Hamilton's Battalion

by Courtney Milan

  She stepped away.

  His smile faded. “Right. So Mr. Wiseman tells Christian that—”

  “Wait. Christian is his name?”

  He nodded. “He tells Christian that he doesn’t have to go through this tiny gate he’s been looking for, he can just go visit Mr. Legality and Mr. Civility, who live in Morality. And of course you know Mr. Wiseman must be a lying schemer trying to keep Christian out of Heaven, but I understand why Christian falls for it because legality, civility, and morality sound like a big improvement over my wife and children burning in a lake of fire to me.”

  He paused for her to laugh. How dare he come back after five years and still expect her to laugh?

  She wanted to, and that made it worse.

  “So there’s an ugly high hill hanging over the path to Morality that our hero is worried will fall on his head. He’s going along in terror and flashes of fire start coming out of this dreadful menacing hill, and guess what this hill turns out to be?”

  She shrugged.

  “Mount Sinai.”

  Her jaw dropped. “No.”

  He dropped the book on the ground emphatically, and stepped on it.

  “Mount Sinai isn’t a hill. It’s, it’s—” The truth was, she pictured Mount Sinai looking like the Palisades along the Hudson River, which presumably wasn’t close to the truth either. But—she knew it was beautiful.

  “How can you live with them? They hate us,” Nathan said, an edge in his voice, and the moment of charity evaporated as if it had never been.

  “Your mother hates me too, and you didn’t object to my living with her.”

  “She doesn’t hate you. She’s just difficult. You of all people can’t condemn someone for that.”

  “I of all—of all people—” Rachel sputtered.

  “She wanted my marriage to bring her naches at Shearith Israel,” he said reasonably for the millionth time, “so she started out a little standoffish, and you never made a single attempt to win her over.”

  Because it was simply a fact that marrying Rachel was a step down, so why should Mrs. Mendelson’s scorn offend her? “I don’t care who she wanted to impress at synagogue. I was your wife, and she was rude to me from the moment I met her. And you never did anything about it but tell me to ignore her.”

  “If you had just had a little patience with her—”

  “At our wedding she offered to take me to a dressmaker if I’d let her give my gown to the maid.”

  She could see him wanting to say that his mother had meant it kindly. How could he not understand how much that had stung? Rachel had tried to look pretty. She’d been nineteen and grateful for his proposal and she’d done her best to be a credit to him. She had tried in the beginning—to be a good wife and a good daughter-in-law, to hold up her end of their bargain—and been rebuffed every time. Mrs. Mendelson hadn’t meant it kindly.

  “So she made some petty remarks,” he said. “For that you turned our home into a battlefield? But I suppose that’s where you always wanted to be anyway.”

  Rachel gritted her teeth. “She told you I was barren and you should divorce me. Plenty of women take a few years to conceive their first child!” She stopped herself before she started listing examples from Shearith Israel; she hated that the names still sprang to mind, after all this time.

  Nathan threw up his hands. “Why are you even here.” His voice was flat. “Why visit me? Why have this conversation? I never even considered taking my mother’s ridiculous advice, but you…well. We both know what you did.”

  As if him laughing and saying Ma, don’t be ridiculous meant the subject was closed and there was no reason to think about it further. “You sent me to Philadelphia with her. Alone. Are you really surprised I ran away after two years of her carping at me and moaning that my childbearing years were slipping away? ‘If you can even have children, dear.’”

  “A year and a half,” he corrected her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It was a year and a half,” he repeated, as if she actually hadn’t heard him instead of merely expressing incredulity at his ability to miss the point. “You left New York on the fifth of Elul in 1776 and you died”— another pause for the Hebrew incantation against the evil eye—“you ran away on the seventh of Shevat in 1778, so that’s a year and a half.”

