Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (23 page)

The library was quiet, the party having yet to spill out of the parlor. At the moment it was empty, except for two women, both of striking appearance. One was seated at a bench before what looked to be a small harpsichord, leafing through sheaves of music resting atop it. The other stood behind her.

Both were dressed in the latest fashion of the year, dresses of finest silk, the younger of the two sitting on the bench in bottle-green, the other in pale blue, wigs not too high, both decorated with ribbons of the flag and, in honor of tonight, the royal ensign.

André set his own glass down on a bookshelf, took the two glasses of claret, and offered one to each of the women.

“Lieutenant van Dorn, it is my honor to introduce Miss Peggy Shippen,” and as he spoke he held one glass to the young woman sitting on the bench, “and Miss Elizabeth Risher.” He offered the second glass to the woman standing behind Peggy.

There were polite nods.

Allen stiffened, eyes meeting Miss Risher’s.
Could it possibly be?
he wondered.

“Van Dorn of the van Dorns of New York?” Peggy asked with a bright smile.

Allen nodded, then shook his head.

“No, ma’am, of Trenton.”

“Oh, I see,” and her smile drifted away.

“Might your father be Emmanuel van Dorn?” Elizabeth asked.

A bit surprised, Allen nodded in the affirmative.

“My dear cousin Rebecca Risher is married to, let’s see, I believe your cousin George. I think you and I met several years back at their wedding.”

Startled, Allen looked at her closely, trying not to visibly react. She had indeed been at the wedding, a lovely vision he had wished to approach for a dance, though shyness prevented him from doing so.

She smiled in a friendly fashion, came forward and offered her hand.

“Well,” André laughed, “one could say you are almost kin.”

“I know your family well, sir,” Elizabeth continued, “and can affirm they are of fine breeding, gentle manners, and loyal to our king.”

She smiled up at him, and he wondered if she knew of his brother Jonathan and his fate.

He held her gaze and waited, as if almost ready for her to drop the next line—that his family business had been a tannery and leather goods, definitely not an acceptable origin for an officer of the British Army.

“I am delighted to see you in the uniform of our king,” Elizabeth continued, and something in her gaze seemed to say more. Was it a surprise that he was in such a uniform?

“Elizabeth and I, for the life of us, cannot figure this thing out,” Peggy interjected, and she turned and slapped the top of the instrument she was sitting in front of.

André laughed.

“Oh, it is one of Dr. Franklin’s infernal devices.”

Peggy drew her hands back, as if actually fearful.

André looked over at Allen with a smile.

“I often find you in this room, Lieutenant, perusing Dr. Franklin’s library. Would you care to venture what it is?”

Allen, surprised by André’s offer, finally smiled.

“It is a glass harmonica.”

“A what?” Peggy asked.

Allen motioned to the device and to where Peggy sat. She looked at André, who motioned for her to move. She shot a quick glance at Allen but then surrendered the bench.

With Miss Shippen no longer sitting at the bench, he felt it proper to point toward where her feet would have been.

“The pedals beneath are attached to a drive belt,” he announced, squatting down to point at them. Standing, he removed the sheaf of music on top of the instrument and looked around for an appropriate place to deposit the papers. With a smile, André took them.

Allen now opened up the main body of the instrument and the women gazed inside.

Instead of strings there were dozens of glass goblets of various sizes, mounted on a shaft. Sitting down on the bench, Allen began to push on the pedals. The end of the shaft holding the glass goblets moved and within a few seconds they were rotating rapidly.

“It really is some infernal machine,” Miss Shippen cried.

André laughed.

“Demonstrate please, Lieutenant,” André urged.

A crystal goblet filled with chalk rested next to the instrument. Allen dipped two fingers in, coating them, then lightly touched one of the rotating goblets.

The room was suddenly filled with a strange, unearthly sound, a humming vibration exactly like that emitted when the rim of a crystal glass is vigorously rubbed with a damp finger.

Peggy drew back slightly, and Captain André obviously was more than happy to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

Allen tried a few more notes, the tones shifting and then dying away as he stopped pumping the pedals. The glass goblets slowed in their spinning and there was silence.

