“An American victory?” I asked, hands on my protruding belly, my breath quickening.
“An American victory.” He nodded to reassure me. “Madam, if the reports are true, your husband personally led a bayonet charge across a shelled field, dodging fire and springing onto an enemy parapet to take the redoubt.”
The blood drained from my face, leaving me clammy and cold with horror at the danger my husband—the father of my unborn child—had exposed himself to. Even in leading a charge, shouldn’t Hamilton have been atop a horse, commanding his troops, rather than at the front, daring his enemy and braving a bullet? A flash of this image passed before my eyes, and for the first time in my life I fell quite literally into a swoon.
Colonel Burr was forced to steady me, a hand at the elbow and one at the small of my back, before easing me into a chair. “We’ve won,” Burr was saying, but I could scarcely hear over the strange buzzing in my ears. “We’ll have Cornwallis’s surrender soon. Or perhaps it’s already been accomplished.”
Dragging in ragged breaths of air, I pleaded, “And Hamilton?”
He gave a slow blink. “Of course. I didn’t intend to leave you in suspense; your husband secured the victory without a scrape.”
Both hands flew to my cheeks with a mixture of exhilarated pride and relief. “Thank you!” I wanted to run through the house shouting the good news like a crier. But I was still in a haze of half-disbelief, dizzied and trying to remember my manners. “Oh, thank you. Bless you for taking the trouble to come here to tell me!”
“Your father has agreed to help me get established in town, so it was my pleasure to deliver this news, Mrs. Hamilton,” Burr replied with silky gentility. “And the rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.”
Do you know, in that moment, how much he reminded me of Hamilton? Slender, with a military bearing, a sly smile, and a clever wit. I liked Burr very much. Right from that first meeting. I laughed and said, “Still—I am not quite myself, sir.”
Glancing at my swollen belly, he smiled. “There is little wonder why, given your happy condition and your family’s recent travails. It would have been a great loss to our country had your father fallen into British hands.”
Though I did blame all that for my momentary swoon, I also blamed the shock of joy at realizing the British were defeated and the relief of knowing my husband would come home to me after all.
But it was also, surely, that for a brief moment, Burr had made me fear that Alexander had died. And, looking back, I wonder now if the dark swirl of my nearly losing consciousness was more than a fear of death but perhaps even a premonition of it. Because though Burr was the herald of great joy that day, he would one day be the cause of my greatest misery.
* * *
HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!
That’s how our guardsmen stirred the household to hail my conquering hero.
In his haste to return to me and our unborn child that autumn, Alexander had ridden so hard from Yorktown to Albany that he’d exhausted four horses, and himself. I ran out the door to meet him and found him stumbling toward the house, his face slathered in sweat and grime, his clothes smelling of horse and the road. I didn’t care—not one bit.
Under a canopy of yellow, orange, and red leaves, I grasped my husband and kissed him on the mouth like the most brazen harlot who ever lived.
Shocked at my conduct, Hamilton startled but didn’t pull away. Instead, he threaded his hand into the hair at my nape, his teeth grazing my lower lip in gentle threat of sweet reprisal.
Behind us at the door, Mama gave a shocked gasp and Prince a disapproving harrumph. But I didn’t care about that either. Let the whole world disapprove, for in that moment, the only thing that mattered was seeing my husband alive and whole. And because I had no words to express it, only the language of a passionate kiss would do.
But once spent of those kisses, and having marveled at the changes nearly six months apart had wrought on my body, Alexander was tired in a way I’d never seen him tired before. As if he’d been feverishly staving off exhaustion with his talents and superlative industry for all the years of the war, and only now, in victory, did his body succumb to its toll.
Once he was bathed and fed and put to bed, he stayed there. Not for a day, or even two. In truth, he scarcely rose from bed for two months. I began to worry he suffered from some contagion, for Cornwallis, exposing a deranged lack of character in his desperation, had infected liberated slaves from southern plantations with smallpox, forcing them to approach enemy lines in the hopes of spreading the illness to the American army. And this, from the man who’d offered them freedom!
