The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “What you did this evening by listening to my guests,” he said finally. “That was useful to me. That was good. I appreciated it.”

  I let my silence stretch longer.

  “I am a practical man, Mary,” he said. “What I said earlier may have the ring of a cynic, but for the sake of those I care for most, I prefer to address the world as it is, not how I wish it to be.”

  The fire popped in the grate, and somewhere in the street a horse whinnied.

  “Please, Mary,” he said at last. “Please.”

  I knew this was more of an apology than I’d any right to receive from him. I sighed, and lifted my hand from the door’s latch.

  He crushed out the cigar, rose, and finished undressing. I slowly undressed, too, and joined him in the bed. For most of the night, all he did was hold me close, though around the first dawn he woke me. He took his time to give me pleasure, too, his way, I suppose, of showing he regretted how he’d treated me earlier.

  “I should go down to make breakfast, sir,” I said finally as the little clock on the mantel chimed the hour.

  “Peg can do that,” he said, his breath warm and close against my ear. “You don’t need to go yet.”

  “But don’t you have court today, sir?” I asked, even as I stretched languorously against him.

  “There’s time.” Lightly he stroked his fingers along my throat. “How did you come by this scar? Were you punished?”

  At once I stiffened. Because I’d been a child when I’d been forced to wear Madame’s collar, the scars on my neck had faded with time, and were now so faint—a zigzagging line left by the jagged edges—that most people took no notice. But the Colonel did.

  “I ran away, sir, and I was punished for it,” I said softly. “A collar was fastened around my neck.”

  “To make you recognized, and more easily captured?” he asked, tracing the pattern of the scars.

  I wished he weren’t so curious. He’d accepted the ragged scars from the whip across my back for what they were, but these other ones seemed to fascinate him.

  “So I couldn’t run away again, sir,” I repeated. “I was a child, and I foolishly believed I could find my way back to my old home. I ran away several times, and was always caught. At last they put the collar on me. Each night I was chained to one of the posts of Madame’s bed. Only she had the key.”

  “Cruel,” he said, but without much emphasis. I wondered how he’d feel if one of his own daughters had been treated in such a fashion. “You wouldn’t run away now, would you?”

  In truth, I had never really considered it, in either New Jersey or New York. Perhaps I was too cowardly, or perhaps I realized the dangers too well to take the risk. Here in the city, and with Mistress’s trust, I’d certainly have had my opportunities to flee. I could take all the small money I’d saved, buy myself new clothes, and find a captain who’d give me passage on a ship bound to another place. But the Colonel had already said he’d hunt me down if I fled, and I didn’t doubt that he would. Without friends to help me find a sanctuary, I’d more likely be captured and sold again, and into a much worse situation than I had at present. I wanted to be free, but without the papers to prove it I would spend the rest of my life on guard and on the run.

  “Tell me, Mary,” he said again; his voice was rough with need, and his hand now cupping my breast. “Would you ever try to run away from me?”

  So that was what he’d really meant. Once again my freedom was only part of the game to him. I wasn’t his property; I belonged to Mistress. Yet he didn’t want me to run away from him. Had he even realized he’d said it?

  By my best reckoning, I was twenty-eight years of age. My knowledge of men was slight, and based more on my observations of others than my own experience. Yet in these last days and nights, I’d soon realized that when the Colonel was alone with me he wanted me more than anything else in the world, and with a ferocity that I hadn’t before encountered. My husband, Lucas, had been the most gentle of men, and I had loved him for his purity and tenderness. The Colonel offered me neither, nor did I wish him to. But his desperate need to possess me ironically gave me a kind of power over him that I’d hoped to have, as if our lots in life were reversed so long as we were in this room.

  This power was largely an illusion, of course, as insubstantial as a shadow by the firelight. I was not so great a fool as to believe otherwise. In this city, he was an important gentleman with wealth and power, while I was only his wife’s chattel, without so much as a name that was truly mine.

