Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (42 page)

Of course after but a day of drill they could march in line, on a parade field, but the last maneuver, when he forced some of the men to act as dead and wounded—within seconds all semblance of formation disintegrated. At Minden he had seen entire companies swept away in the blink of an eye by concentrated blasts of grapeshot from batteries of the enemy’s six-pounders. Assaulting a fortified line, covered with heavy twelve-, eighteen-, and twenty-four-pounder guns, entire regiments could be cut in half in a single salvo. Yet still they were expected to continue to press forward at the double, dressing line as they did so, keeping formation and ready to fire or press in the charge on command.

His young staff was silent, walking to either side of him. None of them had ever actually been in a fight. They knew their drill, of course, but the reality of a battle, the man next to you decapitated, his brains splattering into your face and you were expected to keep control, to lead and not become unnerved?

They were nearly as green as the men he was training.

He looked around at them and smiled.

“My lads, you did well today,” he offered with a smile, hiding all his inner fears.

His few words of praise caused grins of delight.

“Vogel, what is the suggestion for dinner tonight?”

They had managed to hire one of the women working in the camp to cook their meals and tend to their small headquarters house. She had gone into the army with her husband, who had died the week before from the flux, and one of Lafayette’s staff had recommended her as someone of good character who needed the work. Besides, she could speak German.

“Mrs. Wismer said it will be boiled mutton, that was what was issued.”

“Ah, my favorite,” he lied. He detested mutton, but if that was all that was available, for the moment it was better to claim it was his preferred dish, and he led the way across the field.

Peter, legs numb, raced to where the muskets were stacked, and was glad to see that no one had tried to run off with his weapon, though a few arguments did break out between men of the headquarters company and those of other regiments when a few of the preferred second-model Brown Besses were supposedly grabbed by mistake, and battered Charleville or the detested Dutch muskets left in their place.

Harris settled the arguments, backed up by the others of the company before they set off as a group back to their barn.

“Tomorrow we stack weapons together, boys,” Harris announced, “and one of the men detailed off as sick can keep guard on them.”

There was a chorus of agreement.

“What do you think of all this?” Peter asked.

“That German?” Harris asked.

Peter nodded.

“It’s one thing to do what he says marching around out here. But with a grenadier company coming straight at you, covered by light infantry?”

“Like he said,” Harris replied, forcing a smile, “we got thirty days for him to teach us, thirty days for us to teach the rest of the army, and then thirty days after that we face the bastards again.”

Peter looked around at his comrades. All of them had lost weight, some a stone or more, their faces drawn, haggard. As a headquarters company they were expected to be clean-shaven, which only served to reveal how thin and malnourished most of them were. Seven of the men of the company had so far died, three from the flux, one from smallpox. One had just simply collapsed and another had frozen to death while on sentry duty one night. Two more had deserted. They were faring a little better than most companies, at least, but still one out of six who had been with the ranks when they marched here were gone. And now the starving time was truly beginning to set back in again, for the countryside for miles around had been stripped clean by Anthony Wayne’s foraging expeditions. Food was running short and disease was taking an ever-increasing toll.

Ninety days and it would be nearly summer, and he wondered how many of them would be alive by then.

Philadelphia
April 9, 1778

In the crowded room, with candles lit only around the stage itself, they were in near darkness, pressed in on all sides by the audience, intent on the play before them. The actors were arguing how to spell “declaration,” two of them trying to duel with long quill pens. The audience was laughing good-naturedly at the farce.

“I didn’t know you were here,” Allen whispered, leaning over. His attention barely focused on the play…Elizabeth having just slipped up to his side and taken his hand. Contrary to the custom when it came to evening fashion, she was not wearing a wig, but had her natural hair piled high, adorned with the first flowers of spring. The scent was intoxicating.

“How did you get here?” he whispered.

“I walked.”

“No, I mean…your father?”

She giggled like a schoolgirl.

“He’s off to New York to meet his business partners, and Mother is ‘taken with the vapors’ and asleep. I swore the servants to secrecy and just walked here.”

Her boldness startled him. They stood silent for a moment, hands clasped, acting as if they were watching the play. A character lampooning Thomas Paine drew loud hisses from the audience as he waved a sheet of paper attempting to sing his lines—that his “common sense” should rule them all. A captain in the front of the audience, more than a little drunk, climbed up on the low stage and snatched the piece of paper, made an exaggerated gesture
of using it to blow his nose and then wipe himself, which drew gales of laughter, as he bowed and returned to the audience.

Allen knew it wasn’t part of the play—his friend André would not have written something quite so crude. The actor playing Paine fumbled for a moment, then shrugged, held up an imaginary sheet, and kept on singing, his efforts greeted with mocking cheers. Allen, a bit embarrassed, looked over at Elizabeth, who made no attempt to let go of his hand to offer applause.