“Wondrous,” Elizabeth whispered.

“And Dr. Franklin created this?” she asked.

Allen nodded.

“Sounds like the cry of a devil to me,” Peggy announced.

André chuckled.

“Go on, van Dorn, I’ve heard you tinkering with it before now. It’s why I dragged you in here to explain this thing.”

Allen closed his eyes for a moment, surprised that anyone had noticed his attempts. He had only dared to try to play this wondrous instrument when he thought the rest of the staff was out of the house.

He sat silent for a moment and then began to press the pedals. There was a faint whirling sound, like a lathe turning, which in fact was the principle Franklin used when designing this strange instrument. Allen had read that Franklin had a glassblower turn out dozens of sealed goblets of crystal of various sizes, testing each one for proper pitch, before then having them mounted on the rotating shaft.

He touched G-sharp, and slowly worked up a scale, the sound of each note overlapping. With some nervousness, he put both hands on the keyboard and played a short piece by Haydn, one of his concertos, just a few dozen bars. It pleased him that he had hardly made a mistake.

The sound was indeed unearthly—ethereal—something that only someone such as Franklin could have invented. It was, for Allen, soothing and gentle, so unlike the more strident tone of the harpsichord. If anything, it sounded more like a harp brushed by gentle hands.

“I’ve been loath to try it until now,” André announced, “for after all, this is indeed a rare instrument. May I?”

Allen smiled and offered the bench.

André sat down, tinkered for a moment, working the pedals, playing a few scales.

What followed was, for Allen, like a call from heaven, ethereal as only this instrument could create sound, but something far more. The raucous laughter from the party in the other room intruded for a moment, but then seemed to wash away as André more vigorously worked the pedals, volume building,
fingers lightly touching the rotating goblets. He at first used but one finger, then two. At one point, though he made several mistakes, he used four fingers.

With a sigh, André leaned back from the instrument, hands falling away, and opened his eyes.

“You’ve been practicing as well,” Allen cried.

André actually seemed a bit embarrassed and could only nod.

“Sir, what was that?” Allen gasped.

“Oh, something by Mozart.”

“The Austrian?” Allen asked.

“You know of him?” André replied, a bit of surprise in his voice.

“Yes, sir. Before the war, I was in New York with my father on business and I attended a recital. There was one piece, a concerto by Mozart that haunted me. I have tried to find out anything I could about him, but, with this war…”

He fell silent.

The distant haughtiness that characterized André was gone as he looked up at Allen and smiled.

“I actually heard him perform in Salzburg—let’s see, it was perhaps four years ago. I was there that summer taking the waters.

“The Germans, their Bach, always Bach, far too heavy for my taste. Mozart is something different. You know what Haydn wrote of him?”

“Such talent comes perhaps but once in a century,” Allen replied.

“Yes, exactly!” André cried. “Sir, do you know anything else by him?” Allen asked.

André smiled.

“Lieutenant, it is John, not sir, this night.”

Allen blushed with embarrassment and excitement.

“I have performed my triumph,” André replied with a warm smile, “anything else I would surely fumble. But by coincidence I have actually ordered other pieces by him. If the wind is right and rebel raiders do not interdict, copies should arrive shortly from Petracci’s of London. I will be delighted to share them with you. One was actually written for this new wonder of Dr. Franklin’s. Perhaps we can master them together.”

“Thank you, sir,” Allen replied warmly.

“Allen, it is John.”

And he then offered a most uncharacteristic gesture for any British officer: He extended his hand, which Allen took and shook.

André stood up and retrieved his glass of wine, taking a sip.

“You surprise me, Allen.”

“How so?”

“Do not be insulted, but, how do I dare say it…”

“A provincial who knows Mozart?” Allen offered, and there was, even though he tried to control it, a bit of a defensive tone in his voice.

“No insult intended, but, yes, I must say yes. I am surprised that word of the Austrian would have reached here.”

