My Dear Hamilton Read online

  With that, the servants cleared the plates and the most trusted senior officers closeted themselves away. Monroe was too junior to join them, so while Mama entertained the Frenchmen, we took Monroe into the blue parlor, where Peggy kept refilling his wineglass and I bested him in a ferocious game of backgammon.

  “I declare, Miss Schuyler,” Monroe drawled in defeat, his accent stronger the more wine he drank. “You take advantage! But I suppose I ought not feel unmanned by a game of chance. Who taught you to play?”

  Still holding the dice, I boasted, “Dr. Franklin taught me when he visited to treat with the Six Nations. Besides, backgammon is only partly a game of chance. It is also a game of math and perseverance. You’re forced to learn patterns and choose the best move, even if it is only a choice between evils.”

  Monroe dropped his gaze. “Is it in the nature of all New York belles to deprive a man of even his fig leaf?”

  I blushed, because I knew what a fig leaf was meant to cover. Because Monroe was the first gentleman, since Lieutenant André had visited, who seemed to prefer talking to me than to flirting with my sisters. And because I believed he was calling me a belle. Pretending as if this were not a rare compliment, I asked, “Are we New York belles so very trying to your Virginian sensibilities, Major Monroe?”

  He had the temerity to pause in thinking about it. “Any trial is compensated for how you ladies keep me from missing home. After all, if a man is so stupidly insensible of a belle’s charms as to devote his attention to an absent ideal, she cannot receive a higher insult.”

  “I shall not be insulted if you pine for home.” To prove it, I asked, “What do you miss most about your Virginia?”

  I thought he’d mention his family or farmland or horses—or really, just about anything other than what he actually said. “My mammy’s waffles, hot from the fire, slathered in melting butter.”

  I laughed, expecting that Peggy would laugh, too, when I realized that she’d somehow grown bored and left us alone. She’d later tell me that she thought Monroe a bit too unpolished and simple for her tastes. But he seemed to me as a still part of the river, where it sometimes runs deepest.

  And he confirmed that impression when he confided, “As much as I miss home, I am curious about the world, and wish to see as much of it as I can.”

  “We’re kindred spirits, then. As a girl, I used to gaze westward at the horizon with a strange yearning, wondering how far the land went, imagining what it would be like to see and explore everything.”

  He eyed me with curiosity. “That seems an unusual yearning for a belle.”

  I flushed, much less pleased to be described as a belle now. “Not for one who has come of age at the frontier.”

  “Albany is hardly the frontier,” he said, with an indulgent smile. “At least, not compared to where I grew up.”

  “I’m speaking of Saratoga,” I argued. “Before the war, that’s where I felt most at home.”

  Our home at Saratoga had always seemed to be a mysterious gateway to a world I could scarcely fathom and longed to explore. I’d climb rocks and wade in creeks, and come back late with wildflowers in my hair, all brown from the sun. And Papa would tease that perhaps when my mother left me hanging in a cradleboard from that tree, I’d been switched with an Indian child.

  When I told Monroe as much, he chuckled. “And were you switched? You can tell me. I’ll always keep your secrets.”

  He leaned closer, and for the first time in my life, a flutter of real romantic interest stirred within my breast. Monroe was a patriot. A war hero, even. And possibility sparked between us. “Perhaps I was switched,” I teased. “But I’d rather you tell me a secret.”

  “Oh?” he asked, swirling the claret in his glass.

  “Do you think there’s really a conspiracy against General Washington?”

  “I know it,” Monroe answered, draining his wineglass like a man who preferred beer. “It was within General Stirling’s little family that we discovered the evidence.”

  Rapt, I leaned closer. “Who is the villain?”

  “It’s a cabal of villains. Inspector General Conway is involved for certain and . . .” Monroe trailed off there, as if aware that perhaps he’d said more than he ought to have.

  But I pressed him. “Gates? Is it Gates?”

  Monroe peered over his shoulder, then met my gaze and nodded, slowly. “Gates is trying to replace Washington as commander in chief of the military.”

