So I expected, at long last, that with my apology, my father would bring down his wrath on me. But instead he simply said, “That was Mr. Carter’s doing.”
As much as my father had resented his new son-in-law, at least at first, I resented Jack Carter more. That’s why I wasn’t as startled as I should have been when Papa added, “I considered dispatching him with pistols, but I couldn’t kill a man your sister saw fit to love. It also wasn’t in my heart to disown her. So, at the end of the equation, there was no undoing this Gordion knot. And, as you will find is so often the case in life, my dear Betsy, the only prudent thing to do was frown, make them humble, and forgive.”
I realized that he was frowning now.
That I was humbled.
And that I was also forgiven.
At least by Papa. And the love I felt for my father in that moment was eclipsed only by admiration. Because I realized that it was love that allowed my father to set aside the injuries done to his reputation, security, and pride. For love of his family, and his country, he swallowed down indignity as if immune to its poison.
And I wished I could be like him.
But if there is anything that marks my character, it’s that I have never rested easily in the face of injustice. My father might have been able to bear it, but I simply could not. If I’d been born a son, I’d have joined the army to see our family honor restored. I’d have trained to become an officer, testing my bravery and seeking glory upon a battlefield in service of the cause. I’d have challenged his detractors to a duel.
But how, I wondered, could a daughter make a difference?
Chapter Two
There is a spirit of dissatisfaction prevailing among the soldiers and even the officers.
—MAJOR GENERAL LAFAYETTE TO GEORGE WASHINGTON
February 19, 1778
Albany
MEN THINK STITCHERY the most demure of occupations—all they see is gently bred girls, their heads bent in domestic pursuit, their hands kept busy and out of mischief. But my mother knew sewing circles for the wheels of conspiracy that they actually are. At least amongst sisters. Which was why Mama wasn’t about to leave us to our own devices.
Papa might have forgiven me, but my mother was still wroth. “You girls are dallying,” she accused from her rocking chair in the yellow parlor, her own knitting needles clicking and clacking under her experienced hands. “Especially you, Betsy.”
I pressed my lips together without offering a defense of myself, intent on not losing count of my stitches. But Peggy lifted her pretty head of dark curls to complain. “We’ve been knitting since sunrise; if we don’t take a rest, we’re going to split stitches and ruin the stockings.”
“There’s no time to worry about workmanship,” Mama snapped. Her special urgency was because the Committee of Safety and Correspondence was offering eight shillings to the first family in Albany to produce three pairs of two-threaded stockings for the soldiers billeted in our town.
Being one of the wealthiest families, we would not take the money, of course. But because we were beset by recent scandals, and Papa’s court-martial had not yet been convened to clear his name, Mama wished to burnish our reputation by knitting stockings for the cause. After all, with Albany consumed in a near hysteria of suspicion and accusation, our jail was currently filled with formerly prominent citizens accused of being enemies to this country.
I was still desperate to do something to redeem myself and my family—something more than knitting stockings in a warm parlor with frost on the windows. Fortunately, an opportunity presented itself when my father emerged from his study and called for Prince to fetch him his hat and coat.
“I’m going to the hospital,” Papa announced.
He was restless. For years, urgent letters from General Washington had come to us day and night, under seal and from riders on frothing mounts, but once the British were gone from our home, we no longer received any word from headquarters at all.
And the silence was deafening.
In what seemed almost a fit of defiance, Papa rebuilt our Saratoga house in a mere twenty-nine days, salvaging nails and hinges and knobs. Then he paced at the windows, staring beyond the fine trees to a country that was still at war . . . without him. He was a general without a command. A soldier without a battle to fight.
And somehow, I felt that way, too. As my father stooped to kiss Mama on his way out, I quickly finished my stocking and asked, “Can I go with you, Papa?”
I think he knew that I shared his restlessness and discontent, because Papa rescued me from my mother’s withering glare by asking, “Can you spare Betsy? She’d be a help today. Peggy doesn’t have the stomach for it, but Betsy’s good with the soldiers. And Arnold likes her.”