Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Blessed be God the Word, who came to his own and his own received him not, for in this way God glorified the Stranger.” - Nadia Bolz-Weber

Angelica shuts the door whisper-quiet behind her as she steps out of their father’s sickroom. She looks troubled: more troubled than usual, which is saying a lot, and when her eyes meet Eliza’s there’s precious little hope there. Eliza is pregnant, and sick-visiting has been deemed unwise; she hasn’t seen her father since he first fell ill and resigned his commission, six months ago. But if the hex that he took at Saratoga has progressed… if he’s dying…

“How is he?”

“No change,” Angelica grimaces. Eliza sags in relief. “And the sky?”

“The same, last I checked.” She drew the curtains closed some ten minutes ago, disconcerted by the strip of crisp new parchment over the southern sky, growing more and more stark as the night spills dusky-blue and black across east and north and west. She cannot bear to think of her darling Alexander, wholly beneath that unnatural sky.  

Angelica goes to the window anyway, draws the curtain aside for a glimpse at the doom spreading above the Continental Army, leagues and leagues off. Eliza reads the scene from the uncanny glow on her sister’s face, the pinpoint white reflections in her eyes. Something in Angelica’s expression goes hard, and she tugs the curtain shut.

“You know,” her sister muses, “we’re witnessing history. An unwriting on this scale hasn’t been attempted since the Incans.”

“Hasn’t it,” Eliza says, her voice brittle. Sometimes she hates Angelica’s way of making everything into a schoolbook lesson for herself.

Angelica’s mouth works silently for a long moment, as though a thousand retorts are writhing and dying on her tongue, and finally says, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Eliza says, the familiar, habitual flurry of forgiveness she always has for Angelica spilling out. She doesn’t know if it’s generosity or spite at work when she adds, “I know you love him.”

Angelica laughs, dark and bitter. “You love him better.”

Eliza’s hand goes to her wedding ring. On an impulse she pulls it off her finger and twists it open into its two secret halves, revealing the miniscule writing inside. Alexander one half says, and Elizabeth the other. She feels ashamed. This night of all nights isn’t the night to provoke strange and obscure jealousies—not with their father’s illness, not with her husband…

She clasps the two halves of the ring back together and slides it back onto her finger, making a fist and covering her hand with the other, as if to shield it.  

She and Angelica share a room that night, Peggy swapping places with Angelica for the watch on their father, for their mother remains in Albany, with the roads too dangerous to travel. There are just enough rooms in the snug little cabin for each sister to have her own, but each knows instinctively that the other would rather have company. Eliza turns to the wall and sleeps, howevermuch she didn’t expect to, and when nausea brings her awake long before dawn Angelica’s candle is still burning. Angelica herself is asleep, Volume One of Gibbon’s The History of the Unwriting and Fall of the Roman Empire perched upon her chest like a bird of ill-omen.

There is a strange discomfort in Eliza’s belly, as is often the case when she wakes these days. She brings her hand to it and knuckles against the odd spot, feeling the spasm grow and then subside. Eliza stands and stretches and then, against her better judgment, goes to the window. Cold has seeped in from outside, and her skin breaks out in goosebumps before she even draws the curtain back. But when she does, there is nothing to see. Only blackness, total and absolute.

The paper sky is gone.

Can it be true? Can the rebels—can her Alexander have turned the tide?

“Angelica,” Eliza cries, remembering at the last moment to muffle her voice so as not to wake the whole house. “Angelica, look!”

Her sister stirs behind her; Eliza dares not take her eyes from the window. The shadows and reflections on the glass shift as Angelica raises the candle. “What is it?”

Eliza has no time for what is it, only raises her hand and beckons Angelica to come closer.

Angelica screams.

Eliza whirls around. “What is it?” she cries.

“Your hand! Your—Eliza, Eliza, oh—” Angelica races to her side, throws one arm around her as though to offer her support. “Let’s have you to the bed, now, and we’ll summon the doctor—PEGGY! PEGGY!”

“Stop that! You’ll wake father!” Eliza protests, fruitlessly, to the sound of Peggy pounding up the stairs, a new set of shadows growing and capering wildly—she’s bringing the storm-lantern with her.

“What is it?” Peggy demands, throwing the door open. “Oh, Eliza!”

“What?! ” Eliza shouts, losing her patience entirely, throwing her hands wide in exasperation, and then, at last, in the lantern-light, she sees the blood. Her left hand is fair covered; it drips down her forearm. “Oh,” she says, feeling very suddenly faint, and Angelica’s bony arm digs into her back as she takes some of her weight. But Eliza’s legs steady, and she walks back to her bed and lays herself down with only minor support. “Am I—” Tears come to her eyes. “The baby…”

“Shh, shh, never mind the baby; have a care for yourself,” Angelica soothes, gathering her hair and arranging it on the pillow. She disappears for half an instant and reappears. “I have the bucket here”—for Eliza had been sick in just the same bucket the previous two nights—“and if you like I shall fetch you some water.”

“No,” Eliza says, “no, I’m not sick and I’m not thirsty, only stay here, Angelica.”

“Um, Angelica?” Peggy asks, holding the lantern high. “I don’t—”

“Not now,” Angelica says, tone transformed, a voice like a general’s.

Lucky for them all, Peggy is no soldier, for she bursts out, “She’s not losing the baby!”

Angelica turns full round; hope leaps wild in Eliza's chest.

“There’s no blood on her legs,” Peggy points out. She lifts the lantern again, and Eliza sits up to see over the gentle swell of her belly. Peggy is entirely correct; and the dark stain on Eliza’s belly, which had so alarmed Angelica, is not the source, either.

“I wiped my hand off on my dress,” Eliza says faintly. “That must be… I had a little cramp…”

“Are we certain it’s blood?” Peggy asks, her voice high and tremulous. “It looks black…”

“Everything looks black in this light,” Angelica says. She brushes her fingers over the back of Eliza’s wounded hand, already staining the sheets upon which it rests, and draws her fingers up to her face. She sniffs and then, very cautiously, extends her tongue. Her face twists in disgust. “No. You’re right: it’s ink.”

“Ink?” Eliza cries, as another gout runs cold and dripping down her arm from wrist to elbow. Frantic that her wedding ring might be damaged, she pulls it off and sets it on the nightstand. Angelica takes the sheet from the bed—already ruined, in any case—and attempts to scrub the ink off, to get a better sense of its source, and it’s only after several futile minutes of this that they realize the nightstand has spilled over with ink: it’s dripping onto the floor, staining the bottoms of Angelica and Peggy’s slippers.

“It’s my ring,” Eliza says, in mixed wonder and horror. “My ring is… it’s bleeding ink, it’s…”

Her fingers are already so stained there is no point in attempting to preserve them; she reaches out and twists the ring open. She wipes the excess ink off as best she can with the sheet, but it has settled into the grooves of both their names, Elizabeth and Alexander now indelibly dark. As she watches, more ink wells up in the letters of her husband’s name, beading into droplets and glinting black in the lantern-light.

“What does it mean?” she asks. “Are they—do you think it’s over?”

Angelica and Peggy share an uncertain look, and Eliza, impatient, rises and looks to the window again. Darkness there, and nothing more. But if she looks carefully, she thinks she sees something on the southern horizon, a deeper darkness than even the full night sky. It takes her long moments of staring before she realizes the incongruity. This far from the city, the sky is one enormous field of stars bisected by the shining river of the Milky Way. But now that she looks more closely, she sees that something is terribly wrong. The Milky Way comes down from the north in all its glory, and then, perhaps twenty degrees above the horizon, it simply… stops.

Seized by a terrible premonition, Eliza drifts into her own bedroom, her nightgown billowing like a ghost. A puddle of ink, centered on her writing desk, spreads halfway across the floor, shining wet and fresh in the starlight from the window. She steps straight through, disregarding her slippers, and cold ink seeps through their thin soles and between her toes.

Opening the drawer with Hamilton’s letters in it sends ink cascading out, splashing the front of her nightgown and ruining it further. Hands shaking, she draws out the pages, but it’s obvious already; they’re ruined, completely ruined, every one saturated. Wet paper rips between her fingers.

“No,” she whispers, her voice cracking and soundless. “No, no, no, you can’t take him and this, too; not this, not this, not this.”

Dawn comes to three quarters of the sky and finds her father alive. Eliza looks south. Not at the dark, but into it. She says, “I’m going to save him.”

It’s impossible, her sisters say. Don’t do this. Think of the baby—think of the danger—Father’s still so ill...

The next dawn finds Eliza on the road.

The dawn after that the darkness has grown. Eliza tells herself it’s only because she’s getting nearer. This close, she can tell that it isn't a wall of solid darkness like she'd thought from a distance. Massive shapes, empty colors, no colors, hurtling-fast vertigo colors, drift and twist and smear like falling rain or flocks of birds. People stream north on the roads, but none speak to her. They look dead about the eyes.

She travels south alone.

The dawn after the dawn after that it spans half the sky. Her horse grows restless at the half-night, shies and dances at the slightest noise or touch.

On the very margins she finds a dead man sprawled by the side of the road. His coat is blue and splattered with mud. She draws closer, to see if she knows his face, and finds that she does.

It’s Aaron Burr.

He’s breathing.

She splashes water in his face, bids him to drink. Sits with him an hour, sharing crusts of bread, he too tired and heartsick to speak. Despite that, she can tell that he’s desperate to live. That redcoat woman he’d had—rumor said she was with child. Burr’s eyes linger on her belly, kindling with something.

“There’s an inn about five miles up the road,” she says. “Nearly empty last night. Most of the folk who are going to make it north have already made it, I think.”

He nods.

“Can you walk that far?” she asks.

Mute, he shakes his head.

“Take my horse, then.”

He looks her in the face at that, eyes sharp and questioning, but he takes the horse. Eliza keeps walking. A few hours later, she enters the dark.

there are places

where

the words

don’t

reach

On the mudded-out track through the endless woods and rolling hills of central Pennsylvania there walks a woman—young, clad in widow’s black, the heavy fabric falling round the swell of her belly. Her black hood is cast down to shield her face from the wind; her head is bowed but her back straight. Before her the sky is clear and blue in all the glory of early fall; behind her it is ink-black and uncanny, and uncanniness clings to her skin like the smell of death clings to men off the battlefield. No band of brigands dares accost her; no friendly washerwoman inquires if she is well, if she needs a bite to eat, what business a woman in her state has on the road. The uncanniness holds them back—well, that, and the creature that scuttles along at her heels: low-slung, many-limbed, panting and coughing and drooling ink from its gibbering mouths. Its form is ever-shifting but always hideous to look upon. In every one of its eyes there is madness, but some eyes are shrewd as well as mad, and some of the mouths are capable of human speech—if such a thing it may be called, that consists of nothing but jeers and blasphemies and strange rhymes. Horses shy from it; babies cry at the sight of it. When the monster speaks the woman’s mouth narrows to a grim-set line, and her eyes fill with fury.

Strange sights on the roads these days, slipping out from under the darkness, and Elizabeth Hamilton is one of them.

Chapter Text

Night has well and truly fallen by the time Eliza arrives at the outskirts of the little town in upstate New York, and the wind blows cold and wet, promising snow. It’s just as well; nobody is out and about, so the monster trailing behind her attracts no attention, and there's no need to delay her longed-for homecoming by traveling cross-country. Thank God. Eliza’s swollen feet and ankles ache. She wants nothing more than a hot meal and a warm bed and a chance to take her boots off. Even her heartsickness—that she couldn’t save her husband, that her child has been half-orphaned even before his birth—is subsumed by her exhaustion and the chill in her bones. As she walks, she thinks of nothing but the act of putting one foot down, dragging the other forward, repeating.

By the time she passes through town and travels on several more miles to her family’s home, snowflakes are blowing into her eyes and the monster snuffles and whines behind her. She had expected, at this late hour, for the candle in Angelica’s upstairs bedroom to be the only one still burning. Angelica often stays up far into the night, entranced by some book or treatise—it was one of her few points of contention with early riser Eliza, when they shared a room as girls. But judging by the light and the muffled sound of conversation spilling from downstairs, the household is still awake.

As Eliza comes to a halt in the path, the beast bumps her hand with one of its snouts and makes a querulous, chittering sound. It has been unusually quiet on today’s journey, muttering instead of moaning, as though it sensed the end was near. Honestly, Eliza prefers it that way. She hates the sound of her husband’s voice in a monster’s mouth.

All she can come up with for the moment is to pat its malformed head and say, “Stay here, beast. I’ll come back for you.”

The monster lets out a groan, a falling-tree sound, hardly an animal sound at all, but when Eliza steps away it doesn’t follow.

The conversation grows more distinct as Eliza nears the door; they’ve cracked a window to let in some air, chill as it is. She makes out her sisters’ voices.

“If we hire a carriage, we stand too great a chance of missing her on the road. I say—”

“We won’t miss her, Peggy, and we need to travel fast—”

“I know we need to travel fast, what I’m saying is that if we go on horseback—”

“And if we find her and she can’t ride?”

“Well, in that case we’ll have to hire a carriage like you said for the return journey, but I don’t think—”

Eliza opens the door and steps inside. “There’s no need,” she says, less distinctly than she’d like, her face numb from the cold. “I’m back now.”

For a moment, she’s treated to a candlelight tableau: her sisters’ shocked faces, raised from one of their father’s good maps of New York and Pennsylvania, Angelica’s finger still pointing out some feature of interest. And then they both scream, more or less simultaneously, and Eliza is engulfed on both sides, kissed on both cheeks, divested of her wet cloak and boots (dyed midnight-black by rains of ink), and hustled over to the sofa with a blanket round her shoulders before she can so much as say hello. The innumerable inconsequential injuries of her backcountry diversions are cooed over; her cold-chapped knuckles treated with salve, her throbbing, swollen feet elevated even as a hot mug of cider is pressed into her hands. She offers Peggy a smile of thanks, sipping slowly and breathing in the steam, her nose growing runny with heat.   

Angelica talks through the whirlwind, and the steady patter of her words would put the monster to shame.

“Of course you will be anxious to hear about Father, but he began to improve a few days ago and is now as well as can be expected given the seriousness of his condition. Mother came and took him to Albany only yesterday. Of course, we didn’t tell him where you’d gone but it was inevitable that he would notice you weren’t around when he was leaving; he kept asking, where’s Eliza, where’d she go and so then we had to explain the unwriting and I thought he was going to have a fit then and there, he was so upset to hear about the Army and General Washington and you, leaving like that, you really must write to him at once to let him know you’re well, honestly, such a foolish—”

“I will,” Eliza interrupts, almost as offended as she is baffled. “It wasn’t foolish.”

Angelica and Peggy exchange a look.   

“You haven’t asked me how I am,” Eliza says.

Another look.

“We,” Peggy says, in a tentative voice, and Eliza translates we to mean Angelica, “we read some things, while you were gone, which made us quite worried for you, and certain that you had a… a long and hard and fruitless journey. And, I, at least for myself,” she says, looking to Angelica for support, “I didn’t want to ask you about it if you didn’t want to speak.”

Eliza frowns. “What sorts of things did you read?”

A third look. Eliza doesn’t much appreciate it, all this looking and no talking, all in reference to some knowledge she doesn’t have. This time, Angelica speaks. “Eliza, it’s late. You’ve had a very long day, I’m sure, at the end of a… a long journey. Let’s… let’s save it for the morning, all right?”

Eliza scowls. Foolish and fruitless ring in her ears, almost like something it might say. She doesn’t like the insinuation that she walked all that way with nothing to show for it. Certainly she hadn’t found her Hamilton, but that she’s being coddled and pitied because her sisters have decided she’s failed, when really, she’s brought home a—

She stands abruptly, wincing as her feet meet the cold floor. “I almost forgot— I must attend—”

“To your horse? Oh, of course—no, no, Eliza, I’ll get it; Peggy, would you—” Angelica jerks her head, and Eliza finds her little sister blocking the way.

“Angelica, I’m warning you…”

“Rest your feet, I’ll only be a moment,” Angelica calls, already bundling up at the front door.

There’s a draft of cold air, a piercing scream, and Angelica returns to them a moment later. Eliza sips cider with her feet up, as instructed.

“That,” Angelica says, still panting, “is not a horse.”

Eliza nods, in as sardonic a manner as she can muster. But a moment later, Angelica surprises her, slumping into a chair with her head in her hands. “So you found it. And... and you brought it home with you,” she murmurs, as Peggy slips away upstairs. Peggy returns and wordlessly holds out a quilt. When Eliza doesn’t take the quilt Peggy drapes it over her anyway.

Eliza doesn’t answer for a moment. Weeks without anyone daring to speak to her have made her unsociable; her priorities have shifted away from pleasing the whole world and towards the life growing in her belly; she is grieving and exhausted and has walked all day in the soaking cold rain. “I’d thought that much obvious,” she says. “Did you happen to read what it is? What it means?”

“Angelica—” Peggy begins. “Angelica, not tonight, she’s tired, let her rest—”

“Don’t try to spare me.” Eliza holds herself very still, a carved angel on the tomb Alexander will not have, demanding. The silence is empty with the falling snow outside, until there comes a long, low roar like distant cannonfire. Eliza looks up, getting her feet under her, ready to move, but—

“Thunder,” Peggy says, laying a hand on Eliza’s shoulder. “We’ve been hearing it all week. We think it’s an effect of the... unwriting.”

Eliza can believe that. Thunder in a snowstorm is quite mild, compared to what she’s seen: rains of ink, rivers flowing backwards, the strange creatures in the corner of her eye that the monster growled and snapped at. “Tell me, Angelica.”

“Why did you bring it back?” Angelica answers instead. “Did... you didn't think it was...that it might be...?”

"Good Lord, Angelica, give me some credit," Eliza snaps. "As if I couldn't see—as if I wouldn't recognize in an instant my own—"

"I'm sorry," Angelica says immediately, her voice cracking. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply—I only—help me understand, Eliza. You brought it home for a reason, so why—"

“When I first saw—” Eliza's voice breaks. She swallows and wills herself to continue. “When I first saw it, and realized what they’d done, I... I thought I might kill it.”

“But you didn’t. You brought it home.” Angelica's voice is soft. She steps forward and gently lays a hand over Eliza’s, clasped in her lap, the right over the left, hiding her blackened wedding ring.

When Eliza doesn’t shake Angelica off she sits, gathering her sister in closer. Eliza’s next breath comes ragged, and the next, right on the edge of tears, and at last she steadies herself and says, “It has a voice, Angelica. His voice. I couldn’t—I couldn’t. The moment I heard it speak, I… I couldn’t harm it.” She hadn’t known what else to do with the monster except to take it with her, hide it away so nobody could see. Alexander would have been so ashamed …

“Oh, Eliza.” Angelica hugs her tight, her hands stroking down Eliza’s long black hair. They embrace for a long while, Angelica’s fingers absently untangling knots, teasing the wet strands straight. “That was... I don't know if anybody's done that before."

Eliza chokes out a laugh.

But then, after another moment of thought, Angelica says, "... I think you may have done something very wise."

“Was it?” Eliza asks. “If that’s the replacement they’ve made for him, wouldn’t it be better to kill—”

“The history books—well, there’s confusion, but they seem to agree—the books believe that when a man’s… replacement… vanishes, it is a sign that his soul has been freed. But as far as trying to destroy the replacement, before its time has come…before his legacy is set right, I mean… it is thought to be impossible. The beast is only a physical manifestation of a… of a metaphysical state.”

A pause. “It is a good thing I didn’t pistol it, then,” Eliza says dully. “Thing might’ve attacked me on the spot.” She shudders. “Do you mean to say the creature is… immortal?”

Angelica gets the slightly uncomfortable look of an expert confronted with a gross oversimplification. “More… not conventionally alive.”

“You had best tell me everything you understand,” Eliza says, and Angelica returns her ghost of a smile.

“Hadn’t we better see to the thing first?” Peggy asks, and of course she’s right.

She and Angelica make a huge fuss over how Eliza can’t possibly be made to do anything approaching work, but as she sips cider inside, it quickly becomes clear that the creature will answer to none other than her. Eliza listens to Angelica shout, “The barn, now! Go on, move it!” a few times, only for the beast to reply with forlorn goose honks, steadily increasing in volume and stridency. At least she's spared the sound of Alexander's voice arguing, for now, but it would be unwise to allow the situation to escalate any further. She slips back into her cold boots with a grimace, throws on her cloak and gloves, and steps into the night. Snow blows cold in the wind, melting against her face. Within a moment the creature is following her into the barn docile as a well-trained pup.

And then it follows her out again, just as meekly, when she turns to leave.

“No,” Eliza brandishes a finger as Angelica and Peggy look on. “Stay.”

“Stay, play, slay, sashay,” the monster apes, in Alexander’s voice. Eliza very deliberately doesn’t look at her sisters, not wanting to see their reactions. She’s had her fill of their pity already.

“No,” Eliza repeats.

“Maybe we should… feed it?” Peggy suggests.

It hadn’t occurred to Eliza to feed the beast—not that she’d had the means, out on the road— and now she marvels at the idea that the thing has been... around... for at least three weeks and hasn’t, to her knowledge, eaten a thing in all that time. “Can it eat?” she asks, remembering Angelica’s words, not conventionally alive.

Her older sister frowns. “There are accounts of such constructs eating people, certainly…”

“Oh, we’re definitely feeding it,” Peggy says, vanishing and returning a moment later with a sleepy chicken from the coop in her arms. When she sets the bird on the barn floor, the monster’s assorted eyes go wide, its long tail swishing at the straw. Eliza watches, mesmerized, but she feels Peggy’s hand gently tugging at hers and allows herself to be shepherded out of the barn. Peggy and Angelica drop the latch shut behind.

“There,” says Peggy, dusting her hands off and looking quite smug. There's a pounding of feathers and a half-squawk from the barn, and then silence.

Eliza’s belly gives a formidable tug as they’re re-entering the house. She inhales sharply, putting a hand over it, and a moment later the feeling subsides.

“What was that?” Peggy asks, wide-eyed. “You’re not—”

“It’s too early for that, I hope,” Eliza says, eyeing her belly uncertainly. She should have a month left. “But it’s not very comfortable.”

“Sort of a tightening, clenching feeling?” Angelica asks. “I had those all the time with Kitty, weeks before I had her. Your body is just practicing.”

That sentence, though meant to reassure, is alarming in several ways. First, it reminds Eliza that, God willing, she will be having a baby soon, and she’ll have to feed and clothe it and care for it: a real child, her own child and Alexander’s. Second, it reminds her of Angelica’s own two children, left in New York City with John Church when Angelica received news that Father was ill. Last she heard, Church was eager to return to London. Doubtless he will be even more so now that the war has...ended.

Angelica will be leaving her soon.

Here Angelica is, by her side, lecturing briskly about the importance of rest and drinking enough water, generally being an endearing know-it-all like she always is, and suddenly Eliza’s eyes are welling up with tears.

“Eliza? Honey, are you all right?”

“I’m being stupid,” Eliza sobs, flabbergasted at herself.

“No, you’re being pregnant,” Angelica says, in her perfect know-it-all voice. “Let’s go to bed. Everything else can wait until morning.”

“I didn’t cry this whole time,” Eliza sobs, and Peggy darts under her arm and gives her a hug.

“I guess you’ve got a lot of ground to make up, then,” she says, and Eliza laughs.

It’s been an age since they’ve all had occasion to squeeze into one bed, and Eliza’s against it, knowing she’ll have to rise at least once in the night to use the chamber pot, but in the end Angelica gets her way. Eliza drops off to sleep to the gentle sound of Peggy’s snores, almost untroubled by the muted howls of the monster outside.

Eliza wakes to the sound of swearing from the kitchen. Her sisters are both absent, the bed cold. Sun streams in through the shutters, something in its brilliance drawing Eliza out of bed and to the window. She opens the shutters and is rewarded with a scene of blinding, transcendent white. The snow's so thick on the ground she can’t even make out their footprints from last night. The roads will be totally impassable afoot; she arrived home just in time. What's more, the monster's mismatched feet will have left no trace down in the village. Offering up a quick and informal prayer of thanks, she digs under the bed until she finds an old pair of Angelica’s slippers, then wraps a blanket around her shoulders and descends the stairs.

Angelica’s back is to her, bent over a cookbook with the wood-fired oven glowing behind her, wild early-morning hair pulled back, but Peggy spots her almost immediately as she enters the dining room. Eliza opens her mouth to call out a good morning, but Peggy silences her with a look, hurrying over and taking her hand with a mischievous glint in her eyes. Puzzled but intrigued, Eliza follows her back upstairs.

“You should pretend to be asleep,” Peggy says. “Angelica wanted to surprise you with breakfast in bed. She’s nearly done.”

“Oh, of all the ridiculous things,” Eliza huffs, but on second thought, if it will make Angelica feel better to do something for her, that’s worth a little ridiculousness. They must take whatever solace they can manufacture, in these difficult days. “Fine. But I’m not lying here alone. You stay and keep me company.”

“I suppose I can manage,” Peggy says, faux-haughtily, and then giggles. Eliza detects a note of nervousness in her voice, her posture, and wonders where it’s coming from. Peggy sits on the bed, and Eliza sits next to her.

Peggy opens her mouth, but seems to get caught between the impulse to speak and the fear of being poorly received.

“What is it?” Eliza asks, elbowing her playfully. “Something will fly into your mouth and build a nest if you’re not careful.”

Peggy chuckles and ducks her head, and Eliza unfolds the blanket and tosses half of it over her shoulders, to share. Peggy leans against her.

“Are you all right?” she whispers.

“Of course I am,” Eliza says, running a hand lightly over Peggy’s curls. “Pregnant, and perhaps a little inclined to be grumpy, and hungry for breakfast. But all right.”

“But how can you—” Peggy begins, and cuts herself off. She wriggles closer to Eliza. “It feels like the world ended,” she says, soft. “And all the good things are gone.”

It did, Eliza thinks, but there are still those who need us, and we have no time left to waste on tears.

“Well, that can’t be right,” she says, tweaking Peggy’s nose. “You’re here, still.”

Peggy laughs and butts her head against Eliza’s shoulder.

More seriously, Eliza continues, “I know it may seem like all’s lost, Peg. But we can’t give up. If we give up, they win. We have to keep the memory alive of what we could have been. Of what we still might be.”

Peggy sniffs and looks up at her, and Eliza wraps her in a hug.

“Oof,” she says, as the baby kicks her. She raises a hand to her belly. “Baby’s awake.”

Peggy’s eyes widen and ask permission, and Eliza nods. Peggy’s hand settles next to hers, warm and tenuous. “Hey there, niece-of-mine,” she coos. “What a world you’re going to live in, eh?”

“Some disastrous people have gone and ruined some very wonderful things,” Eliza says. “But we’re going to be alright, you and me and your Aunt Peggy.” She doesn’t know how it would even be possible, but it feels good to say the words. If only she had the power to write things and make them true, like a British sorceror-of-war.

There’s a soft knock at the door, and Angelica calls, “Eliza?”

“Come in,” Eliza says, and Angelica creeps inside carrying a plate.

Her expression darkens when she sees Peggy. “Did you wake her up?”

Eliza intercedes before Peggy can draw breath for an indignant reply. “I woke myself. Or, rather, the little one did.”

Angelica gasps, anger evaporating in an instant. She hurries over to lay a hand next to Peggy’s on Eliza’s belly, setting the plate down on the sheets. A moment later, the baby obliges them all with a particularly exuberant kick, and Angelica and Peggy both cry out in delight.

“I made you turnovers,” Angelica says—needlessly, as Eliza has already snatched one and bitten into it.

The hot, buttery pastry practically melts on her tongue, and after so long on the road it’s nothing short of heavenly. Eliza groans theatrically and flops back in bed, crying, “Angelica, you’ve outdone yourself!”

“Oh, stop it,” Angelica laughs. She takes Eliza’s hand and hauls her back upright with a grunt of effort. “You didn’t even get to the filling yet!”

“The crust is the best part, anyway,” Eliza says. She takes another bite, the sweet cinnamon-apple flooding her tongue. “Mmm. I stand corrected.”

“And don’t you dare get crumbs in my bed!” Angelica warns, grabbing Peggy’s hands and bringing them back over the plate just as she takes her first bite.

Later, when they’ve demolished the treats and licked the filling off their fingers, Eliza recognizes the signs that Angelica has something she’s not saying: the way she looks away too often, the way her fingers pick at the sheets. She remembers the enigmatic remarks last night, thinks of Peggy this morning, and decides she can wait no longer.

“What else have you found out, then?”

Angelica sighs, but she knows better than to dodge. “The first piece of bad news I must tell you is that nobody knows where the souls of the erased go after they are gone, and only a few, a very few in all of human history, have ever managed to escape from that place.”

“But some have been redeemed,” Eliza argues. She'd thought about this all the way back, all those lonely miles with the monster gibbering fit to drive her mad. “Joan of Arc, for one, was delivered to Heaven. There is hope. When history comes to know them, they are released, and may pass on in peace to the next world, isn’t that true?”

“It’s… true,” Angelica says, “but for history to come to know someone is…”

“One stranger, all it takes is one stranger, isn’t that what the stories all say?” Eliza’s face heats with impatience.

“Yes, if Alexander had only been erased, perhaps it would be that simple,” Angelica replies, an answering flush on her cheeks. “But he’s been overwritten as well. That—that thing, in the barn—that is what the British are writing about him now. Falsehood made flesh.”

“That’s why you said it was immortal, last night,” Eliza says, a little clarity coming now. “It’s not a creature at all, is it? It’s an idea.”

“Exactly. And as long as Alexander’s soul remains unknown—as long as the lies around him persist—so will the beast. And its very existence counts as evidence for those lies. It’s a self-reinforcing slander.”

Eliza ponders that for a moment, her heart sinking. “So… so I will have to kill it, eventually.”

“It sounds like, if you’re able to kill it, your problem is already solved,” Peggy puts in.

“Peggy’s got it the right way round,” Angelica nods. “Most of the beasts are slain eventually, though some have persisted for centuries. The great monsters of the Old World were almost certainly kings once, who were rewritten.”

Eliza thinks, briefly, what kind of monster King George would have made. Something laughing-mad, something gold and glittering.

Peggy says, “But if no-one understood them, then how were they slain?”

“Even the stories were lost,” Angelica says, flat. “Lies, truths, all of them. Oceans rise, and empires fall, and names are forgotten. Most likely their souls won’t be found until the Last Trumpet sounds.”

The thought of her Alexander’s soul, his brilliant, kind, wondrous soul, shining alone in the blackness for millennia…the brightness fading year by year, lonely and desperate, not even knowing that she hasn’t forsaken him… Eliza shudders.

“So, time,” she gulps. “Time is a weakness. Are there others?”

“Well, this one goes along with time, but memory,” Angelica says. “The British will stop actively maintaining the unwriting soon, if history is any guide. The Romans only maintained their assault on Carthage for four months, and their hate was legendary and their resources immense. After that, folk will remember what was re-written or forget according to their usual tendency in such things. If you can keep Alexander from the front of their minds…”

“… the lies will weaken faster.” Still, the timeline seems too slow. Eliza wants to see Alexander saved in her lifetime, wants to know it’s accomplished once and for all. And keeping the truth alive for that distant stranger, while the lies that would cloud their understanding fade to nothing...it sounds like a fool’s hope. “Is there no other way?”

Angelica fidgets. “Do you know—are the rumors true, that Lafayette was caught up in it?"

Eliza had tried to put it out of her mind. "Yes," Eliza says, and closes her eyes and thinks very hard of the man she knew. Alexander she remembers like she saw him yesterday. Lafayette...

No, she thinks, that was not him.

"Well, then it’s possible that the French might be sufficiently incensed by his fate to launch a counter-narrative—something to weaken the monstrous construct until it can be directly overpowered. A kind of re-rewriting. They’d need publishers, an audience, support, distribution. The sort of thing it would take an empire to pull off.”

“Right,” Eliza sighs. “Well, I suppose that brings us back to the one-stranger approach.”

“Yes,” Angelica says glumly. “A stranger who is willing to entertain heretical discourse with no evidence left to support it, about a figure whom he has been taught to loathe…”

Eliza winces as the baby kicks. Her hand goes reflexively to her belly, and suddenly she has a solution. “The baby,” she breathes. “The baby—Alexander has never met him, technically, and I can shield him from the lies, I can make sure no trace of them touches his ears, and I’ll tell him only the true stories, exactly what I remember of Alexander, and he can understand!”

“Stop calling my niece ‘he,’” Peggy grouses, but she looks intrigued. “That… that could work, couldn’t it?”

Angelica looks to Eliza, determination shaping her jaw. “It’s the best chance we’ve got.”

Eliza nods. To wipe out the stain on her husband’s life—to rescue her Alexander from the fate that his enemies have forced upon him—this child will be enough.

He has to be.

Chapter Text

Angelica comes back from town one day with wind-chapped lips and a rime of ice round her fur-lined hood and a letter from John Church. Eliza is going so stir-crazy in the cabin that she nearly demands Angelica read it aloud, but one look at her sister’s troubled expression withers that impulse. Angelica stomps the snow off her boots, leaves them by the front door, and curls up with her feet under herself on the couch by the fire. Eliza, banished from helping in the kitchen by Peggy, sits and leans her head against her sister’s shoulder and closes her eyes.

“Is he asking you to come back?” Eliza asks, after Angelica has been silent for a long while.

Angelica sighs. “As soon as I can. The wet nurse is threatening to quit.”

“Can he not hire a new one?” Eliza sits up a little straighter, so she can see her sister’s face.

Angelica looks into the fire, her voice going soft and strange. “It would be difficult to find one willing to move to London.”

All Eliza’s breath goes out. London. So soon? Eliza wishes she could give voice to the agony welling up in her throat, but she sees its mirror in Angelica. Her sister doesn’t want to leave her any more than Eliza wishes to be left. And yet she has a husband to return to. A baby girl who needs her mother. Though Eliza’s heart burns to ask Angelica to stay, she’s been thinking about this. She’s afraid that it wouldn’t just be the ritual they act out every time one of them has to go. Angelica might actually say yes—and Eliza can’t bear for her sister’s family to be broken practically before it’s made, like hers has been.

So she swallows her tears and asks, “When do you go?”

“I’m not leaving before you have the baby,” Angelica says fiercely, taking Eliza’s hand and gripping it tight. Eliza nods and grips back, not trusting herself to speak. The thought of giving birth without her sister by her side—she doesn’t want to linger on it. Ever since she first realized she was pregnant she’s been imagining Angelica and Peggy and their mother with her to draw strength from. Their mother is off in Albany seeing to their father still, so it will have to be just Angelica and Peggy.

“Thank you for staying,” Eliza says, her voice watery. “I know it’s hard for you.”

“A team of draft horses couldn’t drag me away.” Angelica shifts, wrapping one arm round Eliza’s shoulders and resting her other hand on Eliza’s bulging belly. Her eyes are full of love. “You’re going to be such a wonderful mother.”

“Oh, stop it,” Eliza says, bowing her head. “My first significant act in this poor baby’s life was probably bringing that monster home.”

That monster has indeed hung around, drawn no doubt by the ready supply of fresh turkey and venison that Peggy and Angelica buy from local huntsmen. Occasionally it will come right up to the house, trying to peer in the windows, but Peggy and Angelica always drive it away, and it doesn’t try to jabber with them the way it did with Eliza. She sighs. “Not exactly responsible motherhood.”

“Some things can’t be helped,” Angelica says. Eliza thinks of London, and nods.

“If I die having it, you have to take the baby with you, all the way to London,” she says, quietly, so Peggy in the kitchen doesn’t hear. “Peggy’s too young.”

“You’re not going to die,” Angelica says sternly. “Don’t you despair. Don’t even think like that.”

Eliza laughs bitterly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past year, it’s that the unthinkable and the impossible are two entirely different things. And I’m not despairing, just… preparing. It’s practical.”

Angelica likes practical, as Eliza knew she would. “Well, if helps you rest easy tonight—yes, of course I’ll take the baby, if you’re sure London is the proper place.”

“With you is the proper place,” Eliza says, indeed a little more settled in her mind already. “One more thing.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t give up on Alexander.”

“Never,” Angelica says, just as Peggy sweeps into the room with three bowls of stew balanced on a tray, and declares it time to eat.

Three days later the baby comes. By the time Peggy returns with the midwife, the birth is well underway, Angelica wiping the sweat from Eliza’s face and unperturbed by the animal grunts that interrupt her prayers. The midwife checks her progress and nods, pronouncing everything as well as it can be. The only thing left to do is let nature take its course, and this it does over the span of several hours.

Eliza is utterly exhausted by the effort, perhaps still weak from grief and her long journey, and soon instead of thinking at all she can only look up at her sisters, breathe in-two-three out-two-three, and try to ride through the waves of clenching cramping discomfort that come closer, and closer, and closer. Eventually the midwife asks her to push, and she passes into a state of mindless resolution, a physical being with only one task in the universe.

But then the terrible clench in her belly relaxes. Eliza blinks to clear her vision. She sees Peggy smiling down at her and attempts a wobbly smile of her own, tasting her own sweat and tears. Is it over? she wants to ask. In the distance there’s a high, piercing sound, and Angelica gingerly stands up into Eliza’s field of view. She’s holding something small in her arms.

“Do you want to hold him?” she asks.

Eliza, dumbstruck, nods. Suddenly it strikes her that the noise is the baby. Her baby.

Angelica gently places the little pink creature on Eliza’s chest, where it quiets. Eliza lays her hands on its back, too tired to do much else. It’s slippery and squirmy and soft. Angelica pats at it gently with a towel.

“It’s a boy?” she asks.

“A healthy little boy,” the midwife confirms.

“Look at these fingernails,” Eliza breathes in awe. “Look at this hair!” Fine black curls, sparse enough to show the scalp beneath them, crown the baby’s head. Peggy kneels down and ever-so-gently touches them.

“So soft!” Peggy reaches her thumb down to stroke the baby’s cheek. The baby, goggle-eyed, purses his lips. “He’s blowing me a kiss!”

Angelica sighs. “Peggy, leave the child be, he’s two minutes old and he doesn’t need to be harassed.”

Peggy, pouting, withdraws, and a moment later the baby finds Eliza’s breast and begins to suckle. A great sense of relief washes over her, the memory of her pain already fading. The grasping shadows of her exhaustion blur into weary, satisfied contentment.

A part of her had dreamed thoughts too dreadful and full of grief to speak aloud, that maybe her exertion in attempting to reach Alexander, or her time under the black flag of his last battlefield, or the trials of the return journey, the mental strain of the loss of her love and the presence of the monster—that any one or a combination of these things might have blasted and blighted the fragile life growing, oblivious, inside her. But even in her weariness Eliza knows that this baby is perfect. Somehow her body has shielded him from harm.

And now she has brought him into the world, where harm is unavoidable. The thought poor baby coalesces in her head, but as she moves to voice it she realizes it isn’t true to the feeling inside her. Her sisters are around her. She still has her own strength and her own mind and her own heart, overfilling with love for this strange little creature, already clever enough to suckle at her breast and clench her smallest finger in his fist.

She looks up at Angelica and Peggy, and words fail her. Her eyes brim over with tears, and she’s so tired and feeling so many things she doesn’t even know what for. But a part of it is joy, joy for this beautiful baby, when so much else is ruined.

A useless thought, which she does not voice: she wishes, she wishes, she wishes Alexander could be here to see him.

Is there anything on this earth so beautiful, so transfixing, so utterly absorbing as a baby? If there is, Eliza has certainly never encountered it. Her child is a source of continuous delight to her, even when he fusses and cries, which is rare. She thrills at every minute change of expression—at his little wiggling toes and fingers—at the wanderings of his bright dark eyes—at the way he tucks his head towards her hand when she gently strokes his face.

Lucky indeed that Peggy’s departure (Angelica left for the city the day after the baby was born, and she and her husband shall sail for London come spring) is delayed by the thick February snow, for Eliza can spend hours in the rocking-chair, the babe safe in her arms, and never spend a moment hauling in firewood, or checking the roof after winter gales, or purchasing a brace of chickens for the monster to eat, or any of a dozen other essential tasks that Peggy quite thanklessly accomplishes in the six weeks after he is born.

But at last in mid-March there’s a warm spell that lasts for almost a week, and the roads are deemed quite passable, and Eliza can tell Peggy is eager to be on her way back to Albany, as much as she tries to hide it. Country living suits her not a bit.

“What shall I tell them all you’ve named him, then?” Peggy asks gently, after she’s packed her things. “Among ourselves, of course, ‘the baby’ is perfectly suitable, but there are so many babies in this world and so, for the purposes of disambiguation if nothing else…”

Eliza wishes she could swat her sister, but lately Peggy has learned the strategy of getting in all her most madcap flights of whimsy when Eliza’s hands are full. For example, right now she’s burping the baby, one hand supporting his tiny weight and the other gently patting his back. She shoots Peggy a playful glare before announcing. “He is Philip.”

Philip burps, as though surprised at the news. Eliza considers it a good omen that he doesn’t spit up.

“Father will be thrilled!” Peggy says, in a tone of voice that nevertheless plainly says, why have you not named him Alexander?

Because Father is still convalescing, and much in need of some cheer, and this will cheer him if nothing else will, Eliza doesn’t say, because it would sound over-filial. The honest response would be, Because I need to leave Alexander a space in the world to pass through on his way to Heaven, and names and babies are powerful things, and I don’t wish to give my husband’s place to a growing, vibrant thing when Alexander’s soul may yet be trapped in some awful in-between space, barely its own, fixed to existence by the most tenuous thread. I don’t wish the past and the future to compete, because Alexander is the past and the past will lose every time—this, Eliza also doesn’t say, because it’s nothing but a pile of half-guesses and intuitions.

(Superstitious intuitious bit fictitious hit malicious, the monster had told her, early this morning, returning from some midnight hunt with the carcass of a twelve-point buck dragging behind.)

So Eliza smiles softly at the cooing child in her arms and says, “Philip suits him.”

“It’s a little grown-up for him, don’t you think?” Peggy asks, goosing his nose and causing him to burst into wild baby-giggles. “Can I call him Pip?”

Eliza likes the idea of Pip immediately. She’s heard of some cultures that name their babies undesirable or insignificant things, so that faeries will not be tempted to carry them off, and it strikes her that Pip can be protective in that sense and again in another—that it is palindromic and therefore to some extent irreversible—that it will shield him from unfriendly influences and spells, to have such a name at his very core and beginning, even if he drops it later. It makes her think of the dots on top of the little i, of dashes and dits that are not quite letters but of course, are found in letters, the essential pieces of text that nevertheless quite rise to the level of text itself. That’s how she wants the baby to be—unmistakably real and present, but unobtrusive to the point of invisibility.

She knows if she said it aloud Peggy’s eyes would go wide with concern. Her sister would step forward, reach out and feel her forehead, ask her if she might not better stay another few weeks after all. And she shouldn’t. Eliza is fine.

Eliza is fine, and Pip is a good name. “Peggy,” she says, “you’re brilliant.”

The baby grows fast, remaining remarkably unfussy despite a terrifying—to Eliza—round of croup. As the spring comes on further and blooms into summer he truly comes into his own, developing a whole suite of mannerisms that are the charmingest in the world: puffing out his cheeks when he’s perplexed by something, which is often, or waving his hand like a great statesman when Eliza speaks to him. On the flip side, he is mortally offended to be excluded from any conversation, even if it’s just Eliza with herself, but coos happily the moment Eliza offers a finger for him to grasp in his tiny, chubby hand.

As the weather warms, with their winter supplies running down, and with little prospect of income or hired help, Eliza begins planting a garden and a crop of her own. It’s hard labor, and she has little enough experience with it—but the neighbors know her from when she was only little Pip’s age, holidaying with her family. They’re generous with help and seed and advice.

Rather than leave the baby alone in the house as she works, Eliza swaddles him and keeps him on her back, shading him from the bright sun with her enormous sun-hat. She knows she looks a sight, but she’s still a Schuyler and a van Rensselaer, and the locals respect that. If they whisper, they do so out of her hearing.

Mostly, though, it’s quiet upstate. She’s never liked the quiet before, but now it suits her purposes well. Nobody comes on social calls, so there’s no need to keep the monster penned up. The woods and the wild give it plenty of space to disappear into, when the mood strikes it, and though its howls sometimes wake her when it storms, well, at least there are no neighbors around to hear. And Pip, too, is protected from prying eyes.

All in all motherhood suits her so well she can hardly conceive of a time before it. She aches every day for the empty place in the bed beside her, for her lost Alexander—all the more, with that wretched beast still occupying the barn and refusing to die as she had hoped it might. But great joy carries her through great grief. She doesn’t even want to contemplate what might have become of her, had she not had Pip to love. Every day she thanks God for her beautiful baby, and the hope he's given her for Alexander.

When the roads firm up after the thaws and Pip can last a few hours without needing to be fed, Eliza walks down to the village for church for the first time in months. Pip is beside himself at the sight of all these strangers, squalling and reaching out, grabbing noses, pipes, spectacles. She’s greeted warmly by most, but some hold back, speaking behind their hands. In the moment Eliza makes a great show of not seeing them, but as she hikes back up the hill with Pip sound asleep on her back she worries and chews at the inside of her lip, wondering what they could possibly have been gossiping about.

The monster greets her on the road. Rare, for midday; she must have forgotten to latch the barn door this morning in her haste to pack clean cloth diapers for Pip and still be on time for church.

“Godly fraudly,” it says, by way of greeting, and capers laughing out of the way when she aims a kick its general direction.

“Blasphemous beast,” she counters. Pip wakes and stirs.

“Treasonous treats.”

“Don’t start with me!”

“Won’t partially!”

Pip coos, and the monster coos back, a disconcertingly skillful imitation. It trots alongside her all the way back to the house, and Eliza is only grateful their stretch of road is lonely, and nobody sees.

Eliza attends church faithfully with Pip every week, and every week the pool of gossips and hangers-back increases. As a kindness to herself and an act of Christian charity, she tells herself that the rumors are a side-effect of the British assault on Alexander’s character—for why else would Magistrate Davis’ rapscallion of a stepson make the bastard’s sign at her and Pip, when Magistrate Davis himself attended her wedding? She's not a natural to this kind of war, of symbolism and metaphor; she has no idea how to combat these rumors that have already tarnished her reputation, other than head-on.

If she were a man, she might challenge Davis to a duel. But since she isn’t, she can only confront the man himself. His memory of her marriage is muddled, his demeanor souring when he realizes that he does vaguely recall it and isn’t quite sure what to do with himself now that he has been reminded. Like most men of his sort when confronted with the possibility of his own moral or factual error, he grows hostile and self-righteous. Eliza, no stranger to self-righteousness herself for a just cause, shakes her finger in his face in full view of half the town, and the next week finds nobody will so much as share a pew with her.

And then there is the matter of the monster. With Eliza it’s as biddable as it ever was, and it’s nocturnal as a habit if not strictly a rule, and therefore only rarely encounters human hunters in the woods. But folk quickly draw a connection between the nonsensical half-rhymed mutters and shrieks sometimes heard echoing through the valleys at dawn and dusk with the unearthly howls that come from Eliza’s barn during thunderstorms—and some even speculate further, to town drunk’s sighting, three seasons back, of a wraith in black with a demon at her heels.

In any case, the villagers suddenly wish to know, what had compelled Eliza to stay in their remote corner of the world all winter? More pointedly, why is Eliza not in Albany? Why is she not with her sister and her new brother-in-law and her mother and her poor father, ailing ever since the southern sky turned black in the war-that-wasn’t? In short, what can possibly be so important as to keep her here, far from her family and far from the rest of the world, except whatever it is she has stashed away in that infernal barn?

Eliza refuses to answer any of these questions. She receives precisely zero supper invitations and issues precisely zero in return, partially out of pettiness but mostly out of the awareness that it would give any guests the perfect opportunity to snoop around the barn.

Then, one morning, some of the wilder boys from the village take matters into their own scabby hands. Thank Heaven Pip wakes from his nap and wails at the first creak of the barn door opening—thank Heaven Eliza realizes their mischief at once and races out to put a stop to it—thank Heaven the monster calms at once when it sees her, though the air already smells thick with blood. Thank Heaven that the boy’s wound will heal with good time, though this makes no difference to Magistrate Davis, for it was his same rapscallion of a stepson who took it.

But the secret is out.

The monster, Davis decides, is clearly a witchy sort of creature, and while this of course is not a guarantee that Eliza is a witch, even the faint insinuation fair curdles the air when he stands up and makes it, at church, in full view of God and everybody.  Now, the Magistrate of course has no quarrel with witches in general—and the tension, ratcheted up to an extraordinary degree, relaxes a touch as the villagers realize he isn’t advocating shattering the truce that has held in the New World since Salem—but the beast is dangerous. He must insist that for the sake of peace in the village Eliza surrender it, so that it may be hanged, quartered, and burnt.

Naturally Eliza refuses this barely-veiled threat; she will suffer no memory of her husband, no matter how utterly twisted and wrong, to be hanged, especially (she adds aloud) when the beast had acted to defend itself and her own property from unlawful and possibly malevolent trespassers. Without her cooperation, of course, subduing the beast will prove impossible—but the atmosphere inside the church grows ugly indeed. She almost contemplates not returning the next week, but realizes in an instant that such a course would be even more fatal than going. Eliza has always been a Godly woman, and now if she doesn’t actively demonstrate herself to be so, these foul, superstitious bunch will suspect entirely the opposite.

So she attends church, as they say, religiously. Every week a hush falls over the congregation as she takes communion, and every week she fails to be struck down. She walks to and fro alone save the babe on her back, but nobody dares to harm her. Or speak to her on the road, for that matter. It as though she had the monster walking alongside her always.  

To say that things grow ugly would be an extreme understatement; the Magistrate encourages the hunters of the village to shoot the beast on sight, and with a man as powerful as he, to encourage is practically to order. Many attempt to—in fact, many insist they have succeeded, although the absence of a trophy and the continued cacophony of pre-dawn voices on the road leads the other villagers to mock these men as fools.

Only Eliza knows the truth of the matter, and that is that sometimes now the monster limps back home late after dawn, dragging a shattered limb behind itself or trailing black ink from terrible wounds. The second time she goes out to the barn alone with her breakfast to see if she can be of any comfort to the creature—for she feels acutely that the threat of its presence is the only thing preventing her and Pip from being run out of her home, even as it incenses the mob against them.

The monster galumphs over to her on eager if clumsy feet, sniffing at her food. It consumes not only porridge but also spoon and bowl in its excitement. Eliza crouches down next to it and pats its flank, feeling a companionable benevolence towards the beast: benevolence she has not known since those first few days on the road from Pennsylvania, when the sky was black behind them and many horrors walked, and this monster was only one among them, and hers.

Chapter Text

My dear sister,

Arrived in London safe and sound. Letter waiting for me from Peggy said that you and the baby continue well—my heart is bright with joy for you both, and you must write me immediately to tell me all about how he is growing up and what you’ve decided to name him.

House in a state of disarray, and an engagement already arranged for tonight, so forgive my rushing pen. Must ready the children and ready myself for my entry into what passes for high society here—sure nothing will compare to New York as it once was, not even New York as it is now. That time is gone.

Adieu my dear Sister, may God bless and protect you, prays your ever affectionate Angelica ever ever yours.

My dear sister,

I have yet to receive a reply to my last letter, but that is no matter—I have news. The Great Revision was officially called to a halt in Parliament two months to the day after it began, for reason that they judged the patriots' destruction to be complete. Now London honors her conquering sons. Seabury has been knighted for his particular efforts, and the position Bishop of New York created for him. Can you imagine, a Bishop of New York? Naturally Church and I were obligated to attend the ceremony at Westminster and I had to stand there in the company of all the angels thinking of—well, you can imagine.

The men who have done it are marked, Eliza. I can smell the ink upon them; sometimes I see it on their hands at supper and wonder that nobody says anything. I've thought of asking Church if he sees it too—but then I think no, of course he wouldn't. He wasn't there the night your wedding ring bled, he didn't smell it then and he won't know it now. But I see it in their faces, too, not the ink but the heaviness and the permanence of it, to have removed someone. The old accounts agree with me. It is said of Cato the Elder that his face grew haggard, not just to have destroyed, but to have erased, that no matter how often he maintained that it was true, that the erasure of Carthage was a necessity, still his dreams troubled him in his old age, of places between stars, of the rift in the real that he had ripped open. That is how I know my sight is true.

Seabury shall be returning to America and to his new post shortly, and in fact he may beat this letter there. John André has been appointed Governor of New York, but he hasn’t made sail yet, and he and his wife Peggy (nee Shippen, of Philadelphia) are the toast of London, their parties second only to... well, I must be modest and say I have something in the works, and leave it to that.

It is said that they brought it off together: their proposal, submitted to Parliament, approved by His Majesty. Seabury supplied the arcana, and I do wonder what his God thinks of him now, and what he thinks of his God, since He has never been said to approve of such Letheian workings; they cut perilously close to the bone. André wrote the monsters, decided their shapes and their natures. He has a mind as ingenious as it is cruel, and he has been handsomely rewarded.

In unhappier news, my poor young Kitty is afflicted with measles and quite cross. She has borne the sickness sturdily thus far and we have every hope of her recovery, with the Lord’s help, of course.

You may have heard this long before this letter reaches you, but in case not—Franklin is alive and well in Paris. It is said that he will retire from political life, and exclusively devote himself towards natural philosophical pursuits. The Great Revision didn't have the power to reach across the sea, it is speculated here. I believe it more likely that the French have taken preventative measures—else why would the British not have done Paris as they have done to the Army? But you must understand this is just my own opinion. I have not the books to back it up (yet). I don’t wish to show my hand, but I shall keep you, as the saying goes, posted.

With much love I am sincerely

Your sister,

Angelica

My dear Eliza,

Why have I not heard from you in an age? Are you well and is little Philip? Peggy sent on word of his name, and shame on you for not telling me sooner. I'm sure she would inform me if anything terrible were to transpire, but you must appreciate the anxiety you cause, dear. Send me a letter—a solitary line, even, but a note in your hand and your voice. The world is too cruel for me to demand any lesser proof of your well-being.

For my part I will write you an ordinary letter and pretend my fears are nothing. Church is now in Parliament and we entertain almost daily. He asks me if perhaps it is too much of a burden, knowing my grief and knowing the constraint under which I must be at such gatherings, but I insist upon them. He must shine if I cannot, and his being a dependable but thoroughly unbrilliant sample, I must cast all the light upon him that I am able. It is a cheerful distraction from my inclination for melancholy might-have-beens. So you see, in the day I am busy—it’s the night I’m still working on.

When Parliament is not in session we retreat to Church's country house in Oxfordshire. It is beautiful, but hasn't the wildness and majesty of New York—very much settled country. More to the point, the University is at Oxford. Of course they don't have anything to do with women, but there are ways around that. Church doesn't mind at all if I borrow his breeches— in fact, I do believe he enjoys the look of me in them. There, I have scandalized you! Now write me back and tell me how much. Or write me back and tell me how liberal you are, that this news has impressed you not a whit and that you are offended I would attribute such a view to you simply because you live in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps without the influence of society you have taken to wearing breeches yourself! Eliza, until you write me and correct the image I am afraid that's how I'll be forced to picture you. Come to Oxford and we can be mad-women together.

Forgive my flight of fancy—I'm lonely without you and Peggy, my built-in comedy troupe, my partners in absurdity. What I mean to say is that the librarian at the Bodleian and I have reached an understanding and as long as I am not too obviously female I can come and go as I please. I am surveying several interesting bodies of literature including some relevant to your interests. The histories are less informative than you might think—so much lost! so that even the losing was lost. I am developing a feel for blank spaces.

How is dear Pip? Peggy says that father is so pleased, that the thought of his grandson has been the light of his recovery. I beseech you to embrace him from me, if you should see him. And of course give the baby a thousand kisses from his Aunt Angelica, though I am sure you are keeping him in good supply already.

My own little ones are well. I'm beginning to tutor them both in reading and writing, but of course Church has also hired masters for them. In my last letter I related to you that Kitty was quite ill with the measles but I assure you now she is almost fully recovered and is already beginning to insist upon a pony for her next birthday.

Alas, it is nearly time for one of those dinner parties I told you about. Although in the countryside the immediate stakes are lower the long-term stakes are often higher. So much hinges on what one's neighbors think. Adieu my dear sister. I would trade England for you in half a heartbeat if I could do so without also exchanging my dear husband and dearer children. Can you not come to me? Can you not for the love of God write?

Your most sincere most loving sister,

Angelica

My dear sister Eliza,

I wonder if the reason for your silence is not a lack of news but rather a superabundance of news which you don't feel safe to convey via the post. If so, your discretion shows good sense, but I do so miss your letters that I have taken steps.

You will note an odd wax seal upon this letter, and that I have enclosed an identical seal. This is a Parliamentary device which should considerably ease the burden of secrecy upon our correspondence. Several were issued to Church for application to any secret business which he must transact, and renders letters enclosed exempt from any official search. The seals are charged with magic, and it is said that the face of any man who breaks one without permission is transmitted straight to the mind of the person who sealed it. Of course, that does not render any letter bearing such a seal unsearchable—but a man would think twice, certainly, before opening such a letter, and if he does so he must be prepared for open war. I have one for my personal use, and I have taken a great liberty in passing this one along to you. So you see, it isn't a small gift, and I hope you will be highly discreet in how you make use of it, and to whom you send letters—but of course, sending them to me will not arouse any suspicion, as half the correspondence to and from our house bears this seal. Pray use it well, and tell me how you and the baby are.

I beg you, write to me,

Your loving sister,

Angelica

Chapter Text

Over the following months the situation with the villagers grows, if possible, worse. Eliza cannot walk through town without folk crossing the lane to avoid her; the broker she hires to sell her crop is forced to range farther and farther afield, where none have heard of her or had poison poured into their ears by the magistrate. The monster remains persistently, spitefully alive, and Eliza often hears it hallooing and howling in the mornings now, as though its meek and cowardly nature, so easily assumed with Eliza, is something it has found it can cast off at will, and is more than happy to do so.

One chill morning in November a hunter goes missing and doesn’t return.

Such a disappearance is sadly not unheard of, but Eliza is discomfited by the news—perhaps more discomfited, even, than the others at church when the pastor delivers the news that the man is missing and asks for their prayers for his safe recovery. She drops to her knees with the rest of the congregation and prays fervently, throwing her prayers up like a javelin of piteousness to pierce God’s heart.

Speculation runs rampant—that the hunter slipped on the icy stones by the river and drowned, that he took up with the baker-woman in the next town over. No-one suspects the monster as yet, even though the man was one of those who shouted loudest about how he would be the one to bag the beast: a bestial and brutal man himself. But even after church, Eliza snatches moments to ask after him, prays for him like she would pray for her own. If it did kill him — she prays, glancing out the window, at the silhouette of the monster perched delicately on the fencepost, a several-hundred pound slab of assorted body parts balanced as perfectly as a dancer—if it did, and please, don’t let it have done it, but God, if it did—let it never come to light. Let the bones never be found. Please, God, don’t let this monster be a man-killer, let this never happen, or please, if it has happened already, please, never let it come to pass again.

A letter from Angelica arrives: the second? the third? that Eliza has received without responding. She knows she’s being terribly delinquent, but she doesn’t know what to say, to think, to write. All is in turmoil and half the thoughts in her head she can’t even admit to having. She doesn’t answer.

They never find the hunter’s body. A week and a half later, Eliza wakes to the flat echoes of a rifle-shot sounding off the hills that hem in her cabin. She throws on some clothes to make herself at least somewhat decent, shoves her feet deep into her snowboots, and charges out of the house. Before she leaves she checks the barn, in case there might be some easy alibi, but of course the monster is not there. Of course it hunts by night. The monster, when it arrives home at its usual time just after dawn, hums contentedly, all-over eyes glittering. There is no sign of blood, either on its body from a wound, or on any of its many mouths. But Eliza’s heart does not rest easy. She has no testimony, no evidence, no sign—but she wonders, all the same.

One man disappearing is a tragedy. Two set folk to talking, especially since this second one was another avowed monster-hunter, with three children and a fourth on the way. Eliza’s heart plummets straight into the earth at the sight of his widow. She holds little Pip close tight to her and rocks him as though to soothe him, though really she is soothing herself. She cannot go on like this.

“It cannot go on like this,” she tells the monster, that evening in the barn. “I don’t know if you understand—if words have meanings to you, or if they are just sounds. But if they have meanings, then I beg you—I beseech you—please, cease this at once.”

“Preach, beseech, please cease,” the monster parrots.

“Yes!” Eliza cries. “Yes, please!”

“Desist forthwith.”

Eliza nearly drops from astonishment, but then the monster continues.

“Insistence persistence perdition syncytium syntenic alembic!”

Eliza could howl with frustration. In fact, she does, and the monster delights in howling along with her, cuckooing and cacawing and capering like a young foal. When she brought the beast back with her she was acting on pure instinct, instinct and desperation to bring her husband home, a desire to seize any tool at all that might be available to her. She hadn’t thought of the logistical challenges associated with having a mad beast living in her barn. A mad beast that might be a man-killer, which she can barely control—which she must control, if she is to go on living as she is. If she cannot rein it in her life her will become unsustainable.

“You must stop!” she cries out, seizing the thing roughly by a beak. “You must stop this at once, do you understand?”

“Canned demand unhand remand unmanned!”

Eliza sighs. “If you can’t cooperate,” she says, “you’re going into the barn until you demonstrate a willingness to reform. I know you hate it there.” An understatement—the creature sets up such a hideous racket to be locked in that neither Eliza nor Pip can properly sleep. But if the beast truly is preying upon its hunters… She sighs and supposes the thing will have to sleep and stop crying eventually, although with the number of its mouths, who knows how far off eventually may prove to be?

Still, a little lost sleep is a small price to pay for a clean conscience, although, Eliza notes wryly, it is usually the cost of a sullied one. No more topsy-turvy than anything else she’s experienced in the last year. She stuffs cotton wads in Pip’s ears before turning in for bed herself.

The racket over the monster’s first night of confinement is such as is conventionally held could wake the dead. Fortunately, neither of the two hunters rise to testify as to his cause of death, and over the course of the next week the caterwauls and wails gradually subside to mere moans and mumbles. Pip always stops up his ears at the sound of the monster, and if Eliza didn’t constantly have her hands full she would be tempted to do the same. There is no end to the commotion that can be made by a beast with somewhere between eight and fifteen mouths on any given day.

But then another man disappears.

Eliza endures the outright hostile glares and witches’ signs from all those she passes on the way to church with her head held high. She knows that the monster cannot possibly have killed the third hunter, and even allows herself the cheering thought that perhaps his death is a sign that the monster was not involved in the others—that her instincts, never before incorrect where the monster is concerned, were dead wrong in this particular case.

This time they do find the body, frozen and with a broken neck, underneath a well-concealed hunting blind. By the time they do, though, it is several days since he first went missing, and the carrion-animals have been at his corpse. There are pieces—eyes, entrails, entire limbs—missing. It could be the work of any carnivore, but of course the village’s collective mind immediately jumps to the strange creature seen in the morning mists: a creature variously described as having a beak like an eagle’s, a snout like a mastiff’s, tusks like a boar’s.

To admit that she locked the beast in the barn after the first two men went missing would be tantamount to admitting its culpability in their deaths, at least in the eyes of the villagers, and so Eliza is trapped. She clutches Pip as tight as she can to herself and tries to assess her options. If she leaves for Albany, she may yet save herself and Pip, but her reputation might follow her there, tainting Peggy and their parents. Her father’s health is still delicate, according to Peggy’s letters, and the last thing she wants to do is put stress on his already over-stressed heart with this sordid business. But if she stays—well, the monster chased off someone a few nights ago who seemed to have no good intentions, and she has received threats in the mail that she picks up each week at the Key and Kite Inn, and some people are signing their names. Nobody is afraid to act against her.

The barn burns one night.

Eliza never learns the cause for certain—it could have been a stray lightning bolt from a storm passing through, or one of the monster’s exhalations, or someone with sinister intentions, or simply a spontaneous fire in improperly stored hay. In any case, nothing’s inside but hay and the monster, and the monster is indestructible anyhow. The cabin isn’t, but for once luck is on Eliza’s side. A turn of the wind keeps the embers away, and steady-soaking rain puts it out. Pip cries the whole day and night away and can’t be soothed.

The next morning, after the rain stops, Eliza throws on her cloak and walks out with Pip still crying in her arms, bouncing him up and down absently as she looks to see if there’s anything she can salvage. There’s nothing, of course, but she has to look. Every day it feels like she’s losing the energy for such purely formal expressions of hope.

Naught but a great rectangle of charcoal studded with ash-blackened nails remains where the barn once stood, and the monster is nowhere to be found. Eliza doesn’t believe for a second that it has been harmed, and wastes no time worrying. It will be hiding somewhere in the woods, and it will come back in a few days when it grows lonely.

At dusk a few days later, when she sees the loose knot of men with covered faces ambling up the road, she doesn’t feel angry, or defiant, or even all that sad. She just bundles up Pip and throws him over her shoulder like a Continental’s rucksack. If she retreats into the woods… if she finds the creature, it might protect her like it did on the road. That’s one piece of her Hamilton the British haven’t been able to alter, that he’ll kill for her.

Or for anything else, it seems.

She slips out the back door, dodges across the field, and watches them from between the trees. One of them knocks on the front door of the house, seeming puzzled when there’s no answer. A few more seem to be pacing out the footprint of the burned barn. When full dark has nearly fallen, more men show up, these with lanterns and several covered wagons. What kind of devilry can they have planned?

“Witches’ wishes,” says a voice from beside her, and Eliza jumps. The monster has come upon her unaware. She lays a quieting hand on a surface that could conceivably be called a forehead—at least it’s above a pair of eyes.

The men have hammered posts into the ground and hung lanterns from them. They begin pulling the cloth coverings from the wagons, revealing wooden planks, some of them already partially assembled. As Eliza watches, they begin arranging these, and as the pieces come together...

Eliza gasps. She’s watching a barn-raising.

They’re here to help.

For a moment she’s simply overcome by emotion. She chokes in a sob, covering her mouth with a hand to muffle the sound. The monster bumps a horn against her leg. “No, you stay here,” she whispers.

The monster whines, but at Eliza’s stern expression it curls up in a pile of dead leaves with a resigned huff. There’s no way in Hell she’ll leave Pip with it, and she can’t exactly sneak back to the house and leave the baby unsupervised with this multitude of strangers about, so that only leaves taking him with her. With Pip on her back like this—sleeping, she can tell by the feel of his weight—she’ll have to be ready for anything. “Watch my back, all right? But stay here.”

