But Alexander obliged my little requests as well. When I begged that I might have a miniature portrait of him to keep by me while we were apart, he didn’t reply, and I’d guessed it was too costly for him. Soon after, however, a small package was delivered to me, and in it was a very fine likeness of Alexander in a rosy-red waistcoat and blue jacket, painted on ivory by the renowned Mr. Charles Willson Peale of Philadelphia. I was overjoyed by such a treasure, and quickly set to work embroidering a special mat to better display it to the world.
In return I sent a little song I’d composed to amuse him, filled with the love and sentiments that were writ upon my heart. To be sure, it was not so fine as the poem he’d made for me, but still it pleased him, which was all I ever wished to do.
Best of all, I hoped he’d be to be steal away from the present campaign for a day or two to visit Albany if his duties with the army brought him within a reasonable distance. His Excellency spoke of traveling to West Point, now under General Arnold’s command, and that wasn’t so very far from us up the Hudson.
In this fashion, it was easy to lose myself in thoughts of Alexander and our wedding. The war seemed far away from us in Albany, and in the summer of 1780, it was. But as summer began to fade into fall, the news that filled Alexander’s letters took a much more somber, even ominous, tone.
First came word of the calamitous Battle of Camden in South Carolina, wherein General Gates (the same foolish general who had stolen credit for the long-ago victory at Saratoga from my father) was routed and humiliated by the enemy. His defeat was so thorough that there were fears that North Carolina and Virginia would be next to fall.
Any possibility of Alexander leaving the army to visit me was now gone for this campaign; it was clear the army, and the country, needed him far more than I. The chance of losing all America had become so real that Alexander even suggested in perfect seriousness that he and I might leave this country entirely for the Continent and live instead in the city of Geneva, in Switzerland—a prospect I found mightily distressing.
But the most disturbing news came in September. After meeting with the French in Hartford, His Excellency and a number of his officers arrived near West Point with the intention of inspecting the fortifications there. While nearby, however, a spy was intercepted with incriminating papers and maps proving that West Point’s commander, General Benedict Arnold, had sold himself to the enemy. He’d purposefully let the fort’s defenses fall into disrepair with the intention of making a capture easy for the British, and had been forwarding many of His Excellency’s confidential letters and dispatches as well. This was a treasonous act of complete betrayal to the American cause, and to so many of his fellow officers (including as my own father) who had previously extended themselves on his behalf.
Alexander himself was the first to read the dispatches of the captured master spy who oversaw the maneuvers of countless smaller villains in thrall to the king. The melancholy task of relaying Arnold’s betrayal to His Excellency also fell to Alexander, as did riding with his fellow aide James McHenry in furious pursuit after the fleeing Arnold, who managed to escape to a British ship waiting for him in the river. Mrs. Peggy Arnold, whom I had met earlier in Philadelphia, was seemingly left behind and abandoned with her child by her cowardly husband, and had been discovered in a raving fit of madness caused by her husband’s wicked acts.
It took Alexander two letters to convey so much, written hours apart, and numbered (as was our habit) so I would know which to read first. As I read them, I couldn’t keep back numerous gasps and exclamations at Arnold’s perfidious disloyalty, and the grief that His Excellency must feel at his betrayal. Once again Alexander had been thrust into the very center of a perilous situation, and it was only by merest luck that the spy had been caught in time to keep His Excellency, his officers, and West Point itself from falling into the enemy’s hands.
I thanked Almighty God for keeping Alexander safe, and preserving His Excellency and the others from harm. But what stunned me the most was that in this particular tale of Alexander’s escapade, two of the major players in the drama were known personally to me.
The first, most obviously, was Peggy Arnold. I hadn’t liked her when we’d met the single time in Philadelphia, but I still could pity how her traitorous husband had fled, leaving her and their child once again in a vulnerable position.
But the second was the captured spy himself, Major John André, a gentleman known well within my family, and especially to me.
“Read this,” I said, thrusting Alexander’s first letter into Angelica’s hand. She had received a letter from her husband by the same rider who had brought me Alexander’s, and we’d taken them outside to a bench in the garden to read in relative peace.
Angelica’s brows rose with curiosity as she put aside her own letter to take mine.
“Are you certain you wish me to see your billet-doux from your beloved Hamilton?” she teased. “Once read, such things cannot be forgotten.”
“There’s nothing in it that you cannot read, though you may wish you hadn’t,” I said. “Major André has been taken up as a spy.”
“What?” she exclaimed, now reading the letter with more interest. “I’ve heard rumors, of course, but I never thought he’d been engaged so deeply behind our lines. And with General Arnold! Oh, Eliza, this is very bad.”
I nodded, my heart racing so fast that I felt ill. “You do remember when he stayed here, don’t you?”
“How could I not?” she said, glancing up from the letter. “He was with us for nearly a month, and at Christmas, too, which made him feel much more like a guest than one more British prisoner hoping to be exchanged. Such an entertaining fellow he was, with so many talents! We were all sad to see him leave.”
“Yes,” I said softly, struggling to control my sentiments. “Yes, we were.”
