The Chariot of Apollo was by far the finest carriage she had ever been in, with every modern advantage to smooth the ride. But nothing could soften the passage over roads rutted by more than a month of constant rain. Every jolt hurt Eliza’s bones, and she half wished her bouncing head would fall off her neck like it felt it wanted to, because it was throbbing so badly she could hardly see. But she bore the pains in silence and instead sat with her hands on her womb, soothing the growing life beneath her dress.
“There, there,” she whispered over and over again. “Shh.”
The sun set just as the moon started to rise. Eliza could see Emma peering nervously out of the carriage’s windows at the lengthening shadows, and the jolts seemed to increase with the darkness. Under normal circumstances Eliza would have suggested they stop somewhere for the evening, but these were far from normal circumstances. She was in a race to save her marriage. No, not that. She was in a race to save her husband’s life.
“The moon is nearly full,” she said to Emma in the calmest voice she could muster. “It will provide enough light for Drayton to see.”
Emma nodded but didn’t say anything. The carriage juddered on its way. The squeals of the axles and the squeaks of the leather cushions seemed to grow louder as the nighttime silence deepened, a soft counterpoint to the rhythmic clop-clop of the horses’ hooves. It had an almost martial cadence, Eliza thought, like the players at the head of a military column. She remembered Alex telling her about his march from Morristown to Yorktown near the end of the war, how at the end of days of marching, the steady beat of the fife and drum corps was the only thing that kept soldiers’ feet moving. I’m a soldier, she thought. I’m marching to war.
She must have fallen asleep, because she was suddenly aware of a strange sensation and realized they had stopped. A creaking sounded above them as Drayton clambered down from the box and the door was pulled open.
“We are here, Mrs. Hamilton.”
Eliza took a moment to summon her energy. Her body felt as bruised as if it had rolled down a hillside strewn with boulders and fallen trees. Then the baby kicked beneath her fingers, her son, their firstborn son, the one they would name Philip, after her esteemed and wonderful father. A sense of calmness and purpose filled her. She remembered what she was fighting for. Not just her future, or Alex’s, but Philip’s. Her pain didn’t fade, but her resolve overpowered it.
Nodding, she accepted Drayton’s outstretched hand and stepped out into the night.
24
Midnight Rendezvous
The Hamilton Town House
New York, New York
September 1785
He had thought nothing could equal his private shame, but he was wrong.
He had stared down at the latest letter from Emma informing him of Eliza’s illness and understood how easily his life could have slipped away from him. Marriage was like a country, he realized, a union that lasts only when all the members involved actively work for its continuation. But while Eliza worked day in and day out to make the marriage a success, he had let his attention waver, and suddenly he found himself teetering at the edge of a precipice. Would he be able to jump back in time, or would the ground collapse beneath his feet? And would there be anything waiting for him if he did manage to escape the trap he had made for himself? He had no idea.
He forced himself to go to bed but lay awake tossing and turning in misery until at last the sun was up. He roused himself groggily, washed with the frigid water in his basin, threw on the first clothes he pulled from the wardrobe. In the kitchen he went through the motions of trying to light a fire, but his shaking hands couldn’t produce so much as a spark, let alone a flame, and after ten minutes of increasingly ridiculous mummery he threw aside flint and steel and staggered out into the day.
As he pulled the door open he glanced into his front parlor, and there, over the fireplace, hung Eliza’s portrait, painted last year by Ralph Earl. With her white wig and lightly powdered skin she had an ageless look to her. She could have been seventeen or seventy-seven. Her bright eyes, twinkling at some private amusement, stared into the future fearlessly, as if nothing could ever go wrong. His first thought was the girl in that picture was naïve to place her trust in him, but as he continued to stare at her calm expression, he realized that it wasn’t Eliza who had been naïve. It had been he. She understood that, more than anything else, marriage required steadiness, and she delivered that every day since they took their vows a mere five years ago.
Five years. Half a decade. Three years shorter than the revolution. That was all the time it took for him to lose his way. How on earth did people do it for twenty-five, or fifty?
I could do it, said the eyes in the picture. I would do it for you.
If only you would forgive me. Please, Eliza, forgive me.
He pulled his hat over his eyes in shame and crept out into the morning.
Outside, his feet turned habitually toward Water Street, but it wasn’t long before the sign for Ruston’s appeared in front of him. He whirled about as if dodging enemy fire and trotted in the direction of Fraunces Tavern, but as it came into view he remembered that this was the place where General Washington had summoned his troops to bid them adieu at the end of the war. He had no place taking so much as a bowl of gruel at an establishment where so great a man—as true to his country as he was to his wife—had taken his last meal as leader of the Continental army. He wandered about aimlessly then, at last slinking into some hole-in-the-wall inn so dingy it did not even seem to have a name, and there he forced himself to eat a few slices of bacon more fat than meat and a couple of eggs whose odor suggested the fetid coop from which they’d been gathered. The coffee tasted like—oh, who knew. Burnt acorns, half-cured leather, moldy bread. He pressed himself to drink it down.
