“I disremember, sir.” Because I wasn’t sure what reply he sought from me, I judged it best to pretend to be uncertain. “Some years, sir. I was brought here as a child, sir, and now I am grown.”
Burr smiled, a smile that showed he wasn’t fooled at all by my answer.
“You’re the wench from India, aren’t you?” he asked, but in a way that made it a statement, not a question. “I’ve heard others speak of you.”
There was nothing I could say to that. I was accustomed to being a curiosity, but there was something different about how he regarded me that made me uneasy. Perhaps it was because I stood on the porch and he still sat astride his horse, keeping our faces nearly level. This seldom happened with me, given my small size, and I didn’t like having a man—especially this man—able to study me so intimately.
I looked down at my hands clasped over my apron, and away from him, and with the show of modesty that Mistress encouraged. I also did it to avoid his gaze. I wasn’t his enemy. He didn’t need to watch me like this, as if he could discover secrets I didn’t know I possessed.
“I shall tell Mistress you are here, sir,” I murmured, and once again I began to turn away.
“I thought I heard voices,” Mistress said, appearing at the door behind me. She’d had other visitors earlier in the day, and was still dressed in a dark red gown that was much the same color as the leaves I’d been sweeping. It was a handsome color on her, making her pale skin appear whiter, and with her skirts tossing lightly in the breeze she looked as handsome as the autumn afternoon itself.
Colonel Burr dismounted in a single easy motion and looped the reins around the post at the bottom of the steps. As soon as he’d seen Mistress, he’d forgotten me, and now joined her eagerly on the porch.
“Good day, Mrs. Prevost,” he said, bowing over his dusty boots and spurs. “Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Burr, commander of Malcolm’s Additional Continental Regiment. Your servant, ma’am.”
“Good day, Colonel.” She smiled warmly, generously. “How delightful that you could join us today!”
“I fear it’s not entirely a pleasurable call, ma’am,” he said as he bowed over her hand. “War—and most specifically an engagement with the enemy last night that we must discuss—has stolen that, ah, delight from me.”
“Then you must come inside, Colonel,” Mistress said, “and tell me all. There is no topic more engaging to me than military affairs.”
He drew his brows together and looked solemn and serious as he followed her inside, but I saw how she’d already bewitched him. She had that effect over most gentlemen, particularly the younger ones. Her voice, her manner, her fine-boned elegance, charmed them in a way that more conventionally beautiful women couldn’t match. In the midst of war, she offered peace and gentility, and they were drawn to her like giddy moths to a lantern’s flame.
I understood. It was the way she’d kept her property and her family untouched, and herself safe.
“You are kindness itself, ma’am,” Colonel Burr said, offering his arm to lead her inside.
She took it, but with only the tips of her fingers, her hands as white and delicate as lilies on his dark blue sleeve. I wonder if he realized he’d only learn what she wanted him to know. I doubted most of the gentlemen who came to sit in Mistress’s parlor ever did.
She glanced back over her shoulder to me. Her cheeks were flushed, too, for she enjoyed this bantering as much as the gentlemen.
“Mary, light refreshments for Colonel Burr in the parlor,” she said. “I can tell that he’s quite famished.”
He chuckled at that, as he was meant to do, and together they entered the house as if they were already the oldest and dearest of acquaintances. I retrieved my broom, and walked outside the house to the kitchen’s back door. I’d no wish to encounter Colonel Burr any more than I must. Besides, he and his men would likely be gone within the hour, and mercifully that would be the last any of us saw of him.
Mary Emmons
CHAPTER 9
The Hermitage
Hopperstown, State of New Jersey
September 1777
I might have been ready to forget Colonel Burr, but when Mistress dined with her sister and mother later that evening the talk at the table was of nothing else.