The monster gives another huff, one that sounds to Eliza’s ears like a response in the affirmative.

“Thank you.”

By now the men are all at work, hammering and measuring and sawing wood with brisk efficiency, eyes fixed on the task at hand. She’s wearing widow’s black, as is her custom, and it’s a dark night; they don’t see until she’s quite close. The first man to spot her hammers his own thumb and then drops his hammer, swearing. His closest compatriot makes an angry gesture for silence at him, one that is completely ignored, since the man is staring at Eliza. The second man turns and likewise goes silent.

The pause ripples through the makeshift encampment, men suddenly realizing that something is amiss and stopping their work to look up. Dozens of eyes find Eliza.

“And who are you?” she asks, once all of them are staring.

To her relief, one of the men nearer to her bows and doffs his woolen cap. He doesn’t remove the strip of fabric that obscures his nose and mouth. “We’re the militia, Mrs. Hamilton. We heard you had some trouble and needed help.”

The militia. Eliza could almost laugh. She’d thought of them as defeated, non-existent, as erased as her true husband’s face, but of course the destruction didn’t reach this far north. Here, the defeat was not in the dissolution of the men, but the dissolution of the cause they fought for. The sons of Saratoga had dispersed, to be sure, and for all purposes the army had ceased to exist.

But the men who won the battle remained. And here, the news that there’s still a militia out there… and a militia as such, a body of men rather than just the men who once made up the body...it’s heartening. The rebels had lost by words—but swords still have power, and so do small kind things, like barn-raising. Not enough power, but Eliza will take anything at this point.

“You do my husband a great honor,” she says, placing a hand over her heart.

“We only right a wrong, ma’am,” the man with his cap off says, and the rest of them nod along. “Now, if you don’t mind, we haven’t much time before dawn, so…”

“Understood,” Eliza says, curtseying to all of them. Something occurs to her. “If you don’t mind, I have… something I need to fetch from the woods. If you hear anything odd from that direction, please pay it no mind.”

They glance at one another quizzically, but apparently her request passes muster.

“Wonderful,” Eliza says, a little forced, and traipses straight back into the undergrowth until she comes across the monster.

“Premonitions demolitions devolutions denotations…” The monster is muttering steadily under its breath with one mouth. Another mouth is nervously chewing on one of its own paws. When it sees her, it whips the paw out and gets to its feet. “Apple squash?”

Eliza has no earthly idea what it means by that. “I need a favor. I need you to come in the house with me, but I need you to be quiet.” She can't have it coming out and disturbing the men while they're working: frightening them off, or attacking them, or God forbid speaking to them. Her Hamilton came north one winter to gather troops; for all she knows, one of them might recognize his voice. No, the monster needs to stay well-hidden tonight, and she can't control it out here in the woods.

The monster cocks at least one head to the side. “Perimeter delimiter quadrimeter?”

“Just come inside. I can’t have these men seeing you and I can’t have you getting into any mischief tonight.”

The monster only lets out a wild yip of laughter.

“No. Absolutely not,” Eliza whispers. “Follow me.”

“Swallow tree!” the monster crows, quite loudly. Philip wakes up and begins making fussy noises. Not crying (yet), but he sounds like he’s hungry. Right, usually she feeds him right at dusk and it’s already well past full dark. All the sneaking around distracted her, but there’s not much that can distract a hungry baby, besides the obvious.

Eliza’s hands form into fists of frustration. If only this damn monster would just cooperate… Well. She’ll just have to play dirty.

“I’m going to leave you here all alone,” she sing-songs, turning her back on the thing. “You might never see me again…”

She turns a full one hundred eighty degrees, placing herself on a path through the woods and parallel to the house, away from the barn. This she walks several hundred yards, until the bulk of their path to the back door of the house is obscured, from the perspective of the barn, by the house itself. Though she doesn’t look back once, it’s obvious enough from the sound of undergrowth being destroyed behind her that the monster is following.

She dashes inside ever as quick as she can, the mismatched thuds of the monster’s gait sounding close behind her. She ushers the thing inside the door—it whines in confusion, since it has never before been permitted to come into the house—and closes it quickly behind. Then she lights a candle and closes every single pair of shutters on the ground floor as Pip loses patience and begins wailing from her back.

“Oh, shh, here you are, baby,” she croons, taking Pip down and settling in the rocking-chair. “Slow down, there, you’ll spit it all back up and then where will be? Right back where we started, mm?”

He doesn’t spit up, but he does give himself a delightful case of burps—delightful to both himself and to the monster, who imitates the sounds and sends Philip into gales of baby-laughter.

Soon Philip falls asleep. Eliza wishes she could do the same, but the presence of the strange men outside and the sounds of their hammers prevent her from finding her ease. She rocks back and forth, shuffling guiltily through the pages of the letters Angelica has sent her, contemplating how she might reply.

She has been hideously neglectful to her sister, she knows. She was never the most conscientious correspondent—Alexander used to complain, used to say they should number their letters so he’d know she was shortchanging him. It had made Eliza blush, to think that he treasured her words just as much as she treasured his, when her words were so much the humbler. She feels she lacks the capacity to describe all that has happened to her, so much has she been living one day at a time, with even her nights fragmented by Pip’s cries. It feels like an age has passed since the sky turned white and then black.

But for now Philip sleeps cozy and contented against her chest, while the monster sprawls across nearly the entire width of the dining room rug, the strange snores that rattle its body an unsettling, unwelcome reminder of the first days after they came out of the dark. No, Eliza cannot very well sleep with the memory of those times fresh in her mind, no matter how sound the walls around her, no matter how sweet the child in her arms. The monster cannot—cannot —stay in the house on a permanent basis. But despite the horrors apparently inherent in its existence, she cannot bear the thought of truly casting it out, of it wandering the earth, of people seeing.

Thank God for the militia, then.

She waits until the last conversations outside fade, and the first light of dawn peeks through the window. When she looks outside, there’s a new barn standing there, the last of the men visible retreating down the road.

“Thank God,” she murmurs. She returns to the living room and nudges the monster awake with the toe of her foot. “Up you get and out you go, creature. They’ve made a home for you out there.”

The monster yawns—four mouths at once, a disconcerting sight—and stretches its many limbs this way and that.

“Come on, now!”

With a last baleful glance the monster sidles out the door. When it sees the barn it whirls around to look at Eliza, all of its eyes wide, ears swiveling wildly in confusion.

“Yes,” Eliza laughs, “that’s for you.”

The monster gives a coyote-yip and caroms off to the barn. Eliza retreats upstairs, gets Pip settled in his crib, and sleeps.

That week church is full of whispers. Her farm is out of the way, but she supposes there are eyes on it, if not always, then often. Not in the middle of the night, though, or they would know about the militia, wouldn’t be so alarmed at the sudden re-emergence of a new barn from the old barn’s ashes. A few of the bolder women attempt to ask Eliza how such a thing might happen—the first anyone has bothered to speak to her in weeks—and Eliza pretends not to understand their questions, pretends barns sprout up like dandelions every other day. Her boldness is for two reasons: the first, simply, that she cannot betray the militia, and the second that now she knows she is among friends. Though she doesn’t know who they are—though they cannot help her at this time—there are people in this church who are on her side. That means something. That means something wonderful.

The usual hateful anonymous threats cut short almost immediately after the appearance of the barn, as though their senders grew unnerved. But a letter arrives for her that Wednesday. It’s affixed with a seal similar, but not identical, to the one that comes on all of Angelica’s letters that Eliza still hasn’t answered. Eliza turns it over and breaks the seal with a sense of foreboding.

A curt notification: the Archbishop of New York has been summoned and will deal with her case come the New Year. Eliza supposes the magistrate believes the Archbishop of New York will have the power to deal with… whatever malfeasance he thinks has taken place here. Though he certainly suspects Eliza is a witch, witch-hunting ceased over a century ago, and witches seem to be following it out of style. Too much knowledge is being papered-over, now, too much locked away in books. To calm the dread in her heart, Eliza tells herself that it’s more likely he wants the Archbishop to do something about the monster.

Well, that would be perfect for her aims. Just perfect. Eliza ignores the sudden sting of tears in her eyes. Let this hideous caricature of her husband be blotted out of history just as surely as Alexander himself was. Let it be gone, and Alexander freed, and she’ll take Pip with her to Albany and rejoin her family and never look back.

The Bishop comes up the overgrown lane in a coach-and-six, wheels splattering mud as he goes. The Bishop himself is resplendent when he steps out of the coach, his mitre and scepter glinting in the hard sunlight, the fur lining his coat riffling gently in the cold wind. As he strides up to the front door, the rime-encrusted snow and mud in front of him compact, leaving a solid, dry walkway for him to walk upon. Two guardsmen, red-coated and silent, follow at his heels.

The majesty of it all is rather undercut by the fact that it is Sam Seabury with the mitre and the scepter and the cloak. The man could be crowned by the entire heavenly host and still not quite pull off majestic— at least, not when Eliza has heard the story of Alexander humiliating him in the common half a dozen times, from half a dozen perspectives. But Eliza is startled by his presence—she had not expected him for another week at least—and falls back on her deeply entrained nervous politeness. Therefore, she bobs a nervous greeting as he approaches. “Welcome,” she says, with her best hostess’s smile, and opens the door. “Please, come in.”

Up close, she observes that Seabury's cheeks are still boyishly pink, but the youth has left his round face, and his benignant smile is belied by the guards. As he steps over the threshold, Eliza catches a whiff of chemical ink and barely prevents herself from wrinkling her nose.

And the way he moves—carefully, slowly, hunching over like he’s trying to hide himself and every few moments realizing and straightening again. The way his eyes dart at her and around her, here and away. He flinches when he sees her wedding ring, still on her hand, black as the space between the stars. She has given up cleaning it—though the floods of ink have never come back, each time she tries more ink only seeps out of Alexander's graven name, sticking the two halves together. It is well, Eliza has decided. The word Alexander may be lost, but he is knit closer to her than ever, and there is no need for names in such proximity.

"Miss Schuyler," he says at last, bowing and bestowing a dry kiss to her knuckles. He blanches at the texture of her hands, rough as the granite crags she used to scramble up when she was younger. Well, farming will do that to a woman, she thinks, without pity for herself or for him. “You have... a lovely cottage, madam.”

Cottage, indeed. Eliza curtseys coldly back, every inch a Schuyler woman. “My thanks, Bishop. I only apologize that the circumstances are humbler than those to which you are undoubtedly accustomed.”

“And who is this?” Seabury asks.

Eliza’s heart falls. She had hoped that Seabury might never see Pip at all, but the little scoundrel has lately found a way to escape from his crib, and entertains himself by wobbling all over the house. Pip leans against the door to the kitchen, watching the proceedings with wide eyes and wild hair.

Without waiting for a reply, Seabury strides over and swoops the boy up in his arms. “Who are you, then, my handsome fellow? Who are you?”

Pip makes a grab for his mitre and almost manages to pull it down over his eyes. Seabury laughs and quickly puts him down.

“My son,” Eliza says, scooping the baby up and holding him close. “His name is Phi—Pip.”

“Pip, then,” Seabury says, smiling now that he’s no longer holding the baby. “By Colonel Hamilton, I presume?”

Eliza’s back straightens reflexively at the insinuation. “Alexander was my husband, sir.” In the extended pause that follows, her fury escalates. “Yes, Philip is his son.”

Seabury’s smile tightens. “Of course. And does the boy take after his father?”

“Too early to tell,” Eliza replies, her voice cool. “Won’t you have a seat? Take some cider?”

Seabury sits down at the dining room table, but waves the cider away. “I’m afraid I cannot linger. I have a long ways yet to travel tonight.”

“Then I will speak plainly,” Eliza says, covering Pip’s eyes. “You have come her to accuse me of… of something terrible, have you not?”

“I have come here on behalf of the people in the town for the purposes of an investigation,” Seabury says. “There is no cause for you to be alarmed. Please, have a seat.”

Eliza bristles at being offered a seat in her own house, and had been rather enjoying the advantage of height over the Bishop of New York, who holds the conversational advantage in nearly all other respects. Nevertheless, she sits, back straight, Pip in her lap.

“Now, Mrs. Hamilton, I have the utmost respect for you,” Seabury says. “The British Empire understands that, although your husband was a seditious and dangerous man, with backwards and regressive opinions and truly barbaric modes of expressing them, the women of the household are only very rarely involved in the political sphere of life—our recent would-be Tyrant’s wife being, of course, a major exception.”

“I loved my husband,” Eliza says. And Lady Washington was a heroine of mine, and I have a revolutionary’s heart . “And you may write that on my grave, if you must.”

Seabury chuckles. Eliza decides that Angelica’s right: he must have lost his faith. Only a godless man would laugh at that. “Yes, that is very admirable of you. Your loyalty to your husband is a credit to wives everywhere. If only more woman were as steadfast as you are!” He leaves a blank space in which Eliza may insert her thanks for his compliment. When she offers none, he continues, slightly ruffled. “Naturally, the British Empire would not dream of punishing you for displaying in such an exemplary fashion the wifely virtue of subordination to your husband’s ideals.”

“If you are not here to punish me, then why are you here?” Eliza takes a sip of the cider herself, to calm her nerves.

Seabury sighs. “Madam, you must understand. The Great Revision is an opportunity for reconciliation between Britain’s loyal subjects and their rightful leaders. We are not here to hold grudges against widows and orphans; we are here to rule. And I, specifically, am here to investigate a claim that has been made against you.”

“By whom?”

“That is a private matter.”

“I have the right to defend myself to my accuser.”

“Alas, Mrs. Hamilton, you do not.”

“To a jury of my peers, then.”

“I am the jury, Mrs. Hamilton. But just between the two of us, I think you will find me fairer than that rabble down in the village. My knowledge of cases such as your husband’s is more extensive than theirs and yours by far. Think of me as a servant of justice, prejudiced towards neither side.”

The pompous prick loves this, Eliza thinks, taking another sip of cider to obscure her sneer. Power. A great soapbox to stand upon. No rebels shouting him down anymore—all counter-arguments erased, all opponents silenced. Just the world laid open before him like an empty book, and Samuel Seabury the man left holding a quill…

Well. That is a terrifying thought.

“Am I at least allowed to know the charge against me?” she asks.

Seabury only smiles enigmatically. “There are reports that a creature of some sort lives in the area. Have you heard anything about it?”

“Yes,” Eliza says, nettled to be toyed with, already sick of his games and furious that Seabury is clearly trying to coax her into denying something and then catch her in some ridiculous lie. “Of course I am. It’s living in my damn barn.”

Seabury’s mitre bobbles in shock. His mouth spasms and then reconstructs itself into a sickly-sweet smile. “Have you… interacted with it, at all?”

“It talks to me,” Eliza says flatly.

“And how did you first encounter this... beast?”

Damn. Eliza doesn’t know how much Seabury knows here—how many witnesses saw her on the road, how many might testify. But she knows beyond a doubt that nobody saw her go in or out of the black; the roads were abandoned for miles before she ever arrived. “During the… the end of the war… I traveled down to the edge of the black to see if my… my dear, darling husband, Alexander, the love of my life, might have possibly escaped it. The thought of him wounded, or distressed, or harmed in any way… well, perhaps it was madness to attempt it, but there was simply nothing else I could do.” She’s laying it on with a trowel, but Seabury has already expressed admiration for her fidelity, and of course the more she can leave politics out of her answers entirely, the safer she’ll be.

“And the beast came out of the blackness.”

“Aye, when it began to recede.” Eliza takes a table-napkin and dabs at her eyes, her widow’s show only spoiled a little when Pip decides the napkin is interesting and tries to seize it in his chubby little hands. She feels not a whit of guilt for her tears. For one, she has wept enough real tears over Alexander that these, conjured up at a moment’s notice, do not feel false to his memory, and second, Seabury represents a direct threat to her child if he decides that Eliza is dangerous. She must make herself appear completely, utterly helpless—helpless in the face of her love for Alexander, helpless in the fate of the might of the Empire that Seabury represents. If she can disappear in between the shadows of powerful men, then perhaps she will be spared. “Naturally I was terrified by it.”

“Naturally,” Seabury says, with a condescending smile. “To the uninitiated and the delicate-hearted, the appearance of such things is dreadful indeed.”

“And yet I saw in this creature my husband’s eyes, my husband’s hair. You cannot imagine, sir, the extent of my grief, to be taunted thus, when it… followed me home.” She wishes she could summon more tears, but her eyes have already run dry. It has been over a year— but it is old grief, already cold and buried itself. Eliza has a plan to bring her husband back to her; she will see him again, in due time, when it succeeds. Theirs is only a temporary separation. This humiliation that he bears, she will witness, and keep close to her heart, and shield from others, and when she is reunited with him she will forget it all, and it will be like the monster never happened.

“Indeed, I cannot,” Seabury says. He reaches across the table and takes her hand in his soft, pale fingers, and Eliza looks fire at him—scorching fire, not warming fire, fire to harm, not heal. She is a widow-bride. Untouchable forevermore.

He withdraws his hand. “Miss Schuyler, I regret that your husband—”

“Mrs. Hamilton,” Eliza snaps.

“Mrs. Hamilton, my apologies.” Seabury stammers, clearly flustered. “I regret the harm that has been done to you, but the fact remains that your husband was the principal quill for one of the most dangerous insurrections the Empire has ever seen. He inflicted real damage upon the very fabric of our great nation, and his current form is only a reflection of that.”

“And it is hideous ,” Eliza hisses. She wishes she could grab Seabury’s hand, exhort him with all the power she has as a woman. Some women could do it in a trice, make a full show of weakness, lure in his heart and then grab him by the balls. But it’s not in Eliza’s nature. She can only be righteous, and cold: hideously wronged and somehow still perfect. “Bishop Seabury, I beseech you. If it lies within your power to rid the earth of this creature, then…”

Then I will see Alexander again .

But Seabury is already shaking his head. “Alas. That is far outside my abilities.”

“But surely—the Bishop of New York—”

“Once a percept becomes alive, it is self-sustaining. A man can no more unmake a monster than unsee it, once he has seen it.”

Philip begins to fuss, and Eliza bounces her knee distractedly. “Uh-oh!” he says, pointing over Eliza’s shoulder.

“Hush, baby,” Eliza mutters. Just to be sure, she checks the locations of Seabury’s two guardsmen, but they’re both still in plain view, looming behind the Bishop with their rifles and their faces in shadow. “Sorry about this,” she says, with her best apologetic smile, but Seabury’s staring over her shoulder, too, the color rapidly draining from his face.

“Christ preserve us,” he whispers.

Eliza turns.

“Yes, that’s the monster,” she says, nodding towards the grotesque silhouette in the window and turning back to Seabury. The man looks slightly green. One of the redcoats behind him is actually covering his eyes, and the other has broken out in a sweat and is standing very, very still.

“Uh-oh!” Pip cries again, and giggles as the monster contorts its faces into an even-more-hideous expression. “Bab!”

“Bab a blab a blabbermouth!” the monster cries, and kicks up its heels like a spirited young lamb before running off.

Despite his declaration of experience with monsters earlier, Eliza had anticipated Seabury might be slightly put off by the monster’s appearance. After all, she had found it unsettling at first, and so had Peggy and Angelica. Even now, the beast’s ever-permutating form will occasionally find a way to flip her stomach. The only person immune to its nauseating qualities is Pip, and of course he is being raised with them.

So, though she’d expected Seabury to be disconcerted, she hadn’t expected this. The man’s lips are shaking, his eyes wide like a spooked horse’s, his skin pale as bleached linen. If he weren’t already in a chair, she would lay even money on the prospect of him fainting.

She hates, suddenly, that he is here. She hates that more people have seen this awful creature and known that it is a parody of her Alexander. “Do you see?” she says, her hands forming into fists under the table. “Do you see why you must kill it? It is an abomination to God, sir!”

“It… it has his voice,” Seabury croaks, and for a bare moment Eliza wonders where Seabury might have heard her husband’s proper voice, before she remembers. The thought is odd, that she’s not the only one with a copy of the true Alexander in her head—that Seabury, in a way, also keeps his memory alive.

“Yes,” she says, “I must hear this monstrosity speak in my husband’s voice every day. Alexander may have committed crimes against your Empire, but I have not, and yet this monster punishes me. What’s more, it terrifies the town! You’ve heard their complaints yourself! It has turned them all against me though I have done no wrong, and I cannot be rid of it! I beg you to remove this injustice—for you said you were a dispenser of justice, did you not?”

Seabury rises from the table. “We must go.”

Eliza hurriedly deposits Pip on the floor and chases after Seabury as he makes for the front door. One of his guards takes exception, bodily blocking her way.

“What of the accusations against me?” Eliza cries, suddenly afraid that she has pushed her luck too far, that Seabury has decided she is a seditionist after all.

Seabury opens the door, letting in a great gust of cold, and turns back to her on the threshold. Freezing air floods in as he speaks. “Your accusers will recant their allegations publicly and apologize to you, Mrs. Hamilton. As for the monster, it would be best if you were simply to reconcile yourself to its existence and attempt to live your life as best you can.”

“Will you tell the folk in the village that as well, then?”

Seabury looks surprised for a moment, and then laughs, even though his face is still the color of bad whey. “Yes, Miss Schuyler. And I’m considering awarding you financial damages as well.”

“Oh, goodness no,” Eliza says, reflexively, the wind from the doorway stirring her hair, freezing her ears. “I don’t need their money. All I want is to be able to attend church in peace.”

Seabury bows his head. “Your piety is an example to us all. I shall honor your wishes. You have suffered enough for this creature’s existence. Good day, Miss Schuyler.”

Mrs. Hamilton, Eliza thinks, furiously, as he retreats the way he came. She bolts the door behind him and bends to scoop up little Pip from the floor.

“Col,” the baby says.

“Yes, darling,” Eliza says, wrapping her shawl close around her shoulders and finding a blanket to swaddle Pip in. “What an interfering sanctimonious twat he was.”

Pip rests warm and safe against her shoulder. Eliza holds him close, even when he starts to squirm discontentedly. Only when her heart has finally steadied does she set him down. He toddles off to play on his little rocking-horse that has entertained generations of Schuyler children. Happy, innocent—no idea of the villainous character of them man who so recently held him.

If Seabury knew her plan for Pip… but Seabury cannot know. Her scheme—the true reason she keeps the monster near—they cannot possibly have occurred to him. He believes her to be not an opponent but a saint suffering virtuously. And in a way, Eliza supposes she’s both; it’s only that Seabury wouldn’t know Virtue if it stole his scepter and whacked him over the head with it.

Still, however misguided and blind the man is, Eliza had dearly hoped to avoid attracting any attention at all from the British Empire. Now that Seabury’s been reminded she’s still here—that Pip exists—can she still hope to bring her plan off safely? She feels choked off, cornered, like she and her son are slowly being squeezed out of the world. She wishes she had someone to talk to, if only to affirm her desire to press forward with her plan at all costs.

Her eyes fall guiltily on the pile of letters from Angelica. To be fair to herself, at first she’d been far too busy and exhausted to write, with the baby taking up all her time, the crops taking up all her time, and the monster’s antics consuming all the time she hadn’t had left over. But lately, even with Pip able to entertain himself for whole minutes at a time, as he’s doing now, she’s found herself avoiding the quill. Perhaps it’s superstition—Alexander is still the last person she wrote, and somewhere in the dreamiest depths of her soul perhaps she imagines that if only she waits long enough he will write her back. But it occurs to her that she’s being ridiculous, and worse, worrying her sister, and now she does have an excellent reason to return Angelica’s letters...

My dearest Angelica,

I've received now four letters from you since I last sent one of mine. Please forgive me! Not all of us have your facility with the pen, and you do not have a newborn baby... I will cease with my excuses, as after all this time I doubt they are what you care to hear.

The little stranger is quite well and growing less little each day, although he's so sneaky about it I don't notice until suddenly his clothes no longer fit! He now has a full head of hair curly like Papa's and Peggy's and yours. His laughter is a delight, and he laughs oftener than I would ever expect at things it would never occur to me to laugh at. For him the world is new and a source of constant hilarity.

Of late though he's been fussy. His poor teeth are coming in. Our other stranger— yes, still with us—brought down a prize buck the other day and although I'm not sure how one of the antlers was left on the front steps, and somehow little Pip got hold of it and now he chews it all day long. It seems to soothe him. Other than croup he hasn't been ill once, which I thank God for every day. I would be lost if anything were to happen to him—and not only I.

Speaking of strangers, one passed by the other day. You did warn me that Samuel Seabury had become Bishop of New York, but it didn’t even occur to me to dread the prospect of seeing him in his official capacity, so narrow did it seem. Alas, circumstance down in the village conspired to cast suspicion on me, and so he seized the opportunity to visit. I say seized the opportunity: initially I thought he came only to threaten me and mine but upon further reflection I believe his purpose to be a more sordid sort of shameless opportunism that I most heartily rejected even the implication of.

I hate the man. I hate that he may invite himself into my house and I must play the hostess and pretend I don't hate him. I hate the way he lingered in the doorway, leaving. I hate that he claims to be a man of God when it is plain to my eye he has not prayed in a year or more and is sore, sore in need of it—yet I certainly could not and will not pray for him. I cannot forget his sins anymore than I could forget my darling Alexander.

You would have been so much better at it than I was. But there was trouble between myself and the village and now it’s gone—so you see, I can play the diplomat. Would you believe some of them thought I was a witch? There hasn't been a witch in our family for generations. If Pip doesn't prove one—and there have been none of the unusual signs—I think we may safely say it has died out of our line.

I fret over Pip. Especially now that the Bishop has stopped by, and seen him. I had prayed he might escape their notice a long time but the higher he grows the less low he'll be to the ground. You understand my meaning. If they have any sense at all they'll fear him, and what empires fear they destroy. But I cannot turn away from my path—am I doing the right thing? I almost don’t care—what matters is only that I do it. I must keep him here, out of their way, out of their sight, out of their minds. I wish I could visit you in London, or you could visit me. But I want to be forgotten, and you are unforgettable. Forgive me, my dear sister—these letters must serve for now.

With my love,

Eliza

Chapter Text

Spring cracks the frost early that year, and as the farmland thaws Eliza has a long time to plan out her garden. She consults and cross-references three different almanacks as well as a book called Rational Gardening that Angelica sends her. She saved some seed from last year and buys some more in the next town over where they don’t know her face. Rational Gardening recommends starting plants indoors if she can, so she spends a day cleaning out what used to be her parents’ bedroom and fills it with little pots. Pip watches her with big, serious eyes as she presses seeds into the soil, and for just a moment her heart flutters with fear. She wasn’t raised to be a farmer. She has no idea what she’s doing—and if she fails—

If I fail, I can go to Peggy’s, she reassures herself. It’s the monster that will be left homeless. And Alexander, hopeless.

But the little seeds sprout, even though spring goes back on its promises and coats the ground outside with ice. “There,” she says, carrying Pip on her hip and showing him the little rows of corn and peas and squash, only a few inches high, “wasn’t your mama prepared, little man?”

“Guh,” Pip observes, tugging at his own curls. Eliza brushes them back, and he makes a happy noise. She wonders sometimes where they came from—whether they’re a gift from her own family, skipping a generation, or perhaps from Alexander’s mother. How tragic, that she knows so little of the woman who gave her husband life! Alexander had told her only a few fragments, and it was clear the topic pained him. She’d let it drop, and now it seems half of her son will be a mystery to her.

Off in the distance, the monster roars.

Eliza shakes herself. What a ridiculous thought. Her Alexander isn’t a mystery. What made him doesn’t matter—he was hers, in the end.

“Babbo!” Pip’s eyes go wide as the monster’s cries grow louder. He flails his tiny fists, almost escaping Eliza’s arms, and Eliza laughs and hoists him safely back up.

“Yes, sweetie pie, that’s the monster! All he does is babble babble babble, all day!”

“Babbo! Babbo! All day!”

Eliza gasps. “Are you putting your words together already, Pip? You’re such a big boy!” She blows a sloppy kiss on his fat neck, and he screams with laughter. “Do you want to know a secret, big boy? When you grow up into an even bigger boy, you’re going to slay that monster.”

Pip goes quiet, his eyes growing huge. So smart, she can tell. His father’s brains, and that’s good, that will help him understand…

“Babbo?”

Eliza runs a gentle finger down his nose. Her beautiful baby. Something in her heart crashes and roars like the sea against a cold, hard cliff. “You’re going to slay him with those big words of yours, sweetie pie. Can you give me some words, ah? Can you do ‘mama’? How about ‘mama’?”

“Mamamamamamamamamamamamamaaaaaaaaa!” Pip bursts out, clapping, and Eliza throws him up into the air and catches him with an oof. He squeals with joy, even as Eliza struggles to get her breath back. Lord, he’s getting too big for that.

“You are so smart,” she says, hugging him back to her chest. “And what a little daredevil. So much like your father already.”

Perhaps the realization that Philip takes after his father should have caused Eliza heartache and worry as much as delight—but nothing could have prepared her for the sight of her son’s empty crib one morning—for the frantic search through the entire house—for the sound of her son’s voice off in the distance, raised in a shriek, coming from the barn…

She sprints off in a state of incandescent panic, remembering at once the state of the Davis boy’s leg, asking a very belated forgiveness from God for not praying for his recovery sooner—anything, anything for Pip—she’ll do her penance for her pride, she’ll set aside this losing war, she’ll pry the monster’s razor-sharp teeth open with her bare fingers if she has to…

The barn doors fly open at her touch, just as Pip lets loose another long, high squeal. He’s walking with his hands against the beast's great flank, the beast snorting and shivering and shying as though it has just encountered a creature more fearsome than itself.

She snatches him away from the monster in an instant, her mother’s eyes scanning him desperately, expecting disaster, expecting blood. Finding none.

She turns to the monster. It blinks at her, all of its many eyes shuttering in parallel.

“Ma?” Pip asks, batting at her face with his chubby hand.

“Achrondoplasiac maniac bay bay babiac!” is all the monster has to contribute. “Brainy bairn in a blarney barn!”

“Babbo!” Pip squeals and claps and almost succeeds in wriggling from Eliza’s grasp.

Oh, Christ. That’s what she was hearing from the house. Not screams, but laughter.

Rhymes, Eliza thinks, stunned. Her child likes rhymes.

Well, shit.

Eliza is successful in keeping the brainy bairn from the blarney barn—after all, though he’s a proficient crawler both forwards and backwards, Pip can hardly wobble a yard on his feet alone before collapsing on his fat little bottom, and is roundly defeated by any properly-secured door.

The problem is, it seems the encounter between baby and monster was mutually intriguing. Soon, rather than merely catching occasional glimpses of the monster hauling in a doe in the diffuse and mystical light before dawn, when one might well expect to glimpse uncanny happenings, Eliza now has a great shaggy-faced, many-horned, ink-drooling beast attempting to force its entire head through her cracked kitchen window every night while she mashes Pip’s cooked carrots for dinner—and Pip, the little traitor, claps and cheers the monster on until Eliza whaps it smartly on the nose with a rolling pin.

At the same time, Eliza makes sure the monster and Alexander have no connection at all in the boy’s mind. She begins bedtime stories as early as she thinks he can comprehend them. At first they’re simple. “Once upon a time, there was a young man named Alexander…” She speaks of the war in only the vaguest terms, not wanting to frighten Pip. With the glaring exception of the monster, he’s a sensitive child, and can spend hours of a day lying on his back, watching the clouds change, or rooting around in the mud with the worms. Eliza’s cautious approach is successful: every night as he hops into bed, after he says his prayers with his little hands clasped between hers, he asks if she might tell him again about his papa. Eventually he knows the story by heart, and can recite it quite happily word for word with her, just as easily as as i lay me down to sleep.

Despite that, Pip’s affection for the monster only seems to grow. As the years pass, and the boy grows—especially after he’s tall enough to stand up on tiptoe and bat open the wooden bar that secures the barn doors—Eliza increasingly resigns herself to the fact that he is determined to spend his time in the monster’s company, no matter what trifling obstacles she may put in place to stop him. Her son delights in words, in rhythms and sounds, in rhymes most of all, and these the monster has in abundance.

Eliza sends a letter to Peggy begging for help. Two months later, help arrives in the form of their old upright piano, packed in straw and trundled down the treacherous roads in an ox-cart. Eliza locks the monster away in the barn (its howls scare the birds from the trees for miles around) and takes Pip to town with her to see if she might find someone capable of tuning the instrument.

It is the first time she’s brought Pip into town for something other than church or routine commerce involving her crop, and she can tell that folk aren’t quite sure what to make of her or him. But some time has passed since the incidents with the monster, and perhaps Seabury’s word meant more than Eliza’s given him credit for, though she hates to admit to herself that he may have helped her in any way. The greetings she receives are far more civil than she might have expected; men tip their hats, women murmur hellos. Eliza’s fortifications of cold and righteous anger dissolve in the face of friendly human interaction. She hadn’t realized just how lonely she was, with only a little boy and a monster and her sisters’ letters for company. She takes supper at the inn and leaves with a full stomach, the name of a musician she can contact, an invitation for tea at the house of a respectable local matron, and an almost pathetic quiver of hope in her stomach.

The piano scheme is an immediate success. When Eliza first sets Pip in her lap and plays him a C-major scale, his eyes go as wide as when he hears the monster tongue-twistering his way through some piece of wild nonsense. Then she plays a major fifth, and his mouth drops open, goggling up from between her arms like he has never heard such a wondrous thing.

Eliza takes on her son’s education herself, worried that his naïve and trusting nature will make him susceptible to absorbing falsehoods about his father. She cannot risk a lie about Alexander staining Pip’s vulnerable, empty mind. She teaches him the musical notes along with his letters and numbers—one, two, three—A is for apple—there are three black keys in an A major scale—and he progresses through all three with what seems, to Eliza, to be an astonishing speed.

He starts writing his own poems: little pieces about how he likes the snow, about how he likes blackberry pie, an epic about the little field mouse that miraculously escaped the monster from between two of its enormous toe-pads. Eliza hoards away the ones he presents to her as birthday presents, each more neatly-written than the last but none less precious.

But perhaps the most precious moment takes place just before Philip turns seven. It’s the dead of winter—January 11, to be precise. Alexander’s birthday. She finds herself sitting in Peggy’s old bedroom—now a sewing room and library—the good light for her embroidery project rapidly fading, unable to so much as make her eyes focus, much less drive a needle through fabric. The whole task to her seems suddenly useless, absurd. Why is she sitting here counting stitches, when Alexander is gone?

It’s been a long time since grief has taken her like this, but she supposes it will come and go as long as she lives, until she defeats the monster and she knows Alexander’s soul is safe. She’s learned from bitter experience not to hold it in—such things only prolong the pain. Best to cry here, where Pip won’t be disturbed by it. She rifles through her sewing box until she finds one of Alexander’s old shirts. He’d laughed when she’d offered to sew up a tear for him—Elizabeth Schuyler, daughter of one of the richest men in New York, mending like a servant! But she’d wanted to do it, in a way that had been hard to express. She’d wanted to mend his shirts, and pluck off his spectacles to clean on her skirts when they got smudged, and help him tie his hair back neatly again when he inevitably ruffled it while deep in thought. She’d wanted to be with him, near him and among all his things, and wanted to leave her own invisible traces of love upon them. And so now she raises the old shirt, mended nearly a decade now, to her face, and breathes in. It’s been so long—she’s not even sure if it really smells like him, or if she’s just tricking her memory. Time…

She remembers the look on Alexander's face—not the last time that he took his leave, no, but the night before. Something like ease had settled into his eyes when she'd sealed her promise to him, wordless and strange like an eclipse, and she'd allowed herself to believe that one day she might bring him to a place that was safe and free from want.

Pip barges in, a stack of books in his hands, singing some aimless tune, and Eliza snatches the shirt away from her face, dropping it to her lap and smoothing it hurriedly.

“Ma?” Pip asks, frozen and bewildered in front of the bookshelf. “Are you alright, Ma? Why are you crying?” He quickly pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to her, and even through her slight embarrassment Eliza is proud of herself for raising such a sweet young gentleman. She dabs at her eyes.

“I’m well, sweetheart. Mommy’s—” her voice trembles, and she starts again. “Mommy’s just sad because—because I’m missing your father.”

“Oh,” Pip says. He shoves the pile of books onto the shelf sideways and walks over, and she stands and lets him give her a hug. He barely comes up to her stomach, his body enveloped in a cloud of skirts. “I love you, Ma.”

“Yes, sweetie, I know. I love you, too.”

He sways back and forth, ever antsy, and eventually tilts his head straight up to look at her. “How did you meet him?” he asks.

“Oh, have I not told you this story?” Eliza asks, going along with it to distract herself. “It was the middle of winter, a very cold night, like this one’s going to be. Alexander was a soldier in his uniform—very dashing, for a young lady such as myself. From the instant I saw him, I knew.”

“Knew what?”

Eliza almost smiles. “That he was mine, and I was his.”

Pip makes a face. “Eww.”

“Oh, what a little cynic you are. Maybe you’ll understand one day.”

“Sure,” Pip says, looking unconvinced. “And then what?”

“And then… we danced. We were at a ball.”

“They had balls? Here?”

“Well, in New Jersey, but of course! How else would young ladies and young gentlemen meet?”

Pip’s mouth drops open. “Am I going to have to go to one?”

Now there’s something Eliza hasn’t pondered. They aren’t exactly in the good social graces of anyone in town yet, but she and Pip have been invited over for tea on a few occasions now, and he’s made fast friends with some of the other little ones at church. But even if Pip did have the social capital to merit an invitation, which still seems unlikely, nobody has had the funds to throw such extravagant gatherings in quite some time; between the taxes and the forfeitures, most folk are barely getting by. Particularly the Patriot sympathizers who would make the most natural social circle for them. So she settles on, “You never know, Pip. One day, you might.”

“But I can’t dance!”

“Oh, we can’t be having that!” Eliza cries, glad for any excuse to stop Pip from dwelling on her own melancholia. She steps back until she and Pip are at an appropriate distance for a social occasion, and Pip, confused, follows her. “No, darling, you stay there. Good. Now, what is the first thing we do when we meet a new person?”

Pip’s face breaks into a smile—an event that always lifts Eliza’s heart, made even more potent by his two missing front teeth. “Hi, who are you?” he cries.

“Yes, we say hello,” Eliza says, choosing to ignore the latter half of what Pip said. “And in dancing, we also say hello.”

“Hello!”

“But we say it by bowing or curtseying, like so.” Eliza takes the hems of her skirts and displays her most elegant curtsy, her muscles a little surprised at suddenly being asked to produce so neglected a pattern. But it is not as though Pip were a very discerning judge. He watches her carefully until he’s certain she’s done moving, then crosses his legs, extends his arms a few inches out to his side and—overbalances and staggers forward, giggling.

Eliza was always taught not to laugh in public at young men trying their best, but she does raise one hand to cover her mouth and think, oh dear. “Actually, darling, I forgot to tell you that it is always the lady who curtseys and the gentleman who bows. Here, let me show you—”

“Oh? Like this?” Pip holds his arms rigid at his sides and bends at the middle, getting close enough to kiss his own knees before bobbing back up.

“An... admirable demonstration of flexibility,” Eliza says, as Pip smiles up at her. She meant to add a “but,” but Philip is already jumping up and down, coming forward to grab both her hands and sway back and forth from them like a happy imp.

“Mommy, mommy, look, I’m dancing!”

Eliza gives up on the lesson. She lets go one hand and twirls Pip round by the other, and he bursts into wild laughter as he spins.

The cold of her grief subsides a little, and Eliza laughs along.

[Image description: Eliza and Pip dancing together. Image commissioned from lauwurens by the author]

As time goes on, Eliza begins embellishing the simple bedtime story she started Pip on, bringing in more of the peril and action, casting Alexander as the courageous, spitfire, gallant, decisive, and brilliant man she remembers. Her only worry is that her words won’t be enough—that she’ll fail to transmit the true glory of her Alexander. Pip has to know Alexander if Alexander is ever to be saved.

They form a tradition of visiting Peggy for Christmas: a week at most at their old house in Albany, with a constant gnawing anxiety at what mischief the monster may be getting into while she’s away. They’ve been allowed to keep the house, just as Eliza was allowed to stay in the little cabin near Saratoga that was formerly their summer home. All the other Schuyler lands have been confiscated and long since auctioned off by the Crown, and so their Christmas dinner is necessarily a good deal less grand than Eliza’s childhood memories. Nevertheless, it is so good to see her sister and her parents each year, especially with her father so much enfeebled. When she receives news that at last his suffering has ended, she hangs her head low and reminds herself that he’s in a better place now. She has been expecting the news for a long while—but she’ll miss him deeply, all the same.

That year when she and Pip arrive for the holiday there is a fresh grave in the Schuyler plot. Eliza visits it hand-in-hand with Pip to pay their respects. He looks up at her with his big serious eyes and draws from his pocket the flowers that she crafted from the silk of one of her old ball-gowns. Too cold for real flowers this time of year, so these will have to do.

Dinner begins a somber affair, but Peggy’s two little ones are always restive, and nothing can suppress Pip’s spirits for long. By the time the winter sun sets the adults have broken off into conversation amongst themselves and the children have long since scampered off to play amongst themselves. Eliza keeps half an eye on them through the doorway; Pip is roughhousing with his cousins in the living room, little Stevie laughing delightedly as the older boy tickles him. Cordelia, Peggy’s eldest and very serious for a six-year-old, sits in the corner determinedly trying to read.

The adults—Eliza, Peggy, Peggy’s husband Stephen, and their mother—haven’t run out of conversation yet, but Peggy stands up all the same.

“I should be starting on the dishes,” she says.

Eliza tries to cover her surprise, but years in the backwoods have dulled her social reflexes. Her questioning glance falls on Stephen, whom she had rather thought was one of the richest men in the colonies—more than rich enough to hire servants.

“Forfeitures,” he shrugs. “Nothing to be done. When King George gives you a choice between your money and your life…”

Of course. “I’ll help,” Eliza says, rising to stand next to her sister.

“Well, I suppose I shall as well,” says Catherine.

“No, Mother,” both sisters say at once; Catherine has terrible arthritis in her hands. “Stephen, be a dear and help Mother watch the children,” Peggy adds.

Mother and husband thus vanquished, Eliza and Peggy gather up the plates. Peggy has some water already drawn from the well, and thankfully it has had hours to warm by the fire. They set to scrubbing the remains of Christmas dinner.

“I was hoping to speak to you alone.”

“Have you heard anything? From New York?” The city had been a hotbed of Loyalist support during the war, and is now thick with powerful folk with the ear of the Empire, including the instigators of the war-that-wasn’t, Seabury and Andre themselves. If she could have move to the city herself to keep an eye on it she might have done so; as it is, with the monster, she must be content with secondhand scraps of gossip. But she trusts Peggy to collect it accurately and make clear and cogent reports.

“Well… yes and no.” Peggy seems intent on the silver gravy service she’s scrubbing. She checks her reflection’s teeth. “I… what I heard has gotten me thinking.”

“Tell me what you’ve heard, and then tell me what you’re thinking, and then we can talk about it,” Eliza says, rolling her eyes.

“Fine.” Peggy takes a deep breath. “Aaron Burr is alive and living in the city with Theodosia Prevost.”

Eliza’s mouth drops open. The plate she was scrubbing falls into the wash basin with a splash. “In the city?” she gasps. “I—I always hoped he would survive, but frankly I doubted—so weak and all in despair and barely able to so much as speak, oh, but that’s wonderful news!”

“They have a little girl,” Peggy says. “Pip’s age, or a little older. Nine, I think?”

Eliza drops her hands and leans against the countertop, gobsmacked. “In the city,” she murmurs. She had never expected to hear the name Burr again, after lending him her horse. At the very least she’d assumed he would go to ground, hide from history’s eyes and never be seen again. “Good Lord, Peggy, what is he doing there?”

“Nothing of distinction,” Peggy shrugs. “He only came to my attention because of his daughter. Evidently, she gave a presentation on the pianoforte for some of the better families during the summer season—quite the prodigy. Mrs. Haversham was happy to tell me all about it. She knew nothing of the girl’s father, only that her name was Theodosia Burr.”

Hiding under the Empire’s very eyes. Oh, but that was a dangerous game—but then again, Burr had no monster to keep happy, and Theodosia Prevost would be exceedingly well-connected. Eliza remembers Burr as a man with a capacity for silence. She can only assume he has been exercising it liberally.

Still. She’s very glad he’s alive. His survival feels like a personal victory for Eliza. And furthermore— “It sounds like he might even be happy.”

“It’s likely he is,” Peggy says. Eliza sighs and returns to the wash basin, taking up a dishtowel and drying plates as Peggy passes them. “I… I thought you might take his example as… instructive.”

“Oh, it would never work, me in the city. I’m nervous just leaving the monster half a week to visit you at Christmas—can you imagine if I had to—”

“I don’t mean the city,” Peggy says. “I meant moving on.”

To Eliza it feels like the room is suddenly roiling with heat. She carefully sets down the plate she’s holding. “What do you mean by that?”

Peggy’s face is flushing slightly, but she takes another dish from the basin and begins scrubbing it. “Stephen and I are very happy together,” she says, her voice slightly high. “Did—I didn’t tell you—we’re expecting another baby.”

Eliza takes the dish when Peggy offers it and begins to dry it mechanically, confused. Perhaps Peggy has realized what an absurd overreach she just made and is attempting to backtrack. “Oh, Peggy, that’s wonderful news. Congratulations.”

“And I was just thinking—” Peggy barrels on, “how lovely it is to be here, in this big house, with Mother here with us, and Stephen, and the children, and friends around, and able to entertain, and seeing you this year, and how lonely you’ve been—and if you were to just come here and live with us—”

“I can’t, Peggy!” At the last instant Eliza remembers she’s holding delicate china, and sets the dish down on top of the plates. “Have you forgotten about the creature?”

“How could I, when my sister has arranged her life around it?” Peggy says. “Perhaps you should try forgetting the creature, Eliza.”

“And abandon Alexander?” Eliza asks, horrified.

“Eliza, it isn’t him—”

“You don’t think I know that?!” Eliza explodes. “You don’t think I can look at that creature every day and honestly think—”

“That’s what I mean, Eliza, this is hurting you, this is hurting Pip, please, please, for his sake if not your own, just—just move on—”

“What would that even look like?” Eliza snaps.

Peggy seems struck that she’s even considering it, but quickly takes up the question. “Well—you’d come here! Mother would be so happy. We don’t have a lot of money but we still get invited places. You’re not that old, you still have your looks—the men used to go wild over you, Eliza, I’m sure any number would be thrilled—”

“Would you give up on Stephen?” Eliza interrupts.

“If he was gone for eight years?” Peggy spreads her arms wide. “I honestly couldn’t tell you. Probably. Eliza, we have barely a hint that saving Alexander is even possible.”

“Angelica thinks it’s possible. Her last letter—”

“Oh, well if Angelica thinks so, she must know best; she’s obviously totally objective when it comes to Alexander—”

“She’s been a great help with research.”

“She’s been encouraging you in this madness! And she’s not around, she can’t see what it’s doing to you and I can, pl—”

“It isn’t madness to want to save the love of my life from a fate worse than death, Peggy! What’s a little loneliness on my part, compared to that?”

Peggy has no answer to that. And if her position is this distant from Eliza’s, about something so important, what else has she...

"You didn't—you didn’t tell anyone else, did you? About Burr?”

“Of course not,” Peggy says, looking offended. “I'm just saying, if a Lieutenant Colonel can escape this, so can you.”

"The point is not to escape, Peggy. The point is that my husband needs me.”

"Alexander’s gone, Eliza," Peggy says, her voice full of unaccountable weariness. "It's time you gave up hope for a better past. There’s no such thing."

It’s Eliza’s turn to have no quick retort, and both of them lapse into silence. At length, Eliza picks up a wet plate and begins drying it. Peggy sighs and sinks elbow-deep in the sudsy water.

“I suppose I can’t convince you,” Peggy finally says, with the dry dishes piling higher and the suds nearly gone.

“No.” Eliza slumps against the counter and closes her eyes. “I wish…” she begins. But she isn’t able to finish. Her throat knots around the words.

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” Peggy says, when it’s clear Eliza won’t be finishing her sentence.

Eliza nods. “I know you didn’t.” She opens her posture, almost gingerly, as though she expects some old wound to pull and give her pain. But the pain never comes; there’s only a splash as Peggy lets go of the spoon she’s washing, and a moment later she’s subjected to a slightly damp hug. For a moment she freezes, the affection from another grown human being feeling foreign, and then she allows herself to relax into it, letting her forehead bump against Peggy’s shoulder.

“You’re my sister, and I love you, and you’re always welcome here. Always, always, always.”

“I wish—” Eliza starts again. Peggy pulls back when the words fail her again, waiting. At last Eliza gives up on saying the thing she wishes, or even a coherent idea of it entering her mind. What she’s lost, though. That she can number; that she can name. “I miss Father.”

Peggy only resumes their embrace, burying her face against Eliza’s neck. Eliza does the same, getting a noseful of curls. Peggy sways from foot to foot, tugging Eliza along with her, and something about the motion loosens the knot of feeling in Eliza’s throat. Her tears aren’t violent, but she’s helpless to hold them back. She can feel Peggy’s sides hitching in her arms.

For long moments they hold each other in the empty kitchen, the sounds of their children laughing and playing filtering in from the other side of the house. When the worst of the tears have subsided Peggy gives an enormous sniff and takes a step back. Eliza dabs her eyes against her sleeve.

“He loved you so much,” Peggy says. “He wanted you to be happy.”

“I know.”

“He asked me to ask you, before he…” Peggy looks away. “But I agreed, I thought it was a good idea. I still don’t see why...”

“Peggy,” Eliza warns, soft.

Peggy’s face falls, and wordlessly she returns to the dishes; but the strain fades after a moment, and soon the silence is sisterly once more.

“Ma?” Pip asks, on the ride back. They’re seated double on the horse, little Pip snug in his new knit cap—a present from Peggy—and tucked under the fur of Eliza’s winter riding cloak.

“Yes, darling?”

“Is Dad dead?”

Eliza is caught totally off guard. Did Pip overhear her conversation with Peggy? Anger flares in her chest that her sister would dare speak so forwardly to her—would dare suggest she remarry—would do so in the possible hearing of Pip, of all people, the wrong words in whose ears would jeopardize everything Eliza has worked for these past eight years.

Philip babbles into the silence. “It’s just, you always say he’s gone, or very far away, but Stevie told me that he had a puppy that was sick and Aunt Peggy told him that she’s sent the puppy to the farm with us but I told him we didn’t have any puppy because the monster would scare it, probably, and then 'Delia said not to be silly and that the puppy got caught under the wheels of a delivery cart and was dead and—and I guess I just got the idea that sometimes when grown-ups don’t want to say someone’s dead they just say far away…”

“That’s very observant of you, dear,” Eliza says, to buy herself some time.

Philip nods and wriggles closer to her on the horse. Eliza realizes she has no idea what he’s thinking or feeling. It’s a hard realization, given how normally in tune they are.

“I wonder, dear, if you might tell me a little bit more about the word dead, and what it means.”

“Dead means… it means dead, Ma,” Pip replies, sounding frustrated. “Your body stops working and your soul goes to Heaven and you’re gone.”

“Ah,” Eliza says. “That didn’t happen to your father.”

“So he’s not dead?”

“Well.” Eliza clears her throat. “I have told you that your father was in a war. That he was very brave and he fought for General Washington against the King’s men.”

“Yes.”

“But in the war, the King had his men do something very strange and terrible, that is not normally done, and that was to… to take your father’s soul out of his body, and put it somewhere else.”

Philip goes very quiet. Eliza can feel his little limbs stiffen. “They… they put it in Hell?” he whispers.

“No. No, no, sweetheart, they don’t have the power to do that.” She remembers the strange dreams she had for months and months after she came out of the black, that she still sometimes has, of no-color shapes and no-feeling fogs, and thinks, but not far off. “They put it somewhere else. We don’t quite know where.”

“He’s a ghost?”

If only! Ghosts can be guided home. “Not a ghost. He’s… not around here anymore.” In Pip’s childlike confusion and desire to make sense of his father’s predicament she recognizes some of her own desperation from those early days after the war-that-wasn’t, and her heart aches for him.

“Does… does he have a grave? Like Grandpa’s, that we can visit?”

“His body is gone,” Eliza says. And I will not mourn him until there is no hope left to save him. “We… we can plant some flowers for him, when spring comes, if you’d like.”

Pip thinks for a moment, then nods. “So he isn’t dead,” he says softly. “But.. but I won’t ever get to meet him.”

Eliza lets some slack into the right-hand rein and brings her arm up to hug Alexander’s son round the middle. When he’s older—when they’re not out in the freezing air—when she’s had time to prepare—when she isn’t in the middle of grieving her own father—then she’ll tell him the full story. His promise; his purpose. But the time hasn’t come.

Not yet.

The long, frigid winter continues, turning Pip into as voracious a reader as ever his father was. Years advance, and Eliza finds herself fielding questions on matters she knows little about—her education as a proper young lady naturally having not included economics or ancient Greek anything. She writes Angelica in desperation. From London they receive trunks upon trunks of books on every possible subject, shipped directly and at enormous expense. Eliza’s sewing room, with the good light, is soon more than half a library. She presents Pip Chapman’s Homer as his ninth birthday present, and he’s so transfixed he spends the whole night reading by candle-light and falls fast asleep over breakfast the next morning, his spoon still in his porridge.

Despite the books and the poetry and despite the piano, Pip fails to grow out of his affinity for the monster. If Eliza cannot find him, the first place she checks is always the barn. Frequently she finds him playing tug-of-war with the beast, or batting words back and forth, or sometimes just reading peacefully, propped up against the monster’s flank. But more and more often, as his twelfth summer passes in days of backbreaking farm work in stifling heat, Eliza finds her boy looking unaccountably sad. When she asks him what the matter is he’s quick enough to force a smile, but it’s plain as the snout on the monster’s face that something is troubling him.

After some consideration Eliza believes she knows what the problem is, and why Pip is so reluctant to speak of it. He's lonely. Cheerful gregariousness is a feature of his character, and in the company of only a single other human his healthy, natural need for conversation has been sadly deprived. Much as Eliza tries, she cannot give him the full variety of human experience—certainly not friends his own age. Church once a week is no longer enough, and once she knows the source of her boy’s melancholy a cure is immediately apparent. She can’t bring herself to deny it to him, despite the obvious danger. And so, though she hates the idea of exposing him to the slanders and calumnies floating about in the village, she will have to trust that the foundation she has laid already is strong.

It’s time to send Philip to school.

Chapter Text

Ma doesn’t like him fraternizing with the creature that lives in the barn because she says it’s dangerous, but Philip doesn't understand why she thinks that. Sure, it’s a little strange to look at—for example, he doesn’t like that thing it does with its eyes, one moment asleep, or its back turned, to all appearances unaware you’re there; the next, a black beady little thing migrating round the back of its head to see what you’re up to. But for all that Ma calls the creature dangerous, she isn’t afraid of it—in fact, she hits it with a broom when it’s misbehaving.

The kids from church, on the other hand, are terrified of the creature. They call it “the monster” in hushed voices, which rankles Philip in a way he doesn’t quite understand, because of course by most definitions the creature is, in fact, quite monstrous, with its multiple mouths and more-than-merely-multiple limbs and the way it sneezes ink and occasionally little gouts of flame. The other kids say that once the monster ate a boy, back when they were all tiny and couldn’t remember it. Philip doesn’t believe that, and he says so one day, as they’re all out digging for crayfish by the lake after church has let out. The creature has always been perfectly nice to him.

“You’re making that up!” one of the older girls, almost too old to play by the lake anymore, says. It’s the end of summer, and school is about to start, and Philip is filled with more-than-usual nervousness because Ma’s told him that he can go to school this year, so he has to make a better-than-usual impression on them. Usually Philip doesn’t quite fit into their conversations—too behind on gossip, to ahead in everything else. He’s aware that he’s working at a social disadvantage, that he’s on the very edge of this group. And he’s also aware that one of the worst things that could happen to his reputation would be to fail to refute a claim that he’s lying. Coming from a girl, no less!

Blushing at the unaccustomed eyes on him, he stammers a retort. “Am n-not!”

“Am n-not!” a boy immediately mimics. “Liar!”

Philip would rather hit him, but he’s above such things. His mother says that when people are cruel, he should just be the bigger person and ignore them, but always remember how nasty they were so he doesn’t have to bother being really friendly to them anymore. Philip’s not sure how satisfying that would be. And in the meantime, there’s the problem of his tarnished reputation.

He shakes his fist and says, “You’re all wrong! The creature is perfectly nice to me and I can prove it!”

They follow after him like the tail of a comet, mile after mile up the dirt road to home. Ma stayed after church to talk to the other ladies, but she’ll know that Philip’s gone back to the house. Part of him gets a little nervous at the idea that Ma won’t be at home. What if the creature gets a little too excited or decides to misbehave, and his ma isn’t there to hit it with a broom?

I could hit it, I guess, he thinks. But Philip hesitates. He suspects he doesn’t have quite his mother’s moral authority, particularly where the creature is concerned.

In any case, he’s led everyone all this way and he can’t chicken out now. The barn’s up ahead. Philip wishes he could describe it as looming, in his head, for dramatic effect, but it’s a cheerful, ordinary building on a beautiful blue-sky day, a real August masterpiece, and a word like looming can stain a reputation. Ma always tells him words have power. He doesn’t want to live in a gloomy, doomy, loomy type of place.

All the way to the barn he fretted that the creature might prove uncooperative, but now that he’s here he suddenly worries that it might be out hunting, or hiding way back under the front porch with its gross skunk friend like it sometimes does, or napping off in some shady and secluded part of the forest. A few years back Ma gave up the practice of locking the creature in because Philip got sad for it and would let it out of the barn whenever he could—so really, it could be almost anywhere. If he’s walked his whole class and more out all this way only for no creature…

“Wait here,” he says, throwing his arms out dramatically. “I go in alone.”

As far as heroic lines go it’s probably as good or better than anything this naïve crowd has ever heard. They whoop and applaud as Philip shoves the barn doors open and immediately shuts them behind him.

His eyes take a moment to adjust to the gloom, striped with vivid lines of sunshine that come in through the gaps between the boards. Philip knows the creature is approaching him by the skitter and scrape of its claws on the wooden floor, the sound of its tail dragging against the grain. A nose presses into his hand.

“Hello,” Philip says, scratching the creature just at the tuft of hair between its cow’s-horns. The creature snorts in contentment and sits, its haunches slumping to the boards in a cloud of dust.

The doors muffle the rabble of schoolchildren outside, but the creature still waggles its ears questioningly.

“Sorry for all the fuss,” Philip whispers. “I brought friends. They’re curious to see you. I told them you’re not… vicious.”

“Delicious fictitious,” the creature says, smacking its lips.

“Oh, hey now,” Philip scolds, “not delicious. Not one little bit delicious. They’re my friends.” Or they will be, he thinks. After I pull this off.

“Delicious repetitious Aloysius,” the creature insists, jumping to its feet, long tail whipping back and forth, scattering old straw and dust. It scuttles towards the barn door and butts its front shoulder against the planking. The doors shudder.

“No,” Philip says, making his voice as firm and deep as he can. Usually the creature obeys him, but today it’s too eager—maybe because it smells new people. Nervously, Philip flicks the creature on one of its noses. It doesn’t even acknowledge him, slamming against the doors again.

“Hey!” Philip says, and hits the creature in earnest.

There’s a shriek, and something stinging and heady-smelling takes him straight in the eyes, and he tumbles backwards with a shout. Before he can right himself—before he can so much as get his bearings—the creature’s on top of him, crushing him to the floor with its bulk.

Philip’s more confused than afraid, although his eyes are burning and so blurred with tears he can’t make out much of anything. He stays still, hoping the creature will see reason and let him up again soon, like it’s done in the past when they’ve roughhoused. But then the creature’s giant chicken-arm—a new addition, as of last Tuesday—comes round and tangles up in his hair, pulling it painfully and removing any power he might have had to move his head. Philip squirms violently, his heart suddenly knocking away at rabbit-pace in his ears.

“Let me go!” he cries, the words coming to him suddenly. He’s a little breathless, the consequence of a creature the size of a prizewinning hog sitting on top of him. It’s not trying to squish him—if it were, he would certainly already be squished. But there’s also no hope of his escaping right now.

The creature lets out an enormous bellow that terminates in a high, lonely whine. It’s shatteringly loud, and Philip can’t even bring his hands up to cover his ears because they’re pinned along with the rest of him. He squirms and squirms and tries to get away, but it’s no use. With a piteous cry that is at least half due to his painful, stinging eyes, he gives up.

The monster makes a low noise of consternation. A sniffling nose blasts hot air in Philip’s face, and the next thing he knows a slobbery cow’s tongue is licking him from chin to forehead. “Eugh!” he spits, only just managing to get his mouth shut before the tongue comes back for another round. “Stop! Stop it!” The acrid, stinging substance is eventually scrubbed off of his face, and his vision clears enough to see that the cow’s tongue is now blackened with ink.

Philip now has a wonderful view of the barn ceiling. But no matter how much he cajoles, begs, pleads, and finally kicks, the creature remains firmly on top of him and refuses to move. Every time it hears something outside it goes tense and growls, like it’s readying for a fight.

Eventually, Philip sighs and goes quiet. Maybe if he stays very still, the creature will get bored and find something more interesting to sit on. He notices after a time that it’s gone completely quiet outside. Probably all the other kids got bored and went home.

Well, that’s just a perfect beginning to impressing his new classmates. Stuck under half a ton of obstinate monstrosity, Philip alternately fumes at it and pities himself. When fuming, he occasionally tries to argue with the creature, but it refuses all his attempts at conversation—only mumbles and mutters and moans to itself at random intervals.

Presently the creature’s ears prick up, and a few minutes later Philip hears galloping hooves. From the sound of it, Ma—at least, Philip prays it’s Ma—dismounts and makes straight for the barn without even bothering to tend to her horse.

The doors slam open, letting in a stream of sun. The creature leaps off Philip and races up to Ma before she can make so much as a single step into the room. She sidesteps it deftly, moving towards Philip. Philip rolls to his knees and stands, sun-dazzled eyes blinking up at his mother.

“Are you hurt?” she asks, seizing both his arms. Her voice sounds like he’s never heard it before.

Philip sneezes at all the hay and dust in the air. “I’m fine, Ma,” he says, looking down sheepishly. “Just a little… sat on, that’s all.”

She turns, glaring daggers at the creature. At once, its perky demeanor wilts, and it retreats into the deepest, darkest corner of the barn, where it curls up and gives a single, indignant chuff.

“What’s this on your face?” Ma asks, drawing a hesitant thumb across Philip’s chin.

“Um… slobber, probably.”

“Eugh.”

Philip nods dispiritedly.

“Well, let’s get you into the house and cleaned up,” Ma says, but her tone is ominous. Philip knows that as soon as Ma is satisfied that he’s safe and clean and totally uninjured she’ll probably lay down the household equivalent of the Intolerable Acts. He’ll be lucky if he sees Homer inside the next two months.

His mother is, perhaps, a little rougher than usual as she wets a cloth in the basin and scrubs the last of the ink and cow-spittle off his face. Then she insists that he change into clothes that stink less.

“You’re hair’s a mess,” she observes, and Philip quails. Never has he heard his mother utter those words but they were followed by two hours at least of picking, detangling, combing, and general scalp pain. Sure enough, she fetches the little bottle that Aunt Angelica sent her and bids him sit down and soak his hair in the basin.

“Ma!” Philip protests, “it’s not that bad, really, I—”

Ma reaches over and plucks a straw from his curls.

“All right, one straw, because I was in the barn, but—”

She plucks a second straw.

“Fine, I have a few…” Philip reaches up blindly and pats the back of his head. It makes a crackling sound, and hay tickles his neck. Worse, he dislodges some more of the barn dust, and sneezes again.

“... fine.” He plops sullenly onto the kitchen stool.

His ma has him lean back and soak his hair in the basin, and with a little work she soon has most of the hay extracted. Philip moves to sit up, but she tsks and shakes her head, determined to finish the full task once she has begun it. It’s been a long time since he’s had his hair washed. She remedies the worst of the tangles by hand, then has him sit up. Soon he hears the thwack of the bottle against her hand, and the soothing smell of cocoa-nut pervades the room as she works it into his hair.

It isn’t so unpleasant, Philip must admit, breathing deep, although sometimes he wishes Ma had a little girl to steal her attention. Having grown up with not one but two curly-haired sisters, her fingers retain all their old skill and all their old restlessness. It’s rare that she has such a golden excuse to pin him down. The comb finds the very ends of his hair and begins its steady, patient work.

Until Ma’s hand falters. Philip fights the urge to turn his head, knowing he’ll likely as not catch an accidental bark to the ears with the comb. “Ma?” he asks, when it’s been a few minutes and he still doesn’t feel anything.

“Lord, Philip,” his mother says, heavily, “what were you thinking? Bringing the other children here, to our house, to see that—that thing!”

“People had been telling lies,” Philip says, straightening up indignantly only to have a particularly painful tug at his hair. “All I wanted to do was show that it wasn’t vicious—”

“Wasn’t vicious?” his mother cries, resuming her combing faster than before. “Philip, however the creature has acted in the past, you must understand that it is—just look at it, Philip, it was not made to be kind.”

“You taught me that God made all the creatures on heaven, on earth, and under the sea,” Philip says, crossing his arms across his chest. “Perhaps He made them to be wild, but you’ve never said He made a one of them unkind.”

There’s a silence behind him, and then, “Philip, God did not make that creature,” his mother says, with such a terrible air of finality that Philip fears she will tell him no more. He twists his head to look at her, hair tugging in the teeth of the comb.

He asks what he must ask. “Well, who did?”

Ma sighs, low and defeated. “There are…there are some things that I haven’t told you about your father.”

His mother speaks for hours, her fingers weaving slow and steady through his hair, capturing the strands into orderly Dutch braids. She talks about the Great Revision, as it’s called officially, or the war-that-wasn’t, which is what real people call it, as though it were yesterday, and suddenly the battle that claimed his father’s life is the Great Revision itself. Suddenly, the fragmentary fairy-stories about his father’s clever, valiant conduct in battle are no longer “some time ago” and “far away from here.” They are given days from the calendar and places on the map. Suddenly, Alexander isn’t just a simple soldier—he’s Washington’s right-hand man, and that makes Philip’s heart sing, because his mother has told him time and time again about the Patriot cause’s steadfast leader. His father, most trusted aide to the General!

