The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “If you please, Mistress,” I began as she sipped her chocolate over letters at her desk, as was her habit. She no longer resembled the engaging and elegant hostess from last evening, but instead sat with ink-stained woolen mitts on her hands, an oversized shawl that the moths had gotten to about her shoulders, and her hair in the now-tousled braid that she’d worn to bed. She either remained lost in her thoughts or ignored me, and I tried again.

  “Please, Mistress,” I said. “I saw Mr. Hering among your guests last night. Did he speak of his cousin Colonel Vervelde? Has he had any news of his whereabouts, or his health?”

  She still didn’t look up from the letter in her hand.

  “Mr. Hering,” she said absently. “He’s a dull, tedious fellow, isn’t he?”

  “Mistress—”

  “Oh, I know what you want, Mary.” With an impatient sigh, she sat back in her chair and tossed the letter she’d been reading onto the desk. “You don’t have the slightest interest in Colonel Vervelde. It’s that beanpole of a Negro of his.”

  I stood straight and raised my chin. “Private Emmons is not Colonel Vervelde’s Negro,” I said. “He is a free man, and was employed for wages by the Colonel before the war.”

  “Don’t be impertinent, Mary,” Mistress warned. “I know you had an intrigue with the fellow, but that doesn’t give you leave to address me in this familiar fashion.”

  “I do not wish to be defiant, Mistress,” I said as evenly as I could. “But Private Emmons is my husband—”

  “Your husband?” repeated Mistress, more scolding than angry, the way one was with a tired child. “Such foolishness, Mary. All I can tell you is that Colonel Vervelde is stationed with his regiment with the rest of the army at Valley Forge. I’d assume that his man is with him. Now stop troubling me, and go about your work.”

  It was a small consolation, but it was better than nothing, and I let myself cling to the thought that God and luck still smiled on Lucas, and would preserve him from harm. I also believed that if he did suffer some grievous mishap, then the Colonel himself would find a way to let me know of it.

  Just as the winter had been particularly cold, so now summer arrived with an unrepentant vengeance after a spring that seemed to last only a few days. By the middle of June, a rare heat shimmered across the fields. The tender new crops lay wilted on the ground, and the leaves in the trees already had the dry, dusty look of August. The air was still and heavy, and even the slightest task was a trial.

  For reasons no one could decipher, the British army had chosen this time, in this heat, to withdraw from Philadelphia, and return to New York. In hasty pursuit, the Continental Army broke camp at Valley Forge, and followed the British back into New Jersey. Farther to the north, we sweated and sweltered, and speculated as to where—or even whether—the Americans would catch the British.

  The same heat also brought on Mistress’s headaches, forcing her to take to her bed and lie atop the sheets, her eyes masked with a damp cloth and her body covered by only her lightest linen shift. Without the bulk of her clothing, the stays and hoops and petticoats that gave her presence, she looked frail and vulnerable, a side of her she’d rarely reveal. For relief from her pain, she bade me rub her forehead and wrists with lavender water, and then stand beside the bed and sweep a fan slowly back and forth over her until my arm and shoulders ached from the effort and the sweat puddled along my spine beneath my clothes.

  But that was not the worst of it. In her suffering, Mistress would hoarsely whisper strange and ominous things like a person possessed by fever, of how her headaches were a special curse cast upon her as punishment for what she’d done. She never said why she deserved to be punished, or what grave sin she’d committed to equal her torment. I didn’t wish to be party to her secrets, and I felt only relief when at last she slept and her muttering ended, and I could leave her.

  Four days later, when Mistress learned what had occurred at the exact time as she’d been stricken (and not sixty miles to the south of us), she vowed her head must have sensed that pain and suffering, and sympathetically shared it.

  On the morning of June 28, the Continental forces under General Charles Lee attacked the British near the courthouse at Monmouth. The two armies then fought for the remainder of the afternoon, in the same torrid heat that plagued us. Clad in woolen uniforms, soldiers later said that the very soil beneath their feet burned like the hearthstone of an oven, with the blast of the air so hot that it became nearly impossible to breathe, let alone fight. Scores of men and horses were felled by this heat, not gunfire, and many perished from it.

