The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “You are well, Mary?” he asked. He was, I suspect, desperate for some reassurance that there was more than grieving in the world. “You and this little one together? You are well?”

  When I saw his fingers spread over that worn blue linen, gently outlining the rounded swell where our child lay curled within me, a rare happiness spread and warmed me from within. Perhaps every mother shares these moments with the father of their child, no matter the circumstances. Perhaps the sorrows of that day and the keenness of his loss had served to heighten my own appreciation for what I had.

  Of course I knew that it was but a pretty dream of happiness and no more. There’d be no future for us as a family. The Colonel was not my husband, nor was I his wife, and it was more likely than not that he’d forbid me to tell our child that he was his or her father. But for this moment, I’d turn my back to reason and truth.

  For this moment, I’d be happy.

  “I’m well, sir,” I said. “The babe and I are both prospering.”

  “I am glad of it.” He nodded, reassured. Then he rose from the chair, and left me to join his grieving wife.

  * * *

  No matter how much unhappiness besets a house and the people within it, outside its walls the world continues at its usual pace. The City of New York in the summer of 1788 was alive with excitement and fresh promise on account of the country’s new constitution. As the Colonel had predicted, the Constitution had in fact been confirmed and established when New Hampshire became the ninth state (and the last necessary for a majority) to vote for ratification, and New York soon followed before the end of July. Since the war, New York had been the bastion of those in favor of both the Constitution and the strong federal government that went with it.

  These supporters had styled themselves Federalists. Led by Colonel Hamilton, who had also personally fought the hardest for ratification, other New York Federalists included Colonel Hamilton’s father-in-law, General Philip Schuyler, Colonel Troup, Gouverneur Morris, and John Jay. But the Federalist Party was embraced by many other prominent gentlemen from elsewhere in the country, too, including General Washington, Colonel James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams.

  Now you will wonder if Colonel Burr included himself within this illustrious group. By education, prominence, wealth, service in the war, and inclination, there should have been little doubt of it, and in fact he did align himself publicly with these gentlemen.

  But to anyone who paid close attention, it was obvious that the Colonel’s support was lukewarm at best. He had been considered for the state’s ratification convention in Poughkeepsie, and had withdrawn his name. He hadn’t once lobbied on behalf of the Constitution, or written any of the opinionated letters that were cleverly published behind false names in the newspapers in its support. Instead, he’d waited until ratification was inevitable before he’d spoken in its favor.

  I recalled how Carlos had long ago observed that because the Colonel hated losing so much he’d never take a case that he wasn’t sure to win. It was this way with the Colonel and the Federalists, with him waiting until they were clearly the leading party before he joined their number. His actions were the very essence of being the practical man he claimed to be. I didn’t question him. It all made sense to me.

  I could also understand how others who’d been loyal to the cause for years would find his hesitation disingenuous, even falsehearted. It was also exactly the kind of misunderstanding that would plague the Colonel for the rest of his public life.

  It was on account of the Federalists that on a Wednesday morning in late July I found myself watching a grand procession in honor of the Constitution. Standing on the balcony of a neighboring house on Broadway, I’d the Colonel to my right, and Miss Burr to my left, whose hand I held tightly in mine, and a group of the Colonel’s friends and acquaintances crowded around us. Mistress was still too despondent from her unfortunate lying-in to join us, and Miss Sally, too, had been determined insufficiently strong to watch the procession in its entirety, and had remained at home with Ginny to watch her.

  Still, the Colonel and Miss Burr were merry enough, and the procession was a splendid sight, the grandest parade I ever witnessed. I’ve heard that there were five thousand men who marched behind brightly painted banners that morning, before crowds so large that they must have included most of the city. The various divisions of the procession represented every kind of trade, profession, and artisan to be found in the city, from coopers to engineers, shipwrights to the gentlemen of the bar, physicians to students to distillers. There were also bands playing music, and ceremonial guns being fired, and even an actor on horseback as Columbus in ancient dress.

  The Colonel was determined to turn the procession into a lesson for Miss Burr, as he did for most things with her, and lectured her upon each of the useful occupations whose representatives were marching by. He was a doting but strict father, and if an event was neither educational nor edifying, then it had no place in his daughter’s young life. While he was distracted by greeting acquaintances, I was the one who crouched down beside Miss Burr to point out the ponies with the red and blue ribbons woven into their manes, or the sly little dog that was stealing food from the carts along the way. In my opinion, these were the things that truly interested a five-year-old girl, and no lasting harm came of it, either.

  But when the Seventh Division of the procession appeared, even the Colonel was left speechless. An enormous wood and canvas replica of a ship, mounted on a hidden wagon and drawn by drays, sailed down Broadway with numerous “crew” on board waving to the crowds on either side of the street. Only when the canvas ship passed by us could we see the ship’s name painted on her stern: the Federal Ship Hamilton.

  “That’s Philip’s name,” Miss Burr said, proud of being able to read it for herself. Tipping back the wide, flat brim of her Milanese straw hat, she squinted up into the hazy sun at her father. “Is the boat named for Philip’s father, Papa?”

