The crowd thundered approval. The leaders got back on their horses, making ready to parade together this time.
“They must be heading to Wadsworth’s house now,” Carter shouted.
“Do you know the way?” Angelica asked.
“I assume I can follow the masses,” he answered with a laugh.
Peggy heard their exchange over the din but had kept her eyes glued to Fleury. She saw Rochambeau speak to him, saw Fleury and Hamilton kiss each other’s cheeks in the French custom of faire la bise.
As the fife and drums struck up the march “The Road to Boston,” she strained to see past the flags and handkerchiefs waving in time to the music. She thought she saw Hamilton and Fleury riding together. Then they disappeared from view. She twisted and peered. There they were! Riding straight for Peggy’s carriage.
Hamilton swept off his tricorn hat in greeting. His buff-and-blue uniform was decidedly cleaner than last time she’d seen him, and his hat’s decorative cockade fresh—a gift from Eliza. “The Schuyler sisters!” he called, grinning, and held his hat to his heart as he bowed. Peggy smiled back at his chivalrous gesture—he really must think himself a knight of the round table or something equally grand, she mused. Then she realized Fleury was spurring his horse to her side of the carriage. She caught her breath at the urgency with which he moved toward her.
Did she imagine it, or did he say, “Ma chérie”? Oh, how she wanted to scream at the multitude to quiet so she could hear.
As the people of Hartford cheered, Fleury leaned over from his saddle, clasped her waist, and pulled her to her feet so he could press his lips to her ear. “There is no time to say all. Rochambeau orders I return to Newport immediatement to report his safe arrival. I will write. I have something to explain.”
Muskets fired into the air in jubilation and Fleury’s horse spooked, half rearing and turning to look about fearfully. The carriage swayed and dipped. Peggy suddenly felt her feet dangling in the air. Fleury held her up, but if his grasp loosened, she’d fall, crushed between carriage and horse!
Fleury’s embrace tightened. And there Peggy hovered, five feet off the ground, cradled in his arm. She could feel his muscles tighten and strain as he supported her while trying to calm his horse with his other hand on the reins. She flung her arms around his neck to help, pulling herself close to his chest so they both didn’t topple over, tipped like a scale by her weight. They laughed—his rumble and her surprised, nervous giggle melding into one triumphant mutual gasp of jubilation at avoiding disaster.
She waited for him to drop her back into the carriage. But he didn’t. Suspended together, Fleury kissed her. Kissed her good-bye with bittersweet urgency, pushing his soul into hers for a fleeting, rapturous breath, a promise of possibilities, of life stolen from catastrophe as the horse danced beneath them.
Then he swung Peggy back into the carriage. She made herself let go. With a gentle caress of her face, a brush of his fingertips on her cheek, Fleury rode away.
The fife and drums played on.
Later that night, after dinner, Hamilton teased Peggy. “Well, that good-bye was certainly impressive, little sister. I can hardly wait to tell Lafayette that he is as good as Cupid.”
Peggy smiled absentmindedly. She really hadn’t been paying much attention to any comment or anyone that evening. The candlelit parlor, the polite repartee, the women tittering, the men boasting; it all seemed so tepid.
“I admire your . . . abandon.”
At that, Peggy was all attention. Her eyebrow shot up, suspecting disapproval.
“No, truly.” Hamilton had caught her expression of concern. “Such zest for life, in a woman, is exquisite, intoxicating to behold. And such independence; shall I even say initiative?” He grinned at her. “Remarkable. Mythic. Very like Diana, the huntress goddess who breaks so many hearts.”
Peggy ignored the banter in the compliment. This night, after that kiss, she was only interested in honesty. She shrugged. “Playing games, now, during a war, just . . .” Peggy hesitated. She was slipping into unusually frank and rather taboo conversation with a man. But he was to be her brother, wasn’t he? “I just am not particularly interested in flirtation as other girls are taught to be. I never was very good at it anyway.”
“Is your sister?”
“Eliza?” She laughed gently. “No.” She turned her head to look at him reassuringly, and realized Hamilton was gazing away from her. She followed his eyes and saw that he was looking at Angelica.