  The fighting stopped at nightfall. The British used the darkness to skulk away back to New York rather than resume the battle again the next morning, retreating to Middletown before transport could carry them across the North River at Sandy Hook to Manhattan. The Americans had proved themselves to be excellent soldiers despite the heat, inflicting four times the casualties upon the British than those they suffered themselves. But while the battle at Monmouth was considered a victory, the day ultimately resolved nothing, and won nothing but frustration for the Americans.

  It also earned a court-martial for General Lee on the charges of disobedience of orders, misbehavior before the enemy, and disrespect to the commander in chief. The general was found guilty, and relieved from duty, which to many was more shocking than the battle itself.

  Soon afterward, Mistress invited several young ladies from New York to the Hermitage as guests, her “flock of fair refugees,” as she called them. They were all of a piece to me, sweetly pretty, foolish, and unmarried, and whenever Mistress spoke of them having flown from New York to her sanctuary I pictured them as the brightly feathered little parakeets that had fluttered and chattered through the trees in Pondicherry, and every bit as empty-headed and flighty as these birds, too. Their visit made considerable demands on our household, for of course they brought their own maids and slaves with them, making more mouths to be fed and bedding to be arranged.

  While it did seem these idle, vain ladies had little in common with Mistress and her books and letters, she seldom did anything without a purpose. She had heard that General Washington and his army would be marching north through our region. She’d also heard that His Excellency had planned to make his headquarters at the nearby home of her aunt, Mrs. Lydia Watkins.

  This, decided Mistress, would not do, not even if Mrs. Watkins was her aunt. She swiftly sent a note of invitation to His Excellency himself, describing the beauty of the Hermitage and the warmth of her hospitality. Whatever she wrote must have been prettily worded indeed, for His Excellency decided to forgo Mrs. Watkins’s house, and instead to make the Hermitage the headquarters for his military family while in the neighborhood.

  I cannot say which decision was more stunning: that His Excellency would choose the estate of a British officer as his headquarters, or that Mistress, as that British officer’s wife, would open her home to his enemy’s commander in chief. But while Mistress would never confide her reasons to us in her household, we felt sure that she must have come to some sort of larger decision about her own loyalties and the American cause of freedom. For truly, why else would she have taken such a monumental and very public step as to have His Excellency as her guest?

  Before the sun had set on the long summer evening, the fields around the two houses began to bristle like a large town of white canvas. His Excellency’s people quickly erected his marquee tent with its red borders and pennants. He would sleep here, apart from all the others on a slight hill to one side and surrounded by the tents of his life guards, as was fitting.

  The rest of the army would sleep in smaller tents, more than I could count, and make their meals around their own messes. I heard it said that there were as many as five thousand soldiers here; I knew I’d never seen so many men (and more than a few women, too) gathered in one place since I’d first arrived in Manhattan. Our entire yard was filled with horses and men, and the field beyond that was made home to the
artillery, wagons, and other baggage carts.

  I was surprised by the variety of the common soldiers’ dress. Some wore smartly tailored uniforms in the colors of their regiments, and many more the hunting shirts (such as Lucas wore) that His Excellency had ordered as a more useful uniform in the field. Others looked exactly like civilians, in the clothes they’d worn when they’d enlisted. There were even a few strutting rogues who’d shed their coats and shirts entirely on account of the heat, and walked past with their weapons strapped across their bare chests like savages.

  Vainly I searched among all these men for the one face that mattered most to me. I’d no idea if Lucas’s regiment was even here, let alone him with it. This wasn’t the entire army, of course. Regiments were stationed on various assignments in every state. Even though the soldiers were forbidden to approach the house, it was still my hope that if Lucas was here he’d find his way to the kitchen as he always had in the past. Each time a tall shadow filled our doorway, I swiftly looked up, but the shadows never belonged to my husband.

