Hamilton's Battalion

by Courtney Milan

  Dozens of letters, she said. Is it a friend from the infantry? If so, how does he live in England?

  I told them everything.

  I never expected them to dislike me if I confessed the truth about my leanings—we’ve been through too much together not to love one another—but I did wonder if they might doubt my judgment or my character. My sister just held my hand and told me that there were enough people who thought us beneath them. She saw no point in adding to that score.

  She then suggested that Patrick was single and didn’t seem to have much interest in women. I had to explain that Patrick does not talk enough for my tastes…

  May, 1784

  My dear John,

  I did not expect to win a seat in the House during the elections, but I must admit that my resounding defeat—which I have been told is an “emphatic rejection” of my “hasty and ill-conceived beliefs”—is a blow to even my inexhaustible optimism.

  Even my allies tell me I must move slowly—that if we are to win hearts and minds on the abolition issue, we must hold firm on India.

  Pah. I cannot stomach the thought of power won at someone else’s expense. I also find that I am particularly unsuited to a career in politics. It turns out that one skill politicians must have is the ability to not say “you must be extraordinarily cruel” when someone says something that is extraordinarily cruel.

  I am unsure what comes next.

  I am only certain that without your correspondence, I do not know where I would be. Years may have passed since last we spoke in person, but you have always been—and will always be—the most fundamental necessity to me…

  November, 1784

  Number 12, Rygrove Square in London was a small house—perfect for a political eccentric like Henry who had been disowned by his father but whose mother and sisters still came around for the occasional visit.

  Over the last handful of years, Henry had gradually developed a knack for political essays. His tutors would never have approved of them—he still tended to ramble, and his style was shockingly familiar instead of tendentiously formal.

  But his words were fun to read, and perhaps he would change a few minds here or there.

  Sometimes he dreamed of more. Sometimes he dreamed that he’d answer the milkman’s knock on the door and that it would not be milk.

  That was an impossible dream, one he’d learned not to indulge in too often. Henry had always been a creature of high spirits; he preferred not to lower his mood with memories of a five-hundred-mile walk.

  And so it was that on a fine November morning, a knock sounded on his door.

  The milkman, of course.

  Henry set aside the essay he’d been writing—somehow he’d dropped a four-page aside on cricket in the middle of the thing, and it would not edit itself down on its own—and went to get the milk.

  This morning, it was not the milk.

  John stood on his doorstep. He looked—no, not older. His head was shaved completely; he stood taller than Henry remembered. He caught sight of Henry and smiled.

  His smile. God, his smile. It felt like a shaft of sunlight piercing straight through his soul. It lifted his heart.

  Oh, Henry thought. Oh, this. This feeling. He hadn’t let himself remember it except in his not-so-rare lapses in judgment. He only let himself feel like this on letter-days, when he perused the pages that had come across the ocean, committing them to memory.

  “Good God,” John said. “You wear spectacles.”

  Henry yanked them away. “Only when I write—which—good God, John.” His heart hammered. All the wishes he so rarely let himself feel came racing to the fore. He wanted another journey. He wanted to walk around the world with this man and never stop. “John.”

  John held out a block of waxed paper. “I brought you some cheese.”

  “Is it…?”

  “No, no. It’s not the cheese. I think some days that that cheese may never really have existed. But it’s…something we make on the island. Someday, it might come close.”

  Henry took the package. “See?” He turned, gesturing John to come in. “I knew it was milk at the door and behold. Just the milk I needed.”

  Henry did not manage to sort out his emotions on the short walk to the pantry. Slicing bits of crumbling cheese did not help him put his thoughts in order. His feelings filled his chest like shimmering tears. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted still, and he didn’t dare ask if this was just a visit, or…?

  Their journey felt like a dream now—one where he could forget the cold and discomfort and just…remember.

  Ought he to embrace John? Kiss him? Beg him never to leave? All options seemed unfair, each in their own way.

  The cheese was sharp and salty with a hint of musk, a deep, rich flavor that lingered on his taste buds.

  It wasn’t the same cheese. It would never be the same cheese.

  “It’s good,” he finally said.

  “A bit immature,” John replied with a shrug. “We’ve only had it twelve months now. The flavors will deepen with age.”

  The pause that followed lingered in awkward curiosity, like a cat that had chosen to sit atop the newspaper when one had hoped to read it.

  John smiled at him. “You never used to be quiet.”

  “I have too many thoughts, all stampeding their way to the forefront of my mind,” Henry explained. “Eventually, all but one will be trampled to death in the crush, and I shall blurt it out in triumph.”

  Another long silence. Their eyes met. John squared his shoulders but didn’t speak.

  Henry gathered his courage. “John, I—”

  John spoke at precisely the same time. “Henry, I—”

  They both stopped. They looked at each other.

  “Well,” Henry said. “This will never do. We can’t trample each other, or whomever will we speak to?”

  “Ah.” John rubbed his hands.

  “You first,” Henry said, because he was a cheater.

  “I’ve seen the newspaper,” John said. “Now that you’re not running for political office, I imagine you’re at loose ends.”

