I wished to be as noble as my father. And I was shamed anew as I remembered the wounded Redcoat’s face. The one who had asked me for water. The one from whom I had turned away. I’d been wrong—worse, driven by fear, I’d been cowardly.
And now I determined to be brave.
* * *
PAPA’S LITTLE STUDY at the back of the house, with its emerald flock-papered walls, and its books, maps, and calculations arranged in orderly fashion, was a place forbidden to my younger sisters and brothers. They never dared interrupt Papa’s work, but because I had mastered the art of sitting with him without disturbing his thoughts, he sometimes indulged me to stay while he wrote his letters. So, bracing for the reprimand I deserved, I took the liberty of knocking upon the door.
Papa summoned me inside, and I closed the door behind me. But instead of slipping quietly into the window seat where I liked to read, I waited for him to finish his letter.
Finally, he poured a circle of wax upon the folded page and stamped it with his seal, then glanced up at me quizzically where I leaned with my back against the door. “What is it, my child?”
“What are you working on?” I asked, not quite finding the courage to tell him why I’d come.
He didn’t press me on the matter. “I’m preparing my defense for the court-martial.”
“Good,” I said, guilt souring the dinner in my belly. “Then your name can be cleared of wrongdoing once and for all.”
Papa wasn’t always a calm man—he’d once threatened to dash the brains of an incompetent underling upon the ground—but he strove to conduct himself as a gentleman. And one of the ways he attempted to discipline himself was by the working of mathematical problems. He must have been struggling with something now, because he absently scratched figures into a notebook before saying, “Unlike you, my dear child, I am not entirely confident that I will be exonerated. But at least I will have a consolation which no one can deprive me of: the conscious reflection that I have done my duty, even if I am to suffer unjustly for my country.”
I followed his gaze as it cut to the silver falcon coat of arms affixed above the fireplace.
Semper Fidelis. Always faithful. Always loyal.
That was our Schuyler family motto, one that had been flung in my father’s face by our Tory neighbors when, in ’75, Papa had exchanged his red officer’s coat for a blue general’s uniform and declared himself a soldier for the American cause. And now, because of me, he found himself accused of treason by some patriots, too.
I swallowed around a knot in my throat and finally said what I should have said months before. “I’m so sorry, Papa.”
When my mother discovered that we’d helped my eldest sister run off, she’d said some very unhandsome words to Peggy and me, in both English and Dutch. And yet, my father had never let one word of blame pass his lips. Which somehow made it worse.
Tears now blurred my vision as I blurted, “I’m so sorry for what I helped put in motion with Angelica . . .”
For my sister’s elopement had given the fractured and fractious soldiers of the Northern Department yet another reason to distrust Papa. My father should have been celebrated for cobbling together an army of fur-trading, river-going New Yorkers and unruly New England backwoodsmen. He should have been hailed as the general who staved off the invasion by felling trees over roads, destroying bridges, blocking rivers, and burning whole fields of golden wheat so as to leave the British with nothing but scorched earth. Instead, he’d been belittled as a general who could not command his own daughters, much less hold Fort Ticonderoga. I worried that my role in Angelica’s elopement had cost Papa the confidence of his men, allowing them to believe the very worst about his loyalties and competence. Perhaps it had even cost him his command.
So I expected, at long last, that with my apology, my father would bring down his wrath on me. But instead he simply said, “That was Mr. Carter’s doing.”
As much as my father had resented his new son-in-law, at least at first, I resented Jack Carter more. That’s why I wasn’t as startled as I should have been when Papa added, “I considered dispatching him with pistols, but I couldn’t kill a man your sister saw fit to love. It also wasn’t in my heart to disown her. So, at the end of the equation, there was no undoing this Gordion knot. And, as you will find is so often the case in life, my dear Betsy, the only prudent thing to do was frown, make them humble, and forgive.”
I realized that he was frowning now.
That I was humbled.
And that I was also forgiven.
At least by Papa. And the love I felt for my father in that moment was eclipsed only by admiration. Because I realized that it was love that allowed my father to set aside the injuries done to his reputation, security, and pride. For love of his family, and his country, he swallowed down indignity as if immune to its poison.
And I wished I could be like him.
But if there is anything that marks my character, it’s that I have never rested easily in the face of injustice. My father might have been able to bear it, but I simply could not. If I’d been born a son, I’d have joined the army to see our family honor restored. I’d have trained to become an officer, testing my bravery and seeking glory upon a battlefield in service of the cause. I’d have challenged his detractors to a duel.
But how, I wondered, could a daughter make a difference?
Chapter Two
There is a spirit of dissatisfaction prevailing among the soldiers and even the officers.
—MAJOR GENERAL LAFAYETTE TO
