by Mary Calvi
Thuds coming from the circle in front of the west side of the dwelling house drew him to the window in the first-floor study. He watched as proprietor Captain Dick brought the wagon to a stop. Anger boiled in every vein of George’s body at the sight. Dick exited the coach and retrieved a crate. George couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Boxes. The fine china arrived, late. Too late.
George exited the study with heaviness in his gait. He stomped into a small hallway, through the richly decorated dining room with its bold green color on the walls, into the central passageway to reach the entry, opened the door, and stood glaring at the man and his box. “I suppose I should not have received them at all!” George’s hands clasped behind his back.
The captain’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Colonel, my sincerest apology for the delay.”
George flew into a fit of rage. So unaccountably indolent is Captain Dick! he thought. “Was it carelessness that prevented their coming to my hand till near six weeks after arrival at port?”
“The vessel with your goods was sent to several different ports, without grant to dock.” He set down the crate near George. “We were refused the ability to remove the goods from the vessel, even after being docked one month and a half.”
“By whom?”
Captain Dick shrugged as he turned away with quick steps back to retrieve additional crates.
George’s jaw muscles clenched. He reached down to carry the merchandise into the house. Captain Dick carried another crate through to the study. They set them down.
“I will be sure to make this up to you on the next journey,” Captain Dick said. He thanked George again for his patience and quickly walked out.
Just the sight of these boxes made George angrier. He untied the rope at the top and lifted the lid on one of the crates. He removed what looked like a teapot wrapped tightly in newspaper. He slowly unwrapped it and held the china in one hand, the newsprint in the other.
What was he to do with all these goods now? He set the teapot down delicately upon his desk. He noticed something on the page of the printed paper. The Virginia Gazette? Each piece of newspaper print that he removed from the fine china made him more enraged. The china was wrapped in salacious falsities. The very publication that printed lies about him. The very article that defamed him—it covered the teapot!
They condemned him, blasphemed him, claimed debauchery, gambling. He was a spendthrift, a drunkard, it said.
They.
They were responsible.
They were the ones. The article was written by the anonymous L & V. The truth sickened George. It infuriated him. He recalled the words of the messenger as he left with the nuptial papers; he was delivering them to the “commander in chief, Lord and Victor, John, Earl of Loudoun.” Lord and Victor. L & V.
Keep him away from Mary Eliza Philipse so another could seize her surrender.
He rushed over to the trunk containing his necessary papers. He pulled out the letters of denial: “yr Absence on that Account from Ld Loudoun must be suspended till our affrs gives a better prospect.” Their dastardly behavior kept him trapped, until it was done.
Colonel Stanwix followed the guidance of Lord Loudoun, whose aide was Roger Morris. The writer of the article, likely Loudoun’s secretary extraordinaire, Thomas Pownall, he of the ridiculous pseudonyms. George learned of the whole diabolical cast from Hugh Mercer.
George raised his head for guidance. Before him were his brother’s eyes. The portrait of Lawrence was the only painting in the study. The only one he needed. George decided right then. He would quit his command. He would retire from all public business. The British took her from him. George would leave his military post to be filled by others who had their endeavors crowned with better success than he.
Back and forth he paced over the creaking floor. George walked into the central passageway, heading toward the double doors on the east side of the house. He opened them with force, catching a cold breeze. Before him was the grand Potomac River. This sight had always made him feel hopeful. Not today. That appearance of glory once in view—that hope—that laudable ambition of serving, and meriting applause, was now no more.
George followed the path through the gardens, down the south lane, and finally arrived at the burial place—Lawrence’s tomb.
All is lost, George thought as he shut his eyes. “All is lost.”
He placed himself on a half brick wall to the left of the tomb. He gritted his teeth. “We are acting under an evil Geni. For we who view the actions of great men at a distance can only form conjectures agreeable to the small extent of our knowledge—ignorant of the comprehensive schemes intended. The conduct of our leaders is tempered with something—I don’t care to give a name.” Arising from his seated position, George paced back and forth, feeling heat rising to the muscles in his jaw. “Indeed. I will go further, and say they are d—” He stopped himself from saying the word aloud, “Or something worse.”
Yes. It was clear now.
They were the enemy.
Part IV
The Reprisal
Chapter Thirty-Four
Note to Self
… woe’s me, that I should Love and conceal …
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
HARLEM HEIGHTS, NEW YORK
JUNE 1776
Ambrosia and nectar found her nose; the scent reminded her of him. Still, after twenty years, it reminded her of him. She forced the steam away with a quick blow to prevent a burn on her lips. She let a small sip of warmth in.
The curtain in daylight shimmered pink, tinting the portico where she stood. Upon the highest point of Harlem Heights, on the northern end of Manhattan Island, her mansion, with its Tuscan columns from ground to roof, emerged like a white palace squarely in the middle of the land between rivers. From here, they’d be able to see the enemy coming.
With her at the mansion was a guest, a friend, Lasthenia Sherwood.
