Learning that the French were joining the war must finally have decided Mistress’s allegiance in favor of the patriot cause, for fewer and fewer British officers and Loyalists now called at her home. We no longer maintained the ruse of placing Loyalist newspapers on tables where they’d be seen, or leaving Colonel Prevost’s old red uniform coat over the back of a chair, as if he’d only stepped away from the house for a moment instead of many years.
I guessed that Colonel Burr must have influenced her decision as well. From what I overheard of their conversations, at his urging she had now thrown herself entirely on the mercy and influence of Governor Livingston to keep her home—still technically owned by a British officer—from being confiscated as Loyalist property by the state. She also turned to Judge William Paterson, the state’s attorney general. Although she’d known both men for many years, they were also close friends of the Colonel from their days at the College of New Jersey, and I suspected that there were personal favors asked between them on Mistress’s behalf. She could not have had any other gentlemen in the state better placed to assist her and vouch for her loyalty as a patriot than these two. But then, she’d always been adept at choosing her allies, and that included Colonel Burr as well.
Her loyalties were soon tested, however, and in a way that no one could have anticipated.
One morning in late September, a young Continental courier brought a letter to the house. I quickly took the letter to Mistress, who was alone at her desk writing letters, as was her custom at this time of day.
She opened it and scanned the contents.
“Is the messenger still here, Mary?”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said. “He’s watering his horse in the back.”
She added several sentences on the bottom of the letter before refolding it and adding a fresh seal of her own.
“Give this to him, Mary,” she said, already preoccupied with planning, “and then return to me. We’ll have guests tonight, important guests, and we’ve much to do to make ready.”
They were important guests indeed: Mrs. Peggy Arnold, the wife of General Benedict Arnold, traveling with her young son, her servants, and her husband’s aide-de-camp, Major David Franks. Mrs. Arnold was traveling from her husband’s post on the North River, where he was the commander of the fortress at West Point, to rejoin her family in Philadelphia. The Hermitage was a convenient overnight stop, and no doubt Mistress’s reputation for hospitality promised to make it much more pleasant than a common inn or stage stop. Entertaining the wife of a prominent Continental general would benefit Mistress as well, and publicly do much to emphasize her support of the American cause.
But Mistress was certain that there was more to Mrs. Arnold’s visit than convenience, as I learned later that afternoon. Mistress had invited several other ladies from the neighborhood as well as her sister and mother to make a proper welcome for Mrs. Arnold, and they’d already gathered in the parlor, dressed in afternoon silk in her honor. I was there, too, standing beside the wall and ready to pour tea for the ladies.
As soon as the carriage appeared before the house, Mistress sent me to open the door while the ladies in the parlor smoothed their skirts one final time in anticipation. But as soon as the footman opened the carriage door and Major Franks handed Mrs. Arnold out, I saw that she was not at all the confident, fashionable wife of a general that they were expecting.
Clutching her baby in her arms, Mrs. Arnold stepped slowly from the carriage. She was small and surprisingly young, likely close to my own age, with full cheeks, a small, red mouth, and a cloud of pale hair beneath the arc of her dark green calash bonnet. She clung to Major Franks’s arm as she came up the steps and entered the house. Her child’s nursemaid and another servant with a small trunk followed close behind her.
“Good day to you, Mrs. Arnold,” Mistress said warmly, greeting her in the hall with a gracious curtsey. “How honored I am to have you stop here for the night. If you’d care to join me and the other ladies in the parlor—”
“Other ladies?” Mrs. Arnold repeated anxiously. “Others? Here?”
Immediately the Major took her by the arm to steady her. “Please forgive Mrs. Arnold, Mrs. Prevost,” he said. “She is much fatigued from her travels, and it has placed considerable strain upon her faculties.”
Mrs. Arnold shrank against him, holding her child so tightly that he began to struggle and wail.
“Do not let them steal away my darling!” she cried. “Oh, Major, hear how he cries from terror! I beg you, please, please preserve us from these creatures who wish harm to me and my innocent son!”
“You are safe here among friends, Mrs. Arnold,” Mistress said, and reached out to rest her hand in reassurance upon the younger woman’s arm.
