My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  “May I tend you, sir?” I asked as a fevered man retched into the straw, too ill to answer. I sponged the sweat from the back of his neck and had just given him a small sip of wine posset to settle him when my aunt was called to help my uncle amputate the frozen feet of a sentry.

  Please let the sentry swoon, I prayed as his screams soon broke past the bullet upon which he was to bite down. At the very least, I hoped he’d been given rum to ease his pain, but I feared otherwise, because he wasn’t an officer and we were rationing the rum.

  I turned to see his black toes and severed flesh flung into a bloody bucket, and I feared I might disappoint Aunt Gertrude’s expectations because bile rose and my stomach rolled. It was only with great effort that I made myself go about my duties, as if screams were not echoing off the high ceiling of the nave.

  At length, the screaming stopped. My uncle abandoned his bloody instruments, snapped off his gore-speckled apron, and uttered a curse for which he immediately begged God’s pardon. Wearing a grim expression, Aunt Gertrude called for a stretcher.

  “He can’t have died,” I said.

  Soldiers could live without toes. Without fingers, feet, arms, and legs, too.

  “T’was the pain,” Aunt Gertrude replied.

  Before that, I hadn’t known someone could perish from pain alone. Since then, I have learned it to be true, but learned the opposite as well. That stubborn life can cling to a person, even when they are in such pain that they wish they would die.

  Aunt Gertrude murmured a prayer and told me to return to my tasks. A few moments later, the church door opened and closed against a sharp winter wind and Alexander Hamilton strode past me.

  “Dr. Cochran,” Hamilton said from close enough that I could hear the men’s conversation. “We’re suffering a nearly complete depletion of medicinal supplies and His Excellency will need a much fuller accounting of your request.”

  My uncle stood rinsing his hands in a bucket. “As explained in our letter, at present, the patients bed down together. Pox victims next to amputees, pneumonia sufferers cough on boys with dysentery, and so on. We ought to separate them, and to do that we need more hospitals.”

  “That I understand, sir,” Hamilton said. “But I’m still left bewildered as to why you should need gunpowder.”

  Though I didn’t know it then, more than any of Washington’s other aides-de-camp, Hamilton was an all-seeing eye over each munition and every last kernel of corn. And he looked aghast when my uncle explained that he wanted to burn precious gunpowder to purify putrid air.

  I thought the willingness of our doctors to experiment was laudatory, but Hamilton’s fingers flicked in annoyance. “The general finds the application for gunpowder unusual and doesn’t think it proper to authorize it.”

  I was startled by the impression that Hamilton was speaking for George Washington without asking. As if he were empowered to do so! My uncle looked as if he might argue, but was too weary. “Perhaps we might discuss this later, Colonel.”

  “I cannot imagine the answer will change,” Hamilton said, with great officiousness. “But I don’t wish to keep you from your work.” With that, he turned to go, quite nearly stumbling over me where I crouched to tend a patient. “Miss Schuyler? I didn’t expect to see you . . . I’m astonished to find you . . . here.”

  Rising to my feet with a pail of vinegar water, I said, “Surely you know Dr. Cochran is my uncle.”

  Hamilton’s gaze traveled the length of me, as if to be sure the girl he’d last seen in a brocaded gown could be the same one now before him in a nurse’s apron. “Of course. But I didn’t realize . . . most belles could not withstand these sights and indelicate smells.”

  I was not, of course, immune to the putrid perfume of sweat, vomit, urine, and blood, but my discomfort hardly mattered. “I’m bothered more by the suffering than the smell.”

  Hamilton nodded. “Another statement that serves as poor proof against your sainthood.”

  I smiled. “Then my aunt must also be a saint. And Mrs. Washington, who tends the soldiers sometimes, too. How can I do less, if God has given me the capacity?”

  He returned my smile, and his gaze lingered on my face. “Far be it from me to question God. I bid you good day, Miss Schuyler.”

  “To you as well,” I replied, watching him go.

  But he’d only marched five steps before he stopped, paused, then turned back. “I neglected to mention that another storm may be coming. If so, you won’t want to be caught here after dusk. I’d be happy to escort you and save your aunt and uncle the trouble of conveying you home.”

