Prologue
It looked like all the other pouches that constantly arrived, its leather as dusty and scuffed as the man who brought it. Not a thing hinted at the horror and heartbreak inside. Still, when the courier handed it to me one hot afternoon a few months ago, I shook so bad I dropped it.
“Express for General Washington, ma’am,” he croaked, scooping it from the floor as I wiped my sweaty hands on my skirts.
At last His Excellency would learn of the doom threatening him and our rebellion, would receive the warning I’d failed to deliver these last hours. So I trembled, yes, but I was mighty relieved, too. For out of the eighteen or twenty folks there that dreadful September day, I alone knew that our most astounding hero had turned traitor, that he’d sold General Washington and the fort a mile or two upriver at West Point to the British—and that his customers might appear at any moment to collect their purchases.
I was also the only one who understood that the papers within this weary case told the whole wicked plot. They’d sound the alarm I couldn’t and save our Cause.
“Pray come in,” I said to the thirsty messenger. “Can I fetch you a sup of something?”
“Be obliged for some kill-devil, you got any.”
I led him toward the kitchen only to meet one of the general’s aides in the hall. Colonel Hamilton grabbed the packet without a word and passed upstairs to His Excellency’s chamber. Our guest stared after him, then glanced sideways at me. “There’s some calls him King Alex, and I can see why.”
He drank his rum, thanked me kindly, and returned to his horse.
I was laying the table for dinner some minutes later when a door overhead flew open. “La Fayette, attend us, please!” ’Twas Hamilton, voice quavering as though he were three years old instead of three-and-twenty.
Then General Washington’s cry pierced us. “Oh, Father in Heaven!” I stood rooted, forks in one hand, a plate in the other. “’Tis Arnold! Arnold has betrayed us! Whom can we trust now?”
All these weeks later, I still hear the agony in those words, the despair, still feel our helpless fury. It’s cold now, but that’s not why I shiver as I scoot closer to the hearth in this house some fifty miles south of West Point and behind British lines, too.
I watch the man poking the logs to rouse the flames higher: Major General Benedict Arnold, formerly of the Continental Army, now with His Majesty’s Land Forces in North America.
He looks up to catch my gaze on him. “That better, Clem?” He smiles, warm and welcoming as the fire. He forgets that a traitor has few friends, and they’re mostly false.
Including me. I’m here to kidnap him.
General Washington himself asked me to do it, a fortnight after that packet had seared our souls and one conspirator—the wrong one, according to His Excellency—had already hanged. “He was more unfortunate than criminal,” the general said, eyes grey as river ice. “’Tis Arnold I want. I want him brought back for trial and punishment. I swear I’ll knot the noose myself.”
What you’ve heard about General Washington’s reserve is true. He’s the most contained man I ever met. So for him to burst loose that way was a shock, like birds flying upside down or George III agreeing he’s abused our liberties after all. Only shows how deep the general was hurt, that an officer he’d defended time and again, a hero he’d admired, a friend, would deliver him to the enemy.
“’Tis beyond me, this treason—it—it—I can’t apprehend it. It’s not within the compass of my reasoning.” He stood staring out his headquarters’ window, huge fists balled at his sides. Then he faced me. “It even baffles conjecture. But he’ll answer for it yet. I’m sending an agent after him, Miss Shippen, but we need someone there with Arnold, in the house, who’ll direct things. I thought of you, of course. You know him, and he trusts you.” He added softly, “And so do I.” That was a high honor then, when he suspected everyone, not knowing how far the treachery had spread.
And so I traveled to New York City, long since fallen to the Redcoats and Arnold’s new home. I pushed my way to his door through the crowds out front. They’d watch the place for hours, curious to see the champion who defied tyrants and bullets and nature and death but who had now, in a move as fatal as any on the battlefield, turned his Cause’s flank to sign with the enemy.
Still, he was a lonely newcomer and glad to have me, especially because I might bring news of his wife.
I told him she’s fine, but he plied me with a hundred questions while his dog sniffed my shoes. Had she come to any harm because of the, ah, business at West Point? Had I seen her recently? Had she trusted me with any letters for him? Well, then, if not a letter, what about a message? Not even that I should give him her love?
I shook my head.
“Hmm.” General Arnold clenched his jaw. “Reckon she’s got a lot on her mind.”
“She surely does.” Once again, I’m the only person, other than the turncoat and his lady, who knows that she’s in this even deeper than he. I’ve mentioned her part to General Washington, other officers, even—a measure of my desperation—King Alex. But her beauty blinds them, and they only laugh. So I look for evidence of his wife’s guilt as I wait to abduct Arnold.
Meantime, he and I sit night after night at the hearth, cozy as an old married couple in December’s storms. I’ve given my plans for the kidnapping to Washington’s agent; all we need’s his approval. Unsuspecting, Arnold tells me stories by the hour, his dog at his feet while my embroidery needle flashes in the firelight. I may be poor company, a homely woman, his cousin by marriage and servant to boot, but I’m all he’s got. He talks of his days in the field, of the battles that made him a hero, second only to Dr. Franklin in worldwide fame. I hang on every word, charmed as the men who starved with him on the march to Quebec or followed his suicidal charge at Saratoga. But my heart breaks as I match what Arnold was with what he’s become—
“Reckon I’ll pop some corn,” he says. “You want some?”
I shake my head and glance away quick to hide my sorrow at his ruin.
But he misses nothing. He was ever a smart-looking fellow and is so still, even with that mangled leg. Better than that, he commands your notice. “Here’s a man,” you think, “can do anything, doesn’t matter how impossible.” His blue eyes are pale yet bold as a lion’s, and they crackle with an energy that keeps his whole body in motion, even when he’s sitting still, or still as he can. Some part of him is always moving: fingers, feet, blackbird head. He’s well muscled, though shorter than you’d expect after the tales you’ve heard, a hand’s-breadth over five feet, middling size. Somehow, everyone expects him to be tall as Washington. His chin juts masterfully. He hardly laughs anymore, but he used to, loud and often. He used to joke and talk so witty, and then he’d point that chin skyward and let it peal.
He asks, “Something wrong?”
“No, sir.” But my voice wobbles. The dog cocks an ear.
“Aw, Clem, I know the ladies too well for you to fool me. What’s the matter? Maybe I can help.” He can be kinder than you’d credit a rascal for.
“I was griev—I was just thinking about—about before the war.”
He’s surprised. We seldom talk on those years. For Arnold, there weren’t any. He wasn’t a hero then, fallen or otherwise, just a merchant with some ships and a reputation for such bravery as most would call foolhardiness.
“You were born here in New York, weren’t you?” he asks.
I nod.
“But you removed to Philadelphia when you were fourteen. That’s when you first met Peggy.” For Benedict Arnold, everything circles back to his wife.
“Yes, sir,” I say, “her father and mine were brothers, you see. ’Twas her family took me in.”
“That’s right, you went to Philadelphia without your parents, if I remember aright.”
“Well, my father was dead by then, but my mother, um, she did what she thought was best, I guess.”
“Lord preserve us from folks doing what’s best.” He pulls a face, making me smile.
“In a way, ’twas because of the king.” I must be careful. Arnold’s a friend of government now, so I can’t let him see I blame it for Dad’s death....
