Hamilton and Peggy!

by L. M. Elliott

  The rider’s face was grim as he handed a packet of letters to the sentry. Then he galloped away down the drive toward the fort at the northwest peak of town, where Patriot troops were encamped. Given its strategic location near where two major waterways met—the north-to-south-flowing Hudson that stretched from just below Canada, all the way to New York City, and the west-to-east Mohawk—Albany had become the center for troops guarding against British invasion from Canada.

  Peggy hoped the poor horse made it. The Schuyler estate was a mile outside the south end of town. The animal was clearly exhausted. Turning from the window, Peggy caught Angelica’s eye. She, too, was tense, obviously recognizing the delivery was unlikely to be happy news.

  As Lieutenant Colonel Richard Varick left the dining room to collect the letters, Catharine shooed her children back to their meal. “Your hasty pudding will grow cold,” she chided. “Mary worked hard to make it for you.”

  Already finished with her porridge of cornmeal, molasses, milk, and butter, Peggy reached for a slice of bread, made of wheat from their fields in Saratoga. Before the war, their table had also been graced with salted meats and smoked fish at breakfast. But even the richest ate more lean these days, given the food shortages made by two armies foraging. The Schuylers still had preserves made from her father’s hybrid plums, though, which he’d cultivated to be sweeter and fuller than the standard. Peggy wondered if her father would ever be able to return to the life he most loved—that of a gentleman farmer, overseeing his crops. Fighting had already dragged on for two years.

  Varick reentered, sorting the mail. A gangly twenty-four-year-old, her father’s military secretary was all hotheaded idealism, a Dutchman from Hackensack, New Jersey, who had instantly thrown off his law apprenticeship to join the cause. He was fiercely devoted to Schuyler. Peggy had grown fond of him for his emotional outbursts. Right before the rider interrupted their meal, Varick had been hammering the table with his fist and damning John Adams for attacking her papa’s military judgment.

  “Anything for us, Colonel?” Catharine asked.

  “No, ma’am,” he answered, distracted with one of the letters. For a few moments the only sounds were silver spoons scraping against china and a rooster sounding off in the courtyard out back.

  “Godverdomme!” Varick bolted up out of his chair, shaking his head as he hastily reread a dispatch from Connecticut.

  “Mr. Varick, what is it?” In her anxiety about its contents, Catharine forwent her usual reprimand for someone using the Lord’s name in vain.

  Varick looked up from the paper, his gray eyes wide, his face pale. “The British have destroyed our supply depots at Danbury.”

  Everyone moaned. The Patriots couldn’t afford to lose one musket.

  “How bad is it?” Peggy asked.

  “I hate to say, miss. I do not wish to alarm you.”

  “You are alarming us more, Mr. Varick, by not divulging the details,” Angelica weighed in. “And pretending we are not strong enough to know facts simply insults us.”

  “As you wish, miss.” Sheepishly, Varick glanced down at the paper. “They torched seventeen hundred tents, five thousand pairs of shoes, four thousand barrels of beef, five thousand of flour, sixty hogshead of rum. They also set fire to the town. Danbury’s meetinghouse and forty of its homes are ashes.”

  Godverdomme indeed, thought Peggy.

  “Five thousand boots burned when so many of our soldiers march barefoot?” Catharine shook her head. “How did we leave such stores undefended?”

  Varick dropped the dispatch to the table. “Forgive me, Mrs. Schuyler.” He bowed formally to her and then to each Schuyler as he said, “Miss Angelica, Miss Eliza, boys. I think I’d best issue orders for Albany residents to strip all lead from Albany’s roofs and windows and melt it down for musket balls.” He saved his final bow for Peggy. “Miss Peggy,” he added with a shy smile.

  Then he dashed out the door, all earnest flurry.

  Her brother John made a face at Peggy and teasingly thump-thumped his hand against his heart. Eliza giggled.

  “Colonel Varick is just grateful for the respect I show him,” Peggy snapped. “You should be, too, for how much he helps Papa!”