  It wouldn’t save them any trouble at all, but there was something about the way he’d debated making the offer that intrigued me, even though it could be nothing but a flimsy pretext to pay call upon Kitty. But I had completed the chores my aunt set for me and thought that perhaps I could use the opportunity to speak on my uncle’s behalf.

  And, in truth, I wanted to go with him.

  So I washed, retrieved my gloves, and allowed him to hold the door for me as we left the church. “Colonel Hamilton, are you certain His Excellency would deny Dr. Cochran’s request?” I asked as we stepped outside and walked together down the snowy lane.

  Hamilton seemed amused that I might question him. “I know your uncle to be an excellent and learned physician. But I also studied medicine at King’s College, before the war. And when I explain my reservations about the safety of burning gunpowder in a wooden church, and remind General Washington of the scarcity of our resources, I’m sure he’ll see the absurdity of it.”

  “If you’ve studied medicine, Colonel, then you should know that smoke smudging is an old and revered medicine. I’ve seen it practiced by the Iroquois as a cleansing ritual, albeit not with gunpowder.”

  “At long last, a detail of your sojourns amongst the Indians that Tilghman neglected to mention,” he said with a teasing smirk as we passed under tree boughs that sagged with the weight of new-fallen snow. “Nevertheless, I can only put to His Excellency a plan to part with supplies in the interest of science, not superstition.”

  That should have ended the matter. Normally I wouldn’t have inquired further. But something about Hamilton provoked me. “Our men at Valley Forge were ignorant of the science behind cooking white corn. It was the Oneida allies my father and Lafayette recruited who taught them better.” Remembering how Hamilton spoke reprovingly to Angelica about the unfair ways we’d been taught to view Negroes, I added, “Perhaps you dismiss Indian medicine as superstition with unfair prejudice.”

  Hamilton’s mouth opened, then snapped shut again. “Certainly our Indian allies have proved invaluable to our cause. And they deserve the respect of humanity. However—”

  “Then I appeal to your humanity to give the doctor what he requires.”

  Hamilton laughed, which was not at all the reaction I’d wished. “Had you appealed to my friendship or gallantry it would have been irresistible. I should think myself bound to attack windmills in your service. But when you appeal to the general principle of humanity, I must show you that even the eloquence of your plea cannot tempt our Fabius to do wrong.”

  “Fabius?”

  “I mean General Washington, of course, who, like the Roman hero of old, pursues a strategy of evading and wearing down the enemy. Avoiding pitched battles and, above all, conserving supplies.”

  Hamilton obviously had done some cold manner of calculation, weighing sickness against the possibility of battle, deciding the gunpowder could not be spared. So I did not press him further. Instead we walked in silence, only the sound of the snow crunching underfoot between us, until I had to ask. “Are we losing the war, Colonel?”

  It was an impulsive question, one that Hamilton shouldn’t have answered. But he did. “Yes, we’re losing the war.”

  I was so surprised by his candor that I slipped on the ice. He caught me by the arms and steadied me until we stood facing one another. And his blue eyes again gave the impression of violet
against the bleakness of all that surrounded us.

  “Is it—is it because of the desertions?” I asked.

  “Miss Schuyler, I begin to worry you are utterly destitute of the frivolousness which is justly deemed one of the principal accomplishments of a belle.”

  “I shall take that as a compliment, sir.”

  “I’m not sure I meant it as one,” he said.

  I swallowed against a sudden unexpected wanting, and took a step back. “Still, you were saying about the war . . .”

  He shrugged as we resumed walking. “We’re losing the war for a thousand reasons, starting with the fact that you arrived here not long after a mutiny. We’re not sure how much longer we can hold this army together. Oh, militia will fight if you pick a time and place and send a pretty invitation, but the hard slog of a disciplined army ready to strike whenever opportunity presents itself is what’s necessary.”

  It was part of the trouble my father faced with militias and the Green Mountain Boys, so I understood. What he said next, I understood less.