Thankfully, my uncle, Dr. Cochran, had helped to inoculate our troops against the dread disease and Mama assured me that Hamilton had no symptoms of smallpox. Moreover, despite the breakdown in his stamina, Alexander remained in good humor. And I will confess, with some delight, that not all the time he spent in our bed was as an ailing convalescent. Despite my being eight months along, I was only too pleased that the comfort he required was not entirely of a medicinal nature . . .
“Is the war finally over?” I asked in the early days of his recovery as he wolfed down a breakfast of hot tea, eggs, ham, and my mother’s spiced pastries. My question was put softly, in a voice that struggled not to tremble, because even though everyone seemed to think the victory decisive, there had been too many disappointments to put my faith in it.
“Perhaps a few skirmishes are left,” he said, reaching for my hand and brushing his lips to my palm. “But if there should be another occasion to fight, it will not fall to me. For us, my charming wife, the war is at its end.”
How blithely he said it, and I was foolish enough to believe him. Foolish because I was desperately in love and puffed with pride. “And you’ve won it,” I said, having cut out every mention in every newspaper to keep as tokens of his glory. So many others had worked to achieve this victory. Many had died for it. But I believed—and still believe—what I said to him that day. “You are a hero, Alexander.”
And, to think, even Burr had once called him that.
“A small feat in this family,” Hamilton said with a smile that attempted, but failed, to be self-effacing. “Why, after seeing that tomahawk gouge in the staircase, I’m ready to recommend Peggy for a commission in the army. And yet, if you are inclined to reward me as befits a hero, I shall not mind.”
“Oh?” I asked, delighted at the sparkle in his eye. “How shall I reward you, Colonel Hamilton?”
In answer, he trailed his fingers over my swollen belly. “Present me with a boy.”
I laughed, kissing his face. Every inch of it. “Won’t a girl answer that purpose?”
He grinned. “By no means. I protest against a daughter. I fear that with her mother’s charms, she may also inherit the caprices of her father, and then our daughter will enslave, tantalize, and plague every man on earth.”
“I do see your point,” I replied, feeling a bit enslaved by the charismatic pull of his eyes, and tantalized as he drew me under the covers.
I knew that in the coming weeks I would be called on to exhibit a sort of heroism of my own. Though my mother had assured me that giving birth was not to be feared in a family such as ours with such hearty Dutch constitutions, I remembered how sick she’d been after the birth of the little brother who died in my arms. And lest I dismiss that as merely a function of Mama being a matron of nearly forty-seven years, my sister Angelica’s most recent birth had also gone hard. Even now, after two months, Angelica had not quite recovered her health, and the little boy was sickly. So my fears for myself were eclipsed by my fears for the child inside me, whom I loved already, boy or girl.
I would love my child with every breath for as long as I lived, whether it obeyed its father’s commands to be born male or no. And that gave me courage. Then, in the new year, after a whole day’s labor, my child emerged from that first breath, a culmination of all his parents’ wishes and desires,
and a reflection of all that was best in each of us.
A son. A little boy with eyes like his father’s and thick, dark, unruly hair like mine. Ten fingers, ten toes, with wondrously fat little legs. Papa affectionately called him a piglet, but in my eyes, my son was perfect in every way!
And if he did inherit Alexander’s caprices, he would undoubtedly enslave the fairer sex, for he’d already captivated me. In truth, my baby stole my heart upon his first little cry.
While Mama oversaw the birth, my sisters had been attending me, Angelica on one side, and Peggy on the other, holding my hands through the screaming while Alexander paced the black and white floor downstairs, knocking back glasses of my father’s best imported wine as if he could not be sober while my sisters forbade him from the birth room. But once the baby was cleaned and swaddled and put into my arms, my sisters finally gave up their vigil, and abandoned their posts so that my husband could meet his son.
