Page 4 of My Dear Hamilton

Chapter Three

W HAT IS THIS hell of blunders, madness, and deception I find myself involved in?” Lafayette shouted, having herded us into a large tent he commandeered in the field next to the barracks.

The Frenchman removed his hat, revealing a prominent forehead, and drew my father and a hobbling Arnold toward the back, where they congregated around a table. Meanwhile I was left to warm myself near a small camp stove, quite anxious about the marquis’s demeanor.

Lafayette gesticulated wildly, shouting in French—a language I didn’t know well—and imperfect English. “It was promised me three thousand troops fit to separate Canada from Great Britain and make her our fourteenth state. Instead, I find disarray.”

This is not my father’s fault, I thought. And even if our soldiers had been in perfect order and well equipped, only a madman would think to assault Canada in winter. It had already been tried before and failed miserably.

Even I knew that, and I was no soldier.

I wasn’t impressed or overawed by Lafayette’s titles, or wealth, or ridiculously long list of names. He didn’t know our country, our winters, or our river. He was too young and inexperienced to know better, and I wanted desperately to say so.

“Please don’t be alarmed, Miss Schuyler,” a young officer whis pered as he joined me near the stove, busying himself warming a pot of coffee. “General Lafayette—well—he can be... most passionate in his moods.”

The fellow attempting to soothe me was a tall, hulking soldier, with gray eyes and a dimple in his chin just like mine. He tilted his head in a quick bow beneath his frosty tricorn hat, then returned to the stove and courteously poured me a cup. “My apologies, miss,” he drawled. “It seems to be the dregs without sugar. In fact, I’m not even entirely sure it is coffee. But it’s all we have.”

I took the steaming tin cup warily as my father stood before a seething Lafayette and Arnold gingerly lowered himself into a camp chair, extending his injured leg. My drink was horribly bitter, but if it was good enough for our soldiers, I would just have to choke it down. “I appreciate it just the same, Major...”

“Monroe,” he whispered with the kind of shy, blushing smile that men usually gave my sisters, never me. “Major James Monroe.”

In spite of our situation, I found myself smiling a little, too. And under my breath, I said, “Have you served Lafayette long, Major Monroe?”

“Not precisely. I’m only here in my capacity as an aide to General Stirling, sent to deliver some confidential missives. It was a happy coincidence that he could send someone to accompany the French who knew the land, the language, and, well, Lafayette.”

“How did you come to know our lands?”

“I served in the Hudson Highlands last year.”

“And French?” I asked.

“My family is French Huguenot stock.”

I sipped at the coffee and tried not to make a face. “And Lafayette?”

“I was with him when he took a bullet at the Battle of the Brandywine.” Monroe smiled at a memory that should have made him frown. “He fell almost at my feet but somehow got up again to lead his men to safety. I stayed with him that night while the doctor tended him. So I know Lafayette is some what... irregular... but I think you’ll find that he’s brave and fair-minded.”

Eyeing Lafayette, who was still gesticulating wildly at my father to articulate some point, I was not much reassured by Monroe’s faith. A frigid wind gusted through the tent’s flap, and when the major saw me shiver—this time without exaggeration—he removed his own coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. It was a small gesture, one I should have absolutely refused, since he’d already ridden so far in the cold, but one so gallant that I was charmed.

It’s strange now, after all these years, to think how easily I was won over by James Monroe’s soft southern accent and courteous manner. Stranger still to realize that if I’d been told in that moment that one of the men in that tent would betray us, another would become my enemy, and a third would win my heart forever—I not only wouldn’t have believed it but would have guessed wrong as to which man on every score.

Thumping his fist on the table, Lafayette shouted, “This makes me wish I had never set foot in America or thought of an American war! All the continent knows where I am and what I am sent for. That I am to lead a great northern army. The world now has their eyes fixed on me. If I abort this campaign, men will have a right to laugh at me.”

At this, my father’s patience came to an end, and he delivered a stiff, cold defense. “I will remind you, General Lafayette, it was not my decision to send you here. I have been against it from the start.”

Lafayette tilted his head in apparent confusion. “ Oui, oui. But of course.” He waved a hand. “That is what I am saying, my dear Général Schuyler. I have read your reports. I have seen what you have been forced to endure. I wish to take into my confidence you and General Arnold. Men loyal to Washington. Men I can trust.”

I was so surprised at Lafayette’s words that I nearly spilled what remained in my cup. My father appeared equally surprised and unsure how to react.

