Saratoga to Valley Forge

October 7, 1777, through May 26, 1778

CHAPTER IV

* * *

Frosty October nights and shortened, crisp, cool days had transformed the forests of the Hudson River Valley into a canvas of reds and golds that reached to the furthest purple rise of the rolling, New England hills. The woods echoed with the whistling bugle of great, antlered bull elk, fat from gorging on the abundance of twigs and berries, nuts and acorns, ripened rich and full by the eternal round of seasons. Instincts as old as time rose from within, and the shaggy giants of the hills squared off in forest clearings to do battle for the rights of the fall rut among the cows. It was a matter of total indifference to the cows which of the thirteen-hundred-pound bulls won or lost. It mattered only that it was the ordained duty of the cows to stand at a respectful distance, watching, listening to the resounding grunts and the rattling crash of massive antlers colliding as the warriors lowered their heads to hurl themselves headlong into each other, their sharp, split hooves ripping huge chunks of sod from the forest floor. The cows watched, and waited, and finally went to the bull that was left alone in the clearing as the other limped away. There would be a new crop of calves in the spring, sired by he who had proved his superiority in battle. Their genus would survive for another year.

On September 19, 1777, at the place called Saratoga, on the west bank of the Hudson River, about twenty-five miles south of the southern tip of Lake George and twenty-five miles north of the wilderness village of Albany, the roar of cannon and the blasting of muskets and rifles and the acrid bite of gun smoke had emptied the forests. The elk and deer, bear and panthers, raccoons and squirrels, ravens and hawks and eagles, and countless other woodland creatures had silently slunk away from the place where the two-legged invaders had intruded into the orderliness and quiet of their kingdom. Better to leave than suffer the scourge that inevitably followed. Where men came, the forests became silent. There was no other way.

The two opposing armies, British and American, had established their lines and their command headquarters about seven miles apart—the Americans under command of General Horatio Gates, with his second in command General Benedict Arnold; the British under the command of General John Burgoyne.

The American camp lay at a place where the old, winding dirt road north of Albany forked at the Bemis tavern, with the left wagon track angling northwest into the wilderness, and the right one, called the River Road, turning northeast, parallel to the Hudson.

To the north, the British had built their cannon emplacements and breastworks just beyond what was called the Great Ravine—a gigantic gash in the earth running northwest from the west bank of the Hudson River. Between the two camps, and slightly to the side, was Freeman’s abandoned farm. Not far from the farmhouse was a sizable open space, known as Barber’s wheat field.

On September nineteenth, the two armies had stumbled into each other, more by accident than design, at Freeman’s farm. At day’s end there was no clear winner, but the Americans had stopped the British in their tracks, in their march for Albany. For the next seventeen days the two armies entrenched themselves and skirmished and waited—Burgoyne for reinforcements from General Clinton or General Howe, Gates for the British to run out of food and supplies.

By nightfall on October sixth, it was clear that the time for waiting was over. No British reinforcements had arrived to relieve Burgoyne, and none were coming. The snows of winter were but short weeks away. Burgoyne had to move but could not retreat with General John Stark and his tough American New Hampshire militia behind him. He had to move forward, south, and try to overrun the Americans facing him, or lose his army to freezing and starvation in the oncoming winter.

In the darkness preceding dawn of October 7, 1777, General Daniel Morgan, the “Old Wagonmaster,” dressed in buckskins with his long hair tied back with a rawhide string, led his crack corps of backwoods riflemen on a silent scout, probing for any change or movement in the British lines.

There was none.

He made his report to General Gates, took his breakfast at the officers’ mess, then went to his tent to sit on his bunk to rest his aging hip and ailing knees. He buried his face in his hands for a time, pondering, reflecting, then heaved himself back onto his feet. Soldiering had taken its toll on joints and muscles, and he stood for a moment, letting his six-foot frame take the weight of his two-hundred-pound body while he worked with his thoughts.

Why isn’t Burgoyne making his move? Winter will lock him in soon if he doesn’t either try for Canada or to beat us.

He shook his head. If he tries to get past us, there’ll be a fight—a heavy one. And if I heard it right, Arnold has just resigned—can’t abide Gates’s refusal to hit the British before they hit us. If Arnold leaves, what will Gates do without him? So far he just sits there in his headquarters drinking coffee. Won’t go to the front lines. Won’t commit to the battle that’s got to come. Won’t let any of us do it for him—especially Arnold. Bad blood between those two—bad. What’s going to come of it all? What?

He could not force a conclusion in his mind, and he walked out through his tent flap feeling a rising sense of frustration, nearly anger. He was halfway to General Gates’s low, log headquarters building when the rattle of distant musketfire reached him from the north. He slowed for a moment and turned his head to better hear, trying to read the far-off crackle.

The pickets and scouts are under fire!

His pace quickened as he hurried on toward Gates’s hut. As he approached, eight other officers came striding, including generals Lincoln and Learned, Major Dearborn, and General Poor. They all slowed then stopped to wait when they saw Benedict Arnold hurrying toward them. With Arnold among them, Morgan rapped on Gates’s door. It opened and Gates stood facing them, fully dressed except for the top of his tunic, which remained unbuttoned.

Standing in the morning sun, the contrast between the two men, Gates and Arnold, was painfully obvious to every man in the group. Gates, corpulent, soft, gray-eyed, a light complexion unblemished by sun or weather, loose-jowled, thick-lipped, by aptitude and lifelong design a politician and paper shuffler. Arnold, stocky, hard, blue-eyed, thin-lipped, so swarthy and burned by summer sun and winter snows that the Iroquois Indians had given him the name “Dark Eagle.” Arnold was absolutely blind to the game and nuance of politics, despised the grinding monotony of paperwork and reports, and detested confinement or inactivity for any reason. Of all the world offered a soldier, nothing fulfilled him like leading men into the white heat of mortal combat. It was his narcotic, his intoxicant, his mistress, his Lord and master, his Deity. Finding himself subject to a commander in chief whose polar star seemed to be avoiding the very battle that had to be, had brought Arnold to a constant state of sullen, smoldering rage. Chaffing under the intolerable conditions, he had written a long, vituperative letter to Gates, requesting that he be returned to General Washington and the Continental Army, where “I might serve my country, since I am unable to do so here.” Gates forwarded the request to Congress, shuffled papers, and left the matter unresolved.

Gates eyed them for a moment, suspicion plain in his eyes. “Yes?”

Morgan spoke. “Sir, we all heard musketfire from the north. Sounds like the beginning of an engagement.”

The sound of a horse coming in at stampede gait turned all their heads, and they watched James Wilkinson, Gates’s adjutant general, come charging through camp as though the devil were nipping at his hocks. He brought his mount to a sliding halt and hit the ground in a cloud of dust, ten feet from Gates.

“Sir,” he panted, “there’s a major British force coming down toward our left. I’d guess close to two thousand regulars and Germans.”

Gates’s eyes widened. “You saw them?”

“Yes, sir.” His report tumbled out, one word on top of another. “They’re up in that field—the Barber wheat field—next to the Freeman farm. They’ve got troops out cutting grain for the horses. Burgoyne and two other officers climbed onto the roof of a barn up there and used a telescope to locate our scouts and pickets. They know we don’t have any force up there. I think this is the attack we’ve expected.”

Gates replied, almost casually. “Well, then, let General Morgan begin the game.”

Arnold broke in, and every man among them fell into instant silence, eyes wide, bracing for what could become an historic confrontation.

“I request permission to go see what’s happening.”

Hope leaped in the heart of every man except Lincoln and Wilkinson. They turned hard, cold eyes to Gates, waiting for his reply. Gates sensed the ugliness in their mood, and he fumbled for words.

“I am afraid to trust you, Arnold.”

Arnold’s reply was instant, abrupt. “I give you my word. I will go, look, return, and report. Nothing more.”

Gates dared not impugn Arnold’s promise in front of his officers. “Then do so.” He turned to Lincoln to deliver his blow. “Go with him. See that he does as ordered.”

Arnold jerked as though struck, and for a moment a dead, intense silence hung heavy before Lincoln answered. “Yes, sir.”

Less than an hour later, Arnold galloped back into camp, Lincoln following, and the officers came quickly out of their mess hall to join him for his report to Gates.

“There’s a large force coming this way. They’ll hit our left flank hard, and unless we meet them, they’ll roll our left into our center, and likely take us all down.”

Lincoln added, “General Arnold is right. It will take a large force to stop what we saw coming. If we fail, our left will fold. We’ll be in danger of total collapse.”

Gate’s response was immediate. “I’ll send Morgan and Dearborn out to our left. They can get west of the British and hit them from the side.”

Arnold shook his head violently. “Not enough. This will take a major force.”