  “Then there is the deranged state of our currency—the value of paper money has dwindled to nothing. And the necessity of a foreign loan is now greater than ever.” He glanced at me before summarizing. “Our affairs are in a bad way, but perhaps Europe will save us in spite of ourselves. If Lafayette returns with assistance from France, it could change everything.”

  “Fortunately, I know the marquis to be resourceful.”

  “So he is.” Hamilton’s expression softened. “I forget that even if you know nothing of old Romans, you are Schuyler’s daughter, and a woman of the world.”

  “Is it your way to taunt and flatter in the same breath?”

  “It is when I’m trying to win a lady’s admiration.”

  I slanted him a glance. “Is that what you’re trying to do?”

  He peered down at me, the hint of a smile around too pretty of a mouth. “I sense that you disapprove of me, Miss Schuyler. Though it is assuredly my own fault, it is fast becoming a circumstance I cannot bear.”

  Did he really care so much what I thought of him? “I confess no such disapproval, sir.”

  “Only indifference?”

  A little smile tugged at the corners of my mouth as we sparred. “I do not confess to that either.”

  He slowed, staring at me a moment. “I meant it for a compliment.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Before. When I chastised you for earnestness.” He cleared his throat. “You took it for a compliment and I meant it as one. I was too embarrassed to say so.”

  Too embarrassed? So he did care what I thought of him, a fact that delighted me more than it should. “Why would it embarrass you?”

  He dug his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Because you possess a very strange charm. And you reveal to me a weakness in my fortifications against your sex. I’ve built a bulwark against guile, but have no weapon against sincerity.”

  “I didn’t realize the sexes were in battle.”

  “Always,” he replied with an arch smile. “The eternal one. Against marriage. Against the delusion that two people can make one another happy for a lifetime. It’s a dog of a life when two dissonant tempers meet, and ’tis ten to one this is the case.”

  “Then you are a foe of love.”

  “Never love. Only marriage. Miss Livingston might have once laid claim to my heart. I ran a great chance of being ostracized by my fellows for dedicating so much time to so trifling and insignificant a toy as woman, but All for Love is my motto.”

  Kitty had hurt him somehow, I realized. Or some woman did. Which is why I decided not to cut his pompous self-regard to ribbons. “Kitty can be fickle.”

  He ducked his chin into the collar of his great coat. “I would not give her the blame. I’m a stranger from the West Indies. I have no property here in this country, no connections. If I have talents and integrity, these are very spurious titles in these enlightened days.”

  So Hamilton was a foreigner. That explained his slight accent—or rather, the way in which he suppressed one. That he wasn’t from the colonies was of no consequence to me whatsoever, but I noted the bitterness. “And yet, your origins have not prevented you from a trusted place in Washington’s inner circle. Does that not fill you with hope for your future?”

  “I try not to think of a future. When I was a child, I wished for a war to improve my circumstance, and now war has been the whole of my life since the start of the revolution. So, I expect to mingle my fate with America’s should she lose her struggle.”

  It was an admirable sentiment, if expressed with almost a sadness that made me wish to reassure him. “But what if we win?”

  He gave me an indulgent look, as if he thought me hopelessly optimistic. “Then I will turn away from the corruption of the world and retire to a frugal life in the countryside roasting turnips, like the general Manius Curius Dentatus.” Another old Roman, I guessed. He seemed fascinated by them. But when he saw the name meant nothing to me, he smirked. “I begin to think I should loan you some books.”

  “A musty tome will not tell me what I wish to know.”

  “Which is?”

  “Whether you could be content planting turnips.”

  He dug with the toe of his boot in the snow. “It sounds like a lonely business.”

  Now I couldn’t help but twit him. “Didn’t Dentatus have a wife to help him plant his turnips?”

  He grinned. “I suppose he must have.”

  “What was her name?”

  Hamilton paused for a heartbeat. “Aquileia. A sweet and devoted woman—no coquette, not fickle in the slightest.”

  “Would it be unkind to think you invented that name?”

  His eyes lit with mischief. “You would have to delve into one of those musty tomes to find out.”