His mother brings out letters as evidence, totally blackened by ink; she tells him your father was blotted out. And, whatever you may hear about him in school—whatever your teachers say about him or about Washington or any of the others—it’s lies. Your father was a brave, honorable, kind, brilliant man. And, I went into the dark to try to save him, she says, and then says no more, for the moment, of the dark.

When Philip was little, there were few things he loved more than hearing his mother tell stories about his father. But as he grew older and wiser, he’d noticed that speaking of him caused her pain, and he’d stop asking for bedtime stories so much. Now, hearing the sadness of her voice, seeing her fingers delicately run over the blackened pages of those lost letters, his heart is wrenched by her pain. He misses the man he never knew, and wishes, more than anything, that there was a way to bring his father back from the void into which the British cast him. To see him whole and well and sitting at the kitchen table with Philip and his ma, a perfect family. Hatred—a hot, uncharacteristic emotion—blazes up in him at the British, for taking his father away from him, and most of all from his ma.

But as it transpires, his mother was only beginning her inventory of heartbreak. Philip listens, gobsmacked, as she relates the story of the creature she found there, in the dark. Almost from the beginning he finds himself stammering, stumbling, at a loss for words. “So he’s—the beast, that’s my… that’s Da—”

“No,” his mother says, her voice hard and flat. “That creature is a—a false trail, a pit-trap, that the British have laid in order to mislead anyone who might attempt to undo their lies. If your father is understood by a stranger—by history—his soul will be freed.” She ties off the last braid and gently draws them together at his neck. “Will you turn around and look at me, Pip?”

Philip turns, and his ma kneels down in front of him, touching a hand to his face. “Do you see, sweetie? Why I had to take it with me? The others—Alexander’s friends, the General, Lady Washington—their lies escaped into the world. Now anytime someone thinks of Lafayette they think of that horrid… candy-thing in New York… but of course, you haven’t heard anything about that all the way out here, have you?”

Philip shakes his head, bewildered. Lafayette featured in some of his bedtime stories: a gallant and talented youth of the French court, impassioned for liberty and utterly devoted to the General. The implication, too, that his mother has been closely observing the situation in New York City, and has told him nothing about it, does not escape him. He feels indignant, almost betrayed.

“Good,” his mother says, oblivious to the reservations growing inside of him. “I’ve been trying as hard as I can to keep your mind pristine.”

“Pristine? Of what?”

“Of their lies, dear.” Ma rises and squeezes his shoulder. “With the creature I could not possibly deceive you once you asked, of course, but my hope is that I have given you an image of your father that is as far removed as possibility allows from any resemblance to that… to that thing.”

“You want me to be the stranger,” Philip says, everything sliding into place. “You need me to understand him. That’s why you’ve been…keeping secrets.”

“I’m so sorry, Pip,” Ma says, enfolding him in a quick hug. “I tried to do what was best for your father.”

“Because you need me to…to save him…” Philip trails off, considering the implications, and suddenly panic grabs his insides and twists them. “Am I the only one?” he cries.

“The only…”

“The only one who can help him? Because I didn’t ever hear the lies about him, and I have you to tell me the truth?”

“You’re our best chance,” his mother says, very serious. “It’s a lot of responsibility, but you’re a very smart boy, and you take after your father in ways you might not even understand yet.”

“Can I—can I still go to school? If they’re going to spoil my brain with lies about him?” he asks, tears gathering in his eyes. He’d wanted to go to school so badly...

“Yes, you can still go to school,” Ma says, her voice firm. She holds out her arms. Philip stands up and wraps his arms around her middle and rests his head on her shoulder. “You’re old enough now to know the difference between lies and the truth. I’ve told you a hundred times who your father really was. If anybody tells you different, I trust you to know not to listen to them.”

“But what if I don’t get it?” he asks tearfully. “What if it’s too much or we’re too different and I don’t understand him and he’s l-lost forever because I—”

“Oh, shh, shh,” Ma says, hugging him even closer. “Philip, you’re as smart and as clever a boy as any mother could ask for and I love you very, very much, all right? You can do this. I believe you can understand.”

“But what if I can’t ? I can’t let Dad be stuck as a, as a”—and suddenly, the word monster materializes in his head, gains substance and truth in a way it never has before; suddenly the shape of the creature takes on a strangeness, an evilness, in his mind, now that he knows it as it is: a distortion of a body, rather than a body in and of itself—“a monster forever! There needs to be somebody other than me, Ma, I can’t do this all by myself, I can’t — ”

“Philip, there is no one else. You can,” Ma insists, shaking him by the shoulders, and Philip dissolves into sobs, well and truly, flings himself into her arms and cries like his heart has broken, like he’s failed her and failed his father already. Blessedly, his ma stops trying to encourage him and hugs him instead, humming a low tune that resonates in her chest and Philip’s ears.

“There we go,” she says, when Philip extricates himself from her hold with some embarrassment. “There’s my brave Pip.”

Philip snorts, forgetting he has a nose full of snot. “Oh!” he cries, covering his face with his hand.

Ma tries to hold it together, but her hand flies up to her face in a mirror of Philip’s gesture, and her eyes sparkle with laughter. Philip giggles helplessly at his own predicament. Ma whips out a handkerchief and hands it to him, and he wipes off his face and giggles some more. Crying is very childish, as is giggling, and he’d wanted to be so grown-up today, this morning, when he tried to make friends, and suddenly he’s almost on the verge of crying again. “I’m s-sorry,” he chokes out.

The laughter leaves his mother’s eyes. “Oh, Philip, no. I’m sorry. This is so much for you to handle right now and you’re still so young. I just forget because of how smart you are sometimes. I should have waited longer.”

“No!” Philip cries. “You should’ve told me when I was small so I didn’t try to make friends with that thing, I—” He stops, feeling like he’s been split into two people, each of them horrified with the other. One half, appalled that he could befriend a monster; one half, appalled that he could denounce his friend. “There needs to be somebody else. In case I can’t do it.”

“Very well,” his mother says, in her humoring my silly son voice, “who else can we tell? And how will we tell him?”

Philip isn’t sure where the idea comes from, but it lights up his mind like a beam from the aether. “I’ll write a story!” he says. “I’ll write it all down, everything we know that’s real, everything that you’ve told me, and we can give it to people. And that way maybe one of them can understand him even if I don’t! Every person who reads it is another chance!”

He stops, slightly breathless with excitement, and his ma steps back and holds him at arm’s length. “Philip,” she beams, “that’s a wonderful idea.”

He wants to get started on the book that very night, he’s so excited, but his mother insists that he take a bath before his first day of school to get all the barn-dust off his skin, and makes him draw up all the water from the well. Then he has to wash his dusty, dirty clothes so as not to waste the water, and while he’s washing those, why doesn’t he wash all his other dirty clothes as well? And hang them up to dry? By the time he’s finished with his chores, it’s already time for supper, and after supper his mother sends him straight to bed.

“You’ve had a lot to think about today, Pip,” she says, tucking him in and blowing out the candle like she used to when he was only a little boy. But even after she leaves, Philip can only stare at the ceiling, some combination of apprehension about school and shock about the monster keeping him awake as effectively as someone playing a drumroll in his ears. He’s completely overwhelmed. It’s one thing to suddenly understand all the hidden forces and circumstances that have directed your life thus far; it is another, even greater thing to be told there is a purpose for your future heretofore unknown to you, a purpose great and mysterious and noble that will set you at odds with possibly the most powerful empire the world has ever known for the sake of the legacy of your father whom you have never met. The summons resonates in Philip’s very bones, but remembering his mother’s letters, the ink-black and tattered paper, sends a chill of fear through his blood.

He shudders, and tosses, and turns, wide awake as the wind roves round the eaves of the house and great fat summer raindrops splat against the windowpanes. Thunder grumbles, and then rumbles, and then crashes and roars, and through the din he hears clearly the forlorn and mournful creature in the barn howling away. The sound of those howls calls up all the loneliness in Philip’s young soul, and he throws off his covers, lights the lantern, and dashes outside barefoot with his nightshirt flapping around his knees.

After today’s incident perhaps he should be afraid of the creature, but it isn’t so; at the sight of its bulk in the lantern-light he feels only a great rush of affection, of familiarity, barely tempered by his momentous new knowledge. He settles himself in the straw a few feet from the trembling beast and strokes its coarse mane, combing out knots and dust with his fingers.

The sense—half wonder, half perplexity—comes upon him gradually, as the storm passes overhead and the thunder subsides. He hardly knows what he’s doing, what sits next to him. This thing, which he has lived with all his life, which he considers as ordinary as an apple tree or a deer, is a monster in both its form and its purpose. It is a construct of artful malice; its blood is ink and its bones are slanders.

It is his father’s death.

But however hard he looks in his soul for revulsion or resentment, he cannot find it. He thinks perhaps it is because he’s known the beast since childhood. It has been his companion. It has never harmed him, not even this morning, when he had frightened it. “Hi, friend,” he whispers, and the beast, which had been hiding its face under massive splayed paws, looks up.

On the monster’s ever-shifting skin a few inky words appear, written in an upright and authoritative hand.

Philip raises the lantern, squinting, and deciphers καλὸς κἀγαθός.

“Kalos kagathos,” he sounds out, straining for a translation. “Beautiful and...honorable?”

The creature whines, covering its bat-ears as best it can with its various paws, chicken-leg on leopard-paw on human hand, desperate to shut the sound out.

Philip snorts, giving the monster an affectionate slap on the flank. “Someone’s got a high opinion of himself.”

The monster swats him with its tail, today long and bare and thin like an opossum's. It cracks against Philip’s ear, stinging. “Mockery,” the monster says, the first it has spoken since the incident. “Mockery, crockery.”

Its blood is ink, Philip thinks, the idea slow to form. Its blood is ink, so maybe… maybe this is a wound. “Gawkery,” he counters, late, rubbing his ear.

“Smockery.”

“Chalkery.” Philip giggles in spite of himself. He knows he’s too grown up for it now, but he loves this game.

“Bockery,” the creature crows. “Bok bok bockery!”

“Bok bok!” Philip clucks back, and the beast lets loose a rooster crow of delight, rising up and capering wildly. “Bok bok!” Philip calls again, and soon the creature is chasing him around the barn, absurdly swift on its mismatched legs—there are nine, today; Philip certainly had adequate time to count—clucking and shilling the whole time.

Of course the creature has a beak or two in there somewhere, which is cheating, but Philip is no slouch at chicken noises either. Soon the beast has him pinned again, but loosely, like it’s done in countless of their games in the past, nothing like the iron hold it took yesterday.

Philip laughs until his stomach hurts, until he can hardly breathe, and suddenly he wants to cry again, just give up and sob like he shouldn’t because he’s twelve and very nearly a grown-up and it’s his first day of real school tomorrow and him ma’s counting on him to save his father’s soul and legacy from the monstrous lies his enemies have crafted, lies so powerful that they take from, that they live, and walk, and carefully lick his face with a cat’s tongue in concern that he’s unwell.

“Bok bok,” Philip clucks, to reassure the creature, and keeps his tears inside.

“Bok bok,” it replies immediately, understanding. How simple it is, Philip thinks, when you have no need for words.

Chapter Text

A shocked silence falls on the schoolroom when Philip walks in.

"Um..." he says, as the other children keep staring. “H-hello?”

"You're Philip Hamilton?" the teacher asks.

"That's me. I mean, yes, ma'am."

The teacher looks at him for a moment before saying, "So I suppose you weren't eaten by a hideous beast yesterday, as your classmates reported?"

"No, ma'am.”

"Well in that case, here, this desk is yours. Class begins at eight sharp. Don’t be late again."

“I’m very sorry, ma’am. It won’t happen again.” He’d fallen asleep in the barn and hadn’t woken at his usual time and his ma had cried out at all the hay-dust in his clothes (“And you just had a bath! Oh, Philip, what am I going to do with you?”) and absolutely insisted on dusting him down and then Riddle had been in a bad temper and refused to so much as trot for him and, in short, the morning had been a disaster.

There are two halves to the classroom with an aisle down the middle, and rows of benches that look sort of like church pews, if pews had desks attached. Belatedly he realizes everyone’s twisted around in their seats staring at him. He flushes and marches between the upturned faces of his peers until he reaches an empty seat, near the front. When he looks around he realizes he’s surrounded by the very smallest children in the class.

The teacher assigns a theme for the older students to write about, and Philip gets his first shock of the day: describe the perfidies of the Tyrant Washington, using at least three examples . All his mother’s bedtime stories come flooding back to him in a rush of blood to the head, and he bites his tongue to keep from speaking. He reminds himself that he wanted this. In any case he has a good excuse not to leap into writing; he has no paper.

“Now,” the teacher says, approaching him after she’s gotten the other children started on their lesson. “Do you know your letters?”

Philip blinks at her, sure he’s missed some part of the question. Whose letters is she referring to? 

“No? Don’t be shy about it, we get plenty of first-timers here.”

She hands him a piece of chalk, and he handles it uncertainly. His ma taught him with a pen; the chalk has a strange feel between his fingers, cool and dusty. The teacher draws a piece of black slate out from under the desk and draws a large capital A on it with her own piece of chalk.

“There,” she says. “This is an A. Now, you copy it.”

Philip looks at her uncertainly. Surely she can’t mean that he should…

“Go on,” she prompts, with a gentle smile.

Nonplussed, he sets chalk to slate and presses down. The chalk barely bites. Frustrated, he presses harder. The chalk snaps in half in his hand. He makes a noise, the kind of gargling bark the monster does when it misses a mouse, and then immediately claps a hand over his mouth.

The teacher reaches into her front apron pocket and hands him another piece of chalk. “Don’t worry, it’s a little tricky your first time. You’ll get it.”

Blushing furiously and now too embarrassed to say a word, Philip takes the chalk and draws a neat capital A with great deliberation.

“Good. Now, do you remember what letter this is?”

“It’s an A. Ma’am, I can do this, you don’t need—”

From the back of the room there’s a burst of laughter, and the teacher’s face, previously soft, takes on all the severity of a harrier hawk’s. “Daniel!” she snaps. “Polly, you show Philip his letters. I shall be back in a moment.” She rises instantly to her feet, leaving Philip in a breeze of skirts and chalk-dust.

Philip sighs. He’s surrounded by little ones—he’s not very good at judging their ages—most of them at least putting chalk to slate but a few daydreaming, a few chewing on their own fingers or the chalk itself, a few kicking their feet under their desks or humming or staring out the window. Polly, who seems to be about seven and who has a small book with some ugly pictures of animals in it, looks up at him with big brown eyes and then immediately hides behind her book. The little girl next to him has a slate like his, and is drawing an endless train of small backwards Rs.

“Hey,” he says, “can I help you with those?”

 He’s so wrapped up with helping the little girl with her penmanship that he doesn’t even notice when the teacher dismisses the older students. Only when she taps him on the shoulder does he look up from their slate. They’ve graduated to the letter S, which the little girl also insists on drawing backwards.

“Are you ready to go home, young man?” the teacher asks. “I usually dismiss the older ones around now so you can go home to help your parents with the chores. I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to come back, but I hope that Polly was able to help—”

“Yes, thank you very much, Ma’am, see you tomorrow,” Philip says, ducking past her and away. Now that he has played along with the absurd fiction that he can’t read or write he has no idea how to correct her impression without implicating the both of them as utter fools. His only remedy is to flee, and this he does, bolting out the door and into the circle of his peers outside. They’re all lounging around under the shade-trees outside the schoolhouse, no doubt chatting and trying to postpone the moment when they all have to go home to their farmwork.

A silence falls as Philip emerges.

“H-hello,” he says. He remembers his mother saying that adults say hello by bowing or curtseying, so he hesitantly bows to the assembled group. He knows most of them from church already, but it feels appropriate to reintroduce himself in this new context, and hopefully such a grown-up maneuver will impress them.

One of the boys scoffs, but a girl curtseys politely in return, seemingly charmed. There aren’t very many of them—only three or four, to the score or so of boys, and they’re all on the younger side. It seems odd to Philip—there are just as many girls as boys at church.  

They’re all watching expectantly. Philip doesn’t know what to do next. A nervous smile makes its way, unbidden, to his mouth.

“So?” one of the boys asks, his face eager.

“So, what?” Philip replies, feeling slightly panicked.

“So what happened?” another boy cries.

“All we heard was this sound, like, ptuiii—”

“And you screaming—”

“And this terrible sound…”

“And then we ran—”

“I didn’t run.”

“Oh, bull’s piss, you did so, I saw you—”

“That sound, though—”

“Yeah, God, what a terrible…”

“Well, I think you lot are pathetically easily impressed,” one of the girls says, with her nose held high. “We didn’t even get to see the monster.”

The general conversation goes silent at that. Philip grimaces. She’s right. He never showed them what they’d come to see. And now that his mother has told him the monster’s true nature, showing it to them is out of the question. If she’s right, then their seeing it would only fortify the thicket of lies surrounding his father’s true soul.

“And,” the girl says, with the air of someone delivering a coup de grace, “he can’t even read.”

“I can so read,” Philip counters immediately. “I can read loads of things. I can read English and French and Latin and a little bit of Greek.”

A wave of consternation ripples through the crowd. Philip knows instantly he’s made some kind of mistake, but he doesn’t quite know what yet. Isn’t it usual to have a few other languages at your disposal? He knows his father had a few when he was this age.

“But then why were you sitting with the babies?” one of the boys asks, quite reasonably.

Philip growls in frustration. He regrets it the instant the faces of his new friends turn to shock. “It’s—it’s just a misunderstanding, I’ll have it put right, I just—”

“I bet you don’t know anything,” the girl crows. “I bet when you’re at home you don’t even speak, you just GROWL!”

Philip dearly wants to hit her, but he’s a boy and it wouldn’t be gentlemanly, and his mother always said that his father was a perfect gentleman. With difficulty, he swallows another growl.

“Can’t read, can’t write, can’t talk!” another kid singsongs. “I bet he’s not even house-trained!”

Thank God, it’s a boy. Philip hurls himself forward and takes him straight to the ground.  

In the end, Ma  comes into town and has a long talk with the teacher. Since it is Philip’s first offense, and since his mother stresses that he has not had much contact with children his own age, and will necessarily still be learning the rules, the teacher is willing to be lenient. Philip will be allowed to return to school—not with the babies, even, since his mother also assures the teacher of his literacy—as long as he stays on his best behavior.

But the teacher’s forgiveness can only take him so far. Among his peers, to say that he is notorious would be an understatement. Most of the older children ignore him. A few try to be cruel, hiding frogspawn and suchlike where they think he will sit on it. After so long dealing with the monster he’s very difficult to faze, and eventually they give up on crude pranks. This doesn’t grant him a reprieve.

At first he avoids the topic with his ma, since he doesn’t want her to get nervous and decide he shouldn’t be going to school, but one day when she asks it all comes pouring out in a litany of frustration and wounded pride. “How are they going to be friends with me if they see me as, as, as, as an object of fun!”

She takes his hand across the dinner table. “You just need to keep at it!” she says, with a note of cheerfulness that sounds slightly forced. “Maybe instead of worrying what the mean kids think about you, you should try to make friends with the nicer ones. You know, the ones who aren’t tormenting you?”

That seems like sound logic to Philip, so sound that he wonders why he didn’t come up with it first. The itch to convert those who are strongest against him still lingers, but he resists it, instead observing his classmates when the old familiar faces come to taunt and tease. 

One immediate advantage: he’s so focused on his observations that he barely even hears what the bullies are saying.

A second advantage: he spots two candidates in no time at all. A girl, who stares fixedly ahead when the bullies start in, her mouth in a thin grimacing line, and a boy, who ineptly covers a laugh when Philip gets in a rare riposte.

After school, he asks the girl if she might like to be friends.

“That’s not how it’s done,” she says, exasperated. “Anyway, they’ve only just left off of me because you came and you’re… fresh meat, I guess.”

Philip thinks that’s a very cowardly way of looking at things, but he supposes he can’t begrudge her her sense of self-preservation. He asks his mother what she meant by how it’s done and she quickly susses out his error.

“People don’t just decide to be friends, they grow to be friendly after spending time together,” she explains. “It’s something that happens organically.”

“But when can I spend time with them? The teacher doesn’t like when we talk in class, and it’s not as though I can invite anyone over.”

Ma puzzles over it for a moment. “You could join a social club, I suppose.”

And thus is born the Society for Betterment of Boys. At first there are only two members, Philip and the boy he noticed. His name is William van Doort, and he is prim and proper as a semicolon, which, as he informs Philip at the Society’s first meeting, is his favorite kind of punctuation.

“So what do we do here?” he asks, as Philip sprawls out under the apple tree after school.

“Um.” Philip hadn’t thought this far ahead. “We could share our books?”

“I don’t have any books,” the boy says. “My Ma says paper’s too dear.”

Right, not everybody has a rich aunt in London, where there is no Stamp Act and no thousand-pound Printers’ Medallions to be procured by anyone wishing to operate a press.

“Well,” he says at last, “I suppose you can borrow mine.”

In all the excitement about school Philip nearly forgets the strange writing he observed on the monster. It’s only on Friday afternoon, visiting the barn in order to ensure the poor lonely beast that he has not, in fact, vanished from the earth, that he realizes the writing is fading.

He fetches his ma.

“Now that is interesting,” she says, having drawn the beast into the sunlight to better observe the smudged, stretched-out words. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.” She looks at Philip, her eyes at once hopeful and cautious. “You haven’t started writing yet, have you?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve just—school, you know—” The work isn’t hard, not at all, but it does take away from his chore-time, and afterwards he’s always preoccupied, going through his history lessons and carefully annotating all the places they misalign with what his mother has told him. He’s been writing a list of lies, so he can keep an eye on them and notice if any try to seep into his thinking the wrong way round, and next to the lies he keeps a list of corrections. It’s very important that he should keep all his facts straight...but no, he hasn’t yet made a start on the book itself. It’s difficult to know where to start.

“Hm. So this probably wasn’t something you did.”

Philip shakes his head. “At least, I don’t I… I don’t think I’ve done anything that would have done this?”

His ma purses her lips, still squatted down by the monster, staring at the letters as though they might offer some great secret up. Philip has the same feeling, which is why it’s so frustrating that beyond the initial translation they can make neither head nor tail of them.

The beast bleats with impatience, and Philip knows from experience it won’t stand still much longer. 

"Do you recognize the handwriting?"  Philip tries. "Do you think it could be Dad’s?"

"It's not his," Ma says, with a frustrated little sigh. "His handwriting was much neater, like a clerk’s. If I were to make a guess, I would say..."

But she falls silent.

"What would you say?" Philip tugs on her sleeve. "Ma? Who might it be?"

"It might be Laurens," Ma says, her voice heavy. Like she's conceding an argument that she'd much rather not lose. 

"Laurens?" Philip makes a face. "The teacher says nice things about him in school." He knows his Ma will understand exactly what he means by this: that anyone the British like cannot possibly be worth taking seriously.

"He and your father were close," Ma says, with a tone of finality.

Philip sees the horsefly land on the creature too late; with a yelp, it leaps into the air and races off, flicking its tail madly behind. “Oh, go, you miserable thing,” his ma sighs. “As to what these letters mean, or why they might have appeared, I have no better idea than you do, Pip.”

“But I don’t have any idea at all.”

“Exactly,” his ma says, with a little half-puff of a laugh. “I suppose I’ll ask your Aunt Angelica.”

It’s an unusual concept, that someone might know something about the monster, or his father, that Ma doesn’t. But Philip’s seen the portrait of Aunt Angelica that hangs in the dining room, to the right of his grandmother’s and to the left of his Aunt Peggy’s. Unlike Grandma and Aunt Peggy, he’s never met Aunt Angelica in person. But her portrait seems to radiate sharpness and self-possession; his ma has said it’s a very good likeness. Letters seem to come from her every few months, and occasionally some excellent books, barely off the presses even in London, and even the pianoforte. So Philip has come to view his distant aunt as some kind of benevolent supernatural being who occasionally showers them with gossip and gifts. He’s not quite sure where the monster fits in, but he approves of the plan.

The Society for Betterment of Boys only expands. William coaxes a few of his friends to come, and a few more trickle in, some even bringing their own books so that Philip doesn’t have to serve quite so much as a lending library. Eventually the girl shows up, although she airily announces, “This isn’t about politics,” before sitting down with them.

“Politics?” Ma asks, alarmed, when Philip offhandedly relates the story to her. “Philip, you mustn’t—it’s far too dangerous for you to—”

“It’s fine, Ma,” Philip smiles. “We haven’t been talking about politics except the Ancient Greek kind, but only Homer so far. I don’t even know where she got that idea.”

“Hmm… and who were the other boys in this club?”

Philip lists them out proudly. They’re up to a round half-dozen now!

“Oh, dear,” Ma says. “Philip, their fathers were all in the militia.”

“Oh, dear,” Philip echoes. “You think people will think—but they’re just my friends, we’re not talking about—would people really—”

“I don’t know.” Ma shakes her head. “People see things to match the story they already think they know. If a Lieutenant Colonel’s son begins gathering up militia-men’s sons…”

“But they’re the only ones who treat me like I’m not—like I’m not nothing!” Philip bursts out. “Who else was I supposed to make friends with?”

“I know, dear, it’s stupid,” his ma concedes. “But… people can be very, very stupid when they set their minds to it. And if I spotted the pattern… I can’t be the only one who will.”

Well, Philip supposes, if he’s going to reap the consequences of something anyway, he might as well do it. It’s only fair. That week, he brings in, for a public reading and discussion, a pamphlet sent to him by Aunt Angelica. She likes to keep him and his ma abreast of London politics, but Philip usually finds those pamphlets and newspaper articles tedious next to the classics. But this London pamphlet is unique in that it directly discusses America at great length, whereas to read most others you would hardly know it existed. Unfortunately the portrait is not flattering; the colonies, it says, are places of pestilence for body, intellect, and soul, tainting good English stock with the wildness of the land and brute habits of savages both native and imported. The anarchic spirit of the rebels, before being checked so justly by the Great Revision, surely stemmed from just such a source. And further miscegenation—the influence of the hot climate—the draw of the closed frontier—continuing flash-fires of dissent that even now must be extinguished—perhaps it is time to admit that the American problem can only ever be managed, never truly corrected, like an ulcer that will never close. Britain must keep a close watch, and a firm hand, and never let her guard down. There can be no peace between a mob and a king, and America by its very mongrel, bestial, sprawling nature will never be anything more than a mob. 

Philip had gotten a kind of sick delight out of reading the brutal, ignorant account of his homeland, and he can feel his mouth twisting even as he reads it out to the shocked faces of the rest of the Society. He has a good voice for reading, a good sense of rhythm after all the Homer, and he can see their faces blanching as the thought comes to them: is this what they think of us?

Welcome, Philip thinks. Now you know how it feels.

Of course, he doesn’t want to let this heaping pile of dung pass for anything worth listening to. Aunt Angelica has helpfully gone through the pamphlet and pointed out all the fallacies, exaggerations, sloppy generalizations, logical leaps, and general mistakes, and then appended a lengthy summary of the author’s conflicts of interest. Philip begins interspersing her comments with his reading, and sees his friends’ spirits restored a little. Soon the leaves on the trees are shaking with their howls of laughter.

 It’s two months after the start of school, and Philip doesn’t want to write.

It’s an unusual state for him. Usually, poems rush into his head at the last opportune times—to the rhythm of hoofbeats as he rides into town, or when he and ma are waiting on their mail at the Key and Kite, or when he’s drifting off to sleep and suddenly it’s like God Himself is pouring words straight into his ears…

Not at a desk in the house when it’s likely one of the last nearly-warm beautiful fall days of the year, and his ma has asked politely if she may see a draft of Chapter One by next Sunday. He frowns at the paper, tapping the quill, restless, leaving blots. The stirring branches with their dry delicate gold leaves draw his eyes outside. He thinks of the promise of sun on his skin with longing. Then he sighs and returns to his paper.

Alexander Hamilton was born on, he writes, and stops. He doesn’t remember his father’s birthday, except for a vague suspicion that it’s in the winter sometime, like Philip’s. He tries to picture his father as a baby, swaddled against the cold, except that’s not right, either, because Ma also said his father was from one of those tropical islands in the Caribbean where it’s warm the whole year round and they don’t have winter and the water is bright, bright blue. The Sugar Islands.

They sound magical, so different from the fiery hills and staid wooden farmhouses and cold rains and frosts of New York in the fall. Philip finds it hard to think about; he knows his mind is filling all the backgrounds wrong, with corn instead of sugarcane, with pine instead of palm.

The quill drops out of his hand, and he realizes he’s been staring out the window for the Lord only knows how long. Sighing and rubbing his eyes, he leaves the spot for the birthday blank and returns to the page.

He was born on a very small island in the Caribbean, and his family was very poor, even though his father was a Scotsman of noble blood. Trade business often took Alexander’s father to other islands, and he was not often present with the family, and departed to pursue a long-distance business venture when Alexander was young, leaving them in financial straits.

That sounds rather meager and mealy-mouthed to Philip, now that he’s written it down, but that’s what his mother told him, and it’s therefore very likely what his father told her. It strikes him as odd, though, that his grandfather could be on the one hand a merchant successful enough to live in such a wealthy place as the Sugar Islands, and on the other hand unable to provide for his family.

Although he wants to go back and fix the first few sentences, the page lying before him is still shamefully uncovered, and the sun is beginning its too-fast descent to the horizon. He must keep trying; he’d wanted to get a page at least before the light failed.

Alexander also had an older brother, whose name was James.

Philip pauses a moment to linger longingly on the whole concept of siblings. All of his classmates have them, some many, and he envies their built-in playmates and their parents’ divided attention. Then again, most of his classmates still have both their parents, so maybe it evens out. He tries to imagine what it would be like to have a little brother; he thinks he would like it a lot. Maybe not so much an older brother. He wonders if James was kind to Alexander or if he picked on him, let him join in all the games or took all the toys and books and hogged the piano. Were they friends at school? Was James jealous of Alexander’s intelligence, which must have been obvious from a young age? Or maybe James was a genius himself. It’s hard to get an idea, with only a name to go on.

James… James might still be alive. At least, there is no reason to think he’s dead. Philip gets a burst of excitement just thinking about it. Maybe he could write to James!

He hurries down to the kitchen, where his mother is cooking. “Ma! Ma! I’ve got an idea!”

She listens to him patiently, adding a little salt to the soup, tasting, adding more salt. “Oh, but there are eyes on the mail, Pip, and I would wager real money that there are more eyes than usual on our mail. If we begin making obvious inquiries about your father…”

“But what about Aunt Angelica?” Philip butts in. “You wrote her about the monster, doesn’t that count as obvious?”

They’d received a reply only yesterday, which is why it’s at the top of Philip’s mind. It had been nearly useless, too; Angelica had thought that the mysterious writing was a good sign, being counter to the British narrative, but uncovered no accounts of such things occurring unless a true counter-narrative was being published and widely spread, and they had no reason to suspect any such thing, since Philip hadn’t even started his yet, and nobody else alive had cause. So the writing remains a mystery, and, having faded in the interim, seems likely to remain one forever. It makes Philip’s brain itch unpleasantly. 

“I have a special way of writing Angelica,” his ma says, “which is slightly illegal and which we must use very carefully, to avoid arousing any suspicion. And writing to your father’s brother would definitely be suspicious.”

“I see,” Philip says, wilting.

“What specifically did you want to ask him, anyway? I might know the answer,” Ma says. “And fetch some bowls for us, would you?”

Philip fetches the bowls and a pair of spoons as well, and his mother ladles steaming soup into them. The smell makes his mouth water. After the whole winter ahead of him promising butternut squash soup at least three times a week, you’d think he’d like it less, but it’s still his favorite. He doesn’t even answer his ma’s question until he’s scurried to the kitchen table with both their bowls and burned his mouth on his first spoonful.

“Ow! Hot hot hot!” he cries, swigging water. Ma raises her eyebrows; he does this, if not every time they have soup, perhaps every other. “Um… sorry. I was just…” He squirms in his chair, not wanting to insinuate anything mean. “I was wondering a little bit about my grandfather.”

“Oh, of course, Pip. What about him?”

Philip clears his throat. “Um… on Dad’s side.”

His mother’s always been happy to answer his questions about his father, but he thinks he catches a note of unease in her face this time. “Yes?”

“Oh, um. Nothing much. But it seems like if he was a merchant, only it sounds like they never had any money…”

“Your father had a difficult upbringing,” Ma pronounces, carefully smoothing the napkin in her lap. “Sometimes, I wonder if… to spare me and him both the… the pain of having to live that experience again, he painted it to me in… softer shades, perhaps, than might have been the most accurate.”

“So he lied to you?” Philip bursts out, thinking of the beautiful day he wasted. “Ma, if I’m supposed to understand him, and I have to use what you tell me, and you have to use what he told you, only he didn’t tell you the truth, then how in God’s name am I supposed to—”

“Language, Philip,” his mother says, her voice harsh. Philip halts, mouth still open. “You will not take the Lord’s name in vain in this house. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

Philip nods over his soup, his anger withering in the face of his mother’s. He’s ashamed of his slip of temper, but he also burns with indignation that he has been so roundly taken to task for breaking the Third Commandment when clearly his mother has no objection to his father breaking the Ninth.

After a few moments of him listlessly running his spoon through his soup, though, his mother speaks again, her voice soft. “I’m sorry I snapped, dearest. I know you’re frustrated.”

Philip takes a careful spoonful of soup and watches the steam rise off it instead of meeting her face. But he also makes a noncommittal noise, to show that he’s listening.

“Your father was a complicated and sometimes difficult man. Sometimes”—here, she sighs—“sometimes, I had no idea what he was thinking, even after I was married to him. But I loved him very, very much because he was a good and a great man, in spite of the few failings that he had, as all we sinners have before God’s grace redeems us.”

Philip swallows. “I know you loved him, ma, but how does that help me—“

“And,” Ma continues, raising a finger, “if he tried to conceal some things about his upbringing, it was only because he found them upsetting and knew I would, too. So maybe you’ve learned something about him after all. Your father was a kind and considerate man who wanted to put his past behind him.”

And had something to hide, Philip thinks, but he doesn’t say anything more.

 Though that’s the first argument the have over the book, Philip worries that it won’t be the last. His mother has such high—and such specific—expectations for him, it’s impossible to think that he’ll meet them on the first try. So, when Philip finally presents his draft of the first chapter to his mother, three weeks after he’d initially told her he’d have it, he’s nervous. It’s odd—he’s never been afraid to show her his poems before, but then again, she hadn’t asked him for those. If they’d been terrible, well, at least the harm done was slight, and she hadn’t been expecting anything good, so any goodness in them was only a bonus. But his father’s biography has real stakes. He yearns to do a good job. And so he shifts from foot to foot with his hands in his pockets as his mother reads through the stack of painstakingly re-copied pages.

“Philip, this is wonderful,” she says, looking up from the last page with her eyes shining. She stands and wraps him in a hug. “Sometimes, I forget how good a writer you are. You’re going to be as good as he was one day.”

Philip beams at this unexpected praise. “Thanks, ma,” he says, sheepish.

“And now I have a treat for you!”

“Really?” Philip asks, thinking of a new book. Usually Angelica sends them along with her letters, but maybe Ma kept one back to save as a reward for his finishing the first chapter.

“This Christmas…”

“...yeah?”

“... after we visit Peggy…”

“...yeah?”

“... we’re going to New York City!”

“Ye—what?”

“What you said about your Uncle James got me thinking. There are parts of your father’s life that I don’t know about in… in quite as much detail as I would like. Of course, his childhood is one of them, but I think we’re going to have to work around that for now. But another is his time in the Army. What was he like among the enlisted men? How did he conduct himself as an officer? With the General? He told me most things, of course, but someone who was there might have details that Alexander wouldn’t have thought to include in his letters to me, for their being too mundane.”

“But Ma,” Philip objects, “they were all erased, I thought, everyone in the camp—you said that everything under the sky when the unwriting hit was doomed—”

“Ah.” His Ma holds up one finger to interrupt. “But there was one who made it out. I was there, and I saw him. And,”—here she smiles, silken-sweet and dangerous— “he owes me a favor.”

Chapter Text

Christmas passes in a blur of happy cousins—Aunt Peggy’s added another since they last visited, so now there’s a screaming baby to contend with as well as the other two—and tense anticipation. Philip doesn’t know what New York City has in store for him, and his mother is being annoyingly close-lipped. He overhears Aunt Peggy ask his mother if she’s written ahead, and although his mother doesn’t give a verbal answer, he can infer one from the shhh of Aunt Peggy’s skirts as she strides away, from the furrow that appears between her brows and doesn’t subside the entire time they’re there.

At first Philip thinks Aunt Peggy is annoyed with them. It’s not until she squeezes his hands very tightly saying goodbye the next morning, and tugs the woolen cap down tighter over his curls, and drops a quick kiss on his head, that he realizes she’s afraid for them. His suspicion is confirmed when Peggy flings both her arms around his mother’s shoulders, hugging her so close her heels leave the ground.

“Peggy,” his ma laughs, laying a restraining hand on her sister’s arm, and she retreats a step.

“Be careful, Eliza. Promise me that.”

“Since when am I not careful?” is his mother’s retort.

Aunt Peggy still looks worried.

His ma smiles ruefully. “Fine. I promise.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Now that, I can’t promise. You wouldn’t have married Alexander.” But she returns Peggy’s embrace, just as powerfully, and as they depart Philip thinks some of his aunt’s worry has been eased.

Usually the Hudson is frozen this deep into winter, but it’s a blessedly mild year, and they’re able to purchase tickets on the barge straight south from Albany. Philip’s delighted to be on a boat, the winter-brown countryside speeding past, the broad river bearing them steadily south as the short daylight hours pass. His excitement rises, and he peppers his mother with questions about the city.

“Pip,” she laughs gently, when he asks her how people dress there, “I haven’t been there in years. I can’t say that I know very well anymore. But it’s a very fashionable and rich place, these days. I expect most of the upper classes will buy their clothes from London, or at the very least their cloth, and then have them tailored here.”

Philip looks down at his plain homespun uncertainly.

“Don’t worry, dear, you’re very presentable,” his ma says.

And then he’s all out of time to be worrying about clothes, because—the city! The buildings! Of course, he’s seen grand homes in Albany, Aunt Peggy’s chief among them. But here the houses are crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, with no space between them, three, four, five stories high! It lends the muddy streets a narrow, claustrophobic look. From the boat he sees all manner of people walking: women carting huge loads of potatoes to market, men working to repair someone’s roof (so high!), fashionable couples ambling about in carriages, shopkeepers sweeping their stoops.  At the sight of redcoats patrolling the streets he yelps in surprise and ducks behind the ship’s railing to hide himself.  

His mother laughs and places a protective hand on his head. “They don’t know who we are, Pip,” she says, and he rises, feeling silly. “As long as we don’t make trouble, they won’t ever know. And if one of them asks to speak with you or to see your travel papers, you must be very polite and give him no excuse to be cruel.”

“All right, Ma,” Philip says. It’s strange to see the villains of all his childhood stories strolling about, their uniforms fiery red in the clear winter light. He wonders if this is how other people feel when they catch a glimpse of the monster.

When they disembark, in late afternoon, there are more redcoats checking papers, but they stamp his and his mother’s without a second look. One of them dares to wink at his ma, and before Philip can so much as open his mouth she sneaks a stilling hand to his shoulder. Passing through the docks there are even more varieties of people. There’s something like a stage with a crowd of poorly-clothed Africans upon it, and a crowd of white men in sharp business attire milling about in front.

“What’s that?” Philip asks, pointing. His mother slaps his hand down.

“I’m sorry, Pip,” she whispers to him, as she hustles them away from the dockyards. “It’s a slave market, and I only wish you wouldn’t point and ask questions so loudly. We mustn’t mark ourselves as outsiders—it’s a good way to become easy prey, near the docks.”

“Oh,” Philip squeaks, and follows her rapid pace east. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, dear, I should have warned you first. If we’d gone further south,” she adds casually, “we’d have seen the Battery.”

“Where Dad stole the cannons?” Philip asks, a little breathless with both the pace and with excitement. “Can we go there?”

His ma frowns. “Now there’s a thought. We’re already in the city…while we’re here, we might as well…”

“For the book!” Philip pipes up. “For the book, Ma, for the book, we have to!”

His ma’s frown folds up into a smile. “You’ve persuaded me,” she says, and Philip barely suppresses the urge to skip in excitement. “It’s too late today. We’ll see the sights tomorrow.”

Even at his ma’s breakneck pace there are plenty of sights. To Philip, raised amidst great swathes of green or red-orange or white depending on the season, everything seems quite hard and cobbled-over. He’s never seen so many right angles in his life. And there is a great variety of unpleasant smells. Eventually they turn right, or south, onto Broadway. It’s a huge street, busy with carriages and carts and people ahorse and on foot. Philip follows carefully in his mother’s wake, trying not to get stepped on as she weaves in and out of passers-by as skillfully as one of the Oneida might steer a canoe through rapids. There’s so many people! As many as might fill the whole church back home, just in this little piece of street! The mud underfoot is churned up like there’s been some sort of parade, but Philip supposes that’s just everyday life here. His traveling boots are already caked with muck, and he has to dodge horse dung on top of that. By the time they reach their inn he’s panting for breath and very warm in his winter coat and scarf and hat and gloves. They eat supper in their room, his ma not in the mood to brave all the strange men in the tavern, and Philip too tired to argue very much. He expects to fall asleep the instant he curls up under his ma’s arm, but something keeps him awake.

“Those people at the market, they didn’t have any warm clothes,” he says.

“You’re right, Pip,” his ma answers.

“Do they not get cold?”

“No,” his ma sighs, “No, they get cold just like you or me.”

Pip’s eyes are sliding closed almost against his will. “Someone should give them clothes.” He yawns. “ ‘Snot…‘snot right.”

His ma has some answer, but he doesn’t manage to stay awake for it.

The next morning, a Sunday, his ma informs him that it’s time for church.

Philip groans. He hadn’t expected any less from his mother, but it’s early and the bed is warm and outside is cold. But his excitement to see the city outweighs these mundane complaints—anyway, it’s much colder back home—and he even manages to snatch a hot roll for breakfast on their way out the door. His ma’s chosen to wear a full black veil along with her black dress, which strikes Philip as very formal, but she, of course, knows city etiquette far better than he does.

They make their way west along Pearl Street to State Street, then follow it north until it turns into Broadway. Long before they reach their destination, Philip sees the cathedral’s spires towering over even New York’s outlandishly tall homes and businesses, scaffolding still in place. As they approach, the bells begin to toll, and Philip gets a strange, shivery feeling. There’s power in those bells, he’s certain of it, but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be aimed at him. He has a feeling that he wouldn’t like it if it was.

“You don’t remember when the Bishop visited, do you?” his mother asks, out of the blue.

“No,” Philip replies, shocked. “The Bishop visited?”

“What happened to your father was his fault,” his ma says, her voice hard. “I want you to see him. It’s important that you understand the enemy. But we must sit in the back and not draw any attention to ourselves.”

And so Philip finds himself tucked into one of the very back pews of Trinity Cathedral: the most awe-inspiring building he’s ever set eyes upon. He almost trips over his own feet walking in, craning his neck to look up and up and up. Only his ma’s hand at his elbow steadies him, but he can tell that even she is taken aback by the sheer vertical scale of the place. The glow of sunlight through the stained-glass windows really does make it seem holy, like a clearing in the woods with the tall pines standing round.   

Still, Philip remembers his mother’s admonition yesterday not to seem too much like a stranger. That was for the docks, of course, but if his father’s murderer truly presides here then perhaps this is a place of even greater danger. So he forces himself to lower his upturned face, close his gaping jaw, and proceed to the first open pew near the back of the cathedral. A moment later, the sermon starts.

There’s the usual hymns, reverberating against the stone in a way that sets Philip’s hairs pleasantly on end. There’s the usual stand-up, sit-down, stand-up, sit-down. The usual liturgy. Seabury has so little stage presence Philip actually misses the first part of the sermon, distracted by trying to figure out which Bible stories the stained glass windows around him are meant to represent. His attention is only caught when he feels his ma’s whole body stiffen at his side.

Seabury is sermonizing on forgiveness. He has a strange way of drawing out certain words for emphasis that makes him eminently interruptable, and the way he speaks is so circular it quickly becomes predictable. Philip finds himself formulating retorts at every turn; they’re practically scorching his tongue.

“—forget not the words of the Word our God, Jesus Christ, who said of the very people who tormented him, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Forgiveness for our enemies is one of the chief, the chief virtues of a good Christian, and indeed we must ask the Lord for forgiveness for our own sins. But let us not forget also the importance of self-forgiveness. If you have done wrong, if you have made proper confession, then you must forgive yourself as surely as the Lord would forgive you, and as surely as you would forgive an enemy. We must practice mercy with ourselves. We must not linger on our own mistakes, which may prevent us from doing good in the future, and this would be the true tragedy.”

Normally Philip would never do such a thing, being too much terrified of his mother’s baleful glance should he be caught misbehaving in church. But in the ringing pause that follows the Bishop’s words he catches her eye. Her mouth manages to find a little humor, twisting wryly, and so quickly Philip barely catches it, she gives a fake-gag of disgust. Forget the architecture, forget the Bishop—this is the wildest thing Philip has seen all day.

After the sermon is adjourned the Bishop begins to make his way slowly through the congregation, shaking hands and smiling and exchanging a few words with each little knot of people, and there’s a frail old couple moving very slow and blocking the way they came in. The Bishop is still a long way off, but Philip is suddenly aware that even though his mother’s face is fully veiled, his isn’t, and if the Bishop saw him when he was a child, there’s a small chance that he might be recognized as the man makes his way nearer. Ma seems to have the same fear; she takes Philip’s hand in a firm grip and drags him out a different exit, one that leads outside into the cathedral’s graveyard. The cathedral is so new there aren’t even graves yet, just an expanse of lawn that would be pleasant if only it were a little greener.  

“There,” she says, a little breathless. “What did you think?”

“He knows he did wrong,” Philip says, a little astonished. “He knows he’s done something terrible, and he’s trying to act as though it were fine!”

“Talking about forgiving himself, in front of God and everybody,” Ma says, her voice more vicious than Philip has ever heard it. “Perhaps he may one day find forgiveness in the world after this—but here, I shall never grant it to him.”

Philip’s heart shrinks away from that idea. He hasn’t known pain like his mother’s. Helplessly he reaches for her, wanting to support her without agreeing. Seeming to realize his discomfiture, she offers a wan smile and clasps his arm.

“There now, dear,” she says, “Let’s find ourselves a meal, shall we?”

Philip nods. They've snuck out the north side of the cathedral, opposite the one they came in, and as they round the corner his eyes fall upon a dull bronze statue, facing the street out from the graveyard. They pass it without looking too closely, and it’s only when his ma glances back over her shoulder in the middle of the busy street that she gasps and goes still.

“That’s him,” she whispers.

Philip stops next to her, cranes his neck to get a better look at the statue. It’s a young man on a marble pedestal, well-dressed and strolling merrily forward. His chin is tipped up, and from a distance the overall effect is that he is about to burst into song. Someone has placed a wreath of red roses on his head, and there are more flowers and dried petals strewn at his feet.

“What is it, Ma? Who’s that?”

His mother only keeps staring. She’s stopped dead in the middle of the thoroughfare; people are giving her ugly looks. Philip tugs her hand. “Ma! Are you feeling well?”

She visibly shakes herself, blinking rapidly and pressing a hand to her forehead. “Yes, Philip, I’m fine,” she says, though she sounds like she has a bad head cold. “That’s John Laurens up there.”

“That’s John Laurens?” Philip says, with disgust. He leaves his mother’s side, ducking and dipping through the crowd until he stands with his nose about even with the statue’s toes. Craning his neck, he scrutinizes the figure’s face. John Laurens has a soppish, eager expression that makes even Philip, a rather eager soul himself, recoil. There is something so good, so pure and precious about him—Philip could see him writing καλὸς κἀγαθός and meaning it about nearly anything.

The statue is clearly made with such loving care that it is doubly jarring to know that the British, the ones who raised and praised the statue and gave it its soppish, eager look, are the ones who killed Laurens in the first place. Philip doesn’t remember precisely which battle he is said to have fallen in, although he doesn’t think they’ve learned it in school—sometime towards the end of the war, he thinks, when the Patriot defeats came so thick they all ran together. He does remember that the schoolmistress always goes out of her way to say that Laurens was a gallant and well-bred gentleman to the last, a credit to his people, his sole error in life being the misjudgment of the foul, wicked, deceitful Tyrant Washington.

At this point in the lesson, Philip usually began making up new songs in his head as loudly as he could. But it seems that he has been served well by ignoring ninety percent of history class. The British would have him believe that this fellow was a soldier, when he doesn’t look like he would even know which end of a sword to stick people with. The thought of him riding into battle is faintly ludicrous. He looks like he would stop to collect butterflies along the way.

The placard reads, Abolitionist — Soldier — Patriot for the Wrong Cause. Philip knows the word abolitionist from the pamphlets Aunt Angelica sends. It’s used to describe folk like Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce who want slavery to be illegal in Britain and all her colonies. Usually the pamphlets have a faintly mocking or reproachful tone, and the abolitionists are held to be living in a fantasy land. After all, half the House of Lords has been granted plantations in Virginia or the Carolinas after the war-that-wasn’t scraped out many of the richest planters. There’s just too much money in it.

His mother finally emerges from the crowd to stand beside him, still looking unusually grim.

“I bet I could take him,” he jokes, elbowing her playfully.

She laughs, which is good. But she laughs very, very hard, which is embarrassing. When at last she wipes the tears from her eyes, she points at the long list of battles on the placard below the statue, which Philip failed to read.

“Wow,” Philip murmurs. The last battle on the list is the one where the Patriot army broke and ran for the last time, beginning the desperate retreat that marked the start of the war-that-wasn’t. And surely Laurens would have survived that war—the British would never have made a monster of one they held in such high esteem. “He almost made it.”

They walk all the way down to the battery and look at it from afar, and then explore a little around the docks. The area is full of big burly men who give his mother the kinds of looks that make Philip nervous in a way he doesn’t quite understand. His mother ignores them, but she takes his hand and holds it tightly, to avoid becoming separated in the press of people.

“This is where your father would have arrived, when he first came to New York City,” Ma says.

Philip startles, looks at the docks with new eyes. They’re so cluttered and confusing. “Do you think he was frightened?”

“No,” Eliza replies, a strange twist to her mouth. “At that point I think Alexander was…hopeful. He had already lost so much—there was little left for him to be frightened for.”

Philip hums, thoughtful. “But I’ll bet he was impressed.”

“I’ll bet he was,” Eliza says. They walk around a little more, his ma commenting wistfully on how everything has changed— this place used to be a tailor’s, your father told me he rented a room above the shop when he first moved here; this is the square where your father shouted down Seabury; and this is where the main Patriot press was, Angelica always used to hang about and snatch up first printings, read Common Sense before anybody else and oh! how she crowed —and then finally carry on back to their lodgings, where they dine on a quite respectable if exorbitantly priced supper. It’s only after they’ve returned to their room that his mother asks him what he meant when he said Laurens had almost made it.

“Oh,” she says, after he explains himself. “Oh, no, darling. I haven’t explained this well at all, have I?” She sighs. “Laurens was with your father to the very end. And—and even after.”

“But then…but then how…why—”

“The statue was there,” Eliza says. “When I went looking for your father, and found the monster instead. In the gloom it shone out like…like a beacon. The only thing you could see, practically.”

Philip swallows. He has never heard his mother speak so plainly of the dark before. He hadn’t known there were other monsters besides his father, but of course once he thinks on it that’s the only way it could make sense. A body for every body of lies.

“But that’s what he really looked like?” he asks, trying to wrap his mind around it. “They didn’t remake him? He got to keep his face?”

"His face…I suppose it’s a good likeness. But his hair didn't look like that," his ma says. “It was as curly as yours. They got it wrong."

"Oh." Philip tries to remember the statue and can't quite bring the hair to mind. He hadn't really paid that much attention. "That's nice, ma."

"He looked like you," Ma says again, forcefully. "Quick temper. Impatient. He and your dad were always scheming together. They could talk each other's ears off."

Philip remembers the word "abolitionist" on the pedestal. "And he was an abolitionist?”

“Oh, absolutely. We were seated next to one another at supper one night. It was all we talked about. I think he was surprised to have someone listen.”

“Was Dad an abolitionist?"

His mother blinks. "I...well, yes, Philip, he was. At least...he was very supportive of Laurens, and Laurens had a plan for a battalion that slaves could serve in to earn their freedom."

"Did they?" What a perfect story for his book!

"It...it never really came together." His ma looks sad. "Maybe...if the war had come out differently..."

Philip nods, thinking of the slaves for sale at the docks yesterday, the lurch his stomach had made at the sight of them. Of course his father would have been against such things. But something else is bothering him.

“The statue said…it seemed like they were trying to make him some kind of hero.”

“A lot of people on both sides would say that he was.”

“But…but I thought the idea was to destroy the Patriots, not to—to honor them!” Or maybe Laurens really was a hero, a traitorous thought supplies. Maybe he was the real thing, and his goodness was too strong for their lies, and your father’s wasn’t, and that’s why your father was made into a half-minded beast while Laurens is wearing a crown of roses outside Trinity Cathedral.

“Laurens was an...honorable man, from what I knew of him,” his mother says, slow and hesitating. “He and your father got along very well.”

She’d said it before that they were close, but still, the notion of this sunshine patriot ever encountering the beast in their barn makes him laugh aloud. The man of the statue would throw up his hands and run the other way at the sight of the thing standing in for Philip’s father.

“Oh, you laugh,” Ma scolds, shoving his shoulder in a gentle rebuke, “but I remember Alexander going on and on about Laurens. None braver in battle, he’d say. He admired him very much.”

“So he was a hero, then.” Philip furrow his brows, trying to reconcile “none braver” with that pudding-face, puzzled. “But the British say he was a hero. Aren’t they liars?”

“They’re tricky, sweetie,” his mother says, kissing him goodnight. “Come on, let’s go to bed. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

In truth, they’ve had a big day today, and as much as Philip wants to ponder more on the statue, and on the infinitely tricky ways of their enemies, he’s exhausted. All through the night, bronze glimmers in his dreams, a prison as sure as ink-black paper, dull and irredeemable.

Chapter Text

They rise early the next morning, finding a little bakery with wonderful sweet buns for breakfast before setting out to the north. The houses, all stuck shoulder-to-shoulder, grow shabbier as they go. Ma holds Philip’s hand tightly and walks at a brisk pace.

“This is King’s College,” she says, stopping in front of a slightly more reputable-looking building. “And there is the library, which was burnt and not rebuilt.” She keeps her tone carefully neutral, and Philip takes his cue from her. Something in her manner reminds him of how she speaks when she speaks of the monster. There is something forbidden here, something dangerous. He says nothing, and swallows his horror as they walk past the ruined building, with its gaping mouths for windows and the startled black tongues of soot licking up the bricks. He thinks of the books—he thinks of history, lost and unrestored. Wonders why they left the library—why they did not craft an abomination to replace it, like they crafted the creature to replace his father. Decides that perhaps the library is a warning to those still left at King’s College, who might still be yearning to throw off its namesake…

As they progress uptown, the houses grow both sparser and grander, the spaces between them groomed and green. Philip eyes their glass windows and neatly-squared shutters with suspicion. There is something too tidy about them, decorous in a spare and unimaginative way; they are not at all like the countryside. He much prefers their snug little cabin, even though Ma’s to-do list for its upkeep is always half a foot long. Or, if he settled in the city one day, that would at least be exciting, right at the center of that intoxicating hustle and bustle. This is fairly obviously a place where rich people go to escape the poor people. He doesn’t much like it.

On foot, he and his mother draw attention from all the rich men on horseback, but at least their clothes are well-made. They could be mistaken for poor but respectable relations, he supposes. He still has no idea whom they’re visiting, and his mother’s vague assertion that it’s someone from the war has set him afire with curiosity. It was said those were all lost, but… could it be some sergeant, whom his father served with? Some veteran of his first company, the stalwart Hearts of Oak? An obscure and poorly-remembered aide-de-camp, who left before the war-that-wasn’t wiped the slate? But his mind crowds with possibility, yearns for something more. Could it be some major figure of the war escaped and is now living here in secret?

At last his mother, checking a piece of paper against the numbers on the houses, determines that they have found the correct one. It is symmetrical and nearly square, with regular windows, a porch in the exact center, and a balcony exactly overtopping the porch. The paint is a spotless off-white, the garden neat. An eminently boring house.  

The man who opens the door is, perhaps, something like the house. He has a pleasantly regular face and smooth, dark skin, and his clothing is well-kept but far from ostentatious. His cool expression doesn’t so much as flicker as he takes in the sight of Eliza and Philip. “Hello, madam,” he says. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Ma’s face grows a shade paler at that. “I must ask you for help,” she murmurs, standing very straight. “My name is Elizabeth—Schuyler.”

Philip cannot disguise his scandalized gasp. The man’s eyes dart down to him and then back to his mother. “Schuyler, is it now?” Pitching his voice low, he leans in close. “I will thank you not to spread rumor of that name about my house, madam.”

“Then you will be grateful that I have not bandied about my other name,” Ma says. She doesn’t raise her voice, but Philip hears the danger ringing in her voice clear as a struck bell. He can only pray the other man’s ears are so sensitive, for his sake. Louder, she says, “I have heard you are a man of honor, Mr. Burr. I am so sorry to bother you at home, but you see, I—”

Mr. Burr. Philip has never heard the name before. He tries to suppress his look of disappointment.

Mr. Burr closes the door in his mother’s face. Not even a slam—just a quick, businesslike thump and the snick of the lock in the door.

“Wait!” his mother cries. She raises her hand in a fist, then suddenly seems to think better of it. She lowers her hand, uncertain.

“Let’s kick it in!” Philip stands on tiptoe to whisper in her ear, and she laughs.

“What sort of wild scheme is that?” she says, placing a calming hand on his head. “If he won’t talk to us…” She sighs, deep and discontented, and the smile slips from her face. But she merely lowers her hand to Philip’s shoulder and turns him to face the street, and says, quite clearly, “Well, I had hoped not to leave a paper trail, but I may have to write him a letter.”

Philip hears voices in the house—muted, impossible to make out, but unmistakable. Mr. Burr’s agreeable tenor plays against someone quieter but more insistent. His ma draws a finger to her lips, and they wait, posed with their backs to the house for ten seconds—twenty—thirty.

Inside, Mr. Burr’s voice falls silent. A moment later, the click of the lock. The slide of well-oiled hinges. “Madam,” the man says, “might I invite you in for tea?”

Ma sends Philip a secret smile, and they turn back around in unison. As they mount the steps of the porch, Mr. Burr pokes his head out the door and glances as far as he can up and down the street. He whispers, “You may come in, quickly, and tell me what it is, and then you must promise to be on your way ever as quick as you can.”

They shuffle inside, ducking under the man’s arm as he holds the door open. Ma wipes her boots on the rug as she comes in, and Philip copies her, feeling slightly self-conscious. Mr. Burr ushers them quickly into the sitting-room. A woman, tall but with an unhealthy gauntness about her face, sits in an armchair by the window. There is something demanding and regal about her presence; she reminds Philip a little of his Aunt Angelica’s portraits. Her short, curly hair is shot through with gray.

Ma drops into a neat curtsey, and Philip hurriedly fumbles out a bow.

“Oh, come, let us not stand on ceremony,” the woman says, but she waits until Eliza is all the way done with her curtsey before she begins speaking, which makes Philip suspect that she’s pleased by the gesture. “You must be Mrs. Hamilton,” the woman says with a sharp grin. Philip flushes that his mother had thought to cast off his father’s name, and that this stranger should try to pin it back on again. It’s all very confusing.

“I am,” his mother says, “and this is my son, Philip. But you must call me Eliza.”

The woman eyes Philip for a moment, as Philip fights the urge to fidget. Sometimes, with his ma, he gets the feeling that she can read his mind, and this woman has the same kind of gaze, like she can see through his weak attempt at neutrality straight to the unease and turmoil beneath. But the woman only says, “I’m Theodosia Burr. I take it you are acquainted with my husband, Aaron.”

Philip had already forgotten Mr. Burr was in the room. He turns too quickly, startled, and Theodosia chuckles under her breath.

“You may go, young man” Mr. Burr says, with a gentle inclination of his head towards the far door.

Ma’s brow furrows. “I assure you, Philip is very discreet. He knows enough of my secrets already that—”

“Dispose of your secrets as you will; he cannot have mine,” Mr. Burr declares.

Ma chucks Philip’s chin gently, and he suppresses the pout that had been forming on his face. His displeasure vanishes when he marches through the far door and finds himself in a grand library, with fancy carved chairs around a long table and shelves upon shelves of books lining the walls. He turns around to ask if he might at least have a look at the books, but Burr shuts the door in his face, and Philip jumps back, startled.

Damn.

Well, since he didn’t get the chance to ask, Mr. Burr didn’t get the chance to say no. His attention is drawn to the only sign of a human personality in the room, a pair of slim, leatherbound books lying open on the table, a neat stack of notes next to them. Philip approaches. It doesn’t feel right to sit down at the table, but he peers over the back of a chair. One book is Greek and the other Latin, how fun! The notes seem to be mostly pairs of words, one in each language. Most of the ones Philip recognizes are quite tricky and obscure, and his fingers start to itch a little at the thought of learning all of them.

It’s a vocabulary list, then. Mr. Burr giving himself a little Classical languages refresher with the help of… oh, yes. The Oresteia: he should have known it sooner, but the lines are in Greek, not the English of his battered old translation, and he feels a little wrong-footed but very intrigued.  

“Hello?” a voice says from behind him. Philip whirls around.

Standing in the doorway is a girl. She has the same tight-curled hair as her mother and her father’s quiet eyes. If he had to lay a guess, he’d say that she’s his age—she’s perhaps an inch taller than him and, as the other kids at church love to tell him, he’s a bit small.

“What are you doing with my books?”

Philip raises his hands and takes several paces back. “Nothing, I’ve—nothing.” A beat. “Sorry— your books?”

“Yes, my books, it’s my house,” the girl says, rolling her eyes.

“Well—well then, Χαρίζεσθε!”

The girl looks surprised, then snorts. “I’m sorry, is there someone else in the room?”

Philip glances around, confused. “Um… I don’t think so.”

Her sharp look softens a little. “You used the plural form. And your pronunciation’s funny. I was making a joke. You should have said Χαρίζου.”

“Oh,” Philip says, blushing. “Sorry. I—I don’t get much speaking practice.”

“What?” the girl cries, looking scandalized, like this is the greatest injustice she’s ever heard—and maybe, in this house, it is. “Learning to speak a language without a partner’s like—like learning half a duet and thinking you know the song. What fool’s teaching you?”

“I suppose I am,” Philip says, growing redder.

“Well, why do you not have someone to teach you and talk with you?”

That’s a stupid question. “Because I’m surrounded by stupid farmers who wouldn’t know Homer from Plato from a hole in the ground!” Philip snaps. “And all the so-called smart people, who might teach me Greek, hate my ma!”

The girl’s countenance, heretofore lofty and undisturbed, begins to look mildly ruffled. “You know, normally I’m pretty good at understanding things, but you’re acting quite odd, so I’m going to back up. Who are you, and what are you doing in my living room?”

Philip crosses his arms. “I don’t know you.”

“Then I’ll start, I suppose, as I’m the host. My name’s Theodosia Burr, and you may not call me Theo, and I’m here because I live here.”

“Fine,” Philip says, still wary. “My name’s Philip Hamilton, and you may not call me Pip, and I’m here because…my mother’s here to talk to your dad about my dad, or something to do with the war.”

“Hamilton?” she asks, eyebrows going up. “Yes, I’ve heard something of him. The pamphleteer who fought Bishop Seabury, yes? The fire-breather?”

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Philip scowls, but the girl only laughs.

“My mother says that. I always say, well, what else am I supposed to believe?”

“Hm. And what does your father say?”

“That a little knowledge is as dangerous as a pistol, and should be kept hidden for the same reasons,” Theodosia parrots, in a passable impression of her father.

“Then why all this?” Philip nods at the books. “Seems like he’s making you very dangerous indeed.” For a wild moment, he wonders if there is a whole network of them—of children, being raised in secret to take on the legacy of some lost soldier of the Revolution. Wouldn’t it be incredible, to have someone who understood...

Theodosia immediately crushes his dreams by wrinkling her nose. “What, all this old Latin and Greek stuff, dangerous?”

That might be even more ignorant than what she said before. “Has nobody told you?” Philip splutters, remembering the hours of conversation and instruction with his ma, not to mention the countless letters and readings from Aunt Angelica . “The war—my father—for God’s sake, if your father was in it, your own life, and democracy, and all this old Greek stuff was what started them thinking maybe they could, and—”

“I’m not stupid,” the girl says, glaring. “I bet I’m smarter than you. I memorized the whole Odyssey, I can recite it at parties.”

“Oh, good for you, popular at parties! ” Philip cries, throwing up his hands. “God, what a waste! To have so much and to know so little, it’s just, it’s—” He sweeps out his arms, indicating the books all around them. “What I wouldn’t give to have this, this, this gamut and glut and glory—” He shuts his mouth before he slips completely into monsterese.

Fierce spots of color appear on Theodosia’s cheeks, and she steps forward—but before she can make a word of retort, she’s interrupted by raised voices from the other room. They glance at one another, the sentiment of truce passed between them at once without a need for speech, and crowd the door. Philip crouches low and places his ear to the wood, hoping he isn’t being too shameless.

“Oh, well, if you’re going to be like that you should at least do it right,” Theodosia says. She swishes off in her skirts and returns a moment later holding two stout glasses. When Philip looks quizzically at her she places one with its rim against the door and leans her ear against the other end. Philip follows her lead, and instantly hears Mr. Burr’s voice, somewhat calmer now though still very strained.

"Alexander," Burr is saying, clearly picking his words with great care, "was, as all of us are, different things to different people. Lafayette and Laurens, he fought alongside. Washington, he trusted. You, I have no reason to doubt, he loved. Me… well, I saw my own side of him, as we all did, but I never understood it.” An agonized pause. “I never understood anything about those times. You cannot ask me to describe them to you. If they ever had a meaning—well, it was lost with Alexander and all the rest."

“You survived for a reason,” Ma says fervently. “Of all the men close to Washington, only you—”

“I was never close,” Burr snarls, “to Washington. Hamilton made sure of that.”

Another silence, this one shocked. Philip imagines Burr is hanging his head from the way he says, “... forgive me. It would seem that he continues to make a fool of me.”

“He made fools of many of us,” Ma says, her voice surprisingly forgiving, and Philip doesn’t understand why. His hands had gone to fists; he wipes sweaty palms on his pants. He doesn’t like it when people snarl at his ma. “You never said what he was to you.”