Gates lost control. His face flushed, and the veins of his thick neck extended, red. With eight of his officers standing less than ten feet away, he nearly shouted at Arnold, “I have nothing for you to do! You have no business here! Go to your tent, and don’t come out until I send for you!” His arm shot up, pointing toward Arnold’s distant command tent. The eight officers who witnessed the explosion gaped in disbelief. Gates had stripped Arnold of his rank, authority, and command and effectively placed him under house arrest!

For a moment Arnold stood still, shaking with rage. Then, fearing he would lose control and throttle Gates, Arnold turned on his heel, and the generals opened a path for him to march away, still trembling.

Gates brought himself under tenuous control and faced his officers. “General Morgan and Major Dearborn, prepare your men to march. Report to me when you’re ready.”

“Sir?” It was Lincoln.

Gates turned to look at the general as he continued. “Respectfully, sir, if just those two companies go to engage what I saw, we’re going to suffer terrible casualties. I highly recommend at least three regiments be sent.”

Gates’s voice came loud in the silence that followed Lincoln’s bold request. “Very well. Three regiments. General Poor, you accompany General Morgan and Major Dearborn. General Learned, you follow for support where needed.”

From his confinement in his tent, Arnold listened to the three regiments march out. By force of will he sat on his cot, sweating, calculating time and geography. He was still sitting when the first sound of distant cannon reached his ears. Instantly he was on his feet, pacing, listening, trying to read the battle from the sounds. Musketfire became a continuous rattle, mixed with the sharp crack of Morgan’s rifles. Finally, unable to contain himself, he jerked aside the flap of his tent and strode out into the compound, facing north. A low, white cloud of gun smoke rose to hover above the distant treetops, and then the black smoke of something burning. The firing became hot, heavy, and incessant. In his mind Arnold was seeing the Americans, charging, falling back, advancing once again, caught up in the chaos of a battle being fought hand-to-hand.

Take the redoubts! The Balcarres redoubt and the big Breymann redoubt. Once you’ve taken the redoubts you are in behind Burgoyne’s headquarters, and those breastworks will do him no good because they’ll be on the wrong side!

Time became meaningless as Arnold listened, watching the clouds of white gun smoke and black smoke reach higher into the clear blue heavens, but the center of the battle was not moving. It was being fought in Barber’s wheat field, where the two opposing armies had collided nearly two hours earlier.

Arnold turned to look at Gates, sitting at a table outside his office door with messengers coming and going while Gates casually issued orders. Arnold turned once more toward the smoke, and the thought came welling up inside. He’s killing them! Those good men out there, and Gates is killing them! Three more hours of this, and they’ll all be gone!

Something inside Arnold rose white hot. He ran to Warren, his tall black horse, vaulted into the saddle, and spun the animal around to face Gates, still sitting at his table. Gates raised his head and stared full into Arnold’s face. In that instant each man knew what was in the mind of the other. Arnold was going to the sound of the guns, and Gates could strangle on it. Gates would have Arnold in irons if he could catch him.

Arnold turned his horse and sunk his blunted spurs into Warren’s flanks, and the animal lunged forward. Frantic, Gates leaped to his feet shouting to the nearest officer he could see, Major Armstrong, as Arnold disappeared in a cloud of dust. “Catch that man and bring him back! Use whatever force necessary, but bring him back!”

For a moment Major Armstrong hesitated, then leaped onto his horse and kicked it to a high gallop after General Arnold, who was already out of sight.

Arnold followed a faint, ancient wagon track that snaked through the tall trees, scarcely slowing in his headlong run. The horse held the pace, quick, sure-footed. One mile from camp Arnold came on a cluster of men from Learned’s command, separated, lost, drinking from a brook. “Come on, good men, follow me!”

Confused, for an instant they hesitated. They had heard what Gates had done to Arnold, and they were confused, knowing he had been stripped of all command. But there he was—General Arnold at his best, sword drawn, urging them on, leading them to the sounds of the battle. As one man they grabbed up their muskets and broke into a run behind him, shouting as they came on. Arnold cantered his horse forward, calling to others who had become separated from their units, and they melded into the growing command behind him.

Arnold and his followers broke from the trees into the open wheat field, and for the first time Arnold saw the entire field of battle. In twenty seconds he knew where the Americans had to strike, and he drove his spurs home. The big black horse plunged forward once again, headed straight for an entrenched and determined German line. As he swept past the command led by General Learned, Arnold bellowed, “Follow me!”

No one, including Learned, paid heed to the tremendous breach of military protocol as Arnold summarily took command of Learned’s column. Stunned at the sight of Arnold charging past, shouting them on, it took two seconds for Learned’s men to decide. They sprinted from cover to follow him, voices raised to a din, driving into the middle of the Germans. The Hessian soldiers were among the best in the world, and with their tall, copper-fronted hats they doggedly stood their ground, firing, reloading, watching the Americans drop before their cannon and muskets.

To Arnold’s left, Morgan and Dearborn suddenly jerked erect, startled at the sight of the great black horse leading the charge, and in an instant their commands were also on their feet, rising above themselves, charging into the side of the troops led by the German general, Balcarres, to overwhelm them, scatter them. With the Balcarres company gone, the flank of the Hessians facing Arnold was exposed, and Morgan did not hesitate. With Dearborn beside him, he tore into the blue-coated troops, flanked them, divided them, turned them.

Ahead, Burgoyne, dressed in a scarlet coat with gold epaulets, conspicuous above all other men, rode his horse back and forth, calling orders. To his left, British General Simon Fraser spurred his tall gray horse onward, leading the light infantry and the Twenty-fourth Regiment in a desperate drive to check Morgan’s surging command and save the Hessian line.

Through the confusion of the battle, Arnold saw Fraser, one hundred fifty yards ahead and to the right, and knew the man had the bravery and leadership to resist the American attack. Instantly Arnold raised his sword, pointing at Fraser, and shouted, “That man is a host unto himself! He must go!”

Morgan heard the order, saw the point, and in a heartbeat turned and raised his old wagonmaster’s bellowing voice, “Tim!”

Three hundred yards to Morgan’s left, Private Timothy Murphy, Irishman, frontiersman, seasoned Indian fighter, and the best shot among Morgan’s select riflemen, heard his leader and froze, searching. In one second he picked out Morgan, waved, and Morgan waved back, then turned to point with his sword at General Simon Fraser.

With understanding born of years together, and battles unnumbered, Timothy Murphy knew what to do. In a minute he was perched on the limb of an oak tree, his long Pennsylvania rifle resting on a branch before him. From his position he had a clear field of vision above the heads of the two clashing armies. He calmly cocked his rifle, studied the slow drift of the cannon smoke in the faint breeze, judged the distance at four hundred sixty yards, and aligned the sights. At that distance, Fraser was but a speck on the back of a gray horse when Murphy squeezed off his first shot. At the crack of the rifle, the marksman moved his head to peer past the smoke to watch. Half a second later the rifleball grazed the sleeve of Fraser’s coat and clipped hair from his horse’s mane.

Instantly Fraser’s aides shouted, “General, get back! Out of range! A marksman is trying to kill you!”

Fraser shook his head. “I’m needed here,” he shouted.

Twenty seconds later Murphy shoved his ramrod back into its receiver, laid the long rifle barrel over the branch once again, made the tiniest adjustment for the soft crosswind, and squeezed off his second shot. With the queer knowledge of a born rifleman, he knew at the crack of the weapon that the second shot was going to hit. He set his teeth and half a second later involuntarily grunted as the slug punched into Fraser, dead center in his stomach.

The whack of the bullet and the gasping grunt from Fraser came just before the general buckled forward. His sword fell from his hand, and his head dropped forward onto the neck of his horse. Immediately his aides were on either side of him, grasping his arms, holding him in the saddle while they turned and retreated through their own men to get the general out of range, away from the battle.

For a few seconds the regulars in Fraser’s command stood stock-still, mindless of the raging battle. Fraser was down! General Simon Fraser, their leader! He who had won their hearts and their loyalty with his selflessness, bravery, courage, and his unending devotion to his beloved army and England! They watched the two aides working back through the lines, Fraser between them, limp, head slumped forward, feet dangling outside his stirrups. They saw it and they faltered. Their inspiration, their reason for going on, was down, dying, gone.

Five hundred yards distant, Burgoyne saw Fraser rock in his saddle and slump forward. Simon, his confidant, his best friend, his trusted right arm, down! He closed his eyes and his head rolled back with the unbearable pain in his heart. With the honed instincts of a crack field general he knew that his army was done. Finished. Quickly he sent runners to both Phillips and von Riedesel to cover the retreat, and then he called out his orders.

