Hamilton and Peggy!

by L. M. Elliott

“Oh, yes, sir. Right here!”

  “Miss Peggy!”

  Startled, Peggy fell forward out of the chair to her knees, and her sketchbook slid across the bleached, scrubbed floor to stop at Varick’s boots. Horrified, she held her fingers to her lips and looked at the colonel pleadingly. What could she say; what excuse for eavesdropping like this?

  But Varick just scrambled to lift her, and flushed as he drew her up and steadied her. “Are you hurt, Miss Peggy? Shall I get you water?” He led her to a chair and hovered as she sat down.

  Had he not seen what she was doing? Why was he smiling at her like that?

  A different kind of horror swept Peggy at that moment. Could her little brother John be right? Poor Colonel Varick. She felt nothing in return.

  Schuyler bellowing for his aide saved her from Varick’s infatuated concern. The colonel backed out of the room, gazing at her with that silly grin.

  Shamelessly, Peggy put her ear back to the keyhole just in time to hear her father explain that he and Harris had agreed to maintain his cover by sending Harris to Albany’s prison, ostensibly to await trial. Within a few days Schuyler would send private instructions to the jailer to release him, secretly, during the night.

  “Will that work, sir?” asked Harris.

  Peggy heard her father clap Harris on the back and answer, “We have done it before.” He opened his study and called the Patriot watch, who manhandled Harris out the front door.

  From the window, Peggy watched them drag Harris down the hill. Her father had allayed their disgruntlement at not getting to lynch their captive by pressing a few shillings into each of the men’s hands and explaining that a public hearing and execution would strike more fear into the hearts of Albany loyalists. As they disappeared, she noticed a cloud of dust and then a rider cresting the hill.

  “Papa!” Peggy called. “It’s another express!”

  This dispatch brought terrible news: Burgoyne and his British Army had reached Saratoga.

  But to Peggy, the next express was even worse. Two mornings later, as Schuyler swung himself into his saddle to ride to Saratoga to prepare for a do-or-die battle, in galloped a messenger from Congress. Schuyler leaned over to take the letter from the rider.

  His face fell as he read. After a moment, he dismounted, landing on the ground heavily. His expression made Peggy tremble with uncertainty and anticipation of god-awful news.

  “What is it, Philip?” Catharine asked with alarm. “Is it about Angelica? Eliza?”

  Schuyler handed the message to his wife. “John Adams and the New Englanders have won their campaign against me. Congress relieves me of command.”

  The bastards! “Oh, Papa, I am so sorry,” cried Peggy.

  But Schuyler did not answer. He stumbled toward the house, limping badly.

  Six

  Early Autumn

  Philip Schuyler to General George Washington

  Stilwater [New York], August 15th, 1777

  Dear Sir

  It is extremely chagrining to me to be deprived of the Command, at a Time when we shall . . . face the Enemy; when we are on the point of taking such Ground, where [Burgoyne] must attack to a Disadvantage . . . —When an opportunity will in all probability occur, in which I might evince that I am not what Congress has too plainly insinuated by their Resolution, taking the Command from me.

  I have the Honor to be Dr Sir with every Sentiment of Respect & Esteem Your Excellency’s most obedient humble Servant.

  Ph. Schuyler

  “HORATIO GATES? THAT ONEROUS TOADY?” VARICK fumed. “Congress is going to replace you with him? That lazy, selfish . . . ?”

  Schuyler help up his hand to stop his aide. “Yes. And he will need you, Richard. I have suggested you for his staff.”

  “No, sir.” Varick shook his head. “I will not leave you for General Gates. That man has taken two weeks to sashay his way up here being wined and dined while we are in such peril. No, sir.”

  “Colonel Varick.” Schuyler sighed. “Your country needs you, no matter who the commander.”

  “But sir, it is too unfair. You were the one to weaken Burgoyne by impeding his march. You rallied our militia. We are ready for this fight because of you. Gates is good for nothing other than politicking, his glasses slipping down that long nose of his as he pens poison. In fact”—Varick stood as if to make for pen and paper himself—“I think they should know that you . . .”

