In October, her father told Abigail that he’d received a letter from Grey Albion, to say that the army was moving north. It seemed that Cornwallis thought he could roll all the way up the east coast. John Master was less sanguine.

“Clinton’s worried. He says Cornwallis isn’t a bad commander—he’s vigorous, and always on the attack, but that’s also his weakness. Unlike Washington, Cornwallis has never learned patience. After his recent victories, he’s the hero of the hour, and with all his aristocratic connections, he deals directly with the ministry, and thinks he can do as he pleases. Clinton is now forced to send men to support him, but he’s afraid Cornwallis will overreach himself.”

He did not say so, but Abigail understood what her father was hinting.

“You mean that Albion may be in more danger than he thinks, Papa.”

“Oh, I dare say he’ll be safe enough,” her father answered.

Late in the year, Clinton was forced to send still more troops to help Cornwallis. He placed them under the competent command of his new recruit, the traitor Benedict Arnold.

James Master had not gone to André’s execution. André’s request for a firing squad had not been granted, but he’d been allowed to fit the noose around his own neck, and had done it skillfully, so that when the cart was pulled away and he dropped, his death was almost instant.

However, in the months that followed, James had brooded constantly on what André had told him about Abigail. Had he been able to visit his sister he would certainly have confronted her about the matter at once. But short of getting himself smuggled into the city—at the mere thought of which Washington would have been outraged—there was nothing he could do. He had started to compose a letter to his father, but had laid it aside for several reasons. It was clear, firstly, that Grey Albion was not in New York, and so the relationship was hardly likely to advance at present. Nor was it a subject he cared to trust to a letter, which might always fall into the wrong hands. But most of all, he felt a sense of hurt, both that Abigail should have acted against his wishes, and that neither she nor her father had seen fit to tell him about it. So he brooded.

And God knows, during the winter that followed, he had time to brood.

Washington made his main winter quarters at Morristown again. But this time he split his forces among several places, in the hope of getting them, and the horses also, more adequately fed. The winter had not been like the previous one, but it had been full of sorrow. The Continental paper currency issued by the Congress was now virtually worthless—it had depreciated by a factor of three thousand times. The troops were supposed to be paid by the province from which they’d come, and those from Pennsylvania, in particular, had not been paid in three years. Discovering that a large group were on the point of mutiny, General Clinton had sent messengers to them offering full pay if they would switch sides, but angry though they were, the Pennsylvania men had treated this bribe with contempt, and fortunately Pennsylvania had finally paid up. There had been other protests also, but the Patriot forces had still come through the winter more or less intact.