The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

by Susan Holloway Scott

  In the same way, Mistress continued to receive letters from her husband and two sons serving with the British army in the Caribbean. She and her mother and sister took delight in Colonel Prevost’s victories and the military accomplishments of the two as if she were the most loyal of Loyalist wives—enough that I wondered if Mistress and Miss DeVisme were also planning to remain in Manhattan, on the far side of the British lines, and abandon New Jersey entirely.

  Yet this very morning as I’d helped Mistress dress, she had made use of the time we were apart from the others to make a special request of me.

  “According to the certificate that Colonel Burr was given, the party from New York will be traveling with four Negroes of their own,” she said quickly, her voice low so she wouldn’t be overheard, always a risk in a public inn. “I want you to make good use of any opportunity you may have in their company to discuss their masters’ affairs without, of course, revealing any of mine.”

  She smiled, as if this in itself were a confidence between us. It wasn’t.

  “Be sure to repeat whatever you hear to me, Mary,” she continued. “You’ve been in my household long enough to know what I seek. Any information on shipping upon the river, landings, military affairs, the movements of troops. Whatever might be of benefit to the army.”

  I didn’t answer at once, pretending to concentrate on her hair before I did. What if information that I discovered for her was passed along to the British forces, who in turn used it against the Americans? What if I was aiding a cause that wasn’t mine, and never would be?

  What if, in this small way, I could be responsible for harm to Lucas?

  “Which army, Mistress?” I asked finally. “Who shall this information benefit?”

  She twisted around to face me, scowling. “Don’t be impudent, Mary,” she scolded. “Such a question!”

  “Forgive my ignorance, Mistress,” I said, persisting. “But if I am not told which army seeks the intelligence, then I do not know what manner of news to collect for you.”

  She sighed dramatically, and turned around again toward her looking glass. It could have been from irritation, but I believed it more likely that she could not in perfect honesty meet my gaze with her own.

  “You are being an inquisitive jade, Mary,” she said. “If you will but recall who has sent us on this junket, then you have your answer.”

  “His Excellency General Washington, Mistress,” I said. “So you wish me to do my best to collect intelligence useful to the Continental cause?”

  “At last you understand,” she said tartly. “Now tend to my hair so I’ll be ready to join the others.”

  It was an answer, and yet it wasn’t, and as I stood here now on the dock with Caesar I thought of how many times Mistress had spoken in this kind of confusing manner. It wasn’t just to me. She twisted her words into riddles and clever knots to everyone she addressed. For now I’d have to accept what she’d told me earlier, for I’d nothing better.

  “This must be the Tories,” Caesar said, looking past me back to the road that led to the dock. “About time they brung their asses along.”

  Three carriages, a wagon, and a mounted escort of four soldiers were slowly approaching and coming to a halt at the end of the dock. Colonel Burr must have been watching from the window of the coffeehouse, for he immediately came through the door to greet the newcomers. Mistress had only mentioned two gentlemen and their slaves, but there were far more to the party, including two ladies, a young man, and several children, as well as another officer. There were several servants, as well as the Negroes I was supposed to befriend, one of whom was a woman no older than I with a baby cradled in her arms.

  It took the rest of the morning for all of these miscellaneous persons and their goods to be stowed aboard and secured. There were no other passengers, and a good thing, too, considering how the sloop had little room to spare, as her master, a bristling Scotsman named Captain Redman, told anyone who’d listen. But at last he cast off, and by late afternoon he’d picked up either the current or the tide (I didn’t know which), and with the wind in our favor, we made brisk progress.

  I’d been carried halfway around the world and more by sea, across harrowing rough oceans that made the most experienced mariners blanch, so to me this river seemed as placid as the millpond at the Hermitage. But members of our party did not feel the same, and we’d scarcely begun our little voyage before several of them were retching either over the side or into the slop buckets that were conveniently placed between the decks.

