The Traitor's Wife: A Novel (46 page)

S
HE SAT
at the kitchen table, her legs giving out beneath her. The events unfolding around her were so much bigger than she was. How could she, Clara Bell, ever hope to thwart the plans of Benedict Arnold, one of the war’s most powerful generals? Or even more difficult—his wife? On the kitchen table sat a pile of papers. She flipped through them—this morning’s post. The same post that had carried John Anderson’s message.

There was a letter for her. Caleb! Her heart soared for one brief moment, a habit that she had not yet lost. And then she remembered the truth. Slowly, she opened the letter.

Clara,

Your last post fills me with worry. What is the latest, pray tell? Have you uncovered some way to foil this treachery? I pray that you write yes. Remember, if you allow this thing to happen, you are implicit in their scheme.

We all are expected to hazard our lives for this cause. Freedom comes at a heavy toll.

Stay safe, and I promise to do the same. My love to the Quigleys and Hannah.

Your faithful friend,

Caleb

That was all he had written. No advice, no counsel. Just his judgment, and his warning that, if she did not stop them, he would view her as a traitor. Never in her life had Clara felt so alone. How was she supposed to single-handedly stop the plot by one of the colonies’ most powerful generals to hand over its most vital fortress?

It was too much.

“Emergency!” Mrs. Quigley ran into the room, her eyes bulging with panic.

“I know.” Clara turned, wondering if the housekeeper had finally caught wind of the plot herself.

“Emergency! Clara, come quick, you must help me!” Mrs. Quigley was waving her hands and shouting indecipherable orders.

“What’s the matter?” Clara rose from the table, her own pulse now racing from the housekeeper’s visible distress.

“It’s Hannah. Come to the larder at once, Clara!”

Clara followed the housekeeper into the small storeroom. There she found the cook lying motionless on the cold floor.

“Hannah.” Clara knelt down beside the still woman. “What’s happened?” She turned to the housekeeper.

“I don’t know! She would come in here sometimes on hot days to keep cool. But when I walked in here just now, I found her lying on the ground, gurgling.”

“Oh, Hannah.” Clara pressed her cheek to the cook’s. She was not sure how else she might check for a sign of life.

“Is she breathing?” Mrs. Quigley asked.

“Oh, Hannah, please wake up.” Clara placed her hand first to the woman’s chest, and then to her abdomen. “No sign of breathing.” Clara looked back at the housekeeper in panic.

“Ladies, I’m looking for the general.” Just then Major Franks appeared in the doorway of the larder, at the house on an errand with his arms heavy with papers. When he noticed the scene, his expression changed from one of business to concern. “Is everything all right?”

“No, Major Franks, look!” The housekeeper pointed at the lifeless cook on the floor beside Clara.

“Good God.” The aide dropped his satchel of papers and knelt down beside Clara. He picked up Hannah’s limp wrist and pressed his fingers to the flesh.

“What are you doing?” Clara asked.

“Checking to see if she has a pulse,” Franks said.

“A what?” Mrs. Quigley questioned him.

“A heartbeat,” Franks snapped. “That’s the sign of whether a person is alive or not. Now please, let me focus.” He screwed up his face in attention, his fingers digging around in the skin of the woman’s pale wrist. Clara had a chilling feeling that the longer he poked and prodded, the worse a sign it was. He was most likely not finding whatever it was he was searching for.

Franks confirmed Clara’s worst suspicion. “No pulse. My ladies, I am sorry to inform you that this person has expired.”

“What can you mean?” Mrs. Quigley stared at Franks, dumbfounded.

“Dead,” Franks said, with numb finality.

“Dead?” Mrs. Quigley gasped, incredulous. “Hannah Breunig, dead?” She fell to her knees, nestling her face into the cook’s bosom as she began to sob. “The poor woman—died of a broken heart!”

T
HE
A
UGUST
heat rolled into the Hudson Valley, bringing with it no comforting breeze. The air was so stifling that it was unpleasant to be indoors. The only cool room was the storeroom, which Clara and all the servants had been avoiding since they’d found Hannah’s body there.

Major Franks had determined the cause of death to be a failure of the heart, based on the cook’s shocked expression and Mrs. Quigley’s description of her last few moments. This confirmed Mrs. Quigley’s original theory, and the housekeeper maintained that the old German woman had died of heartbreak after removal from her home and sister.

“We will not tell Brigitte,” Mrs. Quigley told Clara. “It won’t do her any good to know that her sister is no longer on this earth.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Clara agreed, wondering with a pang of sadness how poor Brigitte Breunig fared these days. Most likely she would be very lonely in Neddy and Betsy Burd’s household, and missing her sister.

“Clara, why don’t you go outside? Let me finish up here.” They were in the scullery, scrubbing the china and silver after luncheon. It was midafternoon and the small room felt like a hellish pit.

“But we’ve got all these dishes left,” Clara objected, eyeing the dirty piles.

“Leave ’em to me,” the housekeeper insisted. “It’ll do you good to get outdoors for a bit. You’re too young to be looking so old with worry all the time.”

“It’s really fine,” Clara protested, continuing to scour a dirty bowl.

Mrs. Quigley sighed at Clara’s stubbornness, and they continued
to clean the china, side by side, in silence. Eventually, Mrs. Quigley spoke.

“You know, Clara, it was a long time ago. But would you believe me if I told you I remembered what it was like to be young like you?”