“Word of many things reaches here,” Allen replied, and for the first time since joining Grey’s staff he felt he could let his guard down. “Just because we are, as you say, colonials or provincials does not mean that we are an ill-educated lot of bumpkins.”

André held up his hand in a gesture of reconciliation. “I did not mean insult.”

“No, sir,” he hesitated, “I mean John. No insult, but I will say that it could be one reason why I serve with General Grey.”

“How is that?”

And as he asked the question, André took another sip of his wine, looking at Allen with an interest that had never been there before.

“Though the Atlantic is wide, and it might take two months or more for the works of Mozart to reach our shore, nevertheless, they do arrive here. And with his work also comes the
London Gazette
, which, in the years before this war, we read with increasing interest and dismay; the latest books from the publishers of London; and, dare I say now, even the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau. In some ways, we are no more distant from London by sail than Edinburgh by wagon if the wind is fair.”

“And yet you Americans do seem so distant.”

“How so?”

“Recall, I was a prisoner for a year out in the frontier wilds beyond Lancaster.”

Allen could not suppress a bit of a laugh.

André bristled slightly. “What is so amusing in that?”

“Nothing, seriously, nothing. Maybe sixty years ago Lancaster was the edge of the frontier, but now? It is a region settled by the Germans who hold against war, the Dunkers and Mennonites, and our own English Quakers. Sorry to beg to differ, but the frontier wilds are now somewhere out near Pittsburgh, three hundred miles westward on the banks of the Ohio.”

“I have never seen or been forced to endure such rude, ill-bred, foul-smelling bumpkins in my life,” André replied, voice rising slightly, dark complexion
reddening. “Barely one in five was literate, they drank to excess, and tobacco seemed to be stuffed into their cheek from the moment they were weaned until they fell into their graves. The promises made when my regiment surrendered under what I thought were honorable terms were ignored. They are a different race altogether and not Englishmen.”

He hesitated, his anger showing, and he checked himself. “Not subjects of the Crown as I would know them.”

“And yet I am a subject of the Crown, am I not?”

André smiled. “Yes.”

“And yet the men who held you captive, are they not still subjects of the Crown?”

André shook his head. “Damn them, yes they are. Rebels, though, but, yes, they must be subjects of the Crown and conform to that.”

He looked at Peggy and Elizabeth, who stood silent.

“My pardon, ladies, for my rude words.”

“Oh, I do agree with you, though,” Peggy replied. “When men like that would come to my father’s office he would joke afterwards that he would need to bathe immediately afterwards.”

Elizabeth laughed politely but said nothing.

“I agree with you, John,” Allen replied. “But we must realize that most are men who fled Scotland and Ireland, or are the poorest of England and Germany. They came here to seek a new life. They did not come here necessarily to flee our king. If treated with fairness, I daresay, and I wish to believe, that many would renew their allegiance. That is why I stand on this side. Together England and this America, united, could reach to the Mississippi and beyond. Torn apart, though, it will be France, Spain, or others that shall rule here in the end.”

“Precisely my point. But instead, these rude bumpkins and that turncoat Washington will lie in bed with the French?” André hesitated, looking at the two women. “Again my apologies. I fear that I do not hold my wine well this evening, and have let my passions take rein.”

Peggy smiled at him.

“No offense whatsoever, Captain André. I most fully agree. The French are such detestable creatures and I am disgusted that neighbors and former countrymen of mine seek their aid.”

“They have no recourse left,” Allen replied somewhat heatedly.

“So do I infer that you agree with their courting the French?” André asked coolly.

“No, of course not. It is why I am in this uniform. I believe in a united British Empire just as much as you do, sir.”

André forced a smile and nodded.

“I regret the treatment you received while a prisoner,” Allen offered. “Do not assume for an instant, John, that such is the manner of all here on this side of the Atlantic. The rebels are but a small portion, a very small portion, of those who reside here. Most of us wish for an ending to this fratricidal war, a return of peace, and the king’s fair justice.” He hesitated for an instant and then continued. “A king’s justice free of the manipulations of some who have created this tragedy.”

“Who are you referring to?”

“I think we both know the answer to that,” Allen replied.