack of news about the French fleet had him on edge.

“The marquis wanted his message delivered in person, sir. He says, if the Comte de Grasse will come to the Chesapeake, we’ll have Cornwallis like a rat in a trap.”

Washington smiled. As he repeated those words, George had looked out of the window and his features had undergone a strange transformation, as if he had become Lafayette for a moment.

“We are all waiting on the Comte de Grasse, Captain. If he comes to Newport, we will act in the north. If he offers the British battle off Sandy Hook, we will attack New York.” Washington opened the packet with a knife and began to read the dispatch. “How badly was Wayne handled?”

“More than one hundred men lost, sir.”

Washington shook his head. “Impetuous. But Wayne has spirit.” He shook himself. What spirit indeed, that he would criticize a general to a captain? Although sometimes he felt that Lake was like his staff, his military family.

He read on. “Ahh,” he said, when he read that Cornwallis had retreated on Williamsburg. This was country he knew well, so that he could see the action at Green Springs, taste the air, see the horses trampling the tobacco and smell the result. “So Lord Cornwallis is well down the Peninsula?”

“He was when I left the marquis.” George continued to stand at attention.

“Captain, please refresh yourself and hold yourself in readiness to deliver my answer. You can join my staff.” He gave a hard little smile. “While we wait on the Comte de Grasse.”

Caesar stood in his room in the barracks and polished the blade of his sword with an oiled cloth and some ash. He moved the blade rhythmically beween his fingers while his mind was elsewhere.

The first essential of the plan to take Bludner depended on constant knowledge of his agents in New York. For that reason, someone watched Sally every moment of the day. Major Stewart tended to spend more time with her, and when he was absent from her rooms Sergeant McDonald or one of his friends watched her door. Even so, in late July, Bludner’s agent met her, hit her and terrified her. They couldn’t touch him as he left her. It would have ruined the plan. But McDonald told Caesar he had never been so close to killing a man and not done it.

The second essential was to know Bludner’s location and to be able to plan to attack it. The prisoner had added to their store of knowledge about Bludner’s posts. He knew of three, and the prisoner said that Bludner moved among them often. Only his couriers knew which post he’d be at. But the prisoner knew a good deal about the locations of the posts: one in an old cabin in a wood, one in a big stone barn and one in an old Dutch farmhouse. They knew a little about each but they needed more to strike.

Polly had gone to be with Sally after McDonald’s report. She came back toward evening. She had been crying, he could see, and she was subdued. Caesar had been blacking his belts, part of a ritual he did to calm himself. His whole kit was hanging from hooks, the leather gleaming softly, the weapons bright. His offering on a private altar. He wiped the blackball from his hands, reminded by the smell of the regulars of the Fourteenth Foot and his days in the Ethiopians.

When his hands were cleaner, he took Polly’s between his. Hers were cold.

“Sally’s drunk,” she said, quietly.

Caesar just sat.

“He beat her, and there was nothing we could do. She’s going to break, Caesar. We have to get Bludner before Sally gives up.”

Caesar hung his head.

“Next time will be the last. I swear.”

“Tell Sally that. I’m not afraid, or if I am, it’s nothing to her terror.”

“We’re making a plan. We can’t move until we have some cover, or the rebels will know what we were after.”

“My father agrees. You know that. And he’s trying to sound out…other quarters. We followed the messenger last night, through three other stops. We know where to follow him, and whom he meets. It will make the big night easier.”

Caesar considered Polly.

“I worry about you, Polly. I think this is a great deal more dangerous than standing guard with a musket.”

She smiled and looked down, and Caesar thought that it was something they shared, the secret love of the excitement. He even wondered if sharing this plan wouldn’t bind them in a way that few couples could be bound. He held her close and she kissed him suddenly, her mouth opening under his and her lips melting and unlike anything he had ever known, and her eyes were liquid.

Then she pushed him away.

“I have something else to tell you,” she said with her secret smile. Caesar sat on his heels and looked up at her, waiting.

“I think I’m pregnant,” she said. “Don’t go gettin’ any ideas.”

Caesar’s smile filled his face.

“It’s a pleasure to have you back with us,” said Colonel Robinson, pouring a fresh glass of claret.

They were back under the map at the Moor’s Head. Stewart’s hair was a mare’s nest of red ends, but he was otherwise looking cheerful, if not well. He had a leg up on a chair like a gout sufferer, and one of his arms was strapped to his chest with a black silk sling.

“It’s a pleasure to have so much female sympathy and never need to dance,” said Stewart, acknowledging a smile from a distant Miss Hammond, who was being instructed on the big floor with Mr. Martin. They were learning a ballet. He inclined his head in return. Simcoe gave a snort.

“I gather that when the use of your limbs returns, we shall find you a very passable dancer, Stewart.”

“Lies. All lies.”

Robinson looked around the tavern. “I hear that our army in Virginia is in difficulties.”

“Lord Cornwallis seems to have been maneuvered into a position where the navy has to retrieve him. My friend Simcoe is not too happy about it.”

“Friends of mine outside the line say that General Washington may be preparing to march that way,” said Robinson. “And we think it might be worthwhile to have a little raid to keep him pinned to his lines here.”

Stewart nodded absently, an idea forming in his head.

“How many men would you use?”

“Oh, two hundred at least. We’d beat up one of their outposts and they would assuredly have a covering party behind them, so any trap would need enough muskets to keep the covering party off.”

“Quite a big show, then,” said Stewart with satisfaction. “Any notion when?”

“We need intelligence. I think they are very careful about their movements.”

“But you’d be ready to go soon.”

“Oh yes. Do I sense a spark of professional interest, Major Stewart?”

“I am interested in being active, sir.” Stewart smiled dangerously. “And I’m trying to please friends.”

“We have to be ready to move,” Hamilton repeated. The staff was gathered around the table in the main room of the tavern, and to their number had been added a dozen French officers, most very young men in splendid uniforms. The Duc de Lauzon, one of the most powerful young men in the world, lounged on the back of a windsor chair, his powder blue leg contrasting sharply with the dark wood all around him.

“Move where?” asked a French officer. “We cannot plan a campaign when we don’t know the object, surely?”

Washington held out a hand to George Lake, who passed him a large chart.

“We have an opportunity to act in Virginia,” he said, showing them a new theater of operations. “Always assuming that the Comte de Grasse will condescend to visit us there. But first I want to secure the ground between the ferry and the river, and perhaps farther down toward their posts. A raid in force, gentlemen, to keep their ears pinned back while we go off after the other fox.”

Robinson came into the tavern, dejected, and passed Caesar without a word and sat in the fireplace nook. He stripped off his gloves and began to tap them against his boot. Caesar approached him cautiously, unsure of his welcome, but Robinson seemed to notice him for the first time and beckoned to him.