Nobody speaks. The clock on the mantlepiece ticks very loudly. Philip finds Theodosia’s sheepish gaze on him and returns it. He’s not quite sure why her face is so red. She’s got a bit of a strangled expression, really, like she’s trying a little bit not to laugh, but she’s also  horrified.

“This is awkward,” he whispers, hoping to lighten the awkwardness, but it only intensifies. Theodosia looks thoroughly discomfited by the entire situation, and Philip doesn’t know how to help. The silence stretches on, and on, and on. Finally Ma speaks, so softly Philip can barely hear her. “Mr. Burr, you owe me a debt.”

“I owe you a horse,” comes the immediate response.

“Aaron,” Mrs. Burr says, sharp.

“I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand the danger of my position—”

“Me, of all people?” Ma replies, and Philip can well imagine how straight she stands, somehow contriving to be tall. “And whatever is that supposed to mean?”

There is another long, agonized pause on the other side of the door.

"Your silence is his death!"

"Then I suppose I am his murderer," Burr mutters. “A murderer and a fool.” Louder, more distinct, he says, "I have a daughter, Mrs. Hamilton."

"How proud you must be," Eliza says, and pitchers her own voice to scald, like an angel rebuking a sinner. "Alexander has a son."

Philip and Theodosia meet each other’s eyes in mutual startlement and solidarity at having been used as pawns in their parents’ argument.

“Burr,” Eliza says, her voice strained, as though civility is too much of an effort, “I won’t be able to come back here. Once more I ask and it’s done. I promise you, all I need is the information. Your name will stay free of it. I’ll write you clean out.”

“All stories bear the marks of their tellers,” Burr says, his voice sad. “The world is too small for me to hide from this, and fools who run their mouths off… well.” He clears his throat. “Goodbye, Mrs. Hamilton.”

Ma refuses to answer that.

“Mrs. Hamilton, the conversation is at an end.” This from Mrs. Burr.

“What conversation?” Eliza says, bitter and very distinct.

“Get out. Now.”

“I will not.”

Yet another long pause. Philip hears the creaking of floorboards just before Theodosia snatches the cup from his ear, shoves him away from the door, and dives to the floor next to him.

“...and that’s how you play Flip the Cup!” she improvises, tossing one of the cups in the air. Philip cries out in alarm—very suave, excellent work—but redeems himself slightly by catching the cup before it can shatter on the ground.

“Do you want to know about your father, boy?” Mr. Burr says. Philip turns, and he’s standing there in the doorway, his arms thrown out wide, breathing hard like a man on the very edge of sanity. “Did she tell you he was a bastard? An orphan? A son of a whore?”

“Enough!” Ma screams, charging through the door and hauling Philip to his feet by one hand. But Burr isn’t finished.

“You come here talking about legacy, oh. He saved my life as much as you did, he’s the one who got me out from under that sky when I thought I was dead. He told me to live. I heard those words from his own lips and I’ll remember them until my dying day. So forgive me if I don’t get myself and my whole family killed just yet for something you think he would have wanted. His legacy is this family’s happiness and you will not take that from me, you interfering bitch—”

“Aaron!” Mrs. Burr cries, and Eliza practically wrenches Philip’s arm out of its socket hauling him away. The cup in his hands drops to the floor and shatters.

“Don’t listen to him, baby, he’s just trying to get us to go away—”

“Right,” Philip squeaks, hurrying along beside her. “Right, I didn’t—” They pass through the entryway and out onto the porch. “Ma, let me go, I can—”

She drops Philip’s arm and he sighs in relief, rubbing his shoulder. He has to trot to keep up with her, and she isn’t even all that much taller than him anymore.

“Wait!” a voice calls behind them. His mother keeps striding forward, her black cloak billowing behind her like a stormcloud, but Philip hesitates, turns. It’s Theodosia, leaving bare footprints on the frosted front lawn, her skirts gathered awkwardly in her hands.

“Theo, get back inside!” her father calls from the doorway, his eyes darting up and down the road again.

“Where can I write you?” Theodosia asks, ignoring him.

Philip gawks at the question. Even his mother is brought up short, a few yards closer to the street than he is. “Um. The Key and Kite, it’s an inn in town, here…” He pulls out the stick of graphite and a piece of scratch paper he was working out a poem on (embarrassing, because it’s not very good, but there’s nothing for it) and scribbles the address. She smiles at him when she takes it, and his upside-down stomach flips upside-up again.

“ Theo,” comes her mother’s voice, and the girl ducks like she’s been swatted at.

“Bye,” she waves, and dashes back to the house. Philip returns to his mother’s side.

“I think she wants to send me books,” he blurts.

“It sounds like she wants to send you something,” his mother says sagely, and together they walk back downtown.

They’re by the burnt-out library again before his mother speaks. “You know that Burr… he was...”

“Lying?” Philip says. But he doesn’t quite believe his own words. He doesn’t know how he’s this tired already, only that he wants to rest and think. What Burr said—bastard, orphan, son of a whore—it resonates. Fills in gaps in a way that makes sense, like a sudden slip of interpretation that suddenly makes the whole poem come into focus. But he mustn’t think he has the truth of it, just because it makes sense. Perhaps this is just him being lonely. Perhaps he wishes that his father was a bastard, orphan, son of a whore, because people call Philip names like that, and he wishes he knew someone who could understand how that hurts. He needs to be careful to make himself a father, and not an imaginary friend.

His ma sighs, a sound so weary and broken that Philip looks up in alarm. But she forces a wan smile and says, “He was… the truth is a tricky thing. And those things…if they were true, and I certainly don’t believe all of them, none of them were your father’s fault.”

“So he was a—a…” His words dry out on bastard. He doesn’t want to say that word. He feels, obscurely, that it will hurt his father, even though by all logic his father is far beyond hurting now.

“The situation surrounding his parents’ marriage was...complicated. I don’t know where Burr might have heard about… about his mother, but by Alexander’s account she was a woman of sterling virtue whose husband had been forced by circumstances beyond his control to spend long times away from her, and who was... surrounded by deeply unscrupulous and unkind men.”

Like you, Philip thinks, remembering the raking gazes of the men at the docks. “You should have told me earlier,” he says.

“About a bunch of rumors that weren’t true? That would have given you the wrong idea about your father’s character? I know who I married, Philip. The way that Burr described him… it’s very misleading.”

“People call me a bastard,” Philip bursts out. People whose memories were confused by the war-that-wasn’t, or children being cruel.  Several passers-by give him startled looks, and his mother takes him by the arm and shepherds him into an alleyway before he can make a scene. In the quiet space Philip tries to collect himself, but tears gather in his eyes in spite of his efforts. “It matters to me, Ma, even if it isn’t true, it matters to me that people think that!”

“Oh, Pip,” his ma says. She hugs him fiercely, and Philip presses his forehead hard into her shoulder. “They’re wrong. They’re confused and they’re spiteful and they don’t understand things, and they’re not worth your attention or your worry. It’s not their fault, but you just have to ignore them.”

“I know,” Philip says. He will not cry, he's too old to cry. “I know, Ma, but it’s really hard.”

“I’m sorry, baby.” His mother’s voice cracks, and Philip redoubles his efforts to get his feelings back under control. The last thing he wants it to make his Ma sad. “I’m sorry people are so awful.”

“It’s fine, Ma,” he says, with a heroic sniff that at last stops up his nose. “Like you said, they’re wrong.”

“There’s my boy,” Ma says. She step back from the hug and squeezes his arm. They step back out onto the main street, rejoining the crowds. “Now, how much did you and young Theodosia manage to overhear?”

Philip knows better than to play innocent. “How’d you know?”

His ma raises an eyebrow. “Flip the Cup, Pip? Really? You think I’ve never listened at doors before? Peggy had it down to an art...”

“It was Theodosia’s idea,” Philip grumbles. He’d thought it was pretty smart, at the time. “We heard a lot.”

“Well, then,” Ma says, a mischievous smile coming to her face, “we should make like Ruth in the Bible, and glean all that we can.”

Chapter Text

After all that Philip's learned in New York City, he’s on fire to make some progress on the book as soon as he and his mother return home. He wants to write up the bits about the city while he still has the streets fresh in his mind, and fortunately, according to his vague outline, that part’s next. Chapter Two is going to cover his father’s journey to America, his time in school in New Jersey and in New York City, and the beginning of his brief career as a pamphleteer and debater. Philip’s looking forward to writing his father’s confrontation with Seabury with particular relish after hearing the bishop’s ridiculous sermon. Seabury frequently writes long, droning pamphlets that are reprinted far and wide, and Philip starts buying them purely for the pleasure of tearing them apart, following Aunt Angelica’s example and scribbling angry corrections in the margins.

But he finds himself uneasy with the idea of setting pen to paper on the book itself, and the longer he delays, the stronger the superstition grows. At last he finds himself returning to Chapter One, drawing it out of the desk drawer and thumbing through the pages. He finds his sentences blocky, ill-gaited, misshapen. Sure, he has presented the facts as his mother conveyed them to him—but he has done it in a journeymanlike manner. And worse, he can feel his own unease in the words, just under the surface. He knows there’s more to this story, something he’s missing.

He thinks of Burr’s bastard, orphan, son of a whore. Is it there? It shouldn’t be—his mother has addressed those words, and mostly refuted them.By Philip’s understanding, if his father was a bastard, it was only because of a terrible injustice done to his mother by an evil former husband with a grudge, and in any case not the fault of her innocent children. An orphan, likewise not his fault, and possibly also untrue—apparently, Alexander had held out hope that James Hamilton was alive somewhere in the world. A son of a whore? Clear slander: cruel, gratuitous, a duelable offense. His father was neither bastard, nor orphan, nor son of a whore.

But then Philip thinks of Burr’s other words, spat out frantic when the man at last loosed his restraints and let his true fury out. He told me to live. He and his mother had spent a long time discussing that. Ma is of the opinion that it meant that Alexander was hedging his bets. He’d convinced Burr to flee knowing that every soul who escaped the darkness was a chance to set the record straight. It was Burr’s duty—nay, even his function— to tell Alexander’s story. And he was shirking that duty, and Alexander’s trust, by remaining silent. That makes a good deal of sense to Philip, but he still wishes that he could hear Burr's defense of himself. It bothers him that they only have half of this story; all his experience with schoolbook history has shown that a story half-told is often completely wrong. He wishes Theodosia would write, as she had seemed to promise, and provide him with the missing half. Alas, no letter comes.

And there was another critical figure who had remained silent: Laurens. The statue, a seemingly perfect preservation of the man (except for the curl of his hair), such a glaring contrast to the obscenity-spitting, yowling, blaspheming monster Philip and his mother had at last freed from the barn upon arriving home from the city. What factor had saved John Laurens’ reputation? Why had his legacy been allowed to survive nearly intact, and Alexander’s so mutilated?

And yet…and yet. Philip thinks of Laurens, seemingly preserved; he thinks of his father. Maybe he wasn’t a bastard, orphan, son of a whore. But how often had his father heard those words chanted at him? After all, there are days at school when Philip wants to growl at the world, to spit ink in the faces of his enemies and scream them into submission when they call him terrible names. Can there be some truth to it? He thinks himself round and round in circles over the mysteries, making no progress. He simply doesn’t understand—yes, he needs to work on the craft of writing, but he's confident enough in his own intelligence and determination to believe that craft will come with time and practice. Harder to address is his deficit in essential information. He feels like a man raised in the dark, presented with a single flower petal and asked to paint a boquet.

In piano when he’s stumped on a piece the problem is always that he’s trying to do too much at once; when he breaks it down note-by-note, measure-by-measure, he can force his fingers to do right. But a book is different from a piano piece. With piano, the right notes are already before him, and all he has to do is make his fingers play them. But here he doesn’t know the notes. There is no sheet music for him to read from—he must be his own composer. He sits at the desk for what feels like ages, his brain at a boil, his pen still.

In his heart he knows what his problem is. The start he’s made is already a bad one. He can’t in good conscience proceed to the second chapter when the first omits the critical testimony of bastard, orphan, son of a whore. But should he go back and rewrite now, after he’s already worked so hard on this chapter?

… yes. Yes, he should.

His legs are sore from sitting, that’s how long he’s been deliberating at the desk. He stretches when he rises, almost joyful just to be moving again, and shoves a bundle of papers, pen, and inkwell into his schoolbag.

“Philip, where are you going?” his mother laughs.

“Getting a change of scenery!” Philip says. First he retrieves a piece of plank from the barn and shoves it into his bag. Then he dashes outside to the fields beyond their knee-high rows of corn, up past a stand of trees into an uncultivated meadow. The raspberry and blackberry bushes are just putting out their flowers, bees buzzing lazily between them. He steers clear, skirting the bushes and their long thorns, ducking under the shade of the true forest beyond. Cold and damp and dark and full of bugs, the forest isn’t any kind of place for writing. But just up ahead…

“Heathen!” the monster cries, as a greeting. There’s a rustling sound, and thirty or forty feet up, from the boughs of an ancient oak tree, an enormous raven’s beak pokes out. A moment later, the monster’s forepaws appear braced against the trunk, claws digging into the bark, the front half of its body nearly vertical.

Philip sticks his tongue out of it. “You’re the heathen, silly thing. No, don’t come down! I’m coming to you.”

“Heeeeeeathen,” the monster says, waggling at least seven ears.

Philip can’t help but laugh. “Oh, you were playing?”

“Slaying.”

“Fine. Heathen, believin.’” he supplies, reaching for the lowest branch high above his head. This first bit is always the hardest. Afterwards the branches are closer together. His pack shifts awkwardly, and he pauses a moment to buckle the strap tighter to his body. Much better.

“Skeevin.’”

“‘snot a word.” He jumps and manages to catch the branch with both hands. He walks his dangling legs up the trunk, hair and bag hanging down, and with a grunt of effort flings a leg over the branch.  

“Skeeeeeevin!”

“Ugh—Athenian.”

The monster brays furiously. Philip wriggles and hauls and eventually manages to get himself flat on his belly on top of the branch. “What,” he pants, “you don’t like Greek?” He stands, brushing his hands off, and sights his next branch. A much more manageable height.

“Fine. Weavin.’”

“Stevens.”

“Hmm…” Philip thinks as he climbs, not focusing too deeply. “Breathin’.”

“Brethren.”

“Severin’.’”

“Malevollin!”

“It’s malevo lent . With a t.”

“Tee tea tree treason!” the monster caterwauls, so loudly it sends birds flying from them.

“Shh!” Philip hushes. “Ma will hear! The whole county will hear!”

“County, bounty,” the monster chants, with a giggle.

“Yes, precisely, there’s a standing bounty out for traitors and you need to shut up! ”

The monster climbs to Philip as easily as it might walk across the floor of the barn. “Treasonous, heathenous,” it whispers. “Glorified, Toryfied. Terrified, horrified, reasonous, storified!”

“Don’t you dare sing,” Philip mutters, because it seems to be going that way. He can’t believe he wanted to come up here to write. He had hoped that the company of the monster would prove motivating—after all, he loves having someone to talk through ideas with, someone who won’t eagerly dissect every idea the way his ma undoubtedly will. But he forgot what a giant distraction the silly beast can be. “I will… I will turn this tree around, just watch me…”

The monster wails and mugs pathetically, and Philip at last makes it onto a branch that he deems high enough, one that catches a sunbeam that warms him wonderfully. From here he can see all across the meadow and the field, back to the barn and the little house and past those to the wild green hills and lakes, beyond those to the fluffy clouds that promise to pile up and rain later. It seems impossible for bad things to have happened in a place like this. Up here, with the sun on his skin and the breeze stirring his hair, it’s hard to think that he’s missing anything.

The monster nudges his writing hand with its nose. It wants scritches, of course, but it doesn’t get them, because that little action reminds Philip that he is missing something, his father, and what’s more, his father is missing this, and that isn’t fair, that isn’t right, that his father shouldn’t be missing this beautiful day and all the beautiful days like it. He gets out the inkwell and holds it between his knees, then carefully sets up the plank and paper on his lap like a writing-desk. Finally he brings out his pen.

The boy Alexander Hamilton was born into desperate circumstances on the island of Nevis. His parents were never married, his father frequently absent, and the other children were cruel to him and his brother, James. Philip thinks of the stinging shame he feels after school, when the other kids call him mean names. This hurt his feelings, and he didn’t have very many friends because of it.

But he was also smart, and he loved to read, and his mother made sure that he knew how to write and speak in several languages, among them English and French. He’s only really certain of English and French, so he crosses out some words to make the sentence more reasonable. But he thinks of kalos kagathos on the monster and wonders about Greek, and with Greek comes Latin, most of the time, and…

Well, he should stick with what he knows. The retraction stands for now.

When he wasn’t in school, he would explore around the island, which was tropical and very beautiful and grew vast amounts of sugarcane in large plantations owned by the rich people. Everything was very green and warm and there were many interesting kinds of animals and sandy beaches where the water was warm and you could go swimming. Philip smiles, remembering the story his mother first told him when he was little, about the time his father fell in a river and Washington thought he was dead and almost cried when he learned he was well. He learned to swim and became very proficient , he writes, feeling clever, which the Reader will see served him well later. So, even though the people were unfriendly, Alexander loved the islands. But he knew that people would only ever make petty accusations about his birth, even after his mother died of a sickness when he was twelve, which made him very sad.

“How does this sound?” he asks, and reads the paragraph aloud to the monster, which watches him wide-eyed. Within a few words it begins to moan and slobber ink and claw at the bark, eyes rolling, but Philip gamely soldiers through the words, well-practiced at ignoring the beast’s absurdities.  When he gets to the last sentence, he frowns. The grammar’s not quite correct. He supposes the modifying clause could go on either word, but the overall structure of the sentence creates an ambiguity that he would rather avoid. He crosses out that sentence and continues:

However, his mother died of a sickness when he was twelve, which made him very sad, and afterwards people still hounded him with accusations about his birth, which stung all the more for being technically a little bit true, even though that shouldn’t have mattered at all because Alexander was kind and smart and brave and didn’t deserve to be treated horribly for something he was born into and couldn’t control, especially since he had only ever been nice to them at church because his mother insisted upon it.

When he reads it aloud (the monster again putting on a horrible display) he realizes how ridiculous it is, how much of himself he’s reading into his father. How childish his own dreams and his trials seem, laid out next to his father's. He sighs and rubs at his suddenly stinging eyes. The monster gives a low, careful moo and attempts to rest its head in his lap, nearly upending the ink-bottle and the page and the plank and Philip. Philip howls, grabbing the tree so he doesn’t fall, and shoves the monster’s giant beak away. The beast has the audacity to caw at him, as though he did something wrong.

“You know what, forget it!” Philip cries, throwing the page up in the air and watching it drift down towards the forest floor. “This was a stupid idea!”

The monster perks up immediately, bobbing its head and chirping like it wants to play, but Philip is already on his way down the tree, grumbling as he goes.

From then on he does his work in the house, staying far away from the wild woods and the monster that stalks them. He throws his first draft of Chapter One in the fire and decides to try for Chapter Two; it’s against all his instincts, but he has no easy way of resolving his indecision over Chapter One.

His ma lets him shirk his chores, knowing the important business that he’s about. But falling asleep in the middle of his geometry lesson is more difficult to excuse, and the teacher stripes his knuckles and promises worse if he makes a habit of it. And still, despite the pages and pages of paper he’s wasted, he cannot escape the worry that he’s missing something, that perhaps the source of his discontent with his earlier draft is the consequence of some deep contradiction or false assumption.

His mother insists on salving his stinging knuckles before he sets to writing that evening, and he has to admit that it helps. But he realizes he has forgotten the ordering of the hurricane and his father finding work for himself, and needs that information to set up what he’s writing about now. Since he burned his first draft (in retrospect, not a smart idea, but it had been quite satisfying at the time, to watch the stupid, wrong words disappear) he has no written account to fall back on, and must ask her for help.

Her brow furrows at his question. “But darling, that’s the first chapter. You’ve already written it!”

So Philip has to explain—no, not precisely—he’s going to be starting Chapter One over soon, but he hopes that this draft—

“Philip,” Ma says, “it is no use writing one thing over and over again. You must move on to the next part now.”

“But this chapter isn’t even good yet, Ma—“

“No, Philip. You can come back to this chapter later. But the British wrote your father out for what he did later, during the war. That’s what you should be focusing on, anyway.”

Philip can’t articulate to her why that seems so impossible to him. His sense of unease at the hidden flaw in the first chapter is so nebulous that he can’t think of a way to say it without making himself ridiculous. And it’s true that he has far more material already about the war proper than any other period of his father’s life—that was after Ma met him, of course, and he has his books from school, which, even though full of lies in most respects, can at least corroborate names and dates. And yet, when he returns to his desk and tries to start on what he tentatively guesses will be Chapter Three, the beginning of the stillborn Revolution, he can only sit there, time rushing backwards through his ears.

For much of the spring and summer, though, the question of what to write becomes immaterial, as Philip scarcely has any time in which to write. He and his ma must till soil, start seeds, plant seedlings, fetch firewood, clear ground and repair deer fencing round the fruit trees, harvest cherries and black-caps and raspberries and blueberries and blackberries, make all those into jam, clean out the cellar, harvest potatoes, dry herbs, and most of all weed, weed, weed every patch of land, every vegetable plot, row upon row upon row—and also all the plants must be checked constantly for caterpillars and weevils and the bad kinds of beetles. The monster is no help at all, shading itself under an enormous fanlike tail it grows every summer for this purpose, heckling from the edge of the fields while Philip and Eliza sweat.

One Sunday in August they take an hour after church to visit the Key and Kite and indulge in a few slices of the proprietress’s cherry pie, which is so good as to be in a separate category from all other cherry pies including, alas, Eliza’s. As they’re eating the woman bustles over to their table with a package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with plain brown string, book-shaped and book-sized. “For you,” she says, handing it over to Philip with a grin at his wide-eyed expression.

“But I—I mean, thank you, ma’am,” he says, at his mother’s look. He wants to open it immediately, itchy with curiosity, but another warning look from his mother stills his fingers against the string. When they’re out of sight from the town he tears the paper off. It’s a small book, almost shrunken-looking and very old, in a plain black cover. The frontspiece reveals it to be a print of a sermon called,  “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” He had hoped the package might be from Theodosia, but he’d envisioned something a little better than some kind of...religious tract.

A letter, jammed tightly between the first two pages, flutters to the dirt. Philip darts down, picks it up, and reads. 

Dear Philip,

I am sorry for not writing you sooner, but it took a great deal of delicate groundwork and negotiation with my vocal instructor—that is, the woman who is teaching me how to sing—before she would agree to send my letters and to receive the letters from you on my behalf. I may have told her some silly things. She is a great enthusiast for certain types of stories.

Allow me to supply one more letter in a book already full of them; I knew that my father wouldn’t miss this one. I want to apologize to you on his behalf, angry as that would make him.  I hope that he didn’t frighten you or your mother too badly.

“Theodosia says she’s sorry her dad was horrible to us,” he says.

Ma nods, a contented smile appearing on her face. “She did seem like a good girl.”

My mother was so angry with him afterwards I half thought she was going to turn him out, and he went quiet for days and didn’t even make me recite my Latin. But then Mother started one of her sick spells and now he has broken out of his mood so he can take good care of her. He really is a much better person than he acted like when you were here. I’m very sorry you had to see him that way. I still don’t understand what made him so frightened and angry, but I’m curious to find out. I am starting, as you seemed to recommend, with the Romans and the Greeks, but I wonder if you might do me the favor of a little more direction since my understanding is, as you felt the compulsion to point out, apparently quite lacking. Also, for your information, my reciting trick is worth something. Just this week it got me invited to a party at the Carters’ house. They are quite fashionable and it is said Lady Andre might even attend.

Your obedient servant,

Theodosia Burr

There’s a return address with the book, thank goodness. Philip writes a short note.

Dear Theodosia,

Thank you for the book. Next time please send me a better one. That Oresteia in Greek will suffice. Also for your readings you may start with Cicero. My favorite of his is De Oratore.

Your obedient servant,

Philip Hamilton

He doesn’t know where he gets the nerve to send it, but the next day his reply to Theodosia is on its way. 

Chapter Text

Philip had hoped that the long break from schoolwork over the summer might allow him some fresh perspective on the book, but it seems only to knock him out of rhythm. He fidgets at a paragraph here, cuts a line and reinstates it a week later there, rereads and rearranges and rewrites, and overall finds his progress unbearably slow. What’s more, the amount of farmwork he has to help with remains enormous, especially once the harvest begins. He flops into his bed exhausted at the end of each day, the sight of the half-neglected pile of papers on his desk slowly growing hateful to him. He can’t wait for school to start back up again so he can see his friends.

On the first day of school Philip receives an unpleasant surprise: he doesn’t recognize the woman at the front of the classroom. At an emergency convention of the Society for Betterment of Boys at lunch that day, one of his better-informed classmates relates the reason: their old schoolteacher has gone off and gotten herself married to a man in the next town over. Philip wishes the old teacher well, in a vague sort of way. It’s true her lessons were never very stimulating, her curriculum frequently incorrect, but nor had she given him any more trouble than their peculiar situation required. Which is to say, she had faithfully taught all the prescribed calumnies about his father, but with a faint air of embarrassment that had intensified the fonder she grew of Philip, and otherwise treated him as any teacher might treat a child of his abilities and advantages, by pairing him off with someone who was struggling or letting him read her spare geometry books. Philip hadn’t learned much, but he had genuinely enjoyed most days in school. At the very least, it had been an opportunity to be with his friends.

Those days, the new teacher makes very clear from the first moment, are gone. First, she leads the whole class in Rule, Britannia! and forces them to start over three times for their lack of enthusiasm—attributable, Philip guesses, to the fact that most of them don’t know the words. Having been deprived of even the slight exposure that his classmates have had, Philip’s struggles are obvious. The teacher summons him to the front of the classroom (“you there!”) and makes him to sing alone, interrupting him and correcting him and making him start again until his face is burning with anger and humiliation. He’s good at singing—he and his Ma even make up songs for each other for their birthdays. But he’s so taken aback, it’s all he can do to stay on-pitch. His classmates seem just as confused as he is. Of course, the nasty faction are all laughing behind their hands, but the rest are twiddling their thumbs or hunched over in their desks, trying not to make eye contact: embarrassed for him, or trying not to attract the teacher’s attention lest they be next.

The sight of his friends cringing stirs something within Philip. If this teacher is trying to embarrass him, well, he’ll not give her the satisfaction of succeeding. On the next try he swallows all his nerves, meets her eye, and stands straight and tall as he sings. Every note and every word comes out perfect.

Quiet falls in the classroom. Philip stands facing the teacher, glowering triumphantly, his fists clenched behind his back. The look she gives him is pure venom. “That will be all, Mister Hamilton.”

Of course. Of course she knows who he is, of course she planned it this way. Rather than being cowed, Philip feels his lips twist in contempt. He bows to hide his traitorous face. “Yes, ma’am.”

Most of the lessons—mathematics, penmanship, the basic letters—remain much the same as they were last year. The teacher has a fondness for chants: the little ones with the alphabet, the middle with their multiplication, the eldest with poetry, which Philip hates because he thinks it ruins the poems.

But the worst are the history lessons. The teacher has chants—only for the younger students, thank god—and every day as Philip works on his mathematics or his writing he struggles to tune out the call-and-response:

    Who led the rebel mob?
    Washington, the tyrant!
    What did he wish to be?
    The Emp’ror of America!
    What shall his crown be?
    Splinters and blood!

They have a verse for his father. Philip can’t escape the classroom every time they start it up, so he tries his best to go completely blank, to forget how English works, to make the song a nonsense wash of syllables like something the monster would spit out. Even then, the rhythm echoes in his ears. The dreadful routine continues without mercy until the day that Lydia, one of the girls from the Society, notices Philip’s distress and upsets her inkwell all over the teacher’s dress just before the history lesson. The teacher spends a good fifteen minutes screaming at her, but she bears it with good spirits, and as they’re leaving the classroom she gives Philip a quick pat on the arm. From then on, it’s almost a contest between Society members to see who can sabotage the lesson most effectively.

Naturally, it doesn’t stop there. As the school year progresses, and Philip and the Society fail to turn into proper young royal subjects, the teacher’s techniques grow more extreme. Every time she talks about Hatchet-Hand Hamilton, Washington’s Penman, the Little Liar of Valley Forge, she stares straight at Philip. Any excuse to send him out of the classroom, she seizes upon; any excuse to stripe his knuckles, she executes with enthusiasm. He goes home at least once a week with his hands bleeding.

“It can’t go on like this,” his ma says, one night as she spreads salve over his swollen fingers. “That woman is cruel, Pip, and you’re not learning anything from her. There’s no reason for you to stay.”

“But my friends,” Philip insists, holding in a hiss as she gently wraps his wounded pinky in linen. There is the original Society, of course, but even the smattering of Tories who joined later aren’t bad sorts, once you get to know them. Philip has started talking to them about things other than their arguments—about horses, about what they’ve seen of the city, about how to best train a dog and how annoying their siblings are.

“But your hands!” his mother counters, and Philip is ashamed that he has no answer other than that he’s willing to bear it.

Part of why he’s willing to bear it is that the other members of the Society look up to him. It’s a strange feeling, after having been so long an outcast, but a welcome one. With the addition of the Tories comes lively debate, and Philip finds himself naturally in the position of liberty’s loudest advocate. He relishes his role: it makes him feel like he’s following in his father’s footsteps, in the yet-neglected chapter on Alexander’s student days in New York City. The mild-mannered William becomes his second, somewhat to his surprise, and Philip even finds himself quietly invited to the van Doort household for supper. It’s an astonishing and surreal turn of events, to find himself seated at a table with William’s enormous family, and he finds himself slightly overwhelmed by all the activity and noise. Nevertheless, he enjoys himself immensely, and he thanks William’s mam so effusively that she laughs and promises to invite him again.

So despite his tyrannous teacher it isn’t all bad. The other bright spot in his life is his correspondence with Theodosia. She tells him all about her life in high society of New York, and he chooses to omit the sadder and stranger details of his own story in favor of blow-by-blow retellings of the Society’s arguments. She reciprocally takes great pleasure in pointing out weaknesses in his own winning cases, purely, she claims, so he will not grow too confident. Really, she writes, after demolishing his interpretation of the latest volume of Hume, I am doing you a great favor, by pointing out your mistakes.

One of the fiercest arguments in the Society concerns not Hume, or even any book, but rather whether the Saratoga Gazette, the local newspaper, really does receive only opinion letters that praise the Magistrate, or whether their selection process might be biased. So, in the spirit of inquiry and of troublemaking, Philip decides that half of them should write letters praising the Magistrate, and half criticizing him, and they should all submit them at once—anonymously, of course—and see how many go through.  

None of the critical editorials appear in the paper, although all of the more favorable reviews are sprinkled in along with the usual sycophantic palaver over the course of the next several weeks. A simple experiment—a clear-cut result. The newspaperman must tip the Magistrate off to the sudden influx of bad press, and the man nearly comes to blows with a suspected turncoat on tavern floor before sense prevails and the hapless patsy is able to convince the Magistrate of his innocence. Though the Society is never caught—nobody would expect schoolchildren to be capable of such a thing—they’re left in fear, as the Magistrate is still furious about the sudden political attack. Philip feels a pang of guilt every time he reads the paper, which delicately covers the Magistrate’s crackdown as his judgements, already harsh, grow even more severe. Upon devising the experiment he had written Theo to crow about his cleverness, and now, three weeks later, reading her reply that begs him not to go forward with it, he feels even worse.

Town gossip turns to a man, just passing through the county, caught with some kind of subversive material (the Gazette is never precisely clear) he intended to distribute. Rumor reaches a fever-pitch when he is sentenced to hanging, the first in the county in fourteen years.

“Do you think he might have been behind the letters? At the Gazette?” Philip overhears one of the magistrate’s clerks ask another, as he waits at the bar of the Key and Kite for the proprietress to fetch his package from Theodosia.

“Tom, would you shut up?” the other says, with a dark glance at Philip, who is trying very hard to pretend that he didn’t overhear.

If only he hadn’t! He tosses and turns the whole night through. Could Magistrate Davis really believe that he’s caught the man who dared to try to insult him in the press? Could that be the reason for the harshness of his sentence? Is a man going to die for Philip’s curiosity? Should he—should he turn himself in? Oh, God, what if the Magistrate decides to hang him and he hasn’t finished the book yet and his father’s soul will be lost, truly lost, without return—

He does something he hasn’t done since he was five years old, and goes to his ma’s bedroom in the middle of the night.

“Philip?” she asks blearily, having just been shaken awake. “Philip, what's wrong? Are you ill?”

“No, no, I only—I’ve done something stupid. Idiotic, ma, I’m, I can’t believe, I never thought it would turn out like—”

“Calm down,” she says, her voice hard, already getting out of bed, already throwing her hair up. “What did you do?”

“I, the man they caught, that they’re going to hang, I sent those letters to the newspaper, and do you think the Magistrate decided to hang him because he thought he insulted him, should I, should I tell him that I—”

“Philip, slower. What letters? What newspaper?” Ma knocks a plug of wood out of a knothole in her bedpost, reaching in and fishing out a thick roll of British banknotes. Then she crouches under the bed and feels along the underside, searching for something in the dark. There’s a solid thud of metal on floor planking, and when she stands, she’s holding a rifle.

“The ones to the Gazette criticizing the Magistrate, well, it wasn’t just me, it was me and the Society, but it was my idea, I just wanted to show that the paper was biased, I didn’t mean to cause all this!” Philip feels like he’s vomiting the words more than speaking them, but gradually he grows more coherent.

His ma lets him gabble, her posture gradually growing less tense. When he’s done she calmly kneels back down and returns the rifle and the money to their hidden places, then pats the bed. “Sit, dear.”

Philip sits, but right on the edge of the bed, his knee bouncing. “So… we’re not going to flee to Aunt Peggy’s in the middle of the night?”

His ma actually chuckles. “You gave me a bit of a scare, waking me up like that. I’m not so worried now.”

“Can you tell me why?” Philip’s voice climbs almost into hysterical territory.

“Because that man was caught distributing the Aurora.”

Philip doesn’t know what that is. “... the Aurora? What is that? Where’d you hear about it?”

“The Magistrate’s wife is in Ladies’ Group at church, and she’s far from discreet. The Aurora is a newspaper, very critical of the Crown, that has only appeared in the last year or so out of Philadelphia. There’s a standing order from the Governor that any man caught distributing or contributing to it be sentenced to death. Nothing you did could possibly have affected that, Philip. That man's sentence had nothing at all to do with you, and it would be folly to turn yourself in.”

Philip lets out a heavy sigh, dread falling from his shoulders so swiftly he’s almost surprised when it doesn’t thud on the floor. “Oh.”

“Now, we do need to talk about your little bit of mischief with the Gazette.”

“Ah.” He braces himself for the verbal beating of a lifetime.

“It seems like you’ve managed not to get caught, which was quite clever of you. And you said you persuaded your friends to help, as well? That’s very impressive, they must respect your judgement a good deal. But I do have to question your broader strategy, dear. Any action against authority has its risks, and I just want to be sure you’re weighing them properly.”

Philip mulls her words over, finding none of the sting he expected. “That’s… that’s it? You’re not angry?”

“I need you to be more careful, next time. You need to remember that your father’s counting on you.” That’s much more in line with what Philip had anticipated. But then she continues, “And I need to remember that you’re your father’s son, and that not much will stop you from making trouble, and to count my blessings that the consequences this time were relatively minor.”

“Just me waking you up in a panic in the middle of the night, I suppose,” Philip says. It’s an attempt at self-deprecating humor, but his mother seems to take his words seriously.

“Oh, trust me, this is one of the mildest cases of too-many-thoughts-at-three-in-the-morning that I’ve seen.” She squeezes him into a quick hug with a kiss on the head. “Now, if you don’t mind, dear, I’m going back to sleep.”

The man who tried to bring the Aurora to Saratoga dies. The town moves on, the people forget, life continues.

Until, late one October night, part of the Magistrate’s farm burns.

It’s not a bad fire, as these things go. He loses a field that was lying fallow anyway, quite a lot of fencing, and the smallest of his three corn patches. No people and no animals are harmed; not even a building destroyed. But for the Magistrate, it’s the last straw.

He requests troops from the Governor.

It’s frightening for Philip how totally the arrival of a single platoon of troops—less than fifty men—changes the atmosphere in the village. Before, the grudge between Tories and Patriots had always seemed faintly absurd to Philip, like the one between the Montagues and the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet. Of course he understands deeply that the Tories and Patriots were once two sides to a war, but now that there is no war for over thirteen years and half the folk involved have completely forgotten what they were fighting for, it seems odd that the distinction should persist.

When the redcoats come, suddenly the distinction is real. Patriots cringe subserviently as the soldiers pass, guilt and fear written into the lines of their posture. Tories hold their heads high, perhaps even wave hello. And with that simple change, the Tories start acting high-and-mightier everywhere they go. They spread out over all the tables at the Key and Kite, crowing Rule, Brittania! deep into the night and leaving the Patriots in a sad little clump at the bar. When walking down the street they expect Philip to get out of their way, and before he figures this new rule out he swipes elbows and angry glares with more than one of them. Ma even grumbles that they have taken over the Ladies’ Group at church.

Philip even feels it in the Society. Ever since the Magistrate’s first crackdown there have been grumbles against his leadership—criticisms he feels acutely, because he believes they’re fair. Fewer and fewer attend their meetings; they lose their last Tory in early December, and Philip feels a pang to see her go. Though he hadn’t made any specific plans for the future of the Society, it hadn’t escaped his notice that it had fostered friendships between folk who might never otherwise have looked twice at each other.  He’d thought, vaguely, that he’d been building something that would matter.

And in the classroom, suddenly everyone is quiet, and nobody stands up for him anymore. History lessons, previously battlegrounds, proceed without a hitch. Even William van Doort, who had previously grown bold enough to match Philip eyeroll for eyeroll during lecture, is suddenly a model student. When asked three reasons why the colonies had no right to complain about their treatment by Britain, he rattles off his answer in a prompt, matter-of-fact tone as Philip watches on, agog with betrayal.

“Hamilton,” his teacher smiles venomously, “you have your mouth open. Do you have another reason to contribute?”

“I—”

“No?”

“Um, well, Thomas Hobbes says that—"

“I don’t want to hear what Thomas Hobbes says, Hamilton. I want to hear what you think.”

Philip’s face grows hot. “I think that—well, Lord North has argued that the cost of the French and Indian War should have been—”

The teacher clucks, shaking her head. Wordlessly, Philip spreads his left hand on the desk, and wordlessly she delivers it a thwap with her ruler. One of his knuckles splits open and starts to bleed sluggishly.

“And Mister van Doort. You as well.”

“But he didn’t—” Philip cuts off a yelp as the ruler strikes his stinging knuckles a second time.

William looks stunned, but he holds out a hand. Philip can see him bite back a flinch as the teacher delivers a blow every bit as vicious as Philip’s was. He tries desperately to catch William’s eye, but the other boy avoids him.

The teacher circles back to the front, the whole classroom watching her, so quiet that Philip can hear the other children breathing. “That concludes our history lesson for the day.”

“William,” Philip calls, rushing to sling his bag over his shoulder and catch his classmate on the road away from the schoolhouse. “William!”

William walks faster, his hands clenched. “Leave me alone.”

“No!” Philip cries, nearly jogging to keep up, feet slipping perilously on the hard-packed snow. He tugs at William’s elbow. “What’s happening, William, why are you doing this?”

“I said leave me alone!” William yanks his arm, but Philip only grabs on with both hands. “Hamilton, I’m warning you—”

“I just want to talk—"

William stops suddenly and throws his arm forward; Philip is helpless to stop his momentum and hurtles headlong into a drift of snow. “You’ve talked enough,” he snaps.

“I—what?”

William strides forward and bends over Philip. “Look, Hamilton, it was a fun game, but it’s over now. They threatened my family, don’t you understand? Said I was going down a dangerous path, said that it could be my ‘bad blood’!”

Philip reels. “Who—"

“I don’t know!” William cries. “Someone in the tavern went up to my mam and she came home white as a sheet! There’s soldiers everywhere!”

“But you don’t have to—”

“God, Hamilton, how can you be so selfish? One slip-up and the Magistrate will confiscate our farm! Get away!” His eyes dart from side to side, as though on the quiet tree-lined road someone could be eavesdropping.

Philip gets to his feet and draws himself up tall. He can feel his face twisting with disgust, although he’s not sure who for. “Might as well give them something really good, eh?”

“I—what are you—”

Philip raises his fists. “I insist. Since we’re friends.”

“Ha—Philip, come on, you can’t be—"

“No, no, by all means. It is so important for everyone to know where one’s loyalties lie.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Philip,” William says, covering Philip’s hands with his own—but Philip punches past his guard, catching a glancing blow to his ear. William gives a cry of outrage and hooks a foot behind Philip’s before Philip can react. In a flash he’s on his back in the snow, the wind knocked thoroughly out of him, and then William does worse than punch him: he walks away.

After that day, Philip doesn’t go back to school.

Eliza’s hand falls gently on Philip’s shoulder, but he startles all the same. It’s the next morning, and he’s in the study, quill in hand, trying to write Theodosia. Although he had thought it would do him good to tell his story to a sympathetic ear, every time he tries, he finds himself getting teary-eyed at the unfairness of it all.

“How are you holding up, honey?”

Philip doesn’t want to complain. His ma had advised him to quit school months ago, after all, and she was right. So he says, “I… um. Can we… can we make bread together or something?” He wants to spend time doing something other than thinking with somebody who doesn’t hate him, and that list is apparently shorter than he thought.

“Of course! I’ll get the yeast started—but I have something for you first.”

“Oh, ma, you didn’t have to—I’m fine, I promise—” She’s fresh back from an errand in the village, and he only hopes she didn’t buy him something expensive that he’ll have to pretend to be happy about when he doesn’t much feel like being happy about anything.

“I didn’t,” his ma says, with a sly grin, “but Theodosia did.” From behind her back she produces a handsome leatherbound volume with an embossed cover. Philip’s eyes go wide as he reads the title: the Oresteia! He still owes her a reply to her last letter—in fact, he’s owed it for over a month now, something he’s shamefully aware of in light of this fabulous gift. He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve such a treat. “I’ll leave you to it,” his ma says, with a quick kiss to his head, and saunters out of the room.

As always, there’s a letter tucked between the pages.

Dear Philip,

I got to the Phillipicae. Trust a boy to assign readings because they happen to have his name. Although I find it funny that these are all against Philip. This Philip fellow sounds like quite a demanding and unreasonable individual.  Come to think of it, his son was Alexander, so I suppose you are even more of an anachronism than I thought.

Perhaps as a slight inducement to reply, I’ve finally found your Greek Oresteia, and I am sorry that I did not send it to you sooner. It is only because I pity your grammar. We have enough copies of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” to fill a whole library, so think of that the next time you write, and remember to be nice and write a good long letter.

My mother’s health has been much improved lately, after seeming perilous for these past several months. Now that she’s up and about and my father isn’t hanging at her shoulder all the time I’ve asked her why me father was so afraid of your mother, and she has explained a few things to me. She said there are many things that she and my father remembered differently after the Great Revision, and that your dad is one of them, that she remembers always knowing that Hamilton was a monster, despite never having met him. But she also says that my father remembers a man, firsthand, and is totally convinced in his impression. I told her that I remember neither, and she said, yes, of course, because you weren’t born yet. It’s different for you; you must form your own impression. So even though my tutor has told me he is a monster, I have the power to change my mind in light of additional evidence. To me, it certainly didn’t sound like the conversation we overheard was about a fire-breathing beast. Is he a monster? Has he always been that way? I hope I’m not being too forward. I promise you I will not think less of you one bit if he is.

Your obedient servant,

Theodosia Burr

Philip takes a deep breath when he finishes the letter. Lord, what a mess. He and Theodosia have been corresponding for months now, and he still hasn’t told her the one fact that everyone here knows before they even meet him. He feels sick at the idea that she might think of him the way that folk in the village apparently do. A troublemaker by blood, someone shifty and selfish, tainting his friends by association.

Instead of working on the letter, he goes to bake bread with Ma. Punching the dough and flinging it against the countertop gives an outlet for the violence of feeling with him. His ma seems to have divined his mood and made a dough so thick and pummelable that Philip’s arms and his frustration tire together. He’s left feeling empty and lost. With a heavy sigh he drops the dough to the counter and hangs his head.

“What’s on your mind, Philip?”

“Everything,” he moans.

“Hm. Everything, that’s an awful lot for someone your age. Most folk are at least forty before they can handle everything. I personally achieved it at thirty-two, but even so, you’ve got a long way to go.”

Philip smiles. “Well, since you can handle everything, can you write to Theodosia for me?”

“Oh!” His ma looks scandalized. “I wouldn’t dream of it. What could you possibly need me for?”

"I, um, I need to explain to her about what happened to Dad.”

Ma’s face falls. “Oh, honey. I know she must be curious, but you don’t have to—”

"No,” Philip says, not knowing that’s his answer until he says it. “No, I… I think I want to?” He feels like these past few months he’s had no way to defend himself, nowhere to argue his case. Everyone in the village already knows his story, or thinks they know it. Nobody cares to let him speak. For once in his life he actually has the chance to introduce himself, to let his own words set the stage for who he is, instead of circumstance and rumor and lies. He should be leaping at this chance. Only… “I’ve just… I’ve never done this before and… and it’s such a strange story, for most folk, and it’s sad, and she’s got both her parents and her nice house and all her nice things in it and I’m just worried… what if she reads it and decides it’s too much and she’s done with me? She’s the only person who likes me right now!”

Ma gives her dough one last knead before putting it down and dusts the flour carefully off her hands. Then she folds Philip into a gentle hug. “First of all, I like you.”

They’re exactly the same height now, and Philip tucks his head over her shoulder and lets himself be held. He hadn’t realized how much he needed a hug until he breathes in and feels the buoyancy and warmth returning to the place in his chest where the emptiness had caught. He manages some spunk. “Well, you gave birth to me. You’d better like me, otherwise that’s just a poor investment.”

He feels her laugh in his own ribs. “You remind me so much of your father, sometimes.”

Philip looks up, startled. “I remind you of him now?”

“Oh, yes.” His ma gets distracted by a smudge of flour off his face. She finds a cloth and wipes it off, and while she’s off looking for the cloth Philip resumes kneading his half of the dough. “I’ll give you some advice, since I can handle everything. If you want someone to like you, and you’re worried that something true, something fundamental about yourself, is going to scare them off… avoiding it isn’t going to help. Because then they wouldn’t really like you, do they? Just you with a piece missing.”

Philip looks away, biting his lip, and mulls her words over. “You think I should tell her everything, then.”

His ma looks troubled, almost like she’s having an argument with herself. “I think... you should be honest,” she says at last. “Even if it’s something you think she might not want to know. You might have to simplify, or go in steps. But you’ll do her and yourself no good by avoiding the question entirely, because… for better or worse, it’s a part of who you are, though Lord knows you had no choice in it.”

She looks so unutterably sad at the last part that Philip almost regrets the whole conversation. So he quickly says, “All right, Ma,” and looks back down at his dough. Oh, dear, he hasn’t refreshed his flour, and he hasn’t been paying any attention. He’s in up to his wrists. “Uh… Ma?”

She follows his gaze and bursts out laughing. “Here, honey,” she says, and quickly flours up her hands to help him escape.

After washing the last of the dough residue from his hands, Philip returns to his letter. With a course of action decided upon, amidst the delicious smell of the loaf baking, with his ma embroidering a handkerchief across from him, his mind is much more settled. Rereading his earlier attempts, he finds several melodramatic exaggerations, and leaves them out of the account that he copies over. Just the facts, and at the end a little commentary.

I admit, it is a severe blow to my spirits that I will not be seeing my friends anymore, due to the prejudices of our society. I cannot say that I have no anger towards them at all, for in truth I feel that they have abandoned me unfairly. But upon further thought, I have considered how frightened they all are, how they have their own families, whom they love. And it is true, that if there were a threat to my mother, from continuing an association with only a schoolmate, I think my choice might be the same as theirs. She is the only family I have.

 As I am on the subject of family now, I suppose I will answer your questions, as I am aware that my circumstances are unusual and you must be curious. No, my father is not a monster. There is a great system of lies about him that has been quite deliberately built up by the most powerful folk here, which I imagine is why your father is afraid of the truth.

There is, however, a monster who lives on our farm, who everyone has been made to think is my father, but he is not. He is a blathering beast, but he is not dangerous unless you cross him (or my mother) or are a deer. He does not like strangers, either, which I find ironic, because he is himself strangest of all. My father was killed was murdered vanished was lost in the war-that-wasn’t, about a year after he and my mother were married. I never knew him, but my mother keeps his memory alive by telling me true stories about him. She tells me that he and I are alike, which always feels a little strange to me, but she loves him so much and I know very well that the comparison is an enormous honor. My mother raised me by herself and she’s the bravest person I know and also the kindest. Even the monster loves her (and is afraid of her). There is more, but I think that’s enough to start with. Thank you very, very much for the Oresteia. If all I need to do to get exactly what I want is to neglect my correspondence with you, then perhaps I shall neglect it more often. Oh, but I am only teasing you, Theodosia. I am very glad for your gift and only wish I could send you something half as grand in return.

Your grateful and obedient servant,

Philip

To Philip’s surprise, when he arrives at the Key and Kite to drop off his letter for the proprietress to hand off to the postman, there’s already another letter waiting for him. Has Theodosia really written him three letters in a row without receiving a single reply? Surely it can’t be from her. But the handwriting on the outside of the folded letter is clearly Theodosia’s—another break from pattern, as usually she sends him a book. What on earth can she have to say that could not have waited?

He’s almost curious enough to open the letter in the tavern itself, but his mother made him promise to be home before dark, and the winter sun is already kissing the horizon. So he’s sitting at home when he opens the letter. In its entirety, it reads:

Dear Philip,

My Mother has found her Eternal Rest in Heaven. I am glad for her sake, that her mortal pains are ended, but for my father and myself, I weep.

Theo

Philip has no idea how to reply, sitting paralyzed at the table as his mother places his dinner plate in front of him, unaware of what he’s read. He has no idea how Theodosia must be feeling. When he tries to imagine what it would be like to lose his own mother, his breaths start coming fast and faster, his eyes welling with sympathetic tears. Oh, Theodosia…

“Philip! Philip, what’s wrong?”

Philip’s throat is choked shut. He hands his ma the letter.

“Oh,” Ma cries, her hand flying her mouth, “that poor woman, God rest her soul. We must write to the Burrs with our condolences.”

In the end, Philip only co-signs the letter his mother writes, very formal and spiritual for all the real sympathy and warmth that lies beneath it. Philip feels a bit cowardly at how intensely relieved he feels, watching his mother fold the letter. At least they have done it properly, he thinks.

Theo’s next letter, only a week later, carries almost no trace of that aching grief that opened up a chasm in Philip’s heart last time. It begins with a peculiar sentence:

Philip,

I hope you are keeping yourself warm in this terrible weather. Please to me the favor of reading this letter with your feet in the fire.

The rest of the letter seems to be a laundry list of callers and well-wishers that Theodosia has received since her mother passed away, and what attempts they made at kind words (some of the more awkward ones Theodosia eviscerates, which, Philip supposes, is only her right), and what kinds of food they brought over. It’s the most mundane letter she’s ever sent him.

“How is Theodosia faring?” his mother asks, her face full of sympathy, when she sees him reading the letter at the kitchen table for the second time to see if there’s something he missed.

“I—I’m not really sure,” Philip muses. “She’s… it’s strange.”

“People who are grieving can often seem strange, to those who haven’t experienced such things,” his ma says gently. “And everyone grieves in their own way.”

“But this is very strange,” Philip insists. “She told me to put my feet in the fire!”

“Hm!” says his ma, tilting her head slightly, considering the letter before her. “Do you mind?”

Philip hands it to her, and then trots behind her as she approaches the fireplace. For one terrible moment he thinks she’s throwing the letter in the flames, but no—she’s only exposing it to the heat. Faint lines begin to appear between Theodosia’s neatly-written rows.

There’s a letter beneath the letter.

“There we are,” his mother says, with a little smirk. “She wanted to keep something private, I suppose. Look, she’s taken up the entire back of the page as well.” She flips the paper over, revealing a forest of hidden letters.

“How did you…” Philip begins.

“Oh, heat-sensitive invisible ink is common enough. It can be made with pickle juice, you know. Your father received quite a few letters similar to this one, when he was on leave with me. There’s no substitute for a good cypher, but the next-best thing is to trick your enemies into thinking no message was sent at all.”

“Um,” Philip says, wondering how to phrase his request, “maybe I should read this in… private?”

Ma laughs. “Of course, Pip.”

The letter-between-the-letter reads more like a to-do list, interspersed with furious ramblings and existential streams-of-consciousness. Her mother died with her country in the hands of liars. Her father is a coward and an appeaser and the whole world is full of cowards and appeasers and the sole exception may be Philip’s ma who is a hermit and a witch (I understand if you cannot say for certain, reads a parenthetical, but I am sure of it) and a little bit insane, and Theo doesn’t want to live like that; Theo has words in her head that need to be heard; Theo has a world-class education (much better than Philip’s, because Philip was taught by a woman: Philip gasps aloud at the hypocrisy of this); there has to be something deeper to life than always scuttling from shadow to shadow and hiding every interesting thought in your head and being seen not heard like a child or a woman, and if everyone and anyone she cares about could die at any moment, if she could die at any moment, then why is she here, so close to the center of things, waiting? Is she to be pulled down one day into the swirling black oblivion of history having made no mark for herself at all? One day will she see her father’s side of things, and will not that day be her death in another way? Will she swim down into the inky pools herself, without even the action of her enemies? Will she grant them permission to undo her after all?

Philip has no idea how to reply to that letter, either, but reading it sets him into a frenzy, and he picks up his writing-pen for the first time in months and skips chapters upon chapters ahead.

In his last days, he writes, Hamilton was set into a frenzy.

Time was running away from him, yet even as the skies were bleached white to be written over, he wrote and wrote and wrote, with all the energy of the idealistic young pamphleteer that he had been so few short years ago. Gone was the exhaustion of the war and the long grinding campaign. His fingers flew.

The sky began to darken, festooned with poison words, and the Patriots’ doom was upon them, and with it Hamilton’s, for he had yoked his very soul to the cause and to General Washington, great defender of men’s liberties, yet even then he wrote—for the reputation and the legacy of all the men under America’s true flag. Despite the terrible powers arrayed against him—despite the knowledge that oblivion might come with any heartbeat—yet even then he wrote. He could do nothing but write and fight (for in this war, they were one and the same) until the very last. Such was the resolution and the desperation of freedom’s cause.

Yet as he wrote, it seemed to him that something changed. Pushing his pen, which had previously been a great effort, suddenly seemed simple. Though black words filled the sky, now some of them were Hamilton’s words. They battled back the British words, tore holes in the skin of the sky. When the darkness came, it did not swallow them whole, and they made their encampment that night by an Earthly river.

The war was over, and the men all went home to their families.

When he wakes the next morning he has no idea what to do with the draft. It is clearly ahistorical and therefore useless for his current project; he doesn’t even know why he wasted the paper. Yet when he reads it over again, to reproach himself with its awfulness and its wish-fulfillment, he finds himself lingering over the words. They are wonderful words, for all that they are lies. Would that he had the power to make his words true, like their enemies do.

It occurs to him that he will never truly know what his father did in his last days. How had he felt, watching the sky turn above him? Had he been afraid? There are no sources for that time, under the changed sky; the war-that-wasn’t has taken them all, texts and souls alike, and thrown up monsters in their wake.

He reads it aloud to the monster, to see what it thinks.

“Horrendous,” it says, scratching an ear with one of its extra hindlimbs. “Stupendous. Portentous.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Philip still feels guilty that he hasn’t written Theodosia a letter of his own—she really should hear from him personally, since she wrote to him and not to his mother. He goes back inside and writes a horrendously stilted letter with no advice and nothing of any use, stuffs it into an envelope so he doesn’t have to look at it another second, and hands it off to his mother only a moment before she rides into town to fetch some candles and drop off the mail.

Only when he returns to his desk that evening, and sees his letter sitting there, does he realize that he sent Theodosia the wrong piece of paper.

Dear Philip, her next letter reads, scrawled inside a book cover in invisible ink.

Thank you. You’re the first person who hasn’t tried to pat me on the head and tell me I’ll meet Mama again in Heaven (Philip glances guiltily at his unsent letter, which indeed contains just such a phrase.) and expect that to be enough. I had forgotten—please forgive me—that your own father passed away very young—

Philip puts down the letter. Certainly he never would have described his dad as having “passed away.” It is far too gentle and at once imprecise for what really happened to him. Even when he was small, before he knew the true secret of the monster, his ma has always referred to his dad as lost, and while he supposes people can be lost at sea or lost in battle or lost to illness, he has lately been thinking of his dad, if he thought of him in present tense at all, wandering in the woods somewhere, some impenetrable jungle of history that it is Philip’s task to hack through. Passing away—what Theo’s mother has done—seems too permanent for what’s happened to his dad. After all, something is only lost, there is some chance that it might be found again.

—perhaps that is why you understand so well the restlessness of my pen, the need to take any action if only to prove to myself that I yet live. Do not shake your head at me—I will be careful. But I am not waiting anymore. I cannot rest knowing I rest upon lies.

My father wishes me to return to ordinary life now. He says we have mourned long enough, though his bloodshot eyes betray him. He has somehow secured me an invitation to deliver a musical program and a recitation of poetry at the Andres’ annual soiree. It is a very great honor, a step into a social circle far, far above our own, and an opportunity for me to catch the eye of some wealthy husband to keep me in comfort for the rest of my days. The matter is critical in his eye—mother’s doctors were expensive, and my father isn’t a wise spender. Despite that I am considering a refusal, for grief has blighted the hunger for comfort from me. I ask only for the truth, and for my freedom. They seem small enough, but even the act of asking, it seems, constitutes a rebellion. My father, so eager to prove my intelligence, seems less eager for me to put it to use. Matters have grown tense between us.

It occurs to me also that I have insulted your education in my previous letter. Please, attribute my ravings to my grief and not to my character. I assure you that I have nothing but respect for your mother, even though of course she hasn’t done a very good job on your Greek. But as I was reading what you wrote it struck me most forcefully that there is an area where my education has been lacking, due to my father’s infinite cautions, and yours superabundant. Not the old philosophers—I have made a very good start on them, now, understanding a little more of their context. You know of the area of which I speak.

I wish you to tell me more about events before the Great Revision. Who were the active participants in the business which your father undertook? What were their names? Were their fates to be forever mistaken for monsters as well?

Blessings and salutations to you and your mother and may I remain, sir, your most humble and obedient servant,

Theodosia

Philip’s heart kicks into double time about halfway through the first paragraph and doesn’t stop until he reaches her signature. He halts, puzzled, at Theodosia’s questions. His mother has always cast the study of his father’s friends in the past tense. Naturally his father has been transformed into a monster, and Laurens into a statue, but Philip doesn’t know what has happened to the rest, and has a feeling that his mother won’t appreciate his asking. Nevertheless, he makes the attempt the next morning over supper.

“Ma… what… what kinds of monsters did they make the rest? And where are they?”

His mother looks up sharply from her peas, knowing instantly what he’s asking. Almost as though she’d been expecting this question, and dreading it. “Philip, I don’t think it would be wise for me to answer that. We need your mind—"

“Pure, I know,” Philip interrupts, frustrated. “But I know that they’re fakes. It’s just like with our monster. I know that it’s not really my dad.”

“But why do you need to know? How would learning lies help you find the truth?”

“I—” Philip lets out a frustrated breath. Yes, Theodosia had asked the initial question, but now he is curious for himself as well. “Remember how confused I was about John Laurens? I thought he was a—a complete pansy, before you set me right, and said he was brave, and very close with Dad, and you wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t seen the statue.”  

His mother’s expression only grows more concerned. “Philip, dearest, I hope you’re not getting distracted. You’re writing about your father, not his friends, remember?”

“I knooow,” Philip whines, letting his head fall to the table with a dramatic thud before righting himself. “I know, but Ma, just think about how differently I would have thought about Dad if I had believed my stupid John Laurens was his friend, versus the real one. I was seriously questioning his taste.”

“But I’ve told you about the real ones,” Ma counters.

“Not Laurens, you didn’t,” Philip counter-counters.

His mother’s face gets a shuttered, guilty look.

“Were they all transformed? Did any of the others get away, like Burr? Are there any in New York?”

“Burr was the only man I saw on the road…” his mother says slowly. Her brow furrows. “I don’t recall if Hercules Mulligan was in camp when the sky changed. Alexander hardly ever mentioned him in his letters, especially later in the war.”

“So what about him, could we talk to him?”

His ma actually seems to consider it for a moment, tapping her mouth with her index finger. But she sighs, and Philip knows her answer will be no. “Peggy discovered that Burr was alive and where he lived because they ran in some of the same social circles. I doubt tracking down Mulligan would be so easy.”

“Why not?”

“He wasn’t exactly… high-class. And he had a talent for people… he was very clever. He would be good at making himself disappear. And… and he’s more than likely dead, anyhow.”

“Why do you say that?” Philip says, crossing his arms, expecting another denial.

“Because he had a very dangerous… oh, it’s probably not worth keeping it a secret anymore, is it? He was a tailor in the City when it was occupied, and quite collegial, very easy to talk to, and well… he was a spy.”

Philip gasps, appalled. A spy, his father’s friend? How dishonorable!

“And you knew this?”

His mother nods, a grin flashing across her face. “Your father used to trust me with the Continental Army’s deepest darkest secrets. The instant he knew something he’d send it off in a letter to me.” Her smile fades a little, and Philip knows she’s thinking of the dead letters up in her desk drawer. “I expect that after the darkness subsided, the British would have been able to discover his identity, and hang him. Andre was their spymaster; he would have been very interested in such things.”

Philip rubs at his own Adam’s apple sympathetically. “Who else was in camp, then? Washington, of course. He must have gotten a monster, but where is it?”

“Philip, give it a rest. My head is hurting tonight and I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Ma, I need to know what they did to them! I need to know how these lies work!”

“You need to finish your supper and go to your room.”

Philip looks down at his plate. He’s two bites from finished, which means she’s basically just asking him to leave. “But—”

“I’m not arguing about this tonight, Philip.” His ma sighs and puts her head in her hands, unhappy lines around her mouth. She really does look like her head hurts, and Philip’s mind leaps to Theodosia’s mother, and his father’s mother, and his mouth goes dry. Suddenly he’s irrationally afraid for his own ma, and hyperaware of how much he loves her, and how much her love matters to him. It’s a feeling like being strangled.

“I’m sorry, Ma,” he says, remembering at the last moment to speak softly so as not to hurt her head. “I didn’t mean to fight. I love you.” He goes over to her and gives her a hug, suddenly needing to feel the warmth of her touch. She seems a little surprised, but she turns in her chair and wraps both arms around him, breathing in deep.

“Thank you, Philip,” she murmurs. “Just… please remember that it’s hard for me, sometimes. And let me think more about it.”

“Yeah,” Philip sniffles. “Yeah, of course.” Please don’t die, is what he wants to say, but he’s aware how strange that would sound. His ma has a headache, that’s all. People get headaches all the time. But he doesn’t pull away.

“Are you all right, Pip?”

Philip swallows hard. He nods into his ma’s shoulder.

“Did I upset you?”

Philip shakes his head. “I’ll get the dishes,” he chokes out, and keeps his face low as he collects them from the table. “You should… you should rest, or something.”

Ma blinks a couple times, her brow furrowed, and then she shakes her head ruefully, a smile straining her lips. “You really are so much like him.” She stands up and embraces him again, and Philip allows himself to be small in her arms. He doesn’t know how she’s read his mind, but she hugs him close and says, “I’m not going anywhere, baby.”

Chapter Text

After the many indignities and miseries of the fall, Christmas sneaks up on Philip. His ma goes down to the village and buys the meanest turkey on offer as entertainment for the monster while they’re gone, and then they set out for Aunt Peggy’s with snowflakes gently drifting down upon their heads.

They arrive in Albany on Christmas Eve having been delayed a full day by the weather. Philip wonders if he will be able to dredge up the required holiday cheer from the turbid depths of his temper. But then, at the first moment when Aunt Peggy flings open the door and his three cousins all tackle him at once backwards into the snow, he bursts out laughing and can’t stop. Only when he’s flat on his back in a snowdrift with a six-year-old sitting triumphantly on his chest, two older collaborators pinning his arms, and tears of laughter freezing his eyelashes together, does he cry halt.

“You seem well,” Aunt Peggy comments after supper. Philip is in a rocking chair near the fire, the six-year-old cousin asleep in his lap and a kitten curled up asleep atop the cousin.

Philip feels well. “It’s good to be in friendly company,” he whispers. Maybe it’s just that he has a child on his lap, but he feels like he’s being included in the circle of adulthood, to have been asked, and he’s proud of how charming his answer is. He’s almost guilty at his own contentment knowing how miserable Theodosia must be at this first Christmas without her mother. But after all the miserable events of his own in the last few months, and with the knowledge it could be even worse driven home by every single one of her letters, it seems that his own spirit is at last discovering a defiant sort of happiness—not blithely ignoring the bad, but rather seizing joy wherever he may find it. And there’s joy here.

“Eliza told me you’ve been having a rough time.”

Most days, Philip would love to have a sympathetic ear to complain to, but in truth he’s not in a complaining mood. “It’s better now that we’re here.”

Aunt Peggy chuckles and allows herself to be deflected. “You must be glad to put your feet up, at least.”

Philip cannot help the face he makes. His feet have been getting bigger and his boots have, alas, stayed the same size. With the cold numbing his toes on the journey to Albany, he hadn’t noticed the blisters until the first evening at an inn, when he’d taken off his boot only to find his feet smeared with blood. The next day they’d been forced to wait for the storm to pass, and during that time his ma had done her best to buy new footwear for him. But the town consisted of little more than an inn at a crossroads, and warm boots were dear in a snowstorm. She had been unsuccessful. Philip had hobbled the remaining twenty miles to Peggy’s, and now is relieved to have his feet propped up on an ottoman, clean and bandaged and snug in wool socks.

“You know, when Stephen and I were picking out your present, we didn’t know about your poor feet, but I think you’ll like it even better now.”

“You’re not going to tell me what it is, are you?” Philip asks.

“Of course not,” Aunt Peggy winks, and Philip smiles. New boots will be perfect.