  Yet I dared to hope that in some fashion I would be able to turn his desire for me to my favor, and coax my long-promised manumission from him. If he pursued me as a kind of game, a hunt, then I would do the same to him.

  I twisted sinuously to face him, and slid my hand lower between our bodies. He grunted with satisfaction, pressing against my palm.

  “I would never leave you, sir,” I whispered. “Never.”

  * * *

  As can be imagined, everything changed when Mistress and her children returned. There were no more private suppers with the Colonel, no more long nights and late mornings spent in his bed. He again assumed his role as a devoted husband and father, so completely that I marveled to see the ease with which he did it.

  The time away from the city had done Mistress good. Her belly was beginning to show more fully beneath her clothes, with her lying-in calculated to be in the late summer. Both she and the girls appeared cheerful, happy, and in as good health as could be expected. Even little Sally appeared to be improving, too, and her parents dared to hope that perhaps their prayers for her were finally to be answered.

  Mistress suspected nothing, and greeted me warmly as well. She’d even told me how glad she was to return to my care, and how badly run the household was at Williamson Hall in comparison to my management. I smiled, and nodded, and thanked her, but in my heart lay a different truth.

  Although Mistress would likely be stunned to learn it, I’d no great affection for her, and never had. I knew she believed herself to be a fine Christian lady, good and generous toward me and the other people she owned. I was given clothes and food and a place to sleep, and she’d never raised her hand against me herself. But she had refused me the chance to become Lucas’s legal wife. This selfish decision had deprived me of being declared his widow, and receiving the soldier’s benefits that Lucas had wanted for me, as well my chance at freedom with them. I couldn’t forgive her that.

  Especially not now. If I had captured even a small part of her husband’s attention, then for once, Fate had smiled at me, and I smiled, too.

  I returned to my own responsibilities, and to sleeping upstairs with the others. No one said anything to me of why I’d returned, or where I’d been sleeping before. I’m sure they all knew. A master showing interest in a servant was so old and sad a story that no one found it remarkable. I suspected the rest of the servants in our neighborhood were aware of it, too, from the silent commiseration I received from other women when I saw them in the street or at the market. What had happened to me could happen to any of them. The only difference was that I was the housekeeper and cook, not some cowering scullery maid who spoke no English, which made the Colonel’s actions even more noteworthy. All the whispers were directed toward him, for his lasciviousness, his hypocrisy, even his daring, and none for me—though in some ways I knew I was equally deserving.

  My friendship with the Colonel didn’t cease with Mistress’s return. Our assignations were not so frequent, to be sure, but if the Colonel was at home while Mistress was out for a length of time, calling on friends or visiting shops, he’d summon me to his library or his bedchamber, or seek me out himself within the house. I believe the intrigue even increased his ardor and his interest. If anything, he seemed more devoted to me than before, all of which I tried to turn to my advantage.

  But I knew it could not last.

  The first month I missed my courses, I thought nothing of it. I’d often missed a moon or
two. Besides, I wasn’t retching and feeling poorly the way Mistress had always been with her pregnancies. But when a second month had passed, and then the third, I could no longer deny the truth. I felt different, changed in a way that I could not define. I’d new life sprouting within me, and I was not as I’d been before.

  One morning on my way to the market, I stopped at the home of Mrs. Conger, a free woman who served as midwife to other black women, both free and not, in this part of the city. Her rooms were clean and scrubbed, and she herself was brisk and tidy and worthy of trust, with her head wrapped with a brilliant striped silk that made me think of Pondicherry. She put me at ease with a cup of cider, examined me, asked me the questions I’d expected, and then affirmed what in my heart I’d already known: that I was three months gone with the Colonel’s child.

  “Do you know the child’s father, Mrs. Emmons?” she asked as she helped me dress. It would sadly be a common question among her clients.

  “I do,” I said, “though I have not shared my suspicions with him.”