  Oh, why did Congress keep their father bogged down in Philadelphia continuing to answer partisan questions about last year’s failings in Canada? He should be in Albany, readying his army! It was nonsense. Petty politics. Regional squabbling kept alive by sanctimonious, puritanical New Englanders! They just didn’t like the fact her father was Dutch!

  “Poor Papa,” she said aloud. Maybe the letter said something about his whereabouts. Peggy reached for it just as John did. But Peggy snatched it up first.

  “At least share it out loud,” her younger brother grumbled as she scanned its contents.

  But Peggy was so stunned by the heroics described in the letter, she kept reading until the twelve-year-old hit her with a well-hurled hunk of bread—right on her forehead!

  “I say, good shot!” Jeremiah shouted, as he and Rensselaer guffawed.

  Peggy’s face flamed. “Oh, you’re going to regret—”

  “Margarita!” Catharine interrupted. “What else does the dispatch say?”

  Peggy glared at her brothers before regaining her deportment. “You remember General Benedict Arnold, Mama?”

  “Of course. After his brilliant defense of Valcour Island in Lake Champlain last fall, your father considers him the nation’s bravest commander.”

  “Well, he has amazed again. When he learned of the British and Tory treachery at Danbury, General Arnold rode through the night in a rainstorm to set a trap for the British as they made the march back to their ships. He and the local militia managed to build a breastwork of wagons, rocks, and dirt and then lay in wait.

  “Arnold’s horse was pierced with nine musket balls during the fight. Finally it fell, the general caught in his stirrups. A Redcoat rushed toward him, bayonet ready, shouting at him to surrender.” Peggy quickly skimmed the next few lines. Holding up her fist, she read dramatically, “‘Not yet!’ the brave Arnold exclaimed, and pulled out his pistol and shot his enemy dead, before extricating himself from his horse and escaping into the nearby swamp.”

  The boys jumped out of their seats, shouting, “Huzzah!”

  Jeremiah skipped around the table whistling “Yankee Doodle.”

  Eliza laughed and clapped on the beat.

  “Thank God General Arnold is on our side,” said Catharine, reaching for more bread and plum preserves.

  How could she think of eating? thought Peggy. “Excuse me, everyone, but you do know where Danbury is, don’t you?”

  “Near Peeks Kill,” answered Angelica. “Right where those British frigates have been seen.”

  The boys froze.

  Peggy nodded. “Exactly. Presumably on their way upriver to attack West Point.”

  Slowly, Angelica finished her sister’s thought. “And if they take West Point, that gives them control of the lower Hudson River . . . all the way down to New York City. The river there is deep enough for any of their seagoing sloops and men-of-war to traverse.”

  “Controlling the Hudson,” added Peggy, “is the perfect way to decapitate us—cutting New England off from the rest of the states. Just like Mr. Franklin’s ‘Join or Die’ cartoon of the severed snake warns us.” Peggy considered the situation with growing alarm. “You know, if General Burgoyne comes down from Canada and manages to seize Lake Champlain . . . then heads downstream to Fort Ticonderoga and can take it . . . Burgoyne will be free to keep moving south, which brings his eight thousand troops to . . .” Peggy trailed off.

  None of them had to verbalize the obvious meeting point for the two British armies—Albany. Thousands of British soldiers, bent on taking control of the country and crushing the Revolution and its Patriots, converging right where they sat.

  Eliza covered her mouth, her large, soft eyes wide in fear. The boys plopped down in their chairs.

  “Tush, c
hild.” Catharine reached over to pat Eliza’s hand. “We must have faith.” Even though her voice quavered, she worked to stanch Eliza’s nervousness. “Your papa says Fort Ticonderoga is impregnable. It is shielded by cliffs too steep to climb and by the lake, which our Patriots have barred with a chain of thick logs moored by double iron links and sunken piers.”

  “That’s right,” crowed John. “Papa said that the king’s whole armada couldn’t break it apart.”

  “There, you see, my dear?” Catharine crooned to Eliza.

  “You know the other thing that raid on Danbury would do, don’t you, Mother?” Angelica asked, an insolent edge to her voice. The tension between mother and daughter since Schuyler had banished Angelica’s card-playing suitor had been like the stinging pop and spark of fabric brushing together. “It would embolden all Tories in that district. Right along the road Papa will need to take to make it home from Philadelphia.”