  “Outrageous. Gates is a scheming bumbler,” I hissed, though I knew my father would never approve of my saying so. But it was true. Gates would have lost even the Battle of Saratoga were it not for Benedict Arnold’s heroics.

  But as indignant as I was at the idea that the New England darling would ever be commander in chief, that wasn’t as awful as my other fear. “Is there anyone close enough to Washington to do him harm?” I asked, because two years before there had been a plot to assassinate him and the culprit had been amongst his own bodyguards. And given that Gates had already used rumors of my father’s treachery to oust him from command, and seemed willing to condemn Lafayette and the whole Northern Army to an icy death in Canada, what else might he stoop to in clawing his way to the top?

  “No chance of that,” Monroe assured me. “Not since Colonel Hamilton joined Washington’s family as aide-de-camp. My good friend Hamilton is too cunning to let an assassin get close again. He would sniff it out at a mile.”

  I knew the name Hamilton already, of course.

  We’d all learned about Alexander Hamilton’s military exploits in the gazettes we read each morning at the breakfast table. In fact, when my sisters and I were away visiting our Livingston relations, Hamilton had even stopped to see my father—briefly—in passing through Albany.

  But my clearest memory of ever hearing Hamilton’s name was from the mouth of James Monroe. And spoken so fondly, too.

  It hurts now to remember how fondly.

  “It’s the politicking in Congress and the Board of War that will do General Washington in,” Monroe said, with more shrewdness than I might have expected. “Lafayette is right. We need to give Washington a win to bring back to Congress—even a symbolic one. Or Gates will get command and there goes the war.”

  At length, as if to fight off the effects of a large meal and the lateness of the hour, Monroe stood and shook himself like a giant hound caught in the rain. And when I saw him rub again at his shoulder, I asked, “Should it still hurt you?”

  “Don’t know,” he replied. “The bullet lodged in my shoulder just likes to remind me of its presence sometimes.”

  “I know a little nursing. If you should like me to—”

  “Oh, no, miss,” Monroe said, nearly tripping over my mother’s lace-covered sideboard table in his hurry to back away, as if I’d suggested something very untoward.

  I’d only meant to offer some of the precious willow bark powder that Mama kept as a remedy for pain, but Monroe almost seemed to think I meant to undress him. “I wouldn’t hazard being shot again. By your father this time.”

  Virginians are preposterous creatures, I thought for the first, but not the last, time. Thankfully, the farce was brought to an end because Lafayette emerged from my father’s study, and the officers made ready to take their leave. I was sorry to see them go, especially because I did not wish to leave Major Monroe with the impression I was a coquette.

  But when Lafayette came into the parlor to retrieve Monroe and say farewell, he noticed a wampum belt upon a table with Papa’s outgoing parcels and letters, and tilted his head in apparent curiosity. “Mademoiselle Schuyler, your papa says you have accompanied him to treaty conventions with the Six Nations. Can you tell me of this?”

  Flattered that Lafayette wished for me to explain it, I answered, “It’s a wampum belt; they served as a form of money, once.” At least until my Dutch ancestors began manufacturing wampum in such quantity as to make it worthless as currency. “Taken by themselves, the beads are merely white, purple,
and black shells, sanded and drilled. But string them together and they can tell a story, seal a treaty, or serve as a badge of authority.”

  If you knew the patterns and the symbols. And I did, having learned them at a very young age from the native women who bartered with Mama at the back door of our Saratoga house, and with whose daughters I sometimes played in their nearby village.

  “What message does this belt convey?” Lafayette asked, peering at me from the corner of his eye.

  “It’s an invitation.” For though Papa was no longer in command of an army, he’d long served as Indian commissioner, an important position he still held. “My father arranged to have this wampum belt and others to be delivered throughout Iroquoia to call for a meeting of the Iroquois Confederacy.”

  The young marquis seemed enthralled. “Do you know why?”

  We could never emphasize enough to outsiders that the Iroquois were not to be confused with other Indians. The People of the Longhouse were a democratic nation, and a powerful one, represented by statesmen who had skillfully played the British and the French against one another for decades. “Because if we can convince the Six Nations to remain neutral, we’ll deprive the British of their Indian guides and war bands.”