“Back! Back! Return to headquarters!”

The red-coated British and blue-coated German Hessians began their retreat, backing away from the Americans, giving ground more rapidly with each passing minute. They came streaming in behind the fortifications and breastworks on the south side of Burgoyne’s headquarters, bringing the wounded they could carry, leaving their dead behind on a battlefield littered with the bodies of those who had fallen.

They flocked around the two aides who had guided Fraser’s horse in, and they didn’t stop until they came to the hut where Baroness Fredericka von Riedesel had set up her tiny hospital. Strong, gentle hands lifted the general down and carried him inside. A table was thrown out to make way for a bed, and they tenderly laid the general down. Moments later they had his clothing stripped to the waist, and their faces fell. None spoke, but they all knew. The general was dying.

The Baroness took charge. Get water—bandages. Get his boots off—cut them off if you have to. She did all she could for Fraser, but no one could remedy the damage and pain wrought by a .60-caliber rifle ball that had ripped into his stomach.

Back on the battlefield, Arnold did not waste one minute celebrating the monumental victory over Burgoyne’s regulars. He bellowed orders to the gathered Americans.

“Follow me, boys!” He stood tall in his stirrups and pointed with his sword. “We’re going to take those two redoubts, and with the big one in our hands we’ll be in behind Burgoyne’s headquarters! By the Almighty, before the sun sets this day, they will be ours!”

He set his spurs, and once more Warren lunged forward toward the nearest redoubt, held by a regiment commanded by Major Alexander Lindsay, Sixth Earl of Balcarres.

Far behind Arnold, Major Armstrong sat his winded horse, hidden in a clump of oak trees, peering at Arnold as he led the charge against the entrenched Germans. He had watched Arnold make his wild plunge into the middle of Burgoyne’s army, and he had stared when the Americans followed Arnold, shouting like wild men, to turn Burgoyne, drive him from the field. Now he was watching Arnold again leading an attack against entrenched cannon and muskets. The man’s insane! If Gates thinks I’m going in there to tell Arnold to return to headquarters, then General Gates is mightily mistaken! Armstrong held a tight rein on his horse and remained hidden.

With Arnold leading, parts of General John Glover’s command, along with men from Paterson’s command, fell in behind him to sprint at the Balcarres redoubt. The Germans inside gritted their teeth and stayed to their guns, firing as fast as they could reload. Their grapeshot was taking its toll, and the American attack slowed while the men ducked behind trees and rocks to escape the flying lead balls. Arnold looked eight hundred yards to his left, to where Morgan’s riflemen were crouched behind anything that would give cover, maintaining a deadly fire at everything that moved in the Breymann redoubt.

The Breymann redoubt! The fortification that controlled access to the back side of Burgoyne’s headquarters. Morgan was already there! Then, from out of the forest, Arnold saw Learned’s command surge forward, running toward the north end of the redoubt.

Mindless of his own safety, Arnold reined his horse left and kicked him to stampede gait. The sweating, winded horse responded yet another time, and the crouched rider flashed in front of the entire length of the Balcarres redoubt, with half the Germans inside shooting at him. Awe-struck men from both armies held their breath and watched as musketballs clipped hair from Warren’s mane and tail, and left dirty streaks where they creased Arnold’s hat and tunic, but none hit man or horse. He held his horse to a high gallop across the open space to the south end of the Breymann redoubt, past Morgan’s men, and on to the north end of the redoubt. Hauling Warren to a lathered halt before Learned’s men, he shouted, “Follow me, boys! We can take this redoubt!”

Among Learned’s men were parts of other commands, including Billy Weems and Eli Stroud. They stormed into the first cabins where Canadians had taken cover and cleaned them out. With the Germans concentrating on their battle with Morgan’s men, Arnold’s charge from their far right caught them by complete surprise. Too late they turned to face him. With Billy and Eli in the leading ranks, Learned’s men swept into them like demons. For ten minutes the fighting was brutal, hot, chaotic, face-to-face inside the four walls of the redoubt.

The Germans tried to back their cannon away from the ramps and turn them to fire at the incoming Americans, but there was no time. In the deafening blast of muskets and the screams of men mortally struck by bayonets a German officer shouted his defiance to rally his command, and raised his sword high to strike. From his left came the flat crack of a pistol, and a ball knocked him sideways to his knees. The sword slipped from his fingers, and he toppled onto his side, finished. For a moment his men stared, then threw down their muskets and ran for any way they could find to get out of the slaughter within the confines of the redoubt. Shouting, Arnold led his men after them.

He had reached the south end of the redoubt when he heard the whack and felt the sick shudder as Warren took a .75-caliber musketball through the neck. The mortally stricken horse stuck its nose into the ground and went down. At the instant the heavy ball slammed into Warren, a second musketball punched into Arnold’s left leg, midway between his knee and his hip, shattering the bone. Numb with shock, he tried to throw himself clear of the falling horse, but could not, and they went down in a heap. He did not know how long he lay dazed before he shook his head and tried to rise. It was futile. His broken left leg was pinned beneath the dead horse.

Men came swarming. They raised the dead horse, and as gently as they could they moved Arnold and his broken, twisted leg from beneath the animal while Arnold groaned through gritted teeth and clenched eyes. With sweat running in a stream he opened his eyes to peer up at Learned, who spoke.                 

“Don’t you move! You let us move you. Hear?”

Arnold grasped Learned’s arm. “Ebenezer, the redoubt. Did we get it?”

“We got it. We’re in behind Burgoyne’s headquarters, and they haven’t got enough men left to move us. It’s over.”

Arnold tried to rise, and a great paw of a hand settled onto his shoulder. He turned to look up into the big, square, homely face of Dan Morgan. “Gen’l, you stay still. We got men rigging a stretcher right now. We’ll get you back home. You’ll be all right.”

Six men lifted Arnold high enough to slip a stretcher fashioned of pine limbs and a blanket beneath him. They forced a rifleball between his teeth when they straightened his leg, and then they picked up the stretcher. Two hours later they settled him onto a table in a crude field hospital and the surgeons ordered the men to leave. Generals Learned, Morgan, Glover, and Poor quietly told the surgeons they would remain there until they knew Arnold would be all right.

Major Armstrong burst into the room, and all eyes turned to him. He swallowed, and approached Arnold. “Sir, General Gates has sent a direct order. You are to return to headquarters at once.”

Half-unconscious with pain, bleeding from a shattered left leg with a .75-caliber musketball embedded in the bone fragments, weakening from loss of blood, Arnold focused only momentarily on Armstrong. Then he laid his head back on the operating table, and he laughed.

Armstrong glanced around, embarrassed, and without a word quietly turned and left the hospital.

The chief surgeon, with two assistants beside him, slit the pant leg wide open and washed the wound. His face fell as he peered at the purple bullet hole and the angry flesh, swelling with each passing minute, and at the great gout of crimson blood that would not stop. With skilled fingers he gently probed the wound, assessing the damage done inside. He turned to one of his assistants, then the other, and a silent communication passed between the three of them. His face filled with pain and compassion as he leaned over Arnold and spoke quietly.

“General, the leg is beyond hope. It has to come off. I’ll need your permission.”

Arnold opened dazed eyes and tried to focus. He licked dry lips as he forced his brain to understand what had been said. He closed his eyes, and as he began the drift into a coma, he spoke.

“It stays on. See to it.”

The chief surgeon let out his breath and his shoulders slumped. He turned to first one assistant, then the other, silently pleading. They looked into his eyes, and he saw their anguish at not having an answer. He turned to the four generals facing him. Each of their faces was streaked dirty from sweat and musket and cannon smoke. Their hair was disheveled, their uniforms sweated and filthy from desperate, mortal battle. They stood solid, swords at their sides. Morgan had a pistol jammed through his belt. Their eyes were flat, noncommittal as they stared back at him.

The surgeon pointed at the bleeding leg. “The bone is shattered,” he pleaded. “Setting it properly will be impossible. The musketball is still in there. If we probe, we’ll do more damage. If we do not remove that leg, it is certain to develop gangrene—go rotten. When that happens it is only a matter of time before the poison will kill him.”

For three seconds the room was locked in strained silence before Morgan spoke.

“Get the musketball out and set the leg. It stays on.”

For two days, three doctors gave Arnold what opiates they had to dull the pain, shoved a lead rifle bullet between his teeth, and sweated over the shattered leg. They worked in the swollen, angry flesh with forceps and probes and scissors to get the musketball out, then the tiny bone fragments. With the sun setting on the second day, they gathered around a table, strapped Arnold down, forced him to drink more opiates, thrust the rifle bullet back between his teeth, and for three hours did what they could to set a leg with a two-inch gap in the bone. Exhausted, they dressed the wound and assigned the head nurse to remain by Arnold’s side. Should he awaken she must come get them at once. Then they sought their own cots and blankets and fell into dreamless sleep with their clothing on.