  “Oh, Angelica, don’t,” whispered Peggy. “Don’t frighten Mama on purpose.” When Angelica was angry, she could go for the most vulnerable part of her adversary. Peggy had experienced that plenty during their squabbles.

  But Angelica ignored her. “I suppose if they capture Papa, they would take him to the British prison ships in New York harbor. Mr. Carter has written me appalling accounts—of so many Americans prisoners being crowded together into the ships’ holds that they almost suffocated for want of air. The pork and bread given them is unfit for humans, riddled with weevils. If they receive rations at all. Sometimes they go for days with nothing. Men afflicted with dysentery, dying in their own filth.”

  “Angelica!” Eliza whimpered, pushing away her pudding.

  Angelica didn’t pause, not even in pity for Eliza, which told Peggy just how much she wanted to rattle their mother. “The Redcoats terrorize Patriot officers for fun—condemning them to be hanged, making them ride coffins to the gallows, with ropes round their necks. Only to be told at the last minute, in front of a jeering crowd of the city’s Loyalist Tories, that they are to be spared.”

  Ashen, Catharine rose slowly from her chair. Peggy expected her to rail against Angelica’s bringing their father bad luck by even suggesting his being apprehended by the enemy. She was Old Dutch superstitious that way. But instead Catharine asked, “You have been in communication with Mr. Carter?” Her voice was icy.

  Angelica answered her mother’s cold imperiousness with hot defiance: “Papa only forbade him from this house. He said nothing of our exchanging letters. And you know, Mother, Mr. Carter has the ear of General Washington’s staff, a Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton in particular. Mr. Carter is to be a commissary for the army. Replacing that flour, those boots burned by the British at Danbury? That is now Mr. Carter’s job. As Papa himself said, an army that is starving or doesn’t have ammunition cannot fight. In fact, it is now rather unpatriotic to speak ill of Mr. Carter.”

  She stood up as well, eye to eye with Catharine. “I still want to marry him. It is my right. Our Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal. That all of us have God-given, unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Carter makes me happy.”

  Catharine snorted. “You ignore an important line in that document, Engeltje. As you just recited, the declaration says that all men are created equal. We women are still subject to the law of our husbands, and”—she emphasized the next words—“our fathers.”

  She stepped away from her chair and rested her hand on the chatelaine at her waist—a decorative silver belt clasp that held all the keys to the mansion’s cabinets and doors. “Your papa has forbidden your marrying this renegade. So I will be locking up the house from now on, for your safety.” She forced a brittle, authoritative smile. “And for your future pursuit of happiness.”

  She looked to her sons. “Finish your breakfast, children. In this crisis, it is a crime to waste food.” With that Catharine swept out of the room. From the hall came two loud clicks as the bolts shut on the front and back doors.

  That night, Angelica reclined in one of the wide window seats of the sisters’ bedroom, silently gazing out into the darkness. Eliza embroidered one of her intricate pictures in thread. Peggy sat on the edge of their bed, swinging her legs and reading aloud to them—Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded.

  “Well, but, Mrs. Jervis, said I, let me ask you, if he can stoop to like such a poor girl as me . . .” Peggy broke off reading and hurled the Richardson novel against the wall. “I know you wanted to hear it, Eliza, but I cannot read this insipid rubbish again!”

  Aghast, Eliza cried, “You shouldn’t throw a book, Peggy! You’ll break the binding.”

  “Oh, Eliza, we should do more than just break the binding of that novel. Don’t you remember that its heroine is almost raped by the master of the house, when he disguises himself as another housemaid to climb in bed with her? Then he claims he loves her but his family won’t let him marry her because of the social chasm between them?” Peggy flopped back on the bed, kicking and flailing her arms. “For pity’s sake!”

  Normally Peggy’s outrage with vacuous prose would have won applause from her oldest sister. But Angelica continued to stare out the window. Quietly, she said, “And there you have my plight.”

  “Oh my goodness, Angelica.” Eliza dropped her hoop-bound cloth. “Have you been . . . have you been . . .”

