8

Reconnaissance

Deserted Road

Rural New Jersey

February 1780

The deeply rutted road was frozen, aggravating the bumpy pace of Eliza’s wooden-wheeled carriage. With every detour the coachman took, she bounced up and hit her head on the low roof, landing in her seat with her bonnet knocked askew. She tightened the ribbon strings for what felt like the twentieth time. After six hours of this she didn’t even consider tucking in the loose wisps of her hair.

Instead she pulled aside the window’s heavy curtain and looked out over the snow-covered fields glittering in the late-afternoon sun. Her seat faced backward, so she could only see where she’d been, not where she was going. Here and there a farmhouse sat in a cluster of smaller work sheds, but these were few and far between.

Morristown, New Jersey, her destination, was a city of several thousand inhabitants, but so far there was no sign of any kind of life.

“Miss Schuyler, please!” Her chaperone, Mrs. Jantzen, cried, a nervous woman who always seemed to be huffing at something. “You are letting out all the heat!”

If only I could, Eliza thought. The temperature inside the carriage was akin to a hot stove. But worse than the heat was the smell.

Squared away behind Mrs. Jantzen was a supply of lamp oil and scrimshaw, gifts sent along to General Washington from her husband, an Albany merchant who specialized in whale products. The collection was rounded out by the good lady’s personal bottle of whale oil perfume, a cloying scent she had grown overly fond of. She rubbed it on her skin the way other women used soap.

Eliza took a deep breath, then let the curtain fall. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll be stinking of whale oil myself. She turned to her chaperone with a sigh. “How much farther is it to Morristown?”

Mrs. Jantzen rolled her eyes and huffed once more. She reached into the folds of the fur spread over her lap and pulled out an imaginary map, unfolding it with theatrical fastidiousness.

“Let me see, let me see. Yes, here we are,” she said, stabbing a gloved finger into thin air. “It is exactly seventeen miles and three feet.”

Mrs. Jantzen pressed her lips together just so, tucking the imaginary map back into her blanket.

Eliza fell silent. Her mother was to have accompanied her on the trip south, but Mrs. Schuyler had fallen ill with a violent cough, serious enough to make it unwise for her to travel. Eliza was willing to make the trip on her own, but her mother wouldn’t hear of the notion of a girl her age making a journey without a chaperone.

“The roads are overrun with soldiers too long denied women’s taming influence,” she said from her bed, propped up by pillows and swaddled in down.

“But, Mama,” Eliza insisted, “I can take care of myself.”

Mrs. Schuyler waved her handkerchief in the air, ending the discussion. “I’ll not have my daughter be the first feminine face they see in who knows how long.”

Eliza wasn’t convinced the presence of Mrs. Jantzen would safeguard her, but if that’s what it took to make this trip, then she was willing to bear it. Perhaps her mother had realized her chaperone’s abominable perfume was weapon enough against a soldier’s advance.

She stifled a laugh and smiled to herself.

The fragrant Mrs. Jantzen tightened the fur pelt around her knees. “I beg your pardon, Miss Schuyler. Did you just say something?”

“Oh. Why, yes. I-I was just wondering whether you had ever met my aunt Gertrude?” Eliza hid her smile behind her hand. “Yes, that’s it.”

“Her that married Dr. Cochran, General Washington’s personal physician? She is sister to your father, is she not? I can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure of making her acquaintance, but I have heard the kindest things about her character.” Mrs. Jantzen, an accomplished gossip, mumbled to herself, “Imagine the stories she’s privy to . . . surrounded by all those soldiers and what-not.”

“Indeed, she is a remarkable woman and a great inspiration to me. Aunt Gertrude insisted her husband train her in the ways of a nurse so that she could remain at his side to assist in the recuperation of our brave patriots.”

Mrs. Jantzen’s pinched face took on a saintly look. “Just as I have spent many a day swabbing the sweat from the brow of a feverish soldier.”

And suffocating those poor invalids with your ghastly perfume, Eliza supposed. Aloud, she said, “But my aunt Gertrude does so much more! She washes the blood from wounds, and runs the threaded needle through lacerated limbs as calmly as stitching together a torn overshirt. Why, she’s even held the hand of a soldier while Dr. Cochran saws off the other—”

“Miss Schuyler, if you please!” Mrs. Jantzen held up a gloved hand. “I do not consider such subjects fit conversation for a lady!”

