The attic. I’d somehow fallen asleep there, in the heat, exhausted by an agony of the soul. And now I saw my son’s bare feet upon the wood planks, loose pages strewn by his toes. For one absurd moment in the delirium, I thought to scold William, as I’d done when he was a child, for walking about like a barefooted street urchin instead of a young gentleman.
But then I saw the lace garter clutched in his hand.
William was reading my sister’s letters, and I didn’t think the burning flush upon his cheek was exertion or summer heat. “I came up because I worried for you—but I didn’t want to wake you when I found you asleep. You haven’t slept much lately.”
My heart jolted, and I shoved myself up. It was all I could do to resist pulling the paper and lace from his hands, but in doing so, I’d only expose myself. Expose everything. He couldn’t possibly attach any meaning to that garter, which had slipped off my sister’s thigh long before he was born, but oh, dear Lord, how much had he read?
“I’m sorry to have worried you,” I managed, struggling for breath in the now hellish heat of the attic. Perspiration pooled at my nape, and my black frock clung to my back.
William quietly nodded, but his expression was bleak and his eyes were a storm. “My father wrote these letters to Aunt Angelica?”
Those were the words he spoke, but not what he truly meant to ask.
And I could almost see it. Almost see William standing at the precipice of a suspicion that would shatter everything he believed about his father, and about himself. And what mother—especially one clinging to that same edge by her fingertips—could allow her child to fall?
Forcing a smile, I said, “Oh, yes. Your father and Aunt Angelica were very good friends. It’s such a comfort to me to read their letters and remember it.”
My son—the one born while his father confessed adultery to the world—swallowed hard. He scrutinized my face, and then his gaze fell to my hand. “You’re not wearing your ring.”
As my mind raced, I thought I might be sick. Burr once said I wasn’t an actress of any talent. It was my sister who could bury her misery and heartbreak beneath pleasantries and a fan of playing cards in her hand. But now I called upon whatever powers of deception I’d ever learned from her to say, “The heat has swollen my fingers.” I kissed my boy’s cheek. “Or perhaps I’ve been eating too much. Speaking of, shall we go down and fix some breakfast?”
“You haven’t eaten anything,” William said. “Not more than a nibble for days.”
What a Hamilton he was—a dogged interrogator assembling proofs and challenging my testimony. But I determined then and there that he’d never find me out.
“Well, that explains why I’m so famished,” I said, feigning a lightness of spirit I didn’t feel, and might never feel again. “And thirsty. Will you fetch me a glass of switchel?”
He nodded, slowly relinquishing to me the letters and his aunt’s garter. And I believed he was tricked by the mask I presented. I realized later that I was wrong.
But I didn’t know that then, I only knew it was a mask I was determined to wear from that day forth. Because I couldn’t deprive my children of their cherished memories of their father. Not after I’d nursed them all on a reverence for Alexander that neared worship.
I’d hoped that lionizing their father would compensate my children for the absence of his guidance, protection, and comfort. That it would somehow make up for the suffering he’d exposed them to. For the debts he’d left. And for the scandal he’d saddled us all with.
Was it comedy or tragedy that after all my husband had done to defend his name, there was not a corner of the country where Hamilton did not conjure up salacious gossip of harlots and infidelity? No place the name Hamilton did not rouse animosity amongst those who held political power. My sons had, each of them, felt compelled to become soldiers to prove themselves loyal, useful, and worthy of the country they’d been bequeathed. And given those circumstances, no mother who loved her children could ever wish to infect them with the contagion of doubt that now malingered inside my breast about what kind of man their father had been.
They knew him as the mythic hero who’d driven a carriage of the sun across the sky; they didn’t need to know he’d crashed it into my world, leaving me in fiery ruin.
So there was no one with whom I could share my bitter cup of poison. I would simply have to swallow the injustice down and lie about the taste until it killed me.
Or until the shame of it burned me alive.
* * *
I shall never forget the destructive majesty of the flames.
—HARRY SMITH ON THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON
The nation was on fire, and part of me wanted to watch it burn. To bear witness to the end just as I’d borne witness to its beginnings. Everything to which I had devoted my life, in flames . . .
In our capital, British soldiers had put a torch to the naval yard, the congressional library, and burned the President’s Mansion right down to Dolley Madison’s bright red curtains. Our president was a fugitive in his own country, having been forced to flee his supper—his wife at least prescient enough to steal away with famous portraits and national treasures before it all went up in smoke.
“These blundering Republicans have led our country defenseless and naked into this lake of blood!” Alex shouted, thumping one fist on the window frame while his other hand gripped the sword swaying at his hip, and I was pained by how much like his father he looked in uniform.
My soldier sons had