Clara looked up, a smile spreading across her face. “Of course, Mrs. Quigley. You’re not so very old.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in lying, Clara Bell?” Mrs. Quigley leaned her head to the side, her eyes softening in good humor. “But it’s true, I remember being young. I was like you. Hardworking. Serious. I wasn’t in the Shippen home just yet, I was working for a family called the Dwights. That’s where I met John . . . I mean, Mr. Quigley.” The housekeeper giggled, her eyes alight—like a blushing girl. “I told Mr. Quigley—” and now her voice was laced with nostalgia, “that I couldn’t marry him.” She paused for effect, and it worked. Clara was listening. Never before had the housekeeper opened up about her past or her marriage.

“You see, Clara, I cared so deeply about my work, and the family I served back then, that I thought there was no time for romance. No place for love in the life of a servant.” Again, she paused, leaving Clara eager to hear more. “But I was wrong. And Mr. Quigley made me see it. I had just as much a right to love as the ladies and gentlemen I tended to.” Mrs. Quigley stared into Clara’s eyes, allowing them to stand opposite each other in silence for several minutes, before turning back to the china dish in her hands.

Eventually the old woman spoke. “And thank goodness he did.”

Clara thought of Cal, sweet on another girl, and did not quite know how to respond. She too resumed her scrubbing.

“I’m just telling you this, my dear, so that you know. Should it ever come up. No one here expects you to spend your days on this earth living someone else’s life, never thinking about your own.
Well, maybe one person expects that. But none of the rest of us do. In fact, we hope that doesn’t happen.”

Clara nodded, suppressing the words:
but what if the one I love has found someone else?
Instead, she answered, “Thank you, Mrs. Quigley.”

“I suppose that, after losing Hannah, I felt the need to tell you that, Clara. Life is short, and hard, but we’re all entitled to our own little slice of happiness.” The old woman paused, a sad smile on her lips. “And on that note, I
insist
you go out, Clara. Out with you. Go take a walk out of doors. Get some air, feel the sunshine, enjoy yourself for a little. You’ve been so very sad lately.” The woman said it as though she were forcing Clara from the kitchen. But why the housekeeper was so eager to relieve Clara of her chores, she could not tell.

“Well, if you insist.” Clara wiped her hands on her apron. “Would you like me to bring Little Eddy so you are free in the kitchen?” Clara looked at the little boy, sleeping on her straw pad.

“Leave him be. When he wakes up I’ll get him.”

“Are you certain, Mrs. Quigley?”

“Positive.” The old woman nodded, smoothing Clara’s unruly blond hair. “And take your apron off. This dress looks nice on you.” Mrs. Quigley untied the linen apron so that Clara stood in her cotton dress, a calico print of blue and yellow with a white collar and cuff sleeves.

“Oh, and Clara?” Mrs. Quigley caught her before she left the room.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Don’t come back until supper.”

Clara walked out of the kitchen, confused, as her light eyes blinked in the sunlight of the warm August day. She tied her straw hat into place and looked out over the yard, the distant wheat baking in
the dry afternoon. Why had she been so uncharacteristically relieved of her chores? Why now, all of a sudden, was Mrs. Quigley eager to share advice on the matters of the heart? And what was she supposed to do outdoors in the heat of the day? Get out of the sun, that was the first thing. She walked to the large oak on the north side of the lawn—the tree that had so kindly suffered the beating in her stead.

She looked up at its leaves, watching as each one swayed in the breeze, dancing with a beauty far more effortless, far more natural than any waltz she’d seen at a British ball. Clara leaned her back against the cool, smooth trunk of the tree, and slid down it, resting on the grass.

She had forgotten how to occupy herself without work, without an endless list of chores, errands, orders. A crying baby, a plaintive mistress. She’d forgotten how to take refuge in her own mind, to allow her thoughts to glide effortlessly like a sweet scent on a breeze. These days, all her daydreams had turned sour.

She gently plucked a cluster of violet wildflowers that grew around the base of the oak. She’d bring them back for Mrs. Quigley, as thanks for this break. She brought them to her nose, breathing in their sweet, sun-kissed scent. Perhaps, she thought, there were still some joys to be taken from life. Even a penniless, heartbroken orphan like herself could still give thanks for the flowers from the earth, the gentle sunshine overhead. She had thought herself broken. Defeated. But she was strong, she always had been. She would continue on, cobbling together some form of a life even as the world seemed to crumble around her.

The sound of a steady clip-clopping interrupted Clara’s reverie. A lone rider, from the sound of it, approaching the Arnold house by way of the narrow post road. Clara pulled herself up to a stand, clutching the nosegay of flowers to her waist.

It was a colonial rider, she saw, here on business with General Arnold.

“Poor gent thinks he’s coming to meet with an American hero. Little does he know how wretched this hero and his household are.” Clara twisted the flower stems in her fingers as she watched the rider. Barley ran out to greet the horse and its rider, tail wagging. Some guard dog he was.

Something about this man’s mannerisms struck Clara as familiar, as he posted up and down on the trotting horse. His movements, his outline against the sun—they stirred some memory of hers that seemed just out of reach.

“Cal.” Clara said it as a whisper at first, too terrified to breathe her thought lest it turn out not to be true. But it couldn’t be Cal. She studied the man more closely now—his strong, narrow figure, his sand-colored hair. The whistle he let out to greet the dog.

“Cal!” she repeated, willing it to be true. She dropped the flowers and took off at a full run, bounding toward the approaching horse. The figure raised a hand to her in greeting.