“Colonel Burr is the commander of Malcolm’s Regiment, which is ordinarily stationed to the north of us at the Clove,” Mistress explained, rapping her knuckles absently on the tablecloth. “Learning a large party of British soldiers was encamped perhaps two miles west of Hackensack, he himself led a detachment from Ramapo here for a foray against the British last night, when they would best be hidden by darkness.”
“Oh, my,” Miss DeVisme said, her eyes wide. “That is very near.”
Mistress nodded. “The British camp is—or, rather, was—indeed close to us. You recall Mr. Timpany’s little schoolhouse, near New Bridge? They’d made that one of their guardhouses.”
“Poor Mr. Timpany,” her mother said, clucking her tongue. “Or Ten-penny, as the boys called him. To think that even a schoolhouse would be used for war!”
I set the final dish on the table and stepped back to stand by the wall. When the three ladies dined together without guests, the meal was generally a simple one, and they often dismissed me from the room.
Tonight I hoped they wouldn’t. Unlike most of the ladies who visited the house, these three were as interested and knowledgeable about the military aspects of the war as any civilian gentleman, and spoke frankly about it among themselves. Because of Lucas, I now always longed to know more, too.
“It was Colonel Burr himself who crept among the sentries first to discover their location,” Mistress continued, “and then he returned later in the night with a party of his best men. The party waited until the sentries were at their furthest point apart, and then slipped between them to surprise and attack the picket.”
“A wise move, that,” Mrs. DeVisme said. “It was dark last night, on account of the clouds.”
Mistress nodded. “That’s what the Colonel said as well. He led the charge, and after fierce combat at close quarters with bayonets, the Americans were victorious without a single shot fired. Several of the British were stabbed to death with the bayonets, and the pickets and a score of others were made prisoners by the Colonel’s men, who carried them off in the same silence with which they attacked.”
Now I understood the dirt and grime on Colonel Burr’s uniform, and how honorably it had been acquired. But I also couldn’t help but think that dead men’s blood could have been mixed with the other stains. I remembered the sharpness of his gaze, the keen watchfulness to it as he’d studied and appraised me. Soldiers were meant to kill their enemies, but that killing forever changed them. I’d seen it in Lucas, and I’d seen it this day in Colonel Burr’s eyes as well.
“But if the British encampment is so large, why didn’t they follow, and attack?” Miss DeVisme was asking. “Surely they must have heard something.”
“It seems they were such sound sleepers, or deep in their cups, that none of them did,” Mistress said. “But here’s the best part of the story. When the British officers awoke and realized their pickets had been neatly seized from beneath their noses, they imagined an American source of great strength beyond the hills, and quickly gave the orders to break camp, and depart. They were gone in haste this very morning, a force of perhaps two thousand or more running from fear of a detachment of under a hundred!”
“A daring night’s work for Colonel Burr, to be sure,” Mrs. DeVisme said. “But I must be honest, Theo. I’d rather you were telling such a story, with such relish, of your own husband’s exploits.”
“Don’t discredit Colonel Burr, Mama,” Mistress said, though even I could see that wasn’t what her mother had intended by her criticism. “You can’t deny that the sortie was planned and executed with brilliant efficiency, and yet the Colonel described it all to me with the most perfect modesty imaginable.”
Mrs. DeVisme raised a s
ingle skeptical brow. “I should like to know how any gentleman could describe all that to you modestly.”
“I assure you that he did,” Mistress insisted. “I’m confident that in time we’ll hear a different version of the events from our British friends, because they were made to play the fool, and at a cost, too. But for now I’m willing enough to credit Colonel Burr exclusively.”
Miss DeVisme sighed, and sat back in her chair.
“I wish you’d sent for me while Colonel Burr was here,” she said. “What manner of gentleman is he?”
“Oh, he is the very model of an officer,” Mistress said, dipping a piece of bread into her stew and idly circling the crust around the carrots and onions. “He is brisk and well-spoken and clever. He has served on His Excellency’s staff and that of General Putnam, and he fought with both General Arnold and General Montgomery on the campaign to Quebec. His grandfather was a noted philosopher and cleric from New England. He was graduated from the College of New Jersey at only sixteen. He speaks Greek and French, though not as well as I.”