  “It’s a ship, not a boat, Theo,” the Colonel said, “and yes, I suppose it is indeed in honor of Colonel Hamilton, and all he has done to promote the ratification.”

  He said it mildly enough for the sake of his daughter, but I could tell he was chagrined to see Colonel Hamilton singled out with such gaudy honor and drawing the most cheers, too. To a gentleman like the Colonel, winning the favor of a handful of farmers and merchants from Saratoga in private wouldn’t compare with a cheering crowd on Broadway, no matter how much hard work Colonel Hamilton had done to earn it. I knew Colonel Burr well enough by now to sense that he found the adulation of Colonel Hamilton somehow vaguely unfair—not that he’d dare say it aloud.

  But his daughter did. “I don’t know why Philip’s father should have a boat—I mean a ship—with his name, Papa,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve it, because New York hasn’t ratified anything yet.”

  “True enough, sweet.” The Colonel chuckled, pleased beyond measure by both her logic and the sentiment. “I’ve heard the Assembly will vote this week for ratification. But you are right that it’s much wiser not to claim the reward before the accomplishment is complete, nor should politics be ruled by emotional displays such as this.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Miss Burr said, equally pleased that she’d earned her father’s approval. “At least Colonel Hamilton didn’t get to see the ship. He didn’t have his reward. Philip told me his father is not at home, but still in Poughkeepsie, and won’t be back until next week.”

  “Well, then, I suppose that absolves Philip’s father from any charges of unseemly vainglory, doesn’t it?” the Colonel said. “Though it might be wise of you not to make that point with your friend Philip.”

  “Yes, Papa,” she said solemnly. “Most likely he already knows, anyway.”

  “Most likely his father does as well.” The Colonel’s smile widened as he gazed fondly down upon his daughter. They truly were so much alike. Not only did she resemble him more each day in her face and expressions, but in her thoughts as wel
l. I do not know if this was a natural inclination between them, or if it came as a result of how closely he oversaw her studies. No matter: the result was the same. Even at this age, they were exceptionally close, and whenever I saw them together I longed for him to be able to share even a fraction of that devotion with our child as well.

  But as precocious as Miss Burr could be, there were also times when she was very much her tender age. As the three of us walked home after the procession, a welcome light breeze swept up from the water. The breeze caught beneath the wide brim of the little girl’s hat, threatening to carry it away from her head as the silk ribbons on the crown danced and fluttered around her face. Miss Burr wrinkled her nose and giggled at the sensation, and I swiftly placed my palm atop her head to keep the hat from blowing free.

  “Mind your hat, Theo,” her father said mildly. “It’s not Mary’s responsibility to stop your carelessness, and I don’t want to hear you weeping if it’s lost.”

  But Miss Burr had forgotten entirely about the hat. Instead, she was staring at me, and how that same mischievous breeze had whipped the soft, worn linen of my apron and petticoats close against my body.

  “You’ve gotten fat, Mary, like Mama was,” she observed. “Are you going to have a baby, too?”

  “That’s a rude inquiry to make, Theo,” the Colonel said quickly. “No lady makes common observations of another person’s appearance. Pray apologize to Mary at once.”

  At once the girl’s face grew solemn, for she hated any rebuke from her father.

  “Please forgive me, Mary,” she said dutifully. “I misspoke, and I was wrong.”

  “You’re forgiven,” I said. “But come, we must hurry home now, Miss Burr. Your mother and sister will be wanting their tea.”

  She nodded, and quickened her steps as I’d asked.

  But the damage had been done, and the glance that the Colonel and I exchanged over his daughter’s head showed we both knew it. The secret that I’d so carefully kept this long could not be kept much longer, and decisions we’d both postponed must soon be made.

  CHAPTER 19

  City of New York

  State of New York

  August 1788

  I never learned if it was Miss Burr’s unthinking chatter that finally betrayed me to Mistress. Perhaps it was the midwife who still came to tend to Mistress, and who might have observed me with a professional eye. And perhaps it could simply have been Mistress herself who’d at last seen what I’d been hiding in plain sight.

  I’d been reading to her in the back parlor, as she still asked me to do on occasion. She lay on the sofa in her dressing gown, propped with pillows so she could see the flowers blooming in the small garden behind the house. Although the physician and midwife both agreed that her body was healing well enough from her last sorrowful lying-in, her soul had not, and she remained despondent and low in spirits. She declined all invitations from friends, and refused to see them when they called upon her. The Colonel and her surviving children did all they could to cheer her, but only time would ease the grief she felt over this last, and likely final, loss of an infant at birth. As a wife, she’d been brought to bed eight times, with only four of those children surviving; it was clear that with each loss the sorrow had become more difficult for her to bear rather than easier.

  “Close the window, Mary, please,” she said, waving weakly toward it. “There is a draft that is making me chill.”

  I didn’t know how she could feel a draft on so warm an August afternoon, but I was happy enough to put down the grim collection of sermons that I’d been reading to her. In these last two years, Mistress had turned more to religion for solace than to the ancient philosophers who had once been her constant companions. I couldn’t fault her, poor lady, though I’d have thought a happier book of humorous stories or poems would have been a better choice to cheer her.