  “Well, there’s always next election.” Henry had thought as much to himself. Next time, next time, next time… Even Henry’s naturally buoyant spirits quailed at the thought of applying himself to the Herculean task of altering the British national conscience, one person at a time.

  “It seems a waste of unappreciated talent. I’ve heard there’s a position open,” John said. “You might take interest in it.”

  “A position?”

  “There’s a new trading company in the process of registering,” John said, “one that is determined to do things differently. You may have heard of it.”

  “Ah?”

  “They’re registering as the Lord Traders,” John said.

  “Cheeky bastards.” Henry’s heart pounded in his chest. “I like their style.”

  “You would.”

  “I must confess—I know nothing of trade. Just what I’ve written in my silly little essays, you know.”

  “Yes, well, it’s not a position as a trader I’m offering.” John looked over at him. “You see, after considerable thought, we find ourselves in need of a personable white man with a fancy accent.”

  “Oh.” Henry swallowed. “These are…qualifications I possess.”

  “Someone who can say, ‘My dear sir, what’s holding matters up? This permit ought to have issued six months ago.’”

  Henry’s heart fluttered in his chest. “I am exceedingly good at uttering words.”

  “I was thinking to hire someone who could wander into a customs office and talk and talk and not leave until everything was settled.”

  “This seems suited to my talents. How do I apply?”

  “The pay is, for now, quite limited. And you’d have to travel with the captain. You’d be on ships for months at a time. It’s a hell of a bad deal, Henry, and the only reason you should consider taking it is because if you stay here, you’re likel
y to lose your temper eventually and say something that will get you arrested.”

  “Oh, I’d say that’s almost inevitable.” Henry stood. “My father threatened me with it just last week, and only desisted when my mother told him to be nice.”

  “I haven’t even come around to the worst of it.” John swallowed. “I should mention that I love you.”

  “Oh.” Henry’s head spun. His heart beat, far too many times. “Oh. That’s—oh. I need a little time to think this over.”

  John straightened and looked away. “Of course. I’ll be staying here for a week. If—”

  “No!” Henry took hold of his arm, turning him back. “A week would be a great deal of time. I needed…oh, two seconds. I’m already done thinking.”

  The stiff look on John’s face softened, and he laughed. “I should have guessed.”

  “I had to think about the salary, not anything else. I will require a larger salary.”

  “Henry…”

  “I inherited some money from my aunt, as you may recall. I thought…perhaps…your organization might need a little capital?” Henry swallowed. “I figured that if I was paying my own salary, I could raise it a bit. That’s all.”

  John’s eyes had widened on this at first, and then narrowed. He shook his head. “I could not ask you to do that.” But he didn’t pull away from Henry’s grip.

  “You don’t have to ask.” Henry shrugged. “It’s already done in all but legalities. You already have my heart and my soul and my body. Why quibble about my fortune on top of those?”

  John looked over at Henry. His eyes seemed dark and still, like an ocean at night. John reached out a hand, clasping Henry’s fingers.

  “If you need someone to say words for you,” Henry said, “then I am your man.”

  “Henry.” John’s eyes shone.

  “To be quite clear,” Henry said, “I have never stopped being your man. Not since I started, sometime on the road from Virginia to Rhode Island.”

  “It’s not bad, my life,” John said. “My family is the best, my sister has little ones, and…I’m babbling, Henry. I miss you. In your last letter, you said I was necessary. Everything has been perfect except one thing. You’re necessary—the most necessary person I’ve ever encountered—and you’re wasted here.”

  “Oh.”

  “I ache, every time I get your letters.” John tapped his heart. “We’ve tried being apart. Can we try being together?”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know how to measure the length of my wanting. Until the stars die and empires fall.”

  Henry smiled, his heart too full. “Until all men are treated as equal,” he whispered. “Until everyone is allowed life, liberty, and the pursuit of…” He trailed off. Happiness was not enough to describe his emotion. He felt an incandescent joy, a sense that he’d finally clicked into place.

  “The pursuit of home,” John told him. “I told you that once, when we went our separate ways. Let me tell you it again, now.”

  The pursuit of home. That was precisely it, the thing he’d been searching for all these years on battlefields, in his father’s parlor, in his political essays.

  “Lizzie told me to tell you that you’d be welcome,” John said. “That we’d be welcome. You’ll like her, you know. And business will take us back here, and you can visit the members of your family who aren’t terrible.”

  Home. Henry might have wept. Instead, he wound his hands in John’s and let their fingers and their futures intertwine.

  “I love you,” he said again. “Please don’t be disappointed when you help me pack. There’s a great deal of ridiculous nothings that I’m terribly attached to and will have to bring along. I am something of a frivolous fellow.”

  John just smiled. “Tell me the story of everything on the voyage, then. We’ll have all the time we need.”

  Epilogue

  Harlem, New York, 1818

  There was a clock ticking somewhere in the room, but John hadn’t been able to find it yet, not without craning his neck. Which he was not about to do, not without appearing unspeakably rude. Instead it ticktocked somewhere to his right, mocking his inability to identify it.