  Rachel had left their little insular world behind without looking back; she didn’t like the pang of loss she felt hearing Nathan mark time by Jewish dates. Sometimes she and Zvi managed to sort out when they were in the neighborhood of a holiday and maybe say a prayer or reminisce about home, and sometimes they didn’t. She’d tried to say Kaddish for her mother each year, hating that she wasn’t sure of the date.

  “It’s a holiday today, isn’t it?” She hazarded a guess. “Sukkos?” That was the Festival of Booths, to remember the wandering in the wilderness after Egypt.

  He grimaced. “The first day. I should be eating in the sukkah.” He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Rachel, what do you want me to say? That I should have gone to Philadelphia with you when you asked? Are you telling me you’d have stayed if I did? You know, I thought…I thought maybe it was my fault you died. That if I’d been there, things might have gone differently. I kept asking my mother what the doctor said, and what you said, and were you afraid, and did you ask…”

  He trailed off, but Rachel knew what he had been about to say. Did you ask for me?

  “And when she didn’t answer, I wondered if the answers were too awful to burden me with. I’ve spent the last three and a half years wondering if I could have changed it! I refuse to do it all over again, not over this. We both know you didn’t really want me with you. I thought…I thought you might like some breathing room.”

  “So you did know.” There was a roaring in her ears. Why, when everything else was gone, did this rage remain? She had wanted to be done with it, to leave it behind as surely as she’d left the lunar calendar and a life where eating outdoors seemed noteworthy.

  “Why couldn’t you just admit it instead of pretending not to notice?” The words spilled up her throat from some ever-springing well inside her. “Instead of acting like it was a joke every time I said something unkind in the vain hope you would leave me alone for half a second. You kept practically begging me to like you, giving me presents and telling funny stories and fussing over my dinner plate. Why couldn’t you give me breathing room then, when we were living together, if you knew I wanted it?” She hadn’t wanted him to send her away to Philadelphia. She’d only wanted space to stop resenting him.

  Too late now.

  “I’m not good at that,” he said ruefully. So sure of his own charm. So sure she couldn’t stay angry. He’d always underestimated her.

  “‘Did I ask for you,’” she mimicked. “Because that mattered more than anything, didn’t it? Oh, yes, I died a terrible death of yellow fever, but let’s ask the important question: was I thinking about you while I did it?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  He looked so innocent and wounded when that was exactly what he’d meant, and Rachel’s anger burned so hot she spit out the one truth she had always swallowed. “I never wanted to marry you. Never. I did it to pay for Mamma’s doctors, and then…” Then Mamma died anyway, only a few months later.

  “I know that,” he said, as if that somehow made it all right. “I didn’t mind, I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. You thought you’d grow on me. You behaved as if we were really married, as if I were really your wife and you could comfort me.” She’d wanted it to be true too. She’d wanted so desperately to feel better and he’d tried and tried, but it was no use.

  “The doctors said she’d recover.” Her eyes filled with tears, still longing for her mother after all these years. She remembered trying not to impose on the Mendelsons with her bottomless grief, to cry discreetly and not to mope around the house, because they were all she had now and she’d still felt like a guest
in their home. “It was all for nothing,” she said viciously. “I made that great sacrifice for nothing.”

  He looked stung at the word sacrifice. “I wanted to help you,” he said self-righteously. “Your mother was sick and I wanted to help you. We were really married. You said yes.”

  Her gorge rose. “You wanted to help me? You wanted to fuck me!”

  She’d never said that word to him before. They’d been shy and respectful to each other about everything to do with the marriage bed. It had been months before she could even bring herself to explain where he needed to touch her down there. He’d apologized, and they both cried. They’d been ludicrously young.

  She was a soldier now and said “fuck” all the time, but she still felt shocking and ashamed.

  He swallowed, tried to take a step back, and almost tripped over his shackles. “Well. That too.”

