The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

by Susan Holloway Scott

  What I wished now was to write a letter to present to Lucas, a true letter, filled with all the thoughts and promises that I’d been unable to tell him these months we’d been apart. I wanted to give him something that he could keep, and reread, and know all the love I had for him wherever he was.

  For a woman like Mistress who wrote a dozen letters a day, this would seem as nothing. But for me it would mean the world, and I held my breath, hoping she’d agree.

  “I’d always wanted Chloe to learn to write,” she said, musing, as she rubbed scented cream into her hands. “I’d hoped that she would keep proper records of meals and general housekeeping, and preserve her recipes, but she’s always been too lazy to learn. It would be useful to me if you could write down what she says.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” I said, barely containing my excitement. “I can do that, Mistress.”

  “Very well, then,” she said, reaching for her hat. “I’ll see that you’re provided with paper, pen, and ink as soon as we return to the Hermitage.”

  * * *

  Because we were sailing upriver, the trip was longer, a full ten days. The company was much smaller now, reduced to only four passengers besides Caesar and me: Mistress and her sister, Colonel Burr, and Major Edwards. They were much more quiet, too, or perhaps it only seemed that way to me now that Mag was gone from our midst.

  At first I thought that Colonel Burr and Miss DeVisme were set to become a match, as Mrs. DeVisme had clearly hoped they would. They were close in age, they looked well together, and they appeared to take pleasure in each other’s presence. Most of all, they were both unmarried, and in need of a spouse.

  But it soon became clear that the Colonel was far more fascinated by Mistress than her younger sister. I’d witnessed this before, of course. Many officers, young and old, had come to the Hermitage as dutiful guests, only to leave worshiping Mistress as a womanly paragon of virtue, learning, grace, and patriotism. She wrote to them after they left, too, engaging ever more correspondents as the war had progressed.

  But Colonel Burr was different. For the first time since I’d known Mistress, she appeared to be as beguiled by this young officer as he was with her. She displayed none of her well-practiced charm with him, nor flattered him into obedience. Instead, they addressed each other with an honesty and directness that was unusual between ladies and gentlemen, at least from what I had observed. They seemed like the oldest of friends reunited after a lengthy separation, rather than new acquaintances, and yet neither could look away when the other was near.

  As she always did when traveling, Mistress had brought a small case of books with her on her journey, and these she and the Colonel now read together. Sitting together at the mess table or walking the deck arm in arm, they would take turns reading aloud to each other, or reading together in companionable silence, and then discuss what they’d read. He was dazzled by her learning, for she read subjects more often preferred by gentlemen than ladies: philosophy, history, and the works of the ancients. She in turn was delighted by how scholarly his own tastes were for his age, and how adept he was at defending them.

  I suppose this was not surprising, for there was considerable education to be found in both their families. Mistress’s grandfather had been a holy minister, while the Colonel could count both his father and grandfather as among the most celebrated preachers of their age. As a likely result, the two of them did relish a loud literary discussion over whatever they’d most recently read, and delighted in the sound of their own voices, much to the regret of the rest of us who’d no choice but to listen.

  At this point there was nothing untoward between Mistress and the Colonel; there could not have been, not in the close quarters and limited privacy of the sloop. It was clear to the rest of us, however, that little would be required to fan these nascent sparks of admiration into an illicit passion.

  If I’d any remaining doubts, the Colonel himself approached me on the deck on the last afternoon of the voyage, at the time when Mistress had retired to rest, having slept ill the night before. I was once again sitting cross-legged knitting; I’d knitted three pairs of stockings on this voyage, and was nearly done with a fourth.

  “A word, Mary, if you please,” he said. “Come, walk along the deck with me.”