In the three o’clock cold and black of morning, a thick, wet fog rose from the broad, silent expanse of the Hudson to shroud the American camp. Pickets stood their watch shivering, with faces and hair and beards and clothing glistening wet, unable to see the length of their musket barrels while they listened to familiar sounds that were strangely loud, distorted. Dawn broke gray and chill in the dead air, and the blanket of mist held while the soldiers rolled out of wet blankets to build sputtering, smoking breakfast fires with wet wood to boil coffee and cornmeal mush. By nine o’clock the sun was a dull ball in the fog drifting overhead, and quiet men went about their grisly duties of placing the maimed and crippled from both sides—American farm boys and British and Hessian soldiers—on carts or sleds or wagons or buggies or horses—anything that would move the wounded south twenty-five miles to the village of Albany, with its hospital and small cluster of homes and barns.

As they worked, they were seeing again the flame and smoke leaping from cannon and musket muzzles, and they were hearing the sustained thunder of the guns and the sickening smack of lead balls ripping into bodies and the hideous screams of men maimed and mortally stricken. They were feeling again the transport from the world they knew into the world of battle, that strange place that was filled with thoughts and deeds that could be neither understood nor explained in quieter times. In the illusory, white heat of deadly battle, men did heroic things, and cowardly things, and thought thoughts that left them confounded and bewildered when the battle died and they were alone in the stillness of night, wrapped in their blankets or doing the habitual things that left their minds free to remember.

At half-past nine o’clock, Colonel Harold Talmadge, slender, thin, hawk-nosed, one of the surgeons assigned to the care of Benedict Arnold, concluded a close examination of the swollen, discolored leg, and shook his head in despair. All too well he knew that the small, make-shift hospital at the Saragota battlefield was little more than a death trap. It reeked of gangrene, putrid flesh, human waste, and the odor of the powerful astringents used in a vain attempt to mask the smells of the dead and dying. The military hospital at Albany was not measurably better, but at least it had a wooden floor to cover the cold dirt, and a fireplace for warmth. With spidery veins of ice forming overnight on the streams and rivers, and the daily threat of the first of the winter snows, it was clear they must get General Arnold to Albany immediately or run the risk of the weather killing him during the trip over a frozen, rutted dirt road.

He turned to an assistant and gave crisp orders. “Have a carriage at the front door in one hour, suitable to transport General Arnold to Albany. Have an armed escort prepared to accompany him. We leave the minute he’s inside the vehicle.”

“Yes, sir.”

At ten o’clock, with the morning fog lifting, Sergeant Abraham Claiborne came back on the reins to the four horses hitched to the largest spring buggy to be found, and the rig came to a rocking stop at the front door of the low log hospital. Captain Noel Milner gave orders to his twelve-man cavalry squad assigned to escort General Arnold to Albany, then dismounted. On Milner’s orders the squad entered the stench and the twilight inside the hospital, noses wrinkled, breathing light. Fifteen minutes later the interior of the van of the buggy was packed with blankets, and General Arnold was seated facing forward with his crippled leg tied to a plank that rested on the heaped blankets. With Talmadge seated opposite, next to the leg, watching every move, Captain Milner ordered his squad mounted and turned to the driver.

“Let’s go, Abe. Slow and gentle. Watch for rocks and stumps.”

Abe, tall, lean, dressed in worn buckskins, threaded the reins between his fingers, two in each hand, spat tobacco juice arcing out and down, wiped at his beard with a battered sleeve, and slapped the reins on the rumps of the wheel horses.

“Giddap!”

The horses leaned into the scarred leather collars, and the buggy moved forward, rocking. Abe came back hard on the left reins and the wagon made its turn southward, down the gentle slope toward Bemis Tavern and River Road. Scattered for miles ahead were wounded men of all uniforms, walking, riding, clustered in groups, helping each other, moving steadily southward to Albany and the hope of a better hospital, more physicians, and the blessed warmth and food to be found in the cluster of homes and outbuildings in the small settlement on the west bank of the Hudson.

The buggy had scarcely traveled one mile before Arnold was white-faced, writhing with pain and dripping sweat. Abe was holding the horses to a near standstill, but it was impossible to move at all without a slight pitch and roll to the van of the buggy; the heavy cushion of blankets could not stop all the vibrations and jolts caused by the pits and ruts of the road.

Doctor Talmadge ordered the coach halted, and with Captain Milner tried to rearrange the padding, but nothing would immobilize the leg completely. Midafternoon Talmadge loosened the binding that held the leg on the wooden plank, and opened the bandage. The bullet hole had broken open, and bright, frothy blood was flowing. The leg was dusky, swollen, and the odor turned his head for a moment. He washed the wound, repacked it, closed the bandage, tightened the bindings on the plank, and spoke to Arnold.

“I believe gangrene is coming. I will not be responsible for the results if we do not remove the leg.”

Through gritted teeth Arnold answered. “I would rather be dead than live as a cripple.”

Talmadge signaled to Milner, and they moved on, the carriage rocking on its springs, Arnold grimacing, sweating, groaning at the unrelenting torment, mumbling, sometimes incoherently, sometimes lucidly, as he slipped into and out of delirium.

It was the evening of the second day that Doctor Talmadge ordered the coach stopped. While four of the armed escort built a supper fire and boiled water for stew, Talmadge directed the moving of Arnold from the coach to a bed prepared on the ground near the fire. Blankets were piled a foot deep and Arnold was laid full length on his back, then covered with six more blankets, his leg still bound to the board.

They fed him a stew of steaming beef and potatoes, thickened with cornmeal flour, and held a mug of hot coffee while he sipped. Talmadge opened the bandage and his face fell at the gather of puss and black clots of blood that came away from the puffy, discolored leg. Half an hour later the leg was wrapped in a fresh bandage and once again bound to the heavy maple plank.

In full darkness Talmadge mixed the last of a powdered sleeping opiate and patiently held it to Arnold’s lips. It was a little past eleven o’clock, with an eternity of stars and a half-moon turning the overhead branches of the bare trees into a silvery network when Arnold groaned, then cried out. In three seconds Talmadge was at his side, holding Arnold’s shoulders down as he tried to rise, twisting and turning.

“Captain Milner,” Talmadge called, and in a moment Milner, and then Abe, were beside Arnold, holding him steady, keeping the leg immobile. Arnold’s eyes fluttered open, vacant, unfocused, and he stared up at them unseeing.

Talmadge started to speak when Arnold cut him off.

“Father? Where’s mother?” He blinked his eyes and licked dry lips, then raised his voice again. “Dan, did . . . the redoubt . . . got to take . . . watch out . . . follow me!”

His voice trailed off, and his eyes closed as his head rolled from side to side. Talmadge held his hand to Arnold’s forehead, then his throat, hot to the touch. “Fevered. Delirious.” He shook his head. “That leg . . . He might not make it to Albany. Nothing more I can do for him. Just keep him from trying to get up. The bone in that leg is in splinters. We operated—got the bullet and tried to put it all back together—I doubt it will knit, heal. Even if it does, the leg will be shorter than the other.”

Milner interrupted. “Can’t you give him something? More powder?”

Talmadge shook his head. “I brought what we had left at Saratoga and it’s gone. All we can do is be certain he doesn’t roll on that leg, or try to get up.”

Milner set coffee to boil. The three of them wrapped blankets around their shoulders and took places on two logs bordering the fire, with Arnold at their feet. They sat with the moonlight on their shoulders, and the glow of firelight on their faces, caught up in the incoherence of Arnold’s ramblings. The coffee boiled, Milner poured, and they sat with both hands wrapped around steaming pewter mugs, squinting as they sipped, singeing their lips and mouths, sipping again, their breath beginning to show vapors as the cold of night settled in.

Arnold’s eyes opened. In the firelight he turned his head to peer directly into Talmadge’s face, but he was seeing a scene from long ago. He spoke, and there was anger and defiance in his voice and face.

“They made fun of me . . . clothes . . . cousins. Why?”

He became quiet, still staring at what only he could see, then spoke again. “No . . . no . . . said father not away on business . . . drunk . . . tavern . . . said that . . .”

Again he became silent, as though listening, then went on, voice rising. “All of it . . . gone? Ships . . . store . . . money . . . everything? How? How?”

Milner turned to look at Talmadge and ask the silent question. Talmadge shook his head, and both of them turned back to Arnold as he continued his jumbled rambling.

“Died when? . . . Richard . . . Henry . . . Benedict . . . who will . . . Hannah is that . . .”