There are, in fact, new boots for him the next morning. He immediately puts them on, breaking into a grin when they don’t pinch his toes. And the buckles are in the latest style (or so Aunt Peggy assures him), the leather a perfect deep black, the heels sharp-angled and unworn and the toes pointed straight forward instead of curled back with age. He struts around the room in them, making everybody laugh, and doesn’t even notice when Uncle Stephen gets up and slips out the front door.

“There,” Aunt Peggy says, clapping her hands together, “Now that we have you properly outfitted, we can go outside so you can get your real present.”

Philip, who had been spinning balanced on one heel to see how many turns he could go, nearly crashes to the hardwood floor. “Another present? Out…outside? But what could…”

Aunt Peggy and his mother meet each other’s eyes with conspiratorial smiles. Philip notices for the first time that Uncle Stephen is no longer in the room. And a piercing whinny breaks the Christmas morning quiet outside.

Philip races his cousins to the door and nearly trips over the threshold in his eagerness. Against the gray of the sky and the white of the drifted snow, the dapple-gray mare looks more like a spirit of the season than a flesh-and-blood creature. She stands placidly at the end of a lead that Uncle Stephen holds in one hand, beckoning to Philip with another.

Philip looks in astonishment from Uncle Stephen, to Aunt Peggy, to his mother. Surely there is some mistake. He opens his mouth to say so and finds he cannot get the words out.

“Mommy,” Cordelia whines, tugging at Aunt Peggy’s skirts, “how come Philip gets a horse and I don’t, that’s not fair.”

“Oh, shush,” Aunt Peggy says, ignoring her.

“I—I get a horse?” Philip says, his voice cracking. It’s been doing that a lot more lately; Aunt Peggy has been teasing him all morning. But this time she only nods.

“All yours,” Uncle Stephen confirms. “With your mother’s permission, of course.”

Philip turns his astonished gaze to his mother. She nods.

“But… but the monster, Ma, there’s no way—”

“The horse-trader we bought her from says she fended off a panther-cat and has the scars to prove it,” Aunt Peggy says. “Mind, he also said she was deaf as a post and twice as stubborn.”

“I have a lot of practice with stubborn,” Philip says, thinking of the monster. “But Ma, can we really—"

“We’ve talked it over,” Ma interjects, “and you and I will have to watch her closely while it grows accustomed to her. If it seems to have…unwholesome designs…I’ll bring her straight back here and Aunt Peggy will keep her.”

Philip turns back to the mare, and she’s looking straight at him. He’s so happy, his whole chest aches. Stepping towards her with an outstretched hand, he says, “Hello there, lady.”

She approaches immediately, bumping his hand with her nose and giving an indignant chuff. Philip jumps as Uncle Stephen presses a carrot into his free hand. He offers it to the mare, who accepts his offering with enthusiasm and allows him to stroke her mane in wonder for quite some time after. 

Too soon, Christmas is over and they have to return home. As a consolation, the return journey is much kinder than the previous to Philip’s feet. For the most part his mother leads the horse while he rides, allowing his blisters time to finish healing, although she does make it clear that after his feet are better, and given that all goes well with the monster, they will be sharing the horse equally. That makes perfect sense to Philip—after all, his ma does more traveling than he does, and it would be foolish not to share something as useful as a horse. But in his heart, the mare is his. Before they leave Aunt Peggy’s, he and Cordelia braid bells into her mane as proof against misfortune.

He names her Lampon, meaning the shining, but also being a reference to a monstrous mare from Greek mythology. Although she does not answer to her new name, being deaf, Philip hopes it will stick some other way, and give her the courage to stand down their actual resident monster.

This hope succeeds beyond his wildest dreams: when the monster comes galloping down the narrow track from the cabin to greet them, Lampon doesn’t budge an inch, but stiffens her legs and arches her neck, making herself look very fierce. The monster doesn’t seem to know quite what to make of her. It sidles up crablike and low to the ground, scuttling in with a particularly nosy part of its body towards the horse. Evidently she judges this too close an intrusion, because she rears back with calculated ease and kicks straight at one of its larger snouts.

The instant the hoof connects, the monster recoils with a great trilling, screeching scream. It bucks onto its trailing legs, the angle so steep that it actually topples onto its back. With a rippling twist of what looks like a hundred-and-eighty degrees to its spine, it gets itself feet-side down and sprints off, wailing all the while.

Lampon gives a self-satisfied snort. Philip, slightly in awe, feeds her a carrot.

The monster makes itself so scarce in the next few days that Philip finds himself grown worried. Even Ma is concerned, although of course she doesn’t like admitting it. For better or worse, the silly thing is a part of their family now, and though Lampon has certainly taken its place in their barn, she certainly hasn’t replaced it in their hearts.

“I hope the monster comes back soon,” Philip murmurs one night, he and his ma are both reading by the fireplace. “It’s not the same without him.”

“No,” his ma says, the worry clear on her face. “It isn’t. Maybe tomorrow—”

Whatever it was she would have proposed for them to try tomorrow, Philip will never know, because at that very moment there’s an unmistakable hoot-crow-honk, and less than a second later a thud-smash, the first sound above their heads and the second just outside the window. Philip rushes to the window and finds a massive slab of snow that has slid off their roof, taking several wicked icicles with it. He shoves on his boots and rushes outside, his ma only a step behind him, and there they behold a truly astonishing sight: the monster, perched atop their chimney. When it sees them it leaps down, making them both jump. It’s an even more pathetic sight than usual, with its fur all darkened with soot and its multitude of eyes red with the smoke.

“There you are!” Ma cries. "Have you been up there this whole time?" The monster gives an answering cry and rolls three or four times in the snow, leaving a great sooty mess.

“Blockado tornado grenado!”

“Oh, you stop that nonsense,” she says, giving it an affectionate swat. The silly beast pretends to be bowled over, toppling back into the snow with an exaggerated screech and landing sprawled with all its tongues lolling out. Ma laughs so hard she has to lean on Philip to stay upright, the monster growing so excited that it races in circles around the house. As they return inside Philip finds his heart as light as it has been in months.

Between the excitement of the holiday and the new horse, Philip finally shakes his winter melancholy. He even manages to scrape up, if not inspiration, willpower enough to redraft the first chapter of his father’s biography. Having attempted it multiple times now, he is more aware of potential pitfalls this time around, and snatches of favorite half-recalled phrases still echo in his memory. It takes him two weeks, but he works a little each day to first write out the facts as best as he knows them.

Then he takes a fresh stack of paper and, with his bare frame of facts close at hand, begins the project of making it more like a story. It is not only a matter of embellishing the language, but of setting the scene, the tone, the attitudes of all the major characters and particularly his father. Even Burr’s testimony has settled somewhat in his mind. What it tells him, he has decided, is not that his father deserved to have those kinds of terrible things said about him—for his mother says they are untrue, and she has it straight from Alexander—but rather that folk have been quite free in unfairly tarring his character and his background. And Philip is extremely qualified to write about the effects of repeated slanders upon a young man’s character and disposition. 

It’s hard work, taxing and emotional and more personal that Philip would like, and his progress is slow. To give himself distance when he finds his nerves fraying, he sets about training the mare and training himself to work with her. It’s true, she’s quite stubborn, but her love of treats provides a clear space for Philip to negotiate in. He’s not at all familiar with the finer points of riding, having not previously had much opportunity to practice, but his ma sets out at once to teach him the fundamentals, and by the first warm day of March he and Lampon are deemed competent to go into town together without Ma’s supervision. No letter from Theodosia, but the proprietress of the Key and Kite smiles at him when he asks.

Between his newfound focus on writing the book, the joys of the gray mare, and the new books and sheet music he received from Aunt Angelica for Christmas, Philip hardly has a moment to dwell upon the loss of his school friends. The scars on his hands fade, as do the chants in his memory.

Forgotten also is the argument he had with his mother before Christmas—at least for Philip. But apparently his mother hasn’t forgotten that he asked about other monsters and has been quietly working her way up to a revelation: a letter from Aunt Peggy appears on his desk one morning. Philip turns it over, puzzled at the cracked edges and yellowing paper. It’s addressed to his ma, but if she put it on his desk, she clearly intends him to read it. So, so he smooths out the paper and reads.

There’s a lot about Uncle Stephen, and some gossip about a bunch of people in Albany that Philip doesn’t know, and an update on Papa’s uncertain health—what? He checks the date on the letter, having skimmed over it the first time. 1783! Only a year after he was born, when Grandpa Schuyler was still alive.

 Peggy continues the theme of family with an admonishment that Eliza’s not writing Angelica as often as she ought and Peggy is having to field the complaints and worried inquiries from their eldest sister. All in all, the letter is so mundane that Philip nearly skims over the relevant passage:

I have discovered some intriguing news regarding the new Governor of this territory, Peggy writes. It is said that dashing young André and his beautiful young wife have taken in a ward, a boy from foreign parts, one who lost his previous guardian in the recent misfortunes. When I heard about him I was instantly reminded of an old friend of yours. The boy is said to be gallant to the point of hilarity, for he is not terribly graceful. He loves to play with toy swords and horses and dress up like a general. He is by all reports quite attached to the Andrés, and the Andrés to him. By all reports, I say, because the Andrés have taken to hosting grand soirees at their house, and I have heard no less than three sources that their ward is a frequent presence, delighting all the guests with his simple chivalry and childlike songs. It is said he is sweet as candy.

I don’t know of what use this information will be to you, but I knew I could never let you hear it from a stranger. Forgive me, Eliza, if this has caused you pain.

Philip’s brow furrows. Why on earth would his mother be pained by Governor André adopting a boy? It doesn’t make any sense; she doesn’t know him. So then why would Peggy say she doesn’t want his mother to hear it from a stranger?

Well, given the date on the letter, the “recent misfortunes” might refer to the war-that-wasn’t. A gallant, foreign boy, whose adoption by Governor André his mother would find upsetting…   

Philip puts the letter down, his breath coming fast. He has to write Theodosia. He has to do it now.

He writes so quickly the ink splatters, so quickly his penmanship flattens into a scrawl. This is too important—he can’t have someone else see this, this is a secret, this could get them both killed—“Ma!” he cries, “Ma, what was it you said about the invisible—can you help me?”—but she’s going to the soiree soon, and the Royal messenger’s coming through town today and won’t be again for another week—and it’s morning yet, but he’ll be along by noon, and he can’t have Theodosia walking straight into a monster’s nest unawares—

His ma appears, hair half-braided. “Philip, what on earth—”

“The ink!” Philip cries. “The invisible ink, tell me you remember how to make it!”

“It’s… it’s just pickle juice, Philip.”

“Then get me some!” At the forbidding look that appears on his mother’s face, Philip shrinks in his chair. “Um, please? It’s very very urgent and important that I send it out with the post today?”

His mother’s face says plainly that there will be a reckoning later, but she disappears and reappears a moment later with a jar of pickles, an old spare inkwell, and a fresh quill. As Philip is frantically completing his black ink letter, she pours the pickle juice into the inkwell and cuts the nib of the quill.

“Blot it first!” she cries, as he reaches out for the new pen. “Otherwise you’ll smear.”

A torturous pause for blotting, and then he resumes.

Theo sorry for my handwriting I hope you can read this because I can’t even see it very well, he begins. I didn’t tell you the whole story before. I’m trying to save my father, and I need to know more about the monsters! Please help me. Reply invisibly if you can.

André—you should know, the Great Revision was half his design—has a little boy who isn’t just a boy. It’s the monster that he made for Lafayette and you must tell me everything about what he is like when you go to the party. You will know him by his toy sword and that he likes to sing.

The other monsters—I only know one for certain. Laurens is in front of Trinity Church. Ma says that he was brave and true, just as they say he was. I need you to tell me if Lafayette seems to be a lie as well and please describe him in as much detail as you can. Ask your father about what he was like before the war if you must, I’m certain that if he knew my father he must have known Lafayette because my mother says all the time that they were friends, and Laurens as well. But I don’t know about any of the other monsters. As for my father’s other friends, one was your father, and you know better than I how he turned out. The other was a talkative tailor by the curious name of Hercules Mulligan who is now very likely tracked down by André and dead, but my ma isn’t certain. He was also a spy, so please do be careful if you go asking after him, as I imagine it may cause some alarm surrounding yourself.

It’s a stream-of-consciousness mess and he’s a little uncertain it will even be comprehensible. In the best case, he’s certain she’ll have plenty to mock him on for grammar and style, but he can’t even read his own words to correct them; the faint wetness on the page has already faded, leaving nothing but the faint smell of pickle juice.

“Wait!” his ma says, before he can fold the letter up and seal it. “How is she to know you’ve sent her something invisible?”

Philip hadn’t thought of that. “I…uh…”

His ma rolls her eyes. “You must do it as she did it, by slipping it past their view. Here, add a postscript with the ordinary ink. Say that you received both of her letters of the eighth of the month—which she will know to mean both the visible and the invisible—and that you are pleased to have responded in kind.”

Philip adds the postscript, smearing it awfully as he folds up the letter. Still, he thinks it can be read, and as he looks up to heat the sealing-wax he finds his mother has already done it. He flips the page—she drives the seal down—he blows on the wax and she takes the letter as he charges down the stairs and bundles into his coat. “There you are,” she says, handing it to him with a nervous glance at the sun. “The messenger likes to lunch at the Key and Kite—you might be able to catch him. Quickly, now!”

Philip races outside to saddle up Lampon, who is digging at a patch of tender new grass shoots and determined to ignore him. “Come on, girl,” he pleads.

“Here, girl, come now.” His ma appears at his side, holding a carrot. Lampon’s head comes up, nostrils flaring. While she’s distracted Philip mounts, and in a moment he’s off, spurring her on through the patchy muck that the melting snow has made of the roads. Lampon is surly with him, and the ground dangerous anyhow—he has to grit his teeth and take it at a trot. He arrives at the inn with the news that he’s missed the Royal messenger by only a few minutes. Well, he started galloping with Ma last week…

The Royal messenger, resplendent in his red uniform, turns around in astonishment upon his own horse as Philip and Lampon come charging up alongside. Philip quickly sits back further on Lampon and gives the foot signal that tells her to slow down, and she actually skids a few feet on the mud as she’s changing gaits before mercifully recovering. Still, he massively underestimated the amount of space it would take to slow down, and he hears an odd rising laugh from the messenger as he and Lampon blow straight past him.

“Whew, girl,” he says, as he pulls back on the reins, but she doesn’t feel like slowing down anymore, and they’re still moving at a canter. This has happened a few times when he was practicing with Ma, and after a few frightening failures Philip has learned how to manage it. He guides Lampon off to the left, then turns back around to the right, leading her in a long arc that eventually takes them back past the messenger in the other direction. It only takes two more circles before Lampon is breathing hard and content to walk—right up to the very bemused Royal messenger, who has halted his horse.

“Something urgent, young man?” he asks, one eyebrow raised.

“Um,” Philip gasps. He hadn’t thought to prepare a story. “My—my friend, I had to. Um. She wrote me—I’m replying to her, it’s very—" He digs into his jacket pocket, drawing the letter out. He worked up such a sweat just now, he hopes it doesn’t smell like armpit. The messenger wrinkles his nose, but he takes the letter—gingerly, by one corner—and stows it in his leather bag.

“Pretty girl, is she?”

Philip stammers over his answer. Fortunately, he turns so red that the man roars with laughter, provoking Lampon into taking a chomp at his knee. Philip only barely keeps his seat. When he recovers, the redcoat is sheepish enough to make a quick exit.

Lampon is quite annoyed with him, probably less for making her gallop and more for making her stop, so to atone for his bad behavior Philip gets off and leads her home by the reins.

“What was that all about?” his mother asks, when he comes inside after brushing Lampon and feeding her thank-you carrots. Ma’s cutting up potatoes in the kitchen, and Philip steps up beside her and gets to work.

“Theodosia… Theodosia’s been invited to one of André’s parties,” he says, mind racing. He knows the intelligence of the lie about Lafayette was begrudgingly offered, and he doesn’t want her to know that instead of treating it as a shameful secret he went and blurted it out to his best friend the first chance he got, so that she could help him learn of more lies of its type. “I…um, your letter…I hadn’t realized how central he was, to the whole war-that-wasn’t. I had to warn her.”

Damn, had he even done that? It certainly seems like a good idea now. He can’t remember what he wrote, his words having disappeared as quickly as they were written.

“Hm. You really enjoy writing to her, don’t you?” his ma says, with a soft smile.

“Yes,” Philip says, with full honesty. Their letters have been growing longer and longer of late. She’s nearly as lonely in New York City as he is all the way out here, and her brilliance and her father’s paranoia have proved just as deadly a combination for her social life as Philip’s in-the-blood reputation and the monster in the woods. “She’s… it’s fun.”

“Well, I’m glad. It’s important to have friends your own age.” His ma leans over and kisses the top of his head. “I’ve got to go into town to see about selling our crop this year. Finish these up and throw them in the stewpot and then you can go outside, all right?”

The next missive from Theodosia appears to be only a short note, folded in the pages of a very boring treatise on botany. Philip holds it up to the heat and finds a single word: book.

When he warms the book, he gasps. Theo has filled pages upon pages, and it soon becomes apparent that the only reason she had chosen this particular book was the amount of space between the lines.

Dear Philip,

It’s been so long since I’ve written and I have so much to say I scarcely know where to start. First of all, I took it upon myself to visit all your father’s friends in person, if I could. John Laurens was the easiest and also the least revelatory. I stole the crown of roses from him, out of spite for his stupid happy face. One day, perhaps, I shall replace it with an olive wreath, but it is not yet the time. My father remained stony-faced when I asked about the man. It seems Laurens doesn’t have the same power as Hamilton to disturb him.

The tailor indeed seems to have vanished without a trace, but in the course of my inquiries among, Lord, it seems every tailor in the city, I did find quite a skillful and garrulous man in the dockyard district who is looking to upgrade his clientele. When he heard my illustrious name he offered me a half-price deal on the first three dresses I purchase from him, with my money back if I dislike anything about them. My three months of mourning-black only recently came to an end, and I dyed all my old dresses, and given the fact I had been invited to deliver a Classical passage at the most exclusive event in New York (that would be Governor André’s annual soiree—do try and keep up), I was in desperate need. So, you may imagine how well-received this offer was. I know I bore you, speaking of such frivolous things, but I assure you that good dresses are an extremely important matter in my circles, and therefore good tailors are worth their weight in gold. It’s a shame, though, that I didn’t manage to find your father’s friend.

 I am sure you have guessed from my mention of Governor André where this story is going. Your letter was most timely. It was most essential to my success in the events that transpired, which I now describe.

I had known, of course, of the existence of the Andrés’ ward. The whole of high society in New York City knows, although I don’t believe the common folk are aware. I was entire ignorant of the boy’s origins, but it’s widely reported that André adopted him after the war. There are murmurs about the circumstances, of course, mostly from André’s political enemies, and these are very few and very quiet in the city, and they are exceedingly cautious because any talk against him, no matter the motivation, is quickly conflated with sedition. André has eyes and ears everywhere, and a great deal of social capital. It is for this reason, I believe, that there is no public and very little private censure or even speculation regarding the boy, though on the face of it this seems remarkable given the sheer strangeness of a child that has, by all accounts, been about ten years old for the last fourteen years.  

Your letter provides another clue for how the boy’s existence has not attracted the attention or curiosity of any other of the powerful in this city, for they were all tied up in the Great Revision in some way or another, and likely understand exactly how he came to be—likely played a role in his creation, just as André did. In this, as in all things, the New Yorkers follow the lead of the British among us, imitating carefully lest we lose our places.

Now that I know the truth, I shudder when I think of the poor creature, brought into this earth only to impugn another, without the wits to understand the first or the last facts about his life. You will tell me, of course, to have sympathy with the man impugned, and I have that too. But I didn’t know that man, and I’ve now met this boy, and I find it difficult to separate my ambivalence towards the first with my pity for the latter.

I know you are of course anxious to hear my account of the soiree’s events and shall tell you the story from the beginning. I like to think that I played the role of girl-prodigy admirably, though it is somewhat without precedent. I recited my lines with panache and then beat all the men at whist, which they found hilarious, though they didn’t let me keep their money. The boy wasn’t present at the party, which I found, of course, vastly disappointing, though I couldn’t say a word about it for fear that my inquiry would be noted and taken amiss. But lingering at the punch-bowl I heard one of the older girls ask after him, for she too had noted his absence and seemed genuinely concerned for his welfare.

The hostess replied, and this is as near to a direct quote as I can manage, “The poor boy has taken ill these past several weeks. We are doing everything we can to help him, but he is in much distress and he is not fit to appear for his admirers.”

“Oh, dear!” replied the guest, looking wistfully up at the western wing of the house. “The poor thing. That is most distressing news. Please, wish him well from me. I shall miss his little voice, piping, Will you have a dance? Will you have a dance?”

The hostess made a frown at this, one which she concealed as best she could with her fan. “I shall convey your well wishes,” she said.

“Is it,” the guest said, and her she pitched her voice quiet, “is it anything to do with the pamphlets?”

“Pamphlets?” said the hostess, making a great show of surprise—quite disingenuous, by my guess, as there are many of them despite her husband’s best efforts to seize every unlicensed printing press in the city.

“Yes!” the guest replied, emphatically. “Yes, I’m surprised you haven’t seen them! They’re almost blanketing the streets!”

“Blanketing the streets?” cried the hostess, turning in alarm. “My dear, if you’ve noticed any locations where seditious pamphlets might be distributed, I beg you to speak to my husband at once!” Then she calmed herself. But her voice was still quite harsh with emotion as she said, “Of course, the pamphlets have nothing to do with the boy, and I have no idea what you think the connection might be. But please, do speak to my husband.”

And then she hurried off to speak to someone else.

I was most intrigued by several aspects of this conversation, but the one most immediately in need of clarification was these pamphlets, for though there are many circulating it was hard for me to see the immediate relevance to Lafayette. So, I approached the guest after the great distraction of the dancing, when it would be less obvious what I was about. Of course she complimented my recitation and we laughed about the gentlemen and their cards together, and she took the opportunity to attempt to take me down a peg with a backhanded compliment about my hair, which I graciously ignored, because it’s not her fault that I’m developing my own signature look and that her aesthetic instincts are not well-honed enough to appreciate it.

Over the course of our conversation it quite naturally came to pass that we discussed where she lived. As it transpired, her address was quite close to my friend Louisa’s, and though I had visited her quite recently I had seen nothing in the manner of seditious pamphlets there, or at least not in quantities that could be said to be blanketing the streets. I attempted to steer the conversation in one direction after another: hobbies, friends, tutors, hairstylists. None of these yielded any locations unfamiliar to me. I was beginning to wonder if she was making the pamphlets up to gain favor—if Mrs. André had merely called her bluff. Fortunately for me, she came up with some excuse to end our conversation. Unfortunately, however, I had gleaned nothing as to where I might find one of these pamphlets about Lafayette.

And even more frustratingly, there was still the fact that I wouldn’t see the boy. After obtaining access to one of the most exclusive social events in the entire season, it seemed like an unconscionable omission that I should be denied the ultimate prize.

I wandered into the westerly parts of the gardens, where there were fewer guests, and those who were there clustered into small, serious groups, almost exclusively men, smoking pipes and speaking in low voices with grave faces about political matters such as the little rebellion in western Pennsylvania that has been so effectively and brutally put down. They mostly glanced at me and, when I continued to walk, assumed I had some destination and went back to their talk. You will recall, I think, that when Mrs. André’s would-be informant spoke so wistfully of the sickly boy, she had gazed straight up at the windows of the western part of the house. I noticed as I drew closer that some of these windows had been flung open to admit the salubrious air, with curtains wafting in the breeze. And here I performed possibly the boldest act of my life thus far (for you had told me that the boy loves music): I squared myself, lifted my head, and sang.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with "Non più andrai" from Le Nozze di Figaro by the great genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a child prodigy of Europe who is now grown, but I suppose you are unlikely to have encountered any of his music in your little town. I thought it the perfect piece to capture the mind of a military-minded young boy for its sweetness and quickness and its jaunty quality. So I sang:

Schioppo in spalla, sciabla al fianco,        Gun on your back, sword at your side,
Collo dritto, muso franco,                               Your neck straight, your nose out,
Un gran casco, o un gran turbante,                 A big helmet, or a big turban,
Molto onor, poco contante.                             A lot of honour, but little pay.
Ed in vece del fandango                                  And instead of the dance
Una marcia per il fango.                                  A march through the mud.
Per montagne, per valloni,                              Over mountains, through valleys,
Con le nevi, e i solioni,                                    With snow, and heat-stroke,
Al concerto di tromboni,                                 To the music of trumpets,
Di bombarde, di cannoni,                               Of bombardment and cannon,
Che le palle in tutti i tuoni,                             Which, with every boom,
All'orecchio fan fischiar.                                 Send bullets whistling past your ear.
Cherubino, alla vittoria!                                  Cherubino, go to victory!
Alla gloria militar!                                           To martial glory!

I have taken the liberty of translating alongside as I suppose you don’t know much Italian either. Of course, the song is scored for a bass part, that of Figaro, so I took it into an octave more suitable for my own voice. Scarcely four measures in, a little smiling face was peeking at me from the upstairs window. “Cherubino!” I cried, when I was finished, and blew him a kiss, and the boy laughed in unbridled delight. In fact, a small crowd had grown cautiously near, drawn by the music and their curiosity, although Governor André was still in one of those deep conversations far-off, and seemed not to be paying much attention.

The small face at the window disappeared, and a moment later a door in the house opened and the boy came tumbling out, carrying an armful of wooden soldiers and throwing them all out on the lawn in full view of the guests. Upon first inspection he seemed to be nothing more than the sweet and simple boy I had been told about—certainly it was clear from the very first moment to me and to all the other guests there that he wasn’t ill, as Mrs. André had said. His skin the same color as mine, not the Andrés’ whey-white, and he was dressed in a long night-shirt and stockings, with his curls gathered in the back, and he wore a locket around his neck, of the sort one usually keeps a miniature portrait in. There was no miniature in the boy’s—the locket hung open, and the space for the portrait was completely black.

I stepped forward and knelt in front of him, taking one of the toy soldiers and holding him up.

“General!” I made the soldier say, in a serious tone. “What are your orders, sir?”

How to describe what happened next? Every person has their own way of turning their head, I suppose, of blinking, of speaking, and surely there is much variety among peoples and among individuals in the ways of doing these things. But beyond these there is some invisible standard, some indescribable, intuitive pattern of how humanity moves that must exist, for the only way I can describe the boy’s movement and speech is to say that this invisible standard was at every moment violated, although if you were to ask me, what precisely was deficient, I should be incapable of a satisfactory answer. Something strange about the way he spoke, some fetid honey-syrup quality that thickened his spit and stickied his fingers and dragged like molasses in his lungs. His voice not coming at quite the same time his mouth opened, his eyes blinking too deliberately, step by step.

And at the same time he seemed too much. Too much like a child, no child so childlike as he, no real boy so fragile and bright and sticky-sweet. Spun sugar, melting in the daylight.

“Hello!” he chirped. “Will you be my friend?”

I hesitated. Many other of the guests had noticed his presence and gathered round, and I realized too late that I had tried my stratagem as a spur-of-the-moment inspiration and hadn’t planned for its success.

“Will you be my friend? Will you be my friend?” he repeated, in exactly the same chirping tone, as though he barely knew the meaning of the words. I remembered the girl’s strange mechanical tone as she parroted, Will you have a dance? Will you have a dance?

“Yes,” I said.

Instantly came the next question. “Will you go to war? Will you go to war?”

The others all saw it, and I judged from their reactions that they, too, were disturbed. There were audible inhalations, which from a crowd as buttoned-up as the Andrés’ usual guests should, I believe, be considered on the level of screams.

I nodded.

“Hooray hooray!” he giggled, and immediately began smashing the soldiers together with incredible violence: one of their heads popped clear off and went flying into the crowd. Seeming not to care, the boy he let loose a stream of battlefield invective in fluent French, very different from his sing-song English, invested with real fire—but the most interesting feature of this, to me, and somewhat lost amidst all the words, was the sentiment Hold the line, men! Hold the line! Courage, men, courage—we must stand!

“What is the meaning of this?” came a man’s voice from behind, and turning I beheld the Governor himself, in an attitude of absolute fury. When his eyes fell upon his ward he raced forward and scooped him up off the grass, glaring at the assembled crowd. It was here I noticed that though the boy had made no sound, and shown no side of distress—and was, in fact, at that very moment giggling faintly—he appeared to be bleeding from a wound on his leg, dark liquid dripping down one of his calves. It left a smear of ink-black on André’s immaculate breeches.

The Governor hurried back into the house with the boy glaring like an angry sun in his arms, but the damage had been done and was irrevocable. When he came out in a fresh pair of breeches some minutes later scarce a man dared meet his eye. All the rest of the night conversations were stilted, laughter too high and too long, and many made their excuses and left as early as could be considered polite, some even before in my opinion. All who remained were preoccupied. The lie of the boy’s humanity had been dragged out into the open, and though everyone perhaps thought privately, “surely all the rest of them cannot go on pretending,” we all, as one, went on pretending. Practically, functionally, it remained true. I begin to see the wisdom now in your mother’s choice to hide your monster away. I cannot conceive of how this one might be vanquished, when all of New York pretends that it isn’t even a monster.

I wish to write you more—I have many theories—but I hope that soon I may track down the pamphlets of which the guest spoke, and there is only so long I can pretend to be at my lessons.

Your servant and your friend,

Theodosia

Only one more addendum to this story: with much effort I have hunted down one of the pamphlets to which Mrs. André’s tattle-tale alluded. Much effort, I say, for many copies were destroyed by the time I came into this one, and the man who finally provided it—my tailor—was highly reluctant to hand it over, and says he gave it to me only so that I would stop risking myself by asking about. It was written in English, a depiction of the events of the Battle of Brandywine, which you may be familiar with from your own studies.

My history books agree that His Majesty’s Army managed to flank Washington at this battle—a humorous near-duplication of the very same tactic that defeated him during the Battle of Brooklyn Heights. But from the pamphlet I learned that Lafayette had played a pivotal role in this battle, rallying troops even as they broke and fled. For this he had received a wound in his calf—honored me with a musket ball, the letter he wrote to his wife said—and a place in Washington’s heart. Astonishingly, to whoever wrote this pamphlet, that seems to be meant as praiseworthy. The pamphlet would have him a lion-hearted champion of liberty, the fierceness of his sword co-equal with the fierceness of his devotion to the cause. I have not enclosed the pamphlet, because while my invisible ink hides this missive I cannot hide something already printed, and I know there are folk who inspect the mail, probably especially yours.

From the quotation of the letter Lafayette wrote to his wife (I never knew he had a wife—the boy I saw was far too young for it) it was obvious enough that this was part of a French campaign, or at least that there was some French connection. But what most intrigued me was that the very words Lafayette is said to have shouted at Brandywine were being repeated by the boy in the Andrés’ garden, and that the ghost of his wound has now reopened in another body entirely. So it seems that their campaign is striking home, and pushing the boy into further uncanniness, and perhaps the Andrés’ lies cost more and more to maintain. Perhaps one day these mysterious pamphleteers will remake the boy in Lafayette’s own image, as Lafayette was once made in the boy’s. But for now, all I can say is that there’s hope for this monster, Philip. And maybe there is hope left over for yours.   

Chapter Text

Theodosia, my God, that was the most incredible thing I have ever read, but what possibly could have possessed you to

Theodosia, I cannot believe that you

Dear Theodosia,

When I said I wanted to learn more about Lafayette, I certainly never expected intended anticipated meant for

Dear Theodosia,

Thank you?

Philip sighs and crumples up his fourth attempt. Theodosia’s book-letter sits open on the desk next to it, looking deceptively innocuous for all the turmoil it has caused him.

“Philip?” His mother’s voice comes from downstairs. “Could you give me a hand with this?”

Philip sighs at the pile of disorganized papers on his desk. Well, maybe doing something else for a while will clear his head, give his shock some time to settle. “Coming, ma!” he yells.

“Beat the dust out of this while I mop, will you?” she says, gesturing down at the long rug that stretches from the front door to the bottom of the stairs. “It’s a lovely day out—it would be a shame not to put it to use.”

So Philip folds the rug over itself several times and hauls it outside, flinging it over the split-rail fence with a grunt. He can hardly reconcile the new clover underfoot and the pleasant-smelling breeze in his face with the nightmarish scene Theodosia described: the boy that wasn’t a boy screaming for war, while all the elite of New York City politely pretended nothing was the matter. Taking the broken-off haft of an old shovel, he gives the rug a thwap. An enormous cloud of dust flies up, and Philip, preoccupied, forgets to hold his breath. He reels back, fighting a sneeze, and trips over something ropy on the ground. As he goes over backwards, his grip on the wooden haft slackens, and it catapults straight up in the air.

There’s a donkey-bray of laughter from a foot away, and even as Philip’s being near-deafened by that he manages to make out, from a different mouth, “Gotcha taughtcha, teacher creature!”

“Oh, not funny!” Philip cries, disentangling his feet from the monster’s whippy tail.

A moment later the shovel haft comes hurtling down from the sky, conking the monster squarely on its donkey-head. The bray cuts off abruptly, only to restart a second later twice as loud. The whole creature bucks and snorts, and the donkey head corkscrews around in asinine delight. Philip goes to pick up the dropped shovel haft, only for the monster to snatch it up from the mud and dance away, keeping it just out of his reach.

Philip sighs.

“Good gracious, Philip, what happened to you?” his ma asks, eyebrows climbing to her hairline, when he finally limps in for dinner twenty minutes late, the rug spooling out of his arms to land crooked in the newly gleaming hallway. His boots are still out on the porch; he pulls back a chair and collapses into it. His face, reflected in the silver pitcher on the table, is haggard and bloody with half a dozen scratches from the blackberry bush he was pulled headfirst through. 

“That… jackass…” Philip can only point outside. “It spouted four new snouts while we were out there, I swear, it’s—" A blast of sound, the hideous duet between a donkey’s bray and an entire pack of coyotes yipping, cuts off his speech. “How we’re supposed to get any sleep tonight, I don’t know.”

Ma leans over and picks a leaf off his shoulder, wincing when she realizes that it's stuck there by tree sap. Instead of making a logical reply, a wistful half-smile comes to her face, and she says, “You’re growing up, aren’t you, Philip?”

Philip frowns. “Um… yes, I suppose? Wouldn’t it be worrying if I wasn’t?”

Ma chuckles. “Time was you’d have been happy to chase the monster through the woods all afternoon.”

“Well— yes , it’s nice to get outside, but—” But I wanted to read over my old Chapter Two drafts and see if there’s anything worth salvaging in them tonight, and Mrs. Potsham at the Key and Kite said she wanted to speak with me tomorrow afternoon, so if I want to make just the one trip into town this week, I should finish my letter to Theodosia before then… “I have a lot I want to get done.”

“Oh?” His ma’s wistful smile becomes knowing. “I saw you had a new book on hand. From Theodosia? How’s she doing?”

My God, she doesn’t know what’s happened. Well, of course she doesn’t know, he didn’t tell her! After all these years of his ma knowing everything and doling knowledge out to Philip as she thought best, it’s a little incredible to suddenly be the one who knows things. “She… oh, Ma, it’ll make you stare.”

He paraphrases Theodosia’s letter as best he can, as his ma’s eyes grow wider and wider, until eventually she’s sitting across from him statue-still, one hand over her mouth. When he gets to the monster Lafayette’s bleeding leg, she bows her head and squeezes her eyes shut, her hand balling into a fist.

“Ma?”

“I’m fine,” she says heavily. “I’m fine, Philip, keep going.”

Philip hurriedly brings the story to a close. “It didn’t work, though,” he says. “I mean, not all the way. Everybody there pretended it hadn’t happened.”

“But don’t you see, Philip? The fact that it happened at all is astonishing. There must be a counter-campaign.”

Philip’s heart beats faster. “Theodosia…she wondered if Lafayette’s wife could be involved. She said the pamphlet had an excerpt from a letter he sent her.”

His ma goes still again. “She had a letter?” There’s a slight tremble to her voice. Philip thinks of her own letters, soaked black and now growing brittle with age, locked in the desk upstairs. “But of course—the unwriting couldn’t possibly reach all the way across the sea. Yes, yes, it must be her—he told me her name, once, but I can’t—” Her brow furrows for a moment, and then suddenly smooths. “Yes. Adrienne. Adrienne de Noailles.”

“Can we write her?” Philip blurts. “She could tell us how she’s doing it!”

“Oh, certainly not, but…Angelica might be able to.” Eliza bites her lip. “England and France are on the verge of war. And putting all that in writing, first me to Angelica and then Angelica to Adrienne…it would be extraordinarily dangerous. There may be ways to make it less risky, but…”

Philip can already feel himself starting to wilt. “It’s all right, Ma,” he says. “I just got excited, is all. I didn’t really think it through.” At the thought of someone else trying to cross this unknown ground, his hopes had leaped higher than he’d have thought. If someone could just teach him what parts of his father’s biography to focus on, or how to get inside his head, how much detail to provide, whether to stick strictly to the facts or to add his own well-informed guesses and interpretations, how much to delve into the lives of his friends, whether to take as neutral an editorial position as possible or whether to attempt to portray Alexander in the most charitable way the facts will allow, or a countless number of other decisions—some guidance would be an incredible relief right now. And it seems that there are people who could give him that guidance, were they not out of his reach.

“This must mean that they have some contact in America, as well,” his mother speculates, oblivious to the crushing weight of disappointment dragging down Philip’s spirits. “Someone to print and distribute these pamphlets.”

“Theodosia might be able to help us find out!” Philip puts in.

“Absolutely not,” his mother says, her face going cold. “She’s already run incredible risk by exposing just how degraded the construct of Lafayette has become. André isn’t stupid. If she continues to act suspiciously, she will be caught. And if the British discover that the two of you have been corresponding, they will doubtless consider you implicated in whatever she’s been doing, simply because of your name. In your next letter to her, you must ask her to be more careful. After all, she is not only risking her own life, but also yours, and in risking you she risks your father as well. The stakes are simply too high.”

Philip feels sick to his stomach. He hadn’t considered that angle, and he thinks that it would be awfully unfair for him to say, given that just one letter ago he was begging her to find out more about Lafayette. But of course, his mother doesn’t know that either. So, instead of trying to explain the whole mess, he bows his head and says, “Yes, Ma.”

“Oh, dearest, don’t be sad.” His ma takes his hand and squeezes it. “This plot to save Lafayette is incredibly good news...just so long as we can keep ourselves from getting tangled up in it.”  

Dear Theodosia, Philip finally writes, at some time approaching one in the morning. The Milky Way glows in the black outside his window. His candle is nearly a stub. And the pickle juice he’s writing with is clear. He only hopes Theodosia will be able to read his handwriting.

What to say to you? I don’t believe I have ever been so astonished in my life as when I read your letter. Please do not take that as only an insult—I suppose I mean both good and bad by it. By good, I mean that you, in the span of one afternoon, advanced my understanding of monster-kind and particularly how their monstrousness may come to fail than years of previous speculation or reading of mine has. Now we know that monsters are indeed malleable to the published word, as we have theorized. We know that they can be altered in body and mind. That is something incredible, and I am deeply and sincerely grateful to you for procuring this knowledge on my behalf, and at great risk to yourself.

But it is with the subject of great risk that I must now concern myself. My mother has particularly exhorted me to write to you and beg you to be more circumspect in the future. If you should ever be implicated in a plot against the British, it doesn’t matter that you are a woman or that you are young or that you entertain them. Your life would be at risk. And there is my life, as your frequent correspondent, to consider as well.

Philip strikes the last line out several times, rendering it, he hopes, completely illegible. Although his mother’s dire warning still rings in his ears, writing it out makes him feel like the worst kind of coward. After all, this is his fight more than it is Theodosia’s. He should be willing to bear more consequences than her.

You may have stumbled upon a plot to alter history itself. Such things are so consequential that danger clings to them like fog to a hillside. I fear that if you learn too much you will constitute a great danger to the Crown’s power.

Philip frowns and crosses that out. Knowing Theodosia, she would probably like being a great danger to the Crown’s power. It would make her feel important, and she has (understandably, after her mother’s death) been grappling lately with the question of her own insignificance.

My mother and I agree with your idea that the French are behind this plot. Would it then not be best to let them get on with it? After all, their situation here is likely quite delicate. You have already drawn André’s eye and his admiration with the power of your mind, and your activities may draw unwelcome attention their way. Or, equally disastrous, if you continue to hunt for them, they might become frightened, and you could flush them out like a covey of partridges. So, while we heartily congratulate you for discovering a secret plot by the French and a less-secret coverup of the secret plot by André, we would exhort you now to let the secret plot remain as secret as ever it can.

With admiration and apprehension in equal measure, I am

Yr svt

Philip

“And you’ve got a letter for me this morning, I suppose?” Mrs. Potsham asks. “And you’ll be having your usual?”

“Yes, please,” Philip says, flushing slightly as he hands over the letter, addressed, as always, to Theodosia’s voice teacher. Mrs. Potsham, the proprietress of the Key and Kite, gives him a slice of cherry pie in exchange. At this time of day, before lunch, even, the tavern floor is nearly abandoned, with only a few regulars arguing over a chess game all the way across the room. The cherry pie is still piping hot out of the oven. He puts a half-crown on the table in payment.  

“Actually,” Mrs. Potsham says, “This is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“My… pie-eating habits?”

“Well, indirectly. I suppose.” She comes round from behind the bar—Philip has seen her so rarely beyond it that he’s a little surprised she has a lower half—and takes a seat at the stool next to him. “I’m hard up for help, and you seem like a likely lad.”

“Likely to do what?”

She chuckles, and Philip nervously chuckles back. “Likely to be a hard worker, and quick-witted, and honest with money.”

Good Lord, Philip doesn’t think he’s heard so many compliments about himself from anyone other than his ma. “How can you think that?”

“Because nobody in this town’s ever given you a chance,” Mrs. Potsham says, a hint of shrewdness in her voice. “Boy with your brains, something to prove—you could rise far, if the whole world weren’t against you. Hell, you might yet.”

Philip digests this for a moment. “Why do you say I have brains?” he asks, eyes narrowed. “You don’t have any evidence for that.”

Mrs. Potsham bursts out laughing. “As if that attitude weren’t enough!” she cries. “Well, if you want an honest answer, the Schuylers all have good heads on their shoulders. I’ve known them all from way back, even back to that old witch Livingston. And I reckon, way you were raised, you’re practically a Schuyler.”

“My name is Hamilton,” Philip says. “People won’t forget that.”

“No,” Mrs. Potsham says. “They won’t. All the more reason to get work here, aye? Be seen. Be personable. Let everyone know you’re a good boy.”

Change the narrative. Yes… that might work for himself. Philip doubts the benefits would extend to his father, but nor would it do his reputation any harm. And, he must selfishly admit, he’d love some time outside the house, and he’s always liked the atmosphere at the Key and Kite, and since Mrs. Potsham acts as the unofficial postmistress of their tiny town it would be excellent cover for sending and receiving letters from Theodosia, and he could always use some extra pocket money, and—

“I’ll even throw in some cherry pie,” Mrs. Potsham says. “You can take the leftovers home every day.”

“Deal,” Philip says, so quickly that she laughs again.

“I should have led with that, I suppose.”

"No, it wasn't because..." Philip realizes he's being teased and smiles. "Ah, yes, well. Thank you for the job."

They shake hands, Philip feeling both solemn and slightly disoriented by his sudden employment. “Now, finish your pie, and I’ll put you to work.”

Philip eats the pie, now cooled to a survivable temperature, and finds himself with a broom thrust into his hands.

“Do you know how to work that?”

“Of course I do,” Philip says. His ma has never let him off easy on chores—couldn’t afford to, with an entire farm to run. He even had a tiny broom when he was small, although he suspects now that was more for his mother’s amusement than any actual help.

“Right, then. I’ve already wiped down the tables, but that will be part of your job in the future. You’ll need to put the chairs up on them while you’re working. Start with the second floor, then the stairs, then the whole main room, corners first, and sweep it all out the door when you’re done, then take all the chairs down.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Philip says, with a sly grin, and sets to work. It’s an easy enough job, mindless, and although for a while he ponders the mystery of Mrs. Potsham’s motives, and develops some intriguing theories he can ask his ma for confirmation on, he soon he finds himself humming. It’s a drinking song that he overheard here once, probably recalled to mind by the setting: To Anacreon in Heaven.

“Boy!” Mrs. Potsham yells up from the first floor.

Startled, Philip nearly drops the broom. Suddenly he realizes that she might not appreciate the tune. After all, even though he wasn’t properly singing it, the lyrics are rather bawdy, and she’s close to his grandmother’s age. “Yes, ma’am?”

“You can sing, too?” She sounds like she can hardly believe her own luck. “Your range isn’t half bad.”

“I… I suppose so? Mostly I play piano.”

“You—really? Get over here.”

Philip rushes down the stairs, but Mrs. Potsham is climbing up them. She pulls a key from her apron pocket an opens a door he’s never noticed before, one that (he presumes) leads to her private living quarters. A moment later she’s back, holding a very old, battle-scarred stringed instrument. It looks something like a violin, but the body is shaped more like a gourd or a great fat teardrop, and there are eight tuning-pegs atop the neck instead of the violin’s four.

“What is it?” Philip asks.

“This,” she says, giving it a strum and immediately wincing at the discordant result, “is my late lamented husband’s mandolin.”

She holds it out to him. Philip takes the proffered instrument, stumped.

“Well? Can you tune it?”

He gives her a searching look. “Why are you doing this for me?”

She shrugs. “Folk spend more money the longer they stay here. Live music is a cow I can milk all night.”

“That’s not it.” Philip knows it instinctively. She could have given the mandolin—hell, given the job—to any one of a dozen youths about town. “Why me?”

“You’re asking a lot of questions for someone who’s doing you a favor,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “And in any case, they’re all the wrong questions.”

“Fine,” Philip snaps. Enough games. “How did your husband die?”

For a moment he’s afraid she’s actually going to slap him, but that teetering moment falls hard to one side, and her twisting expression resolves into, of all things, a smile. “Better question.”

“Which you’re still not answering.”

“Well I’ll tell you one thing: it wasn’t a cursed mandolin.”

Something in the scoffing way she says it makes Philip pause. The battle, he intuits. Though a Patriot triumph, Saratoga wasn’t without its casualties. And…and she was there, maybe. Carrying water, or shot, or tending the wounded. A witness—so she remembers properly, or at least more than most do. “You’re very kind to indulge me. Why?”

She shakes her head sadly. “Just bare minimum decency, boy.”

“Is that the only reason?”

She chuckles. “You just won’t quit, will you?” Instead of answering him directly, she holds out her hand for the mandolin. Philip hands it back, knowing instinctively that he’ll be keeping it in the end. She takes a cloth from her apron pocket and begins to gently wipe dust off. “Kept this thing locked away for years, I did. Like a sad story.”

Philip doesn’t say anything, and she continues to clean. He can tell from the way she handles the instrument that it’s precious to her. He can't understand why she would want to give it away.

“But a mandolin—anything with music—that’s not the kind of thing you lock away in memoriam for time all eternal. If you want to honor the life that moved it before, well, you must pass it along to the next generation. Let it sing new songs. That’s what it’s for. Do you understand me, boy?”

The look she’s giving him has far too much gravity to be about a simple instrument.

“I…you’re talking about...me?” Philip hardly knows what to say. Who is this woman, to presume to want so much for him? How much can she possibly know? “Did…did you ever meet my dad?”

She hands the mandolin back to him, the motion forceful. “That's a dangerous question. Wouldn't you like to come out from his shadow?”

Dangerous questions from both sides, now. Philip's nervous fingers strum over the mandolin’s still-untuned strings, and he winces. Without even thinking about it he finds the pegs and begins cranking them and plucking, cranking and plucking, until the intervals are right. “Do you mind if I take this home with me? To practice?”

Mrs. Potsham’s face creases into a genuine smile. “It’s yours.”

And at supper that night, when Philip, half-astonished, relates to his mother the tale of how he has somehow gotten himself a job and a mandolin, he leaves out the exchange about Alexander, feeling that it was meant in confidence and not wanting to upset his mother. But he does ask one thing.

“Her husband…how’d he…you know.”

“Apoplexy," his ma answers, distractedly grabbing a roll. "It was some time ago, maybe a few years after you were born.”

“Oh.” There goes his theory. “Not serving in the militia at Saratoga, then.”

“No, no,” his ma says. “You must be thinking of her son.”

While he’s waiting for Theodosia’s reply Philip begins his new position at the Key and Kite. At first, Mrs. Potsham advises him to stay away from direct interactions with her patrons while they grow accustomed to seeing him around, and she won’t let him near the food either, so he finds himself mostly tasked with sweeping the floors, cleaning the tables, and scrubbing dishes. He doesn’t mind the work and quite enjoys the pay, and in the meantime every day he practices on the mandolin, sometimes for hours.

At first he gains nothing but painful blisters on his fingertips, but over time they callus up and his skill begins to increase. As the weather warms he finds himself practicing more and more out on the porch, the sweet breeze stirring his hair, the monster laying at his feet like an old hunting dog, occasionally twanging along or letting out a steady stream of rhythmic nonsense as accompaniment. The hardest part is that he has no sheet music to learn from; Mrs. Potsham doesn’t even seem to know what he’s talking about when he asks for some. So he’s left playing by ear, or trying to translate piano music, or just making songs up.

His ma is none too pleased about his new occupation, but she allows it. Philip makes a special effort to keep up with the book and update her frequently, so she’ll know he’s not neglecting his duties: if anything, his progress accelerates. Her greatest concern is not distraction, but rather the danger of being so frequently in the presence of redcoats.

Privately Philip thinks this is a little ridiculous: the redcoats, though hostile in the abstract, like to drink in peace just like everybody else, and he’s doing nothing wrong by fetching them drinks. If anything, he’s likely to endear himself to them through countless minor pleasant interactions. Still, he’s sensible that his mother has real reason to hate and fear them, and so he does his best not to roll his eyes as she explains to him what to do if they try to make trouble or detain him. Mostly, her advice is to follow every instruction they have, no matter how demeaning or ridiculous, on the theory that if he acts docile enough, perhaps they won’t perceive him as a threat. I’m no threat anyway, Philip thinks, but he keeps his thoughts to himself. His ma means the best for him, after all.

Of course, he still has his duties on the farm and his work on the book, and so his days are crammed with activity from dawn until dusk. Some time in April he finishes what he deems to be quite a serviceable draft of Chapter Two, detailing his father’s time as a pamphleteer in New York City. His mother bakes a cake to celebrate. Philip, far from growing complacent, finds his motivation increasing. He quickly begins outlining Chapter Three: Alexander’s early days with the militia before he caught the attention of General Washington. Unfortunately, his mother doesn’t know very much about the militia or how it worked, having not yet known Alexander during that time or discussed it with him in much detail afterwards. So for the moment, Philip is stalled.

Even though he’s not making much forward progress on the book, he finds himself advancing at a satisfying pace in other areas. During a quiet stretch at the inn he brings out the mandolin and plays for Mrs. Potsham, and she’s so pleased with his progress she asks if he might play during the suppertime rush that very night. His nerves nearly get the better of him: all that day he sweeps crooked lines, and the dirty mugs he collects from tables clank together with his trembling. Unbidden, his memory circles back to the Rule, Britannia! incident at school. His anxiety isn’t helped by the presence of several redcoats. Although they come around often enough, and are accustomed to the sight of him, his hair raises at the thought of deliberately drawing their attention. When he takes his seat by the fireplace, tuning the instrument and doggedly ignoring the eyes that settle on him, the only thought he can muster is this is a mistake.

But the moment he begins to play, his mind sinks straight into to music. It’s like the crowd is gone—and indeed, they fall silent almost as soon as he starts playing. He picks a piece mostly of his own devising that never fails to settle him. It starts frenetic and bright but gradually finds its center, gains confidence, and broadens out into a pastoral meander before washing out into some great mystic calm. He pictures it almost like a tumultuous mountain stream that meets other streams, becoming a river that grows big and slow and fat before finally spreading into a delta and rejoining the sea. The notes come to him easy as breathing, charting the rush of his spirit in the beginning, and then, rather than Philip deliberately having to restrain the tempo, it’s like the music washes the restlessness right out of him: peace, child. Peace, peace.

When he looks up, as the ring of the last note dissipates, folk are staring, and for a moment he feels a great jet of despair, that even after baring this inner part of himself to them, still he will be rejected. But then he realizes—they’re smiling. And gradually, tentatively, with glances at one another to make sure everyone else agrees, they begin to applaud.

Chapter Text

“Young man,” a redcoat says, as Philip refills his ale, “I was fortunate enough to see your performance last night. That was wonderfully done.”

Philip is taken completely off guard by the man’s obvious sincerity, and in his confusion finds himself stammering out, “Well… well, thank you,” and hurrying away to another table. He quickly subsumes himself into the general disorder of the tavern, clearing plates, wiping down tables, refilling beverages—

“I mean it, though,” the man says, snagging Philip a second time as he rushes by. “Who wrote that piece?”

“Oh! That was me. With some Mozart at the beginning,” Philip blurts. “Mostly I know two-hand pieces for piano, and it's hard to get those perfectly over to mandolin. So I started by transposing that one but it was slow work and my mind started wandering and it just… happened.”

The redcoat whistles. “All the most talented musicians I have known are just the same. No idea where the music springs from. It just—comes.” And he smiles up at Philip as though this was a perfectly normal thing to say.

“I'm working,” Philip says, in a blind panic, and rushes back to the refuge behind the bar.

“Oh, Lord, what's the matter?” Mrs. Potsham asks, when she sees him frantically washing dishes as the customers are beginning to glance about wondering where their drinks are.

“A redcoat was getting friendly with me!” Philip whispers.

“Oh? Which one?”

Philip points him out.

“Oh, that's Jenkins. He's a toff, sixth son or something like. Loves the sound of his own voice, but he's harmless.”

“So what do you think I should do?”

Mrs. Potsham gives him an affronted look. “Serve and serve alike, Philip! I thought you were trying to make friends all over—isn’t that why you took this job?”

She’s got a point, there, although Philip had never considered the possibility that a redcoat might try to engage him. He makes a great show of refilling his own pitchers before returning to the floor and drops by Jenkins’ table soon after. “We can talk when it’s less busy,” he says, and, to his consternation and curiosity, the redcoat simply nods and takes another sip of ale.

Much later in the evening, when business has slowed to a few latecomers absently finishing their suppers and the regulars up at the bar, Philip returns to Jenkins.

“So you like music?” he asks. “Do you play?”

“I dabble,” Jenkins says. From the conversation that ensues, it becomes clear to Philip that this was false modesty; Jenkins’ knowledge of the modern musical scene borders on encyclopedic—he’s seen Haydn in person, was among the first to be surprised by the famous Surprise Symphony, which Philip has never heard but has, alas, had spoilt for him now. Though Jenkins is, as Mrs. Potsham promised, very stuck-up, he also casually offers to share his sheet music with Philip (“It’s all going to waste now, as our garrison is sadly deprived of a piano.”) and listens with great eagerness to Philip’s description of his creative process.

“Astounding,” he says, when Philip admits his ignorance of the use of the sonata form in the contemporary concerto. “You mean to say that you have had no technical musical education whatsoever?”

“Nothing apart from what my ma taught me,” Philip says, before realizing that it might not be the wisest course of action to mention his ma.

“Extraordinary. She must be a remarkable musician—you simply must introduce us, if you would find it appropriate, of course, and with your father’s permission.”

“I—ah…don’t think that would be wise...or...possible...”

Jenkins’ face creases in concern, and he waves a hand. “Say no more, my boy. I completely understand.”

“Do you?” Philip asks. At the guileless look on the redcoat’s face, he says, “I have a feeling you don’t.”

“Perhaps you shall be kind enough to inform me, please.”

“My name is Philip Hamilton.”

The redcoat looks blank.

“My… my father is Alexander Hamilton?”

The redcoat continues to look blank, before a faint note of comprehension appears in his eyes. “Is this something to do with the war?”

Philip just looks at him, stupefaction bleeding slowly to anger. It’s ironic: after years of wishing that people would judge him based on his own merit, and not upon his father’s twisted legacy, he’s finally encountered someone who will, and finds his ignorance... galling.

“Ah, yes, that explains it,” the redcoat airily continues. “I find your local American politics to be so abstruse that I am afraid I may never wrap my head around them. It seems patently absurd to me, that there is still bad blood over a minor incident some fifteen years in the past. Could your father not be persuaded to—”

“No,” Philip says firmly.

“Not even to—”

“No. He’s… basically, he’s dead.”

Jenkins’ eyebrows go up. “What on earth do you mean, basically?”

Shit. “I mean that he’s dead. He was killed in the war. By you people.”

“Which is why your mother wouldn’t want to talk.”

“Yes.”

Jenkins looks genuinely flustered. “I apologize. I’ve offended you.”

“A bit, yeah.” Philip’s astonished, first that the redcoat has bothered to notice Philip’s anger, and second that he’s bothering to apologize for it. “It matters, you know,” he says. “The history you’re so keen to ignore.”

“Well, you seem to know a lot of it,” Jenkins says, raising an eyebrow. “Perhaps you shall enlighten me, one day.”

“Perhaps I shall.”

“Lieutenant!” another redcoat calls, halfway out the door. “We’re headed back to the barracks. Will you join us?”

With an uneasy glance at Philip, Jenkins gets to his feet. “Good night, young man. And thank you again for the music.”

His mother has a different opinion of his performance, namely, that it should never have happened without her there to witness it. “I wish you would have told me!” she says, as they’re working side by side in the early morning sun. “I would have loved to see you.”

“But you’ve heard me practicing a thousand times,” Philip points out, scooping up another armful of seedlings and placing them, one by one, into the tilled earth.

“It’s not the same!”

“Well, you can come tonight,” Philip says, in what he hopes is a reasonable and not exasperated tone. “Mrs. Potsham has already gotten requests for me to perform again.”

“Oh, an encore! So you impressed them all, did you?”

Philip doesn’t want to be a braggart, but pride draws his mouth into a grin. “They applauded quite a lot.”

“You blew them all away! I knew it! And without me there to see their faces!”

He knows his ma is only teasing, isn’t really angry, but in an odd way it still stings. “It wasn’t much, truly,” he says. “Just one piece. I’ll play it the same tonight, I promise.”

“Well,” his ma says, stepping over to muss his hair affectionately, “If you promise.”

It’s slightly surreal to see his mother intermingling with the evening crowd at the Key and Kite—or rather, not intermingling at all, existing among them and yet apart of them in a way that is at once indefinable and obvious. Nobody is unkind to her, exactly, and nobody ignores her—on the contrary, they all seem to make special effort to keep a respectful distance. Even the redcoats, who have very little sense of the local history and relationships, take their cue from the rest of the room. Philip notices one staring admiringly at his mother—yuck—watches as the man gathers his courage, takes a step towards her, passes into the five-foot empty ring around her, notices his error… and wilts. He retreats back to his table, and the mockery of his mates, before Ma can even notice he’s there.

Philip is afforded no such personal space. Mrs. Potsham has deemed the later hours, when the clientele is nice and soused, to be the best for music, and so Philip is on duty for a good two hours before he will be called upon to perform. Folk are perfectly comfortable seizing his elbow, tapping him on the shoulder, bumping up against him in the crowded room. At first he’d disliked this part of the job, but gradually he’s grown to like it. It means that he’s a part of the town, that he’s one of them.

“Awfully crowded for a Thursday, don’t you think?” he observes, jitters already buzzing in his chest. They’ve got people standing around the back of the room, people leaning on the tables. He feels a pang at the sight of his mother, seated at a table for two with the lone empty chair in the tavern across from her. 

“Well, of course! I told everyone you’d be playing tonight!” Mrs. Potsham grins.

“Oh,” Philip says, feeling funny. “You did?”

“And they told their friends, and they told their friends, and they told their friends, and now half the town is here! Isn’t it wonderful?”

Philip gulps.

All too soon, it’s time for his performance. He makes one last run around the floor refilling mugs before retrieving the mandolin from behind the bar. Then the awkward but essential business of tuning—there’s one peg that always likes to slip up on him—and then he’s just… there. The room is rapt, and he hasn’t even started!

Well, there’s nothing for it. With a deep breath, he begins.

To start with he plays the piece from last time, the one he wrote himself. But Mrs. Potsham has made it clear that he's meant to be providing incidental music as well, the kind folk will chat over and more importantly, drink too, and so after he's done with his opener he cracks a grin and says, “Quiet lot, you folks are,” before launching into a real floor-stomping jig.

A raucous whoop goes up from the room, and soon folk are clapping along. A great laugh goes up when Old Bill Stone, who everyone knows cannot hold his spirits, begins dancing while still in his seat and manages somehow to topple over and take the whole table with him. With a nervous glance at his Ma, Philip checks if she's appalled to see him presiding over what—by Saratoga's standards—is a veritable bacchanal. But to his astonishment she's clapping along with the rest, beaming, spots of joy coloring her cheeks.

Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, so instead of moving onto the next piece he doubles back, wanders up into the next highest key, and the next, and the next, before deciding he's getting too high all together and bringing it all down in a chromatic cascade home. He's not quite sure if all the embellishments and modulations are quite a la mode for pub songs, but his fancy Redcoat friend, Lieutenant Jenkins, has been sitting with the bite of chicken halfway to his mouth for the past five minutes, so he can safely conclude that he's done something interesting.

So perhaps now something boring is called for, since he doesn't see any folks touching their drinks, too busy watching him and clapping along. A slow, arpeggiated chord then, soothing like he's lulling a baby to sleep. Sure enough, after he repeats it a few times he can feel the rooms attention start to slip— all except his ma, who watches with a smile so fond it's almost embarrassing, and Jenkins, who looks disappointed and eventually resumes eating his supper. After the swell of conversation rises up around him, Philip begins throwing in new chords, gently varying so as not to grow to hypnotic, and even improvises a simple melody on top once he's had time to mull it over a while. Mrs. Potsham refills mugs aplenty, and winks at him as she walks by. When the time comes, she gives a signal and Philip closes them all out with a traditional song that has the whole inn singing along like a congregation, if a congregation could be secular, and drunk.

“More!” they cry, applauding, “give us another, come on, lad!”

“Oh, no he won't,” Mrs. Potsham cries, swooping in front of him. “It's past the boy’s bedtime, ain't it?” She winks at his mother. “We’re closing. He'll be here this time next week, don't you fret.”

Grumbles abound, but her logic is begrudgingly accepted. Philip takes the mandolin over to his ma for safekeeping so he can help Mrs. Potsham close, but finds himself unexpectedly engulfed in a hug.

“You were wonderful, Phillip!” Ma beams. “Amazing! Astonishing!”

“Astounding profounding?” Phillip replies under his breath, and she laughs and ruffles his hair.

“Heart pounding,” she confirms.

All the nervous energy Philip had seems to have been spent in his music. He’s so tired he feels like he could lie down on any of these old tables and fall asleep, but he still has to help wipe down some tables, put up chairs, sweep, and the like.

Jenkins tries to talk to him while he's working. “Say, did you modify the second cadenza in your first— “

“I'll stop you right there,” Phillip says, gesturing at the tavern’s state of general disarray as patrons trickle out. “If you want to stay after closing and talk, you need to help me with this.”

Jenkins, to his surprise, agrees, and Phillip says, “You know, probably I did. I don't really make a point of it to play at the same way each time.”

“Well, yes, I suppose that is rather the point of cadenzas,” Jenkins says, sounding slightly insulted Philip felt the need to explain, “but I thought last week's worked much better on the whole.”

“Mm, how'd it go again? I've practiced it so many different ways I've forgotten.”

“It went like—” Jenkins inhales— “twiddle ah twiddle ah twah dah tweedle ah— oh, bother, you're having a laugh, aren't you?”

Philip is indeed having a laugh, one that leaves him weak-kneed, leaning on a table for support. His performance has left his brain feeling like a soggy dishrag— though maybe that simile is only occurring to him because he's holding one— and there's very little he wants to do other than be silly. “I'm sorry,” he says, wiping the tears from his eyes, “maybe we should just talk tomorrow.”

“Agreed,” Jenkins says, and bows to Mrs. Potsham and Ma both as he leaves.

 “Who was that?” Ma asks, the instant they're out of earshot of the tavern. The night is loud with crickets and frogs and the occasional owl, and Philip’s slap-happy mood is rapidly being subsumed by exhaustion and the stupidity that comes with it.

“Who was who?”

“Who was—the redcoat, that's who! He was talking to you like, like you knew each other!”

“Oh, Jenkins?” Philip says, remembering Mrs. Potsham’s description. “He's a toff, but he's harmless.”

His mother explodes. “Harmless!”

“Armless!” comes a joyful cry from the woods, “charmless smarmless smarmy barmy Killarney kill-army farmy argy bargy—”

Ma only sighs, ignoring the monster. “Please tell me you haven't made friends with a redcoat. Please, for God's sake, tell me you have more sense than that.”

“Well, what's wrong with it anyway? It's not like we're at war with—”

“Have you forgotten your book, Phillip? You are at war with him,” his ma hisses.

“Flim shim,” the monster whispers.

Ma whirls around in fury, striking at the nearest bush big enough to hide the monster, but only manages to startle a pair of birds.

“We only talked about music,” Philip says. “He doesn't know anything about the war, and Ma, listen, he even sort of asked me if I would teach him! How amazing would that be, if we could teach the—”

“He—he—Philip, tell me you didn't,” his ma half-wails, half-pleads. Her voice is almost—frightened?

“That I didn't what?”

“Strut, slut, cut it shut it but it bloody ruddy ready steady away we go!”

“That you didn't tell him what you know!”

“Well, no, we hadn't—”

“Never tell him!” Ma seizes him by the shoulders. “Never, do you hear me?”

“Spear me, fear me, clear me!”

“Ma, you're shouting—”

“DO YOU HEAR ME?”

“Yes!” Philip cries, wrenching himself away. “Yes, I hear you, what the hell, Ma—”

“He's got to be a spy,” Ma mutters, turning away. “Seabury, that sordid little, or no, André, he was their Tallmadge. That'd be just like him, have a contingency plan if things get messy, but in the meantime learn the people, learn the terrain, assess the threat…”

“Ma, I think you're seriously overestimating how much André cares about us.”

“Am I?” Ma gives a shriek of a laugh. “What's been happening lately, Philip?”

Philip knows immediately what she's alluding to: it's been the talk of the tavern for a week straight. “The blockade runners are back.” America's ports have been swamped with contraband tea, and hefty rewards have been offered to anyone with information.