“Sergeant?”

“Sir.”

“It’s off, Sergeant. Washington has flooded his outposts with men. There must be six thousand militia in the ground along the river. Suicide to try for one of his posts. It’s as if he knew what we were up to,” he said, and Caesar caught a chill. Sally might break, Polly had said.

“Can you stir your friends for reports on the rebels?” Stewart asked. Marcus White and Stewart had shared all their information.

“I can’t see that it is essential, although I’d be happy to please Colonel Robinson and General Clinton.”

Caesar nodded his head. “We have two men from up that way. Van Sluyt comes from one of the plantations on the river. It may be that we could get a report from the blacks up there.”

“Is it so important?” asked Marcus White.

Stewart nodded. “They have moved forward in strength. Some of my friends at headquarters think that Washington may be looking at a proper attack on New York. If that’s the case, Bludner won’t be in our reach. But others aren’t so sure. Lord Cornwallis has got himself in some difficulties in Virginia. Washington has been cunning at covering his movements before. He may be moving. If he is, we need to know what those rebels are doing.”

White turned to Caesar. “Even if it means sending Polly?”

And Caesar felt a nip of fear.

New Windsor, August 14, 1781

Washington read the message calmly, masking his exultation and the resulting nerves with the ease of long practise. He had his plan in place and he was ready.

“Note to General Knox. Please tell the general to suspend the movement of our siege train north. We will keep it at Philadelphia. Fitzgerald, please fetch me Captain Lake.”

“At once, sir.”

Washington dictated a series of orders to his secretary. Militia to fill the posts. More militia to be called out from Connecticut. Commands for the Hudson forts. Commands for the reserves. One of his aides handed him a report from a spy, from which he gleaned that the British had no idea what his real target was. He frowned.

“Do I know Captain Bludner?”

“He has his own company in the outposts, sir. Something to do with intelligence.”

“Leave him here. General Heath will need all the intelligence he can get if the British choose to strike in my absence.”

“Captain Lake, sir.”

Lake entered and saluted. Washington took off his hat and bowed. “I’m sending you back to the marquis.”

“Sir!”

“Captain, I am bringing the army to Virginia, and the French as well. We are going to have a go at the rat in our marquis’s trap. I want you to tell him that I will be on the Peninsula, God willing, in three weeks. He must keep Cornwallis occupied for that long.”

Lake beamed. All motion in the building had stopped and every man hung on Washington’s orders. Word had passed. Virginia. Cornwallis.

“We will march on the nineteenth of August, in four days. And with luck and the benevolence of heaven, gentlemen, we will go to Virginia and win the war.”

“The French have moved south and the whole rebel army is in New Jersey,” said Robinson, pointing at the map over the fireplace.

Martin took a draw on his pipe. “Mr. Washington can be a deep one, sir.”

Stewart favored his arm, now healing well, and reached his left hand for his wine. “Mr. Washington is marching to Virginia to take Lord Cornwallis,” he said carefully, looking into his glass. The other two officers took sharp breaths, and Robinson cursed.

“Gentlemen, there is nothing we can do to stop him. But, Beverly,” this to Colonel Robinson, “in his absence, I think it would be surprising if we didn’t snap up some of his posts.”

Robinson leaned forward. “Because his army can’t be in two places at once?”

“Even Mr. Washington can’t do that.”

“It will take some time to plan all over again,” said Robinson.

“We’ll need new intelligence. They’ve moved all their posts,” said Martin.

Stewart raised his glass to a distant corner where Sally sat sewing with Polly.

“Here’s to Mr. Washington, gentlemen. In his absence, great things may be accomplished.”

New York, September 10, 1781

In New York, the weather had turned to rain, a harsh, cold rain that kept everyone indoors. It promised to be a hard fall. Caesar stood in the bow window of the Moor’s Head watching a few laborers run through the wet, mud splashing up their thighs. He pitied the soldiers out in the lines.

Major Stewart had a pint of Madeira and a map, and he used them to make his points. “If you really want to leave the impression that the whole thing is an accident, or perhaps that it was about something very different, then I think our best hope is to hide it under Colonel Robinson’s expedition. If Robinson attacks the outposts near the Hudson, we can take Bludner in the same sweep with the same men. But we need to know just where the rebel posts are and just where Bludner’s men camp. We need the whole layout of the area. When we take Bludner’s courier he may spill all of it or he may try and lead us into a trap. I want to know the ground in advance.”

“So we take the courier the night that Colonel Robinson plans to go after the rebel posts?”

“Just so. It came to me when Robinson was telling about his plan. Caesar, do you concur?”

“I do, sir.”

“And do you know the area?”

“We were all over that ground last year.” Caesar could see it in his mind’s eye.

“And Reverend White says that Bludner’s covering party is usually by the Van Cortland house. Look here. That’s less than a mile from the ferry.”

“Stands to reason, sir. There are only so many approaches between our lines and theirs, and Bludner’s spies need the ferry.”

“Just so, Sergeant Caesar, just so. Do you see it, Reverend?”

Marcus White looked at Caesar carefully, as if judging him all over again.

“Doesn’t Mr. Van Sluyt have a wife?” White asked.

“He does, but that has never kept him from his duty…” Caesar trailed off as he saw that he had missed the mark entirely. Marcus White was looking off into the distance.

“Perhaps his wife would go. Women pass the lines very easily. She could take Polly…”

Caesar shuddered.

“I’ve done it before, Julius.” She fairly bounced with enthusiasm and his heart died within him. He wanted to say, “But you are pregnant.” Yet he understood that would be a betrayal.

“But we already know all this,” he protested.

“No, Caesar. We guess it. And if we’re going to commit hundreds of men up the river, we have to know.”

Marcus looked at Polly and they smiled at each other, a smile of private communication. Stewart shook his shoulders a little.

“I don’t like sending them in harm’s way…”

“I’d do anything to get Bludner,” said Polly.

Mount Vernon, 10 September, 1781

Truro Church brought a lump to his throat. As he pulled his horse to a stop and looked at the church’s pattern of Flemish brick for a little, the church unleashed a flood of memory, of obligations and uncompleted tasks from another life. For the first time in five years he wondered who was a warden and whether the rector’s roof had ever been repaired. He could see bricks missing from the churchyard wall.

David Humphreys, the only one of his staff to accompany him on his dash to Mount Vernon, looked ready to fall off his horse. Billy Lee looked better, tired but easy on his tall bay. Washington’s decision to go home for one night on the way to his campaign had been the product of a rare whim, and he had ridden sixty miles in a day to get here. Few men had the stamina to stay with him.

