Christian Cameron - Washington and Caesar

Stewart winced as his hand was thrust into the coat and the abused shoulder took the strain.

“I think it will be some time before I’m shooting at Captain Lake.” He smiled at a sudden thought. “Indeed, I wonder if I won’t go home to recover.” Home to Edinburgh, covered in glory. Yes. And then no. He thought of Jeremy, whom he had counted on for humor and for advice in dealing with Miss McLean’s father. But life was going to go on. And he would see Jeremy revenged.

George Lake’s hands were cold with nerves.

“That’s good,” he said. He sounded strained. Stewart frowned at him from inches away and Lake closed his coat.

“Are you worrying about a dinner with General Washington and his staff?”

“I don’t know how to act like them,” he said.

“Fie on you,” said Mrs. Holding. “Don’t be an ungrateful body, Captain Lake. And poor Captain Stewart, putting himself out all morning to show you how to eat like a gentleman.”

Lake hung his head, and Stewart hobbled across the room.

“George Lake, you have, by all accounts, won several actions all by yourself. And now a dinner undoes you, and that with your own general? Look at me, sir. A poor wounded officer surrounded by his enemies, going to eat with the very ogre who looks to overturn the rightful government of this country.”

“You put me in mind of Mr. Lovell, John. He says such things. But Washington is no ogre.”

“That’s your sweetheart’s da’, then?”

George blushed. He had been easy with his confidences, so quickly had he taken a liking to Stewart. And now Stewart was using them to abuse him.

“Oh, fie on it, Captain. She is your sweetheart, will ye, nil ye.”

“Oh, shame on you, Captain Stewart,” cried Mrs. Holding, laughing despite herself.

George Lake simply shook his head at the two of them. “All very well for you to laugh,” he said. “I fairly dread this dinner. And the marquis will be there, too, I have no doubt.”

A week on, and Caesar was finally getting to have his dinner with Polly, although it had widened into a dinner with Polly and her father…and Sally. Caesar hadn’t known what to make of Sally since that afternoon. She hadn’t been drunk again, and had comported herself soberly, and even sat patiently with Polly learning to put an initial on Captain Stewart’s shirt. Sally did one in the time it took Polly to pick out the letters in five others, but that didn’t lessen the accomplishment.

They were to dine at the Moor’s Head, and Caesar arranged it, securing a table and ordering the food. The black patrons seldom ran to such an occasion, but it was not so rare for Reverend White, as he had prosperous friends. And the Black Guides had something of the run of the place. It promised to be a very good dinner, private in the little room off the hall to the kitchen.

Caesar came in his best scarlet coat, wearing a watch he had kept from the days in the swamp and that Jeremy had arranged to repair last year. He had good new boots and fine smallclothes, all of which had been in Jeremy’s traveling trunk. It made him feel odd to wear them. Polly had taken them apart and altered them to fit. He was dressed to ask for Polly’s hand.

“You look very fine,” she said.

She was dressed in a sack-back gown of printed linen that made her look as slim as a young tree, and had a little cap on her head that made her face as beautiful as he had ever seen it.

“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said with a bow.

She looked over her shoulder as if looking for someone else in the room, and then smacked him on the arm.

Marcus White was dressed in severe but fashionable black, with a new coat and new smallclothes and a white collar that seemed to shine like righteousness. He was leading Sally by the hand, and she was dressed as modestly as she ever had been in Philadelphia. Caesar, who had to judge men every day, knew in his bones that she had dressed to let Polly be the center of attention, and he liked her for it. As they walked through the common room, every eye there was on them. More than one voice suggested that some of the blacks were getting above themselves, but never loudly, and Major Simcoe rose and kissed Polly’s hand. He didn’t directly address Sally, a complicated piece of social tactics that avoided both offense and impertinence.

“Your servant, miss,” he said formally, and Polly showed him just the least flash of her eyes as she curtsied in return, a flash that made him smile unexpectedly.

Then they crossed the rest of the room and left it for their private dinner.

Stewart was seated near the middle of the table, with Captain Lake across from him and Alexander Hamilton on his right. Lafayette was close, above Hamilton. Opposite Lafayette sat Colonel Henry Lee, now a famous cavalryman. General Washington filled the end of the table with both size and spirit.

They were all men of culture and civility-except perhaps Lake, and he was learning. They did not discuss any matter which might give pain to a guest who was an enemy, but instead chatted amiably about letters and sport. Hamilton was delighted to find that Stewart was a fellow fisherman, and they discoursed on horsehair lines and the latest fashion in hooks and snells for several moments until they realized that they had spread a sort of wondering silence all down the table.

“A glass of wine with you, Captain?” said Lafayette, leaning forward.

“Your servant, Marquis.”

“And perhaps you will then enlighten us all about this multiplying reel?”

Stewart winced in embarrassment.

“I am sorry to be a boor,” he said.

“Nothing of the kind, sir, I assure you, and I can guarantee that my friend Hamilton will insist.”

“Well, then,” said Stewart. “It is a brass winch, for holding line, you see? Except that it has a gear on the shaft so that the user has some mechanical advantage as he winds. Am I plain? So that, instead of just storing your line on a winch, now you could actually use it to land a fish.”

“Gimcrack notion,” said Fitzgerald. “What if the thing slips and you lose your fish?”

“Does the sear slip on a well-made flintlock?”

“I take your point, sir.” Fitzgerald raised his glass, acknowledging it. “But do you really need such an advantage?”

“Oh, as to that…” Stewart shrugged. “I don’t use one meself, mind. I was just explaining to Colonel Hamilton here why they are coming into fashion. Friends of mine had them made in Philadelphia.”

“Oh they did?” Hamilton smiled. “Perhaps I can do the same, now that…Oh, I’m sorry.”

Stewart smiled at them all. “I’m not so sensitive as that.”

Washington, as the senior, could not be asked a direct question; it was not done. But he could listen, and by his listening betray an interest. Stewart realized that Washington was listening attentively, and turned to him, inviting a question.

“These are trout you are speaking of?”

“Oh, pah, trout,” said Hamilton and Stewart together, which gave rise to a general laugh.

“No, sir,” said Stewart. “Although I do enjoy fishing for the trout from time to time, it is the salmon, that prince of fishes, that is the true heart of the sport.”

“So I have gathered from Mr. Bowlker and Mr. Fairfax.” Washington dropped these names so that they would know that he was not behindhand in matters of sport, although the books were far away with his old life at Mount Vernon.

“Oh, sir, indeed?” Stewart had sat through a great many regimental dinners, and he knew that a great deal of complaisance on these matters was expected of him as a guest. A decent show of interest. Greatly daring, Stewart asked him a direct question.