But instead Mrs. Arnold whimpered, and shrank away as if she’d been burned. Immediately the Major took her by the arm and turned her so she no longer faced Mistress, which seemed to bring her some comfort.
“Minda, here,” he called to the nursemaid, who appeared familiar with whatever ailed Mrs. Arnold. She put her arm around the younger woman’s shoulders and rocked her gently, murmuring the nonsense most often reserved for infants.
Shaking his head, the Major stepped aside to address Mistress and the other bewildered ladies who’d followed her into the hall.
“I fear recent events combined with this journey have distressed Mrs. Arnold,” the Major said. “It would be best for her state of mind if she were to retire to a quiet room, apart from faces that are unfamiliar to her.”
“Of course, of course,” Mistress agreed, her expression wreathed with sympathy even as she organized the next minutes as efficiently as any field officer. She saw that Mrs. Arnold, her child, and the nurse were settled in the bedchamber reserved for them. She bid farewell to the other ladies even as she briskly ushered them from the house to limit the gossip. Finally she led Major Franks into the parlor, and had me pour him not tea, but brandy, for surely the poor gentleman must have needed it.
“You owe me no explanations, Major,” Mistress began when she joined him. “But I am saddened to see that poor young lady so grievously afflicted.”
“It is indeed a tragedy, Mrs. Prevost.” The Major paused, glancing pointedly at me, but Mistress waved her hand.
“Mary has been with me for years,” she said, “and I have absolute faith that she will carry no tales from this room.”
The Major nodded, though obviously deciding how and where to begin. He was older than most aides-de-camp, and his protective attachment to Mrs. Arnold appeared based on genuine concern, as if that of a conscientious older brother. No wonder he’d been chosen to shepherd her through New Jersey.
“What I shall confide in you now is terrible news, ma’am, though the whole world shall know of it soon enough.” He emptied the glass in his hand, and I quickly moved to refill it. “General Arnold has committed the blackest treason imaginable. Apparently he has been in close communication with the British, and had every intention of permitting them to capture his command at West Point, so that he might defect to their side.”
Mistress gasped and so did I, the only response that anyone would make to such shocking news.
“I can scarce believe it, Major,” she said, her hand pressed to her cheek. “Of all of His Excellency’s generals, surely Arnold was the most trusted.”
The Major nodded, his expression grim. “I have never seen His Excellency so bereft,” he said. “Arnold’s plan was only discovered by the accidental capture of one of his confederates, a British officer named John André, who had the damning papers on his person. When word of this reached Arnold, he acted the coward as well as the traitor, and fled to the arms of the British, abandoning his wife and child.”
“That poor lady,” Mistress said, shaking her head. “I cannot begin to fathom her distress.”
“Indeed, ma’am,” said the Major. “While I am escorting her to Philadelphia, and into the care of her family, in a rare moment of lucidity she did beg to rest
here with you, as a trusted acquaintance.”
I listened with surprise, since Mistress had earlier in the day told her sister that she’d never met Mrs. Arnold.
“I am honored,” Mistress said, making a graceful turn of her wrist. “She may stay as my guest as long as she—ah, my dear, how kind of you to join us!”
She broke off and smiled, rising to her feet and holding her hand out in welcome. Mrs. Arnold herself was standing in the doorway or, rather, huddled to one side of the door’s frame.
“I wish to speak with Mrs. Prevost alone,” she said.
“Are you certain, Mrs. Arnold?” Major Franks asked uneasily. “It has been a long and tiring day.”
Mistress crossed the room to Mrs. Arnold, taking slow steps so as not to startle her. “We shall be fine together, Major. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Arnold?”
Tentatively the younger woman took Mistress’s hand.
“I will be safe with this lady,” she whispered. “Leave us, Major.”
Major Franks sighed, unconvinced, but also unable to refuse. After he left the room, Mrs. Arnold finally took notice of me, studying me warily.
“Mary won’t harm you, either, Mrs. Arnold,” Mistress said, coaxing. “I trust her, and you should, too. Here, sit, and she’ll bring you tea.”
