by Mary Calvi
His mind considered the great task ahead. The powerful fleet of the naval force of the kingdom threatened. Whether this be a place to rendezvous or to facilitate operations, he did not know. Whether they would go north by land or water, and whether they would pay their compliments to him beforehand, he was uncertain.
Experience taught him that it is easier to stop an enemy from entering than it is to dislodge him after he’s taken possession. For this reason, he ordered his forces to repair to this city with all possible expediency.
Nothing seemed of greater importance.
Protect the Hudson.
Possess the Hudson.
He would do whatever necessary to prevent the mighty British from sailing up the river. Lines of defense would be all he could establish, for he had only a hastily formed navy, made up of just private vessels. And as for George’s army, his contingents consisted of undisciplined bands of common folk, volunteers of a motley sort, oftentimes half-starved, half-dressed, and now going up against a behemoth.
* * *
A YEAR PRIOR at a meeting in Philadelphia, the dispirited colonies chose George to lead—voted in by a unanimous voice. Representative John Adams, out of Massachusetts, nominated him: “I have but one gentleman in my mind for that important command, and that is a gentleman from Virginia who is among us and very well known to all of us, a gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents and excellent universal character would command the approbation of all America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the union.”
George left the room when he heard this. He had been sitting near the exit. Although the cause of freedom from the oppressor was emblazoned in his heart, he was certain he had neither the expertise nor the skill for such a position.
Destiny was of a different opinion.
* * *
A STEADY gait carried him into a temporary headquarters established in a grand two-floor mansion on a high hill, on the corner of Varick and Vandam streets. The white house with an Ionic portico held columns from floor to roof. It sat on the southern tip of Manhattan Island. A series of meetings awaited him inside.
After he entered, George acknowledged both the British deserter, Sergeant Thomas Hickey Jr., now a personal guard assigned to him, and a young housekeeper tiptoeing in the hall.
“Fair day to you, General,” the man said to him with the accent of a Brit who’d spent a bit of time in New York.
In the parlor, George offered proper salutations to a sachem, whose name was Chief Red Hawk. The native warrior had sought out council with him for some time. He’d traveled from the Great Kanawha River, near the Ohio, to offer support to his army—the same man who claimed to have shot at George multiple times at the Battle of Monongahela. The brutal battle all those years ago had been seared into George’s memory.
The chief carried himself as one whose maturity in life could be sensed from the grave manner in which he spoke. “I am a chief and ruler over my tribes. My influence extends to the waters of the great lakes and to the far blue mountains. I have traveled a long and weary path, that I might see the warrior of the great battle.”
These were surprising words from a man who was once George’s rival on the field of war. The chief never took a seat, standing in upright position, with a slight tilt to his back. “It was on the day when the white man’s blood mixed with the streams of our forests that I first beheld this chief.” He pointed his whole hand in George’s direction. “I called to my young men and said, ‘Mark yon tall and daring warrior.’”
George realized this daring warrior he spoke of was himself; he recalled the endless gunfire coming at him from the invisible enemy in the trees.
The chief spoke of his own prowess with weapons and how he never missed his targets. Firing at George proved fruitless, he told him; he had shot at him seventeen times. Not a one spilled his blood.
Seventeen times. George had never known this.
“‘Quick,’ I told them. ‘Let your aim be certain, and he dies.’ Our rifles were leveled, rifles that, but for him, knew not how to miss—’twas all in vain; a power mightier far than we shielded you from harm.”
George recollected the blur of the day, the screams of the dying, and the stink of death. He recalled falling as his horse was shot. He had four holes in his coat. Two bullets hit his hat.
Then the enemy’s weapons went silent.
“‘He is not of the redcoat tribe; he hath an Indian’s wisdom. He cannot die in battle,’ I professed to my warriors.” The chief seemed to want to let out what had been hidden inside him for decades. “I am old, and soon shall be gathered to the great council fire of my fathers in the land of shades, but ere I go, there is something bids me speak in the voice of prophecy.”
George leaned forward as the chief spoke in a quieter voice.
“Listen! The Great Spirit protects you.” His eyes shut. He raised his head high. “It guides your destiny.” The chief pointed his finger into George’s chest, directly at his heart. “You … you will become the chief of nations, and a people yet unborn will hail you as the founder of a mighty empire.”
With this, the chief offered his farewell, the allegiance of his tribe, and left.
* * *
GEORGE DID NOT move from where he was standing for some time as he absorbed the native’s prophecy. George fully put his trust in Providence, which preserved him up until this point. In it, he had a great reliance. In the past, it befriended him, protected him, bestowed graces upon him. His beliefs went far back to his childhood, to his mother. She always believed the heavens would shield him from harm.
Bullet holes in his coat and his hat. No wound. He should not have survived. The work of Providence, he thought. George remembered well the battle and the field of red clover and carrying the wounded from that meadow of death.
This cause would yield its protection again. It would have to. It would be the only way to defeat an empire.