  We had, by this point, reached the door of my uncle’s lodgings. But instead of opening it for me when we climbed the steps, Hamilton leaned against it to bar my way.

  And he sighed.

  “Why do you sigh?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. Not precisely. “I suppose you really are a perfect little nut-brown maid with eyes like a Mohawk beauty . . .”

  “Do you mean that for a compliment?” I asked, fighting the blush that surely stained my cheeks.

  “It does me no credit that you should have to ask.” He inched closer to me, and as the bow fastening my hood had come loose, he took the liberty of unraveling it completely. “I suppose your beaus in Albany have paid you better tribute. And that, like a coquette, you’ve shunned them and gloried in their broken hearts.”

  With the ribbons of my hood in his hands, he tugged me until we were so close I thought he might kiss me. And caught up in the spell, I wanted him to. Desperately. “Sir, I hope you will believe me when I say I wish to be a mender of hearts rather than a breaker of them.”

  It was so revealing a comment that I could have cursed myself. How cloying and hopeful and obvious. He must have taken me for a perfect child.

  For in that moment, he stared. Then straightened up again, patronizingly fastening my hood tightly beneath my chin. “I can see why Tench fancies himself in love—and also why you should accept his courtship. He is the right sort of man for you, Miss Schuyler.”

  “I scarcely know him,” I said, not liking the turn in the conversation or how the spell had broken. “I scarcely know you, for that matter. Which makes it all the more confounding that you should presume to guess what sort of man is right for me.”

  “You’re a very earnest girl,” Hamilton replied, as if this fact made him angry. “My friend Tench is a very earnest fellow. From a good family. He has money. You’re well matched. He’s almost as much a saint as you are.”

  I had the distinct impression he was making a case, as if before a jury. But he didn’t like his own arguments. I didn’t like them either.

  Abruptly, he tipped his tricorn hat. “Good day, Miss Schuyler.”

  Thereafter, our every enco
unter was inexplicably strained and abrupt. We crossed paths at headquarters, where I went to help Mrs. Washington mend socks and hats and breeches for the soldiers, and Hamilton stood dumbly in the doorway of the anteroom. A ball of wadded paper had rolled at his feet, no doubt pitched by one of his laughing comrades from where they labored with ink and quill pens. And without acknowledging me, Hamilton stooped to pick it up, then walked away without another word.

  A few days later, he even begged off taking us to the sledding party with a very curious note.

  Colonel Hamilton’s compliments to Miss Livingston and Miss Schuyler. He is sorry to inform them that his zeal for their service made him forget he is so bad a charioteer as hardly to dare to trust himself with so precious a charge; though if he were to consult his own wishes, like Phaethon, he would assemble the chariot of the sun, even if he were sure of experiencing the same fate. Colonel Tilghman offers himself a volunteer.

  “This is just the dance that takes place outside a ballroom,” Angelica said when I told her what had happened. “Men advance, they withdraw, they advance . . .”

  What she didn’t say, but I instinctively knew, was that Alexander Hamilton was not in the category of men that ought to concern me as dance partners in or out of a ballroom. He had already blazed a brilliant career. He was a prodigy, an ambitious man. A peacock who ought to be matched with some society bird of showy plumage.

  He’d been perfectly clear about his hostility toward marriage. Any flirtation between us was merely an amusement. And I hadn’t come to Morristown to be amused.

  * * *

  THERE ARE PLACES in this world that wash you off the solid ground and, like a waterfall, send you hurtling over the precipice onto the jagged rocks of hard reality.

  Jockey Hollow was, for me, such a place.

  The first thing to strike me as our sleigh jingled into the forested hills of Jockey Hollow was how the pine forest suddenly fell away—only stumps of trees remained as far as the eye could see, almost as if some Goliath had reached down to strip the earth bare. The second was the eerie silence, as if every bird and woodland creature had fled—or been devoured. As a military sled piled with logs glided past, pulled through the snow by a bag-of-bones horse and a ragged little fifer boy, the scent of human waste assaulted my nostrils. And a worse scent, too. A scent that I could only name, even now, as suffering.