“It will need lights,” I said, fretfully, hoping that my sister could send me elegant chandeliers and torchères from London. Rustic lights and lanterns would not do for the secretary of the treasury, for whom our previous abode had become suddenly unbearable. Too small for a growing family, my husband said. Too small for a man of his stature, he meant, a man whose portrait now hung in City Hall. A man whose department of government was growing every day, and whose power grew larger with it.
Certainly my husband’s physical stature had become somewhat larger. Sedentary toil had taken its toll. But I rather liked the softer lines of Alexander’s face, and the new weight of his arms around me, as if it somehow made his need for me more substantial. In truth, I liked it so well that when the winter’s snow came, I wasn’t surprised to discover I was again with child. And my husband startled at my suggestion for a name, should it be a boy. “John?”
“After your friend,” I said, gently, hoping to please him. But instead of it drawing him closer to me, he stared into the distance. To prevent the complete retreat that any mention of John Laurens inevitably occasioned, I quickly added, “And after my brother-in-law. If Church brings Angelica home, I could forgive him everything. It cannot hurt to remind the man of his family bonds in America . . .”
Hamilton nodded, slowly. “Clever. I fear I have finally corrupted you and turned you into a politician.”
“Never,” I replied, for I was still sometimes too earnest for the insincerity and idle gossip that served as currency amongst politicians and their wives. I disliked immensely the game I called Who Is Out of Fashion, in which the ladies of the town seemed to collectively decide who must be shunned for some embarrassing faux pas, exaggerated sleight—or even for wearing the wrong gown. Lady Washington’s dignity was such that she transcended the game, and my dear Hamilton teased that I was too much of an angel to know the rules. But I did know the rules of the game. I just didn’t wish to play.
Especially not now, when my husband was a man of fraying nerves.
Darting in and out of the house for meetings at irregular hours. Short-tempered with the children—even the girls, whom he doted on. If I didn’t know his urgency about the country’s business—and a vengeful obsession with keeping Aaron Burr from running for governor of New York—I might have suspected something nefarious afoot.
Especially when, one afternoon in December of 1792, my husband advised me not to answer the door to strangers when he wasn’t at home. “Are we in some danger?” I asked.
Snapping open a gazette, Alexander said, “It’s only that I have enemies in this city who would be happy to abuse my wife’s ears. And you’re too far gone with child to risk any unhappiness.”
I didn’t doubt that he had enemies. A new partisan newspaper had been started, with, as its sole aim, the destruction of my husband and his policies. And there were whispers that the paper was funded by none other than Mr. Jefferson, though I disbelieved he’d stoop to it.
All my husband’s plans, all his schemes, were working—the promises of stability and prosperity finally being realized by our countrymen. And yet, the antifederalists saw in him some manner of corrupt, power-hungry upstart intent upon crushing the rights of our states and enriching the North at the South’s expense. They used pseudonyms, but we knew the identity of at least one of the writers because perhaps no one else in the world had better cause to know Madison’s writing than we did.
And it had crushed Hamilton’s spirits to see our old friend’s formidable pen turned against us. Still, I didn’t fear little Jemmy Madison coming to my door to berate me. I couldn’t even imagine such an absurdity, and if it came to pass I should have no difficulty driving him off with a frying pan. So I couldn’t fathom my husband’s fears. “You’re sure it’s not more than that? When loyalists came to abduct Papa, we were better off for having been forewarned. If I should need to fear a tomahawk splintering our stair rail, I’d rather you tell me.”
Hamilton grimaced, as if not realizing I was making a jest. “Just don’t open the door to strangers.”
* * *
December 12, 1792
Philadelphia
I shouldn’t be able to remember the chill in my bones that wintry night. Or the little mewling cries of my newborn, who awakened me for milk. But I do remember. I remember how I climbed from our bed and took the candle into the nursery—only to find my daughter Ana already there, staring out the window that overlooked the street.
“Bad men are coming to get us, Mama,” she whispered, standing at the window. With a freckled nose and dark auburn hair, she was an imaginative child who invented beautiful songs and countless ways to amuse herself. But like her father, she was easily agitated.
“Why are you awake, my darling? No one is coming. It’s only your dreams.” I shooed her back to bed before I saw them—two shadowy men lingering across the way near the president’s house.
They stooped in the darkness against a low brick wall, the light of a lantern between them, their breaths puffing into the air. Then a newcomer joined—a lady—though no woman of good reputation would be on the streets alone with two men at this hour. They bent their heads, motioning toward our house.
Then these plotters, these obvious ne’er-do-wells, sent her, a slender slip of a thing, to climb our icy stairs and rap at our front door.
Don’t open the door to strangers.
Still cradling our babe, I remembered my husband’s admonition. And a shudder ran through me as I realized how easily he might be