“In coming here,” Lafayette explained, “I go very slowly, some times pierced by rain, sometimes covered with snow, and not thinking many handsome thoughts about the projected incursion into Canada. I think now this is a scheme to have me out of the way.”

Papa took a moment to recover.

Benedict Arnold was quicker. “A scheme?”

“This plan is too stupid to be anything else,” the marquis insisted. “I have seen such machinations in a royal court. It is an unmistakable pattern, no?” When no one answered, Lafayette went on, “It is a plot against Washington or to replace him. You cannot strike a powerful man until you first remove his allies. This is why his rivals must discredit you, Schuyler. And it is why they send me to perish on some icy ledge.”

Even with all the plotting against Papa, I was loath to believe anything so diabolical could have been envisioned. But Lafayette was a nobleman from the most sophisticated court in the world, and possibly wiser in the ways of backstabbing politics than any of us.

So I believed him when he said, “Without Washington, there is nobody who could keep the army and the revolution for six months. We must give him a victory to bring back to the Board of War. If not in Canada, then somewhere else.”

Papa agreed, renewing his invitation to dinner where a plan could be devised with the other officers. Lafayette accepted this invitation, but cautioned against speaking too freely, even with the others in his entourage, explaining why he’d taken us into the privacy of the tent in the first place. “I wish for the happiness and liberty of this country, but now I fear that she could be lost by her own sons. My friends, I fear a traitor amongst us.”

***

You know Monroe to be a man of honor, a sensible man, and a soldier.

— L IEUTENANT C OLONEL A LEXANDER H AMILTON TO L IEUTENANT C OLONEL J OHN L AURENS

We’d endured British officers in our house, but now we made ready to welcome the French.

“I worried Mama wouldn’t leave us time to dress, ” Peggy complained, throwing herself down upon the damasked canopied bed we shared.

For our mother had not been warned to expect guests—much less a French general and twenty officers. If my father had a blind spot, it was his assumption that my mother was always ready to graciously entertain at a moment’s notice. Even when noticeably pregnant, as she was now. Papa had, unwittingly, thrown her into a frenzy of preparation. With keys jingling at her hip, she marched from kitchen to larder to washhouse and back again, issuing orders to the servants and to us until the very last moment.

While I hurried to dress, Peggy propped herself up on her elbows to ask, “Are any of these French officers handsome, Betsy? Because if not, I’ll wear my old flowered frock and leave my best brocaded gown for a better occasion.”

“Wear the brocade.” Then, a little guiltily, I added, “And please sit next to Benedict Arnold tonight.”

Peggy groaned. “Why can’t you ? I’d rather sit near someone who isn’t twice my age.”

I dared not meet her eyes, especially as I scarcely acknowledged to myself that I wished to sit beside Major Monroe. Slipping into dainty blue heels with bright rose ribbons, I confessed, “I told Arnold that you asked after him.”

“I only asked after his recovery,” Peggy grumbled, rising from the bed so that Jenny could brush her curls up into a tall coiffure.

“Well, don’t say anything to him about his slow recovery or his leg,” I told her, because Peggy was the sort who needed to be told such things. Sometimes more than once. “Arnold is very sensitive.”

Peggy merely shrugged in answer.

Fastening the blue paste earbobs, I was reminded again of my older sister. “We’ve still had no letter from Angelica in Boston...”

Sighing, Peggy nodded. “I suppose someday we’ll become accustomed to not having word from her.”

I didn’t think so. I could never add up all the ways in which our painful separation imposed its scars on me. A part of me felt guilty for feeling this way when I had yet another sister at my side, but I sometimes thought I could never be happy without Angelica’s protectiveness and the way she’d made me feel a needed part of her schemes. For as long as I could remember, we’d had a bond based on sharing confidences and sisterly advice. But my relationship with Peggy had never run as deep. I had fun with Peggy, and she made me laugh. But without Angelica I was left to figure out who I was—as a woman and a sister.

And since her elopement, I’d begun to think of myself differently.

No longer the middle sister, trying to mimic and falling short. Now, as the eldest daughter in the household, I felt a greater responsibility and confidence. So I pushed away the notion that the dazzling jewelry didn’t suit me and made for my father’s table.

Downstairs, beneath the chandelier and gilded portraits of my ancestors, Lafayette supped at one end of the glittering table next to my father. My mother presided at the other end near Baron de Kalb. Peggy squeezed between General Arnold and Major Monroe, which led to the happy circumstance of a space next to the latter for me.