Past the churchyard, he was really home. Those were his fields on either side of the road, and the road itself, which needed repair, he was sorry to note, was also his. All the way from Baltimore the roads had been bad, but here in Frederick County they were virtually impassable, just near his home and in the path of his army that needed speed for his troops and more speed for his supplies.

“Good to be home, eh, Billy?” said Washington, turning slightly in his saddle. He was concerned that Humphreys might have a fall, and took the opportunity to give him a glance.

“Yes, sir,” said Billy.

The sun was setting as he finally turned his horse through his gates and was greeted by the moving sight of Mount Vernon glowing with the last light, and all the windows lit from inside. A white man he didn’t know ran from behind the Greenhouse, calling that there were visitors, and Washington smiled, the spell of his own house strong on him.

“Well ridden, David,” he said to his companion. The man bowed in the saddle, stiff with fatigue, and appeared unable to speak. Washington rode past the front of his house toward his stable and dismounted. None of the blacks looked familiar and he handed his horse to a stranger.

“Do you know that boy, Billy?”

“I don’t know any of these folk, sir.”

Washington nodded, a little sharply, collected his pistols from his saddle holsters and gave them and his pannier to Billy. Then he walked up the sandy drive to the house, where doors were opened and there was a great deal of movement.

She was standing just inside the door, an enigmatic smile on her face. Older, very much older, but the smile was the same and he laughed to see it.

As he stepped over his own lintel, she came forward. “I thought perhaps you had forgotten the way?” she said, and he lifted her in his arms and kissed her, a rare excess in front of the house staff, but she didn’t protest. And he held her, remembered the weight and the smell of her, and he was home.

“You are famous, I find,” she said. “Even I have a place in the pantheon.”

It was so easy to forget who she was, how the sharp steel of her went along with the flame, and yet when he looked she wasn’t wearing her closed face, and he realized she was speaking at random because she was surprised. For five years he had written to her every day and only now did he think that she might have had the harder life, trapped here by her illnesses and her own will, without him. He took one of her hands and kissed it.

She laughed.

“I have gifts for you from many admirers, my dear,” he said. “But I am still the commander of an army, if only a little one, and I must send a letter this instant before I place myself at your service. May I have your pardon?”

“You came home. I can forgive you much for that.” She gave him her precious smile of delight and turned into her parlor. “I will await you.”

Washington gave Billy a nod. Billy knew which things to unpack and buff up; the miniature from Adrienne de Lafayette, the scent from France, and Washington passed into his study. He couldn’t call for David Humphreys, who was barely able to walk, and he was determined to send his letter tonight. He went to the desk, rifled it for paper and had to cut a quill. All his pens were years dead. Then he had to mix ink from powder, which required the help of an unfamiliar scullery maid. Finally he had his materials to hand and he dashed off a letter to the commander of the Frederick County militia demanding that they turn out the next day to repair the roads.

Then he rose and caught sight of the bust of Frederick the Great on the bookcase by his desk. He looked around at all the busts, Alexander and Caesar and Charles, and he shook his head as a grown man does when confronted with the excesses of youth. The busts put him in mind of something, though, and when he entered his wife’s parlor he was holding his own copy of Muller’s treatise on artillery and siegecraft.

She was reading a novel by the fire, and he came and settled on an elegant chair that hadn’t been in the room when he left for the war.

She put her book aside carefully. “Is the continent safe, then?”

“As safe as my poor powers can make it. I had to order a repair to the roads. Our wagons would mire…”

“It is not just the roads that lack repair, my general.”

“Yes,” he said, falling in with her conversation. He knew what she was playing at, but he determined to act the part of the man. “Yes, the wall in Truro churchyard also needs repair.”

“I heard talk of gifts,” she said.

Washington rose and called for Billy, who brought them, gave him an odd look and left up the stairs. Washington had pounds of presents for her, because no French officer visited him without a gift for “Madame Washington”. He presented her with a selection of the best, along with a few that he had chosen himself in Philadelphia and the ride south. She began to open them, exclaiming softly over the scent and deriding the tastelessness of a gold snuffbox that must have cost as much as a good horse.

“Now everything is from France,” she said. “I confess to missing our English trifles.”

He brought out a final package from his pocket and she opened it and looked at him. It was a small etui, a collection of sewing tools in a plain sharkskin scabbard with severe silver mounts. She ran her hand over the shagreen, like polished pebbles set in leather, and clipped it to her housewife.

“We still get some English goods,” he said.

“You thought of me,” she said. Her eyes were moist, but she turned away. “You…”

“Yes, my dear?” Once the words were out he knew what she wanted. He hadn’t told her how long he would be home, and she was too proud to ask.

“I will have tomorrow here, alone. The next day my staff and the French staff will arrive, and we will have to entertain. On the twelfth, I’ll be gone.”

“Gone? Where are you going?”

“Down the Peninsula, Martha. Cornwallis is near Williamsburg. I hope to catch him with his back to the sea and make him surrender.”

“Would that win the war?”

He shook his head. “I no longer know.”

She nodded, tears running down her face and neck.

He rose and walked to the window. He saw movement on the lawn and was tempted to give her a moment alone and walk out to see his dogs. The pack would have been broken up, of course, but he thought of the slave, Caesar, and of hunts in the autumn and the feeling of anticipation, so like the feeling he had now. That put him in mind of slaves. He spoke without turning.

“Have we changed a great many slaves?”

“They ran.”

“Ran?”

“When Mr. Arnold’s army passed this way, and again when General Phillips was across the river. Each time the British came near, they flocked to join them.”

Washington looked through the window again. “Can you blame them?”

Martha rose from her chair and looked at him in mock horror. “Whoever you are, leave this house and tell my husband to return!”

He shook his head, laughing with her, and then caught a hand and kissed it. “I’m perfectly serious.”

Martha gave him that enigmatic smile and said, “I think it is time for supper. I wouldn’t want to keep the Generalissimo of the Continental Congress from his bed.” She stopped in the door and looked back at him, twenty years younger in the light. “Or mine.”

He bowed, happy, and made to follow her, but she stopped him with her fan.

“But you have changed.”

“I have, too.”

New York, October 1, 1781

The Loyal Americans had the outer posts on the White Plains road, and Caesar got to know them as he came out every day to wait for her return. She was supposed to go out with Mrs. Van Sluyt and return the next day. After the third day of waiting he kept very much to himself. The Guides had recently been ordered to clean streets in New York, a loathsome chore and too much like labor for any of them. They cleaned for a day and grumbled, but Caesar would have none of it. He was quiet, and very dangerous.