  Not that I’d much time to spare for hopes of my own. The army might be here on Prevost land to refresh themselves, but there’d be no rest for us in the kitchen. Thanks to Mistress’s hospitality, there would now be at least thirty to dine at all meals, including His Excellency and his military family (the most trusted officers of his personal staff), the senior officers from the regiments camped outside whom he chose to invite, and the young refugee ladies from New York.

  If Chloe was the kitchen’s commander in chief for these entertainments, then I was her second in command. Preparing dishes worthy of the honor of serving His Excellency was only part of our challenge. We also were charged with collecting sufficient chairs, linens, and silver for all the guests, and arranging the room to suit Mistress’s orders, as well as providing extra candles and chamber pots. Mistress had borrowed other servants to help, but they were often more trial than they were worth, not knowing our ways.

  I never saw His Excellency or the splendid company myself (nor overheard their conversations, which I’d been anticipating). Instead His Excellency’s own slaves served as footmen and waited at table, resplendent in the scarlet-and-cream-colored livery of his estate at Mount Vernon. Clearly these men believed themselves better than us, and were so full of how things should best be done to please His Excellency that finally Chloe threatened them with a cleaver in her hand if they didn’t cease their meddling.

  While some of the guests retired early, others still lingered in the parlor at midnight. The ladies had all taken their turns singing and playing the fortepiano, followed by gentlemen singing alone, or with the ladies. The longer the night went on, the more wine was drunk, and the more raucous the laughter became, too.

  “General nor private, they’re all the same when they’ve had their share of the bottle,” Chloe said with resignation. Most of the washing up was done, but Chloe and I still sat waiting for the guests to leave so that we could finally clean and close the house for the night.

  “The ladies are keeping their pace, too,” I said. “I wonder if Miss DeVisme has determined which officer to stalk?”

  “You know she has,” Chloe said, chuckling. “Poor fellow! He’ll learn soon enough what it’s like to be that lady’s prey.”

  I rose and stretched my arms over my head, and then stepped outside, intending to go to the privy. Even at this hour, the camp had fires lit, bright little flares of light scattered among the rows of tents and drifts of smoke. There were so many unfamiliar noises beneath the moon, a constant rustle of movement combined with the murmurs and coughs and distant voices of all those men, women, and horses, even while they were supposed to be at rest. Caesar said he’d ask among the drivers tomorrow for news of Lucas’s regiment, the best I could hope for. With a sigh of weariness, I bowed my head and folded my arms over my chest to make myself as inconspicuous as possible as I began across the yard.

  “Mary, isn’t it?”

  I froze, and for one joyful instant I fancied it was Lucas calling my name.

  “Mary,” he said again, the voice younger, without the rich warmth and love I’d wanted so much to hear. But it was a voice that I recognized, and slowly I turned toward it.

  “Yes, Colonel Burr,” I said. “It’s Mary.”

  He was sitting on the small, rough bench beside the row of elder trees that lined the fence. Since the bench was part of the kitchen garden, it wasn’t used by Mistress, but was instead most often the spot where Chloe and I rested our baskets or tools while weeding the beds. It was a curious place for a colonel to be, here in the shadows beneath the elder trees’ canopy of white flowers, and the only reason must be the obvious one: a heavy dose of the strong drink that was being consumed with such gusto inside the house.

  Nor did his overall appearance dissuade me of this opinion. True, he wore his dress uniform, as had all the officers tonight, but he was slumped forward on the bench, his legs sprawled before him and his palm pressed to his forehead.

  “If you please, sir.” I purposefully kept my voice low for the sake of his aching head, the way I did with Mistress. “Might I help you?”

  “You may indeed, Mary,” he said with a rumbling groan. “I’m in need of some, ah, some assistance.”

  “I’ll fetch one of the men, sir,” I said, already half on my way. In my time with Mistress, I’d encountered sufficient numbers of gentlemen in their cups to know that the best thing to be done with them was to send them home to bed, and as swiftly as possible, too. “He’ll help you back to your quarters.”