He quieted for a time, and the three men, shoulders hunched beneath their blankets against the cold, worked at their coffee, each lost in his own pondering of Arnold’s fevered hallucinations.

They started as Arnold shouted, “Get the wall . . . where’s Montgomery . . . haven’t heard . . . hide at Valcour . . . let them come past . . . watch that . . . get that man . . . get him . . . the redoubt’s ours . . .”

His eyes remained closed, his head twisting from side to side as his words became indistinguishable. Talmadge turned to Milner.

“Recognize any of those names? Richard? Henry? Benedict? Hannah?”

Milner shook his head. “Might be his children. I heard he was married.”

“Hannah? His wife?”

Milner shrugged and remained silent. Talmadge went on.

“Wasn’t Montgomery an officer who was killed in that Quebec expedition?”

“Yes.”

“What’s Valcour? And what redoubt is he talking about?”

“Valcour’s an island in Lake Champlain. Arnold built about fifteen little boats and fought a British flotilla there. I think he hid his boats in a cove at Valcour Island and let the British sail on past, then surprised them with an attack. Stopped them. Likely saved the Continental Army. Sounds like he’s getting Quebec and the Lake Champlain battle mixed up with a fight at some redoubt. Maybe Balcarres or Breymann. At Saratoga.”

Abe interrupted, his deep voice purring in the darkness. “I was there. We was storming the big redoubt. Breymann. Gen’l Fraser—he was British—come close to breaking us. It was Arnold saw him coming and gave orders. Dan Morgan called Tim Murphy and Tim put Fraser down. We took the redoubt. That’s likely what he meant about getting the man and taking the redoubt.”

Talmadge turned to Abe. “Know what he meant about his cousins and his clothes? Or his father being drunk at a tavern? What was that about everything being gone? Money, ships, all of it?”

Abe shook his head. “Don’t know much about him before he come into the army. Heard he ran an apothecary business, maybe some other things besides. Maybe he lost it all. No idea about his father, or his cousins. Ask him when he’s fit.”

Milner reached for the smoke-blackened coffeepot and poured for each of them. “Should be interesting.”

They wrapped their fingers about the mugs, settled back, shivered, and pulled their blankets tighter. From the forest far to the west came the inquiring call of an owl. All three men paused for a moment, then turned to peer west, knowing they would see nothing, but unable to resist the primitive instinct to look at sounds in the night.

A reflective mood crept into the little group, lifting them above their fatigue and weariness. For a time they stared silently into the yellow embers and flames of the fire without seeing, lost in their own thoughts. From time to time Arnold mumbled disconnected words, and they listened, and waited for him to settle. It was nearing one o’clock in the morning when Talmadge set his cold coffee mug on the ground between his feet.

“He’s settled. I’ll watch. You two sleep. I’ll call if something happens. We should be in Albany in the forenoon, day after tomorrow.”

While Milner and Abe went to their beds, Talmadge laid more firewood on the ebbing fire, watched the column of sparks wink out as they spiraled upward in the blackness, then went back to his log. Half an hour later Arnold stirred, and once again his mumblings drifted randomly from one scene to another. Talmadge knelt to feel his forehead, then his throat, hot in the cold night. He pulled his blanket tight beneath his chin and took his place on the log, listening to Arnold mumble an incomprehensible mix of names and places and events locked in his memory. Margaret . . . Peggy . . . Norwich . . . Sally . . . Cogswell . . . Canterbury . . . waterwheel . . . ridgepole . . . His grace . . . New Haven . . . apothecary . . . Wooster. The names came tumbling, quickly, then slowly, with no pattern to connect them.

Minutes before three o’clock Arnold quieted again, and in the firelight, Talmadge saw him lapse into stillness. Instantly he was at his side, fingers thrust against the inert throat, searching for a heartbeat. It was there, slow, steady, and then Talmadge felt the sweat cold on his fingers. He clapped his hand against Arnold’s cheek, then his forehead, where sweat was running strong. Talmadge rounded his lips in relief, and blew vapor into the night air. “Fever broke,” he said quietly. He wiped away the sweat, then took his seat once more on the nearby log. At four o’clock he wiped the last of the cold perspiration from Arnold’s face, and sat back down. He felt the tension drain from his mind and body, and then the overpowering drowsiness coming on.

His last conscious thought was, Must ask Arnold about those names, and then his eyes closed, and Talmadge slept, sitting, with his blanket drawn high and tight.

The days were chill, the nights cold as Abe continued to rein and cluck the horses over the rough forest road. Doctor Talmadge was never more than ten feet from Arnold, watching, listening, forcing him to drink beef broth and eat hard bread whenever he could. Three times Arnold lapsed again into a hot fever, muttering incoherently with his eyes wide open, seeing things and times and places known only to him.

They arrived at the Albany settlement on the frosty banks of the Hudson River midmorning of the fifth day, and Abe and five men from the armed escort carefully moved Arnold from the coach to inside the square, log walls of the hospital, to a small room at the back of the building, next to the apothecary and the doctor’s station. Doctor Talmadge set up a cot nearby and watched and waited.

The following morning, stark, bare branches of the forest trees made crooked lines across the face of the rising sun as Captain Milner, average size, round, unremarkable face, reddish beard stubble, strode steadily to the square, plain log building with a board above the door into which was burned the single word, HOSPITAL. Heavy frost turned the sun’s rays into countless jewels of red, yellow, blue, and green, and drenched his boots. He lifted the wooden latch and stepped inside, holding his breath against the rank odor of putrid flesh. A plump nurse with tired eyes tried to tuck stray strands of hair as she spoke to him.

“Who do you wish to see?”

“Doctor James Thacher, or Doctor Harold Talmadge.”

The nurse’s eyes narrowed. “You have an interest in General Arnold.” It was not a question.

Milner spoke with a sense of urgency. “I led the escort that brought him here. A rider just came in from Saratoga. There are things General Arnold needs to hear.”

“Oh. One moment.” The woman walked down a narrow aisle between cots jammed together end to end and disappeared through a rough plank door. For half a minute Milner studied the room. Wounded, maimed, and dying men were everyplace a cot or blankets could be laid, jammed together, with the worst cases on blankets beneath the cots set up against the walls. The stench was stifling. The sounds of unending human pain tore his heart. For a moment he loathed it. War, hate, hunger, cold, ordering men to their death, killing, writing letters to widows and fatherless—it all rose to choke him, and he turned away from it, to face the door.

Half a minute later the nurse returned, followed by Doctor Talmadge, who came to a stop, his thin, weary, lined face filled with apprehension.

“Yes, Captain?”

“How are you, sir?”

“Tired. Very tired. You have news?”

“From Saratoga. Is General Arnold in condition to listen?”

Talmadge pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “Back there in a room asleep. We ought not wake him.”

“Can I wait?”

“If you want. Don’t know how long it will be.” Talmadge cleared his throat. “What’s happened at Saratoga?”

There was eagerness in Milner’s voice. “Burgoyne surrendered. Two days ago. His entire army.”

Talmadge’s mouth dropped open, and he snapped it shut. “John Burgoyne? Surrendered?”

“October seventeenth, at Fish Creek. Burgoyne and his whole army—prisoners of war.”

For a moment Talmadge stared in disbelief, then turned at the sound of the door opening behind him. Doctor James Thacher, balding, bulbous nose, chief surgeon at the Albany military hospital, softly closed it and walked to join Talmadge and Milner.

“I’m Doctor Thacher. You wanted to see me?”

Milner nodded and thrust out his hand. “Captain Noel Milner. Doctor Talmadge and I brought General Arnold in.”

“I know.” Thacher shook Milner’s hand perfunctorily, then locked eyes with him, clearly in charge, clearly waiting for him to state his business.

Milner scratched at his beard. “I got news from Saratoga a while ago. John Burgoyne surrendered two days ago. Him and his whole army—prisoners of war.”

Thacher’s bushy eyebrows raised over slate-gray eyes. “Oh? Didn’t expect that.”

“I thought General Arnold should hear about it.”

Thacher nodded. “In good time. He’s sleeping.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Suit yourself.”

Milner shifted on his feet, then turned to Talmadge. “Did you ever find out about all those names and places Arnold talked about? When he was fevered?”

“Most of them. Took most of a day after his fever broke. Seemed like he needed to talk.”

“Did it make sense? When you got it all together?”

“Most of it. He was born in January 1741—the fourteenth of January I think he said—to a father who had inherited wealth and a thriving merchant’s business in Norwich, which he mismanaged. It failed. Lost everything. Ships, money, his retail store—all of it. His father couldn’t take the loss. Turned to drink. Became the town derelict. When the family fell to poverty, the boy Benedict was shunned by his cousins. They made fun of his clothes and his family’s condition. He spent his winters in Canterbury, in a school run by the Reverend James Cogswell, a close relative of Benedict’s mother. His mother was widowed once before she married Benedict’s father. Had seven children and lost all but two—Benedict and his sister, Hannah.”