On the fourth day he stopped at the Whites’ lodging, finding neither father nor daughter. Then he walked out to the first line of posts, saluting officers and accepting the curious salutes of a variety of corps, and showed his pass, and then out alone through the dangerous ground between the first and second line, and so to the Loyal Americans again at sunset. He watched the road that led to Dobb’s Ferry and the rebel lines, but it was empty.

The green-coated men were quiet around him. They knew something was up. They knew he had been there when two black girls crossed the lines, and they knew that Sergeant Caesar was a favorite of their own colonel. So they nodded to him, stood stiffly in a post that was probably comfortable in better times, and wished him luck.

He watched until the sun went down, and then he picked his way back in the dark.

On the fifth day, a flag crossed the lines, and Caesar feared it, because if Polly had been taken he fancied that the rebels might announce it, but his real fear was far darker, because he feared Bludner. Sally had turned Bludner into a demon, and Caesar tried not to imagine her being made a slave, or raped, or killed for the man’s sport. He hated this game, and he wondered if he would forgive Marcus White his willingness to play it with his own daughter.

On the sixth day, the Loyal Americans had been replaced on the post by some of Emmerich’s men, a Loyalist regiment that included a fair number of rebel deserters, hard men, and in some cases very bad men. They were not so friendly, and they didn’t know him. They had a sergeant who seemed inclined to resent his presence. Caesar was too worried even to react to the slurs they passed casually, until he happened to look at the sergeant in just a certain way, and the sergeant withdrew, muttering. But although two parties of men passed the post, there were no women. It was a week until Sally’s messenger would return, and Polly was six days late, and Van Sluyt cried for his wife all day. Caesar knew he would have to resent the day labor soon, or do something to show that they were too useful to accept such treatment. But all he could think of was Polly.

On the seventh day, he had no duty. None of the Guides did. They were not in the posts, and the labor order had been withdrawn as mysteriously as it appeared. Caesar took Van Sluyt and walked out through the lines, showing his worn pass to every post and being greeted familiarly as he went. He had done this often now, and he was doing it more from superstition than from belief. He had begun to doubt Marcus White again. He couldn’t seem to interest Captain Stewart in the indignity of soldiers being made to labor-Stewart only said that his own men were building a road, and weren’t Caesar’s men getting extra pay? And Lieutenant Martin said the same. He felt as if he had to carry the concerns of every man and woman in the Guides, and he had to bear them while remaining outwardly unmoved by Polly’s absence. Too many people already knew too much. There were so many who could have betrayed her, and he wondered at Marcus White’s curious confidence that no black would betray another. He knew blacks in Jamaica who had sold dozens of their brothers into bondage, or back to bondage. He looked at the company at morning muster and wondered if one of them could have sold Polly to the rebels.

When they reached the outer post, they found Reverend White sitting quietly with a Bible, reading. Caesar sat next to him on a fence rail where he could see the road.

“She’ll come today,” said White, looking down the dusty pale road at the heat ripples in the distance.

“Where have you been?” said Caesar. “Why didn’t you go with her?”

Marcus White looked at him with eyes of sadness and pity.

“Don’t you think I wanted to go with her, Julius?” he asked. “They almost know me now, Julius. There are one or two who might take me just for crossing the lines. They seldom molest women, or even question them. Men are different.”

Van Sluyt sat quietly, but he was so upset that his hands shook.

“They’ll hang my girl,” he said. “Or put her back to a slave, an’ I’ll never see her again.”

Marcus White shook his head with a calm like that which Caesar had on the battlefield.

“They’ll come today.”

“Why?” asked Caesar, his tone more accusatory than he had intended.

“I’ll tell you when they come.”

They hadn’t come by midday. The sun beat down, and the Loyal Americans changed their guard, and the surly sergeant was replaced by a courteous one, and there were two black men in the platoon that came on duty. Caesar didn’t know them but he went to them somewhat mechanically and introduced himself. It passed the time.

They didn’t come in the afternoon, although parties of women passed with eggs and geese, and one pair of very handsome girls leading a pig. None of them was black. None of them had come far, and most were just farm women taking things in for the market.

They didn’t come in the evening. The Loyal Americans shared their mess kettle with good heart and Caesar ate well, sharing his tobacco and a little bottle of rum in return. Van Sluyt didn’t talk or eat, but simply sat on a rock by the side of the road and polished the lock of his musket over and over again. Marcus White began to walk down the road in little spurts. He walked forward a few paces as if to have a different view, and then farther and farther until he was almost at a musket shot from the post itself. All Caesar’s suspicions returned at the gallop and he followed into the gathering gloom, walking fast on the road in such an agitation of spirit that he realized that he had left his fowler propped against the stand of arms in the little post. He was unarmed except for his sword and Jeremy’s dagger.

But when he caught up with Reverend White at a single great oak tree that marked a slight turn in the road, White was making no attempt to escape. He was weeping silently, great tears flooding down his face, a look on him that made Caesar flinch, and Marcus White raised his arms and Caesar felt his heart stop and he looked into the last red shreds of the setting sun.

There were two white caps in the distance, and one had a basket on her head and the other walked in just that way. They were black women, and Caesar’s heart beat once, thud, as if all the promises of the world had all come true and again, thud, and they were closer, the dark coming down like rain between them so that no matter how fast the two women moved they seemed to be getting no closer. He realized that Van Sluyt was still polishing his musket, unknowing that happiness awaited him, and he shouted, and the slighter of the two women looked up, and began to run.

He covered her in kisses and her father hugged her and they tried to accomplish all of this as they hurried Mrs. Van Sluyt down the road to her own husband. All the while the two excited women poured forth their story, of lines closed, of messengers missing their appointments, of an endless tangle of mistakes and missing friends. And then Hester Van Sluyt was in her husband’s arms, and Caesar had Polly’s hand, and they were back within the post.

Without a thought but his own heart, Caesar said, “Promise me you’ll never do it again.”

Polly glared at him like an angry cat. “Pshaw!” she said. “It suits you! I feel it every time you go out. And worse as I like you more!”

He fell back, astounded for a moment and then chagrined, and caught her hand again and she let him. Marcus regarded them tenderly. To make a change, Caesar turned to him. “How did you know?”

White laughed. It was a shaky laugh at best.

“I didn’t know, Caesar, but it was my place to offer comfort if I could. He was afraid for you, my honey,” White said to Polly, and she bowed her head.

“That’s all?”

“Their passes…”

“He means to say our passes were for a Saturday, and he knew that if I thought we were in danger I’d wait and cross on a Saturday,” she said.

Caesar nodded, as if he understood. “You are very brave,” he said.

“Pshaw,” she said.

