Christian Cameron - Washington and Caesar

“I remember Caesar,” he said softly, as if the man were standing there himself, and Washington had just noticed him for the first time.

“Do you hate Mr. Washington?” Marcus White had asked this before, and it always seemed to fascinate him.

“No. No, I don’t hate him. I don’t love him much, either.” Caesar said, looking through the wine in his glass. “We exchanged shots at the Brandywine. Something like a duel, I think. I’ve thought that it settled something between us.”

“Do you have any happy thoughts from then? When you was a slave?” Polly asked.

“Oh, yes. I was learning a good amount every day. I had a comfortable place to live, and it was so much better than the Indies.”

“But what of Washington?”

“He was a distant master. He seldom beat a slave, and he was often fair. He never liked me.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Queeny said it was my scars.” He rubbed them.

“They do give you a savage look,” said Sally in a low voice, as if she was wooing him.

“And I had to be free.”

Marcus nodded at him, as if they had conspired together.

“Yes, it comes to you that way, doesn’t it?”

Caesar frowned, remembering. Sally looked at them both.

“How did you ‘have to be free’?”

“One day, you know you’d rather die than be a slave,” said Caesar. “Some never get it. I grew up with slaves, in Africa. Sometimes one would kill himself, or run. Now I know why.”

Marcus looked at him. “Was it injustice that moved you?”

“Perhaps it was. I just remember the little things. I was never beaten while I was at Mount Vernon. It was never a great injustice, and that is why I say that Washington was mostly fair.”

Marcus White nodded. “That’s the power that slavery has, though. To make a man’s likes and dislikes into the power of a god. A man can be the very best of masters, and yet, in a fit of temper, abuse a slave in a way he would never abuse another free man. As if slaves aren’t human.”

“What else do you remember?” asked Polly.

“He loved to farm and he loved to hunt. He was a master of both. Those skills probably make him a good soldier.”

“The first time I saw him…well, he reminded me of a soldier. He was my dogs boy. He had an eye for ground that…well, that has doubtless made him a good one.”

Washington took a glass of wine from Billy.

Stewart watched the black man, who pretended a complete lack of interest in the conversation.

Washington spoke carefully, because the subject was so great and so painful that he could not simply dismiss it. Nor was this the first time the subject had surfaced at his table, and he wondered again if he was changing.

“Slavery is an issue that will haunt us for some time, I think.”

Hamilton shook his head vehemently.”Can we allow that, sir? When even an advocate like the marquis tells us that it is a blot on our liberty?”

Henry Lee shook his head just as vehemently. “When you speak of the end of slavery, Colonel Hamilton, you speak of depriving us of our property as surely as if you’d come and burned my house.”

Stewart was seated at almost the middle of the table, and now he looked back and forth among the young men, and realized that it split them all. It was odd, as he had seen so many slaves in the north that he thought the matter was pandemic.

But George Lake, whose accent was as deeply Virginian as Henry Lee’s, spoke with quiet confidence.

“Can any man, who has fought so hard for his own liberty, sit idle while another man loses his?”

Every head turned to him, the most junior officer present and welcome mostly as the prisoner’s escort and Lafayette’s friend.

“What do you say, sir?” asked Henry Lee. In Virginia, he owned property worth thousands of pounds, and George Lake was a tradesman’s son and an apprentice, if that.

“I say, with respect, that the men who have fought this war, the handful of us who served from Morristown and will still be here at the end, we know what all these words like liberty really mean. And we know when other men who didn’t do the fighting…” He stopped, as if stricken, and muttered an apology, but Hamilton looked like to applaud.

“The ones who write the speeches and didn’t ever serve? Is that what you mean, Captain Lake?” Hamilton asked, rising a little. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

Lee looked at Hamilton with scorn.

“Free the slaves? Who will indemnify the owners? What will they do with themselves? Will they be citizens?”

“King George might have said the very thing of us, sir!”

“I think that the southern states would go to war rather than lose the full value of the property they have fought to save.”

“Perhaps, then, we can see the precious manpower they cannot spare to fight this war!” Hamilton was on his feet. “At home, guarding against some fabled revolt of their slaves while we face the cannon and the redcoats.”

He flamed red in the face. “My apologies, gentlemen. You all know I do not mean Virginia.” He turned to Captain Stewart. “And please pardon my fling against redcoats.”

“My coat is most certainly red,” Stewart said with a smile.

Washington looked down the table sternly, and shook his head.

“I think this is why we keep politics out of the mess, Captain Stewart.”

“I apologize for what I started, sir.”

Hamilton turned to him and whispered as a strained conversation covered him from up the table. “You didn’t start it, sir. They did. When they bought their human cattle.”

“Can we drink to the happy couple?” Sally asked, and Caesar glared at her.

“I haven’t asked yet,” he said sheepishly. He was enjoying the mood and the conversation, and he didn’t want to come to the point of the evening yet. In a social way, he was afraid of Marcus White, and a little afraid of Polly.

“You’re slow, then,” Sally quipped.

Caesar looked across the table at Polly, whose eyes were down, and then at Marcus White. He reached into his pocket and pulled forth a plain silver band, hammered by the armourer from a shilling. His hands were trembling.

“Sir, I have not hidden from you my admiration for your daughter, and I would like to take this occasion to ask for the honah, that is, honor of her hand,” he said. There was a quaver in his voice, but he got it out just as he had practiced it.

Marcus White waved easily at Polly. “You know that you have my consent if you have hers.”

Polly smiled. “You have mine.”

Caesar went and knelt by her, and placed his ring on her finger.

“Then I hope you will be my wife.”

“I will, Caesar.” She kissed him on the forehead and then looked into his eyes, hers huge and dark. “But my father has to tell you something first, don’t you, Father?”

“Tell me?”

Marcus White looked at her, clearly a little frightened in his turn. Caesar knew what it must be immediately, and went to shush her.

“This isn’t the place.” He looked at Sally, his distrust clear on his face. The scars made him look dangerous at such moments. “Perhaps when we’re alone.”

“This is just the place,” insisted Polly, looking up at him with steady eyes.

Marcus White looked at his daughter for a long moment.

“If I must.”

He looked around and then stood up to lock the room’s only door. Then he busied himself throwing wood on the fire.

“Caesar, you know that I have something to do with gathering intelligence for the army?”

“I do, sir. And you need say no more about it…”

“Caesar, let my father speak.” Polly put her hand on his arm and left it there. Marcus White leaned forward over the table.