I froze at the threshold and gazed out at the carriage where my daughter already waited. “Oh,” I said, hollowly.
“You can visit,” he reassured me. “When she’s settled. Certainly, you’ll want to visit.”
“Yes,” I said. “As soon as possible.”
The doctor smiled and doffed his cap.
Meanwhile, I looked past him to my beautiful Ana, who would continue to age, but never grow old. My eyes saw her alive, but my heart felt like I was losing another child. I was losing another child. And heartbroken against relentless losses, I just stood there, numb against the cold, watching until I could no longer see my daughter’s retreating carriage.
* * *
March 1805
New York City
They wept for Aaron Burr.
The story made all the papers. Far from shunning a man indicted for murder in two states, Jefferson invited Burr to dine at the president’s mansion. But then perhaps sensing that Burr could be of no further use to him in his second term, Jefferson replaced him as vice president. Thus, in Burr’s farewell address on the floor of the Senate chamber, he stood in front of God and country and dared to speak of law and order and liberty, and the need of the Senate to protect the Constitution from the silent arts of corruption and the sacrilegious hands of the demagogue.
And, on their feet and applauding, the members of that body wept for the man who murdered my husband.
Of course, afterward Burr suffered almost instantaneous political exile. I have ever thought that was too kind a fate by far. But he was now on the run, and that would have to satisfy me.
For I had more pressing matters to attend. Namely, my conscience. Since giving over my eldest daughter to a doctor’s care, I couldn’t shake the guilt. Which was why—in what I think now was partly a desperate act of penance for having sent Ana away—I turned my attention back to the Society for the Protection of Poor Widows with Small Children.
Still working with Widow Graham, her daughter, Mrs. Joanna Bethune, and several other pious ladies, I rededicated myself to raising funds, reviewing eligibility requirements, and visiting the homes of candidates for our assistance to determine whether they met the criteria. Which sometimes meant taking the ferry across the East River to Blackwell’s Island, location of one of the city’s most notorious almshouses.
From the outside, the almshouse was a series of sagging, decrepit, gray blocks surrounded by mud, filth, and excrement. Despite its location on an island, the air was stagnant and thick, unhealthful and miasmic. Inside was worse. The halls reeked of every manner of bodily function, and the few little ones with energy enough to spy on me around doorframes were so malnourished as to be frightening in their appearance.
“Pardon me,” I said to the clerk sitting with boots propped upon the desk and a hat resting over his eyes.
Lazily, he moved the hat, and his dark gaze cut up to the basket of victuals I carried. A sneer settled upon his bearded face. “God save me from do-gooders,” he murmured.
I paid him no mind. “I’m here to see Widow Donohue.” He made no move to render assistance, but I was not easily put off. “Would you be so kind as to let her know that Mrs. General Hamilton is here to see her?”
Suddenly, the man righted his chair and stood. “Mrs. . . . General Hamilton.” He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Right away. And please use the administrator’s office. He’s out just now.”
“Thank you, good sir.” I smiled, for it was easier to forgive the man’s rudeness when his respect for my husband was so apparent.
The Hamilton name still held power in New York, and I wasn’t afraid to use it in the service of protecting children—mine and those of the city Alexander helped build.
“Mrs. Hamilton?” came a woman’s voice from the doorway, a babe on her hip, and a wisp of a girl clinging to her dirty, threadbare skirts. For a moment, I saw not the orphaned girls but my own Little Phil and Lysbet, who were not much older, and I yearned to set them all at ease.
“Thank you for meeting with me. Please sit.” Smiling, I opened my basket and laid out a few pastries I’d baked. Hunger etched the faces of the precious little girls. I gave them a nod and watched in satisfaction as they ate their fill.
“Now, Mrs. Donohue, if we might begin our interview . . . may I ask how old you are?”
“Twenty,” she answered.
Twenty. Just Ana’s age. Ana could have been married. Ana could have had children of her own . . .
It didn’t take long to determine that Mrs. Donahue met the society’s criteria. She had a home, such as it was. She was mother of children under the age of ten. She had no income, didn’t beg or sell liquor, and appeared to be of good moral character.
The assistance we could offer would help in her daily struggle for survival, exposed to the contaminating influence of the impious, immoral, indolent, and criminal. And she was grateful. But still, she asked, “What—what will happen to my children, Mrs. Hamilton, if I should die?”
I had no good answer. Our charity was founded to benefit widows. Nothing in our charter allowed for us to help orphans. And it seemed to me quite an oversight.
Upon taking my leave of the almshouse, I glanced at the clerk’s open ledger, listing children that had been admitted to this place—and copied it into my notebook.
Brigit Fogarty, age 2 weeks, died of congestion of the brain
Catherine Connor, age 6 months, died of marasmus
Albert Smith, age 3 weeks, died of diarrhea
Charles May, age 6 weeks, died of syphilis
On and on it went.
Children dead of overcrowding and disease and sheer misery.
Were my own children so different from these little lost souls? What should happen to them if I should fall ill and die? Though Angelica promised she’d
