The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

by Susan Holloway Scott

  Instead, I told Chloe what I knew would make her laugh. “He said he had to leave the parlor. He said the young ladies’ singing made him ill.”

  She laughed, and I laughed with her: not because it was amusing, but because we were both so tired by then that we’d laugh at anything.

  I carried the little tray with the cup through the garden to where Colonel Burr was waiting. I’d half-expected him gone and returned to the others, but there he was, waiting for me with the elder flowers like pale stars over his head.

  “You are an angel, Mary,” he said as he took the cup and began to drink it, grimacing at the taste.

  “Curious stuff, this,” he said when he was done, “but it does act exactly as the surgeon promises.”

  He set the cup back on the tray, centering it precisely in the middle.

  “Are you here, Burr?”

  I turned to see another officer had come around the corner of the house, the moonlight glinting equally off the polished buttons of his coat and his light auburn hair. He stopped there by the kitchen door, and came no farther.

  I knew why. He didn’t wish to interrupt another gentleman entertaining himself with a female slave, away from the house and in the shadows. It didn’t matter that I held the tray with the empty cup, or that I was standing while Colonel Burr still sat. The other officer would see what he expected to see.

  Nor was the Colonel himself averse to letting the other man see it, either.

  “I’m here, Hamilton,” he said, rising to his feet and taking a single step so he stood close beside me. “Am I being summoned?”

  “We’re returning to quarters,” said the other man. “You may join us or not, as it suits you.”

  “I’m finished here,” the Colonel said.

  As he stepped around me, he paused long enough to run his hand down my spine beyond the edge of my stays, and over the curve of my bottom through the two thin layers of worn linen. He let his palm settle there, his fingers spreading wide to cup my flesh and fondle it. I gasped and stiffened at the unexpected caress, the cup rattling on the tray in my hands, but I could do nothing more. I hadn’t forgotten the lesson I’d learned long ago at Belle Vallée, when I’d dared to fight back. My body was not my own. Colonel Burr was a gentleman, an officer, a guest, and while in this house he was as entitled to my person as he was to the pantry’s cream of tartar.

  In truth, the Colonel’s hand was on me for only a moment before he’d moved on to join the other officers. He said nothing more to me, nor looked back. It was as if in that same instant I’d ceased to exist for him, if I had even existed at all.

  I took my time returning to the kitchen alone, composing myself before I saw Chloe and the others again. I didn’t want to tell them what had happened. Such things occurred more often than they didn’t. My body was young and strong and ripe, and no matter how modest I tried to be, I’d be blamed for the temptation I unwillingly offered. It was that way for every woman in bondage. Likely the only reason I hadn’t been used by an Englishman since I’d come to the Hermitage was because I lived in a household of women.

  Still, I was more angry at myself than at the Colonel. It was my own fault for lingering with him alone in the dark, for answering him with more words than I’d any right to, for letting myself pity him in his illness. I was fortunate he hadn’t attempted more, for he would have overpowered me easily enough.

  Mistress had said the army would remain here for four days. It wasn’t just Colonel Burr I’d have to avoid over that time. I’d seen how other officers had looked at me, too. Lucas had once warned me that soldiers after a battle were like beasts in rut: having survived death, they wanted nothing more than to prove they still lived by planting their seed in the first womb they happened upon. The young officers in this encampment might stand about in Mistress’s parlor and listen to white-skinned young ladies in pink silk sing warbling songs of doves and roses, but afterward in the dark they’d hunt for women like me. All I could do was avoid them, Colonel Burr in particular, and count the hours until the army departed.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Hermitage

  Hopperstown, State of New Jersey

  July 1778

  Early the next morning, Mistress had us move all her belongings from the back parlor that was ordinarily reserved for dining, so that His Excellency’s staff could make use of the room as a field office. His Excellency himself took possession of the smaller parlor for his own work and private discussions.

