Hamilton's Battalion

by Courtney Milan

  “Take care of him,” she said. “I’ve got to find my other men.”

  Her other men were hale and jubilant. Their battalion had had no casualties at all, and only four wounded. The wounded were carried out, and the others were told they might rest while the Pennsylvania Line dug fresh trenches. They lay down where they were, amid blood and cartridge papers. Yorktown won’t be able to stand against us now, everyone agreed.

  Rachel touched her wedding ring with her thumb. We did it, she told Nathan.

  October 15

  The second parallel was complete by the time they were relieved at noon the next day. The British guns in the redoubt, set on new platforms, had been turned on their former masters. “We’re giving them ten thousand rounds a day,” she heard one artillery officer tell another, incredulous and triumphant.

  Was Nathan still alive in there, cowering behind something? Please, she prayed. Adonoy. Please. If he was already dead, if her battalion had suffered a casualty after all—

  She missed him. Had she missed him when she left him in New York and went to Philadelphia? It was so long ago she couldn’t remember.

  Well, she missed him now. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted him to talk to her. She wanted to lean her head against his chair while he muttered arithmetic under his breath.

  If he came back, she was telling him yes. She didn’t know how they could go back to New York together when he’d sat shiva for her. She didn’t know what his boss would think of a clerk with a soldier wife. She didn’t care. If she could storm a redoubt, she could face some cold shoulders.

  Nathan couldn’t do this, but I can. The familiar words floated into her head unbidden. But they weren’t true anymore.

  Nathan and I can do this together. There, that was right.

  If he’d only come back.

  “Well, I did come back,” Nathan said. But nearly forty years later, he still looked smug about how frightened she’d been.

  Rachel crossed her arms. “Took you long enough.”

  “Pass over it, then. Nothing much happened.”

  “Nothing happened? Only the end of the war. Besides, I talked to Colonel Hamilton twice. Mrs. Hamilton will want to hear about it.”

  “Twice?”

  Rachel sighed. “You never remember anything. The next day we built another big battery and the weather was dreadful. We were all huddled in our tents listening to the guns, with water streaming through the canvas, and I…I tracked down Colonel Hamilton and demanded a cease-fire for you like Secretary Nelson got.”

  “Then I could never have been useful again, and anyway they wouldn’t have given me back once they realized I was a spy. Spies aren’t entitled to the courtesies of war.”

  “That’s what Colonel Hamilton said.” But Rachel looked unconvinced. “Then after Cornwallis surrendered, there was a ceasefire for a couple of hours before the cannonade started again and I thought maybe it was over.”

  “I was safely across the river in Gloucester the whole time. You didn’t need to fret.”

  “You were safely across the river the whole time in the hospital because you were shot the first day, so I think I did need to fret!”

  “My arm is fine.”

  “It wasn’t fine then. You had a fever.”

  “That’s true, I did. It was dreadful. I needed tender nursing. A cool, gentle hand on my brow.”

  “Shut up.”

  “‘O, Woman! in our hours of ease—’”

  “Anyway, after the guns started again I went back to Hamilton. He told me Colonel Laurens was negotiating the surrender and he’d already talked to him about you, and not to bother him anymore.”

  “Firing stopped again a few hours later anyway. I remember the quiet.”

  “And of course I was glad, but it was too quiet. I could hear myself think.”

  Nathan rested his chin on her shoulder. “You know, Corporal Mrs. Mendelson, I was worried about you too. I didn’t even have a colonel to pester about it.”

  “I was fine.”

  “The British said they killed dozens of you in the assault.”

  “The British flattered themselves.”

  “I didn’t know that!”

  “And then you didn’t come to the surrender ceremony. I watched for you.”

  “Only soldiers went to the surrender ceremony.”

  “Well, I thought you were dead.”

  “I almost went on that ship of Loyalists Cornwallis sent to New York, you know. He offered. It would have preserved my cover so beautifully.”