Tears sprang to Alexander’s eyes the moment I surrendered the child into his arms. I knew my husband could be tender—there was a softness in him that others might have taken for weakness. But these tears, as he stooped to kiss me and our baby, were fierce expressions of love. “We’ll call him Philip,” he decided, choosing to honor my father rather than his own.
Then he vowed that he would never abandon me, or our son. And I believed him.
* * *
I FELL IN love with my son that spring. In truth, I fell in love with the entire world. Because with the war nearly over, everything seemed new. And in my baby’s eyes, everything seemed possible.
Philip was as sunny a child as ever lived. One who so commanded my heart that I could refuse him nothing. And I knew my indulgence was not to be remedied by the influence of a stern father. Because in those delightfully domestic months, one might be excused for thinking that—like Ben Franklin and the lightning rod—my husband had invented fatherhood.
Fractured by our son’s every cry and transported to heaven by every gurgle and smile, Alexander doted, day and night. Staring into the cradle, he boasted, “Philip is truly a very fine young gentleman. The most agreeable baby I ever knew—intelligent and sweet of temper. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” I agreed, with a laugh. “Of course.”
Sensing condescension, Alexander turned in mock outrage. “It’s true! He’s handsome and his eyes are sprightly and expressive. And he has a method of waving his hand that announces a future orator.”
A future orator. Such grand plans he had for our boy, before he was even out of swaddling.
But having been abandoned by his own father, it made sense for my husband to draw so close to his infant son. For him to feel not only the natural bonds that draw a parent to a child, but also the desire to make up for what he’d lacked. It was as if Alexander thought to somehow tip the scales of cosmic justice by giving his son all the love he hadn’t received.
“How entirely domestic I’m growing,” Alexander later said, bouncing our little Philip on his knee at Papa’s dinner table. “I sigh for nothing but the company of my wife and my baby, and have lost all taste for the pursuits of ambition.”
Kissing our father atop his head as she slipped into her seat, Angelica gave a delicate snort. “You without ambition? Betsy, call for a doctor. Hamilton must be sicker than we knew.”
The whole family laughed, because she wasn’t wrong to doubt him. Especially when his desk in the upstairs hall was piled with leather-bound, gilt-edged law books. Tory lawyers would no longer be permitted to practice in state courts, which left an opportunity for men like my husband to step into the vacancy, and Alexander had designed an ambitious plan to condense his study of the law and start his own practice.
Though he seemed content to live in my father’s house—and Papa was very happy to have us—I knew Hamilton yearned to make his own fortune. Late one night, he returned from his duties as a tax collector, and settling into a chair next to our sleeping baby, he opened a law book and whispered, “Go on to bed, love. I will now employ myself rocking the cradle and studying the art of fleecing my neighbors.”
Tax collecting by day, studying law by night, and somehow managing, in the midst of it all, to conspire with my father to build this brave new American world.
The Articles of Confederation had made less a new nation than a loose alliance of states. Hamilton and my father dreamed of something grander. And oh, how it filled my heart to see them together each night, talking through ideas, my father’s wisdom tempering my husband’s more passionate arguments—I took great pride in realizing that I’d given my father more than a son and my husband more than a father; I’d given both a trustworthy friend.
We were happy. I was never happier, I think.
In addition to getting to know my own little family that spring, we also had the chance to become better acquainted with Angelica’s. With the war winding down, Mr. Carter found more time to spend with us at the Pastures. He was debonair and worldly, and I could easily imagine how my brother-in-law’s dashing looks had won over Angelica. But his English reserve made them an odd match. Still, watching their four-year-old Philip hold my little boy on his lap for the first time filled my heart to bursting with the idea that our children would all grow up together, running these fields and playing in the river with their own New Netherlander children’s troops just as we had.
The only thing we needed now was for Peggy to add her own little brood . . .