  Nathan stood there, ankles smarting and bruised, pickled in the same sick shame he’d felt on their wedding night. He’d known she wasn’t really enjoying herself, not the way she should have been, but he didn’t know how to ask her about it, he’d never done this before either and he barely knew her, so he just kept trying and everything he tried, everywhere he put his mouth and his hands, made him harder and her shyer. Yes, he’d wanted to fuck her.

  They’d figured that part out eventually. The rest of it, they’d never figured out.

  He’d never meant to take advantage of her. He was a little older, but not by much: twenty-three to her nineteen. And he’d been a good match. Not a brilliant one, whatever his mother thought, but he’d had a steady job and a house and a kind face and her mother had liked him. Rachel had said yes, and he’d thought…

  He hadn’t thought that meant Yes, I’ll make an enormous sacrifice. He’d thought it meant Yes, I’ll be your wife.

  “Were you only pretending to like me? At the beginning. I thought you liked me.”

  She crossed her arms. “I liked you well enough,” she said reluctantly, and then threw up her hands. “And there you go again! Think about my feelings for once. Think about something other than whether people like you. It made it worse that I liked you, that you were nice to me, that I wanted you in my bed. I couldn’t even be properly angry. I couldn’t feel justified in resenting you. All I could feel was more and more awful, like my life was an apple slowly going rotten and I couldn’t stop it.”

  She smoothed her regimental coat over her hips and straightened her spine soldier-fashion, as if reminding herself she had a new life now, a better one. As if it comforted her to remember she’d tossed their life together onto the slop heap like a rotten apple, and walked away from it.

  He’d tried so hard to be a good husband. He’d never reproached her for being cold or snappish or disagreeing with him about politics in public. Now she told him that was an unforgivable crime too: Why couldn’t you just admit it instead of pretending not to notice?

  “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you,” she said. The words slipped between his ribs like a bayonet, cold and sharp. “What can you understand about wanting independence? All you ever wanted was for the British to make everyone behave themselves, like children. You can’t even stand up to your mother.”

  “That’s not fair. Wanting legality and civility isn’t childish,” he said hotly, even though he liked the British much less now. He and Rachel had done this a thousand times and he still knew all the words. “Peace isn’t childish. How many people have already died for independence?”

  He ran over what she’d said again. “Wait! Am I the British in this analogy? As in, you heroically claimed your freedom from my tyrannical rule?” No, because he was a nebekh who couldn’t stand up to his mother. “No, wait, my mother is the British, and I’m…Canada?”

  “I want freedom for us more than I want to live.” She was talking about literal American independence now. She’d breezed past the trifle of his existence, and moved on to the important things. “Aren’t you tired of us always being simply Jews, no matter where we live? We’re never English or Spanish or Polish. I wouldn’t call myself a Pole if you paid me, but my family lived there for generations.”

  What’s wrong with being a Jew? he wanted to ask, but for once he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to hear her answer. Not today.

  “I want to be American,” she said. “Goyim think they’re governed without representation! There isn’t a single Jew allowed into Parliament, or even to vote for Parliament. Jews aren’t even British citizens. Their army hasn’t got one Jewish officer who didn’t convert to take his commission. Ours does,” she said proudly.

  He snorted. “And you think I pretend not to notice things! How many of your Jewish officers have been court-martialed for suspect loyalties?”

  That brought her up short, but only for a moment. “If you mean Colonel Franks, anyone who was Benedict Arnold’s closest aide-de-camp would have come under suspicion, and he was completely exonerated. Anyway, I didn’t say it would be easy, or quick. Things don’t have to be easy if they’re worth a hard fight. But you wouldn’t understand that. You’re a coward and you—”

  She brought herself up short, suddenly. “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “That wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t dredge up all this old history when you’re— You’ve held up really well in here.”

  “Coward” stung: there it was, what she’d always believed. She had chutzpah, to say that to him. He wasn’t the one who’d run off like a thief in the night so he wouldn’t have to talk to her! But “old history”—that was far, far worse.

  Had she thought of him once in the last three and a half years?

