Washington and Caesar

Washington nodded, breathed, and nodded with a trifle more warmth. The thaw spread up from his jaw to his eyes; it did not reach them, however.

“Thank you, Doctor. I will indeed tender your best wishes to the happy couple. The wedding is not for some months.”

The doctor would have found that look inimical or even offensive with most men, but Washington in anger was someone to be handled gently, like a dog with a bad tooth.

Washington’s slave, Jacka, reappeared at the door, and a slight nod of the head indicated that the carriage was ready. Washington gave his wife his arm, and her slave followed them in her customary silence. An ungainly man was coming up the steps of the store, and he bowed to the lady as she passed.

Henry Lee, seeking to make amends, indicated the newcomer. “Colonel Washington, this is Mr. Fithian, the Carters’ schoolmaster. Mr. Fithian is a graduate of Princeton, in far-off Jersey. Mr. Fithian, Colonel Washington, one of the heroes of the late war, and his wife.”

“Your servant, sir. My condolences. I had the pleasure of your daughter’s acquaintance. She danced with my pupils in Mr. Christian’s class.”

“Yes, I’m sure. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fithian.”

“I have heard of your exploits my whole life, sir. Allow me to present my humble admiration.” Indeed, it fairly shone from him.

Washington nodded, disconcerted by the reminder of Patsy’s death, and confounded by admiration as he always was. He bowed to accept the compliment, his face a little red.

“Odd accent,” he noted later in the carriage. “Odd notions, in the Jerseys. Parochial. Imagine a man that age not dancing.”

Martha smiled for the first time since the reminder of her daughter’s death.

“And Lee can be such a pup,” he added.

“Yes, dear. But hardly the first young man to behave so. Will you be coming with me up the river?” she asked.

He considered as he watched the passing countryside. “I think it would be best if I posted home to Mount Vernon and opened the house for you.” Washington smiled slowly at her. He wanted her to see that things could be as they had been before, that Patsy’s death was not the end of the world. She was showing signs of recovery, but he wanted more.

Martha smiled at him, the old smile that showed that the real Martha was still inside the mourner.

“You get home and make it all right,” she said. “I’ll just follow along, as always.” They chuckled together a moment, and she began a long account of the ball.

Mount Vernon, Virginia, November 1773

Cese had worn shoes before, but never boots. He had been given trousers in Jamaica, but here received stockings and good strong breeches of hemp twill. Queeny dressed him several times, trying clothes on him until she was satisfied.

She walked around him like an artist with a sculpture, admiring her work. “I wan’ cut those sca’s right off you, they look so ‘landish,” she chastened him. The days had sharpened his English considerably, and she refused to help him in Benin or the trade language any longer, except to taunt him. He reached up and touched the scars. She pushed his hand away.

“Don’ draw no ‘tention to ’em.”

She was a tall woman, but he stood over her, six feet or more in the boots. His legs were long for his height, and the breeches and stockings accentuated the muscles of his calf and thigh. He had a white shirt from Mr. Bailey’s castoffs; the patches at the shoulders never showed under his waistcoat and the short blue jacket that Nelly had let out for him, a remnant of Mr. Charles’s younger days. He held his head straight, and placed his right hand on his hip like the white gentlemen, a rather striking affectation for a black man and one Queeny had never seen. Cese never considered it; he had been beaten as a child until he learned to hold his shield in just such a way, resting his spear hand, and the pose, alike in Africa and classical Rome, had been ingrained in him as it was in the men whose statues adorned the white world.

The pose made Queeny a little nervous, although she couldn’t place why, but the face reassured her—an open, honest face, with a long, broad nose and large, dark, wide-set eyes still free from cynicism, his smile directed at her breasts under the boned cotton jacket she wore. It had taken her less than a day to lead him into seducing her, and she had tied him with the strings of his own notions of loyalty. Those eyes promised her some time of pleasure and comfort, as long as she could train him to his tasks and keep his arrogance at bay. He was a good man. She wanted him to stay and not go the way of Tom. But the easy confidence of his pose was troubling, and the clothes had not had the effect she expected, of cowing him, but the opposite. What he had in common with Tom was the danger—too damn smart. Queeny was old enough to know that what drew her to them was the very thing that would take them away. She smiled, a secret, bitter smile.

He smiled back, turning out his toes. “Hard to run in dese, Queeny.”

“These,” she said automatically. “You jes’ learn, Caesa’. Colonel gon’ expec’ you run in those, and those clothes too.”

“Dese ones hurt the feet, Queeny.”

“These, Caesa’. I don’ speak like Miz Bailey, but I wants you to speak bettah, not like no field negra. This, That, These, Those. Say it.”