He walked past Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby without greeting them and shut himself in his private office. He made himself go through the stack of papers there, amending and signing documents until a little after one o’clock, when it was time for him to head to court. It was a routine day, with nothing exceptional on the docket. Or at least Alex thought until he walked into the courtroom and saw the smirking face of Aaron Burr exchanging pleasantries with the judge, who for some reason was already on his bench.
Of all the days, he thought with a silent groan.
“Counselor!” the judge said with false brightness. “So nice of you to join us.”
Alex glanced at his watch and saw that it was just past one. The proceeding wasn’t due to start until one thirty. But something didn’t add up. He had left his office just after one, and it was a ten-minute walk here. How was it still . . . ?
With a start, Alex realized his watch must have wound down sometime last night.
Sometime while he was with Maria.
He felt his face go bright red.
“I—I’m sorry, Your Honor, Mr. Burr. It seems my watch must have wound down during the—that is, I must have forgotten to wind it this morning.”
“Too busy, no doubt,” Burr said with snide wink, then took his place at his table.
If it was possible for Alex’s face to go redder, it did. He felt the sweat beading under his shirt, which was suddenly uncomfortably clammy. An image flashed through his mind, half-sensation, half-mental picture, of the first day he had visited Maria at Ruston’s when he had removed his jacket and waistcoat and then laughed off Sally’s off-color conjecturing.
If I go any redder, Alex thought, I shall become apoplectic.
The proceeding passed in a blur. The affair was as purely formal as a chess game, the outcome all but predetermined. Alex made his moves, Burr made his countermoves, and then the judge handed down his decision: 20 percent for Alex’s client, 80 percent for Burr’s. It was somewhat less than Alex had expected, but not far off.
As he was packing up his satchel, Burr came over to Alex’s table. His own p
apers were being shuffled into an embossed leather case by a fresh-faced assistant.
“I do so enjoy beating you,” he said without preamble, and with more than his usual one-upmanship.
Alex couldn’t be bothered to make eye contact. “I do hope your client enjoys his thirty-two pounds. Tell him not to spend it all in one place.”
“Oh, it’s not the amount that matters,” Burr said as a rejoinder. “It’s just knowing that you are not the golden boy everyone claims you are.”
The edge in Burr’s voice had turned genuinely nasty, and Alex paused in his packing to regard his rival. They had sparred in the courts for the past two years, and though it was well-known that Alex thought of Burr as a dilettante and Burr thought of Alex as a poseur, their animosity had never risen above the level of competitiveness between two headstrong lads who cannot bear to be anything other than the best at what they do. But Burr was looking at Alex as though he were something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe. Not even his shoe. His horse’s shoe.
“Is there something bothering you, Mr. Burr? If you would like to retry our case, I’m sure the judge has nothing better to do with his time. Perhaps you can win that last eight pounds.”
At this, Burr grinned, his small but plump lips shiny with spittle. “You’ll never guess where I breakfasted this morning.”
Alex sighed and turned back to his papers. “You’re right. I’ll never guess.”
“A little place over on Water Street,” Burr continued as if Alex hadn’t spoken. “A little seedy for my tastes, but I had no idea just how seedy it was.”
Alex froze. It took an effort of will to stand up straight and look Burr in the eye.
“If there is something you are trying to say, Aaron, just say it.”
Burr shrugged. “I don’t have to say it. The barman there, a fine chap named Thomas, is telling everyone who comes in.”
There was no blush this time. Alex felt all the blood drain from his face as his skin turned to ice.
“Saying what, Mr. Burr?”
“Oh, come now, Alex, don’t make me be so crass as to put it in words. I’d much rather hear your own flowery expression for stepping out on your wife.”
When something like this happened in books of chivalry, the affronted party would slap his accuser with an empty glove. For better or worse, Alex wasn’t wearing gloves, and he never read books of chivalry either. His punch sent Burr hurtling backward, where he sprawled across the foremost pew.
Fortunately the judge had gone, and the bailiff as well, or Alex might have had a night in jail to add to his troubles. Although if he had been hauled off, it might have saved him from saying what he did next.
“You slander me, sir, in front of these esteemed men of my profession,” he said, even as he felt his guilty heart beating as he indicated the dozen or so people who remained in the courtroom, who looked less like lawyers and clerks than spectators at a cockfight. “In front of these witnesses, I assert my rights as a gentleman. I call you out.”
Burr, who had struggled a bit to stand up and was now clearly resisting the urge to touch his lip to see if it was bleeding (it was, copiously), nodded contemptuously.
“They say you rushed heedlessly to your death at Yorktown, and it was only the poor aim of the British that allowed you to survive. I am no redcoat, sir. I won’t miss.”
Without another word, he whirled on his feet and, after steadying himself, marched out of the courtroom.
* * *
• • •
ALEX’S HEAD WAS reeling as he left the courtroom, as if he had taken the punch, not Burr. It seemed to him that everyone was staring at him. But were they staring at him because he had punched Aaron Burr, or because of what the barman had charged him with?