George walked with certain stride into the war room to review his military plan for New York. He picked up a large scroll and unfurled it onto a heavy table at the center of the room. The survey of the Hudson was drawn on a map with detailed diagrams of the planned defenses. The Mount Morris estate sat at the northernmost end of the island, squarely in the middle of the land between rivers—high up on a hill, the highest point in the city, offering views of the waterways. This place, Harlem Heights, was the key to the northern country.
George’s desire was to prevent any Brit from marching onto that property. He’d set up batteries south of the mansion’s location to prevent forces from moving north by land.
On the water, he planned for a chain across the Hudson to New Jersey’s Palisades. George marked the spot with his finger along the shoreline near King’s Bridge. Here. At Jeffrey’s Hook is where the links would begin on this side of the river.
George studied the other defensive structure on paper; a cheval-de-frise would be sunk in the same spot.
* * *
THE CAPTAIN OF the New York Artillery Company arrived for a meeting with the general to provide his account of ammunitions and weaponry.
George acknowledged him as he entered. “I must commend you, Captain Hamilton, for the masterly manner of executing your work.” George knew of the young man, recently commissioned as a captain, who had led a militia of students from King’s College that stole—or, as it had been reported to him, liberated—British cannons at the Battery.
“I thank you, General.” Alexander Hamilton was youthful in appearance and replied in a firm voice with a twinge of coarseness to it. His name had become known for another reason. He had authored an essay defending the colonists’ rights. Hamilton moved to the maps that George was surveying. “The North River. Aye. If we can get there before them, all will be well.” His head cocked to one side as he peered over the defensive strategy.
“The Hudson. If lost, it will be of the most fatal consequence.�
��
“We little imagined it would come to this, General. How ridiculous is their assumption that we are quarreling for the trifling sum of three pence a pound on tea.”
“They are practicing such low and dirty tricks that men of sentiment and honor must blush for their villainy. They meant to drive us into what they termed rebellion, then stripped us of the rights and privileges of Englishmen. If they were actuated by principles of justice, why did they refuse, indignantly, to accede to the terms which were humbly supplicated before hostilities commenced?”
“Jealousy.” Hamilton placed his hands in the pockets of his coat. “Wars oftener proceed from angry and perverse passions than from cool calculations of interest. Jealousy is a source of the greatest evils. Give me the steady, uniform, unshaken security of constitutional freedom; give me the right to be tried by a jury of my own neighbors, and to be taxed by my own representatives only.”
George became furious just thinking about what the British had done. “We are now embarked on a tempestuous ocean from whence, perhaps, no friendly harbor is to be found. Arms alone must decide it.”
A knock on the door interrupted their meeting. Samuel Fraunces entered, holding glasses of ale. He offered to feed the men during their stay, as they were located just doors from his tavern.
“General Washington, Sam took a hole to the roof of his tavern for us!” exclaimed Hamilton as he clapped Sam on the back. “The Brits fired a cannonball in retaliation for our liberation of their cannons.”
“For the cause of freedom!” Sam cheered as he distributed the ale. He announced food would be served in the dining area.
* * *
GEORGE FOUND A seat on a wide tapestried chair at a polished mahogany table. Roasted turkey wafted in the air. Hunger set in. The day had been too busy to make time for food until this hour. The dish of meat looked appetizing, but George’s teeth had been giving him trouble in the form of a shooting pain through his gums. He settled on starting with the side portion of peas on his dinner plate.
George forked a few of them. He lifted them to his mouth.
The young housekeeper, whom he greeted in the hall earlier, ran toward him with her face appearing alarmed. “Poison! Poison!” she shrieked. “The peas is poisoned!”
Chapter Thirty-Six
A Traitor Among Us
… guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism …
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
YONKERS-ON-HUDSON
JULY 1776
Lulu, all freckled innocence and pure cream skin, sat up straight on a cushioned bench. She appeared quite graceful in an ivory floral gown that Mary had made for her. An unexpected picture, considering her choice of language: “Dastardly maggot of a fella. Mum woulda spit on him as he hung from the gallows.” She feigned expectorating from her lips.
Mary would have her act more in accordance with her place in high society now; however, in truth she agreed with such an action, and about Rosie—yes, she would have spit on him.
Lulu continued reading aloud, albeit slowly, pronouncing each syllable, from the New-York Gazette:
In the forenoon was executed in the field, near the
Bowry Lane (in the presence of near twenty
thousand spectators) soldier Thomas Hickey, belonging to his
Excellency General Washington’s guards, for mutiny
and conspiracy; being one of those who formed and
was soon to have put in execution, that horrid plot of
assassination.
Mary let out a deep breath. The Hickey plot—it could have killed him, she thought.
“Peas! I ne’er liked those bum vegetables anyhows.” Lulu turned the page to continue her pronouncing; Mary had her do this each day to improve her reading. She was advancing quickly, as she worked through the sounds of each word:
This day the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS declared
the UNITED COLONIES FREE and INDEPENDENT
STATES.
“What’s it mean?” asked Lulu.
“Why, it means that freedom … true freedom is soon to come.”