  She poked him. “And why didn’t you?”

  “Because I couldn’t wait another month for news of you.”

  October 21

  Rachel was on her way back from visiting Carvalho in the regimental hospital when Scipio walked straight into her.

  “Sorry,” he said, beaming. “I was reading my letter from Anna Maria. She says she’ll make me a hot johnnycake with maple sugar every day for breakfast when we’re married, and that I’d better end the war so you New Yorkers can go home and stop ruining Albany. Do you believe peace is really here, like everyone says? I have to serve until the war ends, and I’m tired of letters. I want to see her.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh! I almost forgot. A messenger came for you from the commissioner of prisoners. Mendelson’s turned up. The commissioner says he needs you to loan him some money, but since Mendelson’s richer than all of us, I assume that was a pretext to see you.”

  She should feel relief. Instead she only felt a more concentrated dread, as if this might all be a trick. “Where is he?”

  “With other nonmilitary prisoners of war in one of those big brick houses on Main Street. I’m told you’ll recognize it by how it’s still mostly standing.”

  She went over her duties for the rest of the day in her head. Could she shirk them? Could she bear to wait until after tattoo?

  Scipio’s nose was buried in his letter again. He wouldn’t see Anna Maria for who knew how long. She could bear another few hours.

  “Go,” Scipio said without looking up. “I’ll shift for you.”

  Impulsively, Rachel threw her arms around him, careful not to crumple his letter. The other corporals hugged all the time, but she’d always been afraid to, in case they felt her breasts.

  Scipio raised an eyebrow, but he looked pleased. They’d all been trying to worm their way back into her good graces since their accusation before the assault.

  She kissed him on the temple for good measure and ran off.

  It took Rachel half an hour to find the house. After another ten minutes of inquiring after Nathan through the tightly packed crowd of prisoners, her heart was in her throat. It wasn’t real, he wasn’t here—and then she heard his voice.

  “…I’m sure he’s all right. He’s just busy. Indispensable. He’s a corporal, after all. I know his officers rely on him, so probably he can’t come until after—what do they call that drumming at night?… Tattoo? I thought that was any drumbeat generally, are you sure?”

  The lump in her throat so high she felt she might scream, Rachel squeezed through a clump of men sharing a brandy bottle and saw him. He sat cross-legged in the corner, drawing patterns on the floor with a finger. The man next to him listened with thinly veiled irritation.

  “Nathan,” Rachel said. “Why is there blood on your coat?”

  He stopped talking midword. Up close, the pattern was a map of Manhattan; his finger stopped halfway through drawing Cortlandt Street in the dust.

  He looked up, and at last she saw his eyes, dark and beautiful and gleaming. For a second he tried to contain his smile, and then it burst across his face.

  That used to make her angry, how happy he was to see her. It made her angry now, after everything. Her heart felt as if it was in ribbons and Nathan was just…happy to see her.

  He pushed himself to his feet. He’d lost weight since last week; his drawn face was pale and dirty, his eyes red-rimmed. His dark curls were matted to h
is skin. She’d never seen his beard so long.

  “Oh, this?” He picked at the long bullet hole in his sleeve. “I haven’t had a chance to wash it out yet. Don’t worry, the coat’s not ruined. I’ll patch it and it will be good as new.”

  “And your arm?”

  His smile widened. “Oh, that’s already patched. A graze. It will be as good as new too. The fever only lasted a day or two.”

  “The fever?”

  “I worried about you too.”

  She could feel it, the pressure on her chest. “Why are you always so happy to see me?” she burst out.

  Nathan glanced around. There wasn’t anywhere in this crush to be private. He switched into Yiddish, which wasn’t guaranteed to be private either, but it was something. “Because I love you. You know that.”

  She sat in his map of New York, defeated. “I love you too. I just—” She could feel tears pricking at her eyes. She sniffled.

  He sat next to her. “You’re happy to see me too,” he said softly. “You just had a hard week.”