  Mrs. Eliza Hamilton sat in a comfortable chair before them. If she thought anything of the fact that the two men before her were men, or that one was black and the other white, she said not a word.

  She just poured them tea.

  “It’s the least I can do, when you’ve traveled all the way from—Maine, is it?—just to deliver a story of my Hamilton.”

  “Ah, it’s no problem.” Henry picked up his teacup and took a sip. “We’ve traveled everywhere; we’ve an office in New York now, and we were due for a visit in any event.”

  John looked over at Henry. Decades at sea had aged them both, but on Henry, that age gave him a gravitas that almost managed to offset the impudent spark in his eye. He sat straight; his hair was a little lighter, strands of white mixing with gold and ginger. He had smile-lines at the corner of his eyes, and his swift, irrepressible grin had left creases on his cheeks—signs that he loved, and was well loved.

  At the side of the room, a pretty black woman with her hair back in a bun sat stiffly in place. She had ink and a quill and she’d schooled her face to have no expression. “You don’t mind if Mercy stays and takes notes?” Mrs. Hamilton asked.

  “Of course not.” John gave the woman a nod. You there, you’re one of us, he tried to convey to her silently. I see you, not a servant. After a moment, she nodded back.

  “Well,” John said. “It is…not as if we could write our story down and send it along.”

  “We could have done,” Henry interrupted, “but it would have been terribly imprudent, and John tries to keep me to three imprudent actions per week.”

  “I do no such thing,” John protested. “You’re going to make me look the scold already, and I haven’t told you no since—”

  “You never say no, but you look it. You look at me straight on and you say—”

  John couldn’t help himself. “‘Henry, what are you doing?’” Their words spilled out atop each other; they both stopped before they could go any further. Henry laughed. John bit his lip.

  “I see,” Mrs. Hamilton said slowly. “You are…friends as well as business partners.” In that pause, the one just before friends, John heard everything that it would be imprudent to say aloud. Lovers. Partners. Two souls twined about each other.

  In the decades they’d spent together, they had plotted and planned, grown a business from a few small lines to a half-dozen ships and three offices. When they weren’t out on business, they stayed at home. They gardened. They rested. They taught children what they’d learned. What they were to one another was obvious—but their small island of freedmen had had enough of hatred and tossing people out. They had a passel of nieces and nephews. Then there were the children who were not related to them in the slightest—who were also nieces and nephews now.

  “Very dear friends,” Henry said. “And in a way, I suppose we owe it all to your husband’s leadership at Yorktown. It all started, you see, when… No, John, you tell it.”

  “It all started,” John said, “when Elijah Sutton was preparing to bodily toss your husband into the redoubt at Yorktown.”

  “Mercy,” Mrs. Hamilton said to the woman in the corner, “be a dear and remind me that I absolutely must speak to Mr. Sutton.”

  “Of course, missus. You’ve already noted it once before, you know.”

  They continued their story—Colonel Hamilton telling John to use his name to ease his way, the cheese, the journey, the stories about how they had borrowed his name to ease their way.

  They did not talk of falling in love. There was no need to admit such a thing to near strangers, and in any event, John’s words, transcribed, could never capture the look in his eyes.

  “After that,” Henry said, “after your husband had lent his name so willingly, it only made sense to pay him back. I had some propert
y in England, and wanted to be assured that it would not pass to my dreary brother—”

  John cleared his throat.

  “Did I say dreary?” Henry smiled. “I meant my dear brother, who has quite enough property of his own. I should hate to put him to the task of managing my funds, particularly when I have proven such an embarrassment to him. I spoke to Colonel Hamilton in New York, and he worked a bit of legal magic on our behalf.”

  “How lovely.”

  “He enjoyed my essays. We argued about government some when we were in town.”

  “Did he correspond with you at all?”

  “Yes, we corresponded a bit. We argued about what we were building here—a nation for all the misfits who never belonged elsewhere.”

  Mrs. Hamilton beamed. “That sounds so much like my Hamilton.”

  “I brought his letters, if you’d like a copy made.”

  This task, too, was shuffled off to the indispensable Mercy.

  “And he was most sincere in his help,” John said. “He introduced me to people who have been very helpful in making our venture the success it is.”

  “You seem very comfortable together,” Mrs. Hamilton remarked at the end. “Mercy, you’re getting all this down, aren’t you?”

  Mercy looked over at the two men. For some reason, she looked…well, sad, maybe. Perhaps angry. Or maybe that was pity John saw aimed in their direction, for some inexplicable reason. She bowed her head over the page, though, and whatever emotion she’d shown disappeared.

  “Of course, Mrs. Hamilton,” she said. “I would never miss a thing.”

  “Well.” Mrs. Hamilton smiled graciously. “Thank you both so much for the tale, and the correspondence. I suppose you have business to do…?”

  “A bit,” Henry said. “More like, there are people whom I’d like to see, just to have a chance to talk with them. We’re growing older. It’s about time for us to hand off our duties to the next generation, you know. They tend to do a better job of it.”