Christian Cameron - Washington and Caesar

Nonetheless, men were moving on the other side of the wood. Caesar lay silent for minutes, his body heat seeping away into the damp ground, before he crawled forward a little and realized that all the movement was that of men going to and from the downed trees along the northern edge of the wood that they used as latrines. That made him smile; men are seldom at their most alert when dealing with such fundamental issues.

He crept closer. There were no sentries, but the conversation of two men using a latrine told Caesar that this was the encampment of Virginia militia. He gathered from their conversation that they had been digging trenches and that both wanted to be home getting their crops in. Mostly it was griping, little different from the daily staple of Virgil or Tom. But a third man, noisily settling himself on another downed tree, brought the real news; he had been with a patrol and seen the enemy camp-the governor’s camp-which he indicated was not too far to the north.

Caesar had a long way to go to get back to his friends. He ran across the open field, slipping twice in the mud, running as much for the warmth as for the speed. He leapt the creek and headed straight up the ridge, pulling himself up the steep slope by grabbing the smooth trunks of smaller trees in the failing light. He paused at the top, half afraid, perhaps expecting Jim with bad news, or an ambush on his back trail. He was conscious that he was going back exactly the way he had set out, a serious mistake, but he didn’t know another way and didn’t want to waste the time finding one in the gathering gloom.

Once down the other side, though, he felt free, and he was almost unwary as he began to cross the open ground to the south. The smell warned him just in time-the fresh smell of a dead animal. That deer carcass wasn’t too far away. Then he heard the movement and he froze, his fowler coming up to a line with his eye and pointed at the sound. He moved to his left, cautious now, his heart thumping away like horses’ hooves in his chest.

Wolves or coyotes. Maybe dogs. They were all bad, if they caught you alone. And his one shot might not slow them, might just bring something worse, like militia. He kept walking off to his left, the fowler tracking the tearing, rending noises. It sounded like fiends from hell ripping bodies asunder-too many for one poor deer carcass. Caesar shivered again and moved a little quicker, back to the small creek and then up the side of the ridge he’d made camp on last night. He smelled fire and thought he smelled roasting meat, which made him suspicious. He was so worried that he crawled right up on them and listened for a minute to make sure that slave-takers hadn’t left an ambush for him, but it was just Virgil griping nervously to Jim about how late he was.

He wanted to say something about the fire, but he was so cold that he needed it, and he was so relieved to see them that he wanted to hug them all. There, at the base of the last hill, with the wolves close, he had thought it might be some dreadful devil’s trick to let him hear how close they were to the governor’s army and then take his hope away. With warm tea in him and a blanket on his shoulders, he almost had to cry, but he covered it.

“Governor’s army isn’t far, friends.” He looked around at them in the flickering light of the tiny fire. “We gon’ make it tonight, or we won’ make it at all.”

They nodded. They could all see that wherever he had been, it had been a hard place-not just in the cold, but something in his face.

“I got a rabbit,” said Jim.

“How’d you do that?” asked Caesar. “I didn’t hear a shot.”

“Damn thing walked into here bold as brass, just as the light started to go. Jim gets up nice and slow, then fzzt! And he’s off after the thing.”

“Caught it, too,” said Virgil. “Never seen nobody catch a rabbit with their bare hands.”

Jim drank in the teasing praise. “You said we needed food, an’ we’d have to catch it ourselves, so I did.”

Caesar sucked the marrow out of a bone and shook his head.

“Never seen nobody catch a rabbit with their bare hands,” said Virgil again.

The moon was just rising when he started them north, even farther east than the night before. He aimed for the little ridge he had seen, but he wanted to make a big circle around the militia camp, going well east, and come back on his ridge. He had done such navigations in the swamp with mixed success, but the moonlight helped, as did the rabbit. By the time he had been moving for an hour, he was warm again. They were in the low ground where he had seen patches of cultivated land. He thought from the furrows that it was slave-cultivated, not tobacco but food. The slave cabins must be close but he hadn’t seen them and he guessed they must be further east, nestled up against an invisible plantation house. He kept moving, his little band right on his heels in Indian file.

The rabbit was just a memory by dawn. The men had been on their feet for nine hours, and they had started short on sleep. They were done. The rising sun was at their backs, as Caesar had hoped, as they moved west, aiming for the slope of what he still thought was the ridge he had spied while he watched the militia camp. He led them quickly despite their fatigue; more and more he used speed to cross open spaces instead of stealth. When they were in among the trees on the ridge’s wooded slopes, he felt as safe as he permitted himself to feel.

“We’ll get up to the top and take a break,” he said, glancing north through a break in the foliage.

“Thought we was gon’ get to the governor tonight,” Tom said.

Caesar nodded. “We didn’t. I hoped we’d find him out to the east, but he’s still north. I think I smell some smoke out there,” and he waved his arm. “I’ll go see. You stay here and rest.”

Caesar had some energy left, from some reserve he always seemed to cache away, and he left them in a hollow on the wooded ridge. He thought he could see the Chesapeake in the distance.

He was light-headed, and for a bit he just stopped and breathed, afraid that he might have the fever again. But his breathing steadied and his mind was clear, and he kept on across two fields that had been in wheat and one with corn stubble all the way across. He had to burrow through the hedges where they had been allowed to grow, and suddenly he was at the edge of a road and men were talking on the other side of the trees-white men. There were more fires, the fires he had smelled from the ridge. The hedges covered their smoke.

He slipped into the trees and crawled forward until the men were clear, backlit against their fires. He paused for a moment to think how foolish they were to put the fires behind them in the dark; but they clearly had sentries, and the fires helped him see that the sentries were soldiers in coats, and the coats were red. The local civil war was anything but straightforward, but Caesar was sure enough that men in king’s coats had to be the governor’s men. Their fires and their sentries faced the militia, a few miles away. He moved forward to the edge of the trees and watched a while as the regulars changed their pickets and shivered in the fall air. One smoked and another cautioned him about it. The sun rose higher, and as it did, Caesar saw that the relief party coming down the track behind the sentries was composed entirely of black men in sashes, all armed with muskets. Their officer was white. He relieved the regulars and his own men settled in their places. They tended to talk more, and they all smoked. The officer sat down a little to one side, almost at the edge of the track, and opened a book. Caesar began to crawl that way, moving carefully but with joy rising inside him. Those men-black men, with muskets-weren’t runaways, but black soldiers. It was all true.