Benedict Arnold, he meant. The Hero of Saratoga.
Having led a charge in the battle amidst a hailstorm of grapeshot and musket balls, General Arnold had taken a bullet to the leg that shattered his bone. And his patriotism was so unimpeachable that his friendship bolstered Papa’s badly bruised reputation.
It was probably for that reason that Mama agreed to part with me. I was a little sorry to abandon Peggy, who feigned the long-suffering look of a wounded soldier left behind. Still, Papa wasn’t wrong about Peg’s delicate stomach; she’d retched at the sight of a soldier whose face had been half torn off by a cannonball and none of the doctors wanted her back, whereas I knew how to make myself useful.
“Hurry while the horses are being brought out,” Papa whispered. “Before your mother changes her mind.”
I grinned. It was a grin that faded when we neared the barracks and passed a small gathering of patriot soldiers huddled together around campfires upon which they made paltry cakes of nothing more than water and flour.
These men did not salute.
One of them even spat as we passed.
Green Mountain Boys, I thought. Rude backwoods riflemen Papa once commanded who adored General Gates and had spread the rumor about Papa’s supposed treason. Dr. Franklin famously said we must all hang together, or we would surely hang separately. Well, I wished he’d told the militia.
But if Papa feared them, he didn’t show it.
Instead he rode on, contemptuous of the insult. Still, I knew he felt it, because he said, “I spoke for independence when I served in the Continental Congress. Now, blood has been spilled, widows made, children orphaned, and soldiers left half-naked, sick, and starving. I count it my duty to do for them what I can, whether I am in uniform or not, with rank and dignity, or without. Whether they spit at me for it, or not.”
Letting go the reins of my mare for a moment, I reached with one mittened hand to touch him on his mount beside me, to let him know how much I felt pride in being his daughter.
And I hoped to make him proud of me, too.
When we reached the piazza at the two-story hospital, I dismounted like a soldier and collected a parcel of shirts and bandages from the saddle, tucking it under my arm. Then I took a deep breath, knowing the hospital air was often putrid.
And yet, those lingering in either of the hospital wings were the lucky ones. They had a roof and walls to protect them against the snowfall. The hospital could only accommodate five hundred beds—and even the floor of our church at the center of town had no more room, so many wounded soldiers had to make do with tent covers. And there weren’t enough of those either.
We’d scarcely gone through the front door before a grizzled veteran with a bloodstained bandage tied about one eye actually had the temerity to shout in Papa’s face, “Where’s our pay?”
I wanted to say that he should ask Congress. But I was not tart by nature. Not like my sisters. I wasn’t pretty enough to get away with it. So I held my tongue.
Fortunately, we were spared of a reply when Benedict Arnold limped over and shoved the angry man with his crutch. “Shut your bone-box and mind your manners around Miss Schuyler,” Arnold growled at the veteran. “You’re not the only one who can complain about not being given his due . . .”
In the face of the Hero of Saratoga’s disapproval, the veteran went from steel to milk. “Yessir,” he murmured.
Not giving the surly veteran another moment of attention, Arnold turned to me. “Miss Schuyler. Always a pleasure.”
I bobbed my head, not put off by his growling, especially not when it was in defense of my papa. Arnold was simply gruff by nature, and it was a trait I knew the pain of his injury had worsened. “General Arnold.”
But as Papa took Arnold aside into a little room the hero had fitted for himself as an office, I heard the veteran behind us grumble, “Guess it don’t matter when the pay comes, since we’re all soon to die on some snowy cliff in Canada.”
I didn’t blame the soldiers for their fear of the forthcoming winter campaign. The least we could do to encourage them was put warm clothes upon their backs, so I asked, “General Arnold, is there somewhere we can put these bundles of shirts to distribute to the men?”
“Leave them with Dr. Thacher,” Papa replied. “That’s not why we have come.”
I blinked. “It’s not?”
In answer, Papa turned to Arnold. “I thought you might like to borrow a horse and join me at the barracks in greeting my latest replacement as commander of the Northern Department.”