Peggy looked at her quizzically. How could one person possibly be blamed for an entire war?
Reading her mind, Martha nodded. “It’s true. Before the war was formally declared, George was in a terrible fight at Fort Necessity. He was young. It was his first command. He positioned his men badly. Many were killed. He had to surrender.” She sighed. “The terms were written in French, badly translated to English by one of his junior officers, who did not understand the paper claimed that in a previous skirmish, in which a French officer had been killed, my George knowingly assassinated a French nobleman, an official of King Louis’s court. To the French, that was a barbarous insult, requiring retribution and all-out war.”
She took both Peggy’s hands and waited until Peggy met her gaze before continuing. “Colonel Hamilton will be by the general’s side during these strategy talks. But there will be many other conversations among French officers that might bear important nuances. And certainly social connections and comfort always make for tighter alliances, my dear. I heard my old man say that Mrs. Carter’s husband will be the commissary for the French army. She will want to join him, surely, at Newport. So you could travel to Rhode Island with your sister. I would ask Mrs. Carter my favor, but”—Martha paused—“I think in her effervescence she might not notice the littler comments that sometimes bear the most fruit.” She squeezed Peggy’s hands. “May I enlist your help?”
“Almost like a spy?” Peggy whispered eagerly.
Martha’s return smile was warm and motherly. “Let’s say as a lovely female of diplomacy with a good memory for conversation and a wise eye for recognizing implications.”
Peggy smiled, feeling her eyebrow shoot up. Far better than sewing!
Thirteen
Summer
Journals of French officers under Rochambeau:
The fair sex here is really unusual in its modesty and sweetness of demeanor. Nature has endowed the women of Rhode Island with very fine features; their complexion is clear; their hands and feet generally small . . . One sees few malformed women . . . They all like dancing, and they engage in it unpretentiously, as is their manner in general.
—Baron Ludwig von Closen, Rochambeau aide-de-camp
We were frequently invited to private houses. There seemed to be a rivalry among the residents to see who would serve the richest fare and have the largest number of guests at dinner.
—Baron Gaspard de Gallatin
JOHN CARTER SLAMMED DOWN HIS GLASS OF Madeira, his wine sloshing onto the tablecloth. Peggy realized the man was drunk. But if her sister was embarrassed, it did not show. Angelica continued to smile regally, keeping her eyes glued to her husband, as if what he was saying was profoundly interesting.
Peggy sat across from her in a small clapboard house that Carter was renting in Newport, Rhode Island. They were not alone. Lafayette had arrived with messages for Rochambeau from Washington. But the French army had landed only a few days earlier and was frantically fortifying the harbor and town, having spotted the British fleet lurking off the coast. Lafayette’s meeting must wait. Most men would have been insulted by that dismissal by his own countryman, but the ebullient Lafayette instead happily accepted Angelica’s dinner invitation. He brought with him his own brother-in-law, Vicomte de Noailles, and Hamilton’s most dedicated jester, McHenry, who was now Lafayette’s aide-de-camp. Plus, his old friend the Marquis de Fleury, the Frenchman he planned to matchmake with Peggy. She had to give Lafayette credit. Fleury was—well, in a word, gorgeous. Disarmingly so.
“So I told them,” crowed Carter, “when they were dining at my house—captives, mind you—and they still dared to raise a glass to the king—I told them that for every village and farm that Burgoyne and his officers and German devil Hessians had pillaged and set fire to, that we should behead one of their officers. Then we’d put those heads in small barrels, salt them, and ship them all back to England at once. That certainly would send the king the message that his henchmen don’t belong in America any longer!” He pounded the table and guffawed. “Well, you should have seen Baroness von Reidesel’s pretty little face crumple. She looked at me as if I were some monster!”
A stunned silence fell around the table. Of course most everyone there felt the same outrage at British atrocities, but the gory suggestion of pickled heads was a bit barbaric. It was particularly cruel for Carter to needle the young baroness in such a way, since her Hessian husband was in Boston as a prisoner of war.
Peggy felt her stomach twist. Was he that uncouth and mean in the way he talked to Angelica in private? She could find no clue on her beautiful sister’s party-perfect expression.
