“And I shall let you win,” Alexander said, his voice a raw scrape.
“A first,” my son whispered, closing his eyes with apparent relish.
His breath rattled.
Then fell silent.
Frightful, heartbreaking silence.
That silence echoed through the room.
I reeled from the bed, shaking my head, vehemently, backing away in denial, nearly crashing into my sister’s gilded chairs and mahogany tables. Half-hysterical, half-furious, I wanted to tear at my hair and beat my breasts and awaken myself from this cruel nightmare.
But while I retreated, Alexander clutched our dead son, choking out, “Go, my boy. Go out of the reach of the seductions and calamities of a world full of folly, full of vice, full of danger . . .”
All my life I’d taken comfort from religion, but these words offered me no solace, and from my mouth came the keening of a wounded animal, a ghastly howl of despair. My cheeks streaked with salty tears, the skirt of my delicate pink dress stained with acrid sweat and dried blood, I was overcome with a desire to smash everything in my path—silver mirrors, blue china, crystal wineglasses. To sweep off the elegant tables all my sister’s goblets, candlesticks, and trinkets that held no worth in a world without Philip.
But I was stopped by the sight of Alexander hovering, shattered, over the deathbed of our boy, and the absurd thought that I couldn’t endure to see one more thing broken . . .
And because my husband was shattered, I couldn’t endure to see him.
Angelica tended me that night. She took the pins from my hair. She undid the fastenings of my pelisse coat, sliding the bloodstained embroidered cuffs off my arms. She stripped from me my stained pink dress. She bent down and removed my shoes and dosed me with the laudanum that was left. Where Hamilton slept that night I did not know, but my sister put me into her own bed where the sweet, merciful oblivion of sleep overtook me. And from that dream state, where my son was still alive, I did not ever wish to wake.
Chapter Thirty-Three
IT WAS THE will of heaven,” said my well-meaning Christian lady friends. “Remember the duty of Christian resignation.”
It was God, they said, who took my child from me.
But upon my aching knees in the pew in Trinity Church, clutching my Bible, I knew better.
It was not God who took my son from me.
It was a Jeffersonian.
Captain George Eacker, the violent Jacobin we saw ranting against my husband on the Fourth of July. Having come across the man at a playhouse, my son and a friend had confronted him. Captain Eacker had grabbed my son by the collar and called him a rascal. Rascal. A word which, when spoken by one gentleman to another, demanded bloodshed.
“Eliza,” Alexander now whispered, his hand upon my elbow, offering to help me rise.
I startled to realize that we were alone in the church. How long I’d knelt in desperate prayer amidst wooden benches and the scent of incense, I didn’t know. How long my husband had prayed beside me, I didn’t know either.
It seemed I didn’t know anything. I’d been at the Grange while my son negotiated his affair of honor. Blissfully unaware. But Alexander had been at his law office in the city.
Still on my knees, I peered at him. “Did you know?”
Hamilton swallowed and shook his head. He didn’t need to be told what I was asking. “Philip went to his uncle for advice.”
And for those pistols, I thought, bitterly. Philip should have come to us. I’d made plain my Christian opposition to dueling. Every parson and priest in the country decried duels. Even Alexander had issued a memo to curb the practice when he was general of the army.
But my son hadn’t come to us. He’d gone to his rich, swaggering uncle with his shining dueling pistols and a reputation for deadly aim.
No, no, no, I screamed inside my head. Bad enough that my son had involved himself in a duel that took his life. So much worse that he’d been the one to make the unholy challenge. I didn’t have to ask why. Church—our family expert on dueling—would have told my son that he couldn’t let an insult stand. Church would have told him he hadn’t any choice when it came to honor.
But what the devil did John Barker Church know about honor? He’d been born with it. He had the luxury as a young man to cast off a name and put it back on again as the circumstances suited him. He’d never had to scrape and claw to prove his worth.
Not like my husband, who took my hand in his trembling one, and tearfully said, “I learned of it only after Philip had issued the challenge.”
I gasped. Then he had known. He’d known before the deed had been done.