It was surprisingly restorative to have friendly soldiers again in our home, and I listened intently for anything else Lafayette might reveal either about a plot against Washington or a suspected traitor amongst us. My attentions were so riveted on the Frenchman, in fact, that Peggy felt the need to twit me. “I thought perhaps a certain British Lieutenant André had already captured your affection,” she whispered. “Or have you finally set your cap for a French nobleman?”

I forced down a swallow to keep from choking on my buttered bread and embarrassment. If she’d been closer, I’d have kicked her beneath the table. As Major Monroe was sitting between us, he only stopped shoveling food into his mouth long enough to interject, “Alas, the marquis already has a wife. I’m afraid you ladies will have to aim a little lower.”

Peggy laughed. “To you?”

Reluctantly slowing his efforts to wolf down what might have been the first good meal he’d had in ages, Monroe blushed. “That would be more than a little lower. When it comes to marriage prospects, from the marquis to me, is a drop from a cliff.”

I smiled at the major’s self-deprecating nature.

Meanwhile, Peggy mused, “Lafayette is so young to be a general...”

“A year older than me,” Monroe replied, loyally. “And in any case, I think we’re better off under rising young officers than we are under Granny Gates.”

Granny Gates! It was a highly insubordinate thing for a junior officer to say of a general. We should have upbraided Monroe for it. And yet I don’t think he could have found any words that would have sounded sweeter to the daughters of Philip Schuyler.

I liked Monroe. I liked him very much. And that was even before Prince served our dessert course, when I noticed Monroe wincing as he rubbed at his shoulder.

“Are you injured, Major?” I asked.

“I was. It’s all healed up now.”

“Whatever happened to you?” Peggy batted her eyelashes at him.

Monroe flushed. “I was foolish enough to get myself shot at the Battle of Trenton.”

We’d read newspaper accounts of that battle, and Peggy all but squealed. “Are you the one who seized the cannon shouting Victory or Death ?”

With endearing humility, Monroe swirled a silver fork upon Mama’s floral china plate. “Well, I don’t remember what I shouted. All I heard was the whiz of a ball as it grazed my chest.”

Now this was entirely too much humility. “ Grazed! ” I ex claimed. “Why, I read that it hit an artery and blood bubbled up like a geyser through your uniform. Or wasn’t that you?”

Peggy’s pallor turned a little sickly green at my vivid description and Monroe’s eyebrow shot up, as if he couldn’t fathom that a lady might say such a thing at the dinner table. He stammered, “That—that was me...”

I started to explain that I took a keen interest in medicine but was saved from myself when Peggy raised a glass, as if it were proper for her to propose a toast. “To the Hero of Trenton!”

I started to raise my glass, but in catching the darkening jealous gaze of Benedict Arnold, I quickly added, “And the Hero of Saratoga!”

Mama frowned at our antics from her end of the table. But from the other, Lafayette raised his glass, too. “While we remember our worthy brothers-in-arms, I toast Mrs. General Schuyler, our gracious hostess, whose husband must soon be acquitted of these ridiculous charges made by stupid men who, without knowing a single word about war, undertake to judge.”

A more temperate man might have hedged his support, but Lafayette threw in for my father with his whole heart. And it thrilled me even as I looked round the table for those who might disagree.

My father nodded gratefully, as if humbled.

Then Lafayette stood and addressed me and Peggy. “Ladies, I am sad to abandon you now so I may hear wise advice from your papa and General Arnold.”

With that, the servants cleared the plates and the most trusted senior officers closeted themselves away. Monroe was too junior to join them, so while Mama entertained the Frenchmen, we took Monroe into the blue parlor, where Peggy kept refilling his wineglass and I bested him in a ferocious game of backgammon.

“I declare, Miss Schuyler,” Monroe drawled in defeat, his accent stronger the more wine he drank. “You take advantage! But I suppose I ought not feel unmanned by a game of chance. Who taught you to play?”

Still holding the dice, I boasted, “Dr. Franklin taught me when he visited to treat with the Six Nations. Besides, backgammon is only partly a game of chance. It is also a game of math and perseverance. You’re forced to learn patterns and choose the best move, even if it is only a choice between evils.”

Monroe dropped his gaze. “Is it in the nature of all New York belles to deprive a man of even his fig leaf?”

I blushed, because I knew what a fig leaf was meant to cover. Because Monroe was the first gentleman, since Lieutenant André had visited, who seemed to prefer talking to me than to flirting with my sisters. And because I believed he was calling me a belle . Pretending as if this were not a rare compliment, I asked, “Are we New York belles so very trying to your Virginian sensibilities, Major Monroe?”