“Have you read his work?” she whispered, while the forced hilarity lampooning Paine and now Jefferson waving his “Declaration” focused the attention of the rest of the audience.

The memory of Jonathan clutching
The American Crisis
in his dying hands flooded over him again. And yes, he had read
Common Sense
, and found himself torn when he did so. Always pragmatic, he had agreed in some ways with the argument presented but saw, as well, that it was a document that, in the end, would be drenched in blood. Its ideas were now tearing the country apart, and history had always shown that such revolutions, filled with high promises, almost inevitably ended in yet more tyranny, violence, and suppression.

“Yes, I read it,” he said softly.

She looked up at him inquiringly.

“And?”

“I think it has caused more anguish than hope. Jonathan read it, he believed in it with all his heart and soul, and now?”

He paused.

“I doubt if I can even find the grave where they buried him.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I didn’t mean to bring back painful memories.”

“It’s not your fault,” he replied.

The character of Jefferson broke into a duet with Paine, the two of them dancing a hornpipe, the audience laughing and booing good-naturedly.

“It was in this very room,” she whispered, and he could sense her anger. “I stood outside this building when the Declaration was read for the first time. It was such a moment…”

The two characters on the stage finished their song and then the taller actor playing Jefferson, one of Grey’s staff, leaned over and embraced Paine, played by a short, rotund sergeant of the light infantry, the act triggering ribald laughter and comments.

She let her hand slip from Allen’s and left the room, no one noticing her leaving.

He followed her out onto the front steps of the meeting hall.

She looked back up at him.

“I didn’t come here to argue politics and the war with you, Allen,” she whispered.

“Then why?” and there was a touch of nervous ness in his voice.

She smiled at him.

“I’d like to think there was a certain fondness between us, long before this war ever started.”

She stood on tiptoe, leaned into him, and offered a gentle kiss on the lips.

He let his arms slip around her and held her close, kissing her again and then again.

They stood thus for several minutes. More than a few couples were outside doing the same, or wandering off into the darkness together.

“Perhaps when the war is over?” he finally whispered.

“What after the war is over?”

“Your father would accept me, for having served the Crown. I can return to my family’s business. Perhaps then we could…”

His voice trailed off, and he inwardly cursed himself for being so tongue-tied.

“Yes, I would like that,” she replied, and he could feel her begin to tremble as she drew him in closer. “But there is tonight as well…”

“What?”

He was shocked beyond words.

She looked up at him, smiling, and then jumped with a start when the muffled report of a gun, and an instant later a second one, echoed from within the meeting hall.

He laughed softly.

“End of the play,” he whispered. “John Bull just shot Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine.”

“Fitting behavior to be expected,” she said, stepping back slightly.

“It is only John André offering some satire,” he offered.

She didn’t reply.

“We were saying,” he offered, trying to bring her in closer again. She accepted his embrace but did so stiffly.

“Would you marry me?” he blurted out, voice beginning to choke.

She looked up at him.

“When the war is over we’ll talk of such things,” she said.

Their semblance of privacy disappeared as the double doors into the
meeting hall were flung open. The audience began to throng out, some heading for other parties, others for more private rendezvous, couples going off alone into the night, the few unfortunates whose battalions were on watch for the night reporting back for duty.

“Capital, John, simply capital! Good old John Bull at the end like that!”

Allen turned to see his friend in the doorway, accepting congratulations from General Howe, John politely inclining his head as the commander praised him. With his current mistress on his arm, General Howe started down the steps. Allen released Elizabeth from his arms and came stiffly to attention, the general nodding to him and passing on, followed by his entourage of staff and their ladies.

Elizabeth did not offer a curtsy, remaining stock-still, and as the group passed she sniffed.

“Well, I see Beatrice Walker has succumbed,” she whispered under her breath.

“Who?”

“Beatrice, she’s with that fawning major of Howe’s staff.”

And then she laughed softly.

“And she will be certain to tell my father she saw me with you, the gossip.” He couldn’t help but smile.

“Perhaps not—the question might be raised of how did she see you?” he offered, and she laughed softly.

“What did you think?”

It was André, beaming with excitement, coming down the steps to join them, Peggy Shippen clinging to his side.

“Afraid I missed the ending,” Allen offered, and then smiled “but the reports from within were rather thunderous.”

André laughed.

“Double-loaded the pistols with powder and I told that big oaf playing John Bull, Lieutenant Harrison, to point them high so no one would get burned. Instead he aimed it straight at poor Lieutenant O’Brian’s chest, burned a hole clean through his jacket. No love lost between the two, they had a falling-out over a woman, you know.”

