My son blanched. “But I’ve already agreed. Uncle Church and Mr. Pendleton say that I cannot now decline.”
“I know,” I replied, trying not to show how it vexed me that gentlemen all seemed to view me as an enfeebled creature, too broken by grief to know what was best for my own children. “But my wish is for you to stay in New York.”
Alex furrowed his ginger brow. “You worry I’ll fritter away my evenings.” A faint note of hurt underscored his words, as if he thought himself accused of gambling, drinking, or carousing. “Or that I might neglect church and not know right from wrong—”
“No,” I reassured him. “You’re a good boy.”
But Philip had been a good boy, too.
I wasn’t worried about the evil that my son might get himself into in Boston. I worried about the evil lying in wait for a son of Alexander Hamilton. Especially one who shared his name. Every day Alex was out of my sight, I’d live in fear of him being lured into a duel or simply murdered somewhere far from his relations or anyone who could help him.
Perhaps he, too, would be found floating facedown in a river like James Callender . . .
Of course, I could say none of this to my son without provoking some show of Hamiltonian bravado. So I only said, “I’m a sorrowing mother overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for all your brothers and sisters. I can’t manage without you.”
It wasn’t fair what I was asking him, a young man on the cusp of making his own future. Hadn’t we fought to ensure that young men like Alex could choose for themselves how and where they lived, worked, and made a name? And yet, he swallowed down his objections even if with trepidation. “Am I to . . . to farm at the Grange?”
I smiled softly, knowing that none of Hamilton’s bookish boys were suited to working the soil. Nor were there resources at the Grange that might make us a profit. “We’ll take a house in the city so you can study the law,” I said. “A house big enough for all your brothers and sisters, and for Ana to have her privacy. And large enough to store all your father’s papers—perhaps with a library that a writer might visit.”
Alex squinted. “A writer?”
“I want to hire a biographer,” I explained.
They’d murdered my husband. They’d taken him from me. But I still had his words, and they were my solace. Hamilton could still speak to me through those pages. His love letters. His ideas. His essays. Thousands of pages.
They could kill him, but they couldn’t silence him. Not if his story was told. Not if his work was preserved. And I resolved to collect the pieces of the legacy Alexander left behind.
For, just as “Captain Molly” had taken her fallen husband’s place at his cannon, I would take my husband’s place fighting for his country. And this—Alexander’s life, his death, and everything he stood for—had now become my battle.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I pray God that something may remain for the maintenance of my dear wife and children. But should it be on the contrary, probably her own patrimonial resources will preserve her from indigence.
—ALEXANDER HAMILTON IN HIS LAST WILL
August 1804
Albany
LET ME TAKE you home,” Angelica had urged when New York indicted Burr for murder. “Papa has been frantic to embrace and comfort you. He’s too old and sick to leave the house now, but I fear he’ll attempt it anyway if you don’t fly to his arms. And it may kill him.”
I’d won the first battle in my war against Burr, so I went. Because I was a dutiful daughter. Because I needed my father as much as he needed me. And because my sister convinced me it might do Ana some good.
Together, the three of us arrived at the Pastures, and my heart beat faster. And only belatedly did I realize why. Alexander and I married in this house. Philip had been born here. We’d started our life and our family here. And perhaps some part of me hoped to be reunited with him here, too. I longed to hear his laugh float down from the upstairs salon where he’d studied for the law and planned our future. But of course now our dreams and plans were nothing more than the dust that had collected on every surface.
Prince would never have allowed the dust in his day, I thought, running a finger over the sideboard beneath Mama’s portrait, who would have thrown a fit to find dirt in her house. Prince had died the previous summer and been buried on the plot of Schuyler land where slaves were laid to rest. Next to Jenny, and Dinah, who had perished without having experienced the freedom she had once tried to seize for herself.
Jenny, Dinah, Prince, Mama, Peggy, Philip, Alexander . . .
All ghosts, and the house was like a tomb. A lonely clock ticked in the deserted blue parlor. A faded green velvet chair propped open the door to Papa’s vacant study—a study we’d once made available to Aaron Burr.
And it made me remember that right from that first moment, Burr had wanted something from my family. He’d borrowed my father’s books for his own advancement. In repayment, he’d told me of my husband’s victory of Yorktown, and oh, I think he was jealous even then.
Burr was always clever. But what did he accomplish? He never penned any great treatises. Never signed his name to our founding documents. Never wrote a book that I knew of. Even the bank he created was birthed of trickery. He was never more than a
