Washington and Caesar

Despite his misgivings, he enjoyed the dance with something like content. He was growing stronger and faster, because the food was better than anything in Jamaica and the life was so easy by comparison. His hands were clean, his clothes were good, and now he had several new shirts and different waistcoats and jackets for different days. He even enjoyed the respect of most of the other men at Mount Vernon. The white servants were polite to him, even respectful. None of them seemed to think he was over familiar.

He watched Nelly dance with one of the white servants. Was she over familiar?

“There you ah’, thinkin’ them dahk thoughts again. Come dance wi’ me an’ show a little smile.” Queeny reached out and pulled him to his feet. He walked with her out to the floor and she took him boldly to the top of the set, so that they would be head couple.

“Hole in the wall,” said one of the fiddlers. Queeny nodded in time to the first bars of the music, and Caesar took a moment to see how beautiful she was, and how happy, living in the moment. Then they turned away from each other and headed down the set, the two of them in perfect time. When they met again he turned her, not by one hand like a proper gentleman, but with an arm locked around her waist so that his lips were at her ear.

“I think I should marry you, Queeny.”

Her smile lit her face, and then the dance took them apart.

The mountain of business that awaited Washington when he returned to Mount Vernon might have prompted a rebellion of spirit in a lesser man. Jack Custis’s wedding required a final pile of paper to be cleared, although it seemed obvious that he would reside at Mount Vernon with his new wife for a while. Gibson’s accounts had to be cleared, and the problems of shipping goods and grain dealt with. He looked over his accounts, wondering why he had bought the brig and where it might make a profit.

He heard the gentle rustle of Martha’s gown as she paused in the door to his study and he looked up. She shook her head and frowned, very slightly.

“I wish you found my son’s wedding as interesting as you find his accounts,” she said.

“The best gift I can give Jack is a clean bill and unencumbered estates.” Washington waved his pen at the ledger next to him, as if the book held all Jack’s fields and houses within leather covers. They locked eyes for a moment.

“We have guests, George. Come be hospitable and leave the books for a bit.”

It was something he enjoyed, the process of management. He liked building the tools that allowed him to do the jobs that ran the estates, watching the careful plans of years come slowly to fruition. He considered a protest. There was more to be done. In fact, there was always more to be done. Between them, he and Martha and Jack owned a great deal and were likely to own more. But as always, Martha was more in the right, and he bowed in his chair, wiped his pen and rose to join her.

Several of their guests talked about George Muse and his notions of fairness, and while George Mason speculated on the Crown’s reaction to the dumping of tea for the thirtieth time that winter, Washington writhed at their comments. As soon as he could free himself, he settled himself to write the strong letter he had promised.

As he wrote the draft, his pen flew along, the strokes as powerful as sword thrusts.

As I am not accustomed to receive such from any man, nor would have taken the same language from you personally, without letting you feel some marks of my resentment; I would advise you to be cautious of writing me a second of the same tenor, for though I understand you were drunk when you did it, yet give me leave to tell you that drunkenness is not an excuse for rudeness…

He paused, licked the tip of his pen and failed even to note the taste, but dipped and wrote on, fueled by anger.

…all my concern is that I ever engaged in behalf of so ungrateful and dirty a fellow as you are.

Hugh Mercer, late in the library because he couldn’t sleep, committed the unpardonable offense of reading it over his host’s shoulder, because his strong eyes had caught the phrase about “dirty a fellow” from the shelves.

“No, please feel free,” said Washington with a hint of stiffness, when he realized that the doctor was reading the letter on the table.

“Damn, sir. My apologies. I should never…”

“Nonsense, sir. I welcome your opinion. You must know to whom it is addressed.”

“I assume it is to that whelp Muse.”

“It is.”

Thus invited, Mercer read what was offered him. The lengthy justification of the process by which officers’ land claims were settled was worded awkwardly, but it made sense and it utterly dished the arguments Muse was making in public. But the personal attack at the end was a shock, the more so from such an old stoic as Washington.

