The Turncoat

by Donna Thorland

  As they neared West Point, Kate wished that she had taken the time to change her clothes. Since returning home to Grey Farm, she’d settled into the rhythms of country life, and resumed her plain dress. With some modifications. The Widow had wrought a permanent change in her. While she still appreciated the simplicity of plain clothes, she no longer tolerated anything ill-fitting or poorly cut. She’d worked her way through her entire wardrobe, adding darts, changing hems, shortening sleeves, reshaping necklines to flatter her figure and her face. The result, she was well aware, was something like Angela Ferrers’ Quaker costume: a fetching fake.

  But it was not how she wanted to greet her husband—or Peggy Shippen, who had married West Point’s current commander, Benedict Arnold—after all this time. She’d seen Peggy only once since leaving behind Lydia Dare and Kate Grey to become Kate Tremayne. The girl had been only a few weeks married, and already flirting with a man who was decidedly not her doting new husband. She had looked at Kate quizzically, as though she couldn’t quite place her, then turned on her heel and cut her dead.

  But the drawing rooms of Philadelphia were a far cry from West Point. Her escort brought her not to the fort, but to the commander’s stone cottage on the other side of the river. General Arnold’s residence. It was difficult to imagine spoiled Peggy Shippen in the mean little house, with its ungainly proportions and lopsided porch. It was the sort of place that might be made snug, but would never be made comfortable, let alone luxurious. It was meant for a military man. A posting, not a home.

  She found Hamilton seated in what passed for a kitchen, but he did not rise to greet her.

  “Where is Peter?”

  “I’m sorry. I have no news of your husband.” He looked tired. No, she was tired. He was something else. Dispirited. Though it was plain he hadn’t slept either.

  “Then what? Why am I here?”

  “We have an unfortunate situation on our hands.”

  “We? Where is Washington?”

  “The general has retired to his rooms for the moment.”

  “And your host? Mrs. Arnold?”

  “She also has retired to her rooms.”

  “And General Arnold himself?”

  Hamilton sighed. “Have a drink, Kate, please. Then I’ll tell you. Everything.”

  She refused the rum he offered and managed instead to make a pot of coffee in the neglected hearth, because she suspected they both needed it. When she set his cup down in front of him, he captured her hand and pressed it to his cheek. She didn’t pull away. He was in want of comfort, and so, as the disappointment over Peter sank in, was she. Then she sat down opposite him, and he told her.

  “General Washington sent word ahead yesterday to expect us, and asked to have breakfast waiting. When we arrived, we were told Arnold had gone to the fort. Very rude, but the man has always been difficult, and General Washington has ever forgiven him. Mrs. Arnold was said to be unwell and did not come to greet us. We ate, though you can guess”—he waved at the slovenly hearth—“what kind of meal we were offered.”

  Hamilton went on. “The general was insulted, but didn’t suspect anything amiss. This was Arnold, after all. Then we received a startling packet of letters. A man was apprehended riding south toward Tarrytown with plans of West Point, our most recent engineering report for the defenses, and the secret minutes of Washington’s last council of war in his boot. And then word came from the fort that this morning, when he received word we were coming, Arnold had himself rowed out to the British sloop Vulture. And the best part. The name of the rider bound for Tarrytown was John Anderson.”

  “André,” Kate guessed.

  “Indeed.”

  “So General Arnold has betrayed his country and abandoned his wife.”

  “Oh, it gets so much better than that. Shortly after it became plain that Arnold had bolted, his wife was overcome with hysterics. She begged us to attend her. It was a scene worthy of the London stage. She ran about her bedroom, hair streaming, clutching her child to her breast, which I must add was barely covered in a garment more befitting a brothel than a boudoir. She claimed to be entirely innocent of her husband’s treason. But the babe kept squalling, and short of suffocating her infant, Mrs. Arnold had to put him down. And of course the general, being fond of children and in wont of something other than Mrs. Arnold’s nakedness to look upon, looked upon the child. Thereupon he retired to his rooms and has not come out since, save to issue orders for the defense of West Point. The place is a shambles, as no doubt Arnold intended. General Greene arrived with reinforcements last night, so we are safe. For the moment.”

