Washington and Caesar Read online

  “Maybe the governor will arm the slaves.”

  “That’s foolishness, Lark.” Caesar was surprised to hear his own voice. “Who’s gon’ arm slaves?”

  “I heard it happen’ befo’. Not just one time, neithuh.”

  Old Ben spoke from the gloom of his blanket. “They done it before this, boys. They armed us in Carolina once. We was to fight Cherokees.”

  The little group fell silent. Caesar gave the boy by the fire a little slap and pointed him off to another fire. The boy looked at him, pleased somehow, even at being sent away, and Caesar wondered what he had been like these last weeks.

  “You run ‘long.” He tried to sound kindly. Perhaps he smiled. It didn’t come easily. The boy showed his teeth and hobbled off. He waited till the boy was out of earshot. “We have to kill Gordon.”

  Only Virgil met his eye and nodded, but the others made noises, softly.

  “Any o’ us could die, any day,” Caesar continued. “He don’t give a damn whether he shoot us or we die o’ fever.”

  “‘Bout time you come back to yo’ senses, boy!” Old Ben spoke out of the darkness and then leaned in to the firelight.

  “Where do we go?” asked Virgil.

  Old Ben threw off the blanket. “Run to John Canno!”

  “John Canno’s a myth, old man.” Caesar had heard of John Canno from Queeny, from Old Ben. He sounded too good to be true, a black bandit in the deep woods to the south. No one ever seemed to be able to say just where he was from, though.

  “If he be, then where all the slaves that run? Who steal the cattle? Who take the folk to Florida?”

  Caesar looked at them with a little impatience.

  “It ain’t time for talk. You run to Florida if you wan’. I say we kill the overseer and go into the swamp. We steal what we need. Wi’ his pistol and another gun, we can hunt, if we have powder. I was a warrior, and I could be again, and I’ll start here. I’d rathuh die killing this Gordon man than live fat, whether here or at Mount Vernon. I’m tired of being a slave. And if I stay here and talk, I’ll be a dead slave. Better die free.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “Yeah, Virgil, and it ain’t fancy. When he come to the barracoon, he take us to the tools, every morning, wait while we hoist what we need. Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” They all nodded.

  “So when I get my pick, I raise it and throw it, grab the nearest tool and charge him. I’ll go first, but every man of you better be behind me. He get one shot. He hit me, I die. You kill him, you run. Or he won’ hit me. Then we fin’ the other man, the one we never see. We kill him too. After that, we have some o’ their food, make a plan.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I have, man.”

  Virgil smiled. “I got one thing bettuh, then. Listen. I carry the corn meal with me. When he stand to watch us get the tools I throw it at him. It burning hot, wet his gun, too, I hope.”

  Caesar nodded. “Wet gun might not fire.”

  Lark smiled at both of them. “When do we go, boys?”

  Caesar looked at both of them, and past them.

  “We’ll go when I give the word. First morning everything is right.”

  “I wan’ do it now,” said Virgil. Lark gave him an odd look; Caesar saw it but couldn’t interpret it.

  “Wait, Virgil. Jes’ a little while.”

  Virginia Convention, Richmond, Virginia, March 27, 1775

  “It all comes down to logistics, gentlemen. We lack arms, we lack wool, we lack powder and lead to make ball; we have precious few cannon, and those of smallest caliber; and we have no magazines to assemble these items even if they were to fall on us from the heavens.”

  Patrick Henry looked at Washington, usually silent and taciturn, as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt.

  “Surely every gentleman in Virginia has private arms. Many have fine fowlers, even rifles.”

  Washington smiled, although the smile didn’t touch the skin on his cheeks. He waved a hand to a slave by the tavern’s counter and pointed to top his tankard.

  “I’m not sure how many gentlemen want their fine Durs Egg fowlers being handed out to the yeomanry to repel invaders, at ten pounds and more each.”

  “If their liberty requires it!”

  “Mr. Henry, you are a warm friend to liberty, but not, I think, a soldier. Those fine fowlers have fine parts; the cocks and hammers are slim as a pistol. You’ll have noticed this, I think?”