Yorktown, Virginia, October 14, 1781

Washington looked out over the lip of the trench into the dark and listened to a dog barking somewhere in the British lines. Lafayette stepped up close to him and cautiously placed a hand on his shoulder. They could see nothing, could hear nothing, but they stood in the cold darkness and waited for the verdict of the battle.

It was less a battle than a siege. Cornwallis, hugely outnumbered, had built a fortress of earthworks around the Tidewater town of Yorktown and had gone to ground like a fox, waiting for the Royal Navy to come and take him off. But the Royal Navy, for the first and only time in the war, had been outguessed and outnumbered, and now it was a French fleet that lay at anchor out in the Chesapeake. Cornwallis had little chance of succor but, being an excellent general and a professional, he was determined to hold his ground as long as he could.

Washington, the farmer, was now the commander of the largest joint Franco-American army of the war. He had dug his approach trenches, planted his guns and bombarded the star forts and redoubts of the British. He had the advice of the best French engineers and some gifted Americans. He had the support of professional officers from all of Europe. But he was the commander and this was the best chance the fledgling United States would ever have to win the game. He tasted fear tinged with anticipation. They were so close to victory.

Tonight, the picked men of his light infantry and the best of the French grenadiers would assault the most exposed British forts at the point of bayonet, in the best tradition of European arms. It was all managed like a play. In Europe, Kings came to sieges to watch the show. In America, there were only the actors. And in a few moments the last act would open and his best men would fling themselves on Cornwallis’s veterans, and then…

Somewhere in the darkness a dog was barking, but George Lake was somewhere else.

He could read Betsy’s last letter in his head, even standing in a dark and muddy trench. She’d said “love”, which was a hard thing for a young girl to say to a man she hadn’t seen in two years and who served the enemy. She’d said it several times, and constant rereading had imprinted the letter on him to such an extent that he could close his eyes and see the shape of her writing and the color of the paper.

Someone nudged him and he opened his eyes. Even in the dark he could recognize Hamilton, his commander for the night. Hamilton squeezed his arm. “You’ll be a major in the morning, George,” he whispered, and George just shook his head. He had volunteered to lead the first rush over the top of the trench. It wasn’t for the promotion, although it was natural enough for the ambitious Hamilton to think so. It was to get it over with. They were close to the end and George had a chase in view, as the Virginian hunters liked to say. He wanted his Betsy, and a farm somewhere or a shop. It was close. So close that he chose to feel it was just over the top of the rampart of the great British redoubt a few hundred yards distant, if he could only get there.

He shook Hamilton’s hand. He pushed through the crowd at the head of the sap and found Caleb Cooke, with whom he had exchanged last letters, just in case. He and Caleb shook hands without words because they had nothing left to say. He passed through men he had known since before Green Springs, since Monmouth or Brandywine, and often they would simply lock eyes, although some shook hands. They were all around him, all the men who had stayed true from the first fights, and those who had come later, until the dark was fuller than it could really be. He had tears in his eyes. He wiped them on his cuff.

He went back to the head of his own men and got his spontoon, a long weapon like a spear. Around him in the dark, other officers and sergeants gave speeches. He didn’t have one ready. He put a foot up on a step and looked back over six years, and spoke quietly.

“If I fall, no one stops. Just take the redoubt. That’s all that matters.”

There was a pause, and even the damn dog stopped barking. And then the first red rocket burned up into the night from the French lines and George was out in the open, running, silent as a shadow.

He could hear the others coming behind him, and he ran through the mud, jumping shell holes where the mortars had dropped their rounds short. Then he was into the ditch at the foot of the big redoubt, and now the British were awake and firing down at them. He heard a scream behind him, and another, and there was a wall of firing over his head and he ran on, his boots throwing mud high in the air, heading for the rear of the redoubt as they had practiced, where the walls were lower. And the firing seemed sporadic and his heart began to rise. He risked a look back and saw that Desmond, the New York boy, had the colors and was close behind him. They were almost at the end of the ditch when Desmond went down and George was tangled in silk. He grabbed the flagstaff and pounded up the steep slope of the rampart, his new breeches black with mud. He slipped and jammed in a heel to keep his spot and lost his spontoon. Above him on the wall, a man lunged at him with a bayonet. George parried with the flagstaff, pushed its point into the man’s face and suddenly he was gone. Finally reaching the top of the earthen wall, George raised the flag.

At the foot of the inner wall a British officer had a platoon formed and though they were about to be overrun from three sides his men were finishing their loading as calmly as on parade. George admired them even as he collected his own men at the top of the wall and led them down, silence forgotten as they bellowed a cheer, an unstoppable tide of blue coats. Then something punched him in the chest and he felt the British fire and he was down, the cold of the mud catching at his hands and his neck.

New York, October 14, 1781

Jason Knealey liked working in New York better than in Philadelphia, where the people were all suspicious. New York was full of alleys and bolt-holes, and he had no need to do his real work any more. He was an important man, and spying paid.

He walked up the black whore’s steps with a steady pace, trying to draw out the pleasure of the moments before she opened the door. His coat flapped a little behind him. He knocked at the door and heard her familiar movements, the hesitation as she came to the door, and he knocked softly in the code. It was supposed to change every visit, but such things couldn’t interest him, and he simply rapped out a little series, four, pause, two, pause, four. She was supposed to answer in code to tell him it was all clear, but he had never even taught her this nuance. She opened the door. She was smiling in a way she had never done for him and he wasn’t sure he liked it, but he pushed into the room boldly.

“I hope you have something worth my ride,” he said, and then his riding whip was taken from his hands and he was on his back looking at her pale blue ceiling.

“If ye do everything I say, just the way I say, I won’t open ye with ma’ wee knife and let a dog tear at yer guts,” said Sergeant McDonald.

Polly kissed him quickly on the lips.

“I’ll try to be braver than you were,” she said.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” he said, and then realized that she had said the same. She shook her head, and her father came forward and took his hand.

“I am not supposed to shed blood, and yet I almost envy you this. It’s open, compared to the other. Clean.”

“Tell Sally I’ll kill him.”

Marcus White turned his head away for a moment, and then back. He was struggling with himself. “I admit that is what I want. I console myself that he is an evil man.”

“Reverend, this isn’t for you. But I’ll kill him.” He was calm, now. The wonderful clarity that going into action always brought, the way it simplified. He leaned past Marcus White and took Polly in his arms.

“I’ve been scared enough for both of us,” he said. “Now I’ll be back.”

“See that you are, then,” she said, and it was time to march.