  “Richard, sit down.” Schuyler motioned to a chair. “I need you to focus on the work at hand. There is still much to be done. The battle at Saratoga will start any day now. I will not give in to resentment and fail to serve my country when she most needs me. Nor should you. We must do as I have told others: keep up our spirits, show no signs of fear, and act with vigor.”

  “But Philip, why do you continue working yourself to the bone for people who only disparage you?” Catharine railed.

  “Because, Mama”—Peggy finally spoke—“if he doesn’t, Burgoyne will take Albany, take the Hudson, and our Revolution is done for. Only Papa seems to really understand the critical nature of our geography and anticipate British strategy. Colonel Varick didn’t include in his list the fact Papa was the one to save Fort Stanwix and stop the British forces advancing down the Mohawk River. Because of Papa, we only have one British army to fight instead of two at once.”

  “That was not me, daughter. That was Benedict Arnold.”

  “You are too modest, Papa. You sent General Arnold to the fort’s rescue.”

  “Yes, but he devised the ruse that saved the fort.”

  “Because of the Oneida you sent ahead to scout the situation at the siege,” she countered.

  But indeed Arnold’s trick had been a brilliant, lifesaving, perhaps country-saving deceit. After a nineteen-day siege and threats to butcher them when the fort inevitably fell because of their refusal to surrender, the Americans inside were running out of water, ammunition, and hope. Arnold was within forty miles of it when he met up with the Oneida scouts sent by Schuyler. They warned Arnold that he was outnumbered two to one by the British force of Redcoats, Loyalists, Hessians, Senecas, and Mohawks.

  So Arnold sent in a false messenger to terrify his enemy instead, his plan like something out of The Iliad. Threatening to hang his brother if the man didn’t agree, Arnold ordered a captured Loyalist to run to the British and claim Arnold was coming with a vast army. The Loyalist did as Arnold demanded—staggering into the British camp, crying out that he had just escaped and showing as proof his coat, riddled with musket ball holes he had shot himself. Arnold was coming with fury and a thousand men, he panted.

  An hour later, one of the Oneida scouts ran in, claiming he, too, had managed to evade Arnold and two thousand well-armed Americans. Then a third supposed escapee raced to the lines, this time insisting Arnold was pursuing him with three thousand troops.

  The Mohawks and Senecas—already mourning the fact that they were fighting other Iroquois tribes they had called brothers for several generations—decided to quit the siege. They withdrew into the surrounding wilderness. Arnold’s fighting prowess and do-or-die courage was already infamous and intimidating to the British as well. Despite the fact his soldiers were a mere 150 yards from the fort’s walls, St. Leger marched his regulars back to Lake Ontario.

  “Truly, Papa”—Peggy pressed her point—“you must give yourself credit.”

  Schuyler shrugged, shifting the foot he had elevated on pillows. “As General Washington says, we will only win against Britain’s professional soldiers with frontier-style cunning. He himself has saved his forces by using decoys and evacuating into fogs.”

  Catharine noticed Schuyler wince as he spoke, and put another pillow beneath his leg. His gout was plaguing him badly. “Rest, Philip. If you are not better on the morrow, I am fetching the surgeon to bleed you,” she said. Then she left from the room to prepare him willow-bark tea.

  But Peggy knew there was no resting for her father. He had a full day ahead of him, meeting with
delegations who still sought his expertise and advice.

  “Is there anything I can do to help you, Papa?” Peggy asked. What she really wanted to do was to ride to Congress and thwack them all—just as Shakespeare’s Beatrice railed against the courtier casting pernicious attacks on her sister’s honor: O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace.

  Schuyler smiled wanly at her. “Find a way to pour that willow tea your sweet mama is brewing for me into a chamber pot?”

  Albany’s leaders arrived, bustling in, clad in self-importance and dark, Dutch-modest frock coats, no hint of lace frippery. Peggy knew their speech would be heartfelt but boring. She slipped out of the house to enjoy what she loved most about “The Pastures,” as Schuyler had named his estate—its grounds. She could spend hours in their flower gardens and as a child had delighted in petting the soft fleece of the young lambs or playing a dangerous game of tag with the goats who loved to butt intruders. The estate always felt so alive. Now, standing on their hilltop, she happily breathed in the fresh breezes blowing up the river. The air carried a hint of crispness. Scanning the far coast, she could even spot a few maple trees mottled with the first splashes of orange. The beauty of early Autumn along the Hudson belied the danger marching south along its wake.