  “I have, sir. I have handled arms and need no lesson.”

  “I mean no insult, sir, but you do. Those fine, slim cocks will break when a scared boy pulls them back too hard; the springs will burst when overused, or let to wet and rust. A Queen Anne musket like this here is a heavy thing and built to be used by scared boys. The springs are such that it takes a heavy pull to cock, but see how much metal there is throughout? You can drop it and it won’t break. And your fowler has a smaller bore—perhaps sixty or sixtyfive caliber, some as small as twenty or twenty-five balls to the pound. A military musket is bigger in the bore, faster to load and uses a heavier ball that carries farther in the flat or in the brush.”

  Henry nodded. He had not become a great debater by failing to note when other men knew more than he. And Washington knew the tools of his former trade like no one else on the committee.

  “Your rifles can be pitiful things, sir, because the balls they fire are even slighter, but mostly because they are fragile, and take a man trained in their use, of which we will have too few. Neither they nor the fowlers will take a bayonet, either. A soldier needs a bayonet, either to try conclusions with an enemy at close quarters or to keep the enemy’s horse at bay. Without bayonets, you’ll never get a man to stand when he is charged. We need muskets, and proper ones—made careful and with bayonets to fit—and cartridge boxes, slings, and bayonet carriages. And we’ll need our powder and ball rolled up in cartridges—faster to load, as the men have only to bite off the ball and pour the powder down the barrel. Loading from the horn is too slow.”

  His old allies from the militia acts of 1757 knew all this; they’d heard it all too often before. But it was news to the new firebrands, and if it didn’t cool their ardor, it certainly caused them to start counting their shillings. But Henry never relished defeat in any debate; he deemed his opponent knew the subject better than he, but couldn’t let the opportunity to speechify pass.

  “You seem to have little confidence in the yeomanry of Virginia. Scared boys and men who won’t stand, to hear you.”

  “Well, sir, I’ve seen ’em run a few times. Never been a man born not scared when the first balls fly. No gentleman asks too much of his soldiers. General Braddock said that. He may have lost Monongahela, but he was no fool.”

  “Our men will have the courage of true patriots!”

  Washington shook his head. To him, the issue of true patriotism was not germane; no one could recruit or feed an army on it.

  “Virginia will need three thousand stand of arms for the foot alone. And where the furniture for the mounted companies will come from is beyond me. Muskets will be hard enough, but musketoons and carbines and sabers…”

  “New York has been making muskets.” Mr. Lewis had sat quiet up until now.

  “We don’t need New York goods to fight Virginia’s wars.” Patrick Henry seemed divided as to whether the colonies would rise together or as discrete entities.

  “Oh, but we do, and we will, sir, if we propose to fight the mother country. To raise an army, and face British regulars, we will need an army of the whole continent, trained and mustered. And we will need the support and equipment of every colony to face them.”

  Henry turned to Peyton Randolph, who had entered a moment before and sat quietly against the wall. “Colonel Washington becomes the orator at last.”

  Randolph, who had a longer experience of Washington, smiled grimly. “Washington only speaks when he knows his subject and his passions are moved. When you speak of war, you meet both those co
nditions.”

  Randolph stood when Washington ceased. “Gentlemen, I have to ask your committee to rejoin us in the church as we are to vote the members for the Continental Congress.”

  As the chairs scraped back and the men began to move, Henry leaned past him. He was a man who always separated the battle of wills in debate from the true demands of politics. “Make sure we take the soldier,” he muttered, and cast a significant glance at Washington. “I think we shall need him.”

  Great Dismal Swamp, April 1775

  The next two days, they were sent to plant tobacco instead of going into the swamp. It rested them all, and gave them a chance to exchange news with the slaves from the other gangs. They got a little more to eat each night, too. Caesar assumed it had to do with newly delivered supplies that had come with Lark, another slave who never spoke named Tom, and several new white men.

  Days passed, and still the circumstances they needed for the plan didn’t arise.

