21

Soldiers and Suitors

C Infirmary

Morristown, New Jersey

February 1780

The C Infirmary was housed in a long stone barn. The structure had been crudely winterized during its conversion, and the roof had been lowered to keep the heat from disappearing into the rafters, but even so, the barn had not been designed for human habitation, and the four cast-iron stoves deployed along its length barely raised the temperature above freezing. Ten cots stretched up each side of the long space, twenty in all, and puffs of breath could be seen floating in front of pale faces.

Eliza shook her head at the sight and pulled a small notebook and pencil from her reticule and scrawled a note.

“What are you writing?” the colonel asked, intrigued.

For a moment she was consciously aware of his presence and felt the quickening beat of her heart, but she took hold of herself and her emotions in order to concentrate on the task at hand.

“Lists! We need more stoves,” she told him. “More stoves and blankets.” She waved a hand at the vast space. “This simply will not do.”

“If anyone can find them, I have no doubt it’s you.”

An orderly dozing near one of the stoves snapped to attention as they approached.

“Good afternoon, Colonel Hamilton!” he barked, saluting. His face was flushed from the heat so close to the stove, his collar undone, revealing a slightly moist neck.

“Corporal Weston!” exclaimed Eliza, delighted to recognize a familiar face.

“You know this man?” Colonel Hamilton demanded, sounding just a bit jealous.

Eliza turned to him, smiling. “Of course. I inoculated him from the pox. What on earth are you doing here, Corporal?”

Weston looked sheepish. “I got a bit ill from the inoculation.”

“I am sorry to hear that, it should pass sooner rather than later. But I have to ask, Corporal Weston, why is your chair pushed so close to the stove? It seems to be rather uncomfortable for you, if the floridity of your cheeks is any measure.”

Weston’s eyes widened in surprise. “Why, it’s the warmest spot in the room, miss! In case you haven’t noticed, it’s winter!”

“Indeed, I have noticed. As have, I suspect, the twenty men who lie on these cots, much farther from the stove than you are.”

“Nineteen, miss,” Corporal Weston said defensively. “One of the beds emptied earlier this morning.”

“Emptied?” Eliza repeated. “You mean, its occupant died?” Her voice was all but an accusation.

“Y-yes, miss,” Corporal Weston answered weakly. “There are three more stoves, miss.”

“And nineteen more patients. Might I suggest that you move one or two of the cots closer to this stove, and find a place to sit that will be less uncomfortably hot? I do so hate to see one our brave soldiers suffering.”

“It takes at least two men to move a bed, miss. I’m the only attendant on duty.”

“I’m sure Colonel Hamilton would be happy to assist?”

She turned to him for the first time since they’d entered the infirmary, brave enough to meet his piercing gaze, which never seemed to leave her face. Why on earth was he looking at her like that? Was that what Peggy and Angelica meant when they said he mooned over her all during dinner? And if so, did he notice that she looked at him that way as well?

“Colonel?”

As if roused from a reverie, he snapped to attention. “Corporal, grab the foot end and be quick about it,” he said, trotting toward the nearest bed. Its young occupant appeared unconscious; a downy peach fuzz sprouted along the edge of his jaw. Eliza watched as Alex tucked the soldier’s blanket around his shoulders and tenderly patted his hand.

“Get some rest, boy. You will need it for the long journey ahead.”

Eliza pulled gently away from Alex’s side and approached the fellow in the next bed. Another pale young face peered at her curiously, having obviously heard the commotion when she came in. Eliza introduced herself, and the soldier said his name was Private Wallace. He was perhaps twenty, but his hand in hers was as weak as a boy half his age.

“How are you today, Private Wallace? Is there anything I can get you?”

“Just the sight of a female face is enough to brighten up the day,” Private Wallace answered.

“Have you no other visitors?”

“None besides the doctors, and they’re so busy they only come once a day, usually.”

“No family? That’s terrible.”

Private Wallace just shrugged. “We hail from all across the north, and some even as far south as Virginia. The mails being what they are these days, most of our families don’t hear that we’ve been injured until we’ve been discharged or, you know, discharged.”

His eyes floated up toward the heavens, but Eliza’s fell to the bed, where she couldn’t help but notice the flat spot beneath the blanket below Private Wallace’s left knee where his ankle and foot should have been.

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” Wallace said, seeing where she was looking. “Bullet hit below the knee, so I still have the joint left. And the doc says I’m past the risk of infection. I just have to get my strength up, and then I’ll be making my way home to Massachusetts. I’ve been practicing my letters,” he said, indicating a small volume that sat, in lieu of a table, on the floor beside his cot. “I thought I might apprentice myself to a printer when I go home. If it was good enough work for Ambassador Franklin, I figure it’s probably good enough for me, too.”

Eliza passed a few more words with him before moving on to the next bed. The stories were much the same, at least where the patients were awake. The room was cold and the food was poor, but what they claimed really bothered them was the boredom.

Out of the fourteen to sixteen hours they were awake each day, they had human companionship for perhaps twenty or thirty minutes. Eliza decided that she should visit the ward every day; she would commission Peggy and Angelica to visit some of the other infirmaries in the camp. If she couldn’t gather supplies or money as she had done in Albany, and if she had not the medical skills her aunt possessed, she could at least read a story to a convalescing soldier, or listen to his stories about his home hundreds or thousands of miles away.