“But it is the most deliberate provocation, George.” Mercer had known Washington for a long time. He was in his lodge, though he didn’t use his first name without a little hesitation. This was serious—pistols-in-the-morning and Martha-a-widow serious.

“He’s a coward. He won’t fight.”

Mercer looked at Washington amazed that so mature and noble a man could see the world in such a schoolyard manner, could base his expectations of men’s actions on such simple stuff.

“He’ll fight if you drive him to it, coward or not. Would you fight his like, sir? He’s a rascal, I’ll own, but the entire world knows it. You’ll lose nothing—”

“That is not the matter to hand, sir. He has said things, monstrous things, of me and my intentions on these land grants. I won’t stand it; I’ll not be called names by this coward.”

Washington’s voice was calm but his hand almost trembled with indignation. Mercer couldn’t remember when he had himself last been so indignant, although he thought he might have approached it when the Townshend Acts were announced. To be so enraged by some fool’s tattle—but Washington had ever been a proud, noli me tangere sort of fellow, and allowances had to be made.

“I don’t want to pull a bullet out of you. You are too important to us for that, George.”

The comment went right to him, the sort of flattery Washington liked, but the anger was still present. He folded the letter.

“Just a draft. Perhaps I’ll cool off by tomorrow.”

And with that, Mercer had to be content.

Mount Vernon, Virginia, early May 1774

It was really too late in the season for a hunt, with the wheat and the tobacco in the ground, but Washington wanted the pack out one more time and his neighbors joined in happily enough despite the business of the time. Even George Mason, the most bookish of the men in the parish, was to be seen approaching, though to be sure, his clothes suggested more of the scholar than the huntsman, and he had gaiters on, not boots. Washington watched him ride, and smiled at the way his head rose and fell with the horse’s stride like a cock crossing the yard. Not exactly a natural horseman.

They had fewer dogs than usual: just Washington’s pack and French’s, because the chance of a decent fox was low, and because Cedar Grove was not represented in the field today and none of the Cedar Grove people seemed disposed to offer hounds. Washington knew why, but his neighbor’s relative financial troubles didn’t matter to him, except that he would eventually be asked to help them and he would. It was certainly nothing he would think to discuss. And young Lee had insisted on joining the small hunt, despite the fact that he would be the only young sprig in it. Washington watched him with remote tolerance. The boy was already better behaved than he had been on that distant December morning.

Beyond young Lee was Caesar, helping French’s John sort the dogs and send the select pack with the huntsman. He was good, and Washington knew it—knew with satisfaction that several neighbors envied him his luck in finding the boy. He’d won a footrace at a fair, and a small purse with it, and more for his master in wagers than he had cost in Jamaica. But Washington couldn’t warm to him, or to the Ashanti airs that the boy seemed to have. Too arrogant by half, and his habit of standing with a hand on his hip like a classical statue irked him, as he must have learned it on the plantation. He never liked to see the scars above the eyes that seemed to deny any possibility of civilization in the boy. Washington winced inwardly at his unfairness, as he had never minded scars on Indians, but then, he was used to seeing Indians in their own deep woods, not on his plantation.

The boy was above himself. It went against the order of things. Why couldn’t the boy smile like other blacks when he was addressed? Why did he so seldom laugh?

Mason rode past the estate wall and up the drive, head still bobbing, and as he approached Washington, the latter’s worst fears were confirmed. Mason wasn’t here to hunt at all. He was ready to travel. Washington was a burgess as much as Mason, but he was holding his return to Williamsburg and the cares of government back a day to enjoy his farms; he knew that Mason would intrude some bill, and despite his warmth for the man, resentment mounted before Mason had closed the distance.

“Scarcely dressed to hunt, Mr. Mason?”

“Colonel, good day. Mr. Lee, Mr. French. Servant, ma’am. Gentlemen, I rode directly to inform you that Government has ordered the closure of the Port of Boston.”

Mercer, dismounted near the house and struggling with a new and complex cavalry-style girth, missed the gist and almost lost his saddle trying to get it from Mrs. French. The others murmured, but Washington struck his saddle viciously with his whip, enough to make Nelson, usually the calmest of horses, start. Washington soothed him, annoyed at his own burst of temper, but such news put the whole party out of sorts. It had been hard enough to gather them, and the closure of the Port of Boston was a direct attack on the liberties of every man in the colonies. He said as much.