To describe John André as an “entertaining fellow” was to do him the gravest injustice. Born in London, he was the most perfectly accomplished gentleman I’d ever met, able to speak several languages, tell amusing stories, dance with grace, cut silhouettes, draw, and paint to a wonder, and sing and write verse. As if those accomplishments weren’t sufficient, he was also tall, charming, and prodigiously handsome.
André was, in brief, exactly the sort of gentleman to turn the head of an impressionable girl of seventeen, which was what I had been in November of 1775. Seven years older than I and a lieutenant in the British Army, he had been among the prisoners taken by Continental general Richard Montgomery after the siege of Fort Saint-Jean in Quebec. My father has always observed the formal dignities of war: although André was a prisoner, he was foremost a gentleman and an officer, and although he was on his way to his eventual imprisonment in Pennsylvania, Papa made sure that he and several other British officers became our guests for the Christmas season.
Oh, I was smitten! Although he took care not to beguile my affections, he was so kind to me that I’d wept when he’d left. I’d not seen him since, but I always remembered him as a friend—a friend whose actions in war had now put him into the greatest risk possible.
“How terrible that he’ll suffer because of Arnold,” Angelica said. “I cannot imagine a greater tragedy.”
All I could do was sigh and shake my head with sorrow. As our father’s daughters, we both knew the sentence for spies was execution. If André were judged an unfortunate officer following British orders, then he would be shot as a gentleman. If it were determined he was an out-and-out spy, then he would be hung in disgrace like a common criminal.
“What has Alexander written in the second letter?” asked Angelica. “Are there more details of André’s capture?”
I passed it to her. “It’s mostly about how shocked Mrs. Arnold was by her husband’s villainy. I suppose they must be two of a kind, for I found her a sly, conniving woman when we met in Philadelphia. Papa wished me to like her, but I could not.”
“Men have always been fooled by her,” Angelica declared vehemently. “
I’m certain that all this thrashing about by her, pretending to be mad, was only a performance. Even your Hamilton clearly feels nothing but pity for the creature, and he like all worldly gentlemen should know better. What manner of lady languishes in her bed to receive officers?”
I lowered my chin with a mixture of disapproval and dismay. I’d observed myself the charm of Mrs. Arnold en dishabille, and I’d rather she weren’t displaying herself similarly to Alexander. One of his most endearing qualities was his constant desire to assist the weak and powerless; he could be the kindest man! But the eagerness with which Peggy Arnold appeared to have accepted his offers of compassion irritated me, knowing how false her motives likely were. That Alexander should write to me that he longed to be her brother, the better to be her defender, and that he’d offered her every proof of friendship—that was, to me, taking gallantry a shade too far.
But I wasn’t pleased, either, with my sister’s breezy remark about Alexander. I couldn’t deny that there had been other women (I shall not dignify them as ladies) in his life before me, or that he still would smile at a pretty face other than mine. It was simply part and parcel of who he was, and I accepted it, knowing his heart was truly devoted only to me. But that didn’t mean I wished my own sister to speak as if he were still a wandering rogue about the camp, especially not after he and I had been apart for the entire summer.
“In fairness, Angelica, I do not believe Alexander can still be called a ‘worldly gentleman,’ ” I said. “In the past, perhaps, but no longer.”
But my sister only shrugged. “Hamilton is a man, Eliza, and not even marriage to your saintly person will change that,” she said. “When a woman such as Mrs. Arnold throws out her best snares, men are as helpless as weakling rabbits.”
“Mrs. Arnold should not have cast herself upon his good nature,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound quite so prim. “It’s her fault, not Alexander’s.”
“Mrs. Arnold has done a good many things she shouldn’t have.” Angelica leaned forward in confidence, though there was no one else in the garden to overhear. “Gossip says that she and André have long been lovers, and that she married General Arnold only to serve him up more easily to the British. It appears she’s played both men false, however, and now must lie and simper further to save her own plump neck from the rope.”
Somehow that sordid scenario sounded much more like fact than gossip, and fit with other rumors I’d heard of the Arnolds whilst I was in Morristown. Poor John André, to be sacrificed on such a traitorous altar! I didn’t give a fig if Peggy Arnold ended her short life on the gallows, but I resolved to do what I could to help save him.
“As adjutant general, André should be a prisoner of considerable value,” I said, refolding the letters to read again later. “Perhaps the British would consider trading Arnold for him. Alexander is so skilled at negotiating prisoner exchanges that I’m sure he could arrange it.”
I rose, determined to answer his two letters at once, but Angelica caught my hand.
“You’re not going to write to Alexander about André, are you?” she asked, reading my intentions as clear as the day. “Because if you are, Eliza, it would be a most grievous mistake.”
I didn’t deny my intention. “I’m acting to preserve an old friend. There’s no harm to that.”
“There will be to Hamilton,” she said firmly. “Consider his response when you plead for the life of another gentleman—an enemy!—whom you once considered yourself to love.”
“I was too young then to know what real love could be,” I said quickly. “He was a friend, nothing more. If I ask Alexander to act on André’s behalf, it’s because I have perfect faith that he can save another worthy gentleman’s life.”