Eliza smiled a tepid apology. Of course the details were gruesome, yet she found them fascinating. It was bad enough that women weren’t allowed to fight for their freedom. But to be denied the knowledge of what fighting cost its soldiers seemed too much to bear. How could one help the country’s bravest young men if their needs were kept silent?

The carriage hit another pockmark in the road, sending Mrs. Jantzen’s bottle of whale oil perfume sliding across the coach floor.

“Begging your pardon yet again, ladies,” hollered Mr. Vincent from the coach box. The coachman was one of General Schuyler’s retired old soldiers, now employed as the trusted family driver. “It’s a bit of a rough go out here.”

Eliza reached down and caught the bottle, which leaked onto her hands. But by the time Mrs. Jantzen could tighten the lid and settle the bottle more securely under her seat, a fresh wave of whale oil perfume had filled the coach.

Aching to be done with this journey, Eliza decided to look on the bright side. “Well, at least there’ll be no fighting this winter while the army shelters in Morristown. Aunt Gertrude will be working alongside Dr. Cochran inoculating the local population against smallpox. I believe it is heroic work.”

“Variolation!” Mrs. Jantzen said, sneering. “Tell me why anyone would think that infecting someone with pestilence ought cause but further disease.”

“It’s a milder form that’s used for inoculation.” Eliza slowed her words as if talking to a child. “The scratch method is much safer. Look at how many of our soldiers have stayed healthy.”

Mrs. Jantzen huffed once again. “If God had wanted His subjects to resist the pox, He would have made us so.”

Eliza thought about saying that if God had not wanted His subjects to be so creative, perhaps He should have made them less ingenious. But she held her tongue. A little blasphemy would likely induce a faint in the good Mrs. Jantzen, and the thought of having to fan her awake—and send fresh clouds of perfume through the coach—was not to be borne.

Instead Eliza abandoned the conversation and peeked through a slit in the heavy curtain. Aunt Gertrude had written the family two months ago with news of Dr. Cochran’s plans to continue the inoculations while General Washington’s army wintered at Morristown. She had called it “work of the gravest importance” as military hospitals were overrun with soldiers confined in crowded wards that were breeding grounds for disease. “Inoculation,” she wrote with palpable hope, “could save hundreds—if not thousands—of lives.”

Eliza wanted desperately to be a part of the mission. She’d fired off a letter to her aunt to ask if she could help give the inoculations herself. If she could not fight, she could at least do everything in her power to make sure that those who did fight were as well equipped as possible. There were far fewer troops in the Albany area than there were farther south, of course, but they were vital to the capital’s security. Thanks in part to Eliza’s efforts, the battalions were all kitted out in smart new uniforms, stuffed with beef and porridge, and housed in some of the most comfortable mansions in the area, which had been seized from British loyalists. Inoculation seemed like the last noble service she could offer them.

She had begged her mother to let her make the journey south. Surely old Vincent was up to the task. Mrs. Schuyler had refused at first, saying it was far too dangerous, but Eliza had pleaded. She reminded her mother General Washington himself was spending the winter in Morristown, along with his senior staff and thousands of his troops. There was no safer place on the continent.

The mention of General Washington had not endeared Eliza’s plan to Mrs. Schuyler. General Schuyler’s court-martial was only recently completed, and even though he’d been exonerated of all wrongdoing in the Battle of Ticonderoga, she still felt that the military trial ought not to have taken place at all. Indeed, General Washington had gone so far as to write General Schuyler a letter of congratulations on his acquittal, but Mrs. Schuyler was unmoved. She was a steady woman, and slow to ire, but once one had earned her wrath, her forgiveness was hard to come by.

Almost as an afterthought Mrs. Schuyler had warned Eliza, “I suppose that foul Colonel Hamilton will be there as well.”

Colonel Hamilton had served as clerk to the prosecution during the trial. He had been studying to be a lawyer before the war broke out, and though he had left school to serve the revolution, he was still competent enough in the ways of the law and the military that he had been called upon to liaise between the court and General Washington’s office. It was yet another honor for one so young, but clerking for the prosecutor had supposedly caused him great pain, given his regard for the Schuyler family and his belief in General Schuyler’s innocence. He had written as much in a letter to General Schuyler, but Eliza’s father insisted on his presence. If General Washington was not going to preside over the farce of a trial, then he wanted someone close to the commander in chief to attend, so that Washington would be fully apprised of all that had gone on, and would feel that much more shame at capitulating to the political whims of the Congress.

