And so the war had become a war of attrition between redcoats paid in silver and Continentals clothed in rags. He would sit on the Palisades when circumstances allowed and muse on what might happen were he ever captured by the Crown. They’d carry him across the sea in some cage, have him dine on fetid water. The king would parade him through London town in manacles—Britons perusing him as they might a Barbary ape. They’d call him George the Insurrectionist, toss offal in his eyes. But at least it would be a terminus, an end to something, and all he could do now was crawl on a cliff and conjure up a battle that would never happen.
He was like a prisoner of war with chains that rattled nowhere but inside his head. Perhaps such fanciful chains were an omen of some battle that was yet to be.
And whilst he mused, he heard a ratcheting sound that tore at him, as if some lost child were running rampant on the cliffs. He had no need of a spyglass to search his own terrain. Quickly he found the source of this commotion—one of his troopers, wearing manacles, wandered from tree to tree. A pair of Washington’s pickets fell upon the poor soul and beat him into the ground. They stopped only when they saw the commander in chief.
“Excellency,” said one of the pickets, “you must away from here. This madman has destroyed an entire barrack.”
“And to what purpose?”
“To get even with our army. He swears that you have killed his son. And we thought not to disturb your leisure with a madman’s idle claims.”
“Leave,” Washington shouted. “I will care for the prisoner.”
“But he is a danger to you,” said the second picket. “See how his eyes roam.”
“Leave,” Washington had to shout again.
And the pickets departed, grumbling under their breath.
“I will not thank ye,” the madman said in a melodious voice.
Washington stooped and fed him water from his own canteen.
“I am your commander in chief. Yet you have a decided advantage. You know my name, and I know nothing of yours.”
“A worthy commander would know the names of all his men.”
And this manacled trooper began to weep. “I’m starving,” he said between sobs.
Washington was choked with pity. He undid his haversack and shared his own portion of brittle cheese with the trooper. They huddled in the March wind, like field mice. And the commander listened to a most disturbing tale.
The trooper had a twelve-year-old son who worshiped Washington, carried his silhouette with him everywhere. And last winter Washington rode past the trooper’s farmhouse near Valley Forge. The boy stood waiting with that silhouette in hand.
“Excellency, what must I do if I am not old enough to fight?”
“Badger the British,” Washington shouted from his horse.
“And burn their cantonments,” sang one of his aides.
The boy journeyed on his own through wind and sleet to a British cantonment on Long Island, was captured with a torch in his hand, and shot in the rudest fashion.
“But I do not remember meeting your boy,” Washington said, benumbed by the tale.
“My wife was present when you rode past. She waved to you…and wrote me about Robert months ago. Your censors hid the letter. Did they think I would desert?”
Washington’s provost did read every piece of mail. Ye gods, what sort of sedition could have crept between the lines? A fool of a clerk must have tossed that letter into some misbegotten sack.
The commander hid his own tears and commenced to tug at the trooper’s manacles until his fingers were raw.
Finally a picket arrived with the keys to every manacle in creation.
Washington shouted into the picket’s ear. “Sergeant, this man may destroy any barrack should it pleasure him to do so.”
And he strode off into the dark, still waiting for an invisible French fleet.
Fifty-Five
THE NEW YEAR WAS NOT VERY KIND, ALAS. I WAS woken by Washington’s Life Guard and tossed out of bed with all my belongings. It puzzled me even more when Sparks’ cot was also removed. That little bed was a marvel—six and a half feet long, it served as Washington’s own camp cot in the thick of battle. And now it was most rudely carried upstairs to a tiny attic in the eaves of the farmhouse, where Sparks was waiting. I considered it a very rare form of house arrest until Sparks told me otherwise.
“Mrs. Gen’ral Washington has come for a visit,” he said. “And on such occasions, Johnny boy, we have to remove our arses from her gen’ral’s living quarters.”
