They seemed to believe that by keeping America out of a costly foreign war, we were betraying our sister republic in France; that President Washington had turned his back on the values of the revolution. And I dared not go out, not even for church. Not when, clutching broadsheets depicting our president being sent to the guillotine, the mob screamed, “Enemies of equality: Reform or Tremble!”
Instead, I kept the curtains closed and read the Bible to the children upstairs where we’d gathered them, afraid and trembling, into our bed. Nearly nine years old, our daughter Ana was close to hysterical. Fanny, only a few months younger, sucked her thumb, as was her wont when she’d been a babe. While I rocked the littlest ones in my arms amongst a mountain of blankets Alexander had made for the boys, Ana cried, “Will they behead the president?”
“I will never let such a thing happen,” Alexander reassured us, very gravely. “Not while I draw breath.”
I knew that was true. But so, too, did anyone who wished to drag George Washington to the scaffold.
Which was why they would come for my husband first.
Having finally coaxed the children to sleep in our bed with their favorite Dutch stories of elves and river Nixie, Alexander and I retreated to the divan in the back parlor, where a few candles still sputtered in the braziers on the wall. The protesters would return at dawn, but now, in the blessed quiet, I asked, “Are you not weary of all this?”
“More than you can know. Truly this trade of a statesman is a sorry thing. But I cannot quit it. Otherwise, what’s to become of our fame and glory?” He gave a wry grin, one of his most appealing. “How will the world go on without me? I am sometimes told very gravely that it could not.”
He wanted me to laugh with him. But I didn’t. It’d been his habit for months now to crawl into bed with one of the boys at night, claiming that their sleep was troubled or that he didn’t want to wake me. This was the fiction—the polite lie—that allowed us to go on as if all was well. There was no intimacy between us now, and so I wanted no more lies, either.
“All you do is fight,” I whispered. “You fight Jefferson, you fight Madison, and Burr. You fight the Jacobins, the Clintons, the Livingstons, the newspapers, the Congress, the French ambassador—”
“And I beat them,” Alexander replied. “You mustn’t fear, my love. I will defend you and the children to my last breath.”
He said this with fierce devotion, leaning over to kiss me. And I could hear my sister say, Ah, Betsy! How lucky you were to get so clever and so good a companion.
But I whispered, “I could leave you.”
I startled as if the words had come from someone else’s mouth.
Hamilton startled, too, his eyes ablaze. “What?”
I straightened up, and this time I spoke clearly. “I could leave you.” I’d scarcely allowed myself to acknowledge these thoughts much less speak them aloud, but now the words mutinied upon my tongue, beyond my command. “A divorce would be a scandal, but some society ladies quietly abandon their husbands if they have the means and inclination.”
Perhaps Alexander hadn’t believed his sweet, docile wife could contemplate such a thing because he paled. “Betsy, of all times to even muse—”
“Papa would take me back at the Pastures,” I said, idly twisting the interlocked gold bands of my wedding ring as my voice gained strength. “And his grandchildren, too. I am not without options. There’s only one thing that compels me to live with you, to cook your meals, to tend your house, to warm your bed. To admire your brilliance. To stay with you, at your side, even against a mob. And that one thing is a love you have sorely abused.”
In a flash of temper, he snapped, “There is also the matter of marriage vows.”
“Vows you failed to honor,” I shot back.
My shot must have hit its mark, because he buried his guilty face in his hands. Still I gave him no quarter; he was, after all, the one who taught me that if blood must be drawn, you must strike at the most vulnerable place.
“You say you were lured to that woman’s bed. Maybe you believe it. But I know better.” His shoulders tensed, as if he would argue, but I stopped him with one word. “Reynolds.” I spit the name, dragging in a few ragged breaths. “I couldn’t place it at first. It buzzed about like a gadfly, stinging me until at last I remembered, all those years ago, how you went to taverns seeking out the man who’d passed a slander about you . . .”
I stood up from the sofa, arms crossed over myself as I paced.