“Strong tea is better,” insisted Mrs. Adams, elbowing her way forward.
“Dried figs,” Lady Washington serenely stated, setting a basket of them at my bedside. “Figs ease everything for a pregnant woman.” And though I could see they did not agree, the other Federalist ladies were forced, out of deference, to bend to the president’s lady. “Don’t trouble yourself about the children, my dear,” Martha Washington insisted, patting my hand. “I will take little Fanny and Ana in my carriage to dancing school so you can get your rest. All will be well.”
But by the time Alexander returned, victorious over the rebels, having restored order to the country and banished the specter of the guillotine, I had delivered a tiny, misshapen, dead babe.
It would have been a girl. A little girl. I’d hoped for another daughter. A third sister for Ana and Fanny to love. The two of them were already inseparable, but I’d imagined them, the three of them, piling into a bed together and laughing like Angelica, Peggy, and I used to do.
And now I couldn’t be consoled of the loss.
Not even when Alexander burst in the door, clasping me in his strong arms.
“I’m sorry, so sorry.” I wept violently against my husband’s chest. “I lost her. I wasn’t strong enough to keep her.”
Alexander rocked me, tears in his own eyes. “Blame your heartless husband for leaving you. My absence was the cause. It’s my fault, my beloved, my angel, my Eliza . . .”
He was not heartless; he was a hero. He’d saved the country, yet again. The rebellion was smashed. The primacy of federal laws firmly established. The government had passed its first test. And yet, when we put quietly into an unmarked grave my dead child who couldn’t be baptized nor named, I couldn’t find enough patriotism within myself to feel anything but grief.
“She’s cold,” I whispered, awakened by the ghostly cry of an infant echoing in my ears. “In the ground. She must be so cold.”
I started to rise, as if to go to her, but Alexander pulled me back into his arms. “No, my love. She’s with her creator now.”
Icy tears trailed upon my face. “She never felt me hold her. She must’ve been frightened . . . and alone . . .”
“You held her,” he whispered. “You held her inside your body. She wasn’t frightened, my angel. Not while she felt the strength of your love. And you must believe me, for who knows the strength of that love better than I do?”
Having never lost a child before, I couldn’t fathom the grief. Or that I would feel anything other than grief ever again. “I feel shattered. Broken in pieces.”
“I’ll hold you together,” he said, making a bed for me of his whole body. “For once, let me hold you together.”
I let him rock me as I whispered my most secret fears. “I took this child for an embodiment of grace and love and forgiveness, and now she’s gone. What if this is the end of us?”
“This is not the end of us,” Alexander said, taking my face in his hands. “I have tendered my resignation to the president. I am yours forever, Eliza. And I will never leave you alone or desperate again. I will not let this be the end of us. This is the beginning.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
You may judge how much Hamilton must be mortified at his loss of influence such that he would descend to the language of a street bully.
—EDWARD LIVINGSTON TO HIS MOTHER
Summer 1795
New York City
FLOWERS. IN THE five months since he’d left the government, my husband filled my world with flowers. Cut hot house hyacinths in winter. Sunny daffodils from Mama’s garden during our visits to the Pastures. Azaleas at the Pinkster festival. And now the riot of purple aster, red roses, and orange lilies of New York’s Vauxhall Gardens where we strolled with our children.
“Buy your sisters ice cream,” Alexander called after Philip while balancing three-year-old Johnny on his shoulders.
Running wild amongst the gravel paths between the flowers and sculpted shrubbery, our children were happy to have returned to New York. And I was, too. Some part of me would always long for the countryside, but my husband’s legal trade was a city occupation, and there could be no better city than this one.
To me, New York City was a more hopeful, energetic place than Philadelphia. Certainly, I felt better here—the riverside walks and musical concerts and frenetic pace had been a balm for and a distraction from my grief over our lost child.
I was not, of course, the first woman to lose a baby. My mother and my sisters had endured the same. But I’d lived so blessed an existence that it was, to that point, the worst pain of my life, and through it, Alexander had held me together, just as he promised. He’d let me rage. He’d let me cry. He’d let me question, even, the mercy of God. And it was through my husband’s unfailing strength that I forgave myself for having ever worried that another child would be too much burden.