Ma shakes her head. “Think closer to home.”

“... The ambush on that supply convoy up by Rochester?”

“To André's home.”

Philip racks his mind. “Lafayette? But why would he send someone h—”

“Because I knew him,” his mother says flatly.

It seems far-fetched to Phillip, but he doesn't want to fight his ma. Not anymore, not when she's in this kind of mood.

“The knowledge of what you're doing with your book could be incredibly valuable to him,” she says. “He may decide any moment you're too dangerous to keep alive, now there's a threat to a thing that's his. From now on, we stay quiet. No more work at the tavern. You stay home, you write the book, you work on the farm. That's all that's safe for you now.”

Philip’s jaw drops silently open halfway through his ma’s speech, and several seconds pass before the full message sinks into his consciousness. How can they have such divergent interpretations of almost the same set of facts? Has his mother always been this paranoid?

“No,” he blurts.

It's too dark to see his mother's face, and Phillip is glad of it. Her voice alone chills him. “I beg your pardon?”

“No. I like my work. I like the people. I’m not a child anymore. I get to decide what I do with my life.”

“Philip, your father— “

“Would agree with me about this, I think. He wouldn’t ask me to remain alone my whole life, just for his sake. He was better than that.” Unlike you, he wants to say, but bites it back just in time.

His mother exhales sharply, but doesn’t reply. Her silence lasts all the rest of the way back to the house.

 Though Philip is sure that his mother would never admit her motivation, the day after his concert she somehow finds an enormous number of tasks around the house and farm that he and only he must complete. Add this to the work on the book, which he is already trying to move forward with double-time, and his work at the Key and Kite, and he hardly has time to practice mandolin anymore. He’s not sure if anybody but Jenkins notices, but he feels the quality of his performances slipping, forced to focus on the notes rather than the soul of things.

Though he tries his best not to let his mother's paranoia spoil his budding friendship with Jenkins, Philip nevertheless is helpless to stop the palpable awkwardness that overtakes them after that night. Once or twice, Jenkins brings up some neutral recent event (the theft of a cow, or a new arrival in town) for Philip’s opinion, but even these valiant attempts at small talk have Philip second-guessing his words before they even emerge from his mouth. He hates that his ma has such power, that even though he's certain she's wrong, some part of him cannot help but heed her warning. Eventually, Jenkins gives up, and they discuss only safe topics: music theory, tonight's specials, and the weather, and even these in a slightly stilted manner. Nobody else, either redcoat or townsman, goes out of their way to be friendly to Philip the way Jenkins did.

William van Doort comes in once or twice, always sitting at the bar so Philip doesn't have to serve him. Each of them is unwilling to look the other in the face, so much so that Philip misses a fair number of drink requests because he’s avoiding looking at that half of the room. He’s embarrassed not so much by the thought of a confrontation, but rather the memory of his own overdramatic conduct the last time he and William spoke.

Mrs. Potsham chides him for it, gently.  “You know, Phil, most of the time, a conversation is only as uncomfortable as you allow it to be. Keep your chin up and you'll find there's no man you must hang your head to.”

Although Philip supposes this makes sense in an anatomical sort of way, he still dreads William’s return every day. But as the summer ripens, and William doesn't appear for weeks on end, Philip wonders if perhaps he's the one being avoided. His hunch is confirmed when, one Tuesday—not his usual day, but Mrs. Potsham had asked him to fill in—he startles William quite badly by appearing behind the bar.

“Can I get you something?”

William stares at him, realizes he’s staring, and stares at his own hands instead. “Er. A slice of cherry pie, please?”

Well, it’s a slow day, and Philip is in an optimistic mood. “Mind if I have one with you?”

William looks alarmed. Philip’s heart sinks. Could it really be—after he’s worked so hard to make himself almost respectable—that William is still afraid to even be seen with him?

“You’re not angry?” he asks.

It’s Philip’s turn to be surprised. “I thought you were!” he blurts. “I mean, you thought I was—I am! Or I was, but it—I was too much.”

William’s eyebrows go up.

Philip rushes on. “I blamed you for something that wasn’t your fault and I lost my temper with you, and I regret it now, and I probably—I deserved to be punched.”

William’s eyebrows rise further. “I didn’t punch you, though.”

“I know,” Philip says miserably. “You could punch me now, if you wanted?”

William snorts. “I never wanted to punch you. I thought you knew. That’s why I was so angry you told me to. I thought you were trying to make me feel guilty.” He narrows his eyes. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty? By being so… yourself with me now, when by all rights you should be furious about— about what an awful friend I was?”

“William,” Philip says, growing indignant. “I’m trying to apologize to you. If you would like to apologize to me, you could at least have the courtesy to wait until I’m finished.”

“Well, you’ve already apologized, so if you would just shut up and yield the floor for once in your miserable life instead of going off on your own b—” He cuts himself off mid-word, and their eyes meet in a moment of devastating awareness of the absurdity of their conversation. As one, they break into peals of laughter.

“Phil?” Mrs. Potsham shouts from back in the kitchen, “everything under control out there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Philip shouts back. He turns to William. “I’ll go fetch that pie, shall I?”

And all that time, he doesn’t hear from Theodosia.

True, there have been long gaps in their correspondence before. But before, she had never been energetically courting disaster by snooping around their colonial governor and former redcoat spymaster. The dull whine of Philip’s impatience increases in volume, becoming a shrill of anxiety that ebbs and flows but never truly leaves him. It peaks every Friday around ten o’ clock in the morning, when the Royal messenger stops by the Key and Kite with his mailbag. One of Philip’s work tasks now is to help Mrs. Potsham sort through all the mail to make sure it gets to its rightful recipients, and this he does with his anxiety increasing week to week until one sweltering day in late August when she notices his hands shaking.

“Phil!” she cries. “What’s the matter with you?”

Before he can utter a word of protest she’s hustled him into a chair and is feeling his forehead. She doesn’t do it like his ma—wrist instead of hand—but the gesture is unwelcomely motherly, and he scowls and ducks away. “I’m fine.”

“You got too much sun on the way in, didn’t you? Admit it!”

“I’m fine!” he says again.

“Well, what’s got you all a-tremble, then?”

Philip’s scowl deepens. “That’s not your business.”

“Oho.” Mrs. Potsham’s eyebrows go up. “Your correspondent.”

“That’s not your business.”

“She’s angry with you? Giving you the silent treatment?”

“That’s not your business.” But a part of Philip lights up with hope. He hadn’t considered the possibility, in a world so full of danger, of death, of erasure, that Theodosia might be withholding correspondence of her own free will.

That’s… that’s low, if it is the case. And if that’s what she’s doing, how is he supposed to know how she wants him to fix it?

“If she were,” he says, through gritted teeth, “what would you recommend I do about it?”

Dear Theodosia,

I apologize if you found cause for offense in my last letter.

Dear Theodosia,

I apologize if my last letter has caused you any offense.

Dear Theodosia,

I apologize if I offended you in my last letter. Truly, it was not my intention to question your judgment, only to grant you a perspective that you may have been lacking. Perhaps I did it Ham-handedly (haha)—I did not keep a copy, so I cannot even reread my own words, and they were written in great haste at an unfavorable hour of the night. If I have caused offense, which I suspect from your lack of reply, please inform me what I do to make amends. At the very least, please reply so that I know nothing is amiss. I admit, I am fretful for your welfare.

Your friend,

Philip

Three more weeks of summer cartwheel by before, at last, he receives her reply.

Mrs. Potsham smirks when she sees him stock-still above the unsorted post. “What did I tell you?”

“You were right,” Philip says, dumbfounded. “She replied.”

“Are you going to read it?”

Instinctively, he draws the letter to his chest. “When I get home.”

Mrs. Potsham laughs—“fine, keep your secrets!”—and together they return to the task of sorting the post.

When he finally opens the letter, close to midnight after having played to a full house at the Key and Kite, he’s disappointed to see that it contains only a few lines in plain black ink.

Dear Philip,

There is no cause to fret for my health. I am well. I shall take your and your mother’s advice into consideration. Do you always do everything she says? If I only did what my father told me I think I should live a very boring life.

It is good to hear from you. I cannot write more because I am very busy. Please write me again and tell me more about the happenings with you, if you would.

Your friend,

Theodosia

But of course, Theodosia has sent him invisible messages before. He holds it nearer to the candle by which he reads, taking a care not to set it alight. But the heat fails to kindle any new words. No secrets reveal themselves as he scrutinizes every inch of the letter. Where else could she have hidden her message…?

The envelope! Oh, Theodosia, that would be just like her, so clever. He holds it to the flame. Patience, patience… but he’s too eager, and the edge catches, and with a yelp he throws it down to the desk—straight into all his notes for the next chapter of the book. The flame licks higher, and in a panic he flings his hand down over to smother it. The palm of his hand takes the bulk of the heat—he cries out again, letting it bleed into a high whine of pain and disbelief at his own stupidity. At least when he gingerly pulls his hand away, the fire is out.

After all that, the envelope is blank.

Is that… it? Did the not send him any more? He rereads the text she wrote, looking for secret messages, letters malformed or misplaced that he might decipher. Nothing. Nothing, and his eyes are beginning to feel like sandpaper from straining in the candlelight, and his hand throbs and burns. He sneaks down the stairs in the dark to the kitchen, where his ma always keeps a spare water bucket. Dipping a cloth to cool his hand with while he sleeps, he retires, defeated, to bed.

But the pain in his hand and the trouble in his heart combine to keep him awake. Well, Theodosia has deemed him unworthy of her words, but she still maintains enough passing curiosity or arrogance to be interested in his. That is an unequal exchange, and Philip will have no part in it. Let him withhold his letters and see how she likes it. He has already apologized in a dignified manner, and he is not about to gripe and grovel for forgiveness for providing well-intentioned, sensible, and informed advice. If she really wants to hear from him… she knows his address. And, so resolved, he passes into troubled dreams.

Chapter Text

“Boy! Yes you, boy. Ale over here. On the double, now, what are they paying you for?”

Philip, halfway through clearing a table, stiffens. He takes deep breath, counts to three, and then resumes his work.

“Boy! Are you deaf?”

Philip sighs. He drops the dirty plates he had picked up back onto the table with an exaggerated clatter and turns to the redcoats seated behind him. The nagging memory of his falling-out with Theodosia has put him in a surly mood, one that has made this already-unpleasant task nigh-unbearable. He refills the redcoat’s tankard while making baleful eye contact. From the corner of his eye he spots Jenkins and does a double take. He’s never seen Jenkins with this particular, obnoxious group before—had rather thought they were at odds. The man usually sits by himself reading poetry   

Jenkins gives a pointed frown at Philip’s attitude. Oh, he thinks he can tell Philip what to do? That’s amusing. Finishing the pour with an insolent little flourish, Philip turns back away and resumes clearing the other table.

It would be better if his work hadn’t been doubled up this week, Mrs. Potsham’s other occasional helper having disappeared quite suddenly one night with no notice. Philip has not only been waiting tables and providing occasional musical entertainment, but also assisting with deliveries and attending the inn’s stables. Mrs. Potsham has even said she might put him on cleaning rooms as well if her knees keep acting up.

He’s welcomed the excuse to avoid the farm, since his ma seems to be convinced that if she only shames him enough he’ll see the error of his ways, quit his job at the inn, and spend all his time working on his father’s biography. But he resents that Mrs. Potsham thinks she can just inform him that he’s going to be working ten or twelve hours the morning of, especially since it’s coming up on harvest season and he does genuinely need to help his ma on the farm. He’s been rising before dawn in order to squeeze it all in, and as a result has discovered an alarming capacity for falling asleep standing bolt upright with a tankard in his hand.

He’d tried to convince Mrs. Potsham to hire someone else—William, perhaps, who was evasive enough last time Philip asked him about work that Philip immediately concluded he was unemployed—except William, too, has been making himself vanishingly scarce lately. Philip hasn’t seen him since a couple days before Theodosia’s letter arrived. The coincidence has left him feeling doubly abandoned. In short, he’s stretched thin, his friends are all gone, and the two responsible adults in his life have decided that they want to make demanding unreasonable feats from him into a competitive sport.

“Boy!”

Also, he hates customers. All of them. Sighing, Philip turns back to the redcoat table. “What is it?”

“The bill.”

“Oh, thank God,” he says unthinkingly, and returns to the bar to find their tally. Despite his exhaustion, he still catches the sudden silence that falls as he walks away.

Nerves rising, but determined to keep his cool, he adds the numbers up and returns to the table. “That’ll be two pounds, six shillings.”

“That’s horseshit.”

He has no choice but to double down. “The prices are right there,” Philip says, tapping the receipt. “They’re clearly marked on the board. You eat here all the time.”

“Why, you insolent little—"

“Philip, you’re needed at the stable. Let me handle this.” Mrs. Potsham swoops in from where she’d been showing another customer to his room for the night.

A little relieved, a little disappointed, Philip exits the fray and ducks down the back hall that leads to the stables. He doesn’t even get halfway down it before a girl, coming the opposite direction, grabs his arm.

“I’m not a housekeeper,” he interrupts. “If you need—”

“Philip, stop. I don’t have much time. Do you remember me?”

Philip takes a moment to look at her. As a whole, at first she’s unfamiliar, but something of her nose and ears reminds him of William. And with that hint, the memory falls into place: the supper William had invited him to, where Philip met all his younger siblings. This is one of his sisters. “El…eanor?” he hazards.

“Lenore’s a year older than me. I’m Anne.”

“Right, sorry. What’s going on?”

“You need to stay here tonight. Don’t try to help.”

Philip looks at her in blank confusion. “Are you… what do you… what?”

“You need to stay here. Don’t try to help. I can’t say more.”

Philip backs up. “Look, I have something to see to in the stables.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s me. Your business in the stables is: you need to stay here tonight.”

“Why?” He performed yesterday, and the dinner rush is going to end in less than an hour. He’d been looking forward to riding home on Lampon and collapsing in his bed… at least until four in the morning tomorrow.

“Don’t be an idiot. Ask Mrs. P for a place to sleep. Now get back out there.” She gestures back to the tavern behind him.

“I can’t stay here. My ma will murder me.”

“Trust me, if you’re not here tonight, you will have bigger problems.”

There’s a thunder of hooves outside. Anne says an unladylike word, picks up a bucket with a mop, hands it to Philip, and frog-marches him back to the tavern. When he balks at the door she shoves him between the shoulder blades. He topples forward, dropping the bucket and mop, staggering a foot straight into the bucket, tripping, and spilling sudsy water as well as himself all over the tavern floor.

Of course, everyone sees it. The redcoats, just standing from their table, point and roar with laughter, some so amused they have to lean on each other or the table for support. Philip, who barked his funny bone on the back of a chair on the way down, can only fight to regain his breath. His dignity may be a little longer coming, especially since he’s now sprawled in a sudsy puddle and one leg of his trousers is soaked from ankle to seat.

Mrs. Potsham only raises an eyebrow. “Done for the night, are we, Philip?”

The tavern door slams open. A bedraggled redcoat, one Philip doesn’t recognize, staggers in. “They’ve ambushed the supply convoy,” he gasps. “We’re pinned down just over the hill.”

Philip spends the night at the inn. Between his own sick anticipation and the occasional distant pop of musket fire, sleep comes uneasy, bad dreams chasing one after the other: the monster bursting into the inn and vomiting inky soapsuds all over him while Theodosia laughs; his ma handing him a basket of cherries that turn to rot and blood in his hands.

The skirmish only intensifies as the sun comes up, as does Philip’s anxiety. His ma will be waking up now—if the gunfire hadn’t woken her already—and she’ll realize he hasn’t made it home. Will she try to come to him? From what little intelligence the guests can muster over breakfast, the battlefield consists of the three or four rolling, densely-forested hills that lie directly between the inn and Philip’s home. As for who the combatants are, well, opinion is vaguer. Of course the Redcoats are one major party. As for the other, well, nobody who's talking knows, and nobody who knows is talking. Philip does wonder, though, about Anne’s warning, and William’s absence.

Maybe he should cross the field so his ma won’t feel the need to. Will she be thinking the same thing? Lampon’s in the stable here, though. She would be on foot. She wouldn’t go, would she? That would be so stupid. But does she think that he might try on Lampon? Because if she thinks he’s out there, she won’t hesitate a second. His ma would absolutely cross a battlefield on foot to find him, if she thought he was in danger.

Their fights—over the book, over his job, over Jenkins—seem a bit idiotic, in comparison. God, he hopes she’s staying home. Philip climbs to the roof of the inn and peers out over the treetops. The forest is so thick, he can’t see much of anything. As the sun creeps higher a smear of dust appears in the distance, coming up from the main road. From the top of the stables Philip can just make out a body of horses, the occasional flash of red among them. Reinforcements.

He passes another hour on the roof, straining eyes and ears. The battle doesn’t end so much as just… melt away. There are no more volleys of musket-fire, only the occasional crack, and by noon the redcoats have begun the bloody business of bringing in casualties.

As soon as he’s satisfied the battle is over, he clambers down from the roof and finds Mrs. Potsham.

“I’m sorry—I know you need help but I need to get home—my ma will be—”

“Yes, yes, of course, go,” she says, looking frazzled. She has a pot of coffee in each hand. The tavern is crammed with guests still. Philip feels a little guilty leaving her, but it’s nothing compared to the guilt of leaving his ma in suspense a moment longer than he has to. He ducks out to the stables before his impulse to help with the problem immediately in front of him can win out.

Lampon perceives his unease, tossing her head and flaring her nostrils at every little distraction. Though he would rather trot she keeps switching to a canter, disconcerted by her night in the stables and eager to be home. The road is empty, eerily so, the ground well-churned with hoofprints, a faint whiff of gunpowder still lingering in the air. The road curves round the first of the hills, and the forest closes in overhead.

The next blind corner sets them on an uphill slope, which is fortunate because it helps Lampon come to a wild, inelegant halt before they blast through the group of redcoats blocking the road. Philip whirls her around in a few wild circles before she’s truly stopped, snorting and pawing the earth indignantly. The line of redcoats doesn’t budge.

“… hello?” Philip tries. “Um… may I pass?”

“In a hurry?” one of the redcoats asks. Philip can tell by the bars on his coat that he’s a sergeant. “Where are you headed?”

“I live up there,” Philip says, pointing. He searches among their faces for those he knows and finds several who were in the Key and Kite last night, including Jenkins. Philip is glad to see he’s all right in spite of the rift between them, and wonders a little at it. A few years ago he knew only fear and hatred for the redcoats. It seems his views have grown more complicated with contact—he only hopes reciprocal changes have been worked in their hearts.

“It’s that banjo boy,” one of them says. “From the inn.”

“My name is Philip, and actually that’s a mandolin,” Philip says, dismounting because he’s starting to feel awkward so high up. His mother’s instructions from when the redcoats first came to town whip through his head. Be friendly, but not too friendly. Act stupid, but never enough to hinder them. Answer all their questions clearly and quickly. Keep your hands showing at all times. Ma made him drill dozens of times what to do if he was stopped. Nervously, he blurts, “It’s good to meet you.”

The sergeant looks amused at that. “What’s your business, dashing through a battlefield like this?”

“I thought the battle was over,” Philip says, wringing the reins. Lampon snorts in disapproval. “I’m just getting back to my ma. We live up over the hill.”

“At such speed?”

Philip suddenly feels very itchy. “It—it may have been a bit reckless, I suppose.”

“Reckless, eh. What business is it to me if you break your own neck? But unusual, that’s my concern. Countryside’s all astir. Might be dangerous, eh? What with this…insurgency about.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Philip says, the words stumbling and tripping out his mouth as fast as he can say them. “You’re the only ones I’ve seen since I left the inn.”

He looks to Jenkins for backup or, failing that, corroboration. He’s a lieutenant, after all—he outranks the stranger interrogating Philip now. But Jenkins’ eyes are focused in the middle distance. He stands distant and still. Anger leaps in Philip’s heart—anger and wounded pride, that the man who would have been his friend isn’t even acknowledging him.

“I didn’t ask who you didn’t see, boyo,” the sergeant says, his voice soft and dangerous. “I asked what your hurry was.”

“It’s not a crime to go fast,” Philip gabbles. Ugh, that sounded defiant. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

“And if it were, the horse would be as guilty too, eh?” the sergeant wisecracks.

The last thing Philip feels like is laughing, but he fears what will happen if he doesn’t humor this man, especially after a mistake like that. He gives a weak, delayed chuckle. Another mistake.

“Am I amusing, boy?”

No, Philip thinks. I laughed to show how relaxed I am. And I’m so, so relaxed right now, because I’ve done nothing wrong. “I’m sorry if I was behaving disrespectfully, sir,” he says at once.

“So you admit you’re disrespectful?”

Christ, I can’t say yes! “I may have… acted with a levity inappropriate to the situation,” Philip babbles. “I apologize if I offended or insulted you in any way. It was certainly not my intention to be anything but cooperative.”

“Jesus, would you listen to this one!” the sergeant cries out, as his fellows grin. “How many words d’yreckon that was?”

“About three dozen too many!” the other redcoat responds, as Philip cringes. This man he recognizes; he’s seen him in the tavern before. But if he was expecting any extra sympathy, that was a made a mistake. This isn’t a negotiation between gentlemen. This is a trap, and he’s fallen straight into it.

The first redcoat, the sergeant, furrows his brows. “Now… come to think of it, did he ever answer me?”

“Sir, I’m sorry, I didn’t--”

“I didn’t ask you!” the sergeant roars, whirling around. Philip’s grip on the reins goes slack in his startlement, and Lampon takes advantage of the moment to rip them clean from his grasp with a toss of her head. He cries out and turns after her, scrabbling to catch the dangling reins, but the sergeant shouts, “Don’t you move, boy!”

Philip freezes. Lampon, spectacularly unconcerned, strides to the side of the road and lowers her head, chomping at the tall grass.

“Turn back to face me, now,” the sergeant orders.   Keep your hands in sight, his mother had said. Philip raises both, showing his palms. He turns slowly, revealing the soldiers one by one. To a man, they have their rifles raised. This is absurd! Philip thinks. It’s not as though he has a gun with him. He’s no danger to these men.

“I’m not your enemy,” he says, his voice cracking. “I don’t know what you think, but I just want to go home.” Again he looks to Jenkins, and this time Jenkins is looking back. His face is a cold mask. Insolent boy, Philip hears. You reap as you’ve sown.

The sergeant gestures at Philip’s upraised hands with the tip of his bayonet. “You’ve done this before, then?”

“My--” Philip swallows, “my ma taught me how to act.”

The sergeant snorts, but one of the Key and Kite’s regulars seems to understand. “Sir, a word, please?” he says. The two men decamp to the shade and begin whispering amongst themselves.

Philip stands there with the midday sun beating down on his head and his hands held high, sweat itching on his scalp and running down the back of his neck. He wishes he could go over and catch Lampon before she wanders off, but he doesn’t dare move. His legs are starting to shake from fear and from the strain of holding still.

Enough time passes that he’s certain he’s being toyed with, but there’s nothing he can do about it except work himself up, which is precisely what they want him to. He’s beginning to feel decidedly sick when eventually the sergeant saunters back. “Well, boy. It sounds like you have quite the pedigree.”

Shit. Someone knows his history, and better than Jenkins does. “I never met my father,” Philip says, miserable even at disavowal-by-implication. “My ma… we have a farm, that’s all.”

“You go to school, though, don’t you? You must, with words like yours.”

“I—I used to. I do a lot of my own reading.” He worries, immediately, that he’ll be deliberately misinterpreted again, but the sergeant moves on.

“Rourke tells me you had a little club there, with the other kiddies. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

A drop of sweat beads at Philip’s hairline and makes its way down his face. “It—it was just a reading group, sir.” From the corner of his eye he sees Lampon prick up her ears at something. “Sir—my horse—"

The man ignores him, and Philip watches helplessly as Lampon takes off down the road towards home. None of the redcoats make any move to catch her, and a few of them snicker as she passes. Oh, Ma’s going to skin him alive if he gets out of this...

“A reading group,” the sergeant continues, his brow furrowing. “Now there’s something I can’t say I’m familiar with. What sorts of things did you read?”

Philip swallows. He’s almost certain the man is pretending not to know so Philip can say something wrong and be punished. But he refuses to let this bully think he’s cowed him. He draws himself up to his full height—he barely reaches the man’s chin. Not that the redcoat is particularly tall, but Philip is only just starting his proper growth. “We read about current events as well as philosophy and politics.”

“And why would you be interested in such things?”

It’s not even that warm out, but Philip’s face is so flushed it almost feels swollen. He can feel his own pulse in his temples. “Because—because they’re relevant to our lives as citizens.”

The sergeant steps closer. Philip smells his sweat, the souring wool of his jacket. “Citizens?” he says, very quiet.

“Subjects,” Philip corrects, and then there’s a blur and something slams into the side of his head. He staggers and lands hard on his hands and knees. Blood patters down onto the hard-packed earth beneath his face. Stunned, he raises a hand and finds his right eyebrow split. It doesn’t hurt until he touches it: then, it burns and throbs.

One of the redcoats hauls him roughly to his feet in front of the sergeant, who is absently rubbing the butt of his rifle.

“Subjects,” Philip says, getting his legs under him again. “The King’s subjects.” His knees are shaking. He locks them straight, so the redcoats won’t see how frightened he is. Stand up, his instinct tells him. Stand up like a soldier. Don’t let them see weakness or they’ll pounce.

“And do you think you know better than him? With all that reading?” the sergeant asks. He tosses his rifle playfully. It doesn’t look very heavy, but now Philip’s skull knows differently, his head still ringing with the blow.

“I have—” Philip’s voice cracks. He takes a deep breath and tries again. “I have the right to my own mind.”

The sergeant takes another step closer, and Philip has to crane his neck just to see the man’s face. Blood runs into his right eye, half-blinding him. “Answer the question, boy. Do you—think you—know better—than—our—King?”

Philip gulps in air, composing his answer. His heart hammers in his chest. He finds he has no words, and it feels like no breath, either. Lights dance before him as his lungs heave uselessly, and the world goes liquid and hot, and the next thing he knows the ground’s hard under his face and he feels like he’s tilting and falling and harsh laughter is ringing in his ears.

“Did you see that swoon?” one of them chuckles. “I don’t believe it.”

Embarrassment floods Philip’s whole body—his face feels like it’s on fire—he might start crying if he has to be in front of these men another minute. He wants to just lay here and pretend to be unconscious so he doesn’t have to speak anymore, but a part of him is also terrified what they’ll try to do with him if they believe he’s defenseless. Staying still, he prays with all his might that they’ll leave him alone.

Someone up there must be listening, because the sergeant only pokes the toe of his boot against Philip’s ribs and nudges. Philip lets his head loll to the other side, struggling to keep himself rag-doll limp. “Well, I’m bored,” the man says, chipper. “Shall we break for drinks?”

A hearty cheer greets him, and the redcoats move out, leaving Philip sprawled out in the dirt. When their voices fade in the distance Philip cracks his left eye—his right is rapidly swelling shut—and looks around carefully. The road’s abandoned, only the occasional gnat or passing honeybee breaking the stillness. Shakily, he gets to his feet. His knees still feel weak, but they strengthen as he walks, and the fresh breeze as he reaches the top of the hill blows a little more life into him.

They weren’t after me, he thinks, astonished. They seem to have been content scaring the life out of him for… for what? For sport? For the joy of seeing him squirm? If any other boy had passed along the road at that time, would he have received the same treatment?

Well, not any other boy. The sergeant had given him a hard time from the beginning, but the worst of it hadn’t started until after he’d learned who Philip was, and what he believed in.  Anger boils in his stomach. They’d hit him, they’d played games with his head, they’d frightened his horse away—

Shit, Lampon. Ma will kill him if he doesn’t find her. But at this point, hours after a battle without contact, isn’t she going to kill him anyway?

Galloping hooves sound from over the next hill, and Philip hurries off the road and into the underbrush in a flurry of anxiety. A moment later a black-clad figure on a gray horse crests the hill—it’s Ma, it’s Ma on Lampon! He steps out, giddy with relief, and his ma reins Lampon in, bringing her to a neat stop not three feet in front of him. She dismounts immediately, taking his face between her hands, her mouth opening in a soundless gasp. He must be a sorry sight. Lampon snorts and rears her head, and Philip, suddenly shy, drops his eyes and strokes the horse’s nose instead of speaking.

“Oh, Philip, your poor head!” his mother cries, finding her voice at last. “What happened? Were you caught in the—in the—”

Philip shakes his head, and the world spins. He moves his mouth, but is suddenly having trouble getting words out. Emotion—relief, humiliation, the echoes of sickening fear—crowds his throat.

“When Lampon came back without a rider I was so worried—did she throw you? Philip, please, say something!”

“She didn’t throw me,” Philip says. “I… I spent the night and most of the morning at the inn, waiting for the battle to pass. But coming home, there was a checkpoint. With soldiers.” He doesn’t want to say any more of it or think any more of it, but he would also like nothing more right now than his mother to be very sympathetic, and outraged on his behalf, and let him stay inside reading Homer until he forgets everything that happened today. “They hit me,” he says, and his voice sounds very young.

“Oh!” his ma cries, and hauls him into a bruising embrace. Philip hugs her back tighter than he has in a long while, his fingers digging into her back. The sick, panicked feeling starts to fade. She pulls back and looks him up and down. “They didn’t—you’re not hurt? Anywhere else, I mean—”

“Just my head,” Philip reassures her, and is rewarded with a second embrace.

“Come on, baby, let’s get you back to the house.”

She insists that he ride, and his self-pity and his throbbing head override whatever chivalry he might in other circumstances have mustered. In any case, it’s hard to think of his ma as a delicate flower in need of special treatment when they share all the farming chores and he’s only recently come near to matching her in strength. He relates most of what happened to her on the way back, leaving out the most humiliating part of it, when he apparently locked his knees and fainted dead away.

Still, the tale is harrowing enough even without that detail, and she reaches up to where his hands rest on the saddle-pommel and grips his fingers tight. To his relief, she doesn’t try to pick nits about his exact interaction with the redcoat.

“Those bullies will use any excuse to tear a man down,” she says, her voice scalding. “You could have done everything perfectly and they still would have found some reason to harm you.” It’s a relief, to be back on the sheltered side of her scorching wall of fury at the world.

Back at the house his ma uses a hot washcloth to work the sticky mess of blood off his face. With a fine thread and needle she stitches his split eyebrow, and Philip sets his jaw as she works and doesn’t make a sound of protest, not even as she wraps a bandage that half-covers his right eye. His head is starting to pound in earnest.

Ma brings down a light blanket and insists he rest on the sofa while she sweeps the floors, anxious to keep him in her line of sight. At his request she fetches his Homer, but he can’t make his single eye focus on the paper, and the words seem to swim and whirl away from him. He lets his head fall back, moaning in frustration.

“Philip, what’s wrong?”

Shit, she sounds really worried. “I’m fine!” he says, sitting partway up to as a demonstration. “It’s only… I think it’s my head, or my eyes. It’s all swimming away from me.”

“Well, maybe you should try sleeping instead,” his mother suggests, her voice as gentle as the kiss she places on his forehead.

But Philip can’t sleep, at first because he’s too shaken and then later because he’s distracted by the sight of the monster, which has come back from whatever strange errands it had in the forest and is now gawking in the window at him. “It’s just a bandage,” he says, threading a finger under it. “See?”

But the monster only whines and paws at the window anxiously, its claws scoring lines in the glass.

“Ma, can we let it in? It’s worried about me.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” his ma says, rolling her eyes, but she opens the window, and the monster squeezes its body through, the clicks and clacks and clops of its mismatched feet and nails on the floor sounding a cacophony in Philip’s sensitized ears.  

“See? I’m fine,” Philip says, the monster’s serious face—this week the main one resembles something like an enormous muskrat or beaver—almost at a level with his own. The monster huffs and lays its head across Philip’s stomach, and his ma comes in after a while and takes the thin volume of Homer in her hands. She reads in a soft monotone, and Philip hears only the opening stanza before sleep finds him.

The Gods in council sit, to call

Ulysses from Calypso's thrall,

And order their high pleasures thus:

Grey Pallas to Telemachus

(In Ithaca) her way addrest;

And did her heavenly limbs invest

In Mentas' likeness, that did reign

King of the Taphians, in the main

Whose rough waves near Leucadia run,

Advising wise Ulysses' son

To seek his father, and address

His course to young Tantalides

That govern'd Sparta. Thus much said,

She shew'd she was Heaven's martial Maid,

And vanish'd…

Philip sleeps that whole day and night and wakes with the sun already high in the sky the next morning. It’s an alien feeling, sleeping in, and his ma is already out of the house. The monster, dozing on the living room rug, perks up when it sees Philip’s awake. It nearly bowls him over with a greeting headbutt, evidently happy to see him on his feet.

“Tool,” it says.

“Fool,” Philip shoots back.

“Stool.”

“Pool.”

“Drool.”

“Gruel.”

“Cruuuueeeeeel,” the monster concludes, turning it into a howl. “Cruel, cruel cal-cal-calumnies and calculation, stippled—”

“Trickled.”

“Tickled.”

“Um…” Philip pauses, rusty at the game, and the monster nips at his fingers. “Ow! Ticket.”

“Picket.”

“Picky.”

“Pinky.”

“Pension.”

“Tension sentient stanchion mansion institution respiration destitution desperation reparation regulation restitution restoration!” The monster finishes with a triumphant leap onto the dining room table, knocking over two chairs with the sweep of its tail in the process.

The clatter is agony to Philip’s head. He covers his ears. “All right, you win,” he mutters, finding a pot of oatmeal on the stove and spooning some into a bowl for himself.

"Bone apple tea. Bone apple tea. Bone apple tea," the beast hums.

“It’s bon appetit, you Philistine,” Philip grouses, before freezing with his oatmeal halfway to his mouth. His gaze goes to the monster, who blinks its baker’s dozen of eyes in confusion. “Were you trying to say something? Bon appetit?”

“Bone apple tea?” The monster mimics Philip’s inflection.

“Bon appetit?”

“Scone apple tea? Shown apple tea? Bone frapple free?”

“Oh. Well, that’s alright.” Philip returns to his oatmeal, disappointed. A moment later the beast slinks over and lays its hideous head on his shoulder. Philip scratches an ear-adjacent place, distracted and sad. “It’s alright, friend,” he says. “You don’t have to make sense.”

Ma’s surprised to see him outside. So surprised, in fact, that she immediately tries to convince him to go back inside and rest some more. Philip, his limbs stiff after nearly twenty-four hours spent on a sofa, insists he will not, and ends their argument by turning to the future potato patch and beginning to plant. It’s satisfying work, the orderly mounds stretching out behind him.

Within a quarter of an hour, his head is pounding again. He can feel his pulse in his bruised eye, and an irritating burning itch along his stitches. He works harder to distract himself. Another quarter of an hour, and he’s feeling definitively unwell. Ma’s working close by, but he has his pride, and he feels guilty for taking the whole day off yesterday and for making her lose a day looking after him.

The monster comes up behind him and whispers, “Tick. Prick. Click.”

“Sick,” Philip says, wiping his brow.

Ma’s head immediately comes up. “Did you say you were sick, Philip?”

Philip looks at the monster, aghast. It scratches an ear. “I’m fine, Ma!”

She steps neatly over the row of potatoes and examines him closely. “You look like you could use a rest.”

“Ma, really—”

“It’s time for lunch anyway. Come on, let’s go inside.”

Once they’re inside, she immediately sets to work in the kitchen, but insists that he sit again. He makes some feeble excuse why he should not, but somehow finds himself on the couch anyway, a cold washcloth clapped over his swollen eye. It’s annoying to hold there, so he lowers himself down to the cushions and lets the cloth drape across his face, and then he can feel his breath growing more even, and a blanket being tugged gently up round his shoulders, and—

He wakes in the nighttime, which is disorienting. There’s a lamp burning across the room, his ma seated in the old armchair under the window, reading a letter.

“Oh,” he says, rubbing at his gritty eyes. “You worked alone? I was going to help you.”

“I’d rather you took your time feeling better,” his ma says, coming over to check his forehead. “You don’t have a fever. Would you like some supper?”

Philip consults his stomach. “Very much.”

His ma laughs, and they go to the kitchen together.

Over the next few days, his head continues to plague him. Any exertion sets it to pounding, and if he doesn’t go inside, his stomach ties itself in knots and soon the only remedy is sleep. Reading bothers him. Writing bothers him. Mandolin bothers him. Riding Lampon is out of the question; Ma rides over to the Key and Kite to pick up their mail and send word that he won’t be back for a little while.

She has a note from Theodosia. Philip’s heart leaps. Surely she’s seen how unreasonable she’s been, and is writing to apologize. But no.

Dear Philip,

In my last letter, I asked you to write me again. It hasn’t escaped my notice that I haven’t received anything from you yet. I read in the newspaper that there was some kind of skirmish outside of your town. You may tell me about that, if the sum total of everything Mummy permits you to do is too boring for words.

Your friend,

Theodosia

Philip grinds his teeth. He wants to tear the stupid letter apart with his teeth and then throw it in the fire and then ride to New York City and yell at Theodosia until she sends him a proper letter, or maybe just until she shuts up. He pounds up the stairs to his room (his head going ow ow ow ow ow with each step) and gets his own paper and ink.

Dear Theodosia, he writes, splattering ink everywhere, the nib of the pen scraping hard against the paper. Or should I say, Princess, or Queen, since you have seen fit to give me orders as though I were some Subject of yours, as though I had sworn you some oath of fealty or otherwise owed you any sort of debt, which I am not and did not and do not.

Your arrogance is inconceivable, to chastise me for being concerned of the great danger and peril, of turning against the King and his men, when of all the folk in all the colonies that danger falls most squarely upon me. Yes, there was a skirmish in my neck of the woods, as we unworthy unsophisticated uncouth country folk say, and to be honest with you I have no idea why it happened or even what the outcome was, because I was following my own advice and staying well out of it, and even then, Princess Theodosia, even then they came after me. All I was trying to do was go home, because I knew my ma would be frantick with worry for me, which she was, for I had been away the night entire, with musketflash and fire cracking off the hills all around, and as I was on the road home they stopped me on suspicion of I still know not what.

Even though I knew several of the men personally from my time working in the tavern, even though one of them is a great admirer of my music, they knew nothing of mercy. They interrogated me nonsensically, they frightened off my horse, they beat me about the head so severely I have not been able even to work outside on the farm this past week, and my eye swelled shut and is only just now able to open again, and even writing this letter to you is causing me great fatigue and pain, which I shall have to sleep off another day, no doubt, but I must write you anyway, because I am so god-damned angry with your presumption. You imply that I am a coward, Princess, yet you do not understand the very conditions of my existence. If a redcoat killed me for no reason at all they might give him a medal and call it well-justified.

And what I have learned is that they will never respect me, nor will they grant me peace. No matter how much they like my songs, no matter how friendly or reasonable my manner, I am a marked man for life, trapped by my father’s identity. The society through which you so casually flit and float and flirt would breathe a sigh of relief at news of the extinction of Alexander Hamilton’s line. Remember that, the next time you ream me out for cowardice. I am fighting a war that I did not choose, and you are playing a game. My head aches abominably.

I have the honor to be

Yr obt svt

Philip Hamilton

He takes the letter downstairs with him and seals it, his fingers trembling with rage. He sets it on the kitchen table, meaning to mull over a little more whether or not he should send it, but when his ma picks it up on her way out the door to go to town, he forgets to say anything. So there it goes like a tossed grenade into the mail, and he can only pray he hasn’t exploded their whole friendship. After all, Theodosia has been a wonderful correspondent until her sudden swerve in the past two months. Surely, surely they have something worth saving?

Thank God, his head begins to improve. Though he chafes at the rest his mother insists upon, he’s forced to admit that overexerting himself has clear and unpleasant consequences—writing Theodosia’s letter, for example, leaves him hardly able to see straight for two days. But the overall trajectory is upward, and it’s with great relief that he’s able to read his books again, then slowly start helping his ma with the weeding.

Mrs. Potsham gives him a hearty embrace when he returns to the Key and Kite, then immediately pulls back to inspect the scar that runs through his eyebrow. His ma stitched it straight, but he’d scratched it askew that first night, and now his eyebrow doesn’t quite line up with itself. “Oh, dear,” she says, licking her thumb and trying to smooth it out. “Well, I suppose you’re always going to look like you’ve got something very clever and insolent on the tip of your tongue.”

“You know I always do.”

She laughs and swats him with her dishrag, and just like that, he’s back at work. In his absence, she’d finally given in and hired two new people, so he has a light workload today. She assigns him tables far away from the redcoats—he has a feeling his ma explained everything to her—but he finds himself constantly watching them out the corner of his eye for any hint of violence. He knows it makes him look shifty—guilty, even—but he can’t help it.

One morning when he’s working by himself Jenkins tries to flag him down for coffee. Philip pretends not to see him for as long as he can, but after a while Jenkins’ blatant attempts to catch his eye prove too awkward to plausibly ignore, and he approaches.

“Good morning,” Jenkins says.

Philip grunts.

“How… how are things?”

Philip grunts.

“I noticed you weren’t here for some time.”

Philip grunts.

Jenkins sighs. “It’s good to see you back.”

Philip laughs. He can’t help it.

Jenkins sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Philip, I was only doing my job. You understand.”

“I didn’t realize your job was to beat the shit out of innocent people and leave them in the road.”

“It was after a battle, spirits were high—I wouldn’t have let them go any further, I promise you that.”

“Oh, well, that’s reassuring. If someone clubs me in the head with a rifle and decides to bayonet me while I’m on the ground, it’s good to know you’re committed to stopping that second step.”

“Philip—”

“Bye, Lieutenant.” Philip leaves, belatedly realizing he’s forgotten the coffee jug on the table. Well, that’s fine by him. Jenkins can refill his own damn cup.

Theodosia’s reply comes later that day.

He can tell it’s a long one because of the thickness of the book. For one brief, mad moment, warming it by the stove and waiting for the ink to show, he’s tempted to throw the whole thing in the fire just to spite her. But it’s possible that this is a lengthy, groveling apology, and he wouldn’t want to miss that. So, after a suitable amount of time has passed, and Theodosia’s letters have bloomed brown on the page, he begins to read.

Philip. I’m sorry. I didn’t write you before because I thought you wouldn’t understand. But now I see, you are just as trapped as I am—only you are ensnared in a different net.

Let me tell you a story.

One might assume, after my performance at André’s, that folk might be frightened to invite me anywhere. But on the contrary, they are determined to continue the pantomime that the party was a smashing success, and I performed my part of fascinating intellectual object to perfection. My interaction with the boy Lafayette, which they might have seen fit to punish me for, occurred at precisely the moment they are all determined never to acknowledge. So, you see, I continue to be flooded with invitations.

It is this incredible feat of collective erasure that initially convinced me that my place in society was secure despite my rather unusual actions at my debut. Yet you warned me to be more careful, and your mother did the same. Initially, I concluded that you both, unfortunately, had a point. Just because everyone is pretending to have forgotten does not mean that they truly have moved past the incident. My actions may have been silently noted, even though I have, as of yet, received no punishment nor even any mention of them. So, as you suggested, I resolved to feign docility.

I cannot anymore, and this is why.

About three months ago—Lord, has it really been that long?—my father arranged for me yet another performance at yet another absurdly rich man’s house. Squeezed into a corset, my hair burnt straight, draped in fifteen or so layers of tulle organza (the only advantage to any of this is that, with the number of social engagements I have had, between which it would be folly to repeat a dress, I have been seeing more of my tailor than my own father), I was already nigh to a rage before I even stepped out of our coach.

“Don’t worry, dear,” my father said, patting my hand. Evidently he mistook my anger for fear. “You look perfect.”

And then he ever-so-gallantly helped me from the carriage, saw me to the great gates of the manse, and hopped straight back in the carriage. He never comes to these events, you see. He says he doesn’t want to take attention from me, but I know it is because he hates them. He is a terrible hypocrite.

So there I was, left to make my own way into the house, which I did. I recited my poetry; I sang my song with all the young men giving me such a look. Philip, I want you to know that young women know when you are giving them that look. We can see you.

After I finished my performance—well, of course at such events one’s performance is never strictly finished, but after I completed the prepared, official portion of it—there was a break before the dancing was to begin. The son of the host bowed to me, took me by the hand, and led me to a secluded corner of the room. We had a brief conversation, in which I made some witty, perhaps slightly cutting, but ultimately harmless comments about various less-influential Brits in town, as is my way. His face soured. “You know,” said he, “before you opened your mouth, you were perfect.”

At that moment, my mouth fell open in shock. No sound came out, which I deeply regret, because he took it as an opportunity. He seized my arm with one hand, then with the other reached up and took my chin, pinching my lower lip between his finger and his thumb in a facsimile of closing. “There,” he said. “That’s better.”

I don’t think you will understand, Philip, how I felt with his eyes on my face. Your experience and mine are too far removed. But I am writing you now anyway, because I can tell nobody else, and sometimes I feel like you are half my friend and half my diary, and I must get the words out even if they disappear as quickly as I write them.

You know, ever since I learned of unwritings, I have wondered if they are not much more common than we think. I suppose there is really no way of knowing, is there? The big ones, I imagine, are rare, as they require much in the way of sorcerous resources and have no guarantee of success. But then I think upon the spectacle of the boy at the Andrés’ party, how quickly it will be lost to memory—not erased, but simply overwritten, faded, forgotten. Is that not an unwriting in its own right? And when a rich man takes a girl aside at a party, and backs her up against a wall, with only bare amusement at his own so-called witticism in his eyes, well—how many times has that been unwritten? Lost as soon as it happened? So I think what happened to your father is remarkable only for its completeness, and for the fact that anyone made note of it at all.

He tried to kiss me, and I began to laugh. I laughed even though his hand around my arm crushed so tight I had bruises in the shape of his fingers. I laughed though he seized my lip in his grasp and pinched so hard that the next day it was purple and swollen twice its usual size. I laughed so high and so long that people turned to stare—though certainly I had no design to attract their attention. I had no design at all. I could not say, now, why I laughed. It was, perhaps, a monstrous or a mad thing to do. But the result was that many eyes were drawn our way, and the man grew furious and threw me to the floor rather that continue to carry out his intentions.

“Stupid girl, she’s drunk,” he said, perfunctorily, and stormed away. Never mind that I had delivered a pitch-perfect Mozart aria not five minutes before. I was drunk, and that was the accepted explanation, and all the women tittered and all the men chuckled, and the infamous fact of this man’s attempt was gone from the public mind before it was even half-formed.

I picked myself off the floor with the assembled crowd still watching and laughing. And then, because I had been advised that I could not make another stir and survive it, I smiled. With my lip bleeding inside my mouth, I smiled, and said, “Do excuse me, I misjudged the strength of the punch.”

Do you see, Philip, why this cause is bigger than you? Bigger than your mother and your father and your father’s friends? Bigger than any of us? Our entire world is premised upon deception, upon lies, upon silence! You out there with your trees and your rabbits haven’t been caged by it the way I have. You haven’t felt a man’s eyes upon you like I have, and known that you could tell the story with the last breath leaving your lungs and still no one, not even your own father, would understand.

Ah, yes, my father. The next morning when he saw how swollen my lip had grown he said nothing directly. But he did take me by the hand and solemnly declare that he would kill any man that harmed me, and I had only to name the culprit.

I did not allow him to fail me. I stayed silent.

I want to be very clear that I do not blame you, Philip, nor your mother, nor even your advice. It was meant for a less evil world. You took the scales from my eyes, and truly, I am grateful to you for that, but it does not give you the right to put them back on as you choose. I am awake now, and I cannot bow to a crown of lies.

And yes, I’ll be careful. But when they’re not listening, I'm going to scream. I’m going to laugh like a wild thing straight into their gaping stupid faces. All these big men, oh, I’m going to shake their world. But don’t worry, Philip. I know you’re still scared. They’ll never know it’s me. They’ll never suspect it, because I’m perfect, see?

And I think I have spotted a pattern in your monsters, or at least Lafayette and Laurens. They are both of them almost frighteningly perfect, are they not? Or at least, they were meant to be: so perfect that they seem almost anti-monsters, inhuman out the other side. Now with Lafayette we know the illusion is being picked apart from the outside, but Laurens, you have said, is different. I know your theory is that they didn't change him, that they couldn't, but Philip, forgive me, that's madness. He can't have been perfect any more than I can be, don't you see? Have pity on him, for all his dead perfection. This is important to me. Please allow him to be less of an angel, and more of a man. Grant him his frailty, and his fury, and his monstrousness, and his madness. If you grant him his goodness, let it be a triumph over those things rather than a matter of course. Don't lose him behind his smile the way the world has chosen to lose me behind mine.

It was brave of you to bare your hurt to me. I had been wounded deep in my heart, but I built a scar around it, a gross fibrotic growth, tough enough to close off the pain. But now I begin to think a scar is just another cage. The first time I read your latest letter, I shed no tears, felt only a cold, distant anger and smug satisfaction that my bleak view of this world had been confirmed. But I read it again, and your words began to find me. I kept thinking that I had carried a matching pain in my own heart, and been unable to put it to paper, and here you were, bleeding on the page, and I couldn’t find you. Couldn’t find you, until I felt my own wound, and walked forward through the pain, and reached out my hand to you. I wept for you, Philip, and for me, wept until my eyes had no water left. I think you will understand—I don’t say this to make you feel guilty. On the contrary, I thank you. I can feel my heart again. It has been months.

I should have remembered sooner, that silence in this world of ours is a death we make for ourselves. We cannot be silent, Philip. Not to each other, and I am sorry that I was for so long to you. My only excuse was that I was wounded, and in my family we clench our teeth through such things. Not like your mother, having you write a whole book about what must be her greatest wound. The more pain I feel, the less I think she is mad. She is very, very brave in her way, and she has made you brave in the same way. Hopefully I may become more that way, in time. One day I may turn my laugh at that ball into a howl. Maybe one day I can turn a howl into words. Maybe I can find some place between the monster and the paragon, where I am simply Theodosia.

I hope you are well, but I know you are not. Let me say then that I hope your pain eases soon, and if putting it in words will be a balm, know that I will read them and treasure them for their helpfulness to you, and what’s more, I promise to answer. You have helped me more than you know.

Your most sincere and most remorseful friend,

Theodosia

Chapter Text

The rage never really leaves Philip, that summer.

It boils under Philip’s skin, hotter than humiliation, a constant presence as he waits tables, as he pulls weeds, as he sits at his desk, quill stone-still in his hand, ink going dry in the well. Every time he passes a mirror and sees the scar through his brow, it flares. Or when he rides into town and sees the shadow of the monster in the woods, and thinks of the pain his ma has to go through, it burns anew. Or when he reads some book, and thinks of Theodosia— God, Theodosia, and that letter; he can hardly stand it! Stronger or weaker, hot or cold, sharp or dull, helpless or powerful—it changes forms, his rage, but it walks beside him like a bosom companion. The kind of friend Laurens once was for his father, the kind of friend Philip has never been allowed to have.

It sparks up into a fire every morning at the Key and Kite when he sees the Gazette’s headlines. They are now calling the skirmish of a few months ago the Battle of Saratoga, which Philip sees through as a cynical attempt to obfuscate even further the memory of the real Battle of Saratoga, fought seventeen years ago in part by his very own grandfather, and a resounding Patriot victory. But the name is only the beginning of the nonsense: for they have published a good deal of information that Philip knows for a fact is not true. For example, they have said that only six redcoats were wounded, when Philip saw himself, from the roof of the inn, over two dozen men carried back to the barracks on stretchers. And they have said the battle was swift and decisive when Philip knows it lasted overnight and well into the next morning. And they have said as well that the redcoat response was swift and well-disciplined when Philip witnessed himself panic and disorganization among the well-liquored redcoats at the Key and Kite when they were called in for backup.

The lies alone he could nearly bear, but he cannot bear the town’s response to them, which seems to be to read them and repeat them even though they have seen the evidence to the contrary with their own eyes. He overhears countless conversations, as he refills coffee-cups and busses plates, in which blatant, falsifiable shite is cited with all the respect due to gospel. It is enough to drive him near to madness.

Thankfully, his hours at the Key and Kite are now much shorter that Mrs. Potsham has hired new help. But this only puts him back at the house for longer hours, with his Ma and himself both expecting swift progress on the book, especially after the bulk of the harvest is in and the weather turns bitterly cold.

It starts as a way to procrastinate, at first. Since he’s trapped at his desk—on this day, nearly literally, with his mother cleaning downstairs where she will see if he attempts to escape outside—he might as well write something. Theodosia had expressed some curiosity about the skirmish, and now that they’ve reconciled, and now that he already has a fully-formed rant on the subject chasing its tail around his head, he might as well put it down on paper. Words come easy, invisible ink flowing onto the page in steady lines, and by the time he’s done, the squeezing, tightening feeling of rage in his chest has lessened a little. The letter includes not only his firsthand observations of the battle, but also a careful dissection and debunkation of all the British amendations and annotations afterward. I only wish I had a Gazette of my own, Philip concludes, to remind the people of my town what they saw with their own eyes.

After that, he returns to the book and finds his mental block eased. He is in a crackling, high-spirited, dangerous mood after writing a letter so steeped in counter-narrative: a mood that perfectly suits the next major scene he intends to write, of the duel between Laurens and Lee that his father seconded. He flies through it, and when he reads through the draft at the end of the day allows himself a rare glimmer of satisfaction at the prose. If only it could all come so easy.

Three months later, on the day the temperature broaches freezing for the first time since the turn of the year, a package comes in the mail that says open ALONE. Mrs. Potsham winks when she hands it to him. It’s about four times as large as an ordinary letter, wrapped in oilskin as proof against the weather. Philip stows it safely under the bar, and once he’s home takes it straight up to his room and snips the string around it.

Dear Philip,

I hope you are keeping yourself warm in this ugly weather and are not running mad from boredom in your little cabin. Hopefully this book will be a help. It has been far too long since we have seen each other face to face, and I believe we have much to discuss that cannot be properly conveyed in mere letters.When the weather clears, do you think you might find yourself in New York City? My calendar is clear in late May, though of course I am sure we might make other arrangements if need be.

Your friend,

Theodosia

Theodosia wants to meet in person? Well, that is surely about something exciting, although he doesn't know what might be so important, so secret, that she will not entrust it even to invisible ink. He resolves to ask his mother if he may travel to the city the very first chance he gets.

Underneath the book there is another package, wrapped in tissue paper and much too floppy to contain another book. He tears off the paper to discover a jacket—pale mint-green wool, lined with silk of a deep oceanic blue-green. It’s just slightly big on him, but correctly-proportioned, and beautifully (doubtless, expensively) made. A spectacular present: is it for his birthday? He’s never gotten Theodosia anything before, and wonders if he might have to now.

Eager, he puts the jacket on and admires his reflection in the window. The cut and color both flatter him, and the buttons slide easily into their places—but what’s this? When he squares his shoulders, the fabric between them feels oddly stiff and heavy. If he moves his arms forward too quickly, something crackles and digs into his back.

Cautiously, he takes the jacket off and roots around the liner, fine and smooth in his fingers. Nothing that would crackle, until he finds the hidden pocket, so closely-sewn as to be completely invisible to the eye. He reaches inside and pulls out a single inside page of a newspaper.

The AURORA, the header proclaims. Philadelphia, PA. Jupiter, ed.

God. This is a dissident newspaper! If he’s caught with this—if Theodosia’s caught with this—

But the rage that has woken in the pit of his stomach doesn’t much care. His curiosity handles the rest, poring over the articles and editorials until it stumbles over words that ring familiar. This—Theodosia sent this to him months ago, asking for what he thought, and he provided comments having no idea what her intentions were for the piece, thinking it was meant for the privacy of her own heart.

He should have known better. Theodosia, God love her, loves an audience, and she told him straight-out that she was going to scream. He’s awed and a little terrified for her, that she should choose to do it in such a matter.

And then his eyes fall on the next article. “Being an account of the so-called ‘Battle of Saratoga,’ more a Skrimish, by an Eyewitness, and a refutation of such accounts as the British have made of the Affray.”

Philip reads it, feeling half-sick with excitement and dread.

It’s his words, echoing back to him strangely across the months, in regimented printed type instead of his own hand. They’re good words, just as he deemed months ago when he wrote them, but—could Theodosia not have at least asked before sending his words along to this… Jupiter fellow? Could this Jupiter fellow have at least asked before rearranging some of his paragraphs and cutting his very favorite sentence? Why, oh why, have they given him the pen-name Theophilus?

Still, on the balance of it he’s not angry at all. On the contrary—he’s elated. Theodosia thought his words were good enough to be seen by patriot thinkers all across the colonies. Even now, brave and serious men who escaped the final denouement of the war-that-wasn’t may be secretly discussing the points that he came up with. He might be famous!

Well, if he is famous, then thank the Lord for his pseudonym, as stupid as it is. The whole point of he and his mother’s solitary existence is to keep the eyes of history firmly off of them and, more importantly, the monster. What will happen now? Might he have drawn it back their way? Will the British have some way of detecting the authorship of these pieces? Surely not—or else, wouldn’t the newspaper already have been shut down? But what if they find the offices of the Aurora at some future date—what if they track down Jupiter, track down Theodosia, track down Philip?

His ma knocks at the door. “Are you still in there, dear?”

Philip makes a rapid decision. He throws the newspaper onto his desk, where it will be well-camouflaged amidst the piles and drifts of other papers. Then he straightens his new jacket, turns to face the door, and says, “Yes, Ma.”

“Oh, goodness!” his mother cries, as soon as she enters. “You look so handsome!” She strides forward and smooths the lines of his sleeves a little, nodding approvingly at the cut. But a moment later, her smile grows strained. “Miss Burr sent you… clothes? Does she think we can’t afford clothes?”

“No, Ma, I’m sure she doesn’t, she just”—inspiration strikes—“She’s just invited me to a… a social function, in the city, in May, and she didn’t want me to look out of place wh—if I go. Can I go, Ma, please?”

 “What a delightful coincidence!” his ma cries, holding up her own letter with a sparkling grin. “Angelica has just written me. Her children are all in boarding school now and she has persuaded her husband that it’s been far too long since she’s seen me—so she’s coming to visit!”

“Wow, Ma!” Philip is genuinely excited for her, although still residually terrified that she’ll spot the illicit newspaper on his desk. He shifts a few feet to the side so it’s no longer so much in her field of view. “So… so you’re going into the city to meet her?”

“I was thinking maybe we could both go,” his ma says. “Maybe make a few days of it, get us both some new books, some new clothes. I’m sure Angelica will want to spoil you silly. Then we’ll stop at Peggy’s for a day or two on the way back and return here before the creature grows too restless.”

“And I can see Theodosia while we’re there?”

“If her father permits it,” his ma says, and then her stern expression flips over into a sly grin, and she adds on, “or if she can safely sneak out. Does he know that two of you correspond?”

“Um… I don’t know, but I don't think so,” Philip says, flushing. “I don’t think he likes me very much.”

“Then you should write back to her,” Ma says, her grin growing wickeder, “and tell her to expect you, so that she can start planning now.”

The next few months drag by. Philip and Theodosia correspond as quickly as the somewhat irregular postal service allows, setting details as to where and when they will meet. I can't wait to see you again, Theodosia writes, in a moment of unaccustomed sincerity, and it falls to Philip to be the arch one, and reply back, yes, I can't wait for you to see me either. But he can't sustain the pretext for long: his next line is, if I look any good at all it will only be because of the lovely jacket that you sent me, and I am sure that no matter what I wear, you will outshine me.

The letters are a great consolation, and perhaps also a great distraction, from his work on the book, which has become mired in countless drafts and redrafts and fragments and snippets and notes. He can no longer tell with any great certainty what he has finished with and what he has not, and so he has no idea what he needs to do next, nor any concept of how close he might be to completing his task. This last piece, more than any, annoys his mother.

And yet, at the same time, he harbors a secret hope. Previously he had given no thought to the obstacle of publishing the book, seeing as its completion necessarily preceded any such maneuver. But now that he nears the middle of the war and senses the approach of his story’s abrupt and inevitable denouement, he has arrived at the solution: he has a publisher in the Aurora. If they cannot bind a book, he is certain they could serialize his father's story. Though it is true, being a dissident newspaper, that the Aurora is not widely distributed, it is at least a place to start. And perhaps dissidents will be the most receptive to his father’s story, in any case.

And yet, this solution presents its own problems. He certainly could not send off his manuscript behind his mother’s back. Yet he doubts she would approve of the risks associated with becoming a newspaper columnist. She also might ask how he made contact with the Aurora, and that is a trap as well, for he has no desire to implicate Theodosia, because if his mother deems her a bad influence, she may not let him meet her in New York, and that would be a tragedy.

So, Philip keeps his inadvertent side job a secret, and keeps working on the book, and decides for now to table the question of publication. For a while, he allows himself to believe the only thing of consequence he will be doing the spring is counting the days until he sees Theodosia.

Philip arrives at the tavern flushed from the spring sunshine, unaccustomed to its strength still after the long winter. His ma elected to stay behind to pack for the journey to the city and get the farm ready for their upcoming absence; the cherries have picked an inopportune time to ripen, and if they aren’t picked soon the birds will eat them all. At the Key and Kite there's the usual crowd gathered for a Saturday morning. He slips between a pair of redcoats with his hat down over his face and makes his way back to the bar. "Anything for me?" he asks. It’s his day off, but they’re supposed to be leaving for New York City later today, and he wanted to make absolutely sure Theodosia hasn’t had to make any last-minute changes to their plans.

"Matter of fact..." Mrs. Potsham says, bending down and rummaging under the bar, "yes, here it is. A package, lucky you!"

"Thank you, ma'am," Philip says, and, because he's still hot and would like a moment to cool down before riding home, he says, "Do you have any of that cherry pie yet?" Mrs. Potsham favors him with a slight nod, and a moment later a slice of pie is steaming in front of him. He sits with his package in his lap—another book, by the shape of it, and that's exciting already, and prepares to enjoy his pie.

As he's raising the fork to his lips someone walks up to the wall to his left and posts an enormous notice.

"Oh," Mrs. Potsham says, her brows furrowing as she strains to read it. "Surely that can't be—Philip, be a dear and read that to me, I've set down my spectacles somewhere..."

Philip turns and takes in the notice at a glance. His stomach drops. "It says... It says that as an emergency measure, henceforth no town meetings, assemblies, or gatherings are allowed to take place, under any circumstances. Any who attempt to organize such meetings, assemblies, gatherings, or any equivalents thereof, are to be charged with... with conspiracy against the crown. Any meetings, assemblies, or gatherings planned before the ban are cancelled, effective immediately." He clears his throat. “In addition, as an emergency measure, all travel— all land t-travel and shipping to and from New York City, not explicitly approved by the Governor of New York and certified by his writ, is banned, and all persons and goods entering or exiting the city are subject to search.”  

Aunt Angelica and Theodosia, Philip thinks, stunned. We’re not going to be able to meet them in the city after all.

"What emergency?" Mrs. Potsham says, after a few seconds of confused silence. A small crowd has already come up by the bar, many of them less-literate folk eager to hear Philip’s reading. "Travel and shipping to the city, banned? They’ll starve. And, whatever are we supposed to do about the bridge along the road to Ithaca that collapsed if we can’t meet to ta—"

Abruptly she cuts off and looks down, suddenly frantically gathering up dirty glasses from the bar and scrubbing at them with a dishcloth. Philip glances over his shoulder and sees redcoats, four of them, standing shoulder to shoulder and reading the proclamation with interest—and surprise.

"Does this mean tomorrow's meeting?" one of them whispers to the other. “The one about that bridge, after church?”

"I think so?" the other whispers back. “Hell, does this include church? That’s an assembly, isn’t it?”

"Surely church doesn't count as a meeting, does it?" one of the town women interrupts, to the redcoats’ collective astonishment. "This must be for... political-type business."

"It says any meeting or assembly," a redcoat says, pointing to the sign. "Any meeting includes meetings about anything."

The woman looks openly skeptical.

"Oi!" someone else, one of the townsmen, yells from behind the redcoats. "Did you see this, Harry?"

"See what?" Another man shoulders his way straight through the redcoats. "Oh, fuck me. Corporal Marsh, did your lot know anything about this?"

"It doesn't matter now, does it?" one of the redcoats—Marsh, apparently—snaps. "The order is clear."

“Is it, though?” someone from the crowd cuts in. The people laugh.

"But why?" someone else calls. "We haven't done anything!"

"Well— well, someone must have done something!" Marsh blusters. “It says emergency right there—this is probably temporary...”

"Yes, but someone wasn't us, we haven't done anything wrong—"

Philip would dearly love to stay and hear the rest of the fight, but he really needs to get going to tell his ma the bad news and reassess plans with her. Maybe if they get going right now, they can pretend they haven’t heard about the ban on travel to the city, and the guards will take pity on them and let them through. Rueful that he couldn't properly enjoy his pie, he stuffs the rest of it in his mouth in a single bite, scrapes off the remaining filling and licks the fork, and hands the plate and fork back over the bar to Mrs. Potsham.

When he turns around, there's a solid wall of people behind him, standing closely pressed together and all straining to read the sign and offering their own opinions and interpretations. The redcoats are just as trapped as Philip is, two of them looking decidedly nervous. Quickly he turns back to the bar and lowers his hat. Surely they wouldn't bother him now. But he has the package from Theo in his lap and, although he's not sure what it contains, he's positive that it would be disastrous for it to fall into British hands—even if they couldn't find her secret message, the fact that the and Theo are corresponding at all might be dangerous for them to know. And God help him if she's included another copy of the Aurora…

“Maybe you should keep this, for the moment,” he tells Mrs. Potsham, slipping the package back to her. He’d rather she keep it than attempt to bring it through the redcoat-infested crowd, and he and his mother will be back in town soon enough on their way to the city—he can always pick it up then.

The press of the crowd only grows thicker, and Philip is trapped at the bar, still as a spooked rabbit, pretending that he has some reason to be there other than the lack of an escape route. If only he hadn't just choked down his pie he could pretend to be eating it, but he has nothing to do with himself and no money left in his pockets to buy a drink or more food.

Behind him, the debate rages on, degenerating into something more like a shouting match. Philip thinks he recognizes the drunken voice of Tom Davis, the magistrate's good-for-nothing stepson, who seems to be taking up the redcoat line of fallacy that because the village is being punished, then someone among them must have done something wrong, and if that's the case then they must root out the wrongdoer among their number and return to their previous, virtuous state.