Which sister had he meant? What was it between him and Angelica? Was Hamilton falling under her spell as well? Peggy reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Sincerity is the best kind of love, don’t you think . . . brother?”
Hamilton’s pretty face turned that peach color Peggy had come to recognize occurred when he was embarrassed or caught in a thought. But he decided to follow her lead and be direct: “I just wish Eliza would write me more often. The infrequency of her letters makes me worry someone else is courting her. You must report to me any man who approaches her from now on. Agreed?” He ended on a jaunty tone, but Peggy could tell there was an undercurrent of seriousness in what Hamilton said.
“She’s not like that, Alexander. You must trust her. She is a Penelope.”
“Well, let’s hope I am not an Odysseus, at war for a decade and then unable to find his way home for another. And those sirens! Calypso!” Peggy didn’t take the literary bait of Odysseus’s temptations, so Hamilton turned thoughtful. “Tilghman calls her ‘the little saint.’”
“Ha!” Peggy nodded. “Well . . . she’s not.”
“But her letters . . . My letters are . . . hers are . . .”
Peggy laughed at him. She couldn’t help it. For such a preening verbal peacock, he was almost childlike in such moments.
Much—Peggy suddenly realized—as she must sound sometimes in her own insecurities, her little-sister competitiveness, her worry that when compared to Angelica and Eliza she came up short, inferior. She hesitated before speaking again. She might have quite a bit in common personality-wise with Hamilton.
But Peggy drew herself back to the point at hand. It was vitally important that Eliza’s future husband understand and appreciate her still waters. “Eliza is not a confident writer, Alexander. That’s all. She is self-conscious about it since letter writing is deemed a skill that’s proof of a lady’s sophistication. But you could not be blessed with a better, more devoted and thoughtful wife than my middle sister.”
Glancing toward Angelica, who had a ring of men about her, Peggy continued, “It can be hard to be the younger sister of a learned and witty and captivating woman. Out of fear of being compared and found wanting, it is safer sometimes to remain quiet. Eliza’s choice of words can be simpler than Angelica’s, but the ocean of her feeling is vast and deep. Far more lasting than any surface ripples of witticisms or clever turns of phrase.”
Hamilton sighed. Nodded. Then he almost whispered, “I worry Eliza does not fully realize that she could be shackling herself to a poor man. I have no property. No personal victory in battle to make my name and my future. Your lover Fleury understands this—it is why he joined the army, why he came to America, to find glory and thus elevate himself.”
At this Peggy frowned. Fleury had come because he believed in liberty, the cause. Hadn’t he? What did her soon-to-be brother know of the Frenchman she had fallen in love with? “Alexander . . . ,” she began to ask.
But Carter sauntered up and interrupted them. “Wadsworth has brought out the grog, my friend. As scintillating as I know our Peggy is, we men have want of you, Hammie, before the dancing begins.” The way he pulled out the word scintillating made it sound like a sneer. But looking at him more carefully, Peggy quickly realized Carter was tipsy and just beginning to slur his words.
Hamilton stood. What he said next made Peggy like him all the more.
“I have actually been wanting to speak with you as well, sir. This month, the Continental Army has received on
ly four or five days’ rations of meal. This distress at such a stage of the campaign sours the soldiery. We lost the port of Charleston in May mainly from the want of a sufficient supply of provisions. And last month, Gates, puffed up with arrogance, foolishly attacked the British in Camden, paying no attention to the fact his troops were ravaged with dysentery for lack of proper food and medicines. As a result, he lost that battle and two thousand Patriots to death or capture by the Redcoats. Our men are beyond dispirited. They need supplies, Mr. Carter!”
Carter was clearly taken aback. “I work for the French army now, mon ami,” he blustered.
Materializing from thin air, it seemed, came Angelica, a fluttering rush of Patriot-blue satin and French perfume. Peggy suddenly realized that her big sister’s tendency to flit about a party from group to group might have more to do with saving her husband from embarrassment and fights than with entertaining herself. Oh, Angelica, what a waste of your magnificence, Peggy thought sadly.