  I was grateful that Mistress and her sister were not among them and therefore did not require my assistance. I’d had enough of those duties on board the old Céleste to last the remainder of my life. Fortunately, Mistress and her sister were instead merry with shipboard gaiety, and making themselves the belles of the company. The sloop was so small that all passengers (excluding us low slaves and servants, of course) dined together on a single narrow rough table that was fixed to the deck. Captain Redman sat at the head, the king of his watery kingdom and the indifferent meal that was served.

  As was common in most vessels, this table had a small raised bar along the edge to keep the plates from sliding off in rough weather. It seemed, however, that this was a new notion to Mistress, who found it the cleverest invention ever, and she and her sister insisted on trying it by gently sliding their plates against the rail, and then laughing with delight. It seemed to me to be a great foolishness, yet the gentlemen were enchanted by it, and by the ladies. Their enchantment only grew as the bottles were passed about, and I watched Mistress work her usual artfulness until even Captain Redman was making mooncalf eyes at her. If either Mr. Smith or Mr. Colden were carrying any Loyalist secrets into exile, then I was certain that Mistress would have coaxed them away before we reached the City of New York.

  Because of the small size of the sloop, there were no separate cabins, but wooden bunks with thin mattresses stuffed with tufts of stale wool. It was left to each passenger to provide any niceties like pillows, sheets, or coverlets, which of course Mistress had brought with her, and I’d made up the bunks as best could be done. Still, with little privacy, no one disrobed, but instead slept in their clothing. Mistress and her sister had planned for this, too, wearing quilted Brunswick jackets and petticoats that were warm and serviceable and wouldn’t show wrinkles.

  I was to sleep on the deck below their bunks. The day had been long and tiring, and even those who’d been ill earlier were soon asleep.

  Yet I remained wide awake. It was not the discomfort of the deck beneath me—not any different from the floor where I usually slept—but the memories of the Céleste that returned, unbidden and undesired. Too clearly I recalled the faces of death from that voyage, Madame’s staring, red-rimmed eyes and Orianne’s mouth frozen in a fearful gasping grimace. I remembered the stench that rose from their corpses, and the singsong prayers in Latin that the old priest had said over Madame, and how Orianne’s naked corpse, bloated and stiff, had bobbed along in the water, her long braid trailing after her.

  As hard as I tried to think of other things, the very creaking of the sloop’s timbers reminded me of all I wished to forget. Wearily I rose, taking care not to wake the others. I’d already unpinned my cap for the night, and rather than try to find it again, I pulled my shawl over my still-coiled hair and around my shoulders. I often did this in the evening, draping the worn wool shawl like the silk dupatta I’d worn so long ago as a child. Holding the shawl with one hand now against the wind, I climbed the steps of the companionway to the main deck.

  With the single mast and an easy course, the sloop required only a small crew, and besides the man at the wheel and another standing watch, I’d the deck to myself. The breeze from the water was brisk, tugging at my skirts and shawl. The moon hung high in the star-filled night sky, and I guessed it to be an hour or so after midnight. I went to stand by the starboard rail and stared out across the water, struggling to empty my thoughts of the past. The river was d
appled with silvery moonlight, the hills on either side looming as dark shadows, and the rush of the water as well as the wind against the canvas all helped me forget.

  “Ah, another wandering soul who can find no respite in the arms of Morpheus,” Colonel Burr said as he came to join me. “But this moonlit vista is just compensation for those of us who cannot sleep, isn’t it, Mary?”

  Swiftly I turned about to curtsey. “Good evening, Colonel Burr.”

  Thus far on this journey he’d taken no special heed of me, reserving all his attention for Mistress and her sister. I don’t think he’d ignored me so much as that, in his eyes, I simply wasn’t useful to him, which was exactly as I’d wished things to be between us. Sometimes it was good to be invisible.

  But now here he was, standing before me on this lonely deck in the moonlight. I’d so little time to myself that I both resented his intrusion, and feared it, too. I’d retreat back below as soon as I could, but it would have to be with his permission, not by my choice.