“My pa told me the tale once—of the giants hollering ‘Fee Faw Fum.’” The girl who’d grown into a young woman fidgeted with the delicate handle of the gold-embossed porcelain cup. Big green eyes with short ginger lashes swiveled toward Mary. “‘Ne’er be spooked by them giants,’ he told me.” She gulped the tea.
Looking past the cornfields and grove of white-blossomed trees, they could see them far in the distance. Like predators about to attack the sheep, the ships of the Royal Navy practically covered the surface of the ocean. A tax on tea—that’s what many colonists thought this war was over. Mary was of a different opinion.
Mount Morris was prepared—Mary had seen to it—with large supplies of food, enough to feed an army.
“Would you care for something? You must be hungry, Lulu.” Mary worried about her.
Lasthenia shook her head. “I’d best get back to my’s reading.” Her hair—red and long enough to reach her waist—shifted gently as she turned her slim, small frame back to the foyer’s doorway. Her muslin dressed billowed. “I ne’er read ‘The Blue Bird’ by myself, up tills now.”
Mary let her be. She’d have the kitchen prepare her something anyhow.
Below her, the yanking and pulling had been going on all day. Mary knew the timing was odd, being that the colony lay on the precipice of war, but she couldn’t stand the invasive species any longer. Her groundskeepers removed the tendrils that had attached to the walls in thatches and climbed until their dead feet surrounded her; ivy is stubborn like that.
So here, alone on the balcony, Mary remained. She’d gotten used to being alone. She looked out—the Hudson to her right, the Harlem River and East River beyond it, to her left. Colonel Morris had wanted to build on this land because of those views. She bought the estate after they married and after he retired from military life. The land had been advertised in the New York-Gazette:
A Pleasant situated farm on the Road leading to King’s Bridge,
in the Township of Harlem of York Island, containing about
100 Acres; about 30 Acres of whic
h is Wood Land, a fine
Piece of Meadow Ground, and more may easily be made;
and commands the finest Prospect in the whole country; the
Land runs from River to River.
They argued before he left—she and her husband. He was gone—escaped to England a year prior. He hailed from Britain, but he hadn’t left to fight on behalf of his native land. He departed because he was afraid. He had made this clear to her that last day, erupting into a frantic soliloquy about a crime from long ago. No matter what she did or how she asked, he would not reveal what it was that he had done or to whom.
The argument centered around not that, but Lulu. Lulu was not a low guest! His snobbery irritated Mary. What was she to do? Leave Lulu in the street? No one could understand better the feeling of witnessing the last breaths of your mother and your father. Poor Rosie, dying of heartache after Jeffrey took a bullet to the head while lighting the lantern at Hudson’s Hook, fired from a ship in the river, certainly not aimed at him, but hitting him square between the eyes nonetheless. Mary and Lulu planted forget-me-not flowers and Mary renamed the site Jeffrey’s Hook in his honor. Lulu’s father didn’t stay alive for long after that.
Yes, Lulu could stay with her for as much time as she needed.
* * *
MARY DID NOT want war. She was not the only one. Other heads of elite families from the New York Colony were of the same opinion. A letter—an olive branch, a last effort to avert bloodshed—had been drafted and signed by several of those families, pleading with the citizens of England. She had hosted the group at her estate. The Honorable Robert Livingston—the boy who long ago had told Mary he wanted to be a chief justice—had achieved success. Now judge of the Court of General Sessions, he was the letter’s author:
Friends, Countrymen and Brethren!
Give us leave most solemnly to assure you, that we have not yet lost sight of the object we have ever had in view, a reconciliation with you on constitutional principles, and a restoration of that friendly intercourse, which, to the advantage of both, we till lately maintained.
A cloud hangs over your heads and ours; e’er this reaches you, it may probably burst upon us; let us then (before the remembrance of former kindness is obliterated) once more repeat those appellations which are ever grateful in our ears; let us entreat heaven to avert our ruin, and the destruction that threatens our friends, brethren, and countrymen, on the other side of the Atlantic.
Colonel Morris was furious, not about the letter, but about the gathering. He wrote her from England: “I can easily conceive your disagreeable situation, but I did not imagine you would have thought yourself safer under the protection of the chief justice.” In her letter in return, she explained that she’d known Robert since he was a little boy—that he needed a neutral place to meet. This did her no good, nor did the letter. The British responded to the peace offering by calling the signers rebellious.
Spirited by the conviction to independence, common folk across the colonies took up arms against the mother country. Hatred moved from ink to blood. First in Boston. New York was next.
To think! George Washington had gained the position of general to defend the colonists in the War of Independence. She couldn’t deny that when he walked into a room, he had a commanding presence—a man of authority, a man guided by Providence, the man who couldn’t die. No, there was no one better to command than George.
When she closed her eyes, she could recall the day her world changed on a balcony. “Everything which partakes of your nature has a claim to my affections.” His whisper in her ear, she remembered it clearly. But that was long ago, long before he left without saying good-bye. George had married well, an older woman, a wealthy widow with a plantation in Virginia, a lady who didn’t dance—at least that was the word from Sir Tenoe. Tenoe often wrote to Mary from there and elsewhere, wherever his travels took him to teach the waltz to children of the privileged.