  Perhaps some of the apples in the orchard were ready. Rather than going to sit in their formal gardens as she had planned, Peggy fairly skipped to the acres of fruit trees on the north side of their estate. Bordered by Beaver Creek, the orchard hummed with the chorus of honeybees drifting from tree to tree and the laughter of small waters cascading to the river below. It was one of her favorite spots—riotous with pink and white blossoms and their perfume in the spring, a paradise of shade in the summer heat, and a bower of sweet, ripe fruit to be plucked in the fall.

  The very first tree she came to slumped over with the weight of its red apples. She pulled down one the size of a man’s fist, and bit into tart sweetness. Heaven. Peggy bit again, her teeth breaking off a quarter of the apple whole. She munched noisily, juice running down her chin, blissfully happy, like an ancient druid tree-worshipper. She wandered from tree to tree, picking a few more choice red orbs, tucking them into her pocket as she devoured her apple. Then she sucked its juice from the core. Mmmm-mmm-mmm.

  She turned and startled to see little Cicero, the stable boy.

  Embarrassed, Peggy wiped her face with her handkerchief. She pulled one of the apples she’d stuffed into her pockets to hand to the lad. “They are quite wonderful this year.”

  He took it solemnly.

  Cicero had only recently come to the Schuyler family, hired out by a widow in Albany. She was an elderly lady who had remained loyal to the king in her parlor conversation and, as a result, had been thrown into financial upheaval in a city controlled by Patriots. The Revolution was costing so much in human lives. The old woman was politically harmless, her Loyalist stance bred by having family still living in Great Britain, a strong faith in the Church of England, and fear of the unknown. Peggy speculated the transaction had also wrenched poor Cicero away from all the people he loved. “Is there something I can help you with?” she asked gently.

  “No, ma’am. There’s a man down to the wharfs what wants to speak with the general. But I’m afraid to go into the house with all them gentlemen folk.”

  “Won’t the man come to the house?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Why not?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Well, it cannot be important, then,” Peggy said. She took a bite of another apple—a smaller, more appropriately dainty bite. “Try yours, Cicero. They’re perfect.”

  “Begging your pardon, miss, but the man, he say it urgent. He say if I cannot get to the general to ask for the clever young lady. The one so interested in—he made me repeat it so I got it right—‘so interested in candles and knives.’”

  Peggy about choked. “Where is he exactly?”

  “By your papa’s wharf.”

  Racing down the steep hill to the Hudson, Peggy burst onto the large common grazing pastures along the river bank, owned by the Dutch Reformed Church. The fields were usually deep in green grasses and peaceful. But now they were trodden and muddy because of the hundreds of half-starved cows driven into the city by terrified settlers fleeing the British Army.

  At first, the refugees had jammed Albany’s streets with their wagons and livestock, encamped there with nowhere else to go. Besides blocking all carriage traffic, the garbage and waste of so many people and animals living outdoors threatened to spread disease. So the city fathers had ordered all their cattle pastured here, their owners lodged wherever they could beg a roof or in houses the city confiscated from known Tory Loyalists. It had been quite a fight to separate the farmers from their cows. Unaccustomed to being so confined and in such a large mass, the animals were restless, anxious—an echo of the city and its frightened refugees and residents.

  Peggy met an almost deafening mooing as she set the cattle running ahead of her.

  Reaching the wharf, she was surprised to see how crowded it was as well, with people hurriedly loading boats and rafts. Usually their dock received sloops belonging to her father or doing business with him—most tradesmen and fishing boats went upriver to the city’s two large wharves or the seawall that calmed the Hudson’s currents into a still harbor. She asked one of the dockworkers the reason for the hubbub.

  “We’re heading south, miss. Word is Loyalists plan to set fire to the city right as Burgoyne approaches.”

