Christian Cameron - Washington and Caesar

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.