Washington’s missus had indeed arrived in New Windsor. I assumed that I would no longer be welcome at the dinner table, but I had misjudged the general.
Champe himself knocked on my door. “The Chief is vexed you have not appeared. Mr. Washington will not say grace without ye.”
Sparks tied the ends of my hair into a pigtail and I rushed down to the farmer. His missus sat next to him in a homespun bonnet and homespun dress. She was short and plump, with the tiniest hands I’d ever seen, but she had enormous brown eyes. She did not look upon me as a ragamuffin, the way the others did. She grabbed my hand when Washington introduced me as his young friend who so recently escaped from Manhattan.
“Mr. Stocking was so eager to join my family, Martha, he tried to poison my soup—it was but a ruse. He is a patriot in his own fashion. He near died on board the Jersey.”
“I’m delighted that you can share our table,” she said to me.
Didn’t even have a moment to consider Gert and wonder about the farmer’s two madames. A pair of other faces had intruded upon my thoughts. Little Hamilton had returned from Albany with his bride, Elizabeth. She was a black-eyed beauty with the same tall hairstyle of Peggy Arnold—it resembled a manicured bush, entwined with twigs. Despite the bitter austerity of our rebellion, she wore the most astounding silk dress, with jewels sewn into the bodice. Her father, Philip Schuyler, was the richest landowner on the Hudson. He must have considered Hamilton a curious catch for his daughter—penniless, without a whit of property, “Ham,” as the little colonel was called, did wear the green sash of Washington’s aide-de-camp.
How I envied that green color, the boldness of it as it crossed Hamilton’s chest. I would have given up everything to be the owner of such a sash. But Ham, it seems, did not have the same regard for it. He wanted a field command, and Washington would not give him one. There was much tension at the table because of the quarrel that was growing between them. And in his pique, Ham decided to prey on me. “Young fellow, might you tell my Elizabeth your impression of Manhattan’s invaders?”
I was loath to answer. “I have none.”
He turned to Washington. “Excellency, can you not seduce the boy, or put some honey on his tongue?”
I could see the anger build under Washington’s eyes. “Hamilton, he is our guest.”
“And that is why, sir, you treat him better than your aides—he is naught, a fopling with a ribbon in his hair.”
“Mr. Hamilton,” Washington said, both his hands trembling, “do not enter the boy in our quarrel. I cannot replace you, and I will not have your head shot off on some fool adventure.”
“Fool adventure? I asked for a raiding party so that I might harass the king’s men in upper Manhattan. I could accomplish this without straying far from headquarters.”
“We will not discuss this at the table,” Washington said, standing up in the middle of the meal. He bowed to Elizabeth Hamilton and his own wife, kissed their hands. “Forgive us. We soldiers must repair to our little war room on the second floor. We have urgent matters to discuss.”
Washington exited with all his aides, but not until Hamilton said to his bride, “Darling, you must ask Mr. Stocking about his own fool adventures on board a prison ship. He led a most daring escape—seems the Divil delivered him from that inferno.”
And I was left alone with Martha and Elizabeth. We drank Madeira and played vingt-et-un, played for buttons rather than doubloons. And now, when the two
mums asked me about Manhattan, I chattered like a magpie.
I talked of Canvas Town and the Ethiopian Ball, of the British madness for cricket, but I would not talk of Anne Harding. Still, they pressed me for tales about life on board a prison tub, and I was loath to lie. “I had me a bulldog for a companion. Osiris.”
“Did he rise up from the underworld like some godling?” Elizabeth asked.
“A godling, no? My Osiris was trained to kill.”
“A demon, then.”
“Just a dog who shared liver and milk with me, and was much kinder than my jailers…I survived, but Osiris did not.”
“Johnny,” Elizabeth asked, after much Madeira, “do you have a sweetheart?”
“Yes, Mum,” I said, tho’ Betsey—that is what Ham called her—was at least a year younger than I. “She is from the Windwards. Her name is Clara. She is very tall and reads Aristotle. Her mother was a princess and her father a planter.”