  “Attacked? By Mr. Carter? No. But my heart, my happiness are attacked, most assuredly. And if Mother had her way, she would marry me off to some boring idiot. Some mild-mannered Dutchman, I imagine. A Mr. Varick, for instance.”

  “Oh, Angelica, Richard Varick is not that bad,” replied Peggy.

  “Would you want to marry him?”

  “No!” Peggy made a face. “But that’s not the point, and not what Mama has suggested.”

  “Just wait. She might.” Angelica spoke without turning from the window.

  “What are you looking at?” Eliza asked. “Are . . . are you watching for Redcoats? Do you think it possible they will make it up here so fast?” Eliza’s voice was climbing into an anxious soprano. “Remember New York City? Within ten minutes of the first sighting of a British gunship, the whole bay was filled with boats. Like all of London was under sail and afloat. One minute none and a half hour later, thirty-two thousand Redcoats.”

  “Beyond West Point, the river is not deep enough for troop transports,” Peggy said, trying to assuage her fears.

  Angelica seemed oblivious. “Well, they can certainly land at Kingston and then make the march up in a few—” Suddenly, Angelica sat bolt upright, placing her hand on the windowpane. “He’s here,” she whispered.

  “Who? Papa?” Eliza scampered to the window to look out.

  But Peggy guessed instantly. Not their papa. Carter.

  Angelica swung excitedly out of the window seat. Her sudden movement and her voluminous skirts would have knocked Eliza over had Angelica not caught her by the elbow. “I have a secret,” she burbled with excitement. “Tonight, my dearest sisters, I elope with John Carter! You must help me escape.”

  Eliza fainted.

  After much fanning and coaxing, Eliza came to, propped up by her sisters, in a rainbow heap of petticoats, disheveled curls, and tears on pretty faces. “Don’t leave us, Angelica,” Eliza whimpered. “We won’t be the same without you.”

  “Think about this carefully, Angelica,” Peggy urged. “Papa told you this man is a gambler, a debtor! A murderer maybe!”

  “That’s rumor and Papa’s provincial opinion. No, Peggy. John told me all about the duel. It was over the honor of a lady who had fallen desperately in love with him. John was trying to protect her good name.”

  “How gallant,” murmured Eliza.

  “But Angelica”—Peggy continued to push for reason—“why did he have to flee England? Men fight duels all the time without having to run away.”

  “For the Revolution! And he’s heading to Boston now that the port is liberated. Things are happening there. The Sons of Liberty
are there.” Angelica grew more and more excited as she spoke. “Don’t you remember what it was like in New York City before the British Army invaded and occupied it? All those plays, the dance classes, the balls, the fox hunts, the concerts?

  “Remember listening to all those impassioned speeches at the Liberty Pole on the Common about liberty and human capabilities? Didn’t it make your mind soar? And stir your blood? Remember George Washington’s spectacular parade through the city when he was made the supreme commander of our armies? The fife and drums, the dress uniforms, all those young men, the gorgeous horses.”

  “Of course I remember!” Peggy interrupted. “Papa rode right beside General Washington in that parade. You are forgetting Papa, sister. Think how you will break his heart by doing this. Right at a time our countrymen need his full attention! Look at all the British maneuvers going on. Our city may become the critical battlefield of the war. Things will hardly be dull around here. Mark my words.”

  “Blood, cannon fire, and pain, yes.” Angelica nodded, sobering. “But no glory for us. No matter how much you and I might want to fight in the war, we cannot, Peggy. Women are not allowed to lead a charge.” She shrugged. “But I could help persuade foreign dignitaries to go back to their country and send us arms, gold, ships, and men. Emissaries from France and Spain are sailing into Boston to talk to our leaders and decide whether to support us. Mr. Carter will be talking with them, too, to find supplies for our armies. You know I would be good at such conversations. That way I can be a real part of the Revolution.”

  She flashed that disarming smile of hers. “Plus, if you are so worried about Papa, remember that his most vicious critics are from Boston—Samuel and John Adams. Perhaps I can charm them into relenting a bit.”

  Peggy sat back on her heels. She had no retort for that.

  Eliza had been looking back and forth between her sisters as they debated. “Do you love him very much, Angelica?”