Slowly the younger woman sat, holding tightly to the arms of the chair and ready to leap from it if necessary. Mistress closed the door to the room for privacy, and I poured a cup of tea and arranged a plate of small biscuits to offer.
“Is the Major gone from here?” Mrs. Arnold asked.
“I heard him on the stairs,” Mistress said, sitting in the chair beside her. “But I can send Mary for him, my dear, if that is what you wish, and she—”
“My God, no.” As if she was throwing off a disguise (which in a way it was), Mrs. Arnold’s entire appearance changed in an instant. Her expression lost all its previous fear and unease, her gaze became steady, and her posture relaxed into graceful ease. “You cannot know how heartily sick I am of Franks and his endless fawning solicitude.”
“You appear much recovered, Mrs. Arnold,” said Mistress, her brows raised, and her manner shifting, too, but to cynical observation. “I flatter myself that my tea has worked a miracle.”
Mrs. Arnold laughed, her bitterness at odds with her youth and fashionable beauty.
“No miracle, ma’am, but the relief of having put aside the ridiculous sham that my husband—my husband—has forced upon me this last week,” she said disdainfully. “If he had shown more decision and conviction, then none of this masquerade would have been necessary.”
Mistress motioned for me to bring her tea as well, a gesture that, I suspect, gave her more time to consider how best to reply.
“Forgive me for my confusion, Mrs. Arnold,” she said delicately. “But I find your meaning difficult to decipher.”
“Come now, ma’am,” Mrs. Arnold said, tipping her head to one side, the sunlight through the window turning her hair golden. “There needn’t be further deception between us. I know Franks has already told you what has occurred. I asked to come here because it’s well-known where your own sympathies lie. You are wife to Colonel Prevost. Your two sons serve at his side. Your property has remained untouched while others around you have been ravaged and plundered by Howe’s men from New York.”
“All that is true, yes,” Mistress admitted, but admitted no more. Mrs. Arnold might desire to link their lots together, but Mistress had far more years and experience at this game. I’d witnessed it before: how she listened, and flattered, and coaxed, and learned what she needed without volunteering anything of her own situation.
Mrs. Arnold, however, was too caught up in her own smug declarations to realize this.
“Then you know as well as I that the American cause is doomed to failure,” she said, leaning forward. “Their army loses men every day to desertion, they’ve no funds for supplies or weaponry, and as for their leadership—lah, what a sorry assortment of overweening fools!”
“Indeed,” murmured Mistress, all the encouragement Mrs. Arnold needed.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “If you’d but seen how easily I was able to deceive not only simpletons like Franks and Varrick, but the ones who believe themselves clever like Hamilton, and even the mighty Washington himself! My breasts bare beneath a fine linen nightgown were all the armament I required to make them forget their duty in favor of ogling the General’s wife.”
“How extraordinary,” Mistress said. “And how very resourceful of you as well. But aren’t you concerned for your husband’s welfare now that he is marked as a traitor?”
“I needn’t worry over Arnold now,” she said confidently. “He’s safe with General Howe in New York. The British will make him a general as his reward, and see that he prospers, which is far more than Washington and Congress ever deigned to do for him. It could have been so much more, of course, if he’d only heeded me.”
Mistress smiled, as if all they were discussing were flowers and babies, not the monstrous confession of treason that Mrs. Arnold had just proudly made to her. How many American lives had she put at risk by displaying her breasts in that fine linen nightgown? How much longer had she forced the war to continue by persuading her husband to turn his back upon his honor, his duty, and his friends and comrades? The more I thought of what she’d just said, the more disgusted I was. Standing beside her, I wished I could pour hot tea upon her golden head, and that would only be the beginning.
“How fortunate for the General,” Mistress murmured. “Truly, a wife can be a gentleman’s greatest treasure.”
Mrs. Arnold sniffed. “I wish Arnold could have listened to you,” she said. “I have toiled for months for him and his future, writing back and forth to Howe to arrange the terms. If only he had managed to deliver West Point, as he’d promised, why, then the British would in turn have made us wealthy beyond measure. Instead, my husband faltered, and worse, now poor, dear André was captured, and must languish in captivity.”