  “Share your misery with me, Mary,” he said. “What reason have you to be awake while all the others sleep?”

  I shook my head, unwilling to explain.

  He sighed. “You realize that if you don’t share your reasons for insomnia with me, then you’ll be forced to listen to my own dark ramblings instead.”

  I’d much rather that than confide my own. “I’ll listen, sir.”

  “You were warned,” he said, and then fell unexpectedly silent, gazing across the river as I’d done. He wore a dark cloak over his uniform, and with his black cocked hat pulled low across his brow, his pale profile was sharp against the night horizon. I wondered if he remembered how I’d brought him the cream of tartar that evening in the kitchen garden, how he’d called me his angel, and then had caressed me with as little regard as if I’d been some stray cat or dog.

  “I cannot sleep because I think too much of death,” he said finally. “My mother, my father, my grandfather and grandmother, my general, and more friends than I’ve any right to have had. All dead, all lost to me, no matter how I’d long for it to be otherwise. There are nights when they haunt me as surely as restless spirits can. The only way I can escape them is to keep from their realm, and remain awake among the living.”

  I stood very still. Did he somehow know of my own past, so better to mock me like this? He couldn’t know, and yet it felt as if he did.

  “The eyes of death are a curious thing,” he went on, taking my silence as encouragement. “One moment there is life and passion and the spirit of a man, and in the next instant all is cold and flat, a void of emptiness as if he’d never lived. I’ve seen it in the eyes of those I’ve killed in battle, and by God, it terrifies me far more than the possibility that I might die myself.”

  His words struck me so keenly that I couldn’t remain silent any longer.

  “There are parts of my own life like that, sir,” I said softly. “I try to forget them so they can’t hurt me. Most times I do, but . . . sometimes in my dreams I remember all the death and unhappiness I have seen, and there’s no help for it, and I cannot sleep.”

  As soon as I’d spoken I regretted it. I’d no right to speak to him so freely, no right to share this part of myself. I glanced at him quickly, anxiously, prepared to apologize if I’d overspoken.

  But instead he’d listened, and more: he’d understood.

  “Ah, little Mary with the sad and golden eyes,” he said. “Somehow I knew you’d share the same sufferings.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Yes.”

  “I didn’t come on deck intending to make a full confession,” he said ruefully, again looking out across the water. “I trust you’ll grant absolution to me, and in return I’ll promise you’ll hear no more melancholia. Let us instead consider the vista before us, in all its somber majesty. You’d never guess the war was so close, would you?”

  A large island lay to starboard, and the river narrowed to curve around it. He pointed up along the heights of the shore.

  “That’s our fortress at West Point,” he said. “There, behind the walls. If you look carefully, you’ll see the cannon trained down upon us.”

  I looked to where he was pointing, and now saw the stone parapets with the distant shadows of sentries atop them. Below them were the notches in the wall for the heavy artillery, and the ominous dark shapes that were the barrels of the big guns. Suddenly the peace I’d found in the scene vanished, my earlier contentment replaced by this overt reminder of the war.

  “You can be sure they’re watching us, too,” he said. “Fortunately, we’re sailing under that flag of truce, there, or we’d be fair game, too.”

  I glanced up at the white pennant flying high from the mast. I hadn’t noticed it before, let alone understood its importance.

  “They would fire upon us without the flag, sir?” I asked, startled.

  He shrugged carelessly.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “If the sentries are awake.”

  I nodded and looked again to the fortress. The sloop would be an easy target, all alone in the wide expanse of the river. I thought of everything I’d overheard of forts and guns and ships on the North River and in the bay, and instantly it seemed much more real.

  “But sir,” I said, daring to speak again, because I longed to know. “This sloop flies an American flag.”

  “It does indeed,” he agreed. “But it wouldn’t be the first time a vessel traveled under false colors to hide her true nature.”

  I nodded, and thought instantly of Mistress. How much like these deceptive vessels she was, living her entire life beneath false colors!