  The third and fourth mornings, Gordon sent one of the new whites, Keller, to unlock the barracoon, and himself stood well back with a long fowler across his arm; the next morning he did not appear at all. Keller was unarmed, except for a large knife. He was surly, and Caesar could feel his fear of the blacks, which put him on his guard. The other men ignored his curses, took their tools, and went to work, tensions easing only when they were at the heads of their trenches into the swamp, hacking their ditches a little deeper. But something was different; Gordon hadn’t watched them go out, and on a spur of impulse, Caesar stayed with Virgil’s party rather than going out with his own. The sullen boy said nothing; he didn’t even know the slaves apart yet.

  Caesar cut at the roots of a large tree for almost an hour, working his hands into steadiness, cracking the knuckles where he had to force them to respond. The knuckles were getting more swollen every day; they had never looked like this before, even early in his service in the Indies. The black blood around the edges of his calluses made him queasy. He was not a weak man, but his hands looked as if they would never again be adept at anything. Even swinging the pick had become a matter of fine judgment. He tried not to look, then looked again, with the vanity of a handsome man who sees his body being ruined.

  He wondered if the plan to kill the overseer had been betrayed. He was sure of Virgil, less sure of Lark. Lark was new. Old Ben would never; he was too old to care one way or the other. The cook boy, perhaps. He stayed all day at the barracoon, cleaning and cooking; perhaps his loyalty was with the whites. But if Gordon knew the plan, what was he waiting for?

  Suddenly, Caesar decided it was time to act. The decision came suddenly; it didn’t seem to result from conscious thought. It was there. Time to go. He had assumed that the attack should come at the morning or perhaps at the evening, because they were all together; but what entered his mind now was the idea that there was little to be gained from involving the other slaves.

  He sank the head of the pick into a root on purpose, tested it to be sure that it wouldn’t come out easily, and crept off into the swamp. If discovered, he could say he was looking for another man with an ax or mattock to help him cut the pick free. He climbed a short ridge to his left and followed a game trail along it, then moved as quietly as he could through the undergrowth, parallel to the line of workers. He had to know where Gordon was. He was not going to lie sleepless another night and be disappointed. Freedom was no longer something he wanted in the future; his hands and his maimed leg demanded it immediately.

  He came abreast of Virgil, who was working silently. All the singing had stopped; they had figured that it could be used to track the location of their work, and that if it stopped on the day they went for the overseers, it might warn them. No one questioned the end of the songs. Very few of the men knew why they stopped. Virgil hefted his ax and slipped a fascine knife from behind a tuft of brush. He handed it to Caesar.

  “Now?”

  “I’m goin’ to fin’ him. Find him.”

  “And?”

  “And then we take him, you an’ me.”

  “What about Lark?”

  “Just you and me, Virgil.”

  “I’m with you.” Virgil didn’t sound calm, but he was clearly resolved. It lifted Caesar’s spirits.

  If Virgil wanted to question why Lark had ceased to enjoy Caesar’s confidence, he didn’t. Caesar slipped back into the brush, the heavy fascine knife held in his left hand. It had a vicious hook and an ax blade on the back, meant for cutting brush. This one was painted bright red, to make it easier to find when a careless man left it on the ground.

  Caesar’s heart began to beat faster. He moved easily now, the sun having warmed his aching bones but not yet sapped his strength. Virgil made considerably more noise. Caesar stopped and pointed. They were past their own gang, back toward the barracoon, the cabins, and the tilled fields. Keller was relieving himself into their ditch. He had the large knife at his belt and no other weapon. Caesar looked at Virgil, whose lips were a little pale, and he nodded. Caesar moved warily into the open to a patch of cat-tails, making the dry winter grass rustle, but Keller didn’t move, still splashing the ditch with his urine and grunting a little, as if pleased with himself. Caesar made it to the reeds. He stood very still, hidden only by the man’s position and the merest fringe of green, and breathed slowly through his mouth, spreading his hands wide for balance. He had practiced with his brothers, but his one experience of combat had not prepared him for this. His hands ached as if maimed. He took one long delicate step into the reeds that stood between him and his prey, placing his weight gradually down on a rotting stump that supported the little patch of dry ground. Keller began to button the flap of his breeches, his little grunts odd and faintly disgusting.