  She looked at me closely. “Will you?”

  I hesitated, then nodded. “Yes,” I said. “It will become a difficult secret to keep to myself.”

  “Babies usually are,” she agreed, then leaned closer, and lowered her voice. “Do you wish to contrive an accident? You are still early enough. I can guarantee nothing, of course, but there are ways that often—”

  “No,” I said quickly, and from instinct I placed my hand over my belly. As terrible as my own conception had been, my mother had not sought to do away with me, but had given me life, even as I’d taken her own. I could not do otherwise for this babe. “That is, I wish to bear the child.”

  She nodded. “Have you any notion of how Mrs. Burr will take this news? I’ve yet to tend another birth in that house.”

  “I—I do not know,” I said. I did, though. Long ago Mistress had told me she’d give away any bastards born to her servants, something she’d every right by law to do. I wanted to believe that the Colonel would not permit this to happen with any child of his, though that would mean he must confess to Mistress its parentage.

  But I also believed he would not let his child—our child—be born into slavery. He’d need to grant me my freedom before the birth. Before this, I’d blithely told myself that this would be the surest card I’d have to play with him. Now that this child was real, however, I was stunned by how much more intense my sentiments were. Already I felt the fierceness of mother-love, and the willingness to do whatever I must for its sake.

  I’d ten days to fret and plan what I’d say and how I’d counter the Colonel’s arguments, ten days while he was away at court elsewhere in the state. When he returned, another two days passed before I had my opportunity to find him alone, writing at his desk in his library. I didn’t squander my chance, either, but told him directly, while he’d the warm smile of desire for me.

  That smile froze in place, the pen still in his hand.

  “You surprise me, Mary,” he said. “You are certain of this?”

  “I am, sir,” I said as calmly as I could. “From the fortnight in February when Mistress was—”

  “There is no need to mention my wife’s name in connection with this,” he said quickly, his smile now gone. “She must never learn of it, especially not in her present condition.”

  I’d always known that he loved Mistress, not me, but it hurt to hear her and her own unborn child so bluntly put ahead of me and mine.

  “In time she will know, sir,” I said, unwilling to stray from my purpose. “Unless you choose to send me away, then she soon will see for herself.”

  His gaze flicked to my waist, calculating. “November?”

  I nodded.

  He sighed deeply. “She would suspect more if I sent you away,” he said. “Let me consider what will be the best course, and I’ll proceed from there.”

  “No, sir,” I said, raising my chin. “I am bearing our child, and I won’t let you decide what is best without me.”

  “Brave words, my dear, brave words indeed.” He leaned back in his chair, finally tossing the pen on top of the unfinished letter. “But considering the circumstances of our, ah, friendship, I am the one with the greater responsibility for the child’s future.”

  I knew I was fortunate that he neither denied that the child was his, nor refused to provide for it. Many other gentlemen would have not been so agreeable.

  I wished for still more.

  “I don’t doubt that you’ll be generous, sir,” I said, “and I am most grateful. But as the mother, sir, I must beg that the child not be taken from me, but remain mine to raise.”

  He frowned, and looked down at the unfinished letter before him. It was not a favorable sign that he couldn’t meet my eye. For all I knew, he’d sired a score of other unwanted children and they were no more than inconveniences to him.

  “Then you already are aware of my wife’s mandate on the subject of bastards,” he said, absently rubbing his finger along the barb of his pen. “Though as far as I know, it has never been tested within her household.”

  “No, sir,” I said, more sorrowfully than I’d intended. “This would be the first time. But I would ask you to consider the future of our child. This will not be a—a common bastard. Consider how your son or daughter will be blessed with a measure of your intelligence, your wit, your resolve, the bravery you showed in battle.”

  “Your bravery as well, Mary, in coming here to me,” he said, glancing up at me again. “That’s a substantial heritage for any child.”

