Christian Cameron - Washington and Caesar

“Files from the center, follow me!” he bellowed. The men crossing the fence began to run to him. He kept going forward.

Off to his right, he saw Major Stewart moving his men through an orchard. Then he was in the little fold and hidden from the riflemen. He paused a moment to gather his men, few of whom had his turn of speed. There were shots from the farmyard, and then more shots from over his head.

“Ready?” he asked. They all got their breath back, safe in the dead ground and none too eager to leave it.

Martin drew his sword. He looked at it a moment as if it was unfamiliar and then held it up. “Charge!” he yelled and ran up the fold. Caesar followed him and the moment they came over the little crest they began to cheer.

The rebels didn’t wait for them. Surprised by their appearance so close, they bolted. Off to the right, Major Stewart’s horse crested the rise and one of the rebels paused and shot him. Stewart’s horse crumpled. Caesar bellowed. Virgil stopped for one stride and shot the man down, and Martin gave a cry and ran on, Caesar at his heels.

There was a long hill behind the rise where the riflemen had waited, and they ran up it as best they could, Caesar and Martin now well ahead. The rocks grew bigger until they could no longer see their quarry, and then they came around a great boulder and they were on a road. A big man on a horse fired a pistol and the ball went wide. Then he laughed. Another man turned his horse and tried a rifle shot from horseback.

Caesar aimed his fusil and pulled the trigger. Nothing answered him but the clatch of the cock hitting the hammer. The rifle shot ricocheted off the boulder and Martin took a pistol from his belt, raised it like a duellist and shot the man’s horse. The big man gave one glance at his partner and rode away.

Suddenly Caesar knew the big man was Bludner. He gave a wordless cry somewhere between pain and rage and ran down the road, brandishing his useless fusil like a spear. He ran with the full power of his legs, the iron horseshoe plates on his heels kicking up sparks as he went, leaping the downed horse and on around the bend.

He could see for a hundred yards, and there was Bludner going over the next hill, his horse at a gallop. Caesar put his head down and ran. At the next hill he abandoned his fusil. He ran until he could no longer see Bludner ahead of him. And then he turned and started to trot back.

Stewart was lying under a maple tree at the edge of the rise where the riflemen had been. He looked as pale as death. Caesar ran up to him and saw that McDonald was smiling, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He had been convinced that Bludner had killed Stewart.

Stewart had a bandage on his left arm and his shirt, breeches and waistcoat were as red as his coat. His horse lay dead.

“Sergeant Caesar?”

“My compliments on finding you alive, sir.”

“No compliments needed, Caesar. I told Mr. Crawford and Mr. Martin to see to the detail. That shooting will bring the rebels down on us.” Stewart tried to move and gave a little grunt. “I think it’s time I went home to Scotland, Caesar.”

“That was Bludner, sir.”

“Really?” Stewart winced and moved, winced again. “And we missed him?”

“We missed him.”

Stewart shook his head, but McDonald smiled.

“We missed him this time, Julius. But your Mr. Martin took one of his men.”

Caesar brightened. “Took him?”

“Shot his horse. Took him prisoner.”

“Think he’ll talk?”

Sergeant McDonald gave Caesar an ugly smile. “Oh, I’d say.”

Stewart wriggled again and closed his eyes. “I’ll stay a little longer, then.”

Dobb’s Ferry and New York, July 19 and after, 1781

Washington saw the courier arrive outside his window and signed a general order without flourish, then made a sign to David Humphreys, who was acting as his secretary, to hold his private correspondence. The courier was doubtless about to deprive him of his afternoon.

Fitzgerald leaned in from the common room. “Captain Lake from General Lafayette,” he said formally and withdrew.

Washington remembered Lake well, one of the companylevel officers who had been with the army for so long that he seemed to personify it. Lake saluted smartly. Washington bowed a little while remaining seated and held out his hand. Lake gave him a canvas packet.

“I am surprised to see you so far from your company, Captain Lake,” he said. The words sounded cold though he had meant them to be warm. He winced a little. The lack of news about the French fleet had him on edge.

“The marquis wanted his message delivered in person, sir. He says, if the Comte de Grasse will come to the Chesapeake, we’ll have Cornwallis like a rat in a trap.”

Washington smiled. As he repeated those words, George had looked out of the window and his features had undergone a strange transformation, as if he had become Lafayette for a moment.

“We are all waiting on the Comte de Grasse, Captain. If he comes to Newport, we will act in the north. If he offers the British battle off Sandy Hook, we will attack New York.” Washington opened the packet with a knife and began to read the dispatch. “How badly was Wayne handled?”

“More than one hundred men lost, sir.”

Washington shook his head. “Impetuous. But Wayne has spirit.” He shook himself. What spirit indeed, that he would criticize a general to a captain? Although sometimes he felt that Lake was like his staff, his military family.

He read on. “Ahh,” he said, when he read that Cornwallis had retreated on Williamsburg. This was country he knew well, so that he could see the action at Green Springs, taste the air, see the horses trampling the tobacco and smell the result. “So Lord Cornwallis is well down the Peninsula?”

“He was when I left the marquis.” George continued to stand at attention.

“Captain, please refresh yourself and hold yourself in readiness to deliver my answer. You can join my staff.” He gave a hard little smile. “While we wait on the Comte de Grasse.”

Caesar stood in his room in the barracks and polished the blade of his sword with an oiled cloth and some ash. He moved the blade rhythmically beween his fingers while his mind was elsewhere.

The first essential of the plan to take Bludner depended on constant knowledge of his agents in New York. For that reason, someone watched Sally every moment of the day. Major Stewart tended to spend more time with her, and when he was absent from her rooms Sergeant McDonald or one of his friends watched her door. Even so, in late July, Bludner’s agent met her, hit her and terrified her. They couldn’t touch him as he left her. It would have ruined the plan. But McDonald told Caesar he had never been so close to killing a man and not done it.

The second essential was to know Bludner’s location and to be able to plan to attack it. The prisoner had added to their store of knowledge about Bludner’s posts. He knew of three, and the prisoner said that Bludner moved among them often. Only his couriers knew which post he’d be at. But the prisoner knew a good deal about the locations of the posts: one in an old cabin in a wood, one in a big stone barn and one in an old Dutch farmhouse. They knew a little about each but they needed more to strike.

Polly had gone to be with Sally after McDonald’s report. She came back toward evening. She had been crying, he could see, and she was subdued. Caesar had been blacking his belts, part of a ritual he did to calm himself. His whole kit was hanging from hooks, the leather gleaming softly, the weapons bright. His offering on a private altar. He wiped the blackball from his hands, reminded by the smell of the regulars of the Fourteenth Foot and his days in the Ethiopians.