I blinked. “Whatever for?”
“Because you shall have a bevy of admirers. I would even count myself amongst them.”
Fearing that the Frenchman, despite being married, meant to press an improper flirtation upon me, I’m afraid I was quite tart. “I do not think even with your encouragement that my father would consent for me to become a camp follower.”
Lafayette threw up his hands. “Mon Dieu! I suggest nothing dishonorable. Men like me, the wilds remind us that when stripped of luxuries and titles, we are all the same but for our honor.” With that, Lafayette’s chin gestured in the direction of my father. “And weary men of honor need to be reminded of what they fight for. Come with me to Washington’s camp, ma chère Mademoiselle Schuyler. You and your father, who may be safer in a military camp than facing spies and treachery on his own.”
I was touched by Lafayette’s concern for my father. And just then, across the campfire I spied Two Kettles Together, who went where she pleased, wore what she pleased, did what she pleased, and fought when she pleased. I knew that if it were my choice, I would go with Lafayette. But it was not my choice. “You forget the matter of Papa’s court-martial . . .”
“Bah! The stain on your father’s name will be lifted soon enough. Now that France is involved, the war will be so swiftly over, you will miss it all if you do not come.”
I hoped Lafayette was right that the war would be over swiftly, and when it was finally time for us to part ways, I said, “Farewell, General. I hope to see you again soon.”
“You will. I am certain of it.”
But in the end, Lafayette was wrong. My father’s court-martial didn’t take place until autumn. I wouldn’t see the eccentric young Frenchman again for another three years.
And even then, the war was far from over.
Chapter Five
June 1778
Albany
MAMA WAS DANGEROUSLY ill, burning with fever in the confines of her curtained bed, pale and weak as a lamb. Though my father was sometimes afflicted by bilious fevers and gout, my sturdy mother’s Dutch constitution had seemed a shield against every ailment.
Every ailment but one.
Childbirth. The most dangerous female ailment of all. And even though none of us spoke the words aloud as my mother tossed upon her fevered bed, we all feared it might claim Mama and her baby, too.
After a difficult delivery, Mama presented my father with a frightfully little infant son. As was the custom, we’d celebrated the birth with sweet pastries and cinnamon caudle, but Mama had been too sick to take part. And now, only weeks later, her milk had dried up.
Because none of our servants were breeding, we had no wet nurse. Nor could I coax the babe to suck cow’s, sheep’s, or goat’s milk from a cloth. As the sickly little thing trembled in my arms, withering by the hour, I felt, for the first time in my life, an ache in my breasts to feed a hungry child.
“Betsy,” Mama whispered to me, and I looked up from the rocking chair beside her sickbed. Sweat poured from her forehead, and her braid of long black hair had come frayed and lay wild. “If the Lord should take me, I need for you to know something.”
Intent upon her every rasping word, I leaned closer, mopped the sweat from her brow with a cool cloth, and wondered if I should fetch the doctor again.
“You can marry,” she said. “You needn’t. But you mustn’t think that you can’t.”
For her to say such a puzzling thing, I decided that the tincture of saffron, sage, and snakeroot must not have done her any good. “Don’t tire yourself with talk,” I said, trying to hush her as I patted the baby’s back.
But twisting against the sheets, Mama continued, “A son-in-law could be a great blessing to your poor father, who is so . . . harried.”
“Just get well, Mama,” I said, wondering if she remembered that she already had a son-in-law in Jack Carter, even if he was in faraway Boston with Angelica. “Don’t worry about anything else but getting well.”
After all, I worried enough for the both of us. Papa had been torn between staying close to my mother in her illness, collecting rents from our tenants, and rebuilding the charred ruins of our mills at Saratoga. Our wealth was in the timber we cut and the flour we milled there. And I knew Mama worried our family fortune would never entirely rebound.
But what she rasped was, “Peggy is quite pretty.” My brow furrowed as I tried to follow the workings of her fevered mind. She blinked, as if struggling to scrutinize my face with the honest frankness of our shared Dutch heritage. “But you’re pretty enough, my dear child.”