Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Smith’s house is a wealthy ship captain’s house with a long double porch in the front and a widow’s walk to watch the ships coming into harbor. His white house on the hill overlooks King’s Ferry and has many outbuildings and barns scattered over the stonewalled farm. Cows and horses are already out for their breakfast under lazy willow trees and staunch hemlocks. A panting Arnold hobbles up the long winding stone pathway, into the parlor of Smith’s house, and clamors for the first available chair to flop into and wipe his brow.

“Not bad for a half-cripple.” Smith says as he slaps the traitor’s shoulder. Arnold tries to regain his composure.

“Where’s your help, Smith? I need a drink,” Arnold says, his chest heaving.

“Jeremiah!” Smith yells, and a young colored boy hurries into the parlor. Smith turns to us. “I sent all of my servants away on long errands, for secrecy.”

Jeremiah listens intently. Arnold points at him. “What about him then?”

Smith scoffs. “He can’t testify.” He turns to the boy. “Bring me three glasses for our rum.”

“Make that four.” Peggy steps into the room from within the house. All eyes turn to her. She looks especially beautiful in her grey-blue, French silk dress. Smith freezes in her presence as I break the awkward moment by stepping forward to receive her warm hug. She curtseys to Smith and says convincingly, “So this is our brave and hospitable host?”

He can barely find his words. “Joshua Hett Smith, Miss. At your service.” He ends in a half bow. Then he gets some courage and turns to Arnold. “You didn’t tell me to arrange a room for your daughter, too?”

Peggy smiles as Arnold stands to greet her. “You nit, this is not my daughter.” He gives her a tight embrace. “By her beauty, this is my Peggy.”

Smith smirks. “No wonder you have all those grey hairs, having to leave alone such a young and desirable thing.”

Arnold studies him for a moment. “Be careful there, Smith. I can only guess by how you have kept all your teeth how few fights you have been in.”

Smith stares back. “It only testifies to how many fights I have won.”

Arnold laughs, thinking it a joke. “That is a good one, I’ll have to remember that one.” Once we stand in the common room with a view overlooking the water, Arnold leans toward Peggy. “I still feel uneasy with you being here at this dangerous moment.”

She gives one of her fake smiles. “I have sent away my servants, as you instructed, and I cannot bear to be away from you one moment.”

Arnold pulls her to him in another awkward hold. “It is all almost over, and we shall soon sail away safely across the ocean and be alone together.”

Peggy looks over his shoulder at Smith, who burns her with his eyes. She mouths, “Only you, my love.”

I don’t know if more danger lay in that very room or outside the door.

Smith turns away as Jeremiah returns with the silver tray of crystal glasses and pours us each a full glass.

“Arnold, now that we have light, can we go over my notes again?”

Arnold removes a box from his pocket and holds the snuff out to me. I shake my head, and he takes a finger-full to inhale into each nostril. “I have some maps I’d like to show you now that we have the time.”

I bring out my papers and sit across from Arnold. When I look around I realize Smith and Peggy have disappeared somewhere.

As I study the fantastic maps he places before me, he leans back in the armchair and confesses, “My courage was acquired. I was a coward ‘til I was fifteen years old.”

I don’t know what to say to him. “Most courage is acquired.”

He continues as though I’m not even there. “Do you know that when this war broke out, I rounded sixty militiamen up, encouraged them all loudly to cheer for revolution?”

I nod, wondering what this has to do with the task at hand.

He runs on. “The committeemen held the keys to the powder house, so I marched my new and rowdy boys up to the tavern where the town fathers huddled and demanded the keys. Colonel Wooster said, ‘New Haven had already voted on neutrality.’”

I notice one leg is much shorter than the other, and I try to look away as he carries on.

“I damned the town meeting to hell as Wooster went to calm the militiamen down and wait for orders. I yelled out that I was going to break the damned door in and that ‘none but the almighty God should prevent my marching!’ After the boys went wild I was quickly handed those keys.” He laughs, deep in a long time past.

I snicker. “I wished you hadn’t. I could be back in Litchfield had you not.”

“I spent lavishly to supply the needs of the troops, never stopping to write out the vouchers Congress demanded. Vouchers! Who has time for writing bloody vouchers when my troops were starving? Dropping dead while marching on Ticonderoga!”

I see now I don’t need to say anything. He’s lost in some sort of guilty reminiscence.