“Gentlemen.” Angelica flipped open her ivory-carved fan and swept it back and forth, back and forth, hypnotic. “Governor Trumbull and I were just discussing Thomas Paine and his latest call to action. Have you read it, Colonel Hamilton? He feels the fall of Charleston has called forth a spirit akin to the flame of 1776. That the valor of a country is best learned from the bravery of its soldiery.” She smiled. “Surely the men in this room represent that as well as the best and noblest cause that ever a country engaged in.”
“Certainly it is among the soldiers that I place my hopes,” Hamilton answered.
A stiff silence fell.
“Oh dear.” Angelica’s throaty laugh sounded like a quick-dazzle run of notes on a harpsichord. “I must have interrupted a serious conversation. I beg your forgiveness.” She bowed her head slightly, holding her open fan to her lips—a well-known invitation to kiss someone in the language of fans.
Both men stared at her. Then Hamilton shook his head as if to throw off a daydream. He found his manners. “The truth is I am an unlucky honest man,” he apologized, “that speaks my sentiments to all and with emphasis. I was letting my emotions override my manners. Forgive me, Mr. Carter. I hope you will not charge me with vanity.” He added with boyish angst and humorous self-deprecation: “I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves.”
They all laughed with him.
“But the truth is we are in dire financial straits,” Hamilton continued, “even with the French army arriving. The old man will despair if we cannot prod Rochambeau to battle soon, to try to conclude this war as soon as possible. The army is bankrupt. Congress is bankrupt. The country is bankrupt. Washington has exhausted his private resources. He had to borrow money from various persons for us to afford the trip here. I do not know how we will reckon with the bill at the various taverns in which we lodge at Hartford for this conference.”
His face clouded with a raw embarrassment at the thought of having to go a-begging for his dinner funds. Peggy’s instinct was to hug him, in sympathy and understanding, but could tell that would be the worst possible affront to his sense of honor.
Angelica thought a moment and then glanced toward the governor. “Excuse me,” she said, and regally glided toward Connecticut’s top politicians, her fan sweeping the air seductively about her gorgeous face.
Within an hour, Governor Trumbull announced his state would be picking up the bill for the Patriots’ historic talks with the French. All of them.
That’s when Hamilton asked Angelica to dance. Somehow during the effervescent circles and sashays of a cotillion, one of Angelica’s garters slipped from her leg and appeared on the floor. Alexander Hamilton swept it up and presented it to her on bended knee, to the applause of fellow dancers. He lingered over the kiss he pressed to her hand as she took the garter from him.
“My knight of the garter,” Angelica quipped.
A would-be knight of the bedchamber, thought Peggy. She was being separated from her own lover and sent home in part to assuage Eliza’s growing anxieties. How in the world was she to prepare sweet, steady Eliza for such an enrapturing but quicksilver man?
Sixteen
Autumn
Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler
Robinson’s House, Highlands, Sepr 25 1780
In the midst of my letter, I was interrupted by a scene that shocked me more than any thing I have met with—the discovery of a treason of the deepest dye. The object was to sacrifice West Point. General Arnold had sold himself to [the British and] . . . fled to the enemy.
Could I forgive Arnold for sacrificing his honor reputation and duty I could not forgive him for acting a part that must have forfieted the esteem of [his wife] so fine a woman. . . . Indeed my angelic Betsey, I would not for the world do any thing that would hazard your esteem.
ELIZA RETREATED TO A SUNNY WINDOW SEAT TO read a new letter from Hamilton as Philip sorted through a thick bundle of dispatches the express rider had brought him. “None for me, Papa?” asked Peggy.
Without looking up, he shook his head.
Peggy sighed and tapped her finger on the checkers board to show her littlest brother, Rensselaer, that her king could take two of his men if he didn’t move one of them. She was trying to help the seven-year-old survive checkers with his two older brothers. Jeremiah, five years his senior, would still occasionally play with the child, but defeated him roundly each go, reducing Rensselaer to tears. And John, a cocky fifteen-year-old now, refused to play with the boy until he learned to be a worthy opponent.
“Oh my!” Eliza gasped.
“Damn him!” Schuyler cursed.