“Major John André?” Idly Mistress reached for one of the shortbread biscuits, tapping it lightly on the plate to shake away the extra sugar. “I’ve heard he was quite the beau among the ladies of Philadelphia when the British held that town. But then you likely knew him well yourself, yes?”
Mrs. Arnold flushed, her fair skin betraying how accurate Mistress’s guess had been. So she’d not only convinced her husband to betray his command and his country, but in turn it seemed she’d also betrayed him with this British major.
“André is a charming gentleman, ma’am,” she said, so breathlessly that she left little doubt of her attachment. “There are few women—or men—who cannot help but love him. That is why I am certain an exchange of prisoners will soon be achieved, and he’ll once again be among his friends in New York.”
“I hope for your sake Major André is soon released, ma’am,” Mistress agreed. “Since he is a special friend to you, and your husband.”
Mistress broke the shortbread between her fingers, a neat snap into two pieces. Was she guessing, I wondered, or in all those endless letters she exchanged had there been some mention of Major André being more than a mere friend to Mrs. Arnold?
The younger woman’s cheeks grew redder still. “I am sure of it,” she said quickly—too quickly. “He has been captured before, and his superiors have always made sure he is rapidly exchanged. He is far too valuable to His Majesty’s forces for it to be otherwise.”
“Oh, I am sure of it.” Mistress sighed. “What I wish for above all things is for peace, and an end to the waste and misery of this war.”
“That is why I wished to call upon you, Mrs. Prevost,” Mrs. Arnold said, nodding. “My husband regretted learning that Colonel Burr had resigned his commission, and how he, too, had been scorned and ignored by those he tried most to please.”
Mistress didn’t blush or stammer. Instead, she smiled with perfect pleasantness, and dipped one half of the shortbread into her tea.
&nbs
p; “I believe Colonel Burr resigned his commission due to his health, ma’am, and not any unhappiness,” she said evenly. “But you—or your husband—must ask him directly. I’d never presume to answer for the Colonel.”
She popped the dripping shortbread into her mouth as if to say she thought the discussion done.
But Mrs. Arnold shook her head again, refusing to give up. “I’ve heard that Burr is a, ah, a close and particular friend to you, and that you—”
“I have many close friends on both sides of the war, Mrs. Arnold,” Mistress said easily. “I cannot myself bring peace to this country, but I can ask that my friends find peace while beneath my roof, and leave talk of war and politics beyond my porch.”
“But Mrs. Prevost, I only wish to—”
“Tell me of your son,” Mistress said. “From what I glimpsed, he appears a most handsome babe. I would guess him to be about six months in age?”
That was the end of Mrs. Arnold’s remarkable confession, at least in my hearing. She and Major Franks and the rest of their party left the following morning. Mistress never mentioned Mrs. Arnold again to me, proof that her trust in me was indeed genuine.
Yet I thought often of what I’d heard, and of Mrs. Arnold’s audacity, likening her attachment to the British Major André to Mistress’s with Colonel Burr. There was, of course, a sizable foundation of truth to it: both women were married to older officers, and had taken younger men as lovers. But what Mrs. Arnold had revealed branded her as a traitor as well as an adulteress, and perhaps worse, since she’d been a spy as well.
In a way, I was surprised that Mistress, with her new-decided patriotism, did not share the story with any local official, or even General Washington himself. Perhaps her sympathies were still too tangled for that, perhaps she wished to avoid questions about herself and Colonel Burr, or perhaps she simply felt pity for Mrs. Arnold. Having the younger woman arrested, tried, and punished would achieve little for the sake of the war, and would have taken a mother from her child.
But she must have told Colonel Burr. Even though in September he’d shifted to study with Judge Paterson here in New Jersey, he was concentrating so hard on his readings that we now seldom saw him at the Hermitage. But the next time he visited, on a Sunday in late October, he did speak to me of it. Mistress had crossed briefly to her mother’s house while the Colonel had remained to finish a book. I’d come to check that he’d sufficient wood for the fire, for the first serious bite of the coming winter was already in the autumn air.
The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr Page 25