  Lafayette’s smile turned sly. “May I?” he asked, and when I nodded, he took up the belt to inspect it. “These symbols, do you know what they mean?”

  “Well that,” I said pointing, “that is the tree of the Onondoga nation—the Keepers of the Central Fire, the custodians of records.”

  “And this?” Lafayette traced an open rectangle.

  “The Oneida,” I said, overcome by the sudden impression that he was testing me like a schoolmaster, and had been doing so since the start of the conversation. “People of the Standing Stone. They’re friendly to us.”

  “Your father has invited me to go with him to Johnstown for a conference with the Six Nations.”

  I saw my father’s strategy at once, and I warmed with hope. Despite the Six Nations’ vow to remain neutral, many of them had sided and fought with the British against us. We couldn’t hope to get them to join us instead, but in light of our victory at Saratoga, there might now be an opportunity to make them honor their vow.

  If they would come to a meeting.

  General Gates had turned a deaf ear when Papa urged him to pursue a diplomatic course with the Iroquois. There was no glory in that for Gates. But, thus far, the marquis had proved to be as fair-minded as Major Monroe claimed. Maybe we could convince him.

  Iroquois neutrality could change everything. It could help win the war.

  And it might be just the victory Washington needed.

  “I hope you’ll accept Papa’s invitation to go,” I said, because if Lafayette presided over the treaty convention, the Six Nations might attend for that reason alone.

  After all, Lafayette had one thing Papa did not. He had the King of France behind him.

  “Indeed, I will go, mademoiselle,” he said. “But given your knowledge, perhaps you should go, too.”

  “Yes,” I said, before my mother could even lift a disapproving brow. Before, even, I could discern whether or not it was an invitation made in earnest or jest. I knew only that it was the moment, in all my restlessness, I had pined for. And I was sure my father would understand that restless longing. “Oh, yes, I intend to go.”

  Angelica was not the only Schuyler daughter, after all, who could forge her own path.

  Chapter Four

  WE WERE HEADED into Iroquoia.

  The snows were still so deep we were obliged to go by horse-drawn sleigh, my father leading the way beneath gnarled tree branches that bowed, encased in glistening ice. Our slow pace frustrated the hard-charging Lafayette, who was eager to rendezvous with the Iroquois Confederacy.

  And I was nearly as impatient, for so much was at stake—not just the Indians’ neutrality, but the war itself. I’d once asked myself how a daughter could make a difference. Now I might have the opportunity. Though I’d attended Indian conferences before, never one like this—in the company of soldiers, as if I, too, were a warrior in a fight I believed in.

  Bundled in a fur cloak, I rode nestled beside Major Monroe, who I suspected had been tasked to watch over me. “Are you warm enough, Miss Schuyler?”

  It was the fourth time he’d asked.

  “I am. Thank you, Major. Are you always so attentive?”

  I didn’t even have to look at him to know he was blushing. “I try to be attentive to ladies, who are so delicate.”

  This made me laugh, because he said it through chattering teeth. “I daresay the weather seems to go harder on Virginians. Perhaps I should be the one to offer you my coat this time?”

  I regretted pricking at his pride because he scolded, “Ladies of Virginia would not go out in this weather. Nor would their fathers condone their presence on such an adventure . . .”

  I couldn’t tell if Monroe was jesting or if he truly disapproved. My father had never discouraged my sisters and I from taking an active part in his affairs; before she eloped, Angelica had dutifully sent Papa military intelligence reports from Albany, and I had sometimes accompanied him on his travels. I would later learn that the daughters of New Netherlanders expected to enjoy a bit more independence than other American women, but at the time it seemed only natural. “Why shouldn’t he condone it? I have lived alongside the Six Nations all my life.” When that didn’t seem to convince him, I added, “Besides, when I was thirteen, I was adopted by the Iroquois.”

  At that last remark, Monroe’s shy smile disappeared. Beneath his dark wavy hair, his gray eyes went wide and he looked so startled that I feared he might fall out of the sleigh. “Whatever can you mean? You’re telling fibbery.”