  “And Peggy?”

  “Has spent the last several hours raving about how Washington is going to murder her child. She stopped about an hour ago. I have the most ungodly headache. The coffee helps, though.”

  “I didn’t come a hundred and fifty miles in seven hours to make you coffee.”

  “No. Of course not. Though I cannot pretend to be sorry you came. You must see Mrs. Arnold first, if you’re to understand what we’re dealing with, but it wasn’t she who asked for you. Nor was it General Washington. It was John André.”

  * * *

  The first thing Kate noticed was the silk bed hangings. Insufficient to keep out the cold, and impractical so close to the damp of the river. The second was the girl by the bassinet.

  Peggy Shippen Arnold was plumper than Kate remembered. She’d lost the coltishness of youth to childbirth, although the new weight suited her. Despair did not.

  “Lydia?” She’d been kneeling on the floor, strategically draped over her child’s cradle. It would no doubt be a very affecting pose if Kate were a man.

  “It’s Kate. As you surely must know.”

  Peggy must have decided that her dishabille was wasted on a woman. She shot up and paced to the wardrobe, fished out a heavy wool dressing gown, and cocooned herself in it. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just at present, I’m trying to help. What has happened here?”

  “My husband, Benedict, is a traitor. I must divorce him, of course.” She rattled the words off with a rehearsed earnestness. “I knew nothing of what he was about.”

  “Peggy,” she said gently, “even if you did know, a woman can’t be made to testify against her husband. And Washington would never harm a child.”

  Kate crossed to the bassinet, saw the child, and immediately regretted her words. “Oh, Peggy. What have you done?”

  “What have I done? This is all your fault! You wouldn’t tell me how to prevent it. You knew how exercised I was, how moved. And John wouldn’t make love to me unless I was doing something to prevent it, so I lied.”

  If you knew Arnold, and had never met John André, you might think the child belonged to the American. Unless you looked carefully at the gold-flecked eyes. “Does your husband know the child is André’s?”

  “Of course not! And it was never supposed to go on for this long. Arnold is practically an old man. Boring and bitter. John promised I would be free of him as soon as it was done.”

  “As soon as Arnold gave him West Point.”

  “Yes.”

  Kate emerged from Peggy’s bedroom prison, because that is surely what it was, and went directly outside. She wanted air. Miles and miles of it.

  And the river obliged her. She found Hamilton outside as well.

  “You saw?”

  “Yes. She is a dupe, Alex. André used her.”

  “She will hang for it. André, at least, was only doing his job. She—”

  Kate cut him off. “She has done nothing that I did not.”

  He lifted her hair where it rested over the back of her neck and covered her scars. “And they did not spare you for it. You think she deserves any better?”

  “She doesn’t deserve to die.”

  “Don’t spend your favor on Peggy Arnold yet, my dear. I know the general promised you a boon, and he is a man of his word. But see André first.”

  “He knows something
about Peter, doesn’t he?”

  “André hinted as much. I’d say ‘insinuated,’ but he’s not as crude as that. He is a charming man. I find it impossible to entirely dislike him.”

  They left Peggy Arnold under guard at West Point, and Washington, Hamilton, Kate, and a small detachment of Life Guards set out for Tappan. Washington was taciturn on the journey, his courtesies only perfunctory. Kate had no doubt he would honor his word, and spare one of his prisoners if she asked, but she did not know if she could trade Peggy Arnold’s life for that of her husband, if André truly knew Peter’s whereabouts.

  The same messenger who had escorted Kate up from Philadelphia went ahead to secure them lodgings, and by the time they reached the pretty little hamlet, rooms were already prepared for them in a house where Washington had stayed before. It was only a short walk from there to the tavern where André was being held, but Hamilton accompanied her all the same.

