New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [175]
“In my judgment, you could not bestow your regard on a better fellow.” He paused. “He told me also that he had been a close friend of your brother, James …”
“I hope that one day their friendship may be resumed.”
“We shall all hope for that day,” he agreed.
“Well, Abby,” her father asked, when the guests had departed, “was that a good evening?”
“A very good evening indeed,” she answered happily.
So it came as a great shock ten days later, when her father told her: “Major André is taken, and like to be hanged.”
“How? Where?”
“Up the Hudson. Toward West Point.”
Master had the full story from Clinton the following day.
“It’s the devil of a business,” her father said. “Now I know what Clinton was up to, though he couldn’t tell me before. He’s been planning it for over a year, and young André was acting as go-between.”
“Planning what, Papa?”
“To get control of West Point. For whoever holds West Point controls the River Hudson. Get West Point from Washington, and we deal him a mortal blow. It might have been the end of the war.”
“We were going to capture West Point?”
“No. Buy it. Benedict Arnold, who’s one of Washington’s best commanders, had control of the fort. Clinton’s been working on him for more than a year, negotiating over the money, mostly, he tells me. Arnold was going to hand the place over to us.”
“A traitor.”
Her father shrugged. “A man of mixed loyalties. Unhappy with the commands the Patriots had given him. Disapproved of their bringing in the French. Wanted the money for his family. But yes, a traitor.”
“To Washington. General Clinton must like him, though.”
“Actually, Clinton despises him. But to get West Point, he says, he’d have paid the devil himself.”
“What happened?”
“Our friend André had gone up to make the final arrangements. Then he got caught, and the Patriots discovered the plan. So Washington still has West Point and Arnold’s fled to our camp.”
“And André?”
“It’s a wretched affair. Like a fool, he’d taken off his uniform, which makes him a spy. Under the rules of war, Washington and his people are supposed to hang him. But they don’t want to do it—seems they like him—so they’re trying to work out a deal.”
“I wonder if he and James have met.”
“Perhaps. I shouldn’t be surprised.”
The final report from her father came a few days later.
“André’s hanged, I’m afraid. Clinton was almost in tears. ‘They wanted Arnold for him,’ he told me. ‘But if I give them Arnold, I’ll never get another Patriot to come over. So they’ve hanged my poor André.’”
For a moment, she wondered if James had been at the execution, then decided not to think about it.
When James Master had approached the stone house where the condemned man was being held, he hadn’t expected to be there long. Washington himself had sent him on this brief errand of mercy. He meant to accomplish it quickly and courteously, and then to be gone. He was sorry for the fellow, of course—it was a wretched business—but James Master hadn’t much time for sentiment these days.
Anyone who hadn’t seen James Master for a couple of years would have been struck by the change. His face was much thinner, for a start. But there was something else, a hardness in the set of his jaw, a strain in the muscles of his cheek, which could be signaling pain, or sourness, depending on his mood. Worse even than these, to anyone who loved him, would have been the look in his eyes. Iron determination resided in them, certainly, but also disillusion, anger and disgust.
None of this was surprising. The last two years had been terrible.
Getting the French into the war, though crucially important, had always been a cynical arrangement. But Washington had still hoped for a little more than he got. Admiral d’Estaing had frightened the British most effectively, but when Washington had tried to persuade him to a big joint operation to take New York, he’d refused, and he and his fleet now spent most of the time down in the West Indies, doing all they could to weaken the rich British interests there. This July General Rochambeau had arrived at Newport