New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [161]
“He confirms the rumor I’ve been hearing. General Howe’s been recalled.” Master shook his head. “It’s a shameful business. When London heard about the Saratoga surrender, Parliament was so furious that the ministry employed newspaper writers to blame it all on Howe. So now he’s recalled. It seems that Howe’s young officers in Philadelphia are determined to honor him before he goes. There’s to be a ball, and I don’t know what else. Even a joust. Albion’s one of the knights. He wonders if you’d like to go.”
The invitation was so unexpected that she hardly knew what to say. With all the pretty girls in Philadelphia to choose from, she was surprised that he should have thought of her, but she had to acknowledge that it was kind of him. And indeed, when she thought of the festivities, and the joust, and the chance to be in gracious Philadelphia, she decided that perhaps there would be no harm in going.
But by the next day, her father had had second thoughts.
“It’s a long way, Abby, and you never know who may be out there on the road. I can’t easily go myself. Who’d go with you? If you encountered Patriot soldiers, I don’t think they’d do you any harm, but I can’t be sure. No,” he concluded, “it’s kind of young Grey to think of you, but it won’t do.”
“I expect you’re right, Papa,” she said. If Mr. Grey Albion wants to ask me to a ball, she thought to herself, he’ll just have to do it again, some other time.
If the catastrophe at Saratoga the previous October, and the entry of the French against them this spring, caused despondency among the British, for loyal John Master, the world began to change during that long summer of 1778. It was a subtle change. He did not even see it coming. It took place in his mind and heart.
The war seemed to have entered a period of stagnation. Down in Philadelphia, after the departure of poor Howe, General Clinton had taken over, and now that there was danger of invasion from a French fleet, the British decided to pull out and return to New York. It wasn’t only the troops. Several thousand Loyalists had to ship out too. “Poor devils,” Master remarked to Abigail. “The British ask for Loyalist support, but then they can’t protect them.”
As the main British force returned by land, Washington shadowed them. News came that there had been an engagement at Monmouth—a Patriot force under Lee and Lafayette had attacked the British rearguard under Cornwallis, with considerable success, and might have done more damage if Lee had not pulled back. But the British had eventually returned safely to New York, and young Albion with them.
So once again, Congress was back in Philadelphia, and New York, under General Clinton now, remained a British base, but with huge territories, from White Plains above the city, to the tracts of New Jersey across the Hudson, dominated by the Patriots. In July, Washington moved up the Hudson Valley to the great lookout fortress of West Point, fifty miles upriver. An affectionate letter came from James, delivered through Susan in Dutchess County, to let the family know that he was safe at West Point, and to ask his father to attend to some small matters for him. But he gave them no other news.
Soon after that, as if to confirm how the military situation had changed, Admiral d’Estaing arrived with a powerful French fleet at the entrance to the harbor. For a while he stayed there, blocking off the ocean. Then British naval reinforcements arrived and he moved, for the time being, to safe anchorage up the coast at Newport, Rhode Island. But the message was clear. The French were in the war, and the British no longer controlled the sea either.
Two other vexations depressed John Master. In August, another fire broke out in the city and destroyed a pair of houses he was renting out. More worrying was a threat to his land in Dutchess County.
It was a curiosity of New York that year: the city was now ruled by the British General Clinton, while the great New York hinterland, under Patriot control,