  The guard opened the door for them both, but Hamilton held back and put his hand on Kate’s sleeve. “You understand Tremayne may already be dead.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll be right outside.”

  And then she was in the cool, dark room at the front of the house, with its familiar tavern smells. Pipe tobacco and malty beer. Meat drippings and sugar bubbling from a pie plate to scorch on the oven floor. And a distinctive cologne. Washington’s own, she felt certain. Other people must have lent him things as well, because John André was quite the most comfortably at-home prisoner Kate had ever seen. There was a backgammon case open on the table in front of him, with a game half played. And a deck of cards. And a silk banyan draped over the chair that she somehow doubted had been found in his boot along with the plans for West Point. And carpet slippers.

  He seemed entirely at home—a bachelor in his study, rather than a captive spy. But she wasn’t fooled.

  “I see you continue to make friends wherever you go,” she said.

  André rose, of course, and bowed, and kissed her hand, and surprised her utterly by addressing her, “Lady Sancreed.”

  “I do not style myself so, Captain, as it is only a matter of time before my husband loses the right to call himself Sancreed. Of course he may choose to accept the annulment you have offered him and keep his title, but in either case I will not long be Viscountess Sancreed.”

  “You give me too much credit.” André smiled. “I had no part in that particular stratagem. It was the king who suggested the annulment. He could not believe Tremayne would betray him so. And I have often asked you to call me John. But if you will not, at least address me as Major. I have been promoted.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “May I offer you something? Rum punch, perhaps?”

  She laughed. “Major, the last time I had a drink from you I spent the next twenty-four hours casting up my accounts. Why did you send for me?”

  “Because I want to live. And I know where your husband is.”

  He was alive. She wanted privacy in which to react. In which to cry and scream at the same time. Instead, she held Peter’s life in her hands, fragile as an egg.

  “Then why didn’t you ask to be traded for him?”

  “It is not as simple as that. Peter Tremayne is hardly an ordinary prisoner.”

  “What makes you think I can do anything to help you?”

  “It is common knowledge that Washington has promised you a favor.”

  Not so common as all that, surely, but she let it pass. “And you wish me to call in this favor to make certain you do not hang.”

  “I’ve saved your life in the past. I told Lord Sancreed where to find you that night.”

  “Forgive me if I am not swayed by that particular kindness. You also told Bayard Caide.”

  “I was reasonably certain Sir Bayard would not kill you. And I was correct. Here you sit today. A lady. And a very wealthy one. Angela Ferrers and I have been the making of you.”

  For the first time in a very long while, she felt the scars across her back. “Where is my husband?”

  “Do we have a bargain?”

  “That depends. On whether Peter still lives or not.”

  “Ah.”

  She wished now she had accepted the offered drink. “Tell me.”

  “Tremayne lives. But only until the end of the week. When he refused the king’s pardon, it was decided that he might become too much a folk hero if he were tried publicly. He cuts quite a dashing figure, after all, throwing it all away for love. Assassination—a broken or battered body—would only fuel the legend. Better for the world to think him fled, that he abandoned you.”

  It was cruel, but she bore it.

  “You see, I cannot be traded for Peter Tremayne, because he does not exist. He was taken up without the authority of the king. He cannot now reappear in the world, or General Clinton and the others who arrested and hold him would be disgraced.” A pause. There was worse, and he was readying himself to say it. “He is aboard one of the hulks.”

  Do not think about it, Kate told herself. Just do what must be done. “How do I free him?”

  “You cannot. He is being held with the other political prisoners. Men who it has been decided must disappear. They are taken out, one each night, by a party of marines, and rowed across to the Jersey shore, where they are made to dig their own graves, and then shot. Tremayne and four others will die this way next week. You would need a ship of the line, or a fleet bigger than anything Washington has at present if you wished to take the hulks. And in any case, the political prisoners would be slaughtered before you got close enough to hear their screams.”