“To your birthday!” exclaimed Susannah, raising a glass in a toast as she entered the east parlor. A footman carried in a tray with three drinks, each glass with the family’s engraved silver medal seal—a lion emerging from a coronet.
“Must we still celebrate when reaching my stage in life?” replied Mary, picking up a glass of Madeira and handing one to Lulu.
“Sluice your gob,” Lulu said loudly.
Susannah looked dumbfounded.
Mary laughed.
Lulu gulped. “I woulda chosen calibogus if it was me choosin’.”
“You drink rum, girl?” asked a perplexed-looking Susannah.
“Who else will be joining us?” Mary asked this question coyly, knowing full well whom they planned to introduce to Lulu.
Susannah looked at Mary with a gleam in her eye as a strapping young fellow walked through the doorway. “Lulu Sherwood, may I introduce you to Nathaniel Gist.”
“Is he a beard splitter?” whispered Lulu to Mary.
“No, he is not a ladies’ man,” Mary quietly responded. “He’s a gentleman. We wouldn’t introduce you to him if we didn’t think so.”
“May I stay in this spot? Youse know I don’t walk so good.”
“Lulu, you can do whatever you like. But please know, no one is perfect.”
The rugged dark-haired lad came closer. The Philipse family had offered him a place to stay just northeast of the manor, at one of their outer cottages. Mary approved of him. He was just as Mary had pictured his father, Christopher Gist, the frontiersman who had charged into enemy territory with George all those years ago. She had read about their journey many times in the newspaper that she still kept on the shelf in her bedchamber at Philipse Manor, its writing away from her, always away from her.
The four of them sat and toasted Mary’s day. After a few minutes, the sisters gave Lulu and Nathaniel privacy as the siblings moved to the dining room of the manor.
* * *
“SHE APPEARS A child.” Susannah glanced back at her as they walked away.
“Hard to believe, but Lasthenia is an adult now. She’s asked to be treated as such, yet I, too, still see her as that little girl with crooked pigtails.”
Mary was drawn to an appetizing scent as she entered the dining room. Temperance approached. Except for the faint fine lines around her eyes, she hadn’t aged a bit in all these years. She wore her hair the same way as she always had, placed neatly into a bun. “Mes filles helped with the icing.” Temperance smiled as she spoke.
Mary looked over the chef’s shoulder to see her twin girls peeking out from behind the door. They were neatly dressed, with their hair pinned back perfectly in buns, replicas of their mother. “We’ve made your favorite, a great cake with almonds,” added Temperance.
“I thank you, and please offer my gratitude to François. The table setting is spectacular.”
The table looked glorious, set with a blue-and-white porcelain setting and white flowers. The chairs were wrapped in wide white satin ribbon. The decorated cake sat at the center. The darling setup was in stark contrast to the ugliness of the conversation.
Beverley, Frederick, and Elizabeth were already seated.
“James Jay is the author of it.” Beverley sipped his tea.
Just the sound of his name made Mary feel anxious as she took her seat.
“He calls himself a patriot. Nonsense!” Frederick picked up a French biscuit. Elizabeth quickly called over her lady’s maid to butter it for him. “Dr. Jay has no such power.” Frederick shifted in his seat, for his corpulence was greater than the chair could accommodate.
“If he becomes a member of the New York Senate, he will,” added Beverley with a grunt.
“The honorable Philip Livingston is in charge. He would never allow that man to become a member.” Frederick ate the biscuit in one bite.
“Robert the elder?” Susannah took her
seat, as did Mary.
“Yes, my true,” replied Beverley.
“What is that man the author of?” Mary needed to know. Nervousness welled up inside her.
“It means nothing, even if the law were to pass.” Frederick spoke with his mouth full.
“Rumor is that an act of attainder is being proposed by Dr. Jay to the new legislature formed by a group of colonists.”
“An attainder?” Mary launched out of her chair. “An attainder! Like Fontainebleau?”
They gave her a bewildered look.
“The Edict of Fontainebleau.” Mary raised her hands as she stared at Frederick.
Frederick shrugged. “One has nothing to do with the other.”
Mary moved about the room. “James threatened this long ago.” She paced back and forth. “Under Fontainebleau, the Jay family property was confiscated, their possessions taken, and the family condemned to death if caught in the province. Father told us the story. This is why they arrived here from France … with nothing.” Mary had always known the beast would return to take revenge. “Do we not believe he would do the same to us?”
“Our great-grandfather was kind enough to adopt Jay’s grandmother into this family. That should have been enough. She had no rights to the manor.” Frederick’s lips pursed as he spoke in disgust. A crumb clung to his cheek.
“Where does the senior Jay stand on this?” asked Beverley.
“James was disowned by his father years ago.” Frederick nodded as Elizabeth handed him a piece of cake. “Mr. Jay even cut his scoundrel son from the will.”
“His brother?” Beverley inquired.
“The Honorable John Jay is a man of justice,” replied Frederick. “He would disown his brother, too, if this should come to pass.”
“Why would they attaint us, my true?” Susannah sat with a straight posture, as if a board were behind her.