“This…that…these…those,” he said purposefully as he began to trot up and down the street, followed by children from all the huts. His speed was already a byword. He had beaten the plantation champion on his first evening, and then downed another slave, Pompey, in a short but fair fight whose origins escaped him. Later he accepted that Pompey had seen him as rival for Queeny before he himself had even thought of wanting her.

The boots hurt his feet, but they could be borne. His toes splayed wide from a life spent barefoot, and the short boots had been made to accommodate a more civilized foot. He changed his stride, taking longer paces to change the pressure on his feet, and leaned into the turn by the well. As he passed it, his feet went out from under him, the slick leather soles betraying him on the dry ground. He rolled over and felt the thin material around one of the patches in his shirt give way, but he bounded to his feet and increased his speed back to Queeny’s distant door.

“Don’ run so hard, Caesa’. Never give them all you got. They jus’ wan’ it every time.”

He smiled at her, his big open smile full of teeth and confidence. She was angry, for some reason.

“I always got mo of dat ting, I think. Always little mo.”

“Always a little mo. That thing.”

“Yeah, yeah. Always a little mo. That thing.”

“Now give me that shirt, you. You gon’ keep me an’ Nelly sewing all the time.”

“Not all the time,” he said neatly and clearly, and put his hands round her waist, lifting her playfully through the door of her hut. She liked to be lifted, liked when he showed his strength. She laughed, and he was caught in her again.

The dogs were easy—easy in that keeping dogs had been his job in Jamaica, and easy in that these had never been mistreated and took to him from the first. They were trained, he could tell; they had good noses and fine voices, and he fed them meat—more meat than he himself got in a week, but that made no mind. The pack leader was a surprisingly small bitch with a full bell-toned voice, and he took her out and ran with her in the yard, and then with one of her mates. In Jamaica he had known all the packs, and most of the ground, although the packs hunted slaves more often than animals. Cese knew the fox hunt only by repute, never having seen one, but he had learned the rules.

The Master was due home in a matter of days, and the hunt season was on them. All his tests would come together. Virginia was a step up from Jamaica, and he didn’t intend to go back to the beatings and the threat of worse—the barracoon and the pens. Queeny had passed to him her fears that he would be found wanting and sent back to Jamaica. He ran with the hounds and listened to anything any man could tell him about the hunts. Most of them had been beaters, one time or other; Pompey worked the hounds from time to time, and seemed to bear little ill will about the fight.

Pompey resented him for Queeny, and for his instant possession of the dogs, but the fight had been a matter of form. If Pompey bore him a grudge it was well hidden, and none of the hundred other blacks he had met seemed to hold his position against him. Any resentment they might have felt for his clothes and his possession of Queeny vanished in the face of the bricklayer, who already had six of the slaves working under him and was laying the front walk, formerly a broad expanse of white gravel, in brick. He was demanding and brutal as only a man who has learned his leadership on a Jamaican plantation could be. As a skilled man, he had his own hut. As an outsider, he had already earned more than his share of enemies. He was working to get the front walk paved for the Master’s return to keep his place, and Cese had already heard rumors from the others of things that might have been done to the walk—chalk in the mortar, holes under the bricks to make cracks appear. Cese watched and learned, keeping his thoughts to himself.

The other slaves were a mixture, their names and faces still a blur in his head, alien faces, Ebo and Efik and Teke, Luo and Seke and others from further inland. There were no other Yoruba or Ashanti soldiers, hardly any Benin at all, and they half-castes from the coast. His mother had once said that there was good even in an Ebo, if one was patient, and he schooled himself to patience. Queeny was good company, and the work was light compared to the Indies.

He asked Queeny about the threatened attacks on the front walk.

“Oh, it do happen, Caesa’. It do.”

“In the Indies they rack a slave till they know who done it.”

Queeny shook her head. “This ain’t the Indies, boy. You be ‘spectful, you smile, but then you keep some fo’ you. If’n they push hard, you break yo’ tools. If’n they ‘spect you to work all night, you spoil yo’ work. Every one of us know to do this, Caesa’. You pay ‘tention, boy. Indies slaves work too hard, too ‘fraid. Make the otha’s look bad.”

“Queeny, I be’nt afraid. If’n you’s so brave, why not run?”

“Some do. It be a hahd life, Caesa’. Hahd in woods, and hahd on the road, and the devil to pay if they catch you.”

“I heah no slaves in England.”

“English ship brought me heah. English mans run the farms. You know ‘bout Flo-ri-da?”

“No. You tell me.”

“Some time I tell you ‘bout John Canno. But you walk careful, listen to what I tell you. Be ‘spectful, but keep some back.”

“I heah you. I hear you.”