3. YORKTOWN (1781)

We were so close I could almost taste the victory. Cornwallis had failed miserably, had stranded the British forces. He would not escape. It was only a matter of time. And for me, finally, something to do.

      We had sat outside New York for so long, I barely remembered what it was like to fight a war anymore. Washington was so stubborn, believed so much in the importance of New York, and all the while the real war was happening in the South, in the Carolinas and on the oceans, in places I would never see called the West Indies, which I only knew of because I had unloaded so many crates of spices and other products in my old life on the docks, and because my commander, that admirable chap Hamilton, came from there, and listened fondly to stories of French successes.

      Hamilton had not remembered me from the old life, though I’d shook his hand in New York when I had gone there with John so many years ago, when he was only a clerk with revolutionary ideals, but he knew me now. Those that had survived in Washington’s army from the beginning, who had seen everything, had lived through Valley Forge, were highly regarded in the army. My birth and the status of my family would not allow me so high a position as Hamilton’s, I had no formal military training, but I was a lieutenant now, an officer, and though we were not friends, I was under his command, in his councils, had even met Washington and Rochambeau and Greene and Lafayette in my position under direct command of Washington’s Chief of Staff before, and now under his field command of our three battalions of light infantry.

      I rather liked the man. He was so unlike me. For him, this war was about the future, about what we could create, his place in it should he find glory here at Yorktown. He had so many ideas about government and finance and the country we would make, I didn’t know how he was able to concentrate on the task at hand, on winning this war first. I had no such problems. I knew this was it for me. I would have seen her in the crowd…I shuddered away from the memory, of our triumphant march through Philadelphia from New York to help capture Cornwallis’ force. We had been there for two days, and Susan had not come. She had not been among the crowd as we marched down Market and Broad, for I knew I would have seen her had she been there, knew it in my heart. I did not know what would happen to me after this battle. But I would not create some brave new world with Alexander Hamilton. I would look for Susan one last time, and when my suspicions were confirmed, I would disappear.