“Eliza, please,” Angelica warned. “André knew full well the risk he took by his actions, and the consequences, too. Hamilton won’t be able to save him, because his fate will be decided in a trial by His Excellency and the other generals. It has nothing to do with your ‘perfect faith’ in his abilities, and meddling in army affairs will only bring you—”
“I know perfectly how to write to Alexander,” I said tartly, “and I do not require your advice to do so.”
With that I left her behind and returned to the house, and nothing further was said that day, or the next, about Major André between Angelica and me.
I would, however, have done much better to have heeded her sage advice, and not let myself be led by impulse and sentiment, and a measure of shameful petty jealousy. If Alexander hadn’t been so quick to champion Mrs. Arnold, then I might not have done the same for Major André, and more, I wouldn’t have praised his virtues, his talents, and his dignity to the degree I did.
But instead I wrote not one letter to Alexander, but two, begging him in the strongest possible language to save the British major. Both letters were carried away swiftly by the same messenger who’d brought Alexander’s to me. I prayed they’d accomplish their mission, and I prayed for both the British major as well as my own lieutenant colonel.
The next week crept slowly along, and with each day I fretted and doubted myself, and what I’d written even more. Through my father’s dispatches came word that André had been found guilty, and had been hung as a common spy on the second of October. As can be expected, I wept for him bitterly, but if I were honest, a few of those tears were for myself and the girl I’d been when I’d loved him.
Yet there was more to my sorrow, too. I grieved that we lived in a time where such choices were forced upon us, and tragedies like this were commonplace. If André and Arnold had succeeded in their plan regarding West Point, then not only would the fortress have been captured, but likely His Excellency and his staff with it. I could just as easily have been mourning Alexander’s execution as André’s, a possibility I couldn’t bear to contemplate.
Soon after the first news came my reply from Alexander, and if I’d hoped for absolution for my letters, I found none in his words. His account of André’s execution was brief, though he promised a longer description to follow. Nor was there any mention this time of Mrs. Arnold.
For that matter, there weren’t any of his usual effusive and poetical compliments to me, either. I wasn’t his sorceress, his jewel, his angel, his charmer, his dearest black-eyed girl. Instead his tone was subdued and melancholy, even forlorn, and filled with reflection and humility. The self-doubt fair broke my heart.
He’d tried to have the method of André’s execution changed from being hanged to being shot, but with no success. He’d been compelled to refuse a proposal for an exchange of prisoners because André himself had not wanted it. He’d attempted everything he could in the situation, and failed.
He’d failed, and though he did not say it outright, he clearly believed he’d failed me. As Angelica had warned, my unreasonable confidence in his abilities had made my request impossible for him to achieve, and for a man who found failure unbearable, it was a crushing blow.
Worse yet, he’d realized my sentimental infatuation for André (though I’d only called him a friend), and his imagination had blown it into much more of a romance than it had been. He didn’t reproach me as I deserved, which would have been much easier to bear. Instead he once again found only faults in himself, comparing his own talents and accomplishments, his lack of fortune, even his appearance, unfavorably to the dead English officer.
Each humble word cut me to the quick. I’d done this to him. I’d been selfish, unthinking, impetuous, and interfering, and I’d hurt him more deeply than I’d ever dreamed possible. I was the unworthy one, not he, and with his letters clutched tightly in my hands, I wept anew for the pain I’d never wanted to cause so good a man.
How I wished we could be together, and I could tell him to his face how wrong I’d been, and how sorry I was to have wounded him, and how very, very much I loved him. We’d been apart too long, Alexander and I, and the strain of the separation was wearing upon us both. Letters were no longer enough. I wanted to hold him close, and kiss him
, and make everything right once again the way it should be.
It would be, too. We’d only a handful of weeks before our wedding now, and until then, I’d take extra care with every word I wrote to him. I was determined that we’d weather this storm. Our love was strong, and I never for a moment doubted its power, not then, nor ever after.
For he was my Alexander, my Hamilton, and I’d always, always be his Betsey.
CHAPTER 9
Albany, New York
December 1780
“You must be cold there by the window, Eliza,” Mamma said.
“You’ll know well enough when they arrive. Be warm, and come closer to the fire.”
I shook my head, pretending I was warmer than I was as I sat inside the recessed window seat. Even with a large fire in the family parlor’s hearth, winter always crept into the room from the windows and the corners, and it was only truly warm within a few feet from the fire itself. I wore a quilted wool petticoat beneath a wool gown, thick stockings, mitts, and a shawl over my shoulders, yet still my fingertips were so chilled that I was having difficulty holding my needle.
“I’m perfectly at ease here, Mamma,” I lied cheerfully. “The sunlight is agreeably bright for my sewing.”
“What she cannot wait to see in the bright sunlight is her bridegroom,” said my sister Peggy in an exaggerated voice, and without looking up from the letter she was writing at the table nearer to Mamma and the fire. “She wants to see her darling Hamilton.”
“Hush, Peggy, that’s enough,” scolded Mamma. “We are all eager to greet Colonel Hamilton.”
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