Eliza thought to remind her mother of all this, then decided against it. Not that Eliza had given any thought to Colonel Hamilton’s presence in Morristown, nor did she have any opinion as to the high level of his intelligence. Not at all. Besides, recalling the past would only cause Mrs. Schuyler to get her back up.

But to her surprise, her mother had relented rather quickly. She saw the silver lining in Eliza’s plan. “There will be any number of unmarried officers in Morristown. Perhaps you will meet a suitable bachelor to replace the one who courted you so diligently and turned away.”

Her mother was talking about Major John André, the British officer who had strived to win her hand. Eliza had been a bit infatuated with him for a while, but in the end had turned down his suit. Perhaps she was too much of a patriot to accept the man, unlike Angelica, who was holding steady with her Mr. Church, despite his having left her and the country without proposing. Almost three years after her illustrious ball, Mrs. Schuyler was irritated to find her three oldest daughters still unmarried and mentioned this unfortunate state of affairs often.

“Oh, Mama,” Eliza said, running off to pack.

ELIZA PULLED BACK the curtain again and peered out. She felt Mrs. Jantzen’s glare and ignored it. The snowy fields and barren trees looked no different from those of ten minutes earlier, and soon enough she let the curtain drop of her own accord.

“I wonder how much farther,” she couldn’t help but say aloud.

Mrs. Jantzen opened her mouth for a retort, but was caught up by a jarring thump, followed by an even louder crack.

“Whoa!” came the faint voice of the coachman. “Whoa there!”

The carriage lurched to a stop and then slowly, with a splintering sound as of a branch breaking off a tree, the right rear of the compartment sank slowly, heavily down, until it was some three feet lower than the left. Eliza had to grip both sides of the carriage to keep from falling upon Mrs. Jantzen, who was lying on her back, her legs sticking straight up in the air and protruding from the ruffled yardage of her petticoats and bloomers.

“What on earth!” Mrs. Jantzen exclaimed, desperately trying to right herself, but having little more success than a turtle flipped on its shell.

Eliza couldn’t decide which was the more frightening prospect: falling on Mrs. Jantzen, or being shrouded in that terrible perfume, but she wasn’t about to find out. She toed the older lady’s skirts aside as delicately as she could, spread her feet, and braced them against the opposite seat.

“Driver!” she called out. “Driver, there seems to have been some kind of . . . tilt.”

The left-hand door of the carriage flew open, and the bearded face of Mr. Vincent appeared. “Begging your pardon, my ladies,” he called out in his thick Irish brogue. “I’m afraid we’ve broken a wheel. Allow me—”

He reached a meaty hand into the carriage, wrapped it around Eliza’s arm, and pulled her from the skewed compartment with no more effort than if she’d been a weaning puppy. The left side of the carriage was some five feet above the ground, and once free of the narrow door, Eliza had no choice but to jump down.

The road was frozen hard as stone, and sharp, hot pains pierced her feet as she landed. Convinced her daughter was likely to meet eligible bachelors along the trip, Mrs. Schuyler had insisted she wear fancy shoes of thin embroidered cotton—hardly proof against a New Jersey winter. The shoe heels were a full inch tall. Their thin soles gave way almost immediately to the chill of the frozen roadway.

She shook her feet to warm them, looking up just as the coachman lowered himself into the carriage to help Mrs. Jantzen. Eliza had once seen a pair of fighting squirrels chase each other into a pumpkin that had been hollowed out to hold a candle. The pumpkin had shook like a kettle on the boil as the animals tore at each other inside its orange shell, until suddenly the top burst off and one of the squirrels flew into the air and dashed off, leaving the other one poking from the cracked gourd. As the coachman attempted to free Mrs. Jantzen, the tilted carriage vibrated with nearly the same violence as that long-ago pumpkin.

The stranded lady’s yelps and squeaks pierced the otherwise silent afternoon, interrupted by the coachman’s half-desperate requests. “If you would just hold still, m’lady . . . Beg pardon, m’lady, but if you want to be liberated you will have to allow me to place my hand just there . . . Well, I’m sorry, dearie, but I thought that was just swaddling!”

Popping like a bubble, Mrs. Jantzen was fully ejected from the open door and rolled over and off the side of the carriage. Eliza rushed forward to help, only to be thrown aside by the bulk of the older woman’s skirts as she sprawled onto the ground.

“My ankle!” the older lady screamed in pain. “It’s broken!”

The coachman appeared and, despite his ample build, jumped nimbly to the ground. “Forgive me again, m’lady,” he said, unceremoniously hefting her skirt and reaching for her ankle.