“I had hoped you would all feel that way. I should like to have the House debate something on the subject—perhaps a censure.”

Half of the huntsmen were burgesses. They looked about them, each considering bills up for consideration that would vanish if the governor prorogued them after they attempted to censure the Parliament in London. Washington thought of lingering details of the Great Dismal and the settlement for his officers on the Ohio frontier and cursed, but the matter could not be allowed to drop.

“Mr. Mason, it is no pleasure to hear such tidings, but I thank you for the warning. It remains my intention, however, despite this difficult news, to hunt. What says the company?”

Perhaps, if Washington’s views had not been so plain, some would have abandoned the hunt and started back for the capital immediately. Such had been Mason’s plan, no doubt. But so committed was Washington to his hunt, and so formidable did he appear astride his charger, that no one said a word. Mason went inside for refreshment, and the hunt went out.

But Washington’s mood was foul.

They raised a scent soon enough, and the fox took them up Dogue Run beyond the new mill, up into the marshy country near the eastern bounds of Rose Hill and into relatively unfamiliar country before they lost the quarry in a quagmire. The dogs got muddy to no purpose and both handlers were filthy by the time they had the dogs in order and off on a second scent. It all smacked of incompetence to Washington. He had not been riding right forward with the hounds where he liked to be, and he felt the burden of the lost fox on his shoulders and was sure the field blamed him for the loss. Mrs. French, a very Artemis-like woman but a witch for gossip, was regaling Mercer with some unnecessary tale, doubtless exploring the debt problems of the Posey family, or some such. But he heard her say “Muse” in a suggestive way, and he heard Hugh Mercer laugh a certain laugh, and his resentment at the day reached a new height. What were they saying about Muse, that coward? Muse had not even responded to his letter. Was he up to some new calumny? Washington fumed while the dogs searched for a new scent, casting wider and wider back toward the Rose Hill barns. The country above the marsh was relatively unknown to Washington; he had been over it often enough, but never at speed. And when the pack began to move, he was not really minding the ground or his mount.

Nelson shied at something. Washington felt the shift of weight for the jump and raised himself for it, but as the back legs pressed him forward, he rolled his barrel to avoid the snake, and Washington, angry and bemused, felt the unthinkable—the gradual change of weight that told him he was going to lose his seat. He wasn’t thrown quickly—that would have been a mercy. He fell with great slowness, and indeed for a few seconds he was sure he was going to save the jump and regain his seat. He lost a stirrup at the first, and the uneven landing cost him the second, but he had a toe back in his left stirrup when Nelson gave a little twist and he slumped past the regained stirrup. He couldn’t quite get a leg down to dismount, and his hunting sword caught on a buckle of the girth and turned him around so that he fell only the last few feet. Nelson was barely moving at the time, which made it worse; it looked like Virginia’s best horseman had just fallen off a standing horse.

He had to roll off his sword, which had punched him in the side on landing. The ivory of the hilt was cracked, the copper-green dye showing white. Mrs. French was laughing in the distance; closer up, young Lee was hiding his guffaw in his sleeve and trying to look anywhere else. And Caesar, the dogs boy, was grinning broadly as he held out a hand to help his master up.

Washington ignored the suggestion that he needed help to rise and rose to his feet only to find his swordbelt had come down around his knees, and he stumbled badly before he caught himself. The movement was so comical that it finished both Lee and Caesar, who lost themselves in laughter. Washington fumbled with the lion’s-head buckle for a moment before settling the ruined sword back on his hip. Dogs were barking, pandemonium reigned, and Nelson was sidling away uncaught. He had torn his scarlet coat in the fall—the thrust of his shoulders had been enough to tear the seam under the arm.

He had not been a laughing stock since before he went away to the war, and it didn’t suit him, but he strove to cover his feelings. He couldn’t blame Nelson, the most reliable of mounts.

