New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [158]
“I am sorry that Grey Albion is here,” he said at last.
She supposed her brother meant he should not wish to have to fight his friend.
“Father likes him,” she said.
“And you?”
“I admit that he is agreeable,” she answered. “But there seems to me to be a fault in his character. I think he is arrogant.”
Her brother nodded. “Such arrogance is to be expected in an English officer, I fear.” He paused. “We were friends formerly, God knows, and his father could not have been kinder to me.”
“It’s the war that makes you enemies.”
“Yes, but it’s more than that, Abby. My feelings toward England, and what Grey represents, have changed. To tell the truth, I am not sure I’d care to see him now.” He gave her a searching look. “I should be sorry if you liked him too well.”
“Then to tell you the truth, I like him very little.”
Satisfied on this account, her brother said she should not tarry long. And a few minutes later, she was walking back through the town alone.
It was later that month that General Howe finally sailed out of the harbor with a great fleet, and began to make his way down the coast. With him went Grey Albion, and the other young officers in the house. Though she and her father went to the dock with little Weston to see Albion off, Abigail did not believe she was especially sorry to see him go.
When news of the expedition finally came back, it was encouraging. General Howe’s short voyage down to the Chesapeake had been hit with bad weather, but all the same, his plan had worked. Washington, having been wrong-footed, had to double-back from the north. And although he made a brave stand at Brandywine Creek, the redcoats had taken Philadelphia. A letter came from Grey Albion to her father to say he’d be in Philadelphia with Howe for the winter.
And at first, the news from the North seemed equally good for the Loyalist cause. As planned, Johnnie Burgoyne had struck south from Canada and soon taken back the fort of Ticonderoga. He’d got the Indians with him too. Four of the six Iroquois nations had agreed to join the British side.
“The Patriots will love us for that,” John Master remarked drily.
“Are the Indians so cruel?” Abigail asked.
“They have their customs. In King George’s War, thirty years ago, the British colonel of the Northern militias paid the Iroquois for every French scalp they brought him, women and children included.”
“I hope we would not do such a thing now.”
“Don’t count on it.”
By September they expected to hear that Burgoyne had secured Albany and was on his way down the Hudson River to New York. But then other rumors began. The local Patriot militias with their sharpshooters were slowing him down. He was stuck in the northern wilderness. The Indians were leaving him. A force of redcoats was sent up the Hudson to see if they could help him.
Then, late in October, a swift boat came down the great river bearing an astounding message. Her father brought the news to the house.
“Burgoyne’s surrendered. Upriver. The Patriots have taken five thousand men.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Saratoga.”
The news of the British defeat at Saratoga burst upon the British like a thunderclap. Her father, however, though grave, was not surprised.
“Just as I warned Howe,” he said grimly. “An overconfident general, in terrain he does not understand.” The Patriots’ woodsmen’s tactics of felling trees in his path, driving away livestock and removing any food had left his men demoralized up in the huge wilderness. The two Patriot generals, Gates and Benedict Arnold, had, after two engagements at Saratoga, worn him down. And though Burgoyne’s British and Hessian troops had fought bravely, without reinforcements