Eliza leapt from the window to her feet. Schuyler struggled to his feet with his cane, wincing as his bandaged foot touched the floor.
“What? What is it?” Peggy asked with some alarm at both their reactions.
“Tragedy!” cried Eliza at the same time Schuyler bellowed, “The blackest treason!”
“Poor woman,” Eliza whispered.
“The blaggard!” Schuyler shouted. “May he roast in hell!”
“Who? What are you two talking about?” Peggy pleaded.
“Poor Mrs. Arnold!”
“Benedict! The villain, the lying perfidious bastard!”
With both of them uttering such different things at once, Peggy didn’t have a hope of understanding. “Eliza, stop.” She held up her hand. “Papa, what has happened?”
Looking up from his letter, angry tears falling down his face, Schuyler raged, “Benedict Arnold has betrayed us. He conspired with the British to give them West Point. I am the one who recommended Arnold for that post.” He collapsed back into his chaise, rubbing his leg. “Benedict begged me to help him find a military command after he had recuperated in Philadelphia and married Peggy Shippen. He was so deserving of our honor. He saved Fort Stanwix! He won Saratoga!”
He paused, searching his mind, clearly reliving their conversation. “Good God! Do you suppose he was planning this crime even then? Maybe he wanted West Point because he had already agreed to hand it over. Oh, how could I have been such a fool?”
Schuyler started reading again, his head moving back and forth as if the words were so hard to read he had to use all his strength to push himself through them. Peggy knew better than to interrupt, but her heart was pounding with the fearful question: Had the Patriots lost control of the Hudson River? If so, they were all in the gravest danger—particularly her papa. She tiptoed to Eliza, who was turning her letter over and over. “Eliza, do the British have West Point?” she whispered.
“What?” Eliza looked at her with some surprise.
“Does Hamilton say that West Point is lost?” she hissed.
“Oh!” Eliza quickly reread the first paragraph, while Peggy fought the urge to snatch it and read it herself.
“No, it says here his treason was detected. That he fled and escaped. That is why poor Mrs. Arnold—”
Schuyler exploded again, silencing Eliza
. “Verdomd dwazen!”
Little Rensselaer startled enough at his father’s Dutch curse that a number of checkers fell to the floor and rolled about.
Schuyler stood and staggered toward the door, leaning heavily on his cane. “I must write a letter immediately. Lansing!” He shouted for his secretary.
“Is there something else, Papa?” Peggy asked. But what more could there be to add to such a shock?
“They have arrested Colonel Varick.”
Both sisters gasped.
“Colonel Varick? What on earth for?” Eliza asked.
But Peggy knew immediately. The poor, unsuspecting, idealistic man. He was now Arnold’s aide-de-camp. Varick had been such an admirer of Arnold and had been ecstatic with the appointment. He never would have foreseen such deviousness. “Papa, they can’t suspect Mr. Varick of wrongdoing. You know he would never betray the nation, or for that matter ever do anything he knew would disappoint you.”
“I know that,” Schuyler answered. “But we also knew that I would never mismanage funds for my army, and yet Congress suspected me of such misdeeds for months and months. They’ll believe any conspiracy, promote any cow dung, if it seems to clear them of whatever culpability they had in causing a situation. They humiliated Benedict repeatedly by promoting lesser men over him for political reasons. The British probably offered Arnold riches, and in his bitter disappointments he took the deal.” He shook his head. “Poor Richard. I must provide a letter that speaks to Varick’s character and integrity for the court of inquiry.”
As he limped to his study, Peggy heard him curse again: “Would to God that musket ball that hit Benedict’s leg had pierced his black heart instead.”
“Peggy, come listen to this.” Eliza waved to her and patted the window seat so Peggy snuggled in beside her. She read: “On my return, I saw an amiable woman frantic with distress for the loss of a husband she tenderly loved—a traitor to his country and to his fame, a disgrace to his connections. It was the most affecting scene I ever was witness to. She for a considerable time entirely lost her senses. The General went up to see her and she upbraided him with being in a plot to murder her child; one moment she raved; another she melted into tears.”
Hamilton and Peggy! Page 20