“A princess,” Martha said.
“Might we ever meet her?” Betsey asked.
“’T would be my dream, Mum.”
That’s all I dared say.
I WOULD SPEND LONG WINTER EVENINGS with my two mums, since Washington and Hamilton were constantly at their war table—events had worsened inside Virginia. Clinton’s bulldog, Benedict Arnold, ransacked Richmond, and it seemed that he would soon cut a swath across the southland.
The farmer in chief prepared to send his most flamboyant officer, the young Marquis de Lafayette, to stop him. Lafayette was quite slender, had red hair and devilish red eyebrows, wore a powdered wig and long stockings, and had a very quick step.
Whenever he dined with us, Lafayette would charm Martha with his magic tricks and let Betsy borrow a garter that had been given him by the French king. Four years in Washington’s service had seasoned him as a soldier. He idolized Martha’s Old Man, and learned to speak like a Virginian.
“Mrs. General Washington, ma’am, I love my king, but I’d rather be here with you and Mrs. Hamilton in this little house than in the great, great garden at Versailles.”
“I fear you toy with us,” Betsey fluttered. “I have been told there is no place on earth like the king’s palace—that to look upon it is to look at paradise.”
The marquis immediately kissed her hand. “But might one not tire of such constant bliss? I prefer your rough land, and men who wear coats made of squirrel, mesdames. And I would much rather hunt down the British than chase wolves and wild boar in the king’s park.”
I said not a word. I felt like a creature in one of my own fairy tales, about to vanish forever in the forest.
And then, one afternoon, as I marched up to the attic, I could feel a familiar presence. The aroma was unmistakable. I could sniff Clara and her perfume a mile away. She was playing an odd game with Sparks—must have been something she’d picked up in the Caribbean. She rubbed knuckles with him and sang a song in a language I did not comprehend.
A little pulse beat behind her ear. I thought to capture it in my hand but could not. There was so little of Clara I could capture.
She turned about, knowing that I stood there. And the smile she made, with her freckles, was meant to break my heart. Sparks excused himself. I did not even know he was gone.
How did she get through our pickets? Had she come here with a message for the commander in chief? She did not seem in much of a hurry. Clara insisted that we make love with all our clothes on. She was enthralled by the prodigious size of Washington’s camp cot. “Johnny, I could live in it for a week.” She said I must take her without a single thrust, that my tumescence alone would rouse her insides, that the very best loving was slow.
I listened and did not listen. We drifted as far as the China Sea. And then, at the very same instant, we cried with a delight that was as melodious as her Caribbean song.
I CARRIED UP FRESH WATER from the well and washed morsels of her with her clothes still on. I did not ask questions. I concentrated on every curve of flesh. And when I scrubbed her privates, she allowed her eyes to flutter.
“Johnny, ain’t you gonna ask how come I’m here?”
“No,” I said.
“Then you must have figured out that I’m Gert’s silver bullet.”
My hand started to shake. I did not want to know about silver bullets, or the danger of a mad dash across British territory.
“Damn, you’re only alive on account of Gert.”
“I’m bewildered,” I said.
“You are not. That night when Malcolm Treat and his giant were in our garden, Gert sent me out looking for the gen’ral. I swear, Johnny, I had to kiss three British guards, but no more than kiss, just to get through the lines…”
I did not want to imagine those kisses, but I could imagine Gert and Clara putting out all the lights in the nunnery once they saw Malcolm Treat and Sergeant Champe. Gert must have known they’d come for me. And so she launched her silver bullet.
“And the gen’ral had to ride back to Weehawken to save your rump,” Clara said.
“Then he knew all the time that I’d be under the hanging tree.”
“Course he knew. Wouldn’t be much of a commander if he didn’t.”
SHE HAD TO RETURN to holy ground. I would not let her go. “Clara, you must have supper with me at Washington’s table.”
“I dasn’t, Johnny.”