“Goodness, Theo,” said Mrs. DeVisme. “You insist the gentleman is modest, and yet he told you all that of himself in the course of conversation?”
Mistress smiled without looking up from her plate. “He did not tell it, Mama, so much as I discovered it. For all his talents, he is very young, and couldn’t help himself.”
“How very young?” asked her sister.
“Very,” Mistress said. “He claims to be a mere twenty-one.”
“That makes him ten years younger than you, Theo,” her sister said, an observation that was as unnecessary as it was pointed. “Has he a wife?”
If her sister’s barb struck Mistress, then she hid it well. She pulled away a crust from the sauce-soaked bread she’d been toying with, and slipped it into her mouth, taking her time to chew it.
“No, Caty,” she said finally. “The Colonel is unwed. I’m sure you would find him handsome. However, he says that he has not the time for such an indulgence as a wife, at least not so long as the war continues.”
“If the gentleman insists on creeping about in the dark alone to spy upon enemy pickets,” Mrs. DeVisme said as she reached for her wineglass, “then neither his service to his regiment nor his life will be of any length. Nonetheless, Theo, please write to thank him for his solicitude today.”
Mistress smiled. “I have already done so.”
“I’m glad.” Her mother nodded. “If Colonel Burr should return our way again, we will certainly welcome him. And in the future, pray include Catherine in your conversations, Theo. You yourself have no need of more adoring young pups scattered at your feet.”
Mistress slanted her glance at her mother. “You would consider a Continental officer as a suitor for Catherine?”
Now her mother took her time answering as she slowly sipped her wine.
“If the Colonel is half the paragon that you describe,” she said, “then I should hope in time that he should see either the error of his allegiances, or the wisdom of them, and adapt accordingly in order to prosper.”
With the candlelight playing over her face, Mistress’s smile faded.
“You grow more pragmatic by the day, Mama,” she said. “Would you say the same regarding James?”
Her mother sighed, looking down at the wine that remained in her glass.
“You already know my answer to that, my dear,” she said quietly. “You chose to become James’s wife, and have pledged before God to honor him as your husband. He has always been a good man, an honorable man, and he is the father of your children. It is not for him to change.”
“You know I’ve done whatever has been necessary for us to survive,” Mistress said sharply, “and for this property, his property, to be preserved. You have seen all the letters I’ve written, the pleas I have made, the—”
“That’s another matter entirely, Theo,” her mother said. “Do not confuse the two.”
Mistress shook her head, quick little jerks of anger and frustration. “I do not know why you refuse to acknowledge that everything is bound together for me, this house and this land and this war, and the side I must choose to—”
“Mary.” Mrs. DeVisme turned in her chair to look at me. “Would you fetch another dish of butter for the bread?”
I’d no choice but to nod and leave, and when I returned with it the conversation had purposefully shifted from war to harvest, and whether the corn should be brought in now, or left to stand another week.
But I could not forget what I’d overheard. Because Mistress was married to Colonel Prevost, I had always believed that she would follow his loyalty to the king, and support the British in their efforts to put down the revolution in their American colonies. No matter how often I’d seen her dance back and forth with various callers to the house, I still believed that her husband ruled her beliefs.
After tonight, I wasn’t nearly as sure of Mistress’s loyalties—not only to the king, but to her husband himself. It seemed that Mistress was fighting another war, another smaller, private rebellion within the greater one that raged around us. Her mother knew it, too. That was clear enough from how she’d tried to quiet her daughter by counseling acceptance. She was wise to do so, for Mistress’s actions could imperil not only her own life, but the lives of her husband and her sons as well as her sister and Mrs. DeVisme. What worried me most, however, was how Mistress’s rebellions might influence me.