  She wanted to curl up in his lap and press her face against his shoulder and cry. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to go home to their own two narrow beds, and instead here they were in the middle of this horrible crowd…

  She supposed that was being happy to see him, in its own way. Nathan’s way looked more pleasant for both of them. He seemed content with her accusatory interrogation, but didn’t he deserve more? A smile?

  That felt impossible, unimaginable. A kind word, then.

  She had been so angry that he always pretended, that he never came out and said anything. But she’d been just as bad. She’d never come right out and told him what she felt, what she wanted.

  What was the truth? What did she feel?

  “I’m glad you’re safe,” she said slowly. “I missed you. I missed you kibbitzing in my ear. I think I…I don’t have any feelings left after worrying all week. I feel like a pumpkin with the seeds scooped out. I think I might cry. I—”

  She didn’t have any more words. She pulled the ring out from her collar, where it hung on a fresh piece of butcher’s twine.

  “I wore this into the redoubt,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “If I didn’t make it, I wanted you to know…” But the words that flooded her mouth were all qualifications and conditions.

  She choked them down. That wasn’t what she’d wanted him to know. “I can’t…I can’t stop hedging. I’m afraid to. It feels…” It came to her, what it felt like. “Like bad luck. Like if I say it out loud, the evil eye will snatch it away. We’ll be miserable and I’ll break your heart again…”

  “Say it,” he said. “Say it and say ‘keynehore’ afterwards.”

  She straightened her shoulders and prayed no one was listening who could understand. “I destroyed our marriage. I burned it to the ground, and I can’t be sorry I did it. But I’m going to build us a better one, if you want to build it with me. I love you and I want you for the rest of my life and we’ll have to sort the rest out. Keynehore.”

  She’d thought he couldn’t smile wider than he had a moment ago. He managed it somehow, eyes shining as he clasped his thumbs and chimed in with his Hebrew.

  But she couldn’t leave it there. “I can’t give up my plans. Not even to raise your children. Our children.” She pressed a fist to her stomach with how badly she wanted to have a child that was half him and half her. “And I don’t want your mother raising them if I’m traveling.”

  He nodded. “I don’t want her raising them either. She raised me, after all, and look how I turned out.” He made a tsking noise and shook his head.

  She laughed, astonished that she was actually beginning to feel happy. She would feel happy, if she didn’t crush the feeling in her chest out of fear.

  “We’ll sort the rest out,” he said. “We’re imagining a new way to be a country, where our leader isn’t a king. A new way to be a Jew, where God isn’t a king. Let’s imagine a new way to be married, where I’m not a king either. I don’t want that anyway. I don’t want you to be my subject, or even my queen.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want us to go hand in hand.” He blushed. “Sorry, I never said I wasn’t sentimental.”

  She slipped her hand in his.

  “If you’re giving a lecture, I want to be there to bring you tea and lozenges.” He leaned against the wall. Getting comfortable in his visions of the future. “Lecturing is hard on the throat.”

  “I don’t understand how you do it. How you shake off everything. I left you, and you’re just going to take me back? Why aren’t you afraid?”

  She remembered a hundred conversations with him, where she’d been the one consumed with visions of a bright future. She remembered how she’d fought to keep her mother alive, how she’d refused to believe it wouldn’t turn out all right.

  But what she really remembered was the lump of fear in her throat, because she’d needed that future too desperately to admit it might not come.

  She’d thought Nathan such a coward. But she’d never been able to hope like he was doing right now, had she? If she had—before her mother got sick, maybe—she couldn’t remember it. Not a drop of it.

  “Rachel, I’m afraid of everything. What’s a little more?” He gripped her hand tightly. “If I might remind you, you didn’t leave me. You died. I lived through that. I didn’t enjoy it, obviously, but I lived. What could happen now that would be worse?”

  She loved him so much it felt like a catastrophe. But he was right. What was a little more fear?