The little house on Cherry Street was already familiar to the men of Captain Stewart’s company who followed Sergeant McDonald. They’d had it pointed out for two weeks. But it was no part of the sergeant’s intention to let his captive know that his information was worthless. McDonald wanted him to betray, and betray again, until his betrayal became automatic and he gave them the thing they most desired, which was the location of the covering party commanded by Bludner. So McDonald walked along Cherry Street until the man blubbered that here was the first house, and that the man inside, Mr. Harris, was his contact. They took Harris in his nightgown, with his wife weeping by the door. He was small fry, and McDonald knew his role. He made sure to let Harris see the unhappy messenger, Jason Knealey. He had his orders, and his orders were that every man they took was to see Knealey. Anyone from the other side who examined the evidence would assume Knealey had betrayed the whole chain of agents. It was a constant danger of the spy trade, and Marcus White planned to exploit it.

Lieutenant Martin had the Guides formed at the top of Broadway, ready to pass the inner post as soon as Sergeant McDonald joined them. There was a large column ahead of them: the whole of the Loyal Americans, as well as a company of Hesse Cassel Jaegers, and some dragoons at the head. It was a small army, and Colonel Robinson was its commander. He rode up and down the column, checking their last details, calling on individual officers and sergeants to describe their targets. The main part of the column was intended to surprise the New York militia post at the ferry, and each company had a particular assignment-this house or this barn, or crossroads-that they were to secure. Many of them glanced curiously at the Guides, because they knew, as soldiers know, that the Guides had some other mission, and might join them on their own in some way. There wasn’t much talking. The columns were allowed to lie on their arms and men went to sleep on their packs.

Just after the moon set, Major Stewart appeared on horseback.

“They have the spy. He’s on his way,” Stewart said. He looked very white in the moonlight, and Caesar thought it probably still hurt him to ride.

Stewart had no need to come. He was going home to Scotland, had been mentioned in dispatches again for the action in New Jersey, and was buying his next rank in a regiment still stationed in England. Caesar knew he was there, sitting his horse in some pain, because of Jeremy, and Sally, and he nodded to himself and moved over to his little knot of corporals.

“Get them up,” he said. Stewart was already gone, up the column, and men were getting to their feet like ghosts rising in a play, or an army summoned from the ground. The Loyal Americans were in a dark green that looked black in the dark, and most of the redcoats in the column had workshirts pulled over their coats to conceal them. His own men formed quietly, each man looking for his file partner and falling in until the whole company was there. Ahead of them, the rest of the column was marching with only a few whistles sounded, leaving the Guides alone on the dark road.

Sergeant McDonald came up out of the dark on a small horse, leading another. McDonald was wearing a greatcoat, and the other regulars with him were wearing their workshirts over their coats, too. They fell in with the Guides and the party moved off, passing the inner post with a whispered password and the outer post in silence. Then they halted for a moment and Caesar looked to Stewart and Martin, caught their eyes, and ordered the men to prime and load.

Martin kept walking up and down, a fund of nervous energy. He had passed his tests of fire, but this was a different kind of war and needed different nerves. Stewart sat in the starlight, a dark figure with an oddly shadowed face. Jason Knealey feared this silent figure even more than he feared McDonald, a deep-in-the-gut fear that made his flesh crawl, and he all but sobbed aloud when he saw the Guides clearly, row on row of black men.

“Bludner talks about them,” he said trying to sound friendly through his terror.

“Which, now?”

“The black men. He talks about them, an’ how he’ll get them someday.”

“Oh, aye. Weel, I dinna think he’s going to get this lot, but we’ll see.” McDonald was chewing tobacco and seemed lost in thought, and Knealey tried the bonds on his wrists. He felt the knife press his guts, just a pressure through his clothes, but firm and very steady, and he moaned.

“You’ll live to see the dogs start on ye,” said McDonald. Knealey just shook.

The last rammer rammed home the last cartridge while McDonald reviewed their destination with Knealey for the seventh time, and gave his captain the nod.

“Time to march?” asked Lieutenant Martin.

“Time to run,” said Sergeant Caesar, and Stewart nodded.

“Just so.”

“Van Sluyt, take two files ahead and don’t get beyond our sight. Stop and come back if you see anything. Virgil, four files to the left of our path. Stay fifty paces from the column and rejoin if you see anything or cannot pass a piece of ground otherwise. Jim, the same on the right. At the double then. March, march!”

They left the road across the unplowed ground of a fallow field, and in a moment they were lost to the sight of the last outpost.

“Where they goin’?” asked one of the soldiers on duty. The other shook his head.

“Glad they’re on our side.”

They moved for almost an hour without a pause, undiscovered through the night. The scouts reported nothing that could be construed as suspicious, and the column took its first rest halt in a gully at the base of a dark mass of hills. They were making a long arc to their destination to avoid intermixing with Colonel Robinson’s party. They had some hope that Bludner was expecting his messenger from the opposite direction.

After five minutes’ rest and no pipes, they moved again, now at a quiet march across dark fields. Anything in among the trees was invisible in the black, and the sky was an endless field of stars that covered the heavens and seemed to have a clarity and a depth more suited to a winter night.

They stopped when Virgil called a halt by waving, but he had only flushed a deer, and the astonished column watched as the big doe and her fawn raced down the whole length of their little column. Sergeant Fowver slapped the doe as she ran by and laughed softly.

“Bet she never been slapped befo’,” he said quietly, and Caesar glared at him. Then Caesar gave two soft pipes on his whistle, and they were moving again, through an apple orchard full of ripe fruit where Jim Somerset stopped them for reasons he couldn’t explain to Captain Stewart in a hurried conference. But Caesar respected Jim’s ways, and he sent Virgil forward with three old hands to feel out the last few hundred yards of the approach. Knealey sat and sweated, and the other men made their last checks of their equipment. No one spoke. Men filled their haversacks with apples.

To some, it seemed that Virgil returned in a moment, but to Caesar and Stewart he seemed to be gone half the night.

“Sentries out,” he said. “An’ more under cover, I reckon. Hard to tell in the dark.”

“And you have a route?”

“All the way to the last cover.”

Stewart called for all the NCOs down to the lowliest corporal to attend him, and they moved well off from the column to be as quiet as they could. Virgil drew them a hasty sketch in the dirt.

“A big barn heah, an’ the house. The yard is open an’ they ain’t no fence.” He was nervous, Caesar could see, almost shaking from what he had just done. Caesar thought of Polly and all the different ways that people were brave.

“Then this is a little patch o’ wood, and this is a wall, jus’ so high,” and he indicated his thigh. “They’s men behin’ that wall.”

“Cover for us?” said Stewart.

“These woods is empty, and these other woods, I dunno. We din’t get to them.”

Caesar nodded. “Fowver into the near woods and I go into the far.”