Elizabeth Hamilton, he names, and Philip’s blood sings with fear. Elizabeth Hamilton has always been a bad seed among us. That monster she tries to hide, that monster with the voice of a man, that man-eating monster that was visited upon her like a mark of disapprobation from God himself, did no-one else see it? That monster that came into the world at the same time as her newborn babe, probably sucking the same tits—did she still take it like a husband, those howls from the barn, were they that Hamilton witch getting plowed by that eight-legged fire-breathing—

Philip’s fear turns inside-out. He stands with all the fury in the world concentrated in one burning point at Tom Davis’s throat. The crowd, previously chuckling along at the Magistrate boy's tirade, goes silent when they see him. It parts as he comes through, as though his fury is heat enough to warn them back. Finally he's staring up at Davis’s face.

Philip spits.

"Hey!" he hears, and Davis’s fist comes flying out at him. He dodges to one side just as hands come up to grab both his arms, pulling him back—Davis, a few feet away, is struggling against two men as well.

"Dear god, he really is feral," someone says in disgust.

Philip's whole world goes red when he hears that, but after a wild struggle to escape he realizes that he's well and truly caught. "Fine," he snarls, at Davis, still pinioned only a few feet away. "We'll do this the civilized way. Shall we step outside and go now?" And I'll beat the shit out of you, never mind that you’re bigger than me—

"I prefer pistols," Davis says coldly.

"Whatever you fucking want," Philip says. I'll kill you, you son of a bitch, I'll kill you for saying that shit about my ma, nobody gets to talk about her like that—

"Do you even have a second?" Davis sneers. He finds his footing, and taps the hands restraining him, and just like that, he's freed.

"Do you?" Philip shoots back.

Davis glances at another group of young men in the crowd whom Philip vaguely recognizes as being from his year in school. One of them nods. "I do now. I doubt you'll find one as easily.”

Philip grits his teeth, glancing around the room as though that will somehow earn him allies. The best he can hope for would be one of the men in town, maybe without a family to provide for, who would take sympathy on him. But what has sympathy ever bought Philip, in all his life?

“As I thought. And shall you forfeit?" Davis sounds overeager, and rage clenches in Philip’s stomach to know that his enemy is about to duck out of the reckoning he is owed.

But then a voice calls, "I'll be his second."

Philip turns to see who it is, the hands restraining him falling away at last.

It's Jenkins. Jenkins, who had been his friend, who allowed him to be utterly humiliated and then acted as though he had done nothing wrong. “Why would you help me?" Philip asks, hackles up.

"Your mother’s reputation is at stake," Jenkins says, looking calm. “You should be allowed to defend her honor on the field.”

One of the redcoats actually nods to this before seeming to catch himself; a few of the townspeople murmur in approval. Davis purples.

"Right!" Jenkins cries, clapping his hands together and startling the whole room. He turns to the man Davis indicated as his second. "Unless either of the principals objects, let us say this duel will be taking place in one hour’s time. Your man will be supplying the pistols for young Hamilton, seeing as they were his idea.”

Davis’s friend looks bewildered at the intervention. “All… all right?” he says, glancing at Davis.

“Fine by me,” Davis sneers.

"I would like everyone to please clear out, unless you're ordering something," Mrs. Potsham says, her voice trembling. When nobody shouts her down she continues, her voice growing stronger. "That means all of you. Unless you have business here—out."

Philip looks at Jenkins. "Are you really going to--"

"Be your second? Yes, I reckon so."

“We should leave,” Philip says. “Mrs. Potsham doesn’t want—”

“Not before we get you your pistol,” Jenkins says. He leaves Philip alone for a moment while he goes off to confer with Davis and his second. Philip stands with his hands slack by his sides, not even responding to the people who accidentally brush up against him on their way out. He’s just done something large, and he’s not quite sure how it happened. One moment a frozen, cowering little mouse of a boy—the next, a lion, a fire-breather-creature, dangerous as a new-forged sword. And now what? Steel hot with forge-flame, sharp and shatter-prone. He’s going to make Davis bleed.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Jenkins returns with a dueling pistol.

“Come on,” he says, and, when Philip doesn’t immediately move, takes him by the elbow. “Let’s talk strategy where nobody will hear us.”

Philip says, “The schoolhouse.” It’s summer now—no-one there.

Jenkins nods, takes him by the shoulder, and walks him out to the dusty street, along with most of the crowd. Folk are still muttering among themselves, but now instead of complaining about the sudden disbandment of the town meeting all talk is of the upcoming duel. One hour. One hour, and Philip is going to put a hole in that—

“I’ve never shot a pistol before,” he blurts.

Jenkins comes to a stop, arms dropping slack to his sides, something like despair or disgust flooding his eyes. But then he shakes his head and resumes walking. “We’ve got a lot of work to do quickly, then, don’t we?”

When they arrive at the schoolhouse, Jenkins holds out the dueling pistol to Philip. It’s heavy, and in the summer sun the metal has taken on heat like a living thing.

“May I?” asks Jenkins. He takes it back and tosses it from hand to hand. "Nicely balanced," he mutters. He checks to make sure it's unloaded, then pulls back the hammer and releases it, watching with satisfaction as it strikes sparks. "See this bit?” he says, pulling back the hammer and showing Philip, “This is a piece of flint, right here. It falls against this bit, that’s the frizzen, and strikes a spark to light the powder with. Sometimes underhanded folk will coat the frizzen with wax. Prevents the spark from striking, you see?"

Philip nods, making a note to check that in any future duels he has.

Jenkins fiddles with the pistol a little more, checking the weight of the trigger, narrating as he goes so Philip can follow along. At last, he nods. “This pistol will serve very nicely. Now, let’s get you some practice.”

Jenkins takes some empty glass bottles— Philip immediately recognizes them as Key and Kite stock—from his jacket and balances them on a tree stump, then takes ten paces and beckons Philip over to his side. "Right," he says. "There's your target."

"It's awfully close," Philip says.

"Ten paces may feel short, but trust me, men miss more often than they hit, in duels. Why, I’ve witnessed four duels in my life and only in one of them was a man wounded, and him not severely. Now, you’ve no idea how to hold this thing?”

“No.”

“All right, well, how about let’s start with whatever feels most natural and—no. This hand in back, this one steadies. Actually—you’re right-handed, yes? Are you also right-eyed?”

Philip has no idea what Jenkins is talking about, and says so.

Jenkins tuts and makes Philip do a ridiculous exercise with his finger in front of his face, but after a few minutes they conclude that Philip is in fact left-eyed.  

 "All right," Jenkins says. “That’s useful information. Now, it's common practice for showboaters to hold a pistol one-handed and to stand to the side like so, but for real steadiness, especially a heavy weapon like this and especially a newcomer like yourself, and especially with your dominant eye and your dominant hand on different sides, you’ll want to face square forward, like a man."

Philip tries gripping the pistol as he's been shown. It's much heavier than he expected, and the end of it trembles, as much as he tries to keep it steady.

"Drop your shoulders," Jenkins says. "You're too tense."

"I'm not likely to be less tense an hour from now," Philip says, through gritted teeth.

"Oh, surely you will. Now, how about I load it and you start to practice on those bottles, eh?"

"Sounds... sure," Philip says. He hands the pistol back and watches Jenkins load it, hands moving nimbly. "I... you don't..."

"I don't what?"

"You don't think this is a stupid idea?"

Jenkins’ face goes wooden, his fingers slipping for a moment on the bullet. But he recovers, and continues with his task of loading the pistol. "Boy, if you're frightened, don't make the mistake of thinking you have to go through with this. But… it might be distasteful for you. The expectations are very clear: you would have to apologize to him sincerely as a gentleman, and he would have to accept that apology.”

Philip feels revolted at the very thought. He didn’t spit in Davis’s face because his feelings were mild and easily soothed. His pride couldn’t stand an apology, and besides, Davis doesn’t deserve one. “I won’t.”

Jenkins only sighs. "There’s nothing for it, then. Here. Try at those bottles. Just see how you do."

Philip takes the pistol. Jenkins makes a slight adjustment to the angle of his wrist that makes him feel a little steadier. "Right," he says. "Now, you're going to sight at your target along the barrel of the pistol. Let your eyes switch their focus. And you're going to take a deep breath, and then as you're breathing out, you're going to pull the trigger."

"Isn't that going to take a long time?" Philip asks. "Won't he shoot me as I'm aiming?"

"Not if he wants to aim properly himself," Jenkins says.

That doesn't seem right to Philip--surely Davis has had practice with these. But he doesn't want Jenkins to think him a coward, either, especially after he's already expressed his reservations once. So instead he breathes in, stares at one of the bottles, and, as he lets his breath go, he squeezes the trigger.

The pistol kicks in his hands with a deafening crack, and he's so startled at the movement and the noise that he drops it to the dirt.

"Sorry!" he cries out, diving to retrieve the pistol as Jenkins laughs. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting—"

"Recoil," the soldier says. "I should be saying sorry, not you, I'm so used to it I forgot to warn you. The gun tends to pull up as you fire. Best to aim a little lower than you expect." He points. “See that gouge in the tree bark back there? That was you.”

Philip looks at the bite taken out of the tree, about a foot to the right and two feet up from where he was aiming. “Not bad,” he says. Sheepishly, he hands the pistol back to the redcoat. “Could you load it again?”

“Of course.” Jenkins does, handing the pistol back.

Philip takes careful aim, reciting the instructions to himself. There’s another deafening crack, as he fires but at least this time Philip doesn’t drop the pistol. There’s no indication where the bullet went, though, as the bottles remain unshattered.

After a dozen more attempts, each unsuccessful, Philip is growing frustrated. “Is there something wrong with my aim?” he asks.

“You’re just getting your arm in,” Jenkins soothes. “Here, let me try it and see if watching helps.” Philip hands off the pistol and watches with all the concentration of a cat stalking a garden snake. He watches Jenkins roll the tension out of his neck before raising the pistol, the concentration in his eyes, the slight tremor of the pistol as he raises it-- and a bottle explodes into brown shards of glass.

“You were shaking a little,” Philip comments.

Jenkins grimaces, as though Philip caught him at lying, but he says, “I suppose many men do. A little shake doesn’t much detract, I find.”

“Hm,” Philip says. He lets the redcoat reload and takes up the pistol again.

A second bottle explodes.

“I did it!” Philip cries, exultant. “Did you see?”

“I did! Now do it again.”

Philip doesn’t do it again until he’s taken five more shots, and he’s beginning to grow discouraged.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jenkins says, “people are bigger than bottles anyway.” He checks his pocket-watch. “It’s time for us to be getting on.”

“Already?” Philip asks.

“If we want to be on time,” Jenkins says, turning up the road. Philip follows behind, the pistol still in his hands. “There will be about five or ten minutes where me and his second talk and try to smooth things over, if that’s what you and Davis both want. Perhaps you might tell me what terms you would be willing to accept.”

“Nothing less than a full retraction of what he said about my mother and an apology, both delivered promptly, in public, in a sincere tone of voice.”

Jenkins chuckles. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. But personally, I wouldn’t hold my breath, were I you.”

Philip imagines standing ten paces before Davis, whirling to face him, aiming carefully at his chest, pulling the trigger, and Davis—well, exploding, like one of the bottles.

"Am I really going to shoot him?"

He'd addressed his question to the world at large, or maybe to his own conscience, or to God, but Jenkins answers. "You don’t have to if you don’t want to— your honor will be satisfied by presenting yourself to danger, as it were. If you truly would rather not risk Davis’s life, the best course might be to fire in the air."

“Does that happen… often?”

“I’ve witnessed it once,” Jenkins says. “Both participants raised their pistols high, fired once, and made up afterwards. Neither was willing to apologize, but neither had any real desire to harm the other, either.”

Philip tries to decide if he has a real desire to harm Davis. A part of him very much does, but is that the part of Philip that he wants to be in charge of his actions? His blood has cooled a little since the inn, and although he tries to envision sighting down the pistol barrel at a human being, he finds it difficult. The possibility of satisfying his honor without doing violence is appealing.  “Say I fire in the air,” he says. “I can’t reload, right? Davis is free to just shoot me in front of everyone.”

Jenkins wags his head in ambivalence. “I suppose… technically, that option would be available to him. But he would look like the worst kind of scrub, if he did. Nobody would approve.”

Philip isn’t so sure of that, especially remembering Jenkins’ own previous conduct.  Some of the townspeople may like him personally, but nobody spoke out on his behalf back at the Key and Kite. How many of them think that Alexander Hamilton’s son is a blight on their town? How many would rather put the failed Revolution permanently behind them?

He can’t trust his life to the opinion of the town, which means Davis will have no incentive to hold his fire. Strategically speaking, his own best option is to shoot to kill—but does he want to follow the best strategy here? If he cannot shoot Davis for honor, could he do so out of self-preservation? Could he live with himself, if he killed Davis? Could his mother bear to look him in the face, knowing that he’d murdered another human being?

Philip has no answers to any of these questions. Too late, he realizes they’ve arrived at the green. A substantial crowd has gathered, despite the recent injunction against just such things, and Davis’s second has already marked out ten paces between two positions. Jenkins explains quickly that there will be a coin toss for who chooses the first position, so it is in both sides’ interest for them to be equally favorable. Then he pats Philip on the shoulder and goes off to confer with Davis’s second, just in case an apology is in the offing.

Many eyes follow Philip’s path to the shade of a tree. It would feel strange to sit down: tension quivers all throughout his body, almost rising to pain in the large muscles of his legs. Leaning back against the bark, he pulls up one foot behind himself and stretches as best he can. He can do this. He can satisfy his own honor and his mother’s. Ten seconds to count down, a second to shoot, and it will all be over. All he has to do be brave for eleven seconds. He’s decided to fire his pistol in the air.

After what seems like an interminable period, Jenkins and Davis’s second break apart. Jenkins turns back to Philip and sighs: there has been no apology, then. Philip nods and steps forward as the crowd murmurs with excitement. His heart beats fast, his mouth suddenly dry as sandpaper.

Philip steps up to one mark, Davis to the other. Ten paces away—so close, Philip feels he could reach out and touch him. Philip’s heart sounds loud in his ears, the beats almost running together, like thunder, like—like hoofbeats…

“Philip Hamilton!” comes his mother’s voice. She crests the hill behind the green with astonishing speed, Lampon galloping flat out. The crowd breaks when it becomes clear the horse isn’t going to stop in time, scattering to both sides as Lampon slows, sides lathered with foam. His ma swings off the horse while it’s still in motion, running alongside in a tangle of skirts before finally coming to a halt a foot away, mid harangue. “How dare you, Philip, you stop this ridiculous behavior at once—”

“Ma, if you had only heard the shit he said about you—”

“I don’t care, Philip, I don’t give a fig for what that dullard said about me or you or anyone else, you are not getting in a duel and that is final.”

“But Ma, your reputa—”

“I am not a maiden in need of defending, Philip.” Ma’s voice is sharp and cold and crystalline as an icicle. The crowd has retreated completely—Davis too, and his second, and Jenkins, as though blown back by the wind.

They still think she’s a witch, Philip thinks, and for once in his life, he isn’t so certain that’s absurd, Ma’s hair loose and wind-tossed, her eyes hard as black granite. Still, he has to make her understand why he did this. “Ma—the way people talk...”

“People always talk. Let them talk. I don’t care what any of them think.”

“But Ma, they could hurt you if—”

“If they kill you? Yes, Philip. I admit, that would hurt.”

Philip closes his mouth, ashamed. Even though his mother’s words are loving her voice freezes him.

“I—I had to fight, Ma, I couldn’t—”

“You couldn’t see what was happening around you. You walked straight into an obvious trap because you were too hotheaded to know better. Apologize and come home.”

Philip can only stare at her. “Apologize to—to Davis?”

“You heard me.”

Philip looks back at the crowd, at Davis’s shocked face. His mother’s voice is strong enough to carry; they all heard every word she said. Humiliated, but refusing to allow any of them to see it, he walks back to Davis.

“I’m sorry,” he says, through grit teeth, “for—” He can’t even think what to apologize for “— the inconvenience, to you, and I thank you for the loan of the pistol.”

Davis looks down and flinches at the sight of the loaded weapon in Philip’s hands, as though Philip might suddenly choose to assassinate him. But Philip turns the weapon back towards himself and hands it off to the redcoat.

“Careful,” he snarls, not taking his eyes from Davis, “It’s still loaded.”

Behind him, he can hear his mother’s sigh, and then suddenly she steps forward, shoving Philip back towards Lampon. “My son apologizes for the astonishing breach of decorum and the laws of civil conduct which he nearly precipitated, as well as any threat of bodily harm to you, sir. Is his apology accepted? Do you pronounce your honor satisfied?”

Davis gulps. “Yes, Mrs. Hamilton,” he squeaks.

“Good.”

When she steps back, Davis nearly trips over himself in his haste to get away, and nobody else seems eager to stay around either. Philip catches Jenkins’ eyes on him, but the man quickly makes himself scarce when Eliza catches him looking. He’s never seen this side of his mother before; maybe overheard it, in the encounter with Burr, but never before glimpsed the blue-white shriveling fire at the heart of all that ice. For a moment he could almost forget she loves him, and he’s terrified.

“Back to the house,” she says, seizing his hand and yanking him towards the horse.

“Wait!” cries a voice from the crowd. “You forgot something!” Mrs. Potsham forces her way to the front with Philip’s package, shoving it into his left hand as his mother drags him away by the right. Philip clutches it to his chest as his ma grabs him by the back of the collar and practically throws him across the horse, knocking the wind out of him. He flails a foot into the stirrup and manages to stand up against the saddle and get a hand around the pommel, Lampon whinnying in annoyance. He flings his other leg over and finally he’s upright in the saddle, and his ma is already grabbing the reins and striding forward, Lampon following at a brisk walk.

After they’ve left the town far behind them and entered the cover of the trees, Philip says, “There’s been some kind of emergency. They’ve closed the roads to the city.”

Ma says nothing. Ashamed and a little frightened of her anger, Philip falls silent. A little while later, the house comes into view at the top of the hill. Philip dismounts and ties up Lampon, removing her bridle and saddle as his mother walks straight into the house. When she emerges with her travel bag, he falters.

“Put that back on,” she says, gesturing to the pile of tack on the ground.

“Did… did you not hear that the roads were closed?”

“I’m going anyway,” she says. “Angelica is expecting me.”

“But—but you won’t be able to—”

“I didn’t ask your opinion, Philip,” his ma snaps. When he doesn’t move quickly enough, she snatches the saddle from his hands and puts it on Lampon herself.  

“Well… all right, let me get my bag and I’ll be right out—”

His ma laughs, a high, mad-sounding cackle that freezes his blood. “You think you’re coming with me?”

“I—”

“No, Philip. The answer is no.”

Philip feels like he’s been slapped in the face. “But Theodosia, Ma, you can’t just—”

“This journey is going to be dangerous. You have shown a lack of judgement that would be more dangerous still. You will have to write Theodosia and explain that to her yourself.” She buckles her pack to the saddle, checks its balance, and mounts. “I didn’t get all the cherries in this morning. If you need something to occupy yourself with while I am gone, you may pick those. I should be back in a week.”

“Ma, you’re being ridicul—”

She wheels Lampon away, and the end of Philip’s sentence is choked by the dust of her departure.

Chapter Text

Philip feels like he’s flying apart. The morning had started so green, so new, promising a journey to Aunt Peggy’s and then onward to the city and to Theodosia and even meeting his Aunt Angelica, who has always sent him such wonderful presents and clever letters. And now—his hopes dashed, his plans tossed to the winds, his honor and his mother’s in tatters, his tormentor triumphant: and all because his ma had been afraid of a duel. What will they think of him in town? That he’s a coward, just like her, that he’s a boy who hides behind his mother’s skirts rather than hazard danger. And speaking of danger, she’s an awful hypocrite as well, riding off to a fortified and forbidden city completely alone.

For only the second time in his life, he’s angry enough to spit, although this time he restrains himself. Instead of spit, he tries spite; he will be damned if he picks any of those cherries, or weeds any plots, or does any farm work at all while she’s gone. Instead, he flops down on the sofa and opens the package from Theodosia.

It’s a journal, handsomely bound in leather, the pages blank. Or at least, they look blank. He strikes a fire in the grate and waits for it to grow. The box has something else inside it, something heavy. He reaches in, fingers touching cool metal, and draws out a locket that trails a fine silver chain. It’s a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, even to Philip’s unstudied eyes, and he flushes to think of how much it must have cost Theodosia, and what she can possibly mean by sending it to him.

He’s further confused when he opens it and it’s a portrait of her. Does Theodosia want to be sweethearts? He hadn’t been trying to be sweethearts, but he supposes if it had to be anyone he wouldn’t mind Theodosia, only she’s so far away in the city and he hadn’t particularly thought she wanted a sweetheart and this seems like an awfully strange time and… perhaps he should read her letter. The ink in the journal is just starting to show in the rising heat, and he strains his eyes to read.

Dear Philip,

I write in a state of great agitation— please forgive my scattered pen and mind. The boy-monster is no more— Governor Andre is out of his mind— the entire city is under curfew and the atmosphere uglier than I have ever felt it. I don’t know how or if this letter shall reach your hands. But I must write to order my mind. I must get it all down exactly as it happened, before it all dissolves, too strange to be known or thought or remembered.

You will remember that the boy answered when I sang for him at the soiree. Until a few weeks ago there had been no repercussions for my actions there, even though they destroyed the Andres’ fiction that the boy was sickly— and that he was anything remotely human. I had thought the Andres utterly embarrassed by what transpired, and yet at a loss to find any reason to impugn my actions; in short I had thought I’d gotten off scot-free.

Yesterday— close to nine in the evening my father burst into my bedroom in a state of great consternation. “What did you say? What did you write?” he demanded.

I, of course, pretended ignorance, though a dozen things occurred to me immediately.

“Lady Andre is in our sitting-room asking after you, Theo!” he said, with a look of despair. “What do we do?”

“Well, not keep her waiting!” I cried, and pausing only to correct as much of my appearance as I could and practice my look of wounded, baffled innocence in the mirror, I hurried downstairs.

“Miss Burr!” she cried, leaping up and kissing both my cheeks as, I imagine, my poor father swooned in relief, “you’ve no idea how pleased I am to see you! We’ve been at our wits’ end!” It occurred to me that her usual perfect appearance was disordered, her greeting wildly over-enthusiastic for someone, by society’s estimation, barely worthy of curtsying to her.

Here already was a dangerous moment, because I had no desire to put my considerable talents at her disposal if she wished to use them for her own purposes, but it was also a great necessity to appear as an eager and loyal subject. So I said, “My Lady, I would be honored to assist you in any way I can, but I fear...someone as young and ignorant as myself… of what use could I be?”

“Your voice,” she said, seizing my hands. “That song you sang, that charmed him— could you sing it again?”

It was instantly clear to me what she meant, but I affected confusion. “Charmed… I’m sorry, my Lady, there were so many people…”

“Our boy—Lafayette, he had been so… so ill, and you gave him… comfort.”

I remembered how he’d howled out to his imaginary troops, the wild look on his face as he smashed his wooden redcoats together. “Comfort. Yes, of course, I could—that is, I still know that song, and more. I hope he isn’t, ah, ill again?”

Lady Andre’s composure wavered picturesquely for a moment, and my father, standing silently off to the side, handed her a silk handkerchief with which she dabbed her eyes.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, “and I’m afraid I must ask another favor of you—this is a deeply personal matter, and while I am sure of your discretion, I…”

She trailed off in a delicate manner, allowing my father to fill end the rest of the sentence. He bowed and excused himself at once, but I saw his hand linger on the doorknob as he left. So there’s still some part of him that he hasn’t locked off and consigned to the dust; some part of him still harbors some halting ambition to be a part of this world. But he left all the same, and then I found myself on the receiving end of Lady Andre’s confidence. She said that the boy was under attack by magical forces (looking back I believe she didn’t say the French, but I also believe it was as well as implied), that his behavior had grown erratic, uncontrollable, that she and Lord Andre were beside themselves trying to find a remedy, that the situation was desperate and delicate and was I available, right this instant, to go down to the docks?

“The docks?” I repeated, truly thrown. “Should we not be going to the boy?”

“Precisely why we’re going to the docks,” she said, and before I knew it I was hastily bidding my father good-night and clambering into her coach-and-four, the grandest I have ever seen and, I am sure, the smoothest, had we not set off like the hounds of hell were after us, the rushing of the wheels too loud for conversation and Lady Andre apparently not much inclined for it now that she had me.

The docks at night are an unsettling place, with the ocean gargling and stinking and the ships groaning and their masts disappearing into the darkness above the lantern-light. Lady Andre’s driver took us through all the shipping crates and drunk sailors and whores straight to the pier, and several redcoats helped us down from the carriage with grim faces. Lady Andre seized my arm and tore forward, and though I am a good half-head taller than her it was difficult for me to keep pace. I saw her husband at the end of the dock, divested of his usual red uniform coat, in only his breeches and his shirt, looking up into the shrouds of a small and disreputable-looking dingy, his hat clasped to his chest in a pleading attitude, every angle in his body suggestive of deep anxiety. I followed his gaze and found the boy.

Though it was quite dark I could make out his shape perched at the T of the mast—I don’t know the proper word—some twenty feet above the deck. A half-bunched mess of sailcloth hung below him, and as I watched he conquered another knot, and a small portion of the sail dropped unfurled, filling with a little pocket of breeze.  

“I’ve got to find him,” he muttered in French, “where is he, I must find him—”

My mouth nearly dropped open, for here was proof that the Andres had utterly lost control of the monster. And yet rather than putting it down they persisted in their delusion that he was theirs; for it soon became clear that they wished me to lure him down from the mast so that he wouldn’t hurt himself, and could return home with them.

It would have been a dilemma, whether to assist them or to pretend sudden amnesia of the song that had so charmed the boy, were it not for the fact that he was clearly getting nowhere. In the forty minutes or more it took for Lady Andre to come and fetch me he hadn’t even managed to unfurl the sail completely. And now I saw the cause for Lord Andre’s anxiety, for as I watched the boy wobbled precariously on the beam, and barely saved himself from falling.

“Darling,” Lady Andre said, approaching her husband and laying a hand on his shoulder, “she’s here, shall we—”

Lord Andre gave a start, and swung his head suddenly in my direction. “Oh, thank God,” he said, “Miss, please.” He gestured up to the boy.

There was nothing else to do but sing. At the first note the boy’s frantic tugs at the rope came to a halt. In another moment he found me, and the torchlight caught on his fierce and alien smile. It was a cold night, and I admit that my pitch wasn’t all it could have been. But I threw the notes out like a battlecry, and he was enthralled by them. Within moments he was shimmying down the mast, his movements jerky and grotesque. A little more than five feet off the ground his foot caught on something and he fell hard to the deck.

Lord Andre was racing up the gangplank in an instant, and a moment later he returned with the boy squirming in his arms, threatening to throw him off-balance. “Where on earth is that bungler Seabury!” he shouted to one of the redcoats standing off to the side— well off to the side, as the boy, apparently enraged at the color of his jacket, was clawing and scratching to escape and seemed to be trying to spit on him. “I thought you said he was coming; I have the damn text prepared if he will just—augh!” He cried out as the child sank his teeth straight into his hand.   

“Darling, your papa is only trying to help you!” Lady Andre cried, kneeling down before the boy. He seemed not to hear her. Tears welled in her eyes; she looked up at her husband and, pale with rage, said “He’s let this go months too long.”

The monster’s response was only to bite down on Lord Andre’s hand harder, shaking his head like a feral dog might. Blood welled up between his teeth. Andre hissed, his own teeth bared in a grimace, but didn’t let go, and quickly forestalled any aid from the redcoat with a negative motion of his head. “Darling, we may have to—”

The monster attempted to kick Andre’s shins, and Andre was forced to lift him clean off the ground again to avoid it. This close, I could see that the boy had a strange kind of rash or freckling, which had not been present the last time I saw him: little black marks in regular stripes all across his skin, almost like the lines of a book.  

It was clear that the situation was only growing worse, and though I knew in my mind the boy was only a monstrous creation of the British, his struggles made me sick at heart. Without consulting the Andres, I began to sing again, the same war-song over again.

Instantly the boy stilled, his eyes wide, a smile coming to his face. Andre lowered him so that his feet touched the ground, and experimentally took a step back along the pier. The boy followed, distracted. I took the boy’s other hand, and together we walked the whole length of the pier back to Lady’s Andre’s coach. A great crowd of people had gathered, many of them highly disreputable—this was, after all, the docks at night—and I was glad for the broad-shouldered soldiers who fell in around us.

I am going to tell you what happened next in a sensical order, but know that at the time it was nothing but a great confusion, and believe me when I say there was no time for me to react. There was a deafening crack like a lightning strike—several people screamed—I was knocked to the ground, as was the boy and I believe Lord Andre. The redcoats whipped the rifles off their backs and began pushing the crowd back, and then another crack came and one of them sank to the cobbles. Before the others could fill his space a small figure came flying in through the gap, a sword in its hands. Andre, rising from the ground with red staining his shirt, managed to trip the assassin, and it sprawled out on the pavement, but in an instant it had snatched up the sword and hacked down at the boy, once, twice. Everything was a mess of what I thought was blood, splattering and stinging in my eyes, on my dress, in my hair. The boy didn’t stand a chance: he fell without a sound, and I could only scrabble backwards away from the assassin. No need, for Lord Andre drew a pistol from his waist and shot the assassin point-blank. The crowd screamed—Lady Andre screamed—I probably screamed, although I don’t remember.

Lady Andre looked at the windows of the houses surrounding the docks, which I thought odd until later, when I realized she was searching for whoever fired the first shot. In any case she took one glance down at the boy, realized there was no more to be done for him, and seized her husband by the arm—he cried out—and dragged him under cover of  her coach. The redcoats quickly formed up around it, or attempted to, but the rifle above barked again, and another fell. The driver whipped the horses in spite of the crowd all around, and the carriage surged forward several feet, people screaming and cursing and howling as it cut through. Some fled—some tried to climb towards the carriage—at least three were bayoneted and died on the cobblestones. Without a weapon or any means of defending myself, horribly exposed to whoever was picking off redcoats and likely considered an ally of the redcoats by the same, abandoned by Lady Andre and her protectors, the crowd screaming and panicking and fleeing all around me, I did the only thing I could think to, and huddled behind the nearest pallet of shipping crates.

I didn’t come out until the church bells were chiming midnight, and indeed might have stayed there shivering the night away if I hadn’t thought of how worried my father probably would be for my welfare. The corpse of the assassin should have been closest to me, but it was gone, a huge pool of ink and torn soggy newsprint where the body should have been. There was no sword. I do not believe it had been human.

The boy lay only a few feet beyond that, his eyes staring unblinking up at the sky. I knelt by him, my eyes welling up with pity for the poor misbegotten thing. I could see now that the marks or freckles on his skin were actually tiny letters, although by the light of the streetlamps I couldn’t read them. My instinct is that they were from the pamphlets, that the French campaign to sever the monster’s connection to the true Lafayette had been successful, and that the monster’s assassination had been the final step to freeing his true spirit. If this is true, then it is a cause for celebration. But I am still very sad.

I closed the boy’s eyes and folded his hands across his poor broken chest, and as I did so I noticed that his locket had been smashed open in the chaos. The inside was soaked in some liquid—again, I thought it was blood. But when I moved to place it in a more orderly fashion I noticed that the liquid was beading up on the portrait as though it was coated in wax. Curious, I dabbed at it with my handkerchief, and after some investigation determined that the liquid was not blood, but ink, and that it was shedding from the locket, which—you will remember—had previously been a solid black. The miniature portrait revealed by this process was of a man, stern-looking and bald and broad-shouldered, perhaps a few years older than my father is now.

Philip, I hope you won’t think ill of me. I took the locket from the dead boy’s hands.

There were, of course, no carriages for hire in that disreputable quarter, and in any case I hadn’t brought any cash with me, since I had assumed Lady Andre would see to my needs. I was only wearing house slippers, due to our hasty departure. I resolved to walk uptown to a better neighborhood, and try my luck there. But I had none. In the end, I walked all the way home.

I arrived a little after four in the morning, exhausted. My decision to press on turned out to have been a good one, for my father was in fact awake in his study when I returned, and the newspaper bearing a headline that would have spun him into great distress arrived only a few hours after I did.

“Theo!” he cried, and then stood with his mouth agape in silent appalment at my appearance: the end of my skirts dipped in black ink, splatters of Andre’s blood and monster-ink over my right side, black ink like gloves over my hands from where I’d handled the locket.

I admit in retrospect that I didn’t handle the situation well. “Who is this?” I said, brandishing the locket.

He ignored me. “Theo, you’ve been gone all night and you come back looking like—are you hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

“No!” I cried, stepping out of my ruined and bloody slippers in the hopes that I wouldn’t leave a visible trail into the house. “Please, Dad, who is this? I need to know!” I held up the locket to his face, so that he couldn’t help but see it, and in the instant his eyes fell on the portrait his whole demeanor changed. His eyes went wide; his hands, still.

“Where did you get that?” he whispered.   

“Who is it?” I demanded.

My father clasped his hands before his face as though praying and turned away. “Can I never escape this?” he asked the air. “Theo—I beg you—stop asking these questions of me. There’s nothing good down this road.”

“Maybe I should ask Lady Andre,” I said. “I got it off her boy. Lafayette.”

“No!” he cried, whirling around. “How many times—how many… God, Theo.” He leaned against the table and sighed deeply, sinking into a chair as though faint. “I told you knowledge was dangerous. I must have told you a thousand times. Why do you always seek it out?”

“Perhaps I want to be dangerous,” I said, sitting next to him and placing the locket open on the table before him. He flinched away, as though avoiding the man’s eyes. “It’s George Washington, isn’t it? The Tyrant. I’d never seen his true face before.”

Father nodded miserably. “We should burn it,” he said, and made no move to burn it. “It’s too dangerous to have around here.”

“What’s so dangerous about a portrait, anyhow?” I asked. “What knowledge is there in a face?” But I remain unconvinced by my own argument. Something in the steadiness of this man’s eyes seemed to give the lie already to the Tyrant’s explosive temper, his calm dignity so different from those wild roaring rages I’d read about in the history books. There was not a single ounce of cruelty in that face, only dignity and resolve.

Father looked back at the portrait, almost against his will it seemed, and this time instead of flinching away he became almost transfixed, a whole gamut of emotions brought up and wrestled away, one by one, upon his face. “Memory,” he said hoarsely, and slipped the locket closed. “I wish I could close that book of years forever. I wish it had never been written.”

“No!” I cried. “Dad, you were a part of something good, how could you turn your back on—”

“I was a part of something broken,” he snapped. “And it may be indeed that the revolution is circling back around, but Theo, nothing ever changes, you rise and you fall and you win and you lose, but Theo, I cannot lose you.”

This, I admit, brought me up quite short.

“... I can’t take another heartbreak,” he whispered, hanging his head.

Philip, could you refuse your mother if she said something like that? If tears spilled out of her eyes as she brought you in close and begged you not to break your heart? My father is the only family I have left in this whole world. If his fears were unfounded I would, perhaps, persist. But the city has grown very, very hot since the boy-monster’s death. Pamphleteers—writers and readers—have already been strung up from the gallows. The same newspaper that brought news of the boy’s death brought news of theirs. Andre will stop at nothing to—well, I’m not even sure what his end is. Fear creates its own enemies.

Your mother would never do such a thing to you—would never present you with such a dilemma as my father did. Your mother understands that safety isn’t safety in a cage. She understands there is more than one kind of death, and more than one way to lose someone. Someday soon I hope to convince my father of those things—but I’ll do it gently, with words. I won’t rip myself away from him. I love him, and don’t want to be lost.

I am afraid that I cannot meet you when you come to New York. I may not write you again for some time, if I have no news for you. These letters always were a risk, and I want them to be worth that risk. But if you want a keepsake of me, I have enclosed a locket with a miniature self-portrait. Don’t go reading too much into it.

Your friend,

Theodosia

 Philip takes another look at the silver locket. It really is a wonderful object, so delicate and fine…fine enough to be French, perhaps? The portrait of Theodosia inside resembles the girl he remembers, her chin held high and her expression a faint smile of private amusement. Hesitant to damage it, he touches the paint.

A little flakes off, staining the pad of his finger the gentle lilac of Theo’s dress. Underneath, the paint is dark blue.

He fetches a butter-knife and sits at the kitchen table. In the sunlight that streams in the south-facing window, he can make out a fine layer of wax over the fragment of blue paint he uncovered. So she protected the original portrait, and then painted over it. Clever, clever Theo. He wishes there could be some way to keep the portrait of her, but it seems that was never her intention. Perhaps he should ask her for another.

Sighing, he takes the butter-knife and gently scrapes it over her face. Within moments the top layer of paint flakes off, revealing a second portrait under the first.

It’s a man, broad-shouldered and solemn-looking, with a general’s epaulets and a general’s sense of assurance. How confident, how serene, this man seems, not knowing that history is about to swoop down and devour him like a flock of carrion crows after this is all over. It seems wrong that he should be so un-monstrous; wrong that he could be tall and broad and soldierly in his uniform coat, instead of slavering like a beast somewhere in the woods around Mount Vernon.

Philip shudders. So school got to him after all where he wasn’t looking. How carefully he’d guarded the facts with his father, and how carelessly he’d let the noble Washington of his childhood lullabies be overwritten. Washington the tyrant had won out, somewhere in his subconscious, and now, looking at the testimony of the man himself, Philip feels a rush of guilt.

After all, he’s only just finished putting the final polishes on the scene of John Laurens’ duel with Charles Lee, which his father seconded. He knows that defending Washington’s honor was important to his father—and he knows the white-hot rage of a duel firsthand, the heat lingering in his own blood. It shames him, to know that his father thought it so vital to defend Washington’s reputation, and now Philip has let the enemy’s lies slip past his defenses unnoticed.

Because Washington… Washington was important. Philip’s focused so closely on Alexander Hamilton’s story, his personality, his agency, he’d almost forgotten that for most of the war, his father was acting on Washington’s orders. Alexander may have been holding the pen, but Washington had decided what the story was to be written, just as Philip is now writing the biography that his mother dreamed of—and Lord knows, he now has some experience of the bitter friction such a pivotal interdependence can engender, at close quarters. Yet somehow, despite that, some powerful loyalty must have motivated Alexander, to have defended his general by word, by deed, by death.

So, what sort of man was Washington, if not a tyrannical monster? Looking at the portrait, he thinks he begins to understand why so many of Washington’s closest circle—his father among them—chose to remain with him even as the sky turned white over their heads. There was the Revolution, of course, the cause to which they had bound their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. He’s sure his father believed in its ideals with all his heart. But one might believe in ideals and believe that their time has not yet come yet, that they are too feeble and their champions too human, too flawed. But Washington looks like Zeus could be his father and steadfastness his mother. Surely an idea that Washington pledged his sword to was an idea whose time has come. No wonder Alexander Hamilton had flown to his banner; no wonder he had stayed until the bitter end.

And yet, even as Philip’s heart swells with admiration for the idea of Washington he has just constructed, half from this portrait and half from bedtime stories, he realizes he’s making a mistake. He’s doing what Theodosia warned him against—he’s building a paragon, raising up a marble statue on a pedestal. She had charged him to find the space between the monster and the demon, where humanity might yet be preserved. And with Washington, he has no clues. Why had Alexander come to this man? Why obeyed? Why stayed?

As Philip stares at the miniature, conviction grows in his chest that this is it. The piece he didn’t know he was missing. The key to his father, to his cause: his general. This is the sign he never knew he was waiting for. An artifact to save one monster, delivered from the dying hands of another, delivered to Philip by fate itself. Never has he felt so strongly that the world is pointing him somewhere. The tumult of mortification and fury and fear from this morning begins to die down, replaced by a growing sense of purpose.

He’s on his own now. Ma isn’t here to tell him no, be careful. He has so much left to learn.

Philip makes a decision.

He packs two changes of clothes and his battered old Iliad and his mandolin and all his pay and the emergency stash in the knot in Ma’s bedpost. Ma’s taken Lampon, of course, so he walks into town with his bag slung over his shoulder. He slinks into the Key and Kite with his hat pulled down over his face and reads the message-board, but there are no horses for sale, only that great awful notice of the travel restrictions around New York City. Schenectady, a little mostly-Dutch town half a day’s walk away, may have some. And at this late hour, half a day’s walk is the most he has time for.

One last thing before he goes, since he might not have the chance for a while. He begs some paper and ink off Mrs. Potsham and scrawls a note to Theodosia. No invisible ink and no chance to guarantee that nobody’s looking over his shoulder, so he scrawls out something vague and hopes she understands. He tells no one his plans.

Dear Theodosia,

The way to New York City is shut for me now anyway. As I’ll be traveling elsewhere, I may not be in a position to receive letters for quite some time. I treasure the last gift you gave me, and I go where you have pointed.

Chapter Text

Eliza sets out from the farm more furious than she’s been, well, not in her whole life, but at least since she last talked to Aaron Burr. The fact that her fury is aimed at Pip, of all people, lends it a sickening quality, which in turn makes her even more furious, because she still has ground to cover. Miles and miles stand between her and Angelica, and the checkpoints will doubtless be going up, and the guards getting in the habit of obstinate refusal, and the day already grows late, her departure delayed first by Pip’s unconscionably stupid duel, and then by their argument, in which he’d thrown a tantrum that would have disgraced a four-year-old and then sulked off thinking he was still in the right.

The only bright spot in this whole shambles is that at least the monster will have some company while she’s away, instead of treating the village to the usual family-away haunting. The image of Pip and the monster sulking and stewing together fails to cheer her, and by the time she arrives at Peggy’s house in Albany, well after even the late summer dusk, sweaty and caked in road dust, she’s worked herself into a truly dangerous temper. So much so that when Peggy’s helping her brush Lampon, and asks her where Philip is, Eliza can only growl, “He’s staying home.”

Peggy, the sainted woman, has made her children draw water for a bath in anticipation of their arrival, and after a long soak Eliza’s temper finally cools. When she emerges into the living room at nearly midnight, she’s astonished to see her sister still awake. Peggy sits on a couch, her legs folded under her, a lantern illuminating the newspaper she’s reading. When she hears the floorboards creak under Eliza’s feet, she looks up. “Rough day?”

“Oh, Peggy. You have no idea,” Eliza groans, sinking on the couch next to her. “I think Pip may be as big an idiot as his father.”

Peggy gives her a dubious look. “Eliza—forgive me for this, but—I’ve never known you to shut up about how brilliant and intellectual and special your Alexander was.”

“But an idiot,” Eliza sighs. “You remember when he set up that duel with Charles Lee?”

“I thought that was Laurens’ fault,” Peggy says, a hint of mischief at the corners of her mouth.

“Oh, it was,” Eliza says, “but Alexander had his own fool part in it. Honor this and reputation that—and now Pip’s gone and made the same mistake.”

Peggy gasps, but after a moment she sighs in resignation. “And now… grounded.”

“For ever,” Eliza says, and is slightly annoyed when Peggy laughs. “I mean it! That boy’s lucky if he sees New York City again in his life—”

“Oh, we all will be,” Peggy interrupts, suddenly turning serious. “That was why I stayed up—I needed to tell you—it says here that French partisans tried to assassinate Governor Andre and his wife. He was wounded in the shoulder, but it’s thought he’ll recover. He was well enough to order the complete shutdown of routes in and out of the city except for essential trade services. You can’t get through without a permit. We’ll just have to write Angelica at her inn once she arrives and tell her to come to—no?”

Eliza’s shakes her head. “I have other business in the city.” Apologizing to dear young Theodosia for breaking her son’s appointment, for one. And maybe her father will be more amenable to a call from MP’s wife Angelica Church than traitor’s wife Elizabeth Hamilton. Maybe there’s information yet to glean; at the very least, she would be a fool not to seize the opportunity. “I have to get in.”

“But—”

“I have this,” Eliza says, holding up Angelica’s letter, the one where she says to expect her in the city, and sealed with the mark of official Parliamentary correspondence. “If the guards have an ounce of sense or ambition, they’ll see me through.”

Peggy still seems skeptical. “Tell you what,” she says, taking the lamp and standing up. “I’ll set a place for you at supper tomorrow night. At least you’ll have a decent meal and a place to sleep, after they turn you away.”

Peggy’s extra meal goes cold at the table, her spare bed un-slept-in. It’s true, Eliza does have to nag dear Sergeant Miller, who presides over the crossing into Manhattan, for a solid hour before he lets her across, but by the afternoon she’s strolling Manhattan, scanning for notices about her sister’s ship. To say that the atmosphere in the city is oppressive would be an understatement: hardly a soul is out on the streets, even though the notices papered everywhere make it clear that curfew doesn’t start until sunset. Those who are about—mostly ordinary folk and servants out shopping for essentials, to judge by the amount of food baskets in evidence—all probe Eliza with their eyes and then shy away when she returns their gaze. And of course, there are redcoats thick as autumn leaves. They at least have the decency to stare straight ahead when Eliza looks at them, but she can feel the pressure of their scrutiny when she turns away. She’s glad, suddenly, that Philip isn’t with her: he wouldn’t like this one bit.

For a moment she pauses, contemplating her options: to the docks straightaway, or to an inn? She might be more likely to get news of the ship at the docks, but then again, any decent inn would know as well. And at an inn, she could put down her bag and rest a spell; she hadn’t taken Lampon down on the ferry from Albany, choosing instead to leave her at the Albany dockyard stable, and her feet are complaining at the long walk in her seldom-worn Respectable Shoes.

“Help you with your bag, Miss?” comes a voice at her shoulder, and Eliza jumps, whirling to face it.

For a moment, she only gapes. The man standing before her in the blazing light of midday is none other than Hercules Mulligan.

“May I give you a hand with your bag, Miss?” he prompts again.

“I—yes, thank you,” Eliza says, handing it over and barely recalling to toss him sixpence. The redcoats are right there—

“Where to, Miss?”

“The most reputable inn you know,” Eliza says. Time was she would have known what that inn was, but she hasn’t been to the city save once in the last fifteen years. And Angelica will be expecting the best New York has to offer.

“Of course, Miss. Right this way, Miss.”

Eliza’s mind works furiously as they walk. How can he have known she would be here? Her mind jumps immediately to the jacket Philip received from Theodosia a few months back: in her color, and near-perfectly sized. Surely Mulligan’s involvement would explain that: Philip’s build is a copy of Alexander’s, which is to say, there’s not much heft to him yet. So Theodosia is the connection… and she must have learned of Mulligan’s existence through Philip, who learned it from Eliza, unless the elder Burr decided to resume contact… no, Philip is by far the more likely source. A moment after she works this out, Mulligan asks, far too casually, “And are you traveling alone, Miss?”

“Only on the way here. I’m meeting my sister at the docks, and we’ll travel home together.”

“Mhm.” he says. Frustrated, then. So he arranged this encounter with Philip, didn’t he, or Philip and Theodosia between them. Well, no wonder Pip threw such a tantrum yesterday—that’ll teach him to make plans behind her back. Still, now that the shock’s worn off she’s very glad to see Mulligan and know he’s alive, after a long time assuming him captured and dead or worse. So she adds, for his sake, “I had planned to bring my son with me to the city, but unfortunately he’s misbehaved rather spectacularly and I simply couldn’t in good conscience allow him to come.”

“I… see,” Mulligan says. “Well, boys will be boys...”

“He challenged the magistrate’s son to a duel.”

“He wha—I mean. Uh. Wow.”

“Wow,” Eliza agrees, eyebrows up.

With redcoats all around they can say no more, but fortunately the inn is just around the corner. Eliza’s first order of business is to ask after Angelica’s ship, and she learns it’s been spotted by fishing boats and is expected in on the morning tide. Angelica’s given her a note from the Bank of England concerning Church’s account for just this occasion, and Eliza is very quickly ushered into a spacious and inviting room—although Mulligan does have to glare off two other of the inn’s own porters to retain her bag.

“Now,” she says, when at last they have some privacy. “What did you and Philip have planned?”

“Nothing, Eliza, my hand to God,” Mulligan says, dropping his servile affectation at once. “Shit’s been—the last couple days in the city’ve been… it’s been madness, ever since w—ever since the assassination. I came here to warn the kid—down in Philly, the Aurora’s been raided, they nabbed Bache. I got Theo and her dad out—he was livid, no idea what was up, looked like I’d asked him to swallow a live frog—and Theo swore up and down to me that they don’t know Philip’s name, his pieces all went through her. But I thought, if he’s sent as many letters to her as she says—”

“Oh, he has.”

“—then they might suspect him anyway. So when Theo said he was due in town, I knew I needed to warn him.”

Eliza digests this in silence for a moment. After all her warnings about keeping his head down. And this wasn’t some stupid impulsive thing like the duel, which she could almost understand, oh, no, this was deliberate. Premeditated. Total disregard for the very reasonable rules that she’d only put in place to keep him safe, to protect him from, from—

Shit like this.  “You mean to say… Philip has been writing for the Aurora, and so has Theo.”

“Yes, which is why—oh, shit, you didn’t know that?” Mulligan’s normally-guileless smile turns sheepish, almost guilty. Eliza wonders if he may have somehow facilitated Pip’s delinquency—perhaps served as the contact with this Bache fellow, whoever he is. But she has no proof, and it doesn’t particularly matter now that the paper’s been shut down. She changes the subject.

“So you’re saying that Andre’s clamping down following this… this failed assassination attempt—”

“Successful assassination attempt,” Mulligan corrects. “Governor Andre wasn’t the target.”

“Then who…”

 “Lafayette.”

For a moment, it’s like Eliza doesn’t hear the name. It’s just a sound hanging in the air, and then all in a rush she remembers the awful candy-thing Peggy warned her of so many years ago—but she also remembers the real Lafayette, more vividly than she has in years, tall and proud, the rapid ratatat flow of his speech when he spoke of battle, the spring in his step, his kind brown eyes. She collapses to the bed, her hands over her mouth. “You—they did it?” she whispers. “He’s free?”

“He’s free.”

Eliza starts to cry.

“Oh, shit. Uh. Hankie, I have one of those somewhere, I—”

He hands it to her. She blows her nose. “How?”

“Well, the de Noailles bankrolled it—they’d been at it for years. Working with some of the little free presses left in the city… all over the Eastern seaboard, really. The Aurora’s the biggest—Benny Bache was a Franklin connection, of course, his double-bastard grandson. They gave cover, finance, that sorta thing. Ol’ Louis turned a blind eye. Anything to fuck over England, pardon my French.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Eliza says, dabbing her eyes one last time and returning the hankie

Mulligan pauses with his mouth open, the hankie dangling from his hand in shock. Then he bursts out laughing. “Ooh, Eliza, you got me talking! Not a lot that can do that these days—not many who have the right. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, I maybe helped a bit. Here and there.” His expression saddens. “I’m just… sorry Theo had to see it. That wasn’t the plan.”

“See—what, the assassination?”

Mulligan nods. “I didn’t find out she was there til two days later, when the Aurora got busted and I had to show up at her dad’s place to get them both out. Andre’d tried to bring her in to help with-- with the monster, for some reason. Seemed to think she had a way with him.”

This makes intuitive sense to Eliza, but it takes a moment for her to reason out why. “The dark.” she says. “Burr was under it, too, for a time. Philip’s the same way.”

“Uh… I’ll take your word on that,” Mulligan says. “I try not to mix with any of that supernatural shit.”

 Saying Philip’s name brings Eliza back to the start of the conversation, and Mulligan’s warning. “To return to the point: is Philip in danger now?” Other than from me strangling him with my bare hands when I get home.

“I think it’s possible, but not…that possible.” Eliza senses that he isn’t sugarcoating it, which she’s grateful for. “I was… well, I was gonna tell him to lay low, but—”

“But he’s already blown up that plan,” Eliza finishes sourly.

Mulligan winces. “Yeah. It’s a good thing you didn’t bring him here with you.”

Eliza nods. “And Theo is safe?” Philip will be desperate to know, once she’s told him all this. After she’s done tanning his hide.

(As long as he’s safe.)

Mulligan nods.

“And where is she?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Why?”

He grins. “Spy reasons.”

“Spy reasons?”

 “You can never be too paranoid,” Mulligan says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Learned that the hard way after we lost. There must’ve been a dozen documents with my name on them in headquarters. I’ve spent fifteen years looking over my shoulder, praying they got inked like all the rest… best not to create loose ends.”

Eliza mulls that one over. “Only at headquarters?” she asks. “The main camp?”

“Uh, I think so. That’s where Tallmadge was. Why?”

“They weren’t... inked,” she says. Under the black, the paper had been preserved. She hadn’t tried to test what would happen if she brought a sheet out, but she can imagine. “You needn’t be concerned, though. I set the whole thing on fire.”

“To—to get rid of the papers? Oh, Eliza, you perfect angel woman, you—”

Eliza snorts. “I’m far from angelic: I just felt like burning something.”

Mulligan lets out a disconcerted giggle. When he sees the glint of humor in her eyes, though, he breaks, his sides shaking, hand over his mouth to muffle the sound, tears coming to his eyes. “Oh, Christ, Eliza,” he says, still gasping for breath, some moments later, “remind me never to cross you.”

Eliza smiles. “You don’t seem the type to need reminding.”

Outside, the clock strikes six.

“I’ve been here too long,” Mulligan says suddenly. “I should be going.”

“Wait!” Eliza cries, a little surprised by her own vehemence. She stands up from the bed, walks over to him, and gives him a hug. At first he’s stock-still, surprised, and then his big arms settle around her shoulders, wrapping her in a warm embrace. “Thank you, Herc. It’s—it’s good to know you’re alive and well. And—and fighting.”

“You, too, Eliza,” he says softly. “You, too.”

When he lowers his arms, she’s slightly appalled at how keenly she feels the loss. Angelica will be here soon, and Eliza can hug her three times a minute, if she wants. And… and it still won’t feel like that. She shoves the thought to the very deepest corner of her mind, where it will hopefully rot away. Alexander. Her beautiful Alexander.

While Eliza’s inwardly berating herself Mulligan is opening up a window. He leans out to inspect the ground below—it’s an alleyway, only a man’s height and a half down. He throws a leg over the sill.

“Hold on!” Eliza cries. “What are you—there’s a perfectly good door, Mulligan, for God’s sake—”

He turns back to her, expression deliberately bland but betraying, perhaps, amusement.

“Spy reasons?” she hazards.

“Uh. No… but if I left through the hallway and people saw… they might think it… unusual… that a woman of your stature, traveling alone, had just spent an hour or more alone with a freelance stevedore…”

Eliza blushes to the roots of her hair as her mind, unbidden, begins to fill in those ellipses in great detail. “Oh.”

Hercules swings his other leg over and drops to the cobblestones with a heavy thud. Eliza goes to the window, watching his progress up the alley. There’s a redcoat patrolling the main street, coming up round a blind corner—she hisses, and Mulligan glances back at her. He understands her significant glance at once, shrinking back behind a pile of crates until the danger passes. When it’s clear, she signals with a nod. He waves, sending her one last grin before vanishing into the city.

First, she and Angelica hug for so long and so hard it’s a wonder they don’t squeeze the life out of each other.

Then, she grabs Angelica’s hand in one hand and her trunk in the other and says, “Come with me, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

“I knew this wouldn’t be boring,” Angelica says, staggering a little after her month and a half at sea. “Wait, though, that’s not all my luggage. There’s another trunk they haven’t unloaded yet.”

Eliza rolls her eyes, chafing to be away, to get back to Philip so she can make sure he’s safe and then give him the scolding of his young life. “Please tell me this isn’t all clothes.”

“It isn’t all clothes,” Angelica says primly. “Some of it’s shoes.” But she winks when she says it, her eyes skimming over the scrum of people around, so Eliza doesn’t press the point.

Angelica insists on hiring a carriage to the ferry, and as they rattle along Eliza fills her in on the development that most urgently requires her attention: the travel restrictions in and out of the city, and more to the point the fact that all luggage is now subject to search.

Angelica’s lips thin at the news.

Dropping her voice to a whisper, Eliza asks, “Is there anything we should be concerned about?”

“Individual items… no. All together…”

They’ve arrived at the ferry. “Don’t worry,” Eliza says, “I have a plan.”

When the reach the dock Eliza insists on speaking to Sergeant Miller, the man she bullied into letting her cross without a permit yesterday.

“But Madam, he’s posted on the other side of the river, surely you can...”

No, Eliza cannot. It is Sergeant Miller or none.

Angelica, having paid the driver and tipped generously for his help with her bags, has fished some diamond earrings out of her purse and put them on and is now posing in the background, looking rich and glittery and deeply unimpressed.

Eventually, Sergeant Miller is brought over.

Within ten minutes, Angelica’s untouched luggage is being loaded onto the Hudson ferry.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Angelica says, adding her winning smile to Eliza’s as he helps her up the gangplank. “I shall be sure to write favorably to your commanding officer.”

The ferry up the Hudson is significantly slower than down it, but this time Eliza has Angelica for company. In the luxury of the private cabin, they have space and time to fill each other’s ears—and it’s mostly Eliza spilling secrets, worries, agonies, rages, everything she’s learned and everything she speculates about the mess of the world, the mess of her life, the mess of Philip. She mentions the joyous rediscovery of Mulligan, but leaves out the rediscovery of other feelings; just a fleeting, silly sensation, inconsequential against the scale of calamities personal and national that loom at every side.

Upon disembarkation in Albany, so late on the second day that the crickets are starting to sing in the night, Eliza retrieves Lampon. Angelica purchases a horse, a roan with a pink splotch on her nose. They ride to Peggy’s, Angelica spurring them along, hardly able to contain her excitement.

At last, the complete reunion—Angelica bursts into tears at the sight of both her sisters’ faces beaming up at her, joy mingling with the painful aftermath of loneliness. Peggy and Eliza wrap her up from either side, teasing and soothing her in turn.

“I’m—oh, I’m sorry, it’s just—can you believe it? Everything that’s happened since we last saw each other?” She takes Peggy’s face between her hands. “You’re a mom? What the hell, Peggy?”

Peggy’s eyes slide to Eliza. “I don’t know why she’s acting surprised, I swear I told her about it ages ago.”

The two older sisters both break down in laughter.

“So,” Angelica says, “when do I get to see my nieces and nephews?”

“Tomorrow morning, because they’re in bed,” Peggy says sternly. Angelica deflates, but as a mother herself she can’t argue. “And… I suppose Eliza already told you why you can’t meet your other nephew yet?”

“Ohoho, yes. He’s… his father’s son, what more can I say?”

“Actually, Peggy,” Eliza says, forcing a light tone, “would you believe that Pip has gone and done something else incredibly stupid, which… which I’m very afraid means that I’ll have to hurry home first thing tomorrow?”

“Oh, he let the monster out of the barn?”

Eliza’s stomach drops. “He—he was there, it wouldn’t be—why would you think that?”

Peggy wrings her hands. “This morning I heard a rumor about some three-headed howling screaming talking thing that killed a bear near Saratoga.”

Eliza blinks. There’s… there’s not much near Saratoga that meets that description. Or anywhere else, really. She looks to Angelica, her guts suddenly cold and twisting.

“Do you think André—would he move that fast?” Angelica asks.

“What in God’s names would André want with Philip?” Peggy asks, her voice climbing the register. “Is this over that stupid duel?”

“He wrote for the Aurora.”

Peggy’s face pales. She sinks to the couch, head in hands.

“If the monster’s out, then they already have him,” Eliza snaps. “I need to move now—"

“No, we need to move now,” Angelica puts in, seizing Eliza at the elbow. “You’re not alone, Eliza. Not while I’m here.”

“You can’t leave now—the sun sets in four hours. You’ll be caught out after dark, and the roads aren’t safe at night,” Peggy says. “But André won’t be moving either. A redcoat supply convoy out to Ithaca got hit by night last month—they’re being more cautious now.”

Any other time that would be interesting news, but now for Eliza it barely registers.

“Besides,” Peggy presses. “If André does have Philip, he’ll bring him here. The only good road south comes through Albany.” And anyway, she’s kind enough not to add, this is the capitol. The state courts are here—where a sedition or treason case would be tried.

“And then what?” Eliza says dully. “I—I bully him out? Angelica buys his freedom?”

“I resent the idea that my only talent is money,” Angelica says. “There may be a chance for… earlier intervention.” She strides over to her trunk and flings it open.

Peggy leans over and peeks in. “Shoes? You’re going to step on them?”

“Wrong trunk,” Angelica scowls. She opens the other trunk, less dramatically.

“Ah,” Peggy says. “Bundles of plants and things. Much more impressive.”

But Eliza’s drawing closer, her curiosity buzzing. Peggy’s too young to remember, but, “Grandmother Livingston had one just like—oh, Angelica, how long have you—”

“Nine, ten years? Oxfordshire’s boring. Only so many choir concerts a woman can stand before she goes round the twist.” Angelica snaps the trunks shut. “Anyway, if it comes to it… I can do a lot more than bribe people. And I doubt there’s much on the road that could stand against me.”

 Eliza remembers a long-ago letter: there’s some things I can’t write of. And Angelica’s most recent: I will have a surprise for you, once we meet. I can’t put it down—I must tell you in person. How could she have not realized? “You should have told me,” she whispers.

“There’s some things that exist in motion, that can’t be written of, and spoken only slantways,” Angelica says, squeezing her hand. “To pin them down is to destroy them.”

Eliza feels ill at the thought. But right now, there are more urgent matters. “Can you make the ride?”

Angelica nods.

The monster surprises them half an hour after sunset, in a lonely stretch of woods some ten miles from the house. Angelica’s horse gets one sniff and tries to bolt—Angelica cries out, and the dim witch-light she’d conjured to light their way instantly flickers out. She quickly regains control of the horse, tugging the reins hard to the left and letting the animals exhaust its panic in tight circles.

“Beamish squeamish screamish,” the monster cries, raising back on its haunches so that it can look Eliza, on horseback, dead in the eyes. Good God, it’s gotten bigger.

“Did you leave him?” Eliza asks, though she knows it’s futile. “Did they take him away? Why didn’t you fight for him?”

The monster looks more and more distressed as Eliza speaks. The instant she’s finished talking it throws back its head and—

                                        screams, that’s the only word for it, screams like burning, blood-spitting, throat-tearing murder. Angelica’s horse gives a broken whinny and sinks to the ground; even Lampon, deaf as a post, shrinks back.

“You’ve made your point,” Eliza says, when the echoes die away. Her own voice sounds tinny and far away. “You wouldn’t allow him to come to harm, I understand.”

The monster snorts emphatically, but at least it doesn’t scream again.

“Go home,” Eliza says. “Take whatever strange way you would take. We’ll meet you there soon enough.”

In the end, they have to tie Angelica’s trembling horse to Lampon’s lead and walk into town. The animal seems to recover some spirit as they walk, but Angelica decides to board it at the stables for now rather than keep it at the house, where it would doubtless spend its whole time in terror. So they must strap both of Angelica’s trunks to Lampon and walk up to the farmhouse, every step for Eliza an agony. It isn’t that she’s exhausted—though she’s tired—or injured at all—though her heart hurts. It’s the curious agony of suspense, where every step brings her closer to either relief or ruin, and she doesn’t know whether she’d rather run in or run away. In the end it doesn’t matter: she must keep going.

The barn comes into view first, a black silhouette against the deep blue starry sky, and then the cabin.  

“Pip?” Eliza calls, breaking into a trot and racing ahead of her sister. “Philip? Are you there?”

Silence.

She leaps up the steps to the front door. Not open, not broken as she’d feared it might be. When she goes inside and lights the candle on the front table she finds all neat and tidy, with no sign of a disturbance. Up to his room. Clothes hanging neatly, a book open on his desk. The bed unmade, and no Philip, though she calls his name once or twice, like hide and seek. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Back downstairs and then outside, to the barn and to the monster waiting for her there, the door a burnt and splintered ruin. Where she could always find her boy, if she could find him nowhere else. The monster wails piteously as she enters.

“Philip?” she calls.

No answer. He’s not there.

Eliza’s knees give out, and though she didn’t notice Angelica following, she’s there, catching her as she falls, easing her gently to the floor.

Her baby’s gone.

Chapter Text

By the time Philip arrives in Schenectady, he’s already walked nearly twenty miles and cut cross-country around two checkpoints, with the thorn-scratches to show for it. He’s thoroughly footsore and ready for nothing more than a hot meal—but when he comes to the village’s tiny inn, he finds it closed for the night, its lanterns dark. No amount of knocking will rouse the proprietor. The closure makes sense—after all, the moon is high overhead, business can hardly be booming with the travel restrictions in place, and even the much larger Key and Kite would be closing in about an hour. But though Philip’s mind accepts reality, his stomach is less philosophical. It gives a tearing grumble to remind Philip that he’s walked a terrible long way without a meal.

Philip ponders his predicament. Fool that he is, he hadn’t considered that the inn might be closed. Now here he is, in a mostly unfamiliar village, the middle of the night fast approaching, and without shelter or food, his stomach sending him taste-visions of his ma's cooking, then turning sour with guilt at the thought of his ma, deciding it isn't hungry, forgetting what it decided, sending him taste-visions, &c. &c. in a maddening ad-infinitum. He lowers himself on weary legs to sit against the inn door, with the idea that perhaps he might sleep there propped up on his pack.

And then, in the distance, he hears music. Human voices, a good company of them, moving down parallel thirds and sixths in glorious harmony. The sound lifts him to his feet, as enticing as the smell of supper. For the first time in the whole day, his lingering guilt about absconding from home is soothed. The music feels like an omen, like a sign. He has chosen right.

He slings his pack back over his shoulders, hefts the mandolin case in one hand, and sets out to find the source.

Easily enough he finds it: a modest house, its shutters mostly concealing the light within but barely muffling the choir’s exultant—and not terribly in-tune—hymn.

Why do we then indulge our Fears,
Suspicions and Complaints?
Is He a God, and shall His Grace
Grow weary of His saints?

Philip chuckles at the rhetorical question, not being accustomed to such textual slipperiness in matters of theology, and gives a guilty start a moment later when the shutter comes flying open. A middle-aged gentleman, built like a farmer, with deep-set eyes, peers out into the dark at him.

“You aren’t a soldier,” he says, peering down at Philip.

“That’s correct,” says Philip, peering back up at him.

“Well,” the man says, in the awkward silence that follows, “you’re here for the music, then?”

“I—um, well. I was just—the inn was closed, you see, and I heard—”

“Yes, Beth’s off to Massachusetts for her daughter’s wedding, won’t be back for another week or Lord knows how long with the current nonsense.” The man points at Philip’s mandolin. “You know how to play that thing?”

Philip senses an opportunity. “I do,” he says.

“Well, then it’s Providence. Name’s Nehemiah Shumway, part-time composer. You read music? Letters?”

“Both.”