  She’d survived Yorktown. She’d buried her mother, and survived that too. She’d been trapped in the Mendelson home, and she’d left. She’d made a life for herself that she loved, and now she’d make another one.

  We had better act as if what we do here will last.

  She took a deep breath and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Your mother could kill me. If we go back together, the rabbi’s going to know she lied to him.” She took another deep breath and let her heart expand, let happiness fill her chest.

  “Oy, the disgrace!” He shrugged. “We’ll make up a lie. Or not. I’m sorry, I know you had your heart set on people calling you Esther.”

  “Nothing rhymes with Mendelson either.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “What do you want to do next?”

  She thought about it. She’d reenlisted in January for the length of the war. She shrank from going back on her word, abandoning her friends. On the other hand, she could have left in January and no one would have blamed her. She’d done her part. The war would be over soon.

  She’d always meant to reveal her sex sooner or later. She could do it now. When her friends thought she was a woman, they’d wanted her to leave; maybe they wouldn’t even realize it wasn’t fair that she could and they couldn’t. Maybe they wouldn’t hate her.

  They hadn’t been angry or disgusted. They’d just wanted to protect her. That was something.

  “I could keep my cover and go back to New York,” Nathan said. “I’ll have to wait in a prison camp to be exchanged—two escapes in quick succession would strain even British credulity—but they’ll send me back eventually. If you want to stay in the army. Or…we could both quit and go to Philadelphia together.”

  She’d hated Philadelphia. But suddenly she missed its careful grid of brick buildings with white trim, the prim Quaker way they’d named all their streets after trees instead of people. With Nathan, it could feel like home for a little while. Just until the British left New York.

  “That,” she said decisively. “Let’s go to Philadelphia.”

  Nathan leaned in to take the pen from her hand and kiss her.

  Rachel held on to the pen. “Wait, but I talked to Hamilton one more time.”

  He retreated with a peck on her cheek. “She can’t chronicle every moment of the man’s life. Imagine the printing costs. Are you planning to send her a list of our grandchildren’s names and Mrs. Freedom’s johnnycake rec
ipe too?”

  Rachel shrugged. “It is a very good recipe.”

  “True. You should make it when Zvi and Danny come for dinner next week.”

  “You really want a dairy meal when Zvi and Danny come?”

  “No,” Nathan said hastily. “Can they bring steaks again?”

  Rachel’s lips twitched. Zvi still ran his kosher butcher shop in Manhattan; he lived above it with his friend Daniel, who taught Hebrew. “Maybe I should do dairy. Zvi always complains about how I cook the meat.”

  “Let him grill the steaks, then. Uch, this time can you two not spend half of dinner recounting disgusting meals you shared in the army? I have a sensitive stomach.”

  Rachel ignored him, digging in her desk for her memorandum book. “I’ll include everyone’s addresses, in case they aren’t as easy to locate as I am. She might not know Scipio’s changed his name to Freedom. Let me see…”

  Scipio had gone to work as a waterman after the war, and was now a skipper, with a thriving family and his own towboat company in Albany. Tench and Sarah were farming in Orange County with their seven children; Rachel could never remember how many grandchildren there were. Sgt. Flanagan was a tobacconist in Poughkeepsie.

  “Maybe we ought to take another trip upstate,” she said.

  “You just want another chance to eat crab without any of our friends being the wiser.”

  “Maybe. I wouldn’t tell them if you wanted to have some too…”

  Nathan laughed. “Once was enough for me, thank you.” He heaved a sigh. “I’m old,” he said plaintively. “Too old to jounce upstate in the stagecoach and sleep in lumpy inn beds.” But he pulled out his almanac and began looking at dates.

  “You are old,” she agreed. “You’ll be seventy next year. Maybe I’ll go without you.”

  Nathan shook his head. “This is the trouble with these May to December romances. You’re only sixty-five and you’ll make a fool of me.”

  “You don’t need any help from me there.”