Stewart winced as he shifted his arm. He was still sitting on his horse. “One long blast from my whistle and in you go. Remember that we don’t want to give the alarm before Robinson. He’s only a mile or so away, perhaps two. He ought to open the ball in about an hour.”

Martin shook his head. “An hour is a long time lying in the dark.”

Stewart nodded. “I agree. Keep them here for half an hour.”

Caesar moved at the head of his men, cautiously entering the edge of the woods, completely alive and aware of every motion and every sound. The night trees were pitch black, but the gentle hum of insects and the chatter of birds told him the woods were most likely empty. He kept his fowler up and aimed into the darkness as he moved from trunk to trunk, his legs making noise in the underbrush that would easily give him away if there were foes here.

When he was in the middle, the brush was less and he could move better. He changed his posture, rising all the way up on the balls of his feet in silence and then sinking back down to change the weight on his back. He leaned forward, and then back, and felt his spine shift a little, and moved on, placing each foot to make the least noise. He couldn’t see anything, even the man behind him when he turned, and he had to stop himself from looking up at the sky just to find light for his eyes. In what seemed like an eternity he came to thicker brush, and then light-the far edge of the wood. He peered out softly and couldn’t even make out the bulk of the barn, except that there seemed to be a sharp edge on the horizon that must be a roofline. He waited. Virgil came up to him and he patted him off to the right, and then Jim came and was sent to the left. He could hear them make noise, and he expected an alarm at every moment, and he put his own whistle to his lips and held it there like a pipe stem, ready. And still there was no alarm. He realized that it was possible that the farm was empty, and that shook him more than the dread of discovery, but under these worries he was still in the grip of the calm that came in action. He crouched and waited.

The very first lightening of the sky came and with it a gentle rain, almost a mist. It didn’t last long but Caesar dumped his prime and reprimed from a little horn. After it stopped, the sky seemed to darken, and then it became difficult to tell the passage of time and Caesar grew concerned that something had changed, or that the darkness might be a sign of heavy rain.

Off to the north and west, there was a dull thump and the hint of a cry on the breeze, and then another thump as the sky grew brighter. Suddenly Caesar wondered if he had been asleep, because the roofline of the barn and house were each distinct, and the morning seemed farther along out in the open while it was still full night under the trees. A very distant sound, almost at the edge of hearing, so Caesar began to doubt each sound, and they were never repeated, but each was separated from the next by an interminable time. And then, quite close, a whistle blast, and he was on his feet and blew a blast on his own whistle, and the woods erupted, pouring Guides into the open ground.

There was a shot from a window of the house and someone went down.

“Clear the house!” yelled Caesar in a voice of brass. They went forward, right up the front steps and into the first room. There was one man there and someone shot him, and the room filled with smoke. Caesar flung himself at a solid door and fell through it as it came off its hinges. Two shots went over his head, one killing a former slave from Pennsylvania and the other smashing the doorframe and ricocheting to break Virgil’s arm. Caesar was up in a second, stunned but game. He tried to get over a table at the closest man, but the man had his hands up. Jim Somerset shot him anyway. The other man fought grimly, penned against the wall, and managed to knock one of Caesar’s men down with his musket butt before he was stuck under the arm with a bayonet. He screamed.

The room was clear. Jim pushed past Caesar into the next room and it was empty, and they entered the kitchen through different doors, together, each of them with their file partner covering. Smoke everywhere. They could hear shooting upstairs and something was on fire, because the reek of the smoke was in their lungs before they could see it. Everywhere, Caesar was looking for Bludner, but he wasn’t downstairs in the house.

Van Sluyt appeared at the back of the kitchen.

“Just the two upstairs, and they’re dead. Roof’s on fire a little.”

“Let it burn,” Caesar said. He knew why they had set it, and it gave him a grim joy that Bludner’s men expected help when they set the fire. He looked out the kitchen door toward the yard and a shot whispered past his head.

A new boy, not yet fifteen, came past Van Sluyt.

“Mr. Martin says they have the carriage shed, but Bludner’s in the stone barn, an’ he would like a word.”

“Send Mr. Martin my best compliments and tell him that I will attend him directly,” Caesar replied, and fired carefully at the loophole in the barn, just twenty paces away. There was a screech and he gave Van Sluyt and Jim a big smile.

“Jim, just hold the house. I’ll be back.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

The light was enough that it could almost be called morning. Captain Stewart was annoyed that his whole plan to seize the barn had been frustrated by one man tripping on a root and falling just as the last defender reached the barn, but there was nothing that they could do. The barn had walls several feet thick, and would resist even a small cannon.

Caesar came up behind the low stone carriage house and found the two officers watching warily.

“We have to storm it,” Caesar said immediately.

“We’ll lose a lot of men,” said Stewart, looking at McDonald, who nodded.

“And then we’ll get in the doors and kill them all,” said Caesar. He looked at them and they at him, and McDonald gave him a little nod. Caesar felt that Stewart was resisting the notion because he couldn’t share the danger. Mr. Martin looked like he had his doubts.

Caesar said, “Give me a few minutes, sir. Perhaps we can get fire on to the roof of the barn and smoke them out.”

Martin brightened noticeably, and Stewart looked thoughtful.

“Let’s make sure we have the doors covered, then.”

Caesar was back at the kitchen door of the big house. He leaned out so his voice would project.

“Surrender!” he called.

He was answered by an obscenity.

“Come out or you will all be killed. If I have to storm that barn, there won’t be any prisoners.”

“You better git!” That might be Bludner’s voice. “You think we don’t have covering troops?”

“That’s what I think. All your covering troops is dead or taken, Bludner. That is you, am I right?”

Silence.

“Enough talk,” he yelled, motioning to Jim, who was moving very carefully at the corner of the barn where there wasn’t a loophole. “You have ten seconds to surrender, or we storm. Are you ready, Guides?”

A roar, and Jim was at the base of the barn. It didn’t have an overhang on the top side, and he was safe, right up against the wall. He started to light a hasty torch of linen and tow and fat from a coal.

There were noises from the barn as if in debate, and a single pistol shot.

“No one here is surrenderin’. Come an’ take us.”

“Try this, then,” said Caesar, and nodded to Jim, who leaned back and threw his torch high, high in the dark, where it spun like a child’s firework for two revolutions before landing in the thatch of the roof. Jim flattened himself against the building again.

“Don’t seem like no storm!” called the defiant voice inside.

Caesar waited. Fire takes time. The morning was very quiet, as if the first burst of musketry had stunned the birds, and they heard a little rattle of shots far off. And then, as if by magic, the thatch caught in one gallant sheet of flame.

Caesar wondered what it would be like to be inside the barn, with the smoke and the knowledge of what waited for them in the yard. He thought of the ancient Caesar and the pirates, and he smiled.