“Master yourself, Mr. Lee,” he said in a tone so dark that Lee went pale.

Caesar continued to laugh while he ran ahead of Nelson, brought him to a stand by a fence, offered him a carrot, and caught him. He couldn’t stop laughing. Old John, Mr. French’s John, thought of stepping in, but he could tell that the boy was doomed; no fake attack by another black man could save him, and besides, he preferred Queeny a little freer with her favors. He stood and watched, and Caesar laughed, and the world changed.

5

Great Dismal Swamp, September 1774

The trees were larger than anything he had seen since he had left Africa, and the swamp smelled a little like the land by the great river where he had been born. But any notion of home, any similarity that might have recalled a better time and made the place bearable, was instantly erased by the crushing weight of the work.

He was back in the barracoon, locked down at night with chains, sweating to move great clods of mud all day. No woman lay beside him; he did not have a natty jacket and fine leather boots to show his calves. He was naked but for a loose cotton shirt that was gray with dirt and sweat, and some Russian linen trousers that had been old before he had arrived. The last man had died in them.

They rose before dawn, cooking tin kettles of corn meal in the early gray light, forced to endure the first torture of the day as the smell of the overseers’ bacon wafted down the slight breeze. Caesar had not eaten meat since he arrived. He ate his corn meal in silence, as did the other men. Every one of them was a “cull”, a slave that was so troublesome, or lazy, that his master would give him to the reclamation project for the swamp rather than have him at home. Few of them talked; most looked deeply stupid. Caesar couldn’t help but notice that he was the only Ashanti, and that most of the rest were Ebo. It seemed his lot in life to fall among Ebo and still be considered less than they.

What little coolness the night generated was gone long before he took his shovel and mattock and followed the file of slaves down the trails into the swamp. They were cutting the drainage ditches envisioned by Washington, a few feet at a time. The overseer was stupid, and often drunk, and the neat trenches that Washington designed were executed in a very haphazard manner, never deep enough and often running in curves. The easy days they simply cut trails, or attempted to till the fetid ooze they brought up in digging and piled behind them in neat fields. They might some day be neat fields, but so far looked like small lakes of mud.

When he first arrived, Caesar was almost overwhelmed by the futility of it, and the almost-certain knowledge that he would die here, cutting into a swamp. But as time went by, he saw tiny changes despite the corrosive atmosphere, the incompetence of the overseer, and the complete obstructionism of the slaves. Bit by bit, they were claiming land from the swamp. Some of what they drained actually stayed dry. It almost seemed a further offense, that his labor would, in fact, build more fields for his master to till. But another part of him rejoiced that the work was not utterly wasted.

No one spoke. The men with him sang, sometimes, but their songs were badly sung and he didn’t know the words, which were a mixture of African and local patois. They needed a caller, but any slave talented enough to control the pace of the work as a caller in the fields would never end up here. He would be leading the workers in some happier place.

The daze lasted Caesar for some time—time he was never able to reclaim in his mind, until in later years he wondered if he had had a sickness or a fever that kept him from thinking clearly. He remembered leaving Queeny, and her pressing his store of coins into his hands as he left; he remembered Washington dismissing him with the wave of his hand, as finished business, his thoughts elsewhere; he remembered arriving, and some hazes of work and sleep and the smell of the corn meal in the morning. He remembered thinking that before this he had never fully realized what being a slave was. But then he awoke, so to speak. He never forgot that waking because he was swinging the great ill-balanced pick, the only one they had that wasn’t broken, and another man was trying to pull the stump before he had even cut the roots with the pick, just the sort of inefficient work that typified the whole. And then a new man began to sing a song he knew a little of, a hymn he had heard in the carriage barn. He knew the song and he began to sing with it, swinging the pick over his head and down into the morass and the roots, gradually breaking them to the point that his partner for the day could wrestle the whole mass out with a snap and a sucking noise. Water pooled into the hole left by the stump, and with that water Caesar’s will returned, all in a rush. The man who told himself that today he was a slave returned, and the mindless automaton who had swung the pick recoiled forever.