Talmadge paused, trying to remember. “Poverty made Benedict defiant. Once he rode the waterwheel of the local flour mill two complete revolutions, just to impress the neighborhood boys. Another time he climbed the roof of a burning house and walked the roofline with the whole town watching. Terrified them. Tried to join the militia before he was fifteen, but his parents brought him back. In ’57, when he was sixteen, they did let him go with the militia to fight the French and Indians at Fort William Henry, but the battle was over before his regiment got there. Came home without firing a shot. The boy was furious. Defiant. Wanted to fight.”

Thacher interrupted, face clouded. “I practiced medicine in New Haven for a while. Didn’t know Arnold personally, but I knew his reputation when he lived there. He’s never gotten over being defiant. Defies anything he takes a notion. Defiance will defeat him if he doesn’t control it.” Thacher raised a hand to point. “Come on back to my desk. We can sit while we wait.”

They worked their way through the cots to a battered desk next to a small room with APOTHECARY on the door, and sat down, Talmadge and Milner facing Thacher.

Talmadge went on. “Two of the town’s leading physicians—brothers, Daniel and Joshua Lathrop—relatives of Benedict’s mother—decided on an experiment. Planted huge gardens of all kinds of medicinal herbs and took on Benedict as their apprentice. He worked hard and eventually built an apothecary business that thrived. Became the biggest medicine supplier to southern England. One shipment was worth eight thousand pounds sterling.”

Milner shifted in his chair, eyes narrowed in deep interest.

Talmadge continued. “His mother tried to drill into the boy a fear of God’s will—whatever you do, be ready when he calls you home. Be ready. Benedict showed some rebellion even against that. His mother died in 1759, his father in 1761. Everything he owned was sold to pay toward his debts.”

Talmadge paused to collect his thoughts. “By that time Benedict was so valuable to the Lathrop apothecary trade they didn’t want to let him go, but he was too restless to stay. Chaffed at being controlled by someone else. Wanted his freedom. Independence. His own business. The Lathrops gave him five hundred pounds sterling and some letters of high recommendation, and he left Norwich for New Haven to establish himself. Bought ships, and sailed for London with the Lathrop recommendations that got him credit, and he was in business. His flagship was a sloop he named the Sally.”

A sound from behind brought all three men around to look. The nurse closed the door into Arnold’s room and shook her head. They settled back onto their chairs, relaxed.

Thacher picked it up. “I remember he married Margaret Mansfield in 1767. Called her Peggy. They had three sons—Benedict, Richard, and Henry. He plunged into business too headlong—too much too quick. Got into money trouble within months. Never did understand how to handle money, or for that matter, people. When a suitor came to visit his sister, Hannah, Benedict called him out to a duel. Had a duel or two with some of his creditors as well. It appears his solution to solving problems with those who opposed him was very simple. Break heads, or shoot them.”

Thacher paused, then grunted words from his ample belly. “If that man has any compassion for anyone else, I have yet to see it. Hasn’t changed much since New Haven. I stood watch over him several nights. He was peevish and impatient the whole time. Demanded my attention all night.”

Milner’s eyebrows arched in surprise. Talmadge broke in, “Arnold was with Ethan Allen back in ’75 when they took Fort Ticonderoga from the British, but couldn’t stay out of controversy. He came at odds with Allen and his Green Mountain Boys who were with him, and came close to blows. Or worse, a duel. He was later with the expedition north to take Quebec, with Montgomery. They came within yards of conquering Canada before their campaign fell to pieces. Montgomery was killed at the walls of the city. Arnold was shot in the leg. The left leg. The same one that is now giving him so much grief. In the middle of all this he was ordered to go to Cambridge to settle accounts. The Massachusetts legislature claimed he owed them because he had charged expenses to Massachusetts without authority while he led that Canadian expedition. When his leg healed, he didn’t go to Cambridge. He went home, instead, and there learned that his wife had died.”

Milner glanced at Thacher, who sat impassively, staring at his desk, unmoved. Talmadge went on.

“When Arnold finally met with his superiors to settle his accounts for the Ticonderoga and Quebec expedition, he claimed they owed him more money than he owed them. Money he had spent from his own pocket on military needs. They demanded proof, but he had none. Hadn’t kept records. They finally settled by giving him half what he claimed and made him pay the balance they claimed against him. The United States Congress was so embarrassed for the small amount Massachusetts allowed him, they voted him another one hundred forty-five pounds from their own coffers.”

Thacher pursed his mouth. “The man is absolutely numb to politics. No sense of it at all. Keep records of his financial dealings? Never. He loathes paperwork of any kind. Accountability?” He shook his head. “Accountable only to himself. Politics? Politicians? He understands but one thing. Crush them.”

Milner turned to Talmadge. “What did he say about someone named Wooster?”

“Wooster?” Talmadge reached into his memory. “Arnold was elected captain of a company of Governor’s Foot Guard in New Haven. When the shooting started at Lexington and Concord, the New Haven Town Meeting Committee voted to stay neutral. Arnold stormed into the meeting and declared his company ready to fight. Wooster—Colonel David Wooster of the Connecticut militia—told Arnold the Committee had already legally voted neutrality, and they held the keys to the New Haven powder magazine. Arnold condemned the meeting on the spot and threatened to smash down the door to the magazine if they didn’t give him the keys. They started to protest, but Arnold yelled, ‘None but Almighty God shall prevent my marching!’ He got the keys, and he marched. He was thirty-three years old.”

Thacher raised a hand and let it drop. “And he found a release for all his pent-up anger and defiance. War.”

The sound of the front door opening brought all three men around, and sunlight flooded into the twilight room as a small, round-shouldered, wiry man wearing a threadbare coat over a carpenter’s apron entered. He carried a cage nearly five feet in length, made of oak sticks. Ten leather straps hung loose. He stopped inside the door to let his eyes adjust, when Doctor Thacher called to him.

“Is it finished?”

The little man’s eyes shone with pride. “Yes, sir, just like you ordered. It’ll sure do.”

“Bring it.” He gestured to Talmadge and Milner, and the four men made their way between the cots to Arnold’s room. Thacher pointed and spoke to the little man.

“Leave it there, by the door.”

His four-day beard moved as the carpenter replied, “Yes, sir. If she needs any fixin’ or she don’t fit just right, I can fix ’er quick. Just let me know.”

Thacher nodded, and the man hesitated for a moment as though waiting for a ‘thank-you’ or at least some further acknowledgment of his handiwork. Thacher gave him a nod of approval, and the man rubbed his hands on the sides of his coat, bobbed his head, turned, and walked out.

Milner studied the structure for a moment. “What is it?”

Talmadge pointed. “A fracture cage. Fits around Arnold’s hip and leg, and when those straps are tightened the leg is locked in place. Keeps him flat on his back.”

From inside the room came the muffled sounds of a voice calling. Thacher grimaced. “Sounds like he’s awake. I’ll have to go.”

Milner stood. “Mind if I talk with him for a minute? Won’t take long.”

Thacher gave a jerk of his head, and the three entered the room where General Benedict Arnold lay flat in his bed, his leg still strapped to the plank. Doctor Thacher sat beside him to touch his forehead, and Arnold pushed his hand away.

“I’m not fevered. Get this board off my leg. It’s cutting circulation. My whole left side is numb. Get it off.”

Thacher started to speak, but Arnold cut him off, eyes narrowed at Milner. “Who is this man? What’s he doing here?”

“Captain Milner. He commanded the escort that brought you from Saratoga.”

Arnold studied Milner for a moment. “I don’t remember seeing you before.”

“I don’t doubt it. You weren’t yourself. I came to tell you about Saratoga.”

Arnold sobered instantly. “What about Saratoga?”

“Two days ago General Burgoyne surrendered what’s left of his army. All of it. At a place called Fish Creek. They’re all prisoners of war, including Burgoyne.”

“Two days? What date was that?”

“October seventeenth.”

The change that came over Arnold stunned all three men. His entire countenance was transformed in an instant. The internal darkness was gone. A light came into his eyes and his face and being, a light that radiated to touch everything in the room, as if something tangible. All three men were compelled into a silence that held while Arnold spoke.

“I saw it coming! I saw it when we took the Breymann redoubt! What has Gates done? Has he made his report to General Washington? Has he asked for me? To restore my rank? My command? No matter. When Washington learns of what happened there will be no question of my rank. My future.”