“But Betsey Hamilton would love to meet ye.”
I could feel a remoteness return to her body, a remoteness that always marked the beginning of a battle.
“Johnny One-Eye, she has no idea I am alive.”
“But I promised I would bring my sweetheart to the table. I talked about you, about Dominica. She was most curious.”
I should not have insisted, but insist I did. And it’s only then that she decided to undress and stand naked in front of my one good eye. She forbade me to touch her, or fondle her in the least. She wiped the dust off her bodice with a little wet rag, straightened the struts of her pannier, shook the mud off her shoes.
Then she wiggled back into her clothes without breaking the line of her body, lean as a knife. She stood next to Sparks’ tiny cracked mirror and redid her hair. She would not paint her eyes or her cheeks—wasn’t ladylike, she told me. But my Clara did not require paint.
We went downstairs. Washington’s family was assembled—not an eye strayed from Clara. The men rose in their boots and bowed, but Martha and Betsey seemed a bit abashed. I’d brought a colored girl to the table, a tall octoroon, and they’d expected an aristocrat from the Windwards. But they couldn’t ignore the wonder of Clara.
“Mum,” I said to Betsey Hamilton, “I’m most eager to introduce my fiancée.”
“Child,” Martha Washington said, “you must sit beside my Old Man. The war has wearied him. And we shall all benefit from your loveliness.”
And so my Clara sat down next to Martha’s Old Man. But something was amiss. I could see Washington brood, even with Clara beside him. He must have been fighting with Hamilton, who seemed equally grim. An anger, a fierce anger, made his eyes exceedingly narrow.
Washington said grace, and then we lit into the meal—mutton and Madeira, and a small fortune of peas, paid out of Washington’s own pocket, since Congress had not supplied sufficient funds to feed his family.
“Mistress Clara,” Betsey Hamilton said, “my husband is also a man of the West Indies. You must tell us about Dominica.”
I could feel a pain flow through Hamilton. Clara must have sensed it too. She spoke with a prudence I had never seen before.
“I have no fond recollections, ma’am.”
But Betsey wanted more. Perhaps she was still seeking an aristocrat—in coffee-colored skin. “Johnny has told us that your father was a planter.”
“And a most cruel man,” Clara said. “He was not gentle with my mama, and he looked upon me as a little stranger he had been saddled with.”
Hamilton’s face went purple. “Must we continue this farce? I am not amused that Mr
. Stocking has brought his little doxy to sit next to my dear wife.”
I rose up like some dreamwalker and struck Hamilton across his purple face. He tumbled out of his chair and fell backward a good five feet.
“Mr. Hamilton,” I said, “I await your satisfaction.”
I was sorry for one thing. Clara had fled the farmhouse while I was occupied with Ham. And I could not find her.
Fifty-Six
I EXPECTED CHAMPE OR TREAT TO STROLL INTO the attic and negotiate for Hamilton the time and place of our duel. But it was Martha’s Old Man who knocked on my door.
“I beg you to enter, Excellency.”
He had to stoop in the attic, could barely stand. He was not in his neckcloth, and I had a feeling he’d come direct from his own bed.
“Johnny, you must forgive Hamilton. He cannot sleep since he insulted Clara.”
“Sir, Clara did not want to come to your table. ’T was most reckless of me to invite her without—”
“I shall grow colic if you continue,” Washington said. “Clara is one of my couriers. She may sit with us every night of the week.”
“That is most kind. But, sir, I did slap Mr. Hamilton. And I am at his disposal.”
“And I promised Gertrude that I would protect you.”
I’d swear my eye patch moved—the farmer had never mentioned Gert ’til now. It must have cost him to speak of my mother. Buried inside a war, and here he was raking up powerful coals, coals that could stir his spirit, make him question the trajectory of his life. He loved Gert—I could feel that love in the tremor with which he said her name. Gertrude. But I could also see that he would not welcome my perusal of such private coals.
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