I decided to broach the matter at the Pinkster festivities, where Albany’s slaves and freedmen performed African dances to wild drumbeats and sold us oysters and herbs from brightly colored carts. Pinkster was a time for setting aside the usual order of things. Blacks, whites, and Indians mingled and played games. Slaves slyly mocked their masters with relative impunity. And sweethearts stole away without any thought to propriety. So when a gentleman admirer dropped a bouquet of azaleas in Peggy’s lap and she rejected his suit out of hand, I said, “Alexander’s no Barbary pirate, I suppose, but I’m married off now, so what’s stopping you, Peg?”
Seated beside me on a quilt, a bucket of shucked oyster shells beside her, Peggy rolled her eyes, some sharp retort no doubt on her tongue. But before she could speak, Angelica dropped down beside us, smoothing her skirts. “What’s this about Alexander being a pirate?”
I chuckled, wondering if my husband’s ears were burning at the foot of the hill where he and my brothers were playing a game of ninepins. “Peggy once wished I’d marry one.”
Peggy batted her eyelashes and coyly threw each of us a glance. “For all you two know, what with how busy you’ve been making babies, perhaps I’m already betrothed.”
I gaped at her audacious reply. “You must tell us all the details at once.”
“It best not be a certain young Van Rensselaer boy,” Angelica said with a sly laugh. Stephen Van Rensselaer from our Blues troop, she meant, who was to turn eighteen in the fall. And who had spent much of the spring paying call to the Pastures. “I overheard Papa say he is far too young to marry.”
“Fortunately, Mama doesn’t agree,” Peggy said with a self-satisfied little smirk.
I could well imagine that our mother might truly approve of the match. Mama had always hoped that her daughters might marry into one of the great families of New York. And given the unconventional choices Angelica and I had made in husbands, Peggy might be my mother’s last hope until our little sisters came of age.
It was a bit unusual for a woman of Peggy’s age to marry a younger man, but then again, Stephen was set to inherit one of the largest and oldest estates in New York, so there were great advantages to the match, too.
I gave Peggy’s hand a squeeze, wanting her to find the same happiness I’d found. “Well, if you have Mama on your side, Papa will surely give his permission.”
Peggy bit her lower lip, then it all came out in a rush. “He has given his permission. On the condition that we wait until Stephen finishes his studies and is old enough that his family should not ob
ject. Also on the condition that we don’t tell anyone. Which is too cruel!”
I laughed and felt badly for laughing, because it did seem some manner of cruelty to make Peggy keep this secret. So, to distract her, Angelica and I devised all manner of dinner parties and other socials, where my sisters and I played the pianoforte and my brothers played the German flute to the amusement of all. And some of the most amusing gatherings were attended by the newly married Colonel Burr—whose dry wit was a charming accompaniment to my husband’s more sparkling playfulness.
In the months after our first meeting, Burr had become a near-constant fixture at the Pastures as he and Alexander shared Papa’s library in their studies of the law. At all hours, they could be found hunched over their books and papers, debating one point of law or another. I knew very well, of course, the brilliance of my own husband’s mind. But it surprised me that Colonel Burr proved quite nearly to be Alexander’s equal. For at every meal, party, and gathering, they insisted upon demonstrating their intellects, trying to outshine one another to the amusement and, sometimes, exasperation of all.
Indeed, Burr spent so much time at the Pastures that he had no compunction whatsoever about debating Angelica as if she were a man, good-naturedly disputing with my husband about what should come next for America, and arguing whether the principles spelled out in the Declaration of Independence really would become the basis of the enterprise.
The rest of us were all marvelously hopeful.
So it was notable when, in the midst of one of these dinner parties, my husband received a packet of letters and started for the stairs without a word.
“Where are you going?” I asked, but Alexander only mumbled something inaudible in reply.
I wished to follow him but needed first to politely disentangle myself from a surprisingly learned discussion with Angelica, Peggy, and Mrs. Theodosia Burr, a lady of daring outspokenness whose friendship and frequent companionship had further ensured my fondness for Colonel Burr. “What do you think about voting rights for women?” she asked in her typically provocative way.
My Dear Hamilton Page 18