Milner spoke hesitantly. “I don’t think Gates has made his report yet. I’m sure you’ll know when that happens.”

“He’ll have to tell the truth this time. Too many good men were there at the redoubt. He won’t dare repeat what he did when he reported the battle at Nielsen’s Farm. That was in September, you remember. September nineteenth. He made no mention at all of my name in that report, but he cannot do that when he reports the battle at the wheat field. Impossible. Washington—Congress—the entire Continental Army will know what happened.”

Arnold was ecstatic. All thought of his pain and his crippled leg was gone. Suddenly he raised onto his elbows.

“How long will it take to get a messenger to Philadelphia and back? I want to know the news—what the newspapers are saying. I must know.”

Thacher shook his head. “We’ll send a messenger today, sir. Now we’ve got to get the fracture cage onto that leg.” He gestured. “Doctor Talmadge, help undo the bindings on this board. Captain Milner, get that cage. When we get this plank off, lay it on the bed beside the leg and help us with these straps.”

The fracture cage became a torment that turned Arnold’s recovery into an unending purgatory. Worse than any prison cell, it forced him to lie day after day in one position—flat on his back. Doctors and nurses tended his every need. Bowels, food, baths, change of nightshirts, shaving, combing his hair. Arnold became peevish, then desperate. With no physical release for his compulsive impetuosity, he began to live in his head. His remembrances became distorted, at times his conversation irrational. He dictated letters to Congress, then General Washington, inquiring why his rank as general, and his powers of command, had not been restored. Certainly no one in Congress, or in the military establishment, could doubt his service, and his sacrifice, in turning the battle at Saratoga. Burgoyne fell because Benedict Arnold had taken the American army, and the battle, on his own shoulders.

His letters became firm, then demanding. Aware that war, and the times, had moved on without him, he became fearful he would be forgotten, forever abandoned to ignominy and forgotten by history.

Fall yielded to the snows of winter, and answers came in to his letters. Congress had authorized restoration of his rank, but not his seniority. General Washington’s letter of commission arrived two months later. Arnold welcomed it, but when he realized he had lost seven months seniority as a ranking general, he became enraged. He would take care of that personally.

The winds and snows of January turned Albany into a frozen wilderness. The doctors hovered over Arnold daily, testily weighing their opinion of the condition of his leg against his shouted demands that he be allowed to visit General Washington. If anyone in America would understand the injustice of robbing him of seniority among the generals of the Continental Army, it would be his friend, George Washington.

In the second week of February, Doctor Talmadge spent half an hour behind closed doors with Doctor Thacher. Then both men entered Arnold’s room, and Doctor Talmadge spoke.

“We will remove the cage, and you may leave the hospital, but only on the following conditions. The leg will remain splinted at all times. You will absolutely not place weight on it. You will use crutches at all times until advised otherwise by doctors, and you will not spend more than four hours per day on your good foot and the crutches. Do you understand?”

Arnold was ecstatic. “I understand. I’m going to visit my children and regain my health. Then, as soon as I can, I’m going to Valley Forge. I must see General Washington.”

Thacher nodded. “With an escort under orders to see that you follow what Doctor Talmadge just told you. Is that clear?”

“I’ll leave in the morning!”

For more than two months Arnold remained with his children in Middleton, taking comfort from them as his leg slowly healed. It became obvious the crippled limb was going to be noticeably shorter than the other. Grimly Arnold accepted it and lived for the day he could see General Washington and begin the tortuous process of trying to right the wrongs that Congress and the politicians had done him.

The raw winds and thaws of March turned New England into a quagmire, followed by the subtle warming of April, and the reawakening of May. Arnold wrote a request for audience with General Washington. The reply came from John Laurens, Washington’s aide. He would be most cordially welcomed the last week of May. With hope surging in his soul, Arnold ordered a team and buggy and an escort for the trip to Valley Forge. The response came immediately. Captain Noel Milner would lead the twelve-man escort, with a coach and team of four horses driven by Sergeant Abraham Claiborne.

It rained in the night of May twenty-fifth, a soft, warm, steady pelting, and then the heavens cleared. The rising sun burned off the wispy fog and raised steam from the puddles. By nine o’clock the roads were beginning to firm. At half past ten o’clock, Abe sawed back and forth on the reins of his four-up team to slow the rocking coach. He leaned to his left and turned his head to call down from the driver’s seat into the body of the swaying buggy.

“Gen’l Arnold, we’re comin’ into the encampment. We’re on the Gulph Road, comin’ to the Schuylkill, not far from Gen’l Washington’s quarters.”

General Benedict Arnold shifted his weight, teeth gritted at the gnawing ache in his left leg. It had been seven months and nineteen days since the British musketball smashed the thighbone in the do-or-die charge at the Breymann redoubt. Riding in the swaying, jostling coach was to endure a constant, deep ache, and occasional stabs of white-hot pain.

Arnold thrust his head out the window of the coach to call, “Valley Forge?”

“Yes, sir. It’s hills, not a valley, but it’s Valley Forge.”

Arnold caught the windowsill with his left hand and pulled himself over to peer out, studying the men and the camp as the coach rolled on.

Captain Noel Milner brought his horse alongside. “Sir, any particular place you want to see? Any special regiment?”

Arnold shook his head. “No time. General Washington’s waiting.”

“Yes, sir.” Milner touched spur and his mount cantered forward to the head of the twelve-man escort.

The rows of small huts, sixteen feet by fourteen feet, passed by in the bright sunlight. Bearded, barefooted men in tattered shirts and pants slowed to watch the big, highly polished coach rumble past, then point and exclaim as they recognized General Benedict Arnold. The carriage came angling northwest toward the Schuylkill, then turned west, parallel to the big river, and on to the place where Valley Creek, running high and muddy with spring runoff, merged. On the east side of Valley Creek, near the Schuylkill, stood an austere, two-story stone house in which General George Washington had established his headquarters.

Sergeant Claiborne pulled the horses to a stop in the dooryard and climbed down from the driver’s seat. Captain Milner dismounted his sorrel mare, lowered the step-down, and held the door while Sergeant Claiborne took the weight of General Arnold’s arm around his shoulder and carefully helped him set his good right foot on the ground. Milner reached inside the coach for the crutches and handed them to Arnold.

“Can we help you inside, sir?”

Arnold tucked the crutches under his arms and shook his head. “I’ll make it. Wait here. I’ll be out directly.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carefully Arnold made his way to the front door of the building and rapped. The door was opened by an aide Arnold had never seen before. Three minutes later Arnold stopped before a door in a bare hallway. The aide knocked, waited for the familiar, “Come,” and swung the door open.

“Sir, General Benedict Arnold is here for his appointment.”

General George Washington, seven inches taller than Arnold, rose from behind his desk. “Show him in.”

The aide stepped aside, Arnold stepped into the doorway, and General Washington started to come around his desk. Arnold raised a hand to stop him.

“I’ll manage, sir. Forgive me that I did not uncover, but it is a near impossibility to carry my hat and walk on these crutches at the same time.”

“No matter. Come in and be seated.”

Washington watched with interest as Arnold moved forward, maneuvered in front of the plain, hard-backed chair opposite his own, and lowered himself onto it, holding his left leg rigid. Arnold looked for a place to conveniently lay his crutches, and Washington pointed.

“Lean them against the desk.”

“With your permission, sir.”

Washington sat down and for a moment studied Arnold. With an eye trained to gauge the vitality of a man, he saw the weariness in Arnold’s eyes, the paleness, the lines in his face. He sensed the inner fires that drove the man, but slowly understood they were somehow diminished. Diminished, or perhaps directed differently than Washington remembered. He felt a wrenching in his heart.

Washington spoke. “I am much encouraged to see you upright and moving about. I feared at what the doctors were saying. Do you know when you will be fit?”

Arnold shook his head. “Months.”

“I received your letter. The one in response to my inquiry about resuming your command. I see you were right. Active duty is out of the question for now. I trust you’ve had no further problems with Congress since my letter of last January.”

“None, sir.”

Washington glanced downward for a moment. “I regretted very much the delay in notifying you of the action they took. They resolved to restore your rank and privileges on November nineteenth of last year as I recall, which was entirely proper. I received their orders several days later. I can only hope you understand that I was hard-pressed getting the army established here. The delay in my writing to you was solely my responsibility. However, withal, I extend my congratulations.”

Arnold nodded. “Thank you, sir. I did spend a few anxious days waiting for your letter.” He paused and Washington saw him struggle with a thought for a moment. A change of mood stole over him, clouding his face, as though he were struggling with deep, bitter feelings. It reached to touch Washington, startling him.

Arnold continued. “General, you recall that business a year ago, when Congress promoted five generals ahead of me, even though I was senior to all of them?”