Now George had arrived here in New York, headquartered at the southern end of the island. She peered out as far as she could see. He was out there somewhere. She could feel him.
Mary walked toward the north wing of the house, treading upon the wide-planked floor, and passed through a narrower hall in order to get to the study. She needed to write a letter of her own. It had been on her mind for quite some time.
She squinted as she entered the study. The cornices and moldings were painted extremely bright, a scarlet red. Colonel Morris had been particular about this color; he had demanded an extremely vivid tone with a hint of orange to match the military uniform he had once worn. He despised the coloring on the wall that Mary had chosen—dull gray, with Helianthus verticillatus painted in a lighter shade of gray.
Mary placed herself at the intricately carved mahogany desk that once belonged to her mother. She thought of her every day. Mary began a note to her younger self:
Dearest Mary Eliza Philipse,
I know what you’re feeling. Cursed one. Rose with thorns. This is who you are. Open your eyes. Awaken to the realization that you are nothing. Blame yourself for their deaths. Take that in. Feel the guilt. Hate yourself. Find the emptiness that the power of words cannot fix.
Does this make you uncomfortable? I’m glad. Now, go deeper into the abyss, into your darkest days, into your deepest fears, and grab your inner demons and choke them until they stop breathing, because until you destroy the fear, the little hand that reaches out to you from the cold darkness of your nightmares, until you let that go, you will forever be encompassed by fear.
Become nothing.
Like a Phoenix, start again. Be strong like the sharp rocks that don’t budge even when waves slam against them time after time. When all is gone, there will only be Mary Eliza left. This is when you will BE.
These years have passed and you still hold on to what should have been. If only. Yes, if only. Release yourself of it. Find life beyond the guardian’s wall. The battle cannot be won without faith and belief that there is a destiny in our lives, one that even with the most fervent action against it has control of our actions.
So I ask you in your youth to set your sight to the heavens and ask for assistance. Life has not been fair to you. I know this. The path is a long one that leaves you lost without a direction. Sorrow is painful. Unsettledness is lonely. I know what’s it’s like to be encompassed by both.
Move your focus to love. Love out loud. Love with no fear. Love the love that is right in front of you. Why have you fallen asleep to him? He is right there, holding you in his embrace. In his arms, you feel whole for the first time in your life—the only time in your life. You believe you have no right to him. The mistakes, the loss left you scattered and frail. Don’t hide. Don’t be afraid. Cease the battle with your conscience. It has consumed you for so long, for too long. Even when you wish to let it go, it instead holds like mud on a shoe.
Remember the words of your father: “Be the light, Mary Eliza. You are capable of the impossible, for you have survived the unthinkable.”
Her hand trembled as it did every time her signature was required. “Mrs. Roger Morris,” she wrote.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Hail to the Chief
… the wound often irritated and never healed, may at length become incurable.
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
NEW YORK CITY
JUNE 1776
George knew this was best, to send his wife back to Virginia. The journey would carry her far from the toil of what was expected: an invasion on New York. Placing a kiss atop the white bonnet on her head, George thought of the many disagreeable sensations resulting from his command of the troops of the United Provinces of North America: One being, that for her, it was a cutting stroke.
“As life is always uncertain”—he bent down to reach her. Martha was a full foot and two inches shorter than him—“I have asked that a will be drafted.”
As he opened the carriage door to let her inside, she turned and offered a meek smile through narrow lips.
“The shades below are far from your reach.” Her voice was thin, sounding hardly above the level of a whisper. She adjusted her frilled headgear and used his hand to assist her in climbing in. “Besides, you have entered into an engagement, not to quit the theater of this world before the year 1800.” She tapped on his hand with her other. “I rely upon your pledge of no breach of contract on that account.”
George married the widow Martha Custis in a simple ceremony, one year after Mary Eliza Philipse changed her name. He met the widow Custis on her plantation in Virginia. He proposed quickly. The couple never had children together. Martha had a son and daughter from a previous marriage. Her first husband had passed away eight months before she met George.
“You may believe me, my dear Patsy,” said George to her, “when I assure you, in the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it-—not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity.”
His wife was afraid of war. For the short time they were here in New York, he had watched her shudder and shake when she heard the sound of a gun firing. She despised it all, thinking the preparations terrible indeed, she told him privately.
His large hand settled on her knee. “I shall feel no pain from the toil or the danger of the campaign. My unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know you will feel being left alone. I beg of you to pass your time as agreeably as possible.”
* * *
AS THE HORSES took her carriage out of his sight, George lingered to scan the lands and the shoreline. The sea power of the enemy waited beyond the river, in the Atlantic, staring back at him. Every day, the two sides were seemingly doing nothing more than observing each other’s movements from a mile’s distance. Waves on the Hudson River moved turbulently, but not as passionately as what was to come.