The Turncoat (42 page)

To keep herself busy, she put her newfound wealth to use making improvements to Grey House. She was not interested in useless luxuries, but saw no sin in the modern comforts she had enjoyed in Philadelphia. She replaced the parlor curtains, and the bed hangings in her father’s room, had a glazier in to do something about the window drafts, and employed a mason to improve the draw on the chimneys with the new technology. And she got a cabinetmaker in to try to fix the wobbly leg on the harpsichord, which had been broken since before she could remember. He was unsuccessful.

Alex Hamilton visited Grey Farm on several occasions. Like Arthur Grey, he was silent on the subject of Kate’s absent husband, until one day late in August he brought her news. “We had a shipment of arms out of Paris. Tremayne sailed with the boat, but they were stopped three days short of Philadelphia by a British frigate that promised to spare the crew and the cargo if your husband went with them willingly. It may have been a genuine abduction, but, Kate, we have appealed to General Clinton and offered him very generous terms for a prisoner exchange, and they claim they do not have Sancreed.”

“You think he has abandoned me.” She was not asking a question.

“I think you may have need of a friend, Kate, and I hope you will allow me to be that for you. I will continue to make inquiries.”

Then it was autumn, and without warning, she was summoned. The messenger arrived mud-splattered from hard riding, and though it was obvious he had ridden all night to reach them at the crack of dawn, he refused rest or refreshment. Kate was to come with him to West Point at once, at the request of General Washington.

It could mean only one thing: Peter.

Twenty

September 25, 1780

It must mean he was alive. For now. She left instantly.

Though she was traveling by day, the journey reminded her of nothing so much as that terrifying midnight ride with Angela Ferrers. They changed horses every hour, and though the young lieutenant sent to fetch her was respectful and solicitous of her comfort, he insisted they could not stop to rest. She took her midday meal on horseback, in the yard of an inn, being gawked at by the landlord and his family. Military couriers hastening to deliver important messages were a common sight. Those accompanied by Quaker farm wives in singed aprons were not.

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.”

*   *   *

T
he 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.