Washington nodded and waited.

“I know you spoke on my behalf. You and Henry Laurens. Congress finally granted my rank and a promotion but has never restored my seniority. I can endure the personal embarrassment, but I have trouble understanding the reasoning of those men. It leaves me wondering if they intentionally meant to humiliate me before the entire Continental Army?”

Arnold stopped, and it took Washington a second to understand Arnold was silently asking him for any tidbit of information that would illuminate why Congress had treated him with such crass disrespect. Washington spread his hands on the desktop for a moment, sorting out what he could, and could not, tell Arnold.

“Yes, I did speak for you. So did Henry Laurens. He was a representative from South Carolina at the time. He told Congress that he thought their reasoning on that occasion was disgusting. The truth is, nearly all of those five generals who were junior to you were regularly corresponding with as many congressmen as they could. Visiting them, ingratiating themselves with them. Generals Gates, Lee, and sometimes Greene, exchanged correspondence regularly with John Adams. When the time came for advancement, Congress favored them because of the favor they had curried. It had little to do with merit. In my view, to your great credit, you stood on your accomplishments. I told them so. It made no difference.”

Washington paused for a moment, ordering his thoughts. “I am unable to explain why Congress later granted your advancement to Major General without restoring your seniority above those five men, who rightfully should be your junior. I was never privy to the reasoning behind it. In my view it is a travesty. They have badly abused their powers, at your expense.”

He stopped for a moment, and his eyes narrowed with intensity. “I do not pretend Congress is perfect. Far from it. But they must do what this army has had to do. Learn their business. I am committed to keeping government powers away from the military. It must remain with Congress. When the military takes over government, countries do not survive. However imperfectly they use it, the powers of government must remain with Congress. We can only hope time will teach them to better use that power.”

For ten full seconds silence held while Arnold looked deeply into Washington.

The sense of something dark in Arnold once again reached Washington, and he straightened slightly, groping to understand what he was seeing, feeling.

Arnold finally drew a breath and let it out, and the moment was past. He shrugged.

“No matter. The point is, we must move on. I am informed General Howe has resigned. With the French now supporting us, the immediate questions are who will succeed Howe, and what will the British do next.”

The swift change in Arnold’s mood and his plunge into the most critical issues of the day caught Washington by surprise. For a moment his eyes narrowed as he organized his thoughts.

“I think General Clinton has been appointed to succeed General Howe. And, my judgment is that with their empire spread nearly around the world, they face difficulties that could be their undoing. With France just across the channel, and fully capable of invading the British Isles, King and Parliament are put to a choice which will cost them dearly no matter how they resolve it. Protect England at the cost of losing America, or hold America at the risk of suffering an invasion of England.”

Arnold leaned forward, eyes lighted by his internal fire. “Exactly. I conclude the King will sacrifice America before he risks losing England.”

“I agree.” Washington drew a deep breath. “Time will tell, likely sooner than later. It is for us now to continue with our campaign as we planned it, and watch and wait to see how they move.”

“I was in that accursed hospital too long. Lost the continuity of the war. How do we now stand?”

“I expect the British to evacuate Philadelphia. If they do, we’ll follow them wherever they go and wait for an opportunity to strike their flanks. Inflict all the damage we can and fall back. It’s the same tactic we’ve used before. No major engagements. Only battles of our choosing, in which we can inflict significant damage. We can replace our losses, and they cannot replace theirs. Enough losses, and they should recognize they cannot win. General Burgoyne learned it too late at Saratoga, most thanks to yourself.”

Arnold chose not to respond to the high compliment. “General Clinton replaced Howe? Not Cornwallis?”

“Yes.”

Washington diverted his attention to his desktop for a moment, then chose to change direction to lesser matters.

“I understand you have lately visited your family.”

Arnold leaned back, aware the discussion of the war was closed. “Yes. I spent two months in Middleton with my children.”

“They’re well?”

“Fine.”

“Your business affairs?”

Instantly a look came into Arnold’s face that startled Washington. Color replaced the pale cast of his skin. His eyes came alive. His words tumbled out, energetic, emotionally charged.

“Improved. Much improved. I bought an interest in a ship. The General McDougal. A privateer. Ten guns. My partners and I plan to go into the mercantile and apothecary business, all up and down the coast. Should be profitable. Very profitable.”

For the first time, Washington recognized something he had never seen before. This man demonstrates more enthusiasm for his business ventures than for his military affairs! Is he obsessed with profits? Money? Benedict Arnold? Could it be?

Washington pushed his thoughts aside and came to his last point.

“May I acquaint you with a proposal I have in mind? It is clear you are prevented from assuming leadership of a fighting command. Your heroic wounds simply will not allow it. If I am right about Philadelphia—by that I mean if the British evacuate—I have it in mind to give you command of that city. Administer its affairs as a military governor. Would you have thoughts about that?”

Arnold brightened. “Yes, sir. I would be most gratified.”

Washington nodded. “Excellent.” He raised a hand in gesture and let it fall to the desktop. “Would you give thought to who you want as aides, should that come to pass?”

“I shall.”

“Good. Well, then. Unless you have something else that needs our attention, I can only thank you for coming here today. It means much to me to have you available once again. Should you need anything . . . anything at all . . . you have but to ask.”

Arnold reached for his crutches and struggled to his feet. “Sir, I cannot tell you the rise in spirit I experience during such visits. If my humble service is of any value, it is worth whatever the price.”

“Let me help you with the door.”

Washington came around his desk to open and hold the door for an inferior officer—a gesture of high respect not lost on Benedict Arnold. Washington stood in the doorway to watch his crippled comrade in arms make his way awkwardly down the hall on the crutches, then went back to his desk. He took a deep breath, steeled himself for the chore before him, and reached for a fresh pile of paperwork that needed to be handled. He was midway through reading a personal memo from Henry Laurens of the Continental Congress when he laid the document down and for a time stared at the far wall.

When Arnold spoke of how Congress had abused him, was there something deeper than disappointment? Did I sense bitterness? Bordering on hatred?

His forehead furrowed as he pondered.

When he spoke of that ten-gun schooner, the General McDougal, making large profits—did he have more than business in his mind? Very profitable he said. Money. Does he lust after money? Probably the most heroic field commander in the Continental Army—a profiteer? Is there rancor in him?

Washington reached to thoughtfully run his thumb down his jaw-line.

I think not. He’s been through too much. A man of action too long confined in a hospital, too long limited by a serious wound. I have to be mistaken. Still . . .

Washington reached for the Laurens memo. He had no time for pointless conjecture.

Notes

The spectacularly heroic participation of General Benedict Arnold in the pivotal battle at Saratoga, near the Hudson River, on October 7, 1777, as described is accurate. Ketchum, Saratoga, 390–407.

The birth, early childhood, and the experiences that shaped Benedict Arnold are accurate, including riding the village waterwheel for two revolutions to impress his peers and walking the roofline of a burning house for the same reason. His physical description, that is: stout, hawk-nosed, dark complexioned, is correct. His development into an impetuous man, quick to action, hot-tempered, plunging into business after business, is as described. He was almost totally insensitive to politics and politicians. At the New Haven town meeting wherein the city fathers had voted neutrality in the fight against the British, Arnold did interrupt the meeting, curse them all, and declare they would fight or he would break down the doors to the powder magazine and take charge himself. His purchase of part interest in the two commercial ships, Charming Nancy and General McDougal, were but two of his attempts to acquire wealth, which efforts usually failed.

The terrible wound to General Arnold’s left leg in the Saratoga matter prompted the doctors involved to plead with him to let them remove the limb, which he refused. They finally set the leg as best they could, knowing it would be two inches shorter than his right leg. He was transported from Saratoga to Albany where better medical help was available, and there was under the care of Dr. James Thacher, who stated that General Arnold was a difficult patient—demanding, garrulous, argumentative. At Albany, the doctors had a carpenter build a wooden “fracture cage,” which was a device strapped to his hip that extended down his leg in the shape of a frame that immobilized his entire side when the straps were closed. For him, the fracture cage was worse than a prison. While convalescing in Albany, Arnold received word his rank as Major General had been restored; however, his seniority among his peers had been neglected.

After months of convalescing, General Arnold was allowed to leave Albany to visit his children in Middleton, then on to report to General Washington at Valley Forge. It was in this meeting that General Washington proposed that General Arnold accept the position of military governor of Philadelphia, since his leg prevented him from leading a fighting command. General Arnold accepted.

The names of almost all characters in this chapter are correct, except for Captain Noel Milner, Abraham Claiborne, and Harold Talmadge, who are fictional (Flexner, The Traitor and the Spy, pp. 3–19; 123–4; 217–20; Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 203–15).