  “If that is so, sir, then why do they trust the flag of truce?” I asked. “Couldn’t that be false as well?”

  “Clever girl.” He smiled, but at the river, and not me. “Perhaps the sentries are asleep. More likely they’ve taken note that we’re a merchant vessel, with no armament or gun ports, and decided to let us pass. We’re safely out of range now, anyway.”

  “Safe from our own army’s guns, sir?” I was speaking too much, asking too much. This kind of curiosity and familiarity had led me into trouble before with him, and there was no saying he wouldn’t accept my conversation as encouragement, and touch me again.

  But he was telling me things I desperately wished to know, and he was conversing with me as if I weren’t a slave at all. Not since Lucas had any man talked with me like this. I knew I should stop our conversation, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to.

  “Everything could change by dawn, you know,” he said. “West Point itself could be seized by the British, or Hessians, or savages from the forests for all I know. That’s the way of it in this damnable war.”

  He paused, thinking, or reflecting, or something else altogether. Already I’d realized he was not a straightforward man, and in his way he was just as contradictory as Mistress.

  “But for now, Mary,” he finally said, “and in this moment, we are safe. We’re safe.”

  Repeated, that “we” had a curious, familiar sound to it, as if he meant only the two of us, and not the sloop and all its crew and passengers.

  “Thank you, sir,” I murmured, the only reply I could muster. I couldn’t tell if he’d meant to reassure me. If so, he hadn’t. I don’t think he heard me, anyway.

  “Of course,” he continued, “Mr. Colden, Mr. Smith, and the rest of our unhappy guests—those gentlemen ‘notoriously disaffected to the American cause,’ as my orders call them—they would most likely disagree with our definition of safety. I’m sure they are painfully aware of the irony of this little vessel’s name, just as you doubtless are as well.”

  “I haven’t been told the sloop’s name, sir.” I didn’t understand what he meant by irony, either, but it was easier to ask the name of the sloop.

  “Liberty,” he said, giving it a grand emphasis. “If that isn’t ironic, Mary, I do not know what is. Surely you must agree. To convey our traitorous subjects to the City of New York aboard the good sloop
Liberty!”

  “Forgive me, sir, but I do not believe liberty should ever be considered a jest.” I spoke more warmly than I realized, but to one such as I, liberty was the sweetest thing imaginable. “That is the entire reason for this war, for freedom and liberty and justice and—and oh, so many things.”

  That surprised him. He turned to face me, resting his hand on the railing and his eyes hidden in the shadow of his hat. Still I looked down, avoiding the gaze I couldn’t see, but felt.

  “I recall now that Mrs. Prevost said you’ve a soldier for a sweetheart,” he said. “Is that why freedom is so dear to you?”

  “He is not my sweetheart, sir,” I said, “but my husband.”

  “Your husband, Mary?” he said, tipping his head to one side.

  “My husband, sir,” I said. “Private Lucas Emmons of the Fourth New Jersey.”

  “A brave and well-ordered regiment,” he said, and my pride swelled a bit more for Lucas’s sake. “But I wonder that Mrs. Prevost has made no mention to me of you being married.”

  “Because Mistress refused permission, sir,” I said.

  He frowned. “Mrs. Prevost is an intelligent lady of the highest ideals. I’m sure she had her reasons.”

  I knew her reason well enough. She didn’t want to part with me. Her convenience meant more to her than my happiness ever would. I also knew I shouldn’t answer him, but I did.

  “Lucas—Private Emmons—asked her if he could marry me, sir, and buy my freedom, too,” I said, my voice betraying my bitterness. “Mistress refused, sir. But Private Emmons and I pledged to each other, sir, and swore we were man and wife, and we are.”

  Sudden fierce tears of love stung my eyes, and I turned away so the Colonel would not see them. As I did, I turned into the wind as well, and before I realized a gust had billowed into my shawl and plucked it from my head. I cried out and lunged across the deck after it, for I had no other.