And what was he trying to accomplish with these French noblemen with such bragging? Carter’s emotional ties to the nation’s cause seemed thin at best. Maybe if he had taken up arms for America—like the immigrants Hamilton or McHenry—rather than making a profit off supplying her army, Peggy might feel differently. But right now his posturing seemed . . . seemed . . . Queen Gertrude’s line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet was all that came to mind: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
She glanced around the table. Lafayette and his French officer friends seemed frozen in time. This was awful. Why didn’t Angelica say something? She looked again at her beautiful, whip-smart older sister, those wide dark-mahogany eyes. They glistened. Angelica was fighting off tears.
All right, this was up to her. Peggy quick-searched her own mind, but it was actually the Frenchmen’s slightly baffled look that guided her. Carter’s little speech was so outrageous, she could tell they were questioning if they had really understood his English words!
She turned to Fleury and said, “What an excellent metaphor for the English losing their heads—being so confused by American bravery and tactics that their heads might as well have been in barrels.” She repeated herself in French so he understood her precisely, and then finished it with a light laugh.
The men laughed politely in return. Angelica’s eyes kissed her.
“Major.” Peggy hurried to change the subject before Carter could speak again. “I have been admiring that medal about your neck. May I?”
Fleury leaned forward so that the medal and its chain fell toward her. He leaned a little closer than she had expected, smelling of leather and shaving soap. She tried not to be distracted by his typically French good looks—thick dark hair, a lean face with a strongly cut jawline, a long straight Roman-statue perfect nose, and a wide, full-lipped mouth. There were already laugh lines around his dark eyes, but his tanned skin was taut. Not a youth—a man in his prime.
Peggy concentrated on the medal, suddenly embarrassed and hesitant.
On the face of the medal, a soldier dressed like a Roman centurion stood amid ruins, holding an unsheathed sword in one hand and in the other a flag, pointed down so that his bare feet trampled it. At the base was Fleury’s name. Along the top, she read aloud, “Virtutis et Audacle Monum et Praemium.” She paused and then translated, “Commemoration and reward for courage and boldness.”
“Vous savez aussi le Latin?” Fleury complimented the fact she knew Latin as well as French.
“A little,” she answered shyly, not looking up.
“Mademoiselle Peggy, you know not this story?” Lafayette asked. “Mon Dieu! This man is one of the Revolution’s great heroes. Congress struck this medal in honor of Fleury’s courage at Stony Point. Only General Washington was before so honored. Turn it over!”
On the back, etched in the silver, was Stony Point: a clover-shaped fort atop a jutting cliff, surrounded by water. Again, Peggy translated the motto along the medal’s top rim: “Aggeres Paludes Hostes Victi. Victory over fortifications, marshes, enemies.”
Fleury nodded as she glanced up into his face. Words stuck in her throat at his penetrating look.
All Americans knew about the daring raid on New York’s Stony Point. Less than fifteen miles south of West Point, the craggy peninsula jutted into the Hudson River. Taken and heavily fortified by the Briti
sh, who called it “Little Gibraltar,” Stony Point gave the Redcoats command of the river from there south to New York City. It also gave the British the perfect launch point to attack West Point—the American stronghold that protected the northern portion of the Hudson River stretching to Albany and beyond.
Exactly one year before, July 1779, at midnight, a group of handpicked Americans had managed to scramble up 150-foot cliffs and take the fort. Their surprise attack victory had been an enormous morale boost to all Patriots.
“Oh my” was all Peggy could demur in sincere admiration as she dropped the silver medal, which suddenly felt searing hot. “You led that bold venture?”
“Non. Pas moi. General Wayne.”
“Oh, my dear marquis,” interjected Lafayette. “You are too modest. I have learned an English proverb about hiding one’s light beneath a bushel.”
Fleury looked at him quizzically.
“Light is not to be hidden, but revealed! Like freedom! Lift the basket, mon ami!” Lafayette grinned. “Let me.” He turned to Peggy. “Perhaps the marvelous details have not been told yet entire to the nation. This was an attack extraordinaire. Such risks. In darkness. In silence. Absolument. Unloaded muskets. Fixed bayonets only. This was to be a deadly hand-to-hand duel.”
