Becoming Miss Lee

Chapter 15 - Insult to Injury

"He took the Serapis?"

My uncle passed me the paper and removed his spectacles with a laugh. "I do not even know how that mad little fool managed it, but he did."

Reports of the taking of the Serapis by Captain John Paul Jones had reached New York at the speed of light, it seemed. I was ecstatic at the news. Another Continental victory to shove in the face of the British was a welcome relief. I could only imagine how the British high command was dealing with the added embarrassment that this year had brought them. Losing one of their ships must have been far more embarrassing than losing a battle on land. After all, they did boast of having the finest navy in the world. You could almost feel the excitement reverberate throughout the colonies.

André, however, was certainly not feeling my well veiled excitement at the news. He was rather upset when I visited him again in early October. "How in God's name did they lose that bloody ship?" He slammed his hands down on his desk and made his ink pot and quill bounce off and dance in their places. He brought his hand to his face and continued, "They are going to make a mockery of us. We boast a navy and lose to a smuggler!" It was plain to see that the stress was finally getting to him André was never the type of man to lose his temper, but sometimes in extreme duress he let himself go. I watched him violently fling a stack of papers off of his desk and they scattered onto the floor. I moved to pick them up, but he leapt out of his chair, "Do not dare touch those bloody papers!" I froze mid crouch and stood back up, moving away from the pile that he was violently snatching up off of the floor. He slapped them back down on the desk, shaking his ink pot and sending a spare quill rolling to the floor at my feet. I bent over, picked it up, and nervously handed it to him. He snatched it away and tossed it haphazardly onto his desk before running a hand over his face, "Forgive me, my friend. I have simply been under scrutiny from my superiors for not magically knowing what they want to know."

"Do they honestly expect you to be perfect? My God, Major, you are only one man!"

"Ah, but alas, I am John André: spy master and miracle worker for the crown. I swear to you, Bea, that I have been doing everything that I have been physically capable of doing and nothing seems to please Cornwallis. I have no control over those men when they are in the field. They ferry me information as they get it and it is a tedious process."

I almost nodded in concurrence. I wanted to be on André's side through this. Not the crown's, not Cornwallis', just André's. I slowly walked behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder. He glanced back at it and gently draped his own hand over mine. "I am here for you, Major."

"Do you think that Washington would hang a spy like we hung that boy from Connecticut?" I felt myself tighten my grip on André's shoulder slightly, though I do not believe that he noticed through his uniform coat. "I cannot help but wonder what the old fox would do to me. Why do you think he did it, that boy? He was twenty-one, was he not?"

"Twenty-one and three months." I was mortified that I had actually said that.

André turned in his chair and glanced up at me in a state of perplexity, "You knew him?" I removed my hand from his shoulder and turned away. "It is perfectly fine if you did, Bea. Please, tell me about him. When did you meet?"

"We met when I was seven. I was staying with my aunt in Connecticut while mother and father were away on business..." Before long, I found myself next to an engaged John André, telling him all about Nathan, about how he graduated Yale, about how smart he was, and about our exploits as children. I forgot for a moment that he was actually gone. I sat there for no less than an hour recounting tales of our childhood that brought smiles to André's face again and again. "And every time he would finish, we would go out by this brook not far from the school and sit together for hours. Sometimes, we would not even say a word to one another and leave just as satisfied as if we had said a thousand."