  Caesar could smell his urine and his fetid breath. He waited until he heard the boy exhale and he leaned out carefully and pounced, his hand gripping Keller’s throat like a band of iron. The boy’s eyes were huge. Only now did Caesar really see how young he was, but he ripped the big knife free and stabbed, upwards as he had been taught, through the vitals and into the heart, pressing the boy back against his own chest and twisting the knife while his other hand kept the wind from the boy’s lungs. Virgil appeared in front of him and his ax shattered the boy’s skull.

  There was no end to the blood from the head and from the heart. It stained all the water in the ditch in a moment. The boy was dead; he hadn’t made a noise, and already the flies were coming. Caesar took a deep breath and stripped the boy’s shirt, slave cotton, as poorly made as his own, over the corpse’s head. It was soaked with blood, but he used the back to mop his hands and face. He threw it to Virgil, who was still standing, shocked, by the corpse, staring at the ruin he had made of the boy’s head. Caesar ripped some ferns from the ground and used them to wipe the blade of the knife. It was a better knife than he had expected, a heavy blade with fine decoration on the backbone and a riveted wood grip. It reminded him of trade knives in Africa, a little heavier, but much the same.

  “Come on, Virgil.”

  Virgil just stood. He wasn’t whimpering, but his breath was loud and the sharp edges of his face were pale.

  “Come on, if you’re comin’.” Caesar grabbed his arm. At first the ax came up, but the mad gleam in Virgil’s eyes faded in a heartbeat and the big man nodded dully and followed him.

  They headed back toward the cabins. It was almost a mile to the clearing, and they moved along steadily, Virgil starting at every forest noise. Caesar had started to breathe freely. The killing had shocked him. He regretted the age of the boy, but he was old enough to be a warrior anywhere Caesar had been, and he carried a weapon. Virgil had it worse. Somehow, Virgil’s continued reaction helped to steady Caesar. He put his hand on the older man’s shoulder.

  “Halfway home.”

  “Never killed nobody.”

  “Just stay with me.”

  There was a horse in the paddock with the saddle still on, and a man in a greatcoat talking to Gordon in the yard of
the cabin. Chickens clucked around their feet. The man in the greatcoat wasn’t large, but he looked fit, and his complexion was burned red even this early in the year. He and Gordon seemed to be arguing, though they were sharing a jug of corn liquor. His greatcoat had a velvet collar and silver buttons, and his fine hat and top boots, even covered in spring swamp mud, made Gordon’s work smock look drab and poor.

  A few drops of rain began to fall, although the sun still cast a pale light over the dooryard. Caesar slipped closer to the cabin, aiming to use it as cover. He could hear their voices but not what they were saying. Virgil was still behind him. Caesar sank to his knees at the edge of the clearing and waited, as rain could only help them. It came, harder and harder, and Caesar waited patiently.

  “What you doin? I can’ jes’ wait here!” Virgil was quiet, but urgent. He had the need for action on him, something that Caesar had seen before in men, a reaction to danger.

  “We just wait a while, Virgil. Be still.”

  Before long the April rain fell in sheets, the watery sun was gone, and so too were the men’s voices. The horse walked about the paddock, dejected and puzzled that her saddle was still on. The men were in the one-room cabin. Caesar could hear them through the thin walls of the mud-and-stick chimney. He had helped lay the chimney; he knew how flimsy it was.

  “We nevah take that cabin with they inside,” Virgil said, his voice rising.

  “Don’t you move, Virgil. You stay right heah. Here.” He slipped out of the mire, up the bank to the high ground, and along the rail fence of the paddock to the horse. The cabin had no windows. Unless one of the men put an eye to one of the many chinks he was safe. He put a hand in front of the horse’s nose and breathed on it. The horse made a soft noise. He ran his other hand back along the neck to the top of the saddle and felt in the holster. A pistol. Rather than drag it into the rain he felt for the buckle to the holsters and found it, unbuckled the pair of pistols, and moved back to the edge of the swamp.