Washington and Caesar. Christian Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ command, but I will not stoop to personal remarks about my officers.”

      Lee, unfazed, looked back where the first four companies, hundreds of yards ahead of the rest of the column, were wandering toward them, each company a small crowd of men without formation.

      “I imagine the only way to use them would be to ride up and down, showing each man his place and how to load his musket.” Lee laughed at his own sarcasm.

      “On your way, sir.” Washington tried to sound cool; Lee both amused and irritated him. Lee swept him a bow from horseback and was gone.

      It was a byword among farmers that often you had to make a tool before you could even start a job.

      He would train the army and officers, and bring the Massachusetts men to heel. They would obey and respect, and men would not smoke pipes while talking to generals. It would all be a great deal of work, and it wouldn’t succeed if the British attacked him before any part of it was done. He headed back to Cambridge, already composing his notes on the drill of the army, but as he began to pass through the chaos of the leading battalion, a thought occurred to him and he pulled up.

      “You there,” he shouted at a man in a good coarse smock and proper military equipment. The man looked something like a soldier.

      “Sir?” The fellow at least had the sense to come to the recover, still the manner of a soldier.

      “How many cartridges do you have, soldier?”

      “Ten rolled, sir! Powder for six more.”

      Sixteen rounds. Washington saluted and rode on, checking soldiers as he went. By the time he reached the end of the column, he knew his Massachusetts men a little better, and he knew they averaged only nine rounds a man.

      Sometimes, before a farmer built a tool, he had to get the materials for it. Washington started a new set of notes. He was still dictating to his secretary when he climbed the stairs to his rooms and flung himself in a wingback chair.

      “What can I get you, sir?” asked Billy.

      “An army, Billy. Saving that, a staff of professional officers, sixty thousand rounds of ball cartridge, and ten thousand muskets.”

      “I’ll just get goin’ then, sir.”

      “I’ll settle for brandy and water.”

      “They have ice from an ice house, sir. It’s prime.”

      “Better and better. Iced brandy, then.”

      Washington turned to his secretary. “I’ve led you a damned chase today, sir, and you’ve held up well. Put down the notes about sashes as badges of rank and then get yourself a glass downstairs. I won’t trouble you again today.”

      The young man bowed and retired. In a moment, Billy returned, with a glass and some Naples biscuits. Washington devoured the biscuits and drank off half the glass. “They have no concept of discipline,” he said.

      Billy polished a silver salver quietly.

      “They do not seem to believe in subordination. Every man must have his say, no matter how half-witted.”

      Billy nodded to him.

      “I do not intend to discuss every notion of fortification with some Yankee captain who has read a book on the subject. Braddock may not have been the greatest general of the age, but his staff was a tool in his hand, an extension of him. He thought out the plans and gave orders. When will I reach a state where these men will obey me? I doubt that General Gage shares these troubles in Boston.”

      “You want to get those boots off, sir?” asked Billy, unmoved by his master’s tirade.

      “I thought that commanding this army would be like running a plantation, Billy. I would plan, dictate my orders, and the army would execute my designs. I’m not sure these men even know how to obey!”

      Billy looked up from the boots and smiled. But he didn’t speak his mind, and Washington didn’t note it.

       3

       Great Dismal Swamp, September 1775

      Caesar peered through the fringe of magnolia at the arm of open water stretching north from their new camp.

      “Where’s Virgil?”

      “Don’ know.” Old Ben looked shifty when he said it, and he probably did know. Something was going on; all the men smiled when they looked at Virgil or tried to cover his absences. Caesar shook his head, and rose carefully to his feet, the fowler crooked in his arm.

      “What are you all smiling at?” he said to the other men. “Come on. I’m gon’ teach you to use this gun.”

      It was by no means the first attempt, and Virgil and Old Ben had at least passed the stage where the guns scared them, but Caesar was determined that they would all learn to use the fowler well, even the boy. In a corner of his mind, he had considered trying to hit the militia for more muskets; if he had one for every man, and they could shoot, he would have a force to be reckoned with in the swamp. The militia was wary, and hadn’t come as deep in after the first foray, as if by the killing of one slave they had justified themselves and could go home.

      He led them, single file, well away from their camp to a sun-drenched clearing in the high tree cover. Some time back, a storm had knocked two big trees down, and their huge, dirt-clogged roots made pyramids at either end of a clearing long enough to run a horse.

      Two men lit pipes and sat down, and the rest stood in a loose knot. Caesar wondered idly where the tobacco came from; he suspected it was of a piece with Virgil’s forays, but only today did it strike him that the tobacco smelled fresh. He also wondered if he should have a man out watching the trail from the settlements. That would have been Virgil’s job.

      “Everyone look at this gun,” he began. “This is the butt, where you place her against yo’ shoulder. Not yo’ chest. Not yo’ arm. Like this.” He suited word to deed and tucked the fowler into his shoulder. He was quite familiar with it now, having fired it more times than he could count and killed any number of birds and several deer. He still preferred to get right up close to them, though.

      “This is the lock. She make the gun fire, and she mus’ be dry an’ clean all the time. This part, with the flint, be called the cock.”

      He looked up. Several men were smiling. Long Tom had taken out his folding razor and begun whittling at an old stick.

      “Bigger ‘an yours is, Lolly,” Long Tom said.

      Caesar rolled his eyes with the earnestness of the young and plowed on.

      “The cock holds the flint. She strikes against the hammer, like this.” He pulled the trigger so that the flint in the jaws of the cock struck the hardened face of the hammer and made sparks. “Them sparks fall in the pan, heah…here, and touch off that powder.”

      He took the small horn out of the pouch that had come with СКАЧАТЬ