  His expression had softened as I’d spoken, and the hint of a smile again played upon his lips. He was imagining the child that I described, exactly as I’d hoped. As a young child, he’d been left an orphan himself, and he often spoke of how lost he’d felt without the guidance of a loving parent in his life. I could see he was remembering that again as he listened to me, and blending his own childhood with that of this son or daughter. His eyes, so large and luminous, could betray him at times like this, and I’d often thought of how much effort it must take for him to remain impassive in court.

  I wondered, too, if our child would have those same eyes, and for the first time I felt the tremor of tears rising in my throat.

  “How could I give our child away to be raised by strangers, sir?” I asked with a catch to my voice. “Our child, sent away like some unwanted mongrel?”

  “That will not happen,” he said slowly, firmly, leaving no doubt. “I do not want to lose you, Mary, and I will do my best for you, and for the child. You have my word on it.”

  I nodded, speechless with relief, and my tears spilled over. My knees began to sway beneath me, and I grabbed for the edge of the desk to steady myself.

  He noticed, and hurried forward to catch me, his arms around my waist. I hadn’t yet asked for our child’s freedom—or mine—but these were the first steps toward it.

  All I could do now was pray that he’d keep his word.

  * * *

  Through that spring and into the summer, I was surprised by how easy it was to keep my pregnancy a secret. I tired more easily, and was also more hungry, but beyond that I wasn’t ill, as many women were. I continued my tasks as usual. Undressed, my growing belly and fuller breasts were evident enough to me—and to the Colonel—but hidden beneath the layers of my clothes they scarcely showed. I worried that this might mean some sort of defect in the child, but Mrs. Conger assured me that there was no danger. Rather, because this was my first pregnancy, and because my form was by nature more rounded, the changes were less noticeable. I also took to wearing an extra petticoat as well as a larger apron, both to help mask my increasing girth.

  In contrast Mistress grew more and more unwell as her time approached. Again she took to her bed, and slept fitfully for more hours than she was awake. The Colonel sat beside her as much as he could spare from his work, often with Sally and Theodosia on her bed to cheer her. As before, one of the midwife’s women stayed in the house fo
r the last weeks, and I was grateful to be in Mistress’s company so little lest she take notice of my own state. She was forty-one, and it was understood that this child—her eighth—would likely be her last. Once again, she desperately longed to give the Colonel a son, and she kept a hand pressed to her belly at all times to reassure herself that the child moved and prospered.

  On a sweltering night in early July, only days after Independence Day, her travail began. Both the midwife and physician were summoned, and all signs pointed to a happy delivery. But alas, the much-wanted son she delivered that evening was without life, perfectly formed yet stillborn like his brother had been the winter before. Again the house was swallowed in grief for a child, the worst grief imaginable. When at last I was able to retreat to my pallet, I curled on my side, my hands protectively cradling my own belly, praying the same grim fate would not befall my own little one.

  Haunted by these fears, I didn’t sleep well, and before dawn I’d already crept down the back stairs toward the kitchen. On my way, I saw the door ajar to the Colonel’s library, and the light from candles. I found him within, asleep at his desk with his head pillowed on his arms and two of the three candles guttered out.

  “Sir,” I said softly, resting my hand on his shoulder to wake him. “Sir, you should go to bed.”

  He jerked awake, blinking at me in sleepy confusion before he remembered his grief.

  “Ah, Mary,” he said, his voice low with anguish. “How could this have happened again?”

  “I am sorry, sir,” I said, and I was. No one deserved such a grievous misfortune. “For you and for Mistress both.”

  “I do not know how she will bear this loss,” he said wearily. “My poor wife! To come so close on the heels of last year is insuperable, even for a Christian.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I whispered, the words so insufficient. “I’m sorry.”

  He turned as I stood beside him and placed his hands over my apron, over our child. Through my clothes, I knew he wouldn’t feel anything. I’d only sensed the first quickening myself in these last weeks, the tiniest of fluttering kicks.