A Girl Called Samson (93)

“Yes, Samson. I do.”

“Who wins the race?”

“The tortoise.”

“That’s right. I have lost some speed, but I have not lost my stamina.”

His gaze on my face softened, and he let me set the pace as we began to climb the hill behind the house. As we ascended, he relayed what had transpired in the strained meeting.

“Last June, without any discussion, we all put our opinions on the Huddy matter in writing and gave them to General Washington. He did not want us swayed from our own feelings by the sentiments of others. Unfortunately, the consensus was to retaliate in kind and hang a British prisoner of the same rank.”

I gasped. I knew the fate of poor Huddy, but I’d known nothing of the vote.

“Is that what you wanted?” I asked, trying to keep any judgment from my question.

“No. I was, as usual, the voice of dissent. Captain Huddy was an innocent man. To hang another innocent man in retaliation for his death seemed absurd, not to mention immoral. I said as much.”

I should have known. “What did you suggest?”

“I said we should punish the perpetrators if we discovered who actually carried out the hanging of Captain Huddy. Until then”—he shrugged—“I recommended we do nothing. No one liked that idea. I suggested we put all our efforts and attention into ending this damnable conflict instead of creating new atrocities.”

“That was June. What’s happening now?”

“Now, General Washington is embroiled in a mess.”

“How so?”

“All of the imprisoned British officers in Lancaster of the same rank as Captain Huddy were brought into a room and the circumstances explained. They drew lots.” The general paused, pained. “A twenty-year-old captain by the name of Asgill is to be the unfortunate victim. He’s a member of the British guard from a noble family.” He exhaled and shook his head. “General Washington is beside himself. It is the execution of John André all over again.”

Major John André had been the British liaison between Benedict Arnold and Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander in New York, when Arnold plotted the treasonous surrender of West Point in October of 1780. Arnold had failed but escaped, and John André had been captured and subsequently hanged. One man was a traitor, one man a patriot, though he fought for an opposing side. That the patriot was hanged and the traitor remained free in the bosom of the British Army continued to be a painful thorn in the American conscience.

“But I said my piece.” The general sighed. “Then and now. General Washington does not need an ‘I told you so’ from me.”

The general sat down on a boulder that appeared to barely cling to the side of the hill, though it had likely been thus for eons. It was big enough that I could sit beside him, my hands in my lap, my eyes on the view laid out below us.

“It is too hot for such exertions,” he said, but he didn’t appear winded at all, and the tension around his pale eyes and mouth had lessened, making the effort well worth it, in my opinion. His back had healed quickly, but the pressures on him had not ceased.

“What do you suppose Beverley Robinson was thinking when he built his house here?” I marveled. “It is not the most hospitable spot, though there’s something to be said for the view.”

We could easily see the back of Robinson’s house and the outbuildings and orchards now heavy with fruit. I’d spent an hour there, filling a bushel. I took a pear from my pocket and handed it to the general, who took an enormous bite. We traded it back and forth, chatting as we shared.

“Robinson’s wife, Susanna, brought the land into the marriage. Her name was Philipse before she married Beverley. She and her sister, Mary, were the heiresses to thousands of acres up here.”

“An heiress. How lovely for her,” I murmured, licking my lips.

“It’s rumored that Washington was in love with Mary, the sister, at one point. She married someone else instead.”

“And now Washington is here, and the land is his.”

“Knowing him, I’ve no doubt he would have preferred to have the woman. And it is hardly his.” The general tossed the core of the pear as far as he could, watching it soar and then bounce, as if returning back to the orchard from whence it came.

“Well it’s certainly no longer hers,” I said dryly, uncapping my canteen so we could wash the juice from our fingers and faces.

The general wetted his thumb and swiped at the corner of my mouth, not waiting for the canteen. I licked at it, and he instantly withdrew his hand and averted his eyes.

“No. But it ceased to be hers the moment she married,” he said, rising.

I took a deep breath, ready to rail against that infuriating injustice, sticky chin and all, when John asked, “What do you think that’s about?”

He pointed toward Billy Lee, Washington’s African valet, who was rarely far from the commander’s side, even in battle. Lee was on horseback, emerging from the trees at the edge of the huge expanse of green that had once been a deer park, though large game had been greatly reduced by the hungry army quartered nearby. But he had trapped something.

He held a pistol and his reins in one hand and a rope in the other. The rope was looped around the midsection of a man who was trailing unhappily behind him, his face slick with sweat, his blue uniform coat unbuttoned over a bare chest, his breeches bloodied.