He couldn’t really remember the time that had passed, except to know that he had lost his place on the plantation for laughing at the Master, a knowledge that finally and fully exposed to him his foolishness and filled him with rage that he had fallen so easily into the snares of the fine clothes and Queeny’s embrace. The swamp was different only in details. He was a slave, and the property of another man.

He sang and sang that whole day, and in the evening he met the new man, a BaKongo man who had served the Lees. He was called Virgil, a tall, strong man with large eyes that seemed always asleep.

Caesar had all but lost the habit of speech, though he still sought to enunciate. Habits die hard.

“You look too good to be here, Virgil.”

“I ain’t, though. I ain’t. I lucky be alive.”

“What’d you do, man? Kill someone?”

“Tried. Tried with a pitchfork.” When Virgil said it, it sounded like “pithfoak.” He had missing teeth on top of his thick patois.

Virgil shrugged. “He took my woman once too often. Let him stay with his own white gals, that’s all I says.”

“And did you hurt him?”

“I nevuh even ma’ked him, the white bastu’d. He had a little sword, cut me up.”

Other men, the less stupid-looking ones, nodded, though none of them was talking. It was as if Caesar and Virgil were alone with a group of ghosts who murmured and ate, but never spoke.

Virgil leaned over to Caesar and whispered.

“You have plans to run? You seem the smaht one, heh?”

Caesar was at once chagrined that he did not have plans to run and instantly focused on them. Yes, he would run. There would be no more money and no chance of working his way free from here. He realized in an instant that he had seen things, even in the daze.

“We are locked down each night, Virgil.”

“Yeah. Barracoon. I see it. And day?”

“Overseer has two guns, fowler and a pistol. Both loaded. Means business. Shot a boy before I come. He has another man and another party off north, not far. There be more of ’em than we can see, too.”

“So we needs to go at night, get a start. You go with me?”

Caesar thought a moment—thought that Virgil might be a plant to lure him—but he couldn’t imagine any punishment worse than where he was. And it was time to change, time to strike out.

“No, Virgil. Not how I see it. We got to take the man and kill him, get his guns. Then we run.”

“Whoa, boy. We do that, we dead if they take us. No whipping. My back plenny hahd, you see? But no hahd ‘nough for no musket ball.”

“You look and see. We have lots o’ time, man. Lots o’ time.”

It was several days before the overseer shot a man, the first time it had happened since Caesar came to the swamp. Caesar never knew why—whether the man tried to run or whether he was shot for poor work, or on a whim. They heard the sharp, high-pitched sound of a pistol. Later, another slave, Old Ben, said he’d seen the body. Caesar worked with Virgil now. He looked at Virgil while Ben told the story, and when the other man was gone, Virgil looked determined.

“You got it right, Mr. Caesar. Boy gotta die.”

“How?”

“I don’ know. We think, then we get him. But he gotta die ‘fo he kill us all.”

Philadelphia, October 1774

Washington’s parlor was not all he could have asked, and the size and bustle of Philadelphia so greatly outran that of his native Williamsburg or Alexandria that he had had trouble sleeping his first few nights with the constant rumble of carts and the calling of wares. In time, the habits of his military youth won out, and he slept better.

The business of the Continental Congress crept along, each faction hesitant of the others, each region jealous of its own case and its own traditions, but a few men, like Franklin, kept the business of the continent moving, and with that, Washington had to be content. He did his bit to keep the factions happy, but he could not speak in public. He sometimes felt that it was a mistake for the Virginians to have sent him, the more so as Virginia was now fighting the Indians in the very territory that he had just ridden over. In his absence he had missed the opportunity to command the last major expedition of his time. He regretted the talk of massacres—indeed, the Philadelphia Quakers made it sound as if Governor Dunmore had provoked the war himself to suit his own ends—but the campaign might have suited him.

It didn’t matter now. But the short campaign had revealed any number of predictable defects in the Virginia militia. Washington had before him on the table a letter from some of the officers of Fairfax County, asking him to procure muskets, drums, and a pair of colors for their companies, which he had every intention of doing for them. He would want the militia of his county to appear to advantage, just as his parish church should, if compared to others.