Christian Cameron - Washington and Caesar

“My daughter, Polly, often acts as a courier for me.” Caesar started, and he raised his hand. “No, please let me go on. I feel that you can know this because you know all the principals, and because it is time we draw this to a close. I do not so much collect intelligence as attempt to prevent the enemy collecting from us, do you understand?”

Caesar narrowed his eyes a little, but nodded. He glanced at Sally, who was looking at her hands.

“Throughout our army, the enemy has his spies. Some of them move around very publicly, because they wear the same uniform as you do but feel that the colonies have been unfairly treated. I can do little about them, and neither can anyone else.”

Caesar nodded. Many officers had sympathies with the other camp.

“The enemy also attempts to recruit spies through bribery, coercion, indeed, any method that will result in a flow of intelligence. I fear that this is not grounds for moral outrage, as I am very sure we do the same.”

Caesar continued to watch his eyes.

“Some time ago, someone who had been coerced approached me. She wanted to repent her sin. Indeed, she had little notion that I was anything but a minister of the Lord, but all her words fell on fertile ground. I took her under my wing. My daughter became her friend and confidante, because this woman was terrified all the time. I used my daughter to carry messages between us, and to follow certain people. This work was dangerous, but not as dangerous as my agent, the convert. Do you understand?”

Caesar looked at Sally. He looked at her too long, and wondered what she had passed before she became a convert, but then he smiled.

“I understand,” he said, and Polly pressed his hand. And Sally looked up, and into his eyes.

“And I understand, what you and Marcus said. One day, you jus’ can’t be a slave no more.” She looked down. “I can be a whore. Folks like you think it low, but it ain’t like being a slave.” She looked up again. “Marcus is the best thing I ever knew, except maybe Jeremy. I couldn’t have jumped essept for Jeremy. But now I’m scared all the time.”

Marcus said, “We’ve been feeding her false information for some time, and they are beginning to get on to it.”

“So they beat you,” said Caesar, bitterly. “And I thought you had been with a man.”

“Maybe I had,” said Sally. “That don’t make so much of a mind to me as it does you.”

Caesar looked at Polly, and at Marcus.

“I feared, once, that you were both spies. I even wondered which side you spied for.”

Polly kicked her father lightly.

“I told you he was quick.”

Marcus nodded. “Why?”

“You passed the lines too easily, and Polly seemed to know the headquarters, at least according to Jeremy. And you always seemed to know powerful men. I thought perhaps you were spying.”

“Slavery does not beget confidence in one’s fellows, does it, Caesar?”

“No, sir. No, it does not.”

Polly squeezed his hand again.

“Now you know,” she said.

“All’s well that ends well,” Caesar said, one of Jeremy’s favorites. And Sally gave a little sob.

“It ain’t the end for me until Bludner’s dead,” she said. And somehow her saying it robbed much of the joy of the day.

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.