  “I’m going to petition your court-martial for clemency,” she promised, her voice tight. “I’ll—I’ll talk to Colonel Hamilton. He has Washington’s ear, everyone says. We don’t always hang spies. If you give your parole—”

  “I’m not a coward,” he said tightly. “Well, all right, I am a coward, but I work around that. I’m not a spy. Or—I am a spy, but not for the British. I’ve been supplying the British army and then passing information about their numbers and whereabouts to Washington. That’s why I was here yesterday morning, to meet with the general about the state of things in Yorktown.”

  Chapter Three

  There was total silence in the room. Nathan hated total silence.

  “It’s true,” he insisted. “Cornwallis thinks I’m off scouring the countryside for beef for his men. Ask anyone. I mean, anyone who’d know. Washington, Hamilton, um…” He tried to remember who else had been at his briefing. At a day’s distance they were a blur of powdered hair and Gentile faces and names. “John something? Sorry, that’s half the men in your precious army.”

  She blinked at him. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said finally. “Why would you do that?”

  “It’s been five years since you saw me,” he pointed out. Old history. He wished it felt that way. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

  Her face hardened. “And that’s supposed to make me trust you?”

  “You weren’t in New York for the occupation—”

  “Neither should you have been!” she flared.

  He threw up his hands. “You didn’t want me in Philadelphia.”

  Someone pounded on the door. “Is everything all right in there, Corporal?”

  She drew herself up again, that unfamiliar military posture. “Yes, thank you, Private. Open the door, if you would be so good.”

  “Wait,” he said, panicking. “I can explain. I’ll explain. I’m happy to explain, I just got distracted, don’t go—”

  She went, and didn’t look back.

  Rachel couldn’t quite bring herself to go to Major Fish, the adjutant, who would know where Colonel Hamilton was but would expect an explanation for why she wanted to see him. She felt raw and unsoldierly. Surely Major Fish would see right through her and say, That man’s your husband, isn’t he?

  Did she have time to go hunting for Hamilton on her own, thoug
h? She ducked her head into her own tent to see if they’d picked up any assignments. No sign of the first sergeant or the Goodenoughs, but Scipio was playing patience while Zvi sharpened their bayonets.

  “Oh, give me yours,” he said.

  As soon as Rachel handed it over, she missed its holstered weight at her side. You don’t need trappings to feel like a soldier, damn it. You are one.

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling guilty that she’d been dealing with her private affairs while he worked. Like a woman.

  “He’s showing us up, isn’t he?” Scipio said. “I shouldn’t even have these cards; they’re useless weight in my pack.”

  Zvi shrugged. “I needed something to do with my hands.” He tested the edge with his thumb and grinned. “There she is. Maybe soon I can leave bayonets behind and go back to my cleavers.” Zvi had been a kosher butcher in New York before the war—thankfully, not the one Rachel had patronized.

  “Will you go back to keeping kosher after the war?” she asked with sudden urgency.

  “Of course. Who’d buy meat from a butcher who cheats in his own kitchen? Besides, Daniel’s stricter than the Shearith Israel mashgiach. Let’s ask Sarah to get some crab this week; if we win the war with this siege, it may be my last chance.” Zvi heaved a tragic sigh. “Never tell any of my customers. Or Daniel.”

  If we win the war with this siege…

  Rachel had never been afraid of the end of the war. She’d planned her lecture tour and her fame and looked forward to a warm fireplace and enough to eat. But now she felt terrified.

  Would she keep kosher after the war? She’d always disliked those countless rules, and she’d discovered she liked bacon very much. But when she was giving lectures on her service to admiring crowds, would it make her seem less a Jew if she ate it? Would it hurt her cause?

  Nathan hadn’t even wanted a candle if it wasn’t lit properly. His disapproval still itched at her. Rachel was a bad wife. A bad Jew. A bad woman. What else would be left, when she wasn’t a good Patriot and a good soldier?