He stopped for a moment, looking at Elizabeth, and decided to say no more on that subject, since the woman in question was notorious for her lack of virtue of late.

“No one hurt, thank God, but it scared the hell out of O’Brian. Rather than fall down dead, he just stood there patting at the flames and cursing
Harrison like an Irish washerwoman. It was rich.” He sighed. “Pray, it doesn’t turn into a real duel later.”

He turned away for a moment to accept the congratulations of others who were leaving. Apparently the near-tragic mistake at the end was actually the high point, and he accepted the compliments concerning the humorous ending as if it had been planned thus all along.

“Have you heard?” Peggy whispered loudly to Elizabeth.

“Heard what?”

“About General Howe! The room was all abuzz with the rumors.”

“And that is?”

“He will be relieved and ordered back to England to report on his failure to finish the war.”

Allen looked at her, startled.

“Is the rumor true?” Elizabeth asked out loud.

“Which rumor?” André asked. “You are curious, my dear, aren’t you? That Howe has a second mistress? That his brother the admiral has the pox? That the king of Prussia has started an affair with the czarina of Russia?”

“You know what I mean,” she replied with a smile.

“Oh, General Howe? Has this fine lady been talking? I told her not to say a word!”

He looked good-naturedly at Peggy and then gave her a playful swat on her backside. She looked up at him, grinned, and replied with a slight tap on the cheek with her closed fan.

“I am, sir, a lady and will not brook such crass behavior.”

“My apologies,
ma de moi selle
,” he replied with exaggerated courtesy.

“Just rumors,” André offered and then he drew closer. “So my dear Miss Peggy, please do not attach my name to them.”

The party inside was growing louder by the minute.

“They’re celebrating,” he sighed. “Couldn’t wait for the old man to leave.”

He shook his head. “My theater company can clean up and see to themselves.

I’m played out for the evening, and enough congratulations have been said.

To hang about for more would be boorish. And a gentleman should never be boorish.

“Shall we retire to our quarters? Miss Elizabeth, please do come, your secret is safe with me, as I am certain it will be with Miss Peggy.”

Elizabeth hesitated but then nodded in agreement.

The two couples walked the few blocks to Benjamin Franklin’s former residence, still the headquarters for General Grey and his staff. Elizabeth hesitated
at the doorway for a moment, furtively looking around to see if anyone might notice her entering a private dwelling with only one other couple, who, it was rumored throughout the city, were already engaged in an affair.

André took her by the arm and led her in, motioning for them to go into their favorite room, the library, while he fetched a bottle of claret. Wine poured for his guests, he settled down in an overstuffed leather chair, stretched out his legs, and sighed.

“The king, Howe, and Clinton,” he said softly, raising his glass, the others following suit—but Elizabeth, without fanfare or overt display, did not take a drink.

“Clinton?” Allen asked.

“My young friend. It is all rumor,” André said, and now he looked pointedly at Peggy, who blushed slightly but returned his gaze.

“Dispatch ship, as we all know, arrived this morning. Very fast passage, under four weeks. The London papers are filled with the news that France has declared war in support of the Americans. Bitter denouncements in Parliament, statements as well that General Howe had utterly failed to properly support poor old Johnny Burgoyne in upstate New York, thus the defeat at Saratoga was not Burgoyne’s fault but that of both General Howe and his brother the admiral. His critics in Parliament argue that rather than move here to Philadelphia, he should have ventured up the Hudson to relieve the beleaguered northern army. Thus Clinton.”

“Why Clinton?” Elizabeth asked softly.

André looked at her for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s no secret now. Last summer he argued vehemently for the army to move with all possible haste to relieve Burgoyne. General Howe, instead, ruled that we take Philadelphia and that Burgoyne could take care of himself. He did allow Clinton to venture with a small force up the Hudson, but by then it was too late. Burgoyne was cut off and Clinton was forced to turn back in frustration.”

André looked into his now empty glass and then refilled it.

“And what do you think Howe should have done?” Elizabeth ventured.

André looked at her and forced a smile.

“A proper officer never questions his superiors,” he replied, a bit of a chill in his voice.

“Maybe at times you should,” Elizabeth replied, and Allen looked over at her with surprise.

“Yet again, Miss Elizabeth, your spirit strikes me as rebellious,” André announced.

“And if I am?”

He smiled.

“Your secret is safe with me, as I am certain it is with Miss Peggy.”

“I have said nothing against the king or those who serve him,” she replied coolly, and André, ever the gentleman, nodded to her.

“Even if you had, your secret is safe with me, though I daresay that if you wish to continue to associate with our good Lieutenant van Dorn you should be cognizant of his career.”

She looked at Allen, blushed, and then lowered her head in acknowledgment.

“Van Dorn and Clinton do have something in common,” André offered.