  It was an unusual request, but I scrambled to my feet and tucked my needles and wool into my pocket. I didn’t take his arm, the way Mistress or Miss DeVisme might, but walked beside him with my hands clasped before me at my waist. He seemed subdued today, and there were circles of weariness beneath his eyes. I wondered if he, too, had slept badly last night, or perhaps been plagued with a headache. This affliction was one more thing that he and Mistress seemed to share, and they’d compared tales of suffering and remedies for its relief.

  “I wish you to be honest with me, Mary,” he began, frowning a bit. “You have my word that whatever you tell me I’ll keep in complete confidence. If, from loyalty, you would prefer not to reply, I’ll accept that as well.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said; not that he’d offered anything worthy of my gratitude, but because some reply was needed and that was easiest. I expected he would ask me about my conversation with Mag, of ships and troops, and I composed myself to answer.

  But that wasn’t what he’d intended, not at all.

  “Tell me, Mary,” he said, and cleared his throat with uncharacteristic nervousness. “How long have you been in Mrs. Prevost’s house?”

  “Nearly five years, sir,” I said. “Colonel Prevost brought me to the Hermitage when he last visited himself.”

  He stopped his walking, incredulous. “He has kept apart from Mrs. Prevost for that long?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I do not believe it has been from choice, but from Colonel Prevost’s duty as an officer.”

  “But to abandon a woman as fine as Mrs. Prevost, to leave her to the fates and hazards of a perilous war—what husband would do such a thing to his wife?”

  I didn’t reply, for I had no answer to give, and we walked forward and then aft and forward again in silence before he spoke again.

  “Does she receive letters from him?” he asked. “Does he bother to write to her?”

  “Yes, sir, he does,” I said. “Because their two sons are with him, he writes to her of their doings, and encloses letters from the young gentlemen as well.”

  He nodded, making sense of this. “Does Mrs. Prevost answer his letters?”

  “I do not know, sir,” I said. “Mistress writes many letters.”

  “He does not deserve them if she does,” he said, speaking each word as if it were some sort of vow or pledge. “I am limited in my own resources, but I shall do all in my power to offer assistance to her, however she needs or desires.”

  I listened with growing unease. Mistress already had other champions willing to fight her legal battles, including important judges, lawyers, generals on both sides, and even Governor William Livingston. It was how she’d so deftly managed to keep possession of the Hermitage and her family unharmed throughout the war.

  But Colonel Burr’s gallantry sounded different, more determined and more personal, and more reckless as well. I doubted a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant colonel could do more for Mistress than the very governor of the state—unless the assistance he promised her was of a different variety altogether.

  We landed in the early evening, and because it was so late in the day, Mistress took lodgings in an inn not far from the river, and postponed our departure for the Hermitage until daylight. The next morning was dreary and chill for the season, with rain already beginning to drum against the windowpanes.

  Mistress and her sister were to continue south with an escort to the Hermitage, but Colonel Burr would return to his post in Westchester. His farewell to Mistress in the inn’s yard was formal and brief. I wasn’t reassured, however, since I knew they’d dined alone the previous night, and likely bidden each other a fonder good-bye at that time.

  The rain grew heavier, and follo
wed us all the way back to Hopperstown. The resulting mud made travel slow, wet, and difficult, and it took us four miserable days to cover thirty miles. While Mistress and her sister traveled in the carriage, Caesar and I rode in the open wagon with the baggage. All our clothing was soaked by the rain, and remained that way. The escort left us not far from where Mistress’s property began, and with no further need to remain together, the carriage hurried ahead, and left us to follow more slowly. I’d never been so eager to see the chimney of the Hermitage, knowing there’d be a warm fire, drink, and food waiting.

  “Whose gelding is that?” Caesar asked as we drew the wagon into the yard. A visitor’s horse was tied just inside the barn, leaning close to one wall to keep dry from the rain.

  “I don’t know, nor do I care unless he can help me bring Mistress’s belongings into the house,” I said as I climbed down. With a hatbox in one hand and a satchel in the other, I trudged from the wagon across the muddy yard to the kitchen.