The main door of the barn opened, and a handful of men staggered out with handkerchiefs and neck rollers over their mouths. They threw their muskets out first. No one fired, and they were ordered out to the open ground, where some of Stewart’s men took them with ungentle hands. McDonald made sure they saw Knealey, too. Then another group, perhaps five men. Caesar was leaning well forward, looking for Bludner, when he realized with shock that the door closest to the kitchen had opened.

A thick knot of men burst from the door and raced on, scattering as soon as they were clear. One fell over another, and a second stumbled, but the others were running like rabbits from a dog, while the Guides were mostly watching the men at the front surrender.

Jim shot one and immediately began to reload. Van Sluyt shot the one who had stumbled, and Caesar waited too long for Bludner and realized that he had been the first from the door and was already clear of the yard. He shot another man and turned from the door to run through the house. Jim was with him. Virgil fired one-handed from a window and gave him a shout as he whipped through the main room and out the front door. He could see the shapes of four or five men as they ducked into the same woods he and his men had waited in just a few minutes ago, and he reached back for a cartridge as he ran. If Bludner wanted a race, then so be it.

Suddenly Major Stewart was on them, his horse careening into one man and kicking at another, a beautiful capriole. Stewart’s saber transcribed a vicious arc, and a third man was down, and then Bludner and another were clear away into the woods, where the horse could not go. And one of them stopped, because there was movement at the edge of the woods. Stewart whirled his horse and reared it, and the rifle ball caught the horse in the breast, bouncing off the thick bone and leaving a long score and a steady flow of blood. The horse slumped and Stewart fell heavily under his horse as Caesar went by. He gave Stewart a glance, unable to tell how serious the wound was, and focused on his prey, and Stewart cursed. “Get him!” he shouted.

Caesar bit off the back of a cartridge and stopped for one stride to get priming into the pan, and then dashed on. Behind him, there was another burst of firing by the barn. He thought Jim might still be with him.

“See to the major,” he roared. Jim stopped with Stewart, but he looked and saw Virgil, his arm bound against his chest, running along behind. Then he was in among the trees with Bludner and another man.

He could see now. There was enough light. He was surprised at how small the woodlot was in the light. The branches were still moving from their passage, and he followed a little slower, patient. By the time he cleared the wood, he saw them disappearing over a low hill, hundreds of yards ahead. Then he started to run in earnest.

He wanted to catch them before Robinson’s men took them. They were headed directly into the Loyal Americans over the ridge, and he didn’t want the mess of their being prisoners. He didn’t want the chance of escape. He wanted Bludner dead. He ran a little faster, still saving some for the last gasp. He was utterly confident in his running. He could run very fast, and he could run forever.

He flew over the ground, and as he crested the next gentle rise he saw them clearly, Bludner ahead and moving well, and the other man slower and laboring. Caesar looked over his shoulder and saw Virgil coming along, his face gray with effort. Caesar stretched into a long sprint, angling a little as he came down the slope. The other man looked back at Caesar and swerved. Then he stopped, clearly done in by the run, and raised his musket. Caesar ran on. If this man was loaded, then Bludner had tried a shot at Stewart and was empty, because neither of them had had time to load. The man aimed carefully and Caesar could see his arms trembling with the effort and he swerved to make the man re-aim. Caesar saw the puff of smoke and heard the report, but not the bullet. The man was too spent to aim well, which was what Caesar had expected. Caesar ran directly at him, bowled him over at full speed and ran on. The man was thrown aside.

“Finish him, Virgil!” Caesar shouted, and ran on, feeling the fatigue in his thighs. But Bludner was flagging too and Caesar got his round loaded and then began to sprint, catching up with every stride. Bludner looked back twice, and then, with a hundred paces between them, he stopped and began to load. Caesar leapt a low stone wall and dashed forward, watching Bludner’s loading warily. At fifty paces, Bludner was just putting the ball in the barrel, but he surprised Caesar by rapping the musket on the ground to get the ball down the barrel, taking aim and firing in one motion. Caesar barely had time to swerve, and even then he heard the sound of the bullet close, but the report sounded odd, and Bludner threw the musket down, the side of his face burned and black. Bludner drew a heavy sword, breathing like a bellows. Caesar slowed a little and ran past him, breathing easily. He ran until he was between Bludner and Robinson, still a mile or more to the west, and then he stopped.

“You black bastard,” Bludner said, seeing Caesar clearly. “You’ve vexed me before.”

Caesar saw Virgil in the distance, just finishing the man he had knocked down. Although he had the fowler loaded, he placed it carefully on the ground, lock up, and smiled, a thin-lipped grin that showed no teeth. Then he stepped back and drew his hunting sword and began to circle Bludner to the left, drawing Jeremy’s little dagger with his left hand and keeping it close to his side. He relished the fear in Bludner’s eyes, and the way Bludner was edging toward the fowler on the ground. He had seldom felt so alive. He breathed deeply.

Bludner leapt at him with a roar and cut at his head, and Caesar parried easily. He stepped back. Bludner took several deep breaths and cut at him again, an overhand motion that left his side exposed. Caesar noted it and his smile grew. He stepped back again, drew the same attack, met it with the same parry.

“Try harder,” he said. Bludner stepped to his right and attacked, one-two, head cuts from opposing sides, and Caesar parried them both. Then his heel caught a branch and there was a rush of action, Bludner trying to bowl him over, his own total contortion as he fought his own body for balance and got a knee under him and his sword up to catch another of Bludner’s single-minded blows. Caesar stood up, feigned a little twinge, and made as if to stumble back. Bludner brought his wrist up and cut again, the same side, and Caesar parried, stepped in close and slammed Jeremy’s little ivory-handled dirk right up under Bludner’s right armpit.

Bludner stepped back and fell immediately, although he was on his feet in a second. Then he swayed.

“That’s for Jeremy,” said Caesar, and then, as if to himself, “You are easy.”

Bludner waved his blade and said something, and Caesar killed him, a simple feint and a cut to the neck, his whole weight and all his anger, his whole life in one cut, and Bludner fell with a crash, head rolling in the dirt.

He cleaned his blade, took the man’s dispatch case and his rifle, and picked up his own fowler. He looked at Bludner’s body and shook his head.

Virgil came up, still in obvious pain from his arm.

“You killed him.” He smiled broadly through his own pain. “I knew you would.”

“He was easy,” Caesar said simply. “I thought he’d be something…”

Virgil just nodded. “Ain’t it always like that, though?”

They stood together, savoring the early autumn air and Bludner’s shocking corpse, and then they began to run back to the rest of the Guides.