Though the claims had some validity, he could see no way around it: He would have to return to Ruston’s and inform Maria of what was being said about them. He dragged his feet as slowly as he could over the boards, but within less than half an hour he was there.
Alex did not fool himself into thinking that he was in love. He felt a kind of tenderness toward Maria, it was true, but it was a tenderness born of pity rather than affection. He wanted her to know that not every man would treat her as roughly as James Reynolds had, and who knew how many others, but he knew that in the end it would be the same. He would go back to his wife, and she would be left alone. Perhaps Eliza wouldn’t take him back, for which he could hardly blame her. He had sullied her name as well as his. But that didn’t change things. His marriage might very well be destroyed, however, he could not marry Maria, and would not, even if it was an option.
What he didn’t realize was that Maria understood this as well as he did, if not better. Which is to say, when Alex entered the inn he found Caroline in the barroom, clearly waiting for him. After a rather formal greeting, she informed him that Mrs. Reynolds had checked out that morning and left no forwarding address. She deflected his questions coldly, yet there was something she was concealing. Alex thought it was less likely that she had sent Maria packing than that she had given her money to disappear. She handed Alex a note, then stood to take her leave.
Alex assumed it was his bill, but when he looked down he saw only his name in Maria’s handwriting.
He sighed heavily. “Very well then. If you will send me my bill at my office, I will see that you are paid immediately.”
Caroline’s lip curled in disgust. “There will be no question of payment, Mr. Hamilton. It is bad enough that you have associated my establishment with this kind of affair, but if people think I received compensation for it I should die of shame.” She took a breath. “You have done far too much for me to allow me to denounce you openly, and as an innkeeper I am familiar enough with men’s characters that I can attribute this to infantile weakness rather than pure venality of character. Nevertheless, Mr. Hamilton, you have shamed me, and shamed that woman, and your wife and child-to-be, but above all shamed yourself and your good name. You will understand when I say that you are no longer welcome at Ruston’s Inn. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but whatever your virtues, you have demonstrated that you are not a man who can be trusted.”
Without another word, she turned and walked away.
For the first time in his life, Alex had no idea what to do. Dumbly, he folded open the card in his hands.
Do not judge yourself too harshly, Mr. Hamilton. You ought not to have done what you did, but I ought not to have put you in that position. Thank you for all you have done for me, and good-bye.
Maria Reynolds.
Alex didn’t know if the fact that she signed the name of husband-pretender made things a little bit better or that much worse.
* * *
• • •
THIS BEING NEW York, and Aaron Burr being a busy man, and a contemptuous one, it took days to work out the details of the duel, which was at last set a fortnight hence, when Burr should have returned from an errand before Congress. In the meantime Alex lay low and went about his work as mechanically as he could. In many ways his life was the same as it had been before, save that Eliza was not with him, and a series of increasingly plaintive notes from Emma and a few from John, who had moved into his dormitory at Columbia, were piling up on the table in his entryway. He couldn’t bear to write to his sick wife, for writing her meant lying to her, and that he could not do in a letter. Plus, he felt wretched that he was so preoccupied with the duel, his guilt, and hiding from the public eye that he barely noticed that Eliza had been gone a whole month and was sick during most of it! How was she faring? And what of their son?
But at last the appointed day came, and he found himself sitting in a bedroom in Mount Pleasant. The room was large and elegant, with a picturesque vista of the East River from its windows, yet had an air of neglect about it, quite at odds with the elegance of the rest of the mansion. The marble top of the bureau wa
s dusty, the curtains were sun-faded, and the bed skirt had been nibbled by moths or mice.
He held a pistol in both hands as though it were a kind of relic, not fragile or holy but filled with mystery, as if it possessed the power of life and death inside its intricate layers of burled walnut and engraved silver and tooled steel. As indeed it did.
James had installed him in the room to give him a moment to collect himself.
“It is customary to write a note to those you may leave behind,” he said. “I imagine that yours will be quite long.” His voice was not quite hostile, but its forced neutrality sounded somehow more alienating, as if it were only the mores of social civility that kept him from spitting in Alex’s face.
“This was Major André’s room,” James said then. “You remember him, don’t you? He was that dashing young British soldier all the girls were in love with. My father invited him to stay with us, and he repaid that hospitality by sneaking out to meet with Benedict Arnold and help him in his treasonous conspiracy against the Continental army, for which actions he was well and justly hanged.” James cast his eyes around the spy’s one-time chamber, then looked back at Alex. “A fitting place for you.”
He stepped out then, and closed the door behind him.
Sometime after he left, Alex removed the pistol James had given him and inspected it. It was as fine a piece of craftsmanship as you would expect a Beekman to own, and could easily be mistaken for ornament rather than weapon. Still, weapon is what it was, and he took the time to familiarize himself with it. He had been to battle on three separate occasions, but always with rifle and bayonet, and had fired a pistol only a handful of times in his life.
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