He had the temerity to pause in thinking about it. “Any trial is compensated for how you ladies keep me from missing home. After all, if a man is so stupidly insensible of a belle’s charms as to devote his attention to an absent ideal, she cannot receive a higher insult.”

“I shall not be insulted if you pine for home.” To prove it, I asked, “What do you miss most about your Virginia?”

I thought he’d mention his family or farmland or horses—or really, just about anything other than what he actually said. “My mammy’s waffles, hot from the fire, slathered in melting butter.”

I laughed, expecting that Peggy would laugh, too, when I realized that she’d somehow grown bored and left us alone. She’d later tell me that she thought Monroe a bit too unpolished and simple for her tastes. But he seemed to me as a still part of the river, where it sometimes runs deepest.

And he confirmed that impression when he confided, “As much as I miss home, I am curious about the world, and wish to see as much of it as I can.”

“We’re kindred spirits, then. As a girl, I used to gaze westward at the horizon with a strange yearning, wondering how far the land went, imagining what it would be like to see and explore everything.”

He eyed me with curiosity. “That seems an unusual yearning for a belle.”

I flushed, much less pleased to be described as a belle now. “Not for one who has come of age at the frontier.”

“Albany is hardly the frontier,” he said, with an indulgent smile. “At least, not compared to where I grew up.”

“I’m speaking of Saratoga,” I argued. “Before the war, that’s where I felt most at home.”

Our home at Saratoga had always seemed to be a mysterious gateway to a world I could scarcely fathom and longed to explore. I’d climb rocks and wade in creeks, and come back late with wildflowers in my hair, all brown from the sun. And Papa would tease that perhaps when my mother left me hanging in a cradleboard from that tree, I’d been switched with an Indian child.

When I told Monroe as much, he chuckled. “And were you switched? You can tell me. I’ll always keep your secrets.”

He leaned closer, and for the first time in my life, a flutter of real romantic interest stirred within my breast. Monroe was a patriot. A war hero, even. And possibility sparked between us. “Perhaps I was switched,” I teased. “But I’d rather you tell me a secret.”

“Oh?” he asked, swirling the claret in his glass.

“Do you think there’s really a conspiracy against General Washington?”

“I know it,” Monroe answered, draining his wineglass like a man who preferred beer. “It was within General Stirling’s little family that we discovered the evidence.”

Rapt, I leaned closer. “Who is the villain?”

“It’s a cabal of villains. Inspector General Conway is involved for certain and...” Monroe trailed off there, as if aware that perhaps he’d said more than he ought to have.

But I pressed him. “Gates? Is it Gates?”

Monroe peered over his shoulder, then met my gaze and nodded, slowly. “Gates is trying to replace Washington as commander in chief of the military.”

“Outrageous. Gates is a scheming bumbler,” I hissed, though I knew my father would never approve of my saying so. But it was true. Gates would have lost even the Battle of Saratoga were it not for Benedict Arnold’s heroics.

But as indignant as I was at the idea that the New England darling would ever be commander in chief, that wasn’t as awful as my other fear. “Is there anyone close enough to Washington to do him harm?” I asked, because two years before there had been a plot to assassinate him and the culprit had been amongst his own bodyguards. And given that Gates had already used rumors of my father’s treachery to oust him from command, and seemed willing to condemn Lafayette and the whole Northern Army to an icy death in Canada, what else might he stoop to in clawing his way to the top?

“No chance of that,” Monroe assured me. “Not since Colonel Hamilton joined Washington’s family as aide-de-camp. My good friend Hamilton is too cunning to let an assassin get close again. He would sniff it out at a mile.”

I knew the name Hamilton already, of course.

We’d all learned about Alexander Hamilton’s military exploits in the gazettes we read each morning at the breakfast table. In fact, when my sisters and I were away visiting our Livingston relations, Hamilton had even stopped to see my father—briefly—in passing through Albany.

But my clearest memory of ever hearing Hamilton’s name was from the mouth of James Monroe. And spoken so fondly, too.

It hurts now to remember how fondly.

“It’s the politicking in Congress and the Board of War that will do General Washington in,” Monroe said, with more shrewdness than I might have expected. “Lafayette is right. We need to give Washington a win to bring back to Congress—even a symbolic one. Or Gates will get command and there goes the war.”