  “You’re back,” Chloe said as I stepped through the door. She didn’t smile, or demand to hear of our trip, as I’d expected. Instead, she stood before the fire, her hands twisting anxiously in her apron. “Mistress said for you to come to her in the parlor the instant you returned.”

  Grumbling, I removed my cloak, my shoes, and my stockings, not wanting to track fresh mud into the parlor. My petticoat was sodden and splattered with mud and my cap and hair bedraggled, but if Mistress wished to see me directly then she’d have to take me as I came. Most likely she wished tea brought to her and her visitor, and with some sort of special, specific nicety that she hadn’t wanted to entrust to Chloe, and I hurried barefoot down the hallway.

  “Here you are, Mary.” Mistress had removed her cloak, but still wore her traveling clothes. She was sitting on the edge of her chair, her back very straight, and her visitor stood before her, his back to me. She was pale, her lips pinched together and her eyes large.

  Bad news, I thought at once, bad news. Her husband, her sons, her property . . .

  Then the gentleman turned, and I saw it was Mr. Hering, the cousin of Mr. Vervelde, and my heart froze in my breast.

  The bad news wasn’t for Mistress. It was for me.

  “Sit here beside me, Mary,” Mistress said, pointing to the plain chair beside hers. She’d never once bid me sit before.

  I didn’t sit. I’d hear it all standing.

  I knew. Oh, I knew.

  Mistress sighed, her gaze avoiding mine as her hand fell back into her lap. “You recall Mr. Hering, who has kindly been looking after Colonel Vervelde’s farms at Mount Joy while he has been away.”

  I recalled him, a sly man from the city whom Lucas hadn’t trusted and thus I hadn’t, either.

  He was frowning hard, his brows knotted tightly together, and turning the brim of the hat in his hands round and round like a wheel.

  “I regret that I’ve received some, ah, terrible news today. I fear my cousin and several of his men have been killed to the south, near Somerset Falls. They had stopped to rest at the farm of a friend to the cause, but they were betrayed by a Tory sympathizer to British troops in the area.”

  “Mary,” said Mistress gently. “I fear your friend Lucas was among those lost.”

  “When?” A single harsh word, all I could manage.

  “I believe it was ten days past,” Mr. Hering said. “It has taken that time for the dead to be identified, and notification sent.”

  Ten days past, the night on the sloop when I’d dreamed of death and dying, and so had Colonel Burr. Somehow, I’d known.

  Oh, Lucas, my love, how could I have lost you before you were truly mine? What of our life together after the war, and the children we’d now never have?

  My fingers trembling, I fumbled for the heart he’d made for me, resting there against the hollow of my throat. The silver was warm from my skin with my own heartbeat beneath it. How could he be gone and I still lived?

  “It is a tragic loss to the cause of freedom,” Mr. Hering said. “My cousin always had nothing but the most generous praise for his Negro’s courage and loyalty.”

  “Private Emmons was a free man, sir, and didn’t belong to Colonel Vervelde or anyone else,” I said sharply. “He’d bought his freedom.”

  He and Mistress glanced at each other, a glance I understood all too well.

  “Mary, please,” Mistress said, her voice at once soothing and condescending. “There’s no question that your friend was a brave and courageous man, and that he died in the defense of his country.”

  “He wasn’t my friend,” I said. “He was my husband.”

  Swiftly, before she’d say more, I turned from her to Mr. Hering.

  “Where is my husband’s body?” I demanded. “Where are his belongings?”

  “Mary,” Mistress said, turning my name into a warning. “I won’t have you addressing Mr. Hering with such disrespect.”

  Mr. Hering held up his hand, his index finger raised, to reassure her, not me.

  “I believe he and the other men including my lamented cousin were buried close to where they fell,” he said. “I understand that is the custom for the army.”

  I prayed that was so: that he now lay with his friends, his fellow soldiers, and not apart and alone and forgotten because his skin had been black.