  I crossed the room and stretched my arms up high to reach the open casement, pulling it down with a thump. When I turned back toward her, her expression was strangely fixed.

  “Mary,” she said slowly. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

  “No, Mistress,” I said, feigning surprise. I should have known better than to stand as I had before the window, or perhaps part of me had done it on purpose so I might stop the pretending. Either way, my growing belly must finally have been impossible to ignore. “I’ve nothing to tell.”

  “Mary, don’t lie to me, please,” she said with a sadness I hadn’t expected. “You have been with me far too long for that. Can you reckon when the child will be due?”

  I took a deep breath. “November, Mistress.”

  There, that was my admission. She seemed to wilt a bit beneath it, sinking back against the cushions.

  “November,” she repeated. “Oh, Mary. Did you come to harm through some violence, or is the man known to you?”

  “Yes, Mistress, I know him,” I said. “Or I did know him.”

  She sighed. “You either know him, or you don’t,” she said in the too-patient voice she used when reasoning with her children. “Evidently you knew him well enough to—to engage with him.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” I said. “I did know him then. But he is a mariner, an Englishman. He has left New York, and I do not know when, if ever, he shall return.”

  The lie had come readily to my lips, well polished and well practiced, as the best lies always were. Lies had often been a part of my life, not from choice, but in self-defense. My words had never meant anything to those who’d owned me. Why shouldn’t I have learned how to twist them to protect myself as best I could?

  I met her eye, and did not flinch. She was the one who was uncomfortable, not I. Everything I said now, everything I did, was for the sake of my child, and that was what gave me this courage to stand so straight before her. But telling Mistress the truth wouldn’t have been possible, even if I’d wished to do so. She wouldn’t have believed me and the Colonel would have denied it, and I would have soon found myself on the trading block at the end of Wall Street, an inconvenience to be swept away and sold.

  “Oh, Mary, a sailor,” she said with dismay. “How could you have let this happen?”

  “I met him walking in the park, Mistress, while you were at Williamson Hall,” I said. “I was lonely, Mistress, and he was kind to me.”

  That was all I’d say, letting her imagine the rest. A good lie was short.

  “I don’t care how lonely you were, Mary,” she said, her voice growing more upset with each word. “I have trusted you for years to behave in a certain way that reflects well on me and my family, and now you have cast that trust aside as if it were nothing. You have betrayed me, simply because you believed yourself to be lonely.”

  “I am sorry, Mistress,” I said, though I knew that would never be sufficient for her.

  It wasn’t. “I am sorry, too, Mary,” she said, “sorry that you couldn’t conduct yourself like the respectable woman I’d believed you to be. I suppose it cannot be helped, considering, but still.”

  Absently she picked up the book of sermons from the table where I’d left it, smoothing her fingers over and over across the leather binding. I couldn’t tell whether this was to draw comfort from what was written on the pages within, or to wipe away my touch from the cover.

  “I told you when Colonel Prevost first brought you into my house what would be expected of you in a Christian household,” she continued. “I warned you then that there would be consequences if you didn’t obey. I will not permit you to keep this bastard under my roof.”

  I gasped. I’d told myself that she wouldn’t truly follow that threat to give away my child, and that the Colonel wouldn’t permit it, but to hear her now say it again made dread run chill within me.

  “Please, Mistress, no,” I pleaded. “Please don’t do that.”

  Her mouth grew tighter. “Don’t argue with me, Mary, or I shall—Is that Colonel Burr?”

  She twisted around on the sofa to look toward the front hall. The C
olonel could not have chosen a better—or was it worse?—time to return home earlier than usual from his office. Mistress struggled to free herself from the coverlet, her thin legs tangled in the quilted silk.

  “I’ll fetch him, Mistress,” I said, offering as I would have done countless times before.

  But now she looked at me not with gratitude, but with unhappiness, and a certain resentment as well. For years I’d made her household run smoothly for her, so that her attention could be directed in other ways more agreeable to her. Now, suddenly, I wasn’t making things easier for her, but more difficult.

  “Tell Colonel Burr I wish to see him at once,” she said. “Return here with him, Mary. He’ll know best what needs to be done to address this situation of yours.”

  I hurried into the hall, where the Colonel was shrugging free of his coat for Carlos to take. He must have walked home from his office. His face was flushed and gleamed with sweat, and he’d soaked through the white linen of the sleeves of his shirt.

  “Good afternoon, Mary,” he said pleasantly. “Though it is warm today, isn’t it?”

  “Mistress wishes to see you in the back parlor, sir,” I said. My words were unremarkable, but he knew at once from my expression what had happened.

  “How is she?” he asked quickly, his heels brisk across the marble floor.

  “Unhappy, sir,” I said, following after him.

  He nodded, visibly bracing himself.

  It did not take long for Mistress to repeat my story. The Colonel sat beside her on the sofa, his arm around her shoulders and her hand upon his knee, turned inward toward each other and linked together as husband and wife. I stood alone before them with my hands clasped over my child, cast in the role of the sinner awaiting judgment.

  “A common sailor, Mary,” he said, frowning at me. “Did you learn the man’s ship? The name of his vessel’s owner, or its master?”