Christian Cameron - Washington and Caesar

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.