  “I’m not drunk,” he said, his voice crisp and irritated and thoroughly sober. “Though you may choose to disbelieve me, I have for a fact avoided Mrs. Prevost’s punch entirely tonight. Surgeon’s orders. I fear it’s the speeches and the singing that have done me in.”

  “I’ll believe you, sir,” I said. Why not, when I’d no reason not to?

  He lowered his hand from his forehead, looking up at me.

  “It was that infernal heat at Monmouth,” he said. “I felt as if I’d ridden headlong into the very mouth of Hell itself. It didn’t help that my wretched horse fell atop me, either. I haven’t been right since.”

  “I am sorry, sir.” I now regretted judging him to be inebriated. Every man reacted differently to the horrors of war, and even differently to each battle as well. I recalled the confidence, even bravado, that the Colonel had shown when he first called on Mistress last fall. There was none of that now. Instead, he looked drained and wounded from the inside, where the scars wouldn’t show. “At least the Continental Army was victorious.”

  He glanced up at me again from beneath his dark brows.

  “We were not victorious, Mary,” he said firmly, “and whoever told you that is a damnable liar. We escaped only because Clinton was unwilling to see his troops suffer any further from the sun and withdrew by choice, not because of any attack of ours. Given the blind ineptitude and stubbornness of our generals, it’s a wonder we weren’t all slaughtered.”

  “You mean General Lee’s cowardice in the field, sir.” I was so eager for news that I spoke more freely than I should have.

  “I did not mean General Lee,” he said, sitting straighter on the bench. “Lee is—or was—the single general our forces possessed with any experience and sense. He had observed the hazards of our so-called commander’s strategy, and had wisely called a retreat to protect us against further losses. Yet instead of being honored for his actions, as would have been just, he has been driven from the army by the pride of this same ignorant and uneducated dunderhead of a commander.”

  I listened, stunned beyond measure. He could only mean His Excellency General Washington. In all the conversations I’d overheard, both Whig and Tory, rebel and Loyalist, I’d never once heard anyone dare to criticize the commander in chief with such vehement fury.

  “I’ve shocked you, little Mary, haven’t I?” he said ruefully, watching me now as closely as he had last September.

  “Yes
, sir, you have,” I said. He had in fact shocked me, shocked me so severely that I could only answer the truth. But I didn’t back away, not from him nor what he’d said. I was no longer wary of him the way I’d been last fall. Watchful, perhaps, as I was with all those I didn’t know, but not wary.

  He smiled, a slow, weary, pain-fed smile. I’d remembered him as looking almost boyishly young. He’d lost that now. Instead, his eyes were filled with things that had no place with youth: disillusionment, cynicism, sorrow, and suffering.

  Things I understood all too well myself.

  “The truth is often shocking,” he said, more calmly. “But I’ll spare you my further revelations, from fear you’ll abandon me. Somewhere in Mrs. Prevost’s house she must keep a supply of cream of tartar. If you could find it, and mix a spoonful into a small amount of vinegar for me, I will be eternally grateful. It’s the only remedy that brings me ease.”

  “I’ll fetch it directly, sir.” I returned to the kitchen, to the shelf in the pantry where the spices, nuts, and various dried powders for cooking were kept. Cream of tartar was one of the imported ingredients that would not be replaced until the war’s end, but also one included in few of Chloe’s recipes. I doubted it would be missed, and besides, it was for one of Mistress’s guests.

  “What are you about, Mary?” Chloe asked curiously as I found a cup for the mixture and a spoon to measure and stir it.

  “Colonel Burr is in the garden and feeling poorly,” I explained, “and requested a spoonful of cream of tartar.”

  “Ah, the poor gentleman,” she said. “He must be in a bad way if he asked for that.”

  “He is.” I stirred the powder briskly into the vinegar until it dissolved, then set the cup carefully in the middle of a small tray. I didn’t repeat what the Colonel had said about His Excellency or the battle, suspecting that the Colonel himself might not have spoken so if he’d felt better.