Peggy was transfixed—as if Lafayette was Homer recounting Odysseus’s legendary journey.
“The approach was hellish. Waist-high water in the marsh. Then rows and rows of spikes! The British had stripped the cliffs of all trees and turned them to spears, anchored in the hills. Twenty brave Patriots were assigned the ‘Forlorn Hope’—the task to cut gaps through those rows of spears so that the marquis and his men could slide through and—voilà!—climb the battlements.
“Need I tell you, Mademoiselle Peggy, that the odds of success were minuscule. Of death immense! Imaginez: The men of the Forlorn Hope chop with their axes. Their blows awake the Redcoats. The British fire down onto our courageous men. Many are killed. General Wayne is struck in his head and falls. But our marquis, our Fleury, rallies his men. He charges through the tiny gaps in the spikes cut at such a price of blood and death. Then he, our Fleury, is the very first to leap over the fortification! He fights his way to the British flagpole and tears down the hated Redcoat flag.”
Lafayette pointed to his friend’s chest. “And there it is, commemorated!”
Everyone at the table was riveted by the retelling. The enslaved servants had hung by the door, decanter and trays in hand, listening, too. Lafayette looked around at his audience with great satisfaction, his face pink from the excitement of the tale.
Fleury merely smiled. Then he shrugged. “All were brave. The glory belongs to all. When he thought he might die, dear General Wayne demanded to be carried into the fort. He said if his wound was to kill him, he wished to die at the head of the column.”
Lafayette interrupted, “Perhaps this is why his men call him ‘Mad’ Anthony.”
Fleury laughed. It was a nice, deep rumble. “Toutefois, he was our inspiration. The message General Wayne sent to His Excellency that night was brief. The best example. He said the fort was ours. Our officers and soldiers behaved like men determined to be free. C’est tout. That is all.”
Carter destroyed the spell. “I hear that Washington offered a bounty to the first man to enter the fortifications. Five hundred dollars if the rumor is correct.”
“Strong proof of the danger!” Lafayette exclaimed, trying to keep the atmosphere heroic.
“A small fortune,” said Carter. He leaned back in his chair and eyed Fleury. “I hope you spent it well, and gave yourself a just reward for the risks you took.” His tone was overly playful.
Fleury frowned slightly and looked to Lafayette.
With some embarrassment, Peggy clarified. “Mr. Carter wonders how you celebrated that victory, given General Washington’s reward.” She repeated herself in French.
“Oh, I did not keep the money,” said Fleury. “I divided it among my men. We shared the danger. We share the reward.”
Without realizing she was doing it, Peggy sighed deeply.
This time, Angelica kicked her under the table.
A few weeks later, Peggy sat in a carriage with Angelica and Carter, waiting for a large delegation of Oneida, Tuscarora, and Caughnawaga warriors to ride into Newport to meet Rochambeau. Their papa had sent them from Albany, to be reassured that the French forces had indeed joined the Patriots. The British were claiming the alliance between France and the United States was a lie.
Peggy had brought her sketchbook to record them. She was flipping through drawings she had made of Oneida sachems when Fleury trotted up on a tall bay horse. He was stunning in the uniform of the Saintonge Regiment: white linen breeches and canvas gaiters, a white coat and waistcoat piped and faced in dark green, with matching cuffs and vertical rows of gilt buttons.
“Bonjour,” he called, nodding at Angelica and Carter before riveting that intense gaze of his on her. The French troops had been so busy settling into quarters, constructing barracks, and building fortifications around the harbor she had talked with him only briefly a few times since the dinner party. Her face was carefully shaded beneath her wide straw bonnet, yet she felt her cheeks turn pink—much to her self-conscious annoyance.
“I did not know you are an artist aussi, mademoiselle.”
Peggy smiled nervously, forgetting to close up the sketchbook.