DARKNESS HAD FALLEN by the time she and the colonel had finished the rounds. Eliza turned to him. “I must thank you for bringing me here, Colonel Hamilton. I believe I can procure some more blankets for this ward, and even one or two more stoves. My aunt tells me that there are many empty houses in town.”

“It’s I who should thank you,” Alex answered. “I really had no intention of bringing you here today. Any other girl would have run away.”

“I’d like to think I’m not like any other girl,” Eliza answered. She hadn’t meant her answer to sound flirtatious—two hours in an infirmary can take that right out of you—but the words came before she could stop them.

“I like to think that as well,” Alex answered and, to her surprise, he laughed. “I swear, if ever there was a more ungainly swain than myself, I have not heard of him.”

“A swain, are you? Are you courting me, Colonel Hamilton?” she asked with a shy smile.

“If you can call courting taking a girl to an infirmary as an afternoon’s outing. And this after only recently getting her to talk to him!”

“That seems like ages ago now. I can’t even remember what I found so objectionable about you,” she said bluntly.

He grinned. “Well, I shall not remind you, then. Although I find it to be a fine twist that you ended up joining me in a barn after all!”

She almost gasped, but her smile betrayed her amusement, and they were back at her aunt’s house sooner than she would have liked.

She turned to him at the door. “I do not know that I should describe this afternoon as pleasant,” she said. “Nevertheless, I must admit that I did enjoy my time with you, Colonel Hamilton.”

“May I take that as permission to call again?”

“Somehow I don’t think you would stay away even if I asked you to,” she said, feeling quite as bold as Angelica all of a sudden.

“Oh, but I would. I would stay away, and ache for want of seeing you.”

Eliza had to laugh. She knew she should scold him for pressing his suit so insistently, but the visit to the ward had reminded her that these were not normal circumstances under which to entertain suitors. It was a war, and war laid bare the urgency of things. What might have taken months under different circumstances was now unfolding over the course of days.

“I expect to be busy during the afternoons seeing to the ward, but my evenings are likely to be free. If you wish to come by, I know my aunt and uncle always welcome your visits.”

“But will you?” The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes tightened into a fine squint. “Welcome my visits?”

“Please, Colonel. A girl must hold on to some mystery.” And, tapping on the tip of his reddened nose with a gloved finger, she went inside, but her heart was pounding all the while.

“WAS THAT COLONEL Hamilton?” Peggy’s voice greeted her. She rushed into the hall and pulled Eliza into the heated parlor after Eliza had removed her frozen, wet boots. “Louisa says you’ve been gone for hours! Tell all!”

Eliza opened her mouth, but didn’t know where to start. She shrugged.

“Colonel Hamilton and I paid a visit to Infirmary C.”

“You—” Now it was Peggy’s turn to be speechless. “I do not know what to say to that.”

“Neither do I,” Eliza said. “But I think I like him,” she said in a small voice.

It took Peggy a moment to process this. Then she squealed. “You like him!”

“I do! I like him!” Eliza exclaimed, admitting what she had felt for a while now.

“I can’t believe it! At last, a suitor the Schuyler parents will approve of. Washington’s most-trusted aide! And neither too British nor too young nor—”

“Nor too rich. Mama will not like that, I fear.”

“Pshaw,” Peggy scoffed. “Stephen’s fortune will more than make up for any deficiencies in Colonel Hamilton’s accounts. And Church is not doing so badly, either,” she added as Angelica joined them.

“Is there more news?” asked Eliza, turning to her older sister, whose beau had left town for a few days.

“Yes, He arrives on the morrow. He writes that he comes with ‘a question in his heart.’”

“A question? But he has already asked you to marry him, and you have already accepted. What other question could he have for you?” asked Peggy.

“He has been pressing me to get Papa to bless our union. I have mentioned it to him several times, but Papa always shuts down the subject. He says that it’s bad enough that John is British, but his past is simply too shady. He has heard rumors that John left gambling debts behind him in England, and he couldn’t bear to see him do the same with my dowry.”

“But Papa knows what you told me the other night, does he not? That John is—how did you phrase it—running guns? For our troops? An activity that is both lucrative and honorable,” said Eliza.

Angelica shrugged. “You know Papa. Once he’s made up his mind about someone, it never changes.”

“So then what do you think Mr. Church’s question will be?” Peggy persisted.

Angelica looked at her sisters nervously. “I think he is going to ask me to elope.”

“What?” Eliza gasped as Peggy literally clutched her pearls. “You cannot be serious! Surely you did not lead him to think that you would accept—oh, Angelica!” Eliza stopped herself when she saw her sister’s face. “You’re not going to run off with him!”

“I think—” Angelica broke off and was silent for a long time. “I think I am.”

Peggy grabbed her sister’s hand. “But does this mean you love him?”

More silence from Angelica, who smiled whimsically and stared off into space. “I think I see us as Mama and Papa are. Not enthralled with each other, but respectful and supportive. Two people joined together in a partnership to create something enduring. A family. A legacy.”

“But do you love him?” Eliza pressed. “You are too young and too beautiful to give up on love yet. There are more young men out there!”

“Are there?” Angelica said, getting up and heading to the door. “Or are they all ending up in the infirmary, or the kirkyard?” She paused at the door. “Mama and Papa raised us to expect a certain lifestyle. You were always less enamored of material comforts than other girls, but Peggy and I, well, we like our things, don’t we? And John will provide me with all the things I want, and adventures as well.” She smiled at her younger sister. “Dearest Eliza, you’ll have to have the romance for us.”

And she slipped into the hall, letting a shiver of cold air into the room.