  Sure enough, within the hour his men had brought in extra furnishings, set the chairs before the long tables that served as desks, and covered the tops with green baize cloths. Soon His Excellency’s aides-de-camp were settled in their chairs and scribbling furiously away at letters and orders and fair copies, conducting the tedious ink-and-paper side of warfare while most of their officer-brethren were gallanting about with the young ladies from the neighborhood. Mistress’s orders to me were to make certain the dutiful gentlemen indoors were kept well supplied with hot coffee to fuel their labors, which I did, offering a cloth-wrapped pot whenever a cup ran dry.

  I recognized one of these officers as Colonel Burr’s acquaintance from last night; his red-gold hair set him apart from the others, as did his bustling manner. He was Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, and he appeared to be trusted with more responsibility than the others at the desks, and so occupied by it that he didn’t recognize me from the garden, or perhaps chose not to.

  To my relief, there was no sign of Colonel Burr in this room. I recalled Mistress having said he’d once been an aide-de-camp, too, but had resigned the post after a short time, preferring a field command. If he’d ever shared the same ill-worded opinions with His Excellency as he had with me last night, I could well understand why the appointment had been brief.

  For the remainder of the day I retreated to the kitchen to help Chloe first prepare dinner for His Excellency, his staff, and chosen guests, and then the lighter supper for later in the evening. There was more than enough work to be done for all of us, and far into the night, too.

  On the final afternoon, soon after dinner was done and the officers had returned to their makeshift desks, Mistress sent for me to bring a large service of tea to the front parlor where His Excellency now reigned.

  As soon as I’d entered with the tea equipment, I realized that this was no ordinary gathering. For one, the windows were shut for privacy’s sake, no matter that it was a warm afternoon. Then there was the company itself: Mistress, of course, and several other officers who left soon after I’d entered, and another tall and imposing gentleman who I realized was His Excellency himself. In a well-tailored uniform with gold epaulets, his hair neat with pomade and powder, he had the grave, dignified manner of a natural leader. I’d heard his slaves speak of him, some believing he was a reasonable master, but more declaring him to be vengeful, harsh, and demanding. I was more inclined to believing the latter. Still, there was no denying that His Excellency was the most important gentleman in America, and I was awed simply to be in his presence.

  He was sitting in one of the tall-backed armchairs and listening intently to Mistress, his thumb and forefinger resting against his chin. She wore a white silk gown sprigged with pink and blue flowers, kept from being cloyingly sweet by a kerchief of black lace twined around her neck and bosom. Even His Excellency was not immune to her considerable charm and intelligence, and listened with respect to every word she spoke.

  “I’m sure in her wisdom Mrs. Washington has told you the same thing, Your Excellency,” she was saying. “We ladies may not wield guns or swords, but we can make contributions in our own gentle ways to the great cause of liberty.”

  “My dear wife doesn’t need to tell me, Mrs. Prevost,” the General said. “I have observed it countless times myself, most recently here in the case of your own most generous hospitality.”

  “You are so very kind, Your Excellency,” she said. In this room she always sat in her favorite chair placed beside the same win
dow, so that the daylight would fall on the more pleasing side of her face, the one without the scar. “You know my only wish is to do what I can, and remain true to my own loyalties.”

  I listened as I bent over the tea tray, filling the cups with boiling water from the kettle to warm them, and marveled once again at how easily Mistress could profess the deepest loyalty to one side or the other. Surely General Washington knew she was married to a British officer. But how had Mistress persuaded him so thoroughly of her loyalty? Had she finally decided the American cause would overrule her husband’s and she was at last speaking the truth of her heart?

  His Excellency nodded. “I do know it, ma’am,” he said. “I’ve been considering how best to make use of your rare talents, and yet preserve your delicacy as a lady.”

  She smiled. “I’m not so fragile as that,” she said wryly. “I believe you’ll find me perfectly capable for the assignment we discussed earlier. Mary, His Excellency will take his tea now.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” I murmured. Somehow she always knew the exact moment I’d emptied the boiling water from the now-heated cups, wiped them dry, and was poised to fill them with hot tea. She didn’t even have to look. Most ladies liked to prepare their guests’ tea themselves, but Mistress preferred to have me do the small rituals, so that her attention remained entirely upon her guests. I poured the tea into the porcelain cups, set them on the smaller tray, and carried it across the room to the General.