  Peggy backed away, chewing on her lip. If her father’s intelligence was right, sailing south wasn’t exactly safe, either. She needed to find out what Moses Harris knew. She kept walking, scanning faces.

  She finally recognized him, dressed in fisherman rags, trying to braid rope. Peggy had spent enough time around her father’s ships to see the spy-courier really didn’t know how to make rigging. Anyone who knew a thing about boats would spot that he was an amateur. But clearly he wanted to be incognito. So Peggy slowly wandered toward him, pretending to inspect the fish being hauled up in baskets.

  “Hello, miss.” He stood and tipped his hat. “Would you be interested in some oysters I brought up from downriver?”

  “Why, yes, sir, I would.”

  “This way, then; I be keeping them in the shade.”

  She followed him away from potential listeners. “Wouldn’t it be better for you to come to the house, Sar . . .” His frown stopped her from saying his rank or name.

  “No, miss. I’m taking a chance being here at all. After being hauled off to the Albany dungeons, all sides know me face. It were necessary, I know, for the general to allow me jailed—part of the game—but I cannot be caught again here. I am dizzy with all the lies I have told. I fear making a mistake in my story. Although a bit of outraged innocence can get you out of a heap of trouble. Remember that if you get caught in a bear trap yourself, miss.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” she breathed.

  “Well, you take a bit of a risk, coming here to talk with me, miss. There are still plenty of Loyalists and turncoats in this city. If they realize you be talking to me, well . . .” He shrugged.

  Peggy couldn’t help looking over her shoulder.

  “But here’s what you do,” Harris continued. “Them last letters I took to Burgoyne—the ones your father stuffed with lies and false orders to throw the Brits off our scent—they so fooled Burgoyne he thought he’d caught news that would be General Washington’s undoing. So he ordered me take them all the way to St. John’s. Canada! Once I got there, half-starved and footsore, mind you, the British royal governor and his men accuse me of treachery. Everyone accuses me of that. I am getting a bit tired of it, miss, truth be told.

  “So I tore open my shirt, I did, and bared my chest, telling them to shoot me then and there. It was worse’n than death, I said, to be suspected of disloyalty to my king.” He laughed. “I so impressed them they gave me some new messages for Burgoyn
e.”

  “Goodness, I’m not sure I could playact that well.” Peggy laughed.

  Harris grinned at her, pleased. Then his smile faded. “Of course they regretted their decision and sent runners after me. I escaped them and got to my uncle’s. But that old cur has begun to suspect me, too. Some of his villains dragged me off to an island in the big swamp east of Sandy Hill. They strung me up on a tree to get me to confess, only letting me down as I saw stars and black and St. Peter at the gates. They did that to me three times. Three! That last time,” he muttered, shaking his head, “I thought for sure I’d die. So I committed a betrayal.”

  “Oh no; you didn’t tell them of your mission, did you?”

  “What? Of course not, miss.” He looked at her indignantly. “But I did betray my brothers, the Masons.” He shook his head with sadness.

  Peggy knew secrets were vitally important to the ancient fraternity of Masons. The order was full of rituals, symbolism related to the symmetry of stonemasons’ tools, and promised their members a path to moral certainty.

  “I was so afeard swinging from that branch,” continued Harris, “that I gave our sacred hailing sign of distress—with a dying man’s hope that someone there might be a brother Mason. And you know what?” He paused theatrically, the consummate storyteller. “The captain of that gang were one himself. He cut me down.” He studied her a moment. “I’d show you the signal, miss, but I sworn an oath.”

  “That’s all right,” Peggy reassured him. “I don’t think anyone would believe me a Mason anyway.”

  “No, I suppose not, miss. A pity, that. You would make a good one if you weren’t wearing skirts.” He grinned. “Please tell the general that I will wait with Mr. Fish in Easton.”

  “A Mr. Fish?”

  “Aye, miss. He is the go-between the general set for me.”

  There was a prearranged go-between now? “You have been to the house since I last saw you?” Peggy asked with surprise, annoyed that she had not known of it.

  He shrugged.

  Hmpf. “Well . . . do you have anything for my father?”