She stood there, a large old woman, smiling at the things she would say to him in the morning, this big foolish baby of a son. There were times now, like this, when she lost control of the time count and moved freely back and forth into three generations. Was it a birthday ball? When Peter had reached his majority at eighteen? Or was it her own first ball as mistress of this big house, a Van Rensselaer bride from way upstate near Albany, from Rensselaerwyck. And this handsome booby, staring and sweating, was he her bridegroom?

Martha picked up the hem of her gown and with eyes closed she slowly began to dance a stately minuet around the ballroom.

David Cortlandt was tired beyond almost the limits of his flesh. He had ridden hard from Boston, and he was not used to horseback. Now, driving the horse and sulky borrowed from Mynheer Schuyler, he felt as if every bone was topped by burning oil and that every muscle was ready to dissolve into jelly and leave his big body helpless and unable to move.

The road leading south along the river was shaded with old trees, and in the moonlight the silvery landscape was like a setting for trolls and wood gods rather than the Hudson River Valley of his boyhood memories. He slapped the reins on the back of the powerful gray horse and held on as the sulky's wheels hit a pothole and came out with a jolt and went on. He would cross to Manhattan, to Harlem Heights, before morning. There a certain farmhouse was a station for the Sons of Liberty. He would send on by trusted messenger the dispatches with their electrifying news. And he would sleep, sleep, and never think of roads and horses' sore haunches, of colonial wars.