“Sir!” Mrs. Jantzen protested. “I must remind you that I am a married woman, and a lady!”

The coachman ignored her. His nimble fingers slipped inside her booted ankle and squeezed tenderly. Mrs. Jantzen winced and pulled away, but he held her in place. “It’s not broken. Probably just a sprain. Best keep the boot on to hold in the swelling. We’re only five miles from Morristown, but this does complicate things.”

“Complicate things! I shall in all likelihood lose my leg!”

Eliza couldn’t resist. “My uncle John is an excellent physician. And I shall be honored to hold your hand while he cuts.”

“Now, now, ladies, let’s not get carried away,” Mr. Vincent said, though he grinned at Eliza out of view of Mrs. Jantzen.

He looked over at the ruined coach wheel. It was thoroughly shattered.

“No fixing that. I’m afraid we’ll have to ride.”

“But there are only two horses!” Mrs. Jantzen protested. “And no saddles! And we ladies in skirts!”

“Aye, there’s that.” He pondered a moment. “This will require some rope.”

A half hour later, Mrs. Jantzen lay awkwardly across one of the horses, tied onto it like a saddlebag and covered in a voluminous fur, so that she looked like a bear carcass being brought in from a hunt.

“This is most indecorous,” she said. “I assure you that you will not be receiving a tip at the end of this journey.”

The coachman ignored her and turned to Eliza.

“Mrs. Jantzen’s ankle is starting to swell up like a puff adder. I’m afraid of proving her right in her fear of amputation if we don’t get to a doctor in short order. I was going to put you on the second horse and lead you, but I really do think we need to ride.”

Although she had wrapped herself in the other fur from the carriage, Eliza had no protection from the winter other than her waistcoat. Her feet, however, were freezing and starting to go numb.

“Of course,” Eliza said. “I would not wish further injury to Mrs. Jantzen. But with no saddle, sir, and me encompassed by all this fabric”—she indicated the expanse of her dress—“I do not think we shall both fit, or that I shall be able to remain astride.”

“I shouldn’t blame your dress, m’lady, as much as my own belly.” He patted his large stomach. “The wife’s shepherd’s pie is too tasty for my own good, I’m afraid. Well. I am at a bit of a loss, I must admit.”

“It is only five miles to Morristown, you say? Mr. Vincent, you’ve known me to walk that kind of distance on a daily basis back home in Albany. Why don’t you ride with Mrs. Jantzen to aid, and I shall come on foot?”

“Your self-sacrifice is admirable, m’lady, but I can see how ill shod you are for such a journey.”

“Nonsense. We Dutch girls rarely even bother with shoes on a day as warm as this.”

“She’s fine, coachman!” Mrs. Jantzen called. “Do please let’s hurry! I’m DYING!”

The coachman shook his head anxiously.

“Night’s coming on, too, and the moon’s waning crescent. One step off the road and I fear it’ll be you who meets her end on this day.”

Eliza could see no other solution, and wished the coachman would get going with things. The sooner she started walking, the sooner she would reach her destination.

Before she could speak again, however, she heard the clip-clop of horse hooves from farther down the road.

“Is it redcoats?” Mrs. Jantzen moaned. “We are killed!”

The British had been confined to the eastern shore of the Hudson River in New York City, but even so, Eliza was tense as she turned on her aching feet and stepped from behind the broken carriage to see who was approaching. A large bay horse was galloping toward them, mounted by a figure in tricorn and dark blue overcoat.

“Never fear,” she said to Mrs. Jantzen. “It is one of ours.”

The soldier’s face was obscured by a scarf, Eliza saw as he approached, no doubt to protect it from the cold. She wouldn’t have minded one herself. The rider was not tall, but certainly not short, with broad shoulders and a perfect, martial posture, wearing a long, slightly curved sword at his waist. The only part of his face that was visible, however, was a pair of piercing blue eyes staring at her—almost, she could have sworn, with amusement.

A voice came through the scarf with a fog of breath.

“Looks like we’ve had an accident.” The mirth was audible in the words as well as visible in the eyes.

“Sorry to say we have,” the coachman replied. “And our precious Mrs. Jantzen has injured her ankle. I wonder if perhaps you could give our Miss Schuyler the use of your horse.”

“Oh, I’d be happy to give the daughter of General Schuyler a lift,” the scarved figure answered. “That is, if Eliza does not object.”

The soldier pulled back his scarf then, revealing a shadow of reddish stubble. Eliza’s hand flew to her mouth.

It was Colonel Alexander Hamilton.