Noticing her younger sister’s uncharacteristic reserve, Angelica spoke for her. “She is actually quite good.” Her big sister scooped up the book and held it out for the marquis to peruse before Peggy could protest.
“C’est magnifique!” Fleury exclaimed as he pointed to one sketch of a chief with feathers festooning his head, a fur crossing his chest, and sandal leathers coiling up his calves.
“You do not wear your medal this afternoon, Marquis,” Carter commented.
“I wear it for special moments.” He smiled warmly at Peggy. “My dear friend Lafayette told me the night I meet the Schuyler sisters was such an occasion.”
“You are too kind, monsieur,” said Angelica, nudging Peggy to say something, anything.
Words stuck in her throat until Fleury said, “General Rochambeau has gold and silver medals to give the chiefs today. On them is King Louis on his coronation. I hope they will like?”
“Oh, they will see it as an honor and a sign of respect.” Peggy found her voice finally. “The Iroquois commemorate their peace treaties with gifts. They revere symbolism. Two different-colored rows in a wampum belt, for instance, means that the two tribes support each other but neither will interfere with or dominate the other. The belts are quite beautiful, made of tiny beads of whelk and quahog shells.”
“I didn’t know that you knew so much about the Iroquois, Peggy,” said Angelica.
“Well, we’ve grown up with them.” She wondered how Angelica couldn’t know them as well as she did, but then realized her big sister was trying to give Peggy the stage. That recognition pulled her up short. How many times had Angelica done that for her before and Peggy simply hadn’t seen it because of little-sister insecurity that she could never be as captivating or clever as Angelica?
She smiled gratefully to her big sister before continuing. “I hope you have the chance to really talk with them, Monsieur Fleury. They are so brave, but also so loyal to family and to those they believe in. They keep to their promises. And they are kind.” She turned to Angelica. “Remember Polly Cooper?”
Angelica nodded. “Tell the marquis,” she prodded.
Peggy glanced up at Fleury, gauging his interest. She had yet to learn if he valued human stories as much as military ones.
“S’il vous plaît, mademoiselle.”
“Well,” she began, “the winter before last, when our troops were starving at Valley Forge, the Oneida gathered six hundred baskets of their own corn and carried them all the way from New York. A clan mother, Polly Cooper, came along to show the troops how to grind the kernels and boil
the meal into a soup mixed with fruits and nuts. Their white corn must be prepared a certain way or it makes people dreadfully sick. The Oneida probably saved hundreds of lives with that generosity. It meant their own people ate less that winter. Mrs. Washington gave Polly a beautiful black shawl as thanks.”
“Incroyable! That and courage. Both! Lafayette told me that his army would have been devastated, he a British prisoner at Barren Hill, had it not been for the Oneida.”
Peggy nodded. She knew this story, too. Washington had sent Lafayette to monitor British movements, but local Tories alerted the Redcoats. The Brits sent out eight thousand men to capture Lafayette—nabbing him would be a tremendous propaganda coup. They outnumbered the Patriots four to one. It would have been a catastrophe had not a forward scouting party of Oneidas and Patriot riflemen heard the Redcoats’ horses coming along the road and opened fire on the British line from the woods. With that screen, Lafayette was able to rush his troops across the Schuylkill River—holding hands so the current wouldn’t drag them downstream. Lafayette’s second in command only survived because two Oneida managed to grab and carry the injured French aristocrat to the river just as two British cavalrymen were descending on him.
“Here they are now,” Carter said, and pointed.
Nineteen sinewy men rode into camp, near naked given the late summer heat. They rode erect and tall and essentially bareback—only blankets for saddles and ropes for bridles. One foot was bare in deference to the French general. Their simplicity contrasted starkly with Rochambeau’s entourage, at attention, in their high boots and spotless, buttoned-up, gold-braided uniforms, broiling in the American sunshine. Suddenly the regally clad Europeans looked a bit ridiculous to Peggy.
She spotted the Oneida sachem who had led the delegation to Albany and with whom she had shared family memories. She could tell Rochambeau was speaking, greeting them, but she couldn’t hear. “Oh, I wish I were closer,” she murmured.
Hamilton and Peggy! Page 17