  I was proud of my skill at this. I held my head up, walked with gliding steps, and never spilled a drop, not even as I curtseyed. I understood that I was one more elegant and valuable part of the tea equipage, my grace as important to the effect as the Chinese porcelain and polished silver, but even so, I found pleasure in it, too, especially as I held the tray for His Excellency. He was my husband’s general, and I only wished I could have told him of Lucas, and how honored I was to serve him because of that.

  “Well done, Mary,” Mistress said softly as I came to her next. It was a rare compliment, likely more for the sake of the General than for me.

  “I’ve always found mulattoes served best for labor within the house,” His Excellency said with approval. “They’re more easily trained to perform genteel tasks.”

  My pleasure faded. I’d been honored to serve the General for my husband’s sake, yet in his eyes I was the same as the cattle on his estate, bred to perform his wishes.

  “Mary was a gift to me from my husband,” Mistress said watching me with pride, as if my accomplishments were her own. “He purchased her from a French family in Saint-Domingue. She has learned my ways quickly, especially given her youth. I’m considering bringing her with me on our little junket to Fishkill for just that reason.”

  I worked to keep the excitement from my face. Since the war had intensified for our valley, it had become hazardous for Mistress to leave her land, and the few times she’d ventured to the house of a friend, she’d left me behind. This junket, as she called it, would by necessity take us away from the Hermitage for at least one night and likely more.

  “An excellent suggestion, Mrs. Prevost.” The General sipped the hot tea with care, the cup looking foolishly small balanced in his oversized fingers. “Mr. Eltinger and the others are sure to have their people with them, and often their gossip is more revealing than that of their betters, as they are by nature more impulsive and less given to reticence.”

  I could think of few people more reticent than those of us forbidden to speak our own thoughts, or who were expected to stand mute and invisible.

  “Then I shall bring Mary with me,” Mistress continued. “I’ll also bring my man Caesar, to help with the horses and luggage.”

  The General nodded. “What of Miss DeVisme? Will she require a servant?”

  “No, Mary shall do for us both.” Mistress brought her teacup to her lips, musing while she sipped. “Have you considered which officer will be accompanying us as our escort?”

  “I haven’t,” the General admitted. “There are several who would do, but I’ve yet to decide.”

  Mistress set the cup down on the saucer on the table beside her, gently, with just the slightest of clinks.

  “I know to make such a suggestion is vastly presumptuous of me,” she said, “but there is Colonel Burr.”

  To my surprise, the General’s expression darkened. “I would not have thought Burr would be your suggestion, Mrs. Prevost.”

  “Ahh!” she said, a soft, vaguely distressed exclamation that made gentlemen want to rush to her rescue.

  “Pray forgive my boldness, Your Excellency,” she said. “I’d have thought Colonel Burr would be your first choice. Hasn’t he performed your recent requests for intelligence of the enemy’s shipping upon the North River with both efficiency and reticence?”

  The General frowned. “Has Burr spoken to you on his own behalf, ma’am? Because if he has—”

  “Not at all, not at all,” Mistress said quickly. “If one of us is at fault, it is I, to repeat what was told me in confidence. Yet I have no shame in my words, nor do I regret speaking on a capable officer’s behalf.”

  “The intelligence Burr is compiling has indeed been useful,” the General admitted grudgingly. “His diligence in this matter was, and continues, to be exceptionally thorough. Malcolm cannot praise him enough.”

  “But you have doubts.” Mistress cocked a single brow. “Unspoken, but there.”

  “I do, ma’am, I do,” he said, and sighed. Motioning for me to come take his now-empty cup, he then rose, and crossed the room to gaze from the window beside her chair. “I must ask for your confidence in this, Mrs. Prevost, so that I may speak plainly.”