  “You insult me, sir,” I cried, like a man ready to challenge him to a duel. Laughing, I explained, “It’s true. I remember well how all the chiefs, clan mothers, and greatest warriors, row after row, stood silently around an open space where green grass gleamed.” Major Monroe now seemed enraptured, so I continued. “I dressed in white and they in the splendor of war paint. And I held tight onto my father’s hand when, with much pomp and ceremony, the chieftains put their hands upon my head, commented on my black eyes, and gave me an Indian name.” I pronounced the name in their language. “It means ‘One-of-us.’”

  Though Monroe could not seem to decide if he ought to be awed or horrified, Lafayette, riding beside the sleigh, turned to marvel. “Then, mademoiselle, you know not only the symbols but the language of the Iroquois League?”

  “Some.” I nodded, for I’d been raised in a home where Dutch, English, and Mohawk were all spoken.

  Lafayette rubbed at his reddened nose. “Ah! We have the company of a pretty lady and the blessing of her knowledge. Pity, Monroe, you must leave us soon.”

  Monroe had come with us as far as he could. Having discharged his duties in Albany, he felt bound to return to winter headquarters at Valley Forge. But as we reached the road where he would take his leave of us, Monroe didn’t seem to want to go.

  It was hard to credit that such a big strong soldier could be so shy, but as he prepared to leave, Monroe reddened to the tips of his ears and stammered. “D-do you think your father would find it permissible, Miss Schuyler, for me to write to you?”

  Was it such an improper thing for Virginians to correspond with a lady friend without her father’s permission? Or did he mean to imply the beginnings of a courtship? I wasn’t sure, but I am more apt now to think it was merely an attempt at gallantry owing to the antiquated peculiarities of James Monroe. Or maybe to his southern charm. Perhaps they were one and the same.

  In any case, what I said was, “Well, what if I were to say you have my permission, sir? And that’s all you need.”

  He gawped a bit at my brashness, and the fact that I’d taken up the reins of the sleigh, as if I meant to drive it. Which I had intended, until I realized he might think it unladylike.

  It seemed to me as if we New Yorkers
were too aristocratic for the New Englanders, and too bold for the Virginians, which made me wonder how we’d all get along together if we weren’t forced to it by our war with the king.

  I parted with Monroe affectionately, though not nearly as affectionately as Lafayette did. The Frenchman hugged Monroe and kissed him upon both cheeks again and again, until the major finally seemed like a squirming cat eager to get away.

  Then we continued westward onto Johnstown.

  When the marquis first said that the world’s eyes were upon him, it seemed a self-important boast, but he was already known—or at least known of—by the chieftains. And because he was a Frenchman, we were very well received where the Iroquois had gathered for the conference along the banks of the Mohawk River.

  Hair streaked with feathers, their ears cut open, jewels dangling from their noses, their tattoos and painted designs visible beneath the beaded skins they wore, the old men smoked pipes and talked about politics. And so did the women . . .

  This did not give Lafayette pause. “If you could see the salons in Paris, the women are the same! Even in my own family. Perhaps especially the women of my family.”

  With that, the Frenchman waded into the crowds and showered them with little gifts. Mirrors, rum, brandy, and shining gold coins—louis d’or. And the Iroquois took to him, just as we were beginning to take to him.

  It was the same generosity he’d shown our soldiers in Albany. There, and with his own personal funds, he’d bought food, armaments, and clothing for the men. I would later learn that Lafayette spent more than twelve thousand dollars—an even more outrageous sum then than it is now. He’d been able to do for our soldiers what Congress could not. He put shirts on their backs, shoes on their feet, and beef in their bellies. And when he began drilling soldiers, they actually obeyed him, calling him the soldier’s friend. As the daughter of Philip Schuyler, I might have resentfully said it was because he bought their loyalty. But, in truth, I admired the sincerity with which the Frenchman approached his dealings. No one could ever accuse the marquis of being unpretentious, but his enthusiasm and optimism were infectious.