“Actually, Clinton despises him. But to get West Point, he says, he’d have paid the devil himself.”

“What happened?”

“Our friend André had gone up to make the final arrangements. Then he got caught, and the Patriots discovered the plan. So Washington still has West Point and Arnold’s fled to our camp.”

“And André?”

“It’s a wretched affair. Like a fool, he’d taken off his uniform, which makes him a spy. Under the rules of war, Washington and his people are supposed to hang him. But they don’t want to do it—seems they like him—so they’re trying to work out a deal.”

“I wonder if he and James have met.”

“Perhaps. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

The final report from her father came a few days later.

“André’s hanged, I’m afraid. Clinton was almost in tears. ‘They wanted Arnold for him,’ he told me. ‘But if I give them Arnold, I’ll never get another Patriot to come over. So they’ve hanged my poor André.’”

For a moment, she wondered if James had been at the execution, then decided not to think about it.

When James Master had approached the stone house where the condemned man was being held, he hadn’t expected to be there long. Washington himself had sent him on this brief errand of mercy. He meant to accomplish it quickly and courteously, and then to be gone. He was sorry for the fellow, of course—it was a wretched business—but James Master hadn’t much time for sentiment these days.

Anyone who hadn’t seen James Master for a couple of years would have been struck by the change. His face was much thinner, for a start. But there was something else, a hardness in the set of his jaw, a strain in the muscles of his cheek, which could be signaling pain, or sourness, depending on his mood. Worse even than these, to anyone who loved him, would have been the look in his eyes. Iron determination resided in them, certainly, but also disillusion, anger and disgust.

None of this was surprising. The last two years had been terrible.

Getting the French into the war, though crucially important, had always been a cynical arrangement. But Washington had still hoped for a little more than he got. Admiral d’Estaing had frightened the British most effectively, but when Washington had tried to persuade him to a big joint operation to take New York, he’d refused, and he and his fleet now spent most of the time down in the West Indies, doing all they could to weaken the rich British interests there. This July General Rochambeau had arrived at Newport Rhode Island with six thousand French troops. But he’d insisted he stay with the French ships that had been bottled up there by the British Navy, so until he moved, he and his troops might as well not have come. As far as James could see, the French regarded the American colonies as a sideshow. If the Patriots were looking for moral support, they were almost as alone as when they’d started.