  “What you have given me is nothing, and you will hang.”

  “When I said you cannot free him, I meant without my help. If you secure my release, I will give you the information you need to rescue your husband. The rest is up to you.”

  She could speak to General Washington, have André released, and rescue Peter. It could all have been so easy, but it wasn’t. “I will speak to Washington, but there is something you must know first. Arnold fled this morning. He is safe, on the Vulture.”

  André laughed, not without a touch of bitterness. “That is rich. Two years of wooing the man, like a virgin in a whorehouse. You know he’s going to give it up, but not until he’s squeezed every penny out of you. I could scarcely bear his company. I would not have met with him in person at all but that Peggy insisted she had news that could not be committed to paper. And then of course Arnold knows nothing of this and has mapped and lettered to a nicety, and I am forced to tramp across New York with my boot stuffed with evidence. The damnable girl was a poor substitute for you.”

  “Peggy did not get away with Arnold. And neither did her child.”

  André pursed his lips thoughtfully. “She’s safe enough. They have nothing against her. I never wrote anything incriminating to her, and all of her letters to me are secure.” The words lacked his customary confidence.

  “John,” she said. He blanched. She had finally used his Christian name. For the first time since she had arrived, he was very obviously afraid. “They have incontrovertible proof against Peggy, and she will most assuredly hang. You have a son.”

  He deflated like an empty bladder and shook his head. “She insisted on it, you know. Said she’d taken precautions. Wouldn’t believe that I loved her otherwise. And of course I didn’t. But, still in all, to have it come to this. To lose one’s mother thus,” he added wistfully. “To have your life twisted down a dark path before you have the years and mind to choose your own. Tragic. It can’t be borne.”

  Kate thought of the letters from André’s boy lover, and the spy’s explanation of why he hadn’t consummated that relationship. She said nothing, but met his gold-flecked eyes, so like the babe’s.

  She realized that his decision had been made when he said, “Will you have that drink with me now?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He scratched on the door, and his jailers summoned the innkeeper. Shortly th
ereafter, they brought two glasses of punch, and André paid for another for his guard and one for the innkeeper and his wife. It tasted better than Kate expected, rich with molasses and tart with fresh limes.

  “I have a different, smaller favor to ask of you,” he said, setting down his drink. “You have a pressing engagement with your husband at the end of the week, and I would not keep you from it, but this business here, I fear, will be concluded within a very few days, and I should like for you to be there.” The business, of course, was his hanging.

  Kate saw Peggy only once more, to deliver Washington’s orders for her release and safe conduct. The girl left in a flurry of tears and recriminations, blaming Kate for her lover’s impending death, her husband’s failures, her own predicament as the mother of a bastard. Kate wished her Godspeed.

  Kate stayed through the brief trial and was in the crowd when André took the scaffold. Afterwards she walked to the little church nearby and prayed—not for the man who had just departed this earth, because he had gone well and almost gladly, as if buoyed by his one selfless act—but for Peter, and for herself.

  Then she rode with Hamilton and a party of six picked men to the Closter Dock in Jersey, where the forest gave way to a rocky shore, and a row of shallow graves scalloped the tree line.

  “You have hired a company of rogues,” she observed to Hamilton, as his mercenaries scoured the woods for cover and began digging pits in which to conceal themselves for the night.

  “This is a job for hard men,” he replied. “I’ve had cause to know such in this war.”

  A job for hard men, Kate thought. He was right.

  “The identities of the political prisoners are a closely held secret,” André had told her. “The same marine detail will bring one prisoner each night—they dare not trust more than four men with this duty, to know the face of the condemned, to compass his cold-blooded murder. And you must do nothing until you are certain it is Tremayne, because if you raise the alarm, the detail will choose another spot the next night, or burden the next few corpses with lead weight, and sink them in the mud. And you will never even know where your husband’s body lies.”