At length, as if to fight off the effects of a large meal and the lateness of the hour, Monroe stood and shook himself like a giant hound caught in the rain. And when I saw him rub again at his shoulder, I asked, “Should it still hurt you?”

“Don’t know,” he replied. “The bullet lodged in my shoulder just likes to remind me of its presence sometimes.”

“I know a little nursing. If you should like me to—”

“Oh, no, miss,” Monroe said, nearly tripping over my mother’s lace-covered sideboard table in his hurry to back away, as if I’d suggested something very untoward.

I’d only meant to offer some of the precious willow bark powder that Mama kept as a remedy for pain, but Monroe almost seemed to think I meant to undress him. “I wouldn’t hazard being shot again. By your father this time.”

Virginians are preposterous creatures, I thought for the first, but not the last, time. Thankfully, the farce was brought to an end because Lafayette emerged from my father’s study, and the officers made ready to take their leave. I was sorry to see them go, especially because I did not wish to leave Major Monroe with the impression I was a coquette.

But when Lafayette came into the parlor to retrieve Monroe and say farewell, he noticed a wampum belt upon a table with Papa’s outgoing parcels and letters, and tilted his head in apparent curiosity. “Mademoiselle Schuyler, your papa says you have accompanied him to treaty conventions with the Six Nations. Can you tell me of this?”

Flattered that Lafayette wished for me to explain it, I answered, “It’s a wampum belt; they served as a form of money, once.” At least until my Dutch ancestors began manufacturing wampum in such quantity as to make it worthless as currency. “Taken by themselves, the beads are merely white, purple, and black shells, sanded and drilled. But string them together and they can tell a story, seal a treaty, or serve as a badge of authority.”

If you knew the patterns and the symbols. And I did, having learned them at a very young age from the native women who bartered with Mama at the back door of our Saratoga house, and with whose daughters I sometimes played in their nearby village.

“What message does this belt convey?” Lafayette asked, peering at me from the corner of his eye.

“It’s an invitation.” For though Papa was no longer in command of an army, he’d long served as Indian commissioner, an important position he still held. “My father arranged to have this wampum belt and others to be delivered throughout Iroquoia to call for a meeting of the Iroquois Confederacy.”

The young marquis seemed enthralled. “Do you know why?”

We could never emphasize enough to outsiders that the Iroquois were not to be confused with other Indians. The People of the Longhouse were a democratic nation, and a powerful one, represented by statesmen who had skillfully played the British and the French against one another for decades. “Because if we can convince the Six Nations to remain neutral, we’ll deprive the British of their Indian guides and war bands.”

Lafayette’s smile turned sly. “May I?” he asked, and when I nodded, he took up the belt to inspect it. “These symbols, do you know what they mean?”

“Well that,” I said pointing, “that is the tree of the Onondoga nation—the Keepers of the Central Fire, the custodians of records.”

“And this?” Lafayette traced an open rectangle.

“The Oneida,” I said, overcome by the sudden impression that he was testing me like a schoolmaster, and had been doing so since the start of the conversation. “People of the Standing Stone. They’re friendly to us.”

“Your father has invited me to go with him to Johnstown for a conference with the Six Nations.”

I saw my father’s strategy at once, and I warmed with hope. Despite the Six Nations’ vow to remain neutral, many of them had sided and fought with the British against us. We couldn’t hope to get them to join us instead, but in light of our victory at Saratoga, there might now be an opportunity to make them honor their vow.

If they would come to a meeting.

General Gates had turned a deaf ear when Papa urged him to pursue a diplomatic course with the Iroquois. There was no glory in that for Gates. But, thus far, the marquis had proved to be as fair-minded as Major Monroe claimed. Maybe we could convince him .

Iroquois neutrality could change everything. It could help win the war.

And it might be just the victory Washington needed.

“I hope you’ll accept Papa’s invitation to go,” I said, because if Lafayette presided over the treaty convention, the Six Nations might attend for that reason alone.

After all, Lafayette had one thing Papa did not. He had the King of France behind him.

“Indeed, I will go, mademoiselle ,” he said. “But given your knowledge, perhaps you should go, too.”

“ Yes, ” I said, before my mother could even lift a disapproving brow. Before, even, I could discern whether or not it was an invitation made in earnest or jest. I knew only that it was the moment, in all my restlessness, I had pined for. And I was sure my father would understand that restless longing. “Oh, yes, I intend to go.”

Angelica was not the only Schuyler daughter, after all, who could forge her own path.