More than ever, I wished I were a free woman. Lucas had once told me that some wives followed their husbands to war, marching behind the army and then being paid to serve as cooks, nurses, and laundresses in camp. I already performed all these tasks at the Hermitage without recompense, and I was certain I could make myself useful to the army. It was true that the dangers and the hardships would be genuine, but I would endure it all to be with Lucas. Each night as I lay beneath the rough beams of the attic, I’d pretend that instead I was curled snugly beside him, his large body warm and familiar, with a roof of canvas over our heads, and the stars and moon beyond that.
Pretending was the closest I’d come to him. While Mistress was recounting the story of Colonel Burr’s sortie, much greater, grander events were taking place in other colonies. Two weeks after it had happened, I overheard in Mistress’s parlor that General Washington and his army had barely escaped after a horrific, daylong battle along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, and that the British under General Howe now were in full possession of the capital city of Philadelphia, just as they occupied New York.
Later, with a newspaper before me in the kitchen, my voice trembled as I’d read aloud the descriptions of these terrible defeats, and I knew from the silence that followed from Chloe and Caesar that they feared for Lucas, too. The newspapers never listed which regiments had engaged the enemy, or the companies that had suffered the most. More than two thousand American soldiers were killed, wounded, or lost at Brandywine, and I prayed that Lucas wasn’t among them.
But soon after, reports came from the north that were more heartening to the American cause. The British General Burgoyne had fought General Arnold and the Continental Army twice at Saratoga, at the top of the North River in New York, finally compelling Burgoyne to surrender his troops and a large contingent of Hessians as well to General Gates.
When all this was done and the season for war with it, I’d hoped that the American troops would once again encamp for the winter at Morristown, so close that Lucas might return on leave to the Hackensack Valley with Colonel Vervelde. This year, however, His Excellency decided he would rather remain close to General Clinton’s troops in Philadelphia than in New York. He settled the encampment instead upon a bluff at a place called Valley Forge, overlooking the Schuylkill River, the main waterway from the country to Philadelphia. There his men shivered their way through the coldest months of the winter while the British and Hessian officers made merry in the warm brick mansions of Philadelphia merchants.
We remained in tolerable comfort at the H
ermitage, though there was no doubt that the war had taken its toll on the lavishness of Mistress’s entertainments. Once exhausted, costly imported spices, raisins, white sugar, and liquor that had been regular features of the kitchen’s larder were not replaced unless one of Mistress’s acquaintance brought her smuggled goods, and Chloe and I made do with what was grown on our own farm. There were no new gowns for Mistress or her sister. Instead, older dresses were picked apart and the silk remade into new styles, or refurbished with different laces or a freshly embroidered stomacher. Because hair powder was another imported luxury, they now wore their dark hair without it even at the most formal of gatherings, and were praised for their simplicity and patriotism.
“Patriotism” itself became the most favored word in the house. With the British now concentrated in Philadelphia and New York, they were much less in evidence in our corner of New Jersey. To no one’s surprise, Mistress more openly embraced the cause of liberty, and the toasts that were offered in the parlor were now raised to the triumph of His Excellency General Washington instead of His Majesty the King. Because of her adeptness, the Hermitage continued to be one of the few estates in the valley undisturbed by looting or vandals.
All this seemed wiser still (or at least fortuitous) when Mistress learned in March that the French King Louis XVI had joined the American battle against the British, and signed an alliance with the American Congress. Mistress celebrated with an entertainment where all guests were required to speak only French, or suffer a forfeit. She included me, and I was ordered to address her guests in French for the evening. I did not enjoy this, being made to perform like a trained dog at a fair, but Mistress’s acquaintances were mightily amused by my prowess, and that was all that mattered.
One of the guests was Mr. Hering, the cousin of Lucas’s Colonel Vervelde, who was watching out over the Vervelde farms while the Colonel was away fighting. I recognized him at once, and although I couldn’t approach him myself, I did dare to address Mistress the following morning.
The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr Page 16
