“Where?” Hamilton barked.
“Fifty miles out,” Mac replied. “They broke against their officers and are marching on Trenton to demand that the state legislature redress their grievances.”
Fifty miles away. Better than here, I thought. Marching to demand the pay, clothing, and supplies they were rightly owed by a state that recruited them to war was better than deserting or going over to the British. Maybe my husband thought so, too, because his motions to dress became less frantic.
But Mac clapped him on the back and said, “Saddle up, lad. The general thinks we made a mistake negotiating with the Pennsylvania mutineers. He means to go after them this time, before it spreads like a contagion.”
Mac started to go, but my husband called after him. “Grab that crier by the ears and give him a knock-about, will you? The fewer people who know about the mutiny the better.”
Mac nodded, then was gone as soon as he’d come. Meanwhile I found my husband’s shirt in the bed linens and tossed it to him, at which point he colored at realizing my presence and my state. “A thousand apologies, Betsy—”
“Don’t make even one,” I said, understanding the urgency. “Did McHenry really mean that you’re going after them?”
Hamilton nodded. “We’ll stop the mutineers before they get to Trenton. And this time we’ll make an example of them.”
I bit my lip at the horror of American troops fighting American troops, feeling a little disloyal to my husband and to Washington, because it seemed to defy all notions of justice. These mutineers had sacrificed so much and suffered for so long. Did they not have the right, as free men, to petition their government for redress of their grievances? They wanted nothing more than what any human being seemed due—food, shelter, clothing.
Freedom.
The thought of punishing them for it unleashed a pain within my chest. A pain that worsened to know that my own husband might have some part in their punishment. And though I said nothing, he must’ve seen that pain in my eyes. Buttoning the collar of his shirt, Hamilton asked, “What happens when the mutiny isn’t fifty miles away, but here, at headquarters? As it is, Lafayette is afraid to leave General Washington alone for fear that disloyal troops might turn their coats and hand him over to the British.”
“They wouldn’t,” I said, only because it was treachery too black for my heart to even contemplate.
“Maybe not,” my husband said. “But we lost more than a thousand soldiers in the negotiations with the Pennsylvania Line when they were released from their enlistments. We can’t lose any more men. Not when Arnold is unleashing hell on Virginia.”
Benedict Arnold. I couldn’t hear the name without erupting into a fresh rage. That traitor knew everything. Our strengths. Our weaknesses. Our strategies. Maybe even our spies. He’d already burned Richmond for the British, looted it, and sold off the plunder for his own financial gain. There was seemingly no end to the depravity of which Arnold was capable nor the damage he could do. I hated him for all that, for John André’s death, and for having compromised my father, too.
But now I had further reason.
Good patriots were going to hang or be shot, at least in part, because of Benedict Arnold, and my husband’s hands would be stained with their blood the rest of his life. As if to steel his courage against it, Alexander eyed me beseechingly and said, “I hate Congress. The army. The world. I hate myself. But we must hold this army together.”
“I understand,” I whispered as he stooped to kiss me good-bye. And I did understand, after a fashion. I remembered that he’d said it before, at Morristown, when I asked him if it was right to torture that poor deserter. He’d defended himself then by saying that he hadn’t given the order. But this time, he might. He would, in fact, ride out that very same day with Lafayette and Washington for the trials that would condemn several mutineers to execution.
But before he left, Hamilton stopped in the doorway and stared at me where I sat fighting back tears. And his own voice thickened with emotion. “When the fighting is done, I will make this a better world, Betsy. I promise you.”
An audacious vow no mere mortal should make. A vow born as much of egotism as of idealism, as much self-justification as godliness. But young and hopeful as I was, I believed him. I put my faith in him.
And at least in that, I was right to.
Because whatever else he did, Alexander Hamilton did make this a better world.
He kept that promise.