  “You know you have it,” she said quietly. “Always. My word, honorably given.”

  He sighed again, his hands clasped tightly behind his back.

  “I am certain that you have by now heard of the actions of General Lee at Monmouth last month,” he said. “His disobedience, his disrespect, were insupportable, and clearly proved by the court-martial. Yet he has his misguided followers. Burr has been vocal among them.”

  “Then what better way to test Colonel Burr’s loyalty than to send him to escort the Tories to New York?” Mistress asked. “If he returns with fresh intelligence that he’s gleaned from these men, then you have your answer. If he is sufficiently disillusioned and chooses to remain on the far side of the British lines in New York, then you’ll have another answer, too.”

  His Excellency didn’t reply, but continued to stare out the window. I wondered how much of the scenery he was actually seeing, and how much he was occupied instead by this tangle of loyalty and betrayal.

  “This assignment could be a test of his loyalty,” Mistress continued, idly wrapping one scalloped end of her lace kerchief around her finger. “It could, I suppose, also be perceived as a test of mine.”

  He glanced over his broad shoulder at her, his expression revealing nothing.

  “I have already considered that, ma’am,” he said evenly. “Nor for the first time, either.”

  “As have I, Your Excellency.” She smiled slowly, raising her chin a fraction toward him as she did. “As have I. Would you care for more tea?”

  * * *

  “Back and forth, back and forth,” grumbled Caesar as we stood on the dock beside the pile of trunks. “You’d think crossing that river once was enough for any Christian.”

  “Hush, Caesar,” I said, pulling my shawl more tightly around my shoulders. We stood on a small dock on the bank of the North River, not far from the town of Fishkill. The breeze off the water was chilly so early in this gray day, and Caesar and I had been waiting here for over an hour. The sloop was moored at the dock, but her master hadn’t wanted to take on Mistress’s belongings until the others were here as well with theirs. Caesar and I had been left to stand guard over the trunks while Mistress, Miss DeVisme, and Colonel Burr had gone inside the little coffeehouse nearby to wait in comfort.

  “We crossed the river once in n
ext to no time,” I continued. “Today we’ll be bound to Manhattan, and that will only take a few days with the current to do all the work.”

  “Where in blazes are those Tories keeping themselves, anyway?” Caesar pulled a worn red-dotted handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly. “D’you think they’ve changed their mind, and turned Whig?”

  “It’s too late for them to do that,” I said, stamping my feet up and down to warm my legs. “I heard Colonel Burr tell Mistress last night that these two are the most stubborn old Tories he’s ever seen. He said the Commissioners for Conspiracies in Poughkeepsie couldn’t get clear of them fast enough.”

  “‘Commissioners for Conspiracies,’” he repeated. “These people’ve got a commission and a committee for everything, don’t they? We’d best be careful, Mary, else they’ll start up a Committee for the Righteous Regulation of My Supper.”

  “Don’t let them hear you say that,” I warned, “or they likely will.”

  He wasn’t far wrong. Mistress’s entire junket (as she continued to call it, as if this little voyage truly were some sort of pleasure cruise) was the work of the Committee of Safety, the Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies, and likely a half dozen others besides. Two upstanding gentlemen from the state of New York had refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the new country, and because they insisted on remaining loyal to the Crown, the Committee of Safety had declared them to be traitors. They were now being escorted with their families to the British army they so professed to love.

  I guessed the gentlemen must be more than ordinary Tories to receive this kind of treatment. Considering two of them were lawyers, one being the former attorney general of the old colony, they were no doubt clever, wealthy, and guilty of troublemaking for the American cause.

  I say that I “guessed” all of this because that was all it was: guessing. After the conversation I’d witnessed between Mistress and General Washington, I was more confused than ever regarding her loyalties. His Excellency at first had appeared to trust her, then had doubted her. Yet in the end, he had sent her and her sister here to accompany the three Tories into exile, and with Colonel Burr as our escort as she’d suggested.