“Trying to fend off your Hessians.” He points at me accusingly. “In an attempt to allow my brave boys to escape as our barricade fell at Ridgefield, my horse was shot out from under me. Eight bullets hit my noble beast and, as it fell, it pinned my foot in the stirrup, landing me face-down in the bloody mud!” He twists his body and leg to show me visually. “As I looked up, I wiped the mud from my eyes to see a Tory with his bayonet-point straight at my chest yelling, ‘You are my prisoner!’” He dramatically holds his hand at his chest. “Pulling my pistol from my holster, I cried, ‘Not yet!’ as I pulled the trigger. I sprang out from under the horse before his body even fell and took off for the swamp under a hail of grape and shot!” His eyes glimmer with pride.

He pauses and claps for Jeremiah. “What sort of bread is there?”

The boy responds without making eye contact, “Cheate bread, sir.”

Arnold scrunches his nose up slightly. “Any butter?”

Jeremiah shakes his head. “Oil, sir.”

“Confounded war!” He breathes out. “Bring me the bread.”

Arnold is brought bread and oil. He cuts off the blackened base of the bread and hands it in a napkin to the slave boy, who nods in thanks.

“Yet five officers were promoted over my head.” He just picks up where he was before as he stuffs the dripping bread into his mouth. “And what did I get? A damned Caparisoned horse! And a pat on the back for gallant conduct during the Danbury invasion. Yippee.” He twirls a feeble finger in the air in sarcasm. “My seniority was never reestablished, and inferior after inferior was promoted above me.”

He offers me some bread, which I take gladly since I haven’t eaten and being awake all night has provoked a gnawing in my stomach.

“I was there holding the river when Washington crossed! I practically resigned just as you Brits came back, and Washington was more than happy to have me lead at Brandywine.”

I feel sorry for this person suddenly. This person who put so much on the line for his men to end up with me in this house, this way.

“It was my idea to give a reprieve of a death sentence to an Indian in our custody. Actually, a white man who lived with the Indians so long he forgot he was white. I thought of an exchange so that the half-lunatic would go back to his people (who were allied with Burgoyne), and report I had such great arms and numbers that no one would fight and live to tell about it.” He chokes on some of the bread as he laughs. “The half-lunatic convulsed in hysterical fits like the Great Spirit was directly talking to him. Convincing the chiefs that there was such danger if they stayed and fought that all of the allies fled!”

He has to pull away from his bread and throw his head back, he’s laughing so hard. He slams his fist down on the table, causing me to jump with his sudden anger. “My very name made British soldiers run!”

He stands up and goes searching in the space above the fireplace. “Where has Smith gone to anyway?”

I was wondering why he hasn’t noticed Peggy’s absence too. He pulls out a few slabs of smoked bacon and hands half to me so I can chew the fat, happy to have something to occupy my mouth as he rages on.

“If I hadn’t been there, Gates would have waited for Burgoyne to get his cannons in position for a classic siege. I contradicted his orders when Gates completely ignored my rightful position and led another attack before Burgoyne could regroup. I am the reason why this army is where it is now. I told my Norwich boys that we’d have them all in hell before night and by God we did!” He throws his fist up in the air and clenches his teeth. I can swear I see a tear squeeze out of his squinted eye.

His voice is choppy now. “I led them all in myself, with grape and musket pelting by me. My horse was shot out from under me and sent me flying in its death throes. When I tried to get back up, my leg—which was already wounded at Quebec—shattered beneath me. I am now sentenced to walk like an old, feeble man, hopping around on my heel for the rest of my life with never-ending pain, and what have they given me? They owed me. Gates got a gold medal and what did I get?”

He stares straight into my eyes, half-lunatic himself. “A damn court-martial!”

Seeing me freeze, unsure of what to say to this, he laughs again, quite disturbingly. “They damn well deserve it then, right?”

The strangeness of the moment throws me, and all I can say is, “You are doing the right thing.” Completely aware that he is the worst thing anyone can be—a traitor.

He gets up to leave, and I ask, “Can I take this map?”

He barely nods. “As a little bonus, General Washington has confided, and confided to me only, for fear of the information falling into the wrong hands”—he scoffs—“that he will be at King’s Ferry Sunday evening next, on his way to Hartford where he is to meet the French admiral and general and will lodge at Peek’s Kill.”

He goes outside to fill his pipe, and I leave him alone with his heavy thoughts.