  “As for his belongings,” Mr. Hering continued, “his musket and other military equipage were divided among his fellows. He must not have left any personal belongings of value, for none were sent with those of my cousin.”

  “They would have had value to me!” Hot tears finally filled my eyes: not tears of sorrow, but of anger. Lucas had been such a good man, a wise man, and he hadn’t deserved this from them. “What of the belongings he left in his quarters at Mount Joy, sir? His tools, his clothes, his furnishings from his employment with Colonel Vervelde?”

  To have anything of his would be a great comfort to me now. I remembered an old threadbare shirt he’d had that was more darns and patches than new. As worn as it had been, I’d still embroidered his initials—LE—in tiny red crossed stitches beneath the opening at the neck on that shirt, exactly as I’d done for the other two shirts he’d taken with him. He would have been wearing one of them when the British had killed him, and was wearing it now in his grave, and I felt my eyes fill again with more tears.

  “I know it won’t be much, sir,” I said, finally letting the tears flow down my cheeks, “but his things should come to me as his wife.”

  Mr. Hering ducked his chin and frowned again.

  “I am sorry that you have been misled, Mary,” he said. “But when Lucas enlisted, he named my cousin as his survivor, having no family of his own. By law his belongings, as well as any back pay owed him by the army, are now considered part of my cousin’s estate.”

  “No!” I cried with anguish. “That cannot be, sir! That cannot be!”

  “The law of this state is quite clear,” Mr. Hering said. “Unless you can produce a certificate of marriage that proves—”

  “No!” I cried again, my heart breaking with the weight of the truth. This was not what Lucas had wanted for me, for us, and I’d never believe otherwise. “Lucas told me I was his wife, and that he would register our marriage with his regiment’s clerk, and that it—it would be so! He loved me, and he promised he’d buy my freedom, and then after the war when he’d received his acres—”

  “Mary, that’s enough,” Mistress said, rising from her chair to take me by the arm. “Come, I’ll call for Chloe to look after you.”

  I jerked free of her, my bare feet stumbling beneath me.

  “He loved me, Mistress,” I sobbed. “Lucas loved me as my husband, and I loved him as his wife, and you . . . you wouldn’t—”

  But before I could finish, Mr. Hering struck his fist across the side of my face, so hard that I toppled backward to the floor.

  “Kindness does not serve with Negroes, Mrs. Prevost,” he said sternly, and smugly, too. “They are like wicked children, and will o
nly find their advantage if you show them a gentle hand. You must be firm, ma’am, and you must be strict. This little wench may be sullen now, but I’ll wager she won’t challenge you again.”

  I wasn’t the first woman he’d hit. He’d known exactly where to strike me, to make sure the hard knot of his knuckles caught the bone of my cheek where there wasn’t much flesh to cushion the blow. The pain splintered through me, bright shards of it that I couldn’t escape. Years had passed since I’d last been punished. Time enough for me to grow careless and forget how to be on my guard to dodge and duck and escape the worst. Yet I wouldn’t give Mr. Hering the satisfaction of clutching at my face, or weeping, or begging for mercy. That much I remembered. That much I’d do.

  Slowly I rolled to my knees in my mud-splattered petticoat, steadying myself. I’d had Lucas torn from me, along with the sweet promise of his love and a life we’d one day meant to share. But with him I’d also lost my best hope for freedom, the freedom he’d died trying to gain for me and the children we’d never have.

  I willed myself to stand, to keep my balance, to lower my eyes, to curtsey.

  “Leave us, Mary,” Mistress said, returned to her usual chair by the window. “That will be all.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The Hermitage

  Hopperstown, State of New Jersey

  October 1778

  I sat alone in the kitchen, with only the fading coals in the hearth and a single candle near the window for light. It was the middle of the night, and outside the darkness was velvety and the sounds of wild creatures rustled in the fallen leaves near the house. I welcomed their company. They’d ask no questions about my husband, nor offer me empty pity for his death.