“Then consider yourself drafted—if that suits you. You can stay here for the night.” Suddenly the man looks sheepish. “Or, if you don’t wish to play—those darnable anti-assembly orders—the door’s open any which way you choose. But if you might find it in your heart to—”

“I’d love to stay,” Philip smiles. “You know, I’ve never heard someone say darnable before.”

“Oh,” says Nehemiah. “Well, I’m a preacher, you see, part-time, between the farming and composing. Can’t be swearing, now.”

“Would damnable really be swearing, though?” Philip asks. “You’re not actually committing to damning anything, are you? You’re just noting its damnability, perhaps in case someone else might want to come along and damn it. Observing the door is open, one might say, without going though it yourself.”

Nehemiah blinks. “You’re an odd little duck, aren’t you,” he says, patting him on the head. “Why don’t you come in?”

And so Philip find himself welcomed into a small sitting-room crammed with, it seems, half of the adult population of Schenectady and a good portion of the youth as well. A woman shares a tattered page of sheet-music with him. He hardly has the chance to pull out his instrument before a reference pitch is being thrown about, and within a moment they’ve launched into the hymn right where they left off. Still with one hand on the tuning-pegs Philip finds himself singing, always half an instant late as he matches the pitch of the woman next to him:

Can a kind Woman e'er forget
The Infant of her Womb,
And 'mongst a thousand tender Thoughts
Her Suckling have no Room?

Yet, saith the Lord, should Nature change,
And Mothers Monsters prove,
Sion still dwells upon the Heart
Of everlasting Love.

Deep on the Palms of both my Hands
I have engrav'd her Name;
My Hands shal raise her ruin'd Walls,
And build her broken Frame.

In the breathless, ringing silence after the last note, Philip’s stomach picks exactly the wrong moment to squeal.

“Oho!” Nehemiah cries, “Is there a piglet in the house?”

Philip laughs, his embarrassment cut by humor, and raises his hand.

“Can’t be having that,” one of the ladies says, and disappears in a swish of skirts. She returns a moment later with a plate of cold bacon, a few slides of hard cheese, and two slices of coarse bread. Philip barely maintains table manners as he stuffs them into his mouth, swallowing hard to get out a “thank you, ma’am!” before returning immediately to the food. He’s been growing fast these last few months, his hunger seemingly bottomless, but it feels like he’s never been so hungry—or bacon so delicious.

Though he doesn’t feel quite full even after the meal, nor is he lightheaded, and he finds himself much less distracted and able to pick up on the patterns in the music. It’s simple stuff, but no less beautiful for that, well-proportioned and well-crafted like an inlaid desk or a patterned quilt. They finish the first tune and move onto the second, one of Nehemiah’s own compositions. Before too long Philip finds himself nodding with sleepiness, and though he can’t quite remember the details, he knows one of the ladies takes him aside and lays out some quilts on the floor for a bed. See, ma? he thinks, half-dreaming she’s watching as he curls up to sleep, I can take care of myself.

The smell of baking bread wakes him. Hurriedly he orders his clothes, tries to tame his hair a bit, and tidies up the quilts. Nehemiah’s wife—Sarah, she introduces herself—sweeps in and, seeing he’s awake, invites him into the kitchen for breakfast rolls and butter and jam. The open window looks out on New York’s forested hills, boughs of pine piercing the first pink beams of dawn with shadow, mist souping the valleys and streamways. A fresh breeze cools the rolls on the windowsill.

Outside, there’s a sound like a piglet squealing.

“Still hungry, are we?” Sarah calls over her shoulder, already chopping onions for lunch. She faces the cabinet, her back to Philip and the window.

“Oh, no, that wasn’t me,” Philip says, turning red. “I apologize for falling asleep in the middle of things last night—it was very rude, and I hope you can forgive me for nodding off like a—like a child—”

“Mild.”

“What was that, dear? Pfaugh, these onions! Fourteen years keeping house, you’d think I’d be able to tolerate them by now…” She wipes her eyes with her sleeve.

Philip doesn’t answer, frozen.

The monster’s outside. “Cow!” it says, in a voice that Philip only is just now realizing greatly resembles his own—

“I beg your par—”

“Thank you so much ma’am for all your hospitality, I’m ever so grateful and I must apologize again because I must now take my leave, goodbye!” Philip says it all in one breath, dashing out of the kitchen, hoisting his bag, finding his mandolin and racing out onto the Shumways’ back porch, where the monster is wriggling with delight at the success of its scheme—or, Philip guesses less cynically, at his appearance.

“Fiend,” he grouses, but the monster only licks him from chin to eyebrow and capers away.

“Spleened,” it giggles, and lashes him with its tail, and races away towards the woods.

Eighteen hours and some thirty miles later, Philip is regretting his decision to let the monster accompany him. Having to dive off into the woods every time they spotted fellow travelers was bad enough, but this. This is intolerable.

“Would you shut up?” Philip moans, rolling over and trying in vain to cover his ears with his pack. 

It’s no use. The monster continues its course of lamentation, one that began a quarter of an ago when it started raining and has gone on uninterrupted since. Philip hadn’t realized quite how much the thing abhorred the weather until it followed him—of its own free will, mind—into a barn-less part of the country. Philip is soaked as well, but do you hear him complaining? Certainly not.

The day hadn’t been so bad. Yes, avoiding company had lowered Philip’s spirits, but he knows enough about his current plight to realize that it wasn’t a bad strategy—and one he would never have followed without the incentive of the monster with him.

But going cross-country had slowed him, and the sun had sunk before he could reach the next town. Hence why he’s here, by the trunk of an ancient spreading oak. And—the trouble of sleeping on acorns aside—that wouldn’t even have been much of a hardship, were it not for the—

A crack of thunder sounds, very close now, and the monster lets out a scream of dismay. The dribble of rain turns into a good pelting, threatening to soak his blanket and clothes and his hasty-packed supplies. Only his mandolin, in its leather case, seems likely to stay dry. The monster is already cowering, paws stuffed in all of its various ears, its whines drowning out the increasing sound of rain.

Even deeply annoyed and much wishing he were asleep, guilt twists Philip's stomach at the sight of the monster, bedraggled and frightened and trying to shrink down into itself. The poor creature should be safe and warm and dry in the barn right now, not traipsing about in the exposed wilderness because it has no other family to cling to but Philip. In a way, Philip is responsible for its plight. He should have realized the monster would notice the pattern had broken, that Eliza and Philip weren’t together, that something was amiss. He should have known it would follow him.

Being careful not to startle the creature, he raises a hand and gently strokes it down the monster's trembling flank. Eyes start open, and then the monster recoils, backing up with a frightened bleat.

"Easy, easy," Philip croons. "Come on, it’s me."

There's hardly any light, but from what little he can make of the beast's posture it seems incredulous. With an abrupt snort a head darts out, teeth seizing the tail of Philip's shirt and yanking him forward. One enormous wing unfolds above him and just as quickly collapses back down over his head, knocking him forward into the creature's bulk and boxing him in at the same time. Philip doesn't fight back--he wouldn't want to hurt the creature, not when it's already so frightened-- and allows himself to be gathered in to the smelly, warm, but ultimately dry space under the monster's wing. At first he crouches, but his neck is so cramped that ultimately he decides to lay down, stuffing the damp blanket from around his shoulders under his body to provide some insulation against the ground.

"It's okay, friend," he says, settling a calming hand against one of the monster's minor snouts.

"Portend."

"Subtend."

"Pretend."

"Pretense."

"Prevent."

A crash of thunder very close, and the monster howls. Rain pounds against the taut membrane of its wing like marbles falling on a drum, so loud Philip can't even hear himself speak. But he strokes the creature's side, calms it as best he can, and notes with satisfaction that as the rain fades a few of the hideous mouths start to snore, and a few of the spare limbs give the occasional sleepy twitch.

“You’re a very brave beast,” he says solemnly, the next morning, “And it's kind of you to have come so far with me. But you need to go home, all right?”

The monster whines at him. Philip wishes he could not tell it’s ashamed of itself, but it’s obvious. Every line of its body droops.

“I’ll be home soon, friend,” he says, petting its snout. “You did your best, but it’s time to part ways. I can’t bring you where I’m going.”

It’s a decision he made this morning, when he woke up and saw what a dreadful mess the night had made of his clothes. He can’t make it all the way to Virginia without a single interaction with human society, and the monster’s company is rapidly making him unsuitable for such. Add in the constant anxiety of being discovered-- the entirely inexplicable nature of his companion-- really, it's a wonder they've not been stopped and arrested already. This simply can't go on.

When he turns away, it tries to follow him.

“No,” he says, firmly. He points back north. “You go home. Ma will be there. And I’ll come back to you, I promise.”

The monster brays like a bear and takes an angry swipe at the oak trunk, pieces of bark flying out from under its claws.

“Go. Home.”

“Grown,” the monster moans, turning back to him.

“Yes.” Philip says, firmly.

The monster looks at him for a long moment, and then abruptly turns back to the north. “Bless,” it says, walking away.

Tears spring in Philip’s eyes, hot and unexpected. He wipes them away. “Impress,” he offers.

“Duress,” the monster hisses, and is gone.

After all those years of his mother telling him not to believe anything he heard in school, he’d expected Mount Vernon to be a perhaps overgrown, perhaps neglected, but fundamentally normal place. All the Virginia countryside has prepared him for his expectations to be met: a grove of upright deciduous trees; some farmland; the river, slow and measured in its seaward journey.

What he hadn’t expected: a tangled wall of jungle-swamp-growth exactly tracking the property line, just as his teacher described. The trees are old, past their prime, even, the smell of rot and mold and stagnant water reaching his nose from a dozen feet back. It’s been barely over sixteen years since the war-that-wasn’t, but it seems there are forces at work her beyond simple time. Philip experiences a moment of doubt that he’ll be able to find the mansion-house, that it’s even there anymore, but he can’t turn back now. He’s not going home without something to show for it.

He steps into the woods.

The smell doubles, triples even as the light is reduced to a fraction of what it was, caught in nets of moss fathoms above Philip’s head. He knows it’s sunny outside—still feels the warmth on his skin, fading—but it’s hard to believe. The trees are unlike any Philip has ever seen: massive, their bark studded with knots that, in the gloom, give the impression of hard, unblinking eyes. They make Philip squirm, seized with the sensation that there are hundreds of insects crawling under his skin—or maybe that he himself is an insect, crawling under the skin of something.

Still, once he’s stepped into the darkness there’s nothing to do but keep walking. His mother did this before him, though she never speaks of the dark itself, only going in, and coming out. He just has to have faith that he’ll come out, too—and like his mother, he won’t come out until he’s gotten what he came for. So even though there’s hardly any earth to walk on for all the tree roots, even though the moss drips droplets down the back of his shirt and makes him shiver, even though the air is so thick his lungs strain at it—even though, even though, even though, he keeps walking.

Presently he comes to a clearing, eyes aching for a moment at the unsuspected sunlight. It’s a little less stifling. He seats himself on a great felled tree-trunk and eats a roll from his satchel. As he eats, he notices that many trees have fallen in this area, not only his current seat, and furthermore, the arrangement of their trunks doesn’t suggest they were all downed at once when the big trunk fell, as he has seen sometimes in the forests in New York. Yet nor do they appear to have been logged. The wood is splintered, as though they were drowned in a noreaster or perhaps some more southerly-type storm, like a hurricano.

Curious and now finished with his lunch, he hops off the trunk and moves to one of the smaller stumps. The barest outline of a lower eyelid is visible on its bark, just before the wood snaps off.

Philip backs up, full of misgiving, and bumps into another fallen trunk. This time, there’s no question. Four long gouges, each a handspan apart score the wood in parallel.  Old, dry sap clogs and clots the wounds.

Claws, is all Philip can think, remembering his own monster’s tantrum in New York—God, it feels like years ago. Claws, claws, claws. His body shrinks and cringes down without his conscious will, his senses straining even as his heart pounds and his hands shake. He remains perfectly still for a long moment before at last he can think again. Still, fear twitches in his limbs, and once he starts moving the instinct to run is nigh-overpowering.

But Philip doesn’t run. He tamps down his animal instincts and walks, slowly, without crashing through any undergrowth or injuring himself on any roots, and when he at last steps back into the shade, under all the staring eyes of the trees, he feels nothing but relief.

For the rest of his journey Philip remains far clear of any patches of sunlight he sees, going long and arduous distances out of his way to avoid them. He speculates as he walks, and decides that the monster uses the trees to sharpen its claws, and that this is what destroys the trees. His initial, terrified impression, of deliberate brutality and destruction, is an example of just the sort of lazy, prejudicial thinking that turned the villagers at home against his father’s monster. Likely the monster isn’t thinking much of anything; likely the monster enjoys the feeling of its claws sunk deep into something. Nothing sinister about it. Surely it is dangerous—but not evil.

Still, he must remember that this beast is not his friend, nor likely to become one. Every time his mind falls back upon the riven wood—and it does so often, in the dark and the gloom, with no distractions—he’s racked with shudders. A full handspan between each carved line! A dozen old hardwoods knocked down like ninepins! He can only pray that the monster isn’t at the mansion, that he can find the mansion before the monster catches his scent. He prays the house is still standing, that this uncanny swamp hasn’t swallowed it whole. Time, as much as magic, is his enemy.

Afternoon slips away, full of mosquitoes whining in his ears and sweat running down his face. It’s verging on evening when he trips over something and falls headlong into the mulchy earth, his teeth jarring together as he lands. Cursing, he rolls over, snatching up his pack and scrambling to get his back to one of the great watchful trees in case something heard…

He crouches there, panting, for a moment, until at last a glance at the ground tells him it was not mere clumsiness that tripped him.

He’d stepped on a trowel. He picks it up, turns it over. The wooden parts of the handle have nearly rotted away, the metal eaten by rust. But it is unmistakably a human-made thing, from the ordinary human-made world, and after so long in this sweat-soaking swamp it fills him with hope.

Philip presses forward with renewed vigor. Only a few minutes later he spots a ninety-degree corner of some sort in the woods before him—an outbuilding, or a fence, perhaps. Forgetting concealment, he crashes forward through the brambles and brush. He comes to something like a shed, low-slung and ramshackle. The roof has caved in, and the door hangs askew, but Philip thrills at it all the same. This building was once owned by General Washington himself, the commander of America’s true army and of Philip’s own father. He tries to imagine them together: maybe they even came here, to Mount Vernon, maybe his father even saw this room! The very thought of it lights him up from the inside. But for the removal of some sixteen years, he might be standing at the side of two of the greatest men to ever live. Perhaps General Washington’s hands once unlatched this padlock, which has by now all gone to rust. Perhaps he once stooped low—all the stories, good and bad, agree upon the matter of his height—to duck through this door.

After the gloom of the forest Philip’s eyes take only a short time to adjust to the little room. It is a tight, claustrophobic space, with low sleeping pallets lined up shoulder to shoulder with scarce an inch of space between them. There is no other furniture.

The incongruity leaps out. Why, he wonders, did Washington put a padlock on the outside of this building, if he wanted people to sleep in it?

A moment later he realizes, and feels very, very stupid.

This is the slaves’ quarters.

His mother had explained to him, long ago, what plantations are. And of course he had also known, though perhaps not directly from his mother, who had only said that Washington was a farmer, that Washington owned a plantation. And Philip had heard, no matter how hard his mother tried to shield him from it, what the British propagandists had to say about Washington—that he was a would-be tyrant, a treaty-breaker, and a town-destroyer, that he wished nothing less than the American people on their knees before him…

Don’t listen to that, his mother had said to him. Washington was a wonderful man—this, it’s lies, it’s slanders, it’s a false legacy like your father’s…

Philip wonders, for the first time, if perhaps he’s on the wrong side of this war. He backs up, his hand snaking behind him to find the lock on the door. Even in the summer, it’s cold. Dead metal.

Tyrant. Oppressor. Murderer. These accusations and more, Philip has heard leveled at Washington. With the weight of the lock solid in his hand, Philip knows there’s truth in them. The British had plumbed the General’s heart and found the monstrousness there—had found the despot that well-bred manners and a pair of shining epaulets could not conceal. Washington’s legacy was hopelessly entangled in a horror of his own making, and though one part of Philip—the boy, who had heard talk of his honesty and honor—cries out at it, another part of him appreciates the neat justice of it, like the rhyming couplet that brings a sonnet to a close.

A rustling sound outside draws Philip’s ear. Quickly he shuts the door to the slave cabin behind him and crouches low. He finds a knothole and peers through it, straining to see what might be outside, but it’s no use; the cabin’s surrounded by jungle, and what’s more the hour grows late. What little light drains down to the jungle floor is dimming.

The sound comes again, this time accompanied by a low growl, and Philip’s heart pounds in his chest so fast he finds himself panting for air, trying desperately not to gasp too loudly lest he be heard. He dares not move—he dares not even think. He no longer believes the monster is without malice. If it really is Washington… it will tear him apart. Its claws will go through him like ten bayonets at once. He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die like this, and his poor ma will—except really, she should have told him, maybe if he’d known he wouldn’t have—but how should she have known? and does he really want to spend his last moments being angry with her? and oh, hell, he bought a pistol in Maryland when he heard rumor of highwaymen on the road, he might as well die on his feet—

Even as he draws it from his rucksack he knows it’s not a solution. He’s seen his father’s monster at home burp up little fragments of buckshot with amused condescension—how much more powerful must Washington’s be?

But he’s not going down without a fight. He primes the pistol with powder, loads it the way Jenkins showed him. Its weight in his hand steadies his heart. He leans up against the wall, and waits.

And waits, and waits, and waits.

Eventually, his head tips forward, and he sleeps.

Chapter Text

When Philip wakes the next morning he is astonished to find himself still alive and in possession of all his limbs. He seems to have slept mostly upright, propped against the wall and leaning against his pack and mandolin, and a crick in the neck is all the injury the night has done him. Dim morning light filters in through knotholes in the eastern wall.

His stomach turns afresh at the memory of where he is. Outside, the squawks of frogs and birds and all manner of creatures remind him that he is deep in the wild, accursed jungle for the sake of a monster that may deserve its monstrousness. But, taking a deep breath, he reminds himself that that’s not quite true. He must remember that he’s here for his father—to understand the man, he must understand his cause. And to understand the cause, he must understand the commander. And if the commander is flawed, and so too is the cause, then… then what of his father?

Lord, it is too early to be asking such questions. Or perhaps—he thinks, as the slightest wind-blown stir of shadow on the wall makes him flinch—too late.

But he will understand the man now, whatever the cost, whatever the consequences, good or ill. He is committed. He is here. He will know.

So steeling himself, he stands and walks to the door.

His hand is on the latch when his stomach growls. Shaking his head, he returns to the floor and retrieves a slightly-stale roll with cheese and an apple, because if a great monster is going to kill him the instant he steps outside he would at least rather not die on an empty stomach. Of course, he would most prefer to not die at all, and so as he chews it occurs to him that he should steps to every knothole in the cabin in turn and peer through as best he can. The eastern side is a little clearer, the other three sides surrounded by jungle.

From the side with the door—the south—he catches sight of what looks like a small dog, curled up on a bed of leaves. Unless he kicks hole in some other wall, he’ll have to pass the dog in order to get out, and he doesn’t wish to make a racket. But he also doesn’t want to alarm the dog and have it barking at him.

He makes his decision. “Hey, doggy,” he coos, through the knothole. “Hey, doggy doggy! How are you?”

The dog raises its head, its eyes opening. All of its eyes opening—and the creature seems to be all eyes. From its paws to its flanks to its tail to the tip of its nose, even under the collar round its neck—nothing but eyes, of every human color, ranging in size from a bead to a small egg.

“Goodness,” Philip murmurs, but he’s more experienced with this sort of thing than most folk. “You’re a handsome one, aren’t you?”

The dog hops to its feet. It’s approximately terrier-shaped. Philip imagines it lived here before the war-that-wasn’t; maybe it was one of Washington’s own hunting dogs, somehow caught in the overspill of the curse. It walks towards the door, out of Philip’s view from the knothole, and a moment later he hears the scrape of nails and a soft whine.

“Aww, of course you can come in,” Philip says, opening the door and taking the dog as it jumps into his arms, tail wagging happily. It doesn’t seem to be perturbed at the pressure of Philip’s arms against all those eyes—even has eyes on the bottoms of its feet. Philip gingerly kisses a space between some of the eyes on top of its head. “What’s your name, buddy?”

The dog only pants, but Philip holds its little body against his chest with one arm and fumbles at the collar with his free hand. The tag only says 721.

“Well, that’s a strange name,” Philip frowns. “Can I call you Sev, boy?”

The dog makes a snuffling noise and licks Philip’s chin, and—Lord, he has eyes inside his mouth. What could possibly be the point of that? Isn’t it just dark in there?

Despite the undoubted oddity of his new companion, Philip is thrilled to have the company for the day ahead. Yesterday had depressed his spirits, but Sev, trotting at his heels, restores some of his optimism. He tells himself it will be useful, too, to have someone watching his back, as well as every other thing in every other direction.

He walks east, where the trees are thinner, and soon the shape of a building emerges from the golden morning mist. From what Philip can see, the structure is largely intact, although clearly it has not been maintained. It is orderly and symmetrical, with a triangular pediment and a little cupola peeking out the center of the red roof. There are saplings sprouting out of the gutters in places, and a few prominent holes in the shingles where storm-flung branches have punched through. Most of the windows are broken—he will have to be careful of the glass inside. But given the wild profusion of the jungle outside, he had not expected the house to be nearly this intact.

Strolling in the front door feels wrong, somehow, so Philip skirts around the back of the house. Through the mist and trees he catches the occasional flash of light on water—it must be the Potomac, not so very far away. The whole of the back of the house is taken up by an enormous porch, still with a few toppled rocking-chairs and a tea-table. Philip creeps past them as carefully as though they were sleeping guard dogs. It feels wrong to break into somebody else’s house, and so grand, no matter how long abandoned.

He steps up onto the porch and turns the knob of the back door, gripping it gingerly as one must with old doorknobs. The door creaks open, the rusting hinges grating a little, the knob vibrating under his fingers. He ducks into a dark, stuffy room, Sev following close on his heels. The little dog’s nails clack against the wooden floor.

Philip pauses a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He appears to be in a passageway, with a wooden staircase ascending just in front of him and doors to both his left and his right. A week ago he would have been on fire to explore Washington’s beloved home from top to bottom, but after last night he isn’t sure he wants any more insight into the man. He still feels sick at the thought of all those people crammed together like livestock.

He’s doing this for his father, not Washington. Once Philip finds any papers and letters relating to him, he’ll leave this cursed place.

Where would those papers be? Likely a study or library, or failing that, a bedroom. He finds a small bedroom behind the first door he tries, but it is small and without personality, clearly meant for guests. The smell of mildew pervades everything; mold grows in ugly dark splotches on the light blue walls. When he takes another right he finds himself in a room that is truly, alarmingly green, the paint brilliant in some places, but faded where the sun would glare in from the windows, if it were sunny out. Bits of plaster have fallen from the ceiling, covering the simple oval table with what looks like an uneven dusting of snow.

The next room is larger and simpler, with white walls and plain wooden floors and a whole wall of bookshelves to his left. Perched against the far wall is a writing-desk. Washington’s study. Philip’s heart begins to beat faster. He goes to the desk and begins rifling through the papers that are, miraculously, still there. Not ink-blackened like his mother’s letters, just as he expected. Whatever—wherever—whenever the unwriting was or is, Mount Vernon—Washington—is the anchor to it.

Sev growls.

Philip looks up, glancing behind him as well as through the two tall windows at the end of the room, but these haven’t lost their glass, and his view through them is warped. He waits for half a minute, listening for any sound beyond that of his heart thudding in his ears, but there’s nothing. He returns to the papers. There’s a thin, leather-bound book in nearly the center of the desk, and he opens it.

Sev growls again, this time jumping up to tug at the leg of Philip’s breeches.

Philip drops the book and kneels down. “What is it, boy?” he asks. “Do you hear something?”

Sev whines and licks his face. Well, Philip hasn’t heard anything, but he knows enough about monsters to trust that the dog’s senses are far more acute than his own. He springs back up and flips through the pages of the book. There are dated entries; it seems to be a diary of some sort. He stuffs it into his rucksack. Sev makes a little yip of anxiety, running around in circles.

“Got it, boy,” Philip says, reaching back into his rucksack and tossing the dog a little piece of cheese, which vanishes down his eye-covered gullet in an instant. “I’ll just check upstairs really fast and then we can leave, all right?”

Sev races ahead to stand in the doorway that would be Philip’s way back into the house. He barks.

“Shh! Shh! Come on, boy, don’t do this!” Philip whispers. “If that thing’s nearby, you can’t—”

Sev throws back his head and howls.

Philip gives up. He darts around the dog, races back through the dining room, and returns to the central stairway he found earlier, taking the stairs two at a time. One stair breaks under his foot, and only his forward momentum allows him to keep his balance as he stumbles upwards. Behind him, Sev yips once, and Philip hears the clatter of his nails on wood as he flees.

Well, he had hoped for a little better in a guard-dog, but at least he got some warning. Arbitrarily Philip decides to check the left side of the second floor first. He finds two bedrooms, the second of which has lost a window to a questing tree-branch, leaves reaching almost to the bedposts. There’s a small writing-desk in the corner, but all he finds inside is an incomplete letter with many crossings-out and misspellings and haphazard capitalization, perhaps the work of a child. He leaves it, racing back to the landing and trying the right side. After passing through yet another bedroom, this one an alarming shade of yellow, he finally arrives in what must be the master, with a writing-desk, an elegant clock, and several portraits on the wall. He goes straight for the writing desk.

Outside, the crash of leaves and the sound of wood breaking, and a flock of birds goes up all at once. Philip throws open the desk-drawers and nearly howls with frustration at the sight of fresh, blank paper and a sealed inkpot. In the other drawer there’s an old Bible and a few broken quills.

A furious bellow, sudden and earthshaking as thunder when the lightning is close enough to blind. Philip’s body quails involuntarily, his skin breaking out in a thousand goosebumps. With no thought he throws the Bible into his rucksack with the leatherbound journal from the study and races back to the staircase. Get out get out get out—

He reaches the top of the stairs in time to see the front door blown in, knocked clean off its hinges. Frantically he backtracks, glimpsing enormous tusks. The thing’s body is too wide to fit through the door, its stooping shoulder higher than Philip’s head. It has a face like a boar’s, with tigers’ paws and bristling fur and blank, red eyes. When they fall upon Philip his knees fail him, and he sinks to the floor. The creature tosses its head in a glint of metal, and Philip realizes with a sick lurch of his stomach that it wears a crown—or rather, that a crown is protruding from its skull. The Emperor of America, Philip thinks, stunned.

General Washington himself.

The creature bellows again, lowering his head and charging the door, and finally, finally Philip’s wits return to him and he throws himself away on his hands and knees, gasping with terror.

The impact of the monster’s shoulders against the doorframe shakes the whole house, flinging Philip onto his face. He scrambles upright again, scrabbling for his bag and his mandolin. The next impact comes with a splintering sound and a deep roar of triumph, and the whole building begins to shake as the creature mounts the stairs. Philip sprints into the second bedroom on the left—the one with the tree branch coming in through the window. His tosses his things out the broken window without a second thought, then leaps up to the sill and wraps his hands round the tree branch. It’s not any thicker around than his wrist, but he doesn’t have time to worry if it will splinter under his weight. He pushes his feet off the sill and lets his lower body drop, and though the branch sinks under his weight, it holds.

Another roar hits him like a physical blow, and his hands lose their grip.

His feet and knees take the brunt of the impact, but from such a height his whole body slams the earth with punishing force. Even his teeth clack together, hard enough that he feels like he’s taken a hit direct to the skull. But he doesn’t have an instant to recover. He grabs his rucksack and mandolin and scrambles to his feet, his right ankle giving a stab of pain as he does so.

Panting and wincing, he runs for the forest. The river was his first choice, but the monster will be at an advantage across the mostly open ground between the mansion and the bank, and Philip has no hope of outpacing it now.

He has to lose it in the trees, or he’s dead.

Another, distant roar behind him, along with crashes and the sounds of tearing fabric that allow him to guess it must still be inside the house. It could realize he’s gone at any moment, and so he doesn’t allow his pace to slow until he’s over a dozen yards into the underbrush and the pain in his ankle becomes intolerable. He continues at a brisk but uneven march, trying to keep utterly silent even as he sucks air into his burning lungs. The rucksack feels like it weighs half a ton, thudding between his shoulder blades with every step. Realizing his throat is parched with thirst, he takes his canteen and drinks two thirds of it in one go. That, at least, lightens the load a little.

Eventually he risks pausing long enough to find a tree branch to use as a walking-stick, and after that he hobbles along a little more comfortably. His stomach begins to rumble, but he dares not halt for food. Every rustle of leaves, every twig snap, he glances behind, heart accelerating until he feels sick. The memory of the monster’s eyes burns within him.

The terror doesn’t abate, precisely, but with time comes the ability to cope a little better, to force himself to function in spite of it. I have to get out of here, he thinks—obvious, perhaps, but better than mindlessly fleeing through the undergrowth. All right, his mind coaxes, how do we get out?

Find the river, of course, and follow it downstream. But how he is to do that, with very little idea which direction he fled in, and his ankle still throbbing, and dark coming on soon…

He will find a stream. There. He will find a stream, and follow it to the river. Nothing simpler.

Except that he hasn’t seen a stream yet today, and the sun is low, and he has to confront the reality that he’s almost certainly going to have to spend another night in the jungle…

He certainly cannot sleep on the ground. The thought of doing so, when there’s a creature out there hunting who could gut him with its littlest claw, makes him feel sick all over. That means he’ll have to climb a tree, bad ankle or no. He looks for good prospects as he hobbles along, eventually finding a stout-looking oak with some easy, low branches. He throws his rucksack over the highest branch he can reach from the ground and starts to climb.

Sleeping in trees is not much in his experience, but he is very fortunate to find a broken branch tangled amidst its fellows that he can pull out and wedge crossways over two larger branches. He wedges his walking-stick as well, and by weaving in a few smaller green branches he manages to construct something almost like a small platform against the trunk of the tree, about twenty feet up. It feels steady against his weight, although his feet dangle, and leaning against the tree-trunk wouldn’t be the most stable sleeping position. But if he holds the case of his mandolin in his arms and then uses his rucksack as a pillow...

Well, it’s still quite uncomfortable. But he doesn’t feel like he’s about to fall, either, and exhaustion is pressing heavy on his shoulders. His whole body is one enormous throb. He wills himself to sleep, and his body gratefully obeys.

A splattering of cold dewdrops to the face wakes Philip some hours later with the sun still unrisen. His limbs have grown stiff with the awkward position, and an odd twinge has taken up residence in the center of his back. He rolls his shoulders forward and back, and when that doesn’t do the trick, he reaches up to grasp a limb and lever his upper body, twisting left, twisting right, rolling his ne—

It is only by God’s grace that Philip doesn’t fall clear out of the tree in shock, because the sight of the creature staring down at him knocks his wits away. It has a long, tusked snout and beetley eyes that glint in the barely-there predawn light. In silhouette it resembles an overlong pot-bellied pig, but how such a thing could climb a tree…

The creature watches him closely. Evidently it decides that he isn’t a threat, because a moment later it extends down a long-fingered, powerful hand and reaches straight into Philip’s pack, withdrawing the last of Philip’s rolls. As he watches, astonished, it pops the roll into its mouth and gulps it down whole.

Then it leans closer and gives Philip a sniff. One of those long-fingered hands reaches towards his face. He pushes it away, and then, uneasy, gives the beast a firm rap on the nose, the kind that would send the creature—his creature, or his father’s, or anyway, the one at home—shying away.

The pig-snout emits a squeal, and the beast springs with impossible agility over to the next tree, its departure from the branch above Philip launching cold dewdrops in every direction. The beast settles on a thick branch not so very far away, crossing its front limbs and laying its head upon them. In what little light there is Philip catches the glint of metal. Silver.

The Queen of America, he thinks.

Oh, his ma would be so sad to see this.

Sleep is now, of course, out of the question, but so is descending the tree in near-total darkness. The beast watches him closely, but not in a way that suggests imminent violence, and Philip wonders at that, in contrast to her husband’s and even to his own father’s monster. Why is Lady Washington so meek, where the other monsters are so ferociously territorial?

He remembers the candy-sweet quality of Lafayette, before at last his form was vanquished and his soul freed. Perhaps Lady Washington wasn’t crafted to be the terror that her husband was. But his teacher had cast the Washingtons as equally monstrous—or as equal as a Emperor and a Queen could ever be—once Philip had asked about Martha.

Except… Philip had needed to ask. So perhaps that was the difference. Perhaps Lady Washington was being lost from memory faster than her husband—perhaps her tales were just as horrid, but less often told, or eclipsed. Perhaps the mantle of tyrant and monster fit better round the General’s shoulders; perhaps the British narrative hadn’t caught the public’s nightmares with her as it has with him. That squares with what his mother told him: Martha had been fashionable, and exceedingly well-mannered, sharp-witted but kindly with it. Perhaps the British had sought to make her monster a matched set with her husband’s, but the fit has clearly been ill.

And this is what she’s been reduced to. A smallish, hungry, pitiful thing, scurrying through the treetops to stay out of the reach of her husband’s claws. Philip remembers the felled trees from before, and wonders.

“Hey,” he says, as softly as he can, almost musical, and the monster’s head snaps up, her ears swiveling. “No, no, it’s fine, all’s well.” Taking a firm grasp on the tree limb above his head, he extends his other hand about halfway across the gap between them. “I’m pleased to meet you, is all.”

There’s no reaction in her beady eyes. Well, perhaps she doesn’t speak, unlike his father and unlike Lafayette. Still, he supposes, if they made John Laurens into a damn statue… clearly speech-theft is in their repertoire.

Philip keeps his hand out but, knowing that his direct gaze might be taken as a threat, looks off into the distance, keeping Martha in his peripheral vision. As he does, he notices a long patch, devoid of trees, off to the east. Morning fog swirls heavy around it, but through the mist he thinks he spies the light of sun on water.

The Potomac.

He’s saved.

The instant he thinks it, he has to laugh, because he knows the river alone isn’t sufficient to save him. He is still deeply, deeply in trouble, to the extent that thinking about it too much is going to overwhelm him with panic. But if the journey all the way to Virginia has taught him anything, it’s to take his days and his problems one at a time. You don’t plan to get all the way to Mt. Vernon in one go—you plan to get to Schenectady, and figure out the rest later.

So. Potomac, and the rest later.

While he’s sitting there, mouth dropped open a little, the monster’s snout presses gently to the palm of his hand, and in spite of himself Philip’s hairs stand on end. Her nose is velvety-smooth, with coarse bristles all around. Her crown glitters in the gathering dawn.

Something rustles the leaves below, and Philip and the beast both turn to look.

It’s Sev, wagging his eyes. Evidently he spots Philip high in the tree. He sits back on his eyes, eyes lolling out in a doggy grin.

The moment Martha sees him she melts back under cover, her mottled coat disguising her well. But the crown is unmistakable, its mirror-shine bright as a signal lamp.

Sev barks.

“Sev!” Philip calls, as loud as he dares. “Shh, boy, shh!”

Three things happen at once. Sev throws back his head and howls, and Martha Washington leaps clean into the next tree and takes off to the west at a spectacular pace, and, far in the distance, a crash shakes the whole forest.

“You traitor!” Philip cries, glaring down at Sev. Sev doesn’t linger to be lambasted, but instead races after Martha with a joyous bay of pursuit.

It occurs to Philip that maybe 712 was no traitor, but instead, merely a dog that already had a master. That is a terrifying thought, because it means that George will soon be following in his dog’s footsteps, and judging by Martha’s frantic pace, Philip has precious little time in which to escape. Even if George is hunting Martha—a sickening thought, and the moment it occurs to him he hates John Andre, but given her behavior it seems the most likely thing—he’s certainly coming this way, and Philip doesn’t want to be anywhere near here when that happens.

He throws his things to the ground and descends with haste—too much haste, as he only remembers to save his ankle after he’s already landed on it. His eyes well up, but he has no time. He scoops up his things and runs straight for the river.

Once again, the tangled underbrush slows him considerably, although he gives up silence in favor of speed and crashes through with all the brute strength he can muster. Thorns tear at his clothes; branches whip at his face. But he doubts the Washington-beast can hear the racket over its own—from where he came he hears the unmistakable splintery groan of a tree going down. Philip attempts to speed up even more, trips, falls flat on his face, and scrambles back to his feet as quick as his flailing limbs can carry him.

A quarter-mile back, the monster lets out an almost human scream, furious, terrible enough that Philip has no doubt as to its meaning: the beast has missed its prey. The scream grows louder and deeper, turning into a bellowing, resonant roar that shakes the leaves on the very trees. Philip drops straight to his knees, his hands over his ears and tears in his eyes, his heart beating fit to pound out of his ribs, his mind a blank mass of fear.

When he finally gathers his wits, Sev is sitting directly in front of him.

“No!” he screams. “No, no, no! Bad dog!”

He strikes at the little dog with a swing of the hard case of his mandolin, though his heart is hardly in it. The dog is bowled over, but Philip doubts it’s badly injured. Sure enough, he soon hears yips after him—and in seconds, the sound is lost in the thunderous sound of Washington in pursuit.

One moment he’s diving and dodging through the brush, his lungs on fire, blood pounding in his ears—the next, he’s trying to run on empty air. He plummets into the river, stomach dropping, but the blank isn’t high. His feet touch bottom, and he pushes off and bobs to the surface, spitting brackish water. He whirls around, and not half a moment later the enormous horned head of the Washington-beast emerges from the brush, red eyes glowing like the furnaces of Hell itself, sweat lathered on its flanks.

On instinct, Philip ducks under the muddy water, allowing the current to sluggishly push him downstream and away. He didn’t have a moment to get in a proper breath, and since he was just running flat-out his chest begins to burn almost immediately. Desperate for air, he tugs his hair over his face in a last-ditch attempt to disguise his profile and tries to surface slowly, so as not to draw the creature’s eyes. If it’s anything like the pigs Philip has known, vision won’t be its strongest sense.

Not audibly gasping when he breaks the surface might be the hardest thing Philip has ever done. Wet hair covers his mouth and nose, making him feel like he can’t get enough air, and he can barely see the beast through it—but hopefully he’ll look more like a drifting piece of flotsam than a person. Philip was never much of a one for prayer—not like his ma, anyway—but he certainly prays now. God save me, God save me, God save me...

The beast stands on the bank. Philip notes with some satisfaction that it’s also heaving for breath, its crown tangled with vines and leaves. It takes a few purposeful sniffs, its ears rotating to scan the water, but it can’t seem to spot Philip.

And then a voice from a fair distance behind Philip cries out, “Great fucking Christ, that’s—”

Washington’s head snaps up, and Philip sees great jaws opening. He dives an instant before the roar hits. The sound creates a wave in the water, throwing Philip backwards and sending him spinning. When he surfaces, he’s facing across the wide expanse of the river towards the opposite bank.

There’s a two-masted ship directly in front of him, only thirty or forty feet away, and if that isn’t Divine Providence it’s certainly the next best thing. Its mainmast has been sprung, and hangs like a dead man, tangled in rigging, sails flapping crazily in the strange breezes and backdrafts from the creature’s roar.

Philip swims with all of his remaining strength, gasping and swallowing water in his haste, expecting at any moment to be pierced by claws.  

“Help!” he cries, getting a mouthful of water, coughing and choking.

“Man overboard!” someone on the ship cries. A moment later something comes flying towards him and splashes him in the face as it lands not two feet away. A log. Philip grabs on with both hands and is swiftly pulled in.

“What in hell’s name?” someone says, when he trips over the railing climbing in and lands hard on his hands and knees. He’s content to stay there a moment, coughing up water and heaving for breath like a winded racehorse. There are voices, urgent and confused, around him, legs moving every which way, and eventually, when someone nearly steps on his hand, he realizes he’s in the way and sits back on his haunches against the rails, waiting for the dancing spots to fade from his vision. After a few moments from this, he reaches two conclusions. First, he’s on a boat. Second, he isn’t dead.

Cautiously, he stands up.  There are several crewmen around him, paying him little heed. They’re all staring at the bank—at the monster. Despite the putrefying hate in its red eyes, it keeps to the shoreline, seemingly hesitant to so much as put its claws in the water. As Philip watches, the little dog—vanishingly small at this distance—trots up beside Washington. From all the way across the water, he hears a yip, but still the monster doesn’t follow.

When they round a bend in the river, and the monsters are both out of sight, Philip heaves a sigh of pure relief and drops to his knees, bowing his head and clasping his trembling hands together.

Somebody nudges his ribs with their foot, and Philip starts.

“Oh,” says Philip, blinking up at the looming figure. “I’m sorry, of course—how rude of me, I’m Philip.” He gets to his feet, gritting his teeth, and realizes that he’s gone and scraped his knees and the palms of his hands, most likely when he fell in the forest. There’s blood on the deck as well, and he’s read that Navy folk are particular about such things. He drops to his knees, scrubbing at the stains with the tail of his shirt. “I’m so sorry for dirtying your ship, I’ll clean that right up, and thank you so, so much for stopping to help me, without a doubt you saved my life—”

A silence, unusual in quality, greets Philip’s words. It stretches out for long enough that he glances up uncertainly from the bloodstains and finally sees the pistol aimed at his head.

Chapter Text

Philip’s breath catches.

A little voice in his head whispers, now is the time to do the fastest thinking of your life.

So. What does he have?

Number one: despite his initial confused idea that this was a Navy ship, it most certainly is not. There’s not a uniform in sight. Nor is the deck clean. The ropes are so frayed they look blurry with fuzz. The sails are patched, the canvas of different qualities and ages bleached to varying shades of white. No flag flies from the shattered mainmast. Whether it dropped down in the chaos or there was never any flying, Philip cannot tell.  

Number two: They are on the Potomac, a shallow backwater inlet of the much better-trafficked Chesapeake Bay. There is nothing much here that would be of interest to a trading vessel. Mount Vernon cuts off any inland access from this point; pestilential swamp goes on for miles along the shores. The place, in short, does not have much to advertise it, except for being the kind of place where one might rest unseen.

Number three: Despite the utter lack of military uniform or order, there is still on the deck a stunning amount of military equipment, namely, cannon of every shape and size and color. Their mismatch matches the mismatched crew.

Furthermore, the mainmast could not have been shattered by the beast’s roar alone—it certainly wasn’t capable of toppling trees of that thickness with a single roar, else it surely would have pulverized all of Philip’s bones down to jelly back at the house. More likely the mast had been weakened previously, in some storm—or some battle.

He turns to the captain, certain he’s figured it out. “You’re John Paul Jones,” he announces.

The man looks stunned for a moment, then laughs. “John Paul Jones is dead. Been dead for years.” But then his eyes narrow, canny like a cat’s. “Why do you call be by that name?”

Philip’s heart skips in his chest. “You know it, then? It means something to you?”

“As much as anything might be said to mean anything. What does it mean to you?”

Philip can’t bring his mouth to speak. Say the wrong word, and he’ll die. Silence seems the safer route.

“Do I look the cannibal to you, boy, is that it? Do you see shark’s teeth in my mouth? Are my fingers the arms of a squid? Would I rape the very roses of England and then burn their country mansions down around them?”

Flinching back from the tirade, Philip cries, “No, no! You look normal!”

“I look normal,” the man says, rocking back on his heels and swinging his arms with a wild grin that shows off his normal human teeth. “Then I ask again—why call me John Paul Jones?”

“I don’t understand!” Philip cries. John Paul Jones was only a peripheral figure in his mother’s stories, vaguely associated with a certain derring-do and the general concept of a Navy. He wasn’t a prominent figure in his school lessons. “Did they make him a monster too?”

The captain, who had been pacing the deck in deep agitation, stops dead. He turns slowly back to Philip. “What do you know of the monsters?”

Philip swallows. “Only a little.”

“Liar. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”

“I’m no liar!” Philip cries. “You’re not John Paul Jones, then, but—you are a privateer?”

“Privateer?” The man snorts. “And who, young man, would sign my letter of marque? Without which I would be a pirate?”

“Semantics,” Philip says, waving a hand. “I chose the more respectable term.”

A flash of white teeth. “And what makes you think I’m respectable?”

“Well,” Philip says, “I suppose I’m an optimist. And the fact that you’re giving me a hearing at all is… remarkable in itself.”

“That it is,” the captain says, with an inclination of his head. “So tell me, strange boy who swam to my ship from a cursed swamp, pursued by the Emperor of America itself, who calls me the name of my better-to-have-died captain—who are you?”

Philip takes a deep breath. He thinks he can trust this man. “Hamilton.”

“That’s a common name,” the captain says, but the glint in his eyes shows he’s understood. “I’ll ask no more.”

“And you?”

“Gave my name up in the war,” the captain says. “Can’t kill me if they don’t know me, right? You may call me Captain.”

“That’s—” Philip can’t choke out the word brilliant, not with his hair standing on end at the idea. Oh, this man is dangerous and desperate and he shouldn’t have Philip’s name, not when he has none of his own, that’s wrong. “—remarkable.

“Remarkable indeed,” Captain says, clapping his hands together and rocking back on his heels. “So. What’s in the bag?”

A laugh goes up from the assembled crew as Philip moves to shield his satchel from view. With a start he realizes that he no longer has his mandolin, and for a moment his hands waver in the air, uncertain, grasping for a handle that’s no longer there. He looks about himself, left, right—turns to the railing of the ship and looks over the edge.

Nothing.

“Did you see a case?” he asks, searching the river. “A case for a mandolin, was it in the water, did anyone—”

“Boy,” Captain says, his voice low, “I’d advise you not to test me. What’s in the bag?”

It’s lost. It’s lost and he has to accept that or he’s going to die. Philip chokes down his emotion and turns back to the man with the gun. “Books,” he says, his voice tissuey and raw. “Just books.”

“From Mount Vernon?” Captain asks.

Philip nods. The crew recoils—he hears oaths among the whispers.

Their captain only shakes his head. “I don’t know if you’re a fool, or a genius. Do you think you’d go mad if you tried to read one?”

“I think there’s a good chance I’m already mad,” Philip says, remembering the monsters. A wild laugh escapes him. Oh, Christ, where is he? On the deck of a pirate ship hundreds of miles from his home, because he wanted to see his father’s general? And what has he to show for it? The loss of Mrs. Potsham’s mandolin, and a Bible and some journals?

He opens his bag and takes out one of the journals. It’s soaking wet. Opening it to a random page, he clears his throat to read it aloud.

“Well?” Captain asks, after a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Philip says, “The ink’s bled.” The words are illegible.

All that, and he can’t read it.

He can’t read it, no matter how he stares at the black lines on the page. They seem to be growing darker—thicker—merging together. He blinks, confused—he doesn’t think he’s crying—and the ink continues to expand, flooding the pages, dripping down his hands, clinging to his forearms and splattering to the deck from his elbows. A rivulet of ink forms in the crease of the book’s spine and begins streaming down the page. Philip only gapes.

“What in Hell’s name—” he hears someone start, while another cries, “Sorcery!”

He finds the book wrenched from his hands, and a moment later the fluttering sound as the captain flings the thing as hard as he can back towards back Mount Vernon. Then he grabs Philip’s pack by the strap and—before Philip can utter a word of protest—throws it too. The only sign of Philip’s last possession is a splash in the still waters.

“A fool,” the man pants, looking Philip up and down. “Decisively a fool. Whatever you know about monsters, it seems it’s not enough. So. Answer me again, disaster-bringer. What is your life worth?”

Oh, he’s in trouble, because he has no answer. His mother loves him—he stole her money, left without a word. The monster loves him—he turned it away on the road because its appearance was an inconvenience. His father’s story—what can that mean, in the light of what he’s learned? His music—he’s proven himself unworthy of the instrument, betrayed the trust of the good woman who gave it to him. Theodosia—he’d shown her the path straight to her ruin.

God, he can’t die now. There’s so much he must mend.

He hangs his head. “I don’t pretend to be any good to the world. But my existence is a spite to John André, which I think you like. And I can work, and I can write. That’s all.”

Captain stares him down for long moments, hand resting on the butt of his pistol. Finally he says, “Fuck John André. You’ll work until you’ve paid off that.” He points up at the sprung mast. “If you’re good, should take you about ten years, and that’s more than fair. You’ll start by splicing rope tomorrow morning, when we’ve men to spare. Clean the ink off your hands first—I don’t abide by curses.” Then he addresses the crew. “Are we all in agreement?”

The crew roars its approval.

“Very well. Left side gunners, clear the debris and salvage all you can. Right side, man the foremast and set course south by southwest.”

Philip can only press his back to the rails and try to stay out of the way of the sudden flood of activity. The ship groans as she turns. Behind them, incongruous in the clear blue morning light, the Potomac floods slowly black.

It’s a blockade runner, simple as that. With British warships thick in the Chesapeake, guarding Baltimore like jealous lovers, sometimes the Potomac is the only escape. The sandbanks and shallows make it impassable for heavier ships, the fog and the swamps and the wild air from Mount Vernon render it inhospitable to most civilians. It’s the perfect place for a trim little clipper to hide.

“Except for the monsters, of course,” Philip grumbles.

The old man who had been showing him how to splice rope raps him sharply over the ear. “Never saw no monsters before we came across you, little Jonah. Whispers and rumors, that was all we had, and then suddenly our mast split and you aboard and a beast from hell itself screaming from the shore.” His tone makes it clear that he’s dissatisfied with the trade, as is most of the crew. Philip thinks that if they could throw him overboard to get their mast back they would gladly do it. As it is, they’ve jury-rigged a replacement, but it’s nowhere near as fast as the original, a fact that’s going to make their journey into Baltimore for repairs even more perilous than it would have been otherwise.

“If I’m so unlucky to have aboard, maybe it would be best if he just let me go,” Philip tries.

“Ha!” the old man says. “He’s a canny man, our captain—no, you’ve got to—” He snorts in frustration, grabbing Philip’s hands and shoving them closer together. “If you don’t get the ends good and tight at the beginning they’ll slip right out again, mark my words.”

“Sorry,” Philip says, tugging his half-started splice back apart, trying to keep all the strands straight in his mind. Eventually he makes a beginning to the old man’s satisfaction and begins cautiously twining the strands together.

“Anyhow, if you’re worth something, he’ll find it out. One way or another, you’ll pay your debt. He’ll make sure of that.”

Philip frowns, trying to concentrate. The memory of his unqualified failure at Mount Vernon saps his focus, drains his morale. He has no idea how he’s going to get out of here. If you’re worth something. Part of him is beginning to wonder if he’s not—if his mother’s faith in him is totally misplaced, if he can’t understand his father because he’s simply not as good as him, not as clever, not as brave, not as skilled. If he were kidnapped by smugglers he’d probably be running this ship by now.

Then again, his father had followed George Washington. So clearly his judgement isn’t unimpeachable.

“No, no, through there, boy, the opposite strands, are you trying to splice the rope to itself?”

For all he understands what he’s doing, he is, but Philip withdraws the offending strand. When he tries to fit it through the space the old man indicates, it frays, and the old man growls in disgust.

“Oh, for God’s sake, just give it here!” The sailor finishes Philip’s work in thirty seconds, his fingers moving as fast as Ma’s embroidery needle and just as sure. Philip watches, listless even though it’s not even lunchtime yet. He’s bone-tired, and the ache from his flight through the jungle hasn’t faded. If anything, it was worse when he woke this morning.

A sharp rap against his skull rouses him.

“Are you simple? Did I hear right you speak Greek?”

“Sorry,” Philip says. “What were you—”

“I was asking if you can fish,” the sailor says. After a moment’s pause, in which Philip desperately prompts his brain to assemble the mess of sounds he just heard into English words, the man adds, “You know, where you put a net in the water.”

Oh. Oh, “I can fish with a rod and a line,” Philip says. “I’m not sure about nets.”

He passes most of the day like that, dragging his mind along five seconds behind his body. Over supper—a fishy thing that smells worse and worse by the second—the chills hit. His spoon knocks against the inside of his bowl, so intense are his shakes, and he sets both down on the deck and curls up, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his head hang. He’s so cold and so tired. He closes his eyes.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, you’ve hardly done anything today. Get up,” someone says, prodding Philip with their foot.

Groaning, Philip raises his head, which feels as heavy as a sack of stones. As he does, a stabbing pain goes through his head and neck, and he drops it again. “Sorry,” he rasps. “I—I’ll work, what do you want me to…”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the voice says again. A vertiginous sense of deja vu swamps Philip-- didn’t they just say, but did they say again, what’s…

At some point a little later the captain comes along.

“Probably swamp sickness, wouldn’t you think?” someone says. “All that bad air…”

“Or malingering,” the captain says.

“No!” Philip cries. “I can—” Summoning all his strength, and aided by the bulkhead, he gains his feet. He doesn’t want them to throw him overboard—it seems probable they will. He’s so useless: can’t write a book, can’t catch a fish, can’t splice a rope, can’t please his ma, can’t even run away properly. The effort of standing sends another angry stab through his head, and his stomach turns. “I can work, I—” His nausea doubles, and redoubles, and doubles again, and he has only just enough time to sight a bucket and fall over it before he’s retching, sending back up all the fish stew he managed and precious little else, although his body seems determined to try. When he’s done he’s shaking all over, spit hanging from his lips, chilled to the bone, but the thought does cross his mind that at least now the captain will believe he’s sick.

The captain sighs, somewhere over and above him. “I suppose you’d best find him a place to bunk, then.”

Hour upon shivering hour he remains huddled in the ragged, threadbare blanket, his head pounding, before he slips into sleep. For all Philip knows they slip the blockade silent as a cat coming home—for all he knows they are sighted and chased and only barely give the enemy the slip—for all he knows there is a great sea-battle, but the truth of it is that the utter prostration of his illness renders him insensible to the world, and nothing short of the crash of cannon-fire in his ears could wake him.

He dreams that the monster is crouching over him. Not Washington, but his monster, or his father’s. His vision is doubled. With one eye, he watches floating outside himself, and with the other he inhabits his body. Philip tries to sit up, but the creature’s weight rests squarely on his chest. It talons rip away skin and flesh, and Philip’s body-vision blinks out—he watches on from the outside, crying out and whimpering, as the creature leaves him nothing but a skeleton, a collection of papery white bones, a cherry-pit heart still pulsing inside.

When he wakes, he ponders. This quest has torn me to pieces, he thinks. That’s what it means. Hardly a comforting thought, as he dozes in some out-of-the-way corner of the ship, his fever fading.

For all its severity, his illness is short, and only about eighteen hours after he was first taken ill he awakes in possession of most of his senses, though tangled in clothes that reek of fever-sweat. They are in Baltimore harbor.

When they realize he’s awake and able to stand upright, they chain him in the hold.

“So you don’t jump ship,” the old sailor who taught him to splice explains, as though it were a reasonable thing to do. “Your debt’s far from paid.”

Philip rattles his shackles, furious. “I could pay it off much faster if you’d let me do something I’m actually good at,” he snaps. Even that little effort tires him, and he sits down, head spinning. “Something with languages—numbers—figures.”

“Well, we can’t always get what we want in life, now, can we?” the old man says, not unkindly, and shuts the door behind him as he leaves. A little light drains in from the cracks under and around the door, but other than that, Philip is left in complete darkness.

Right, he thinks. Some time alone. Why on earth do they even have shackles and chains built straight into the walls? Is this ship a prison transport or—

Philip grinds his teeth and hangs his head. A slave transport; logically such things must exist, and now that he thinks on it he’s seen them discussed in the papers. It’s very different to be inside of one. It’s so dark and close in here, the bulkhead of the ship resounding with the smack of waves, even the gentle harbor-motion slightly nauseating with the thick air and no reference-points. Crossing the ocean down here with hundreds of other people… this isn’t the lesson he set out to learn, when he began his quest to unearth Washington, his father’s commanding officer, his mentor. He feels like he went digging for treasure and come up with a murdered corpse.

Philip shakes his head in an attempt to clear it of despairing thoughts. As discomfited as he is, wallowing down here is of no use to him or anybody else. He can explore the hold, see if there’s anything he can use to escape these shackles-- maybe a long piece of metal, to try to pry them open, or something he can pick the lock with. For that matter, they aren’t so tight around his wrists… maybe with a little effort, or some oil, he could slip them off… whale oil, don’t smuggling ships carry that? Whale oil would be perfect...

A major flaw in his plan: the barrels in the hold are all sealed tight, and with his dominant hand encumbered by shackle and chain and no tools to speak of, he’s not even able to open them to see what their contents are. He’s groping around on the floor for some kind of tool when the door flies open, the old sailor and another man charging inside. Philip leaps to his feet, trying to come up for an excuse for his behavior, as the second man seizes his arm and the old sailor pulls out the shackle-key.

“What—” Philip says, but the second man has already seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly out into the corridor—up the ladder—out on the deck—into a cabin. Philip glances around; it’s a small but economical space, containing a desk with a few half-completed letters on it, a small unmade cot, and a sea-chest.

“Quickly, now,” the old sailor says, tearing the blanket off the cot and gesturing towards it. “Get in! We’re treating you well, aye? We're treating you well!”

“Like hell you are!” Philip cries, squirming, and actually manages to break free of the man holding him. He charges out the door of the cabin and out on the deck—and nearly collides head-on with a woman. She’s tall and imperious-looking, arm-in-arm with the captain. Her dress is of rich fabric, in a different design than Philip has ever seen, but the utter ease and poise of her bearing suggests to Philip that it’s simply because she’s ahead of all the trends. What on earth a woman like this could possibly be doing on board a vessel of this kind—

“Philip!” she cries, rushing forward and crushing him in an embrace before he can utter so much as a word. “Oh, thank goodness you’re safe. When the good captain said you were ill, I hardly knew what to think!”

At the sound of his name, it all slots into place, the portrait on his mother’s mantle and the face of this stranger suddenly aligning. “Aunt Angelica,” he says, gently prising himself out of her arms. “It’s… what are you doing here?” He looks about wildly, trying to understand the situation, finding no clues.

She looks faintly amused. “Fetching you, of course.” She’s holding a small, nondescript bag, not at all in keeping with the rest of her outfit, and this she hands to the captain without a second glance. When she reaches out and takes his hand, her grip hurts his fingers. “Come with me, Philip.”

Does she even know the danger she’s in? Philip pretends to embrace Angelica again so he can whisper “smugglers” urgently in her ear.

“I know they’re smugglers,” Angelica says aloud, with that same faintly amused tone, as though nothing in the world could rattle her and least of all that. But something in her face changes, just for a moment; like she’s trying not to choke on something. Is she afraid? It’s all right, Philip thinks fiercely in her direction, although he worries what they might do if the captain simply decides to seize them both.

As if to answer his concern, Angelica continues, “I’ve paid half your ransom today, and they won’t get the other half until tomorrow. No harm will come to us.”

The captain looks up from whatever’s inside the little bag long enough to put a hand over his heart like he’s been wounded by the implication, while Philip tries to work through the notion of being ransomed. He’s flattered and embarrassed both, mostly the latter. Some foolish, prideful part of him wishes he could have had the chance to work the debt off himself, as much as he knows that would have been impossible. As it is, his debt has only been transferred to Angelica— and Angelica will never let him pay it back, so he’ll always owe her.

Angelica holds out her other arm for Philip to take. “Now, dear, please accompany me back to my hotel. Your mother is worried sick about you.”

Chapter Text

Aunt Angelica walks fast, Philip sometimes having to trot to keep up. They leave the wharves and dockyards behind them, turning onto a broad boulevard thick with redcoats. Philip drops his eyes out of habit, but Angelica continues with her head held high, the soldiers tipping their hats to her as she goes. He shrinks further as they enter the sparkling hotel, conscious of the travel-grit on his face, how his clothes are torn and splattered with ink and mud and blood. As though sensing his hesitation, Angelica unlaces their arms and seizes his shoulder, her fingernails needling his skin. When they arrive at the door to her room she watches him as she retrieves her key, as though at any moment he’ll turn tail and run down the hallway-- Philip feels wounded at her lack of trust.

"Go inside," she says, practically shoving him in the door the instant it opens. Philip stumbles over the threshold as Angelica crowds in behind him and closes the door, and from another room comes the sound of his mother's voice.

"Home already, Angelica? I have had no luck down at the wharf; if they've seen him they certainly aren't telling me, and in the meantime they have certainly proposed all manner of indecent--"

Eliza halts in the doorway, halfway through letting down her hair, her eyes wide with shock. Angelica shoves Philip forward another ungainly step, and Eliza mirrors it-- a single pace forward, like a fall caught at the last moment.

"Philip," she whispers. Where he did not understand Angelica's face back on the ship, he understands his mother's all too well, reads weeks of heartbreak there where she has already had so much. She has stayed up long nights wondering and worrying for him; her hair is streaked heavier with gray. She has followed him all the way to Baltimore, and her sister with her... And Eliza's face proves the key to Angelica's-- that emotion back at the on the ship that Philip could not name was righteous fury, choked back so that he wouldn't be frightened off. How dare you do this to your mother, that face had said. How dare you harm this kind and gentle woman who gave you life, who gave you a home, who guarded you and nurtured you and protected you from the world, how dare you deceive her?

"Ma," he says, his voice breaking, and rushes forward to close the distance between them.

"Philip!" his mother cries, catching him in such a tight embrace it makes his ribs ache, but in that moment, he would never ask her-- would never dream of asking her to let go.

She pulls back, looking him up and down, and he flushes at how obvious it is that he’s taking rather terrible care of himself. Her smile grows a little watery, and she draws him straight back into an embrace. “Oh, my sweet boy,” she murmurs. Philip reddens further at the thought of the terrible argument they had before he left, which his mother seems to be choosing to forget. “I was so worried about you-- have a drink, are you thirsty? Come, sit!”

“Not on the sofa!” Angelica cries. “For God’s sake, look at the state of his breeches.”

Nothing seems more appealing, in that moment, than rolling underneath the sofa and never coming out, but instead his mother cries, “Oh, of course, his clothes! Pip, stay right there, I brought spares for you--”

“You brought--” Philip stammers, but shuts his mouth. Of course she did. This is his ma they’re talking about.

And so instead of the barrage of questions he expected, he gets bustled behind the changing screen in the bedroom-- “Ma, no, this pair is too short now, I told you…” he protests, to no avail-- while Angelica makes a short trip downstairs to ask the innkeeper to bring up enough water for a bath for later.

As he’s tucking in his new shirt, his ma picks up the old one and examines it.

“Do you think you can save it?” he asks guiltily. Clothes are expensive.

“I—” She hesitates, turning the tattered shirt over in her hands. “Philip, are these…inkstains? They’re all the way up the sleeves!”

Oh, no. This isn’t how he wanted to tell her—he still doesn’t even know how she found him, what she and Angelica are doing in Baltimore—

He sees the moment she makes the leap. Her eyes go wide. “Oh, Philip, surely you didn’t--”

He’s saved from answering by Angelica breezing back inside with the news that the water will be ported up shortly. Ma insists he take the couch, and so there he sits, again fully-dressed (save, alas, his ankles).

Angelica begins the interrogation. “How long had you been in the company of those men?” she asks. “Incidentally, Eliza, I ransomed your son from smugglers.”

“Smugglers!” his mother cries, halfway through picking up his old breeches. “Philip, I raised you with more sense than this! Where’s that big brain of yours?”

Philip splutters indignantly. “I wasn’t with them on purpose, I just… really, really needed a boat,” he protests. “And to answer your question, Aunt Angelica, I’d only been with them a couple days.”

Angelica cocks an eyebrow and sits a little straighter, her gaze cool. “Perhaps this story will make more sense from the beginning.”

“Stories tend to, yes,” Philip says, crossing his arms, and his mother snorts. He hates that his knee-jerk impulse is to start a fight with her.

A moment later she cries out in dismay. “Philip, is this blood?”

Philip winces. “Probably. I… I tripped.” He heaves a breath and stands, his tired limbs protesting. “I was hoping for more, but… honestly, Ma, I don’t know how much is left there.”

There’s a moment of suspended silence. He wonders if she’s going to make him say it. He has the horrible feeling the words will tear his throat as he utters them, like coughing up thorns.

“Mount Vernon,” his mother says, lips tight.

Philip nods, the memories returning in a tumbling, bumbling rush: claws, fangs, red eyes, a roar like the sky falling in on his head, run, run, RUN! Against all intention, he starts trembling. “I saw them,” he says. “I saw W—I saw the G-General; I saw Mar—his w-wife—"

His ma wraps her arms around him, and for once her frame isn’t solid against him. She’s trembling, too.

“Lord, Philip, so did I, when I-- I could have told you…”

But you didn’t, Philip swallows down. And anyway, there were things he only could have understood with his own eyes-- the cozy little guest bedroom and the Spartan study and the view of the river and the dark, fetid slaves’ shanties out back. As much as he knows she loves him, he also knows she would never have found words stark enough for the evil that lingers there. Perhaps there are no words.

Eventually his mother stops shaking, and although Philip doesn’t, not entirely, his heart steadies a little. They pull apart. When he looks around Angelica isn’t there, but she ducks silently back into the room a moment later. “I ordered supper,” she says, and Ma gives her a smile of gratitude.

“Eat, eat!” his mother cries, pushing his plate another inch towards him even though it was already well within his reach. She snatches up a roll and begins buttering it for him as he shovels green beans into his mouth, as though even that level of inefficiency in filling his stomach is intolerable. There’s simply no way he’s going to be able to eat this much food-- for one, it’s humanly impossible, and for two his appetite still isn’t restored after his illness. He supposes they’ll take what’s left with them on the road tomorrow, when they set out back to New York.

Back to New York. He’d never planned anything else, and yet after the tribulations of his journey, it seems nothing short of a miracle. Back to the hills and the deep green and the blackberries and the monster he can’t seem to redeem, no matter how hard he tries or how much he risks. A monster that is, perhaps, irredeemable. His relief and eagerness to be home are shot through with melancholy, like a stone shot through with jet.

He swallows, takes a long swig of the French wine that Aunt Angelica insisted he try, and says, “Ma, we… we need to talk.”

“I… agree with that,” his mother says, heat coming to her face, and Angelica scowls at him. “But it can wait until after supper. Eat, Pip. There’s plenty here for you.”

Philip takes another bite, but his mouth is dry, and it takes more wine to get it down, and no, he can’t let that lie, can he? “I didn’t starve, you know,” he says. “I know you think I can’t fend for myself, but I’m perfectly capable of buying food and eating it.”

Ma’s voice is level when she replies. ‘I never said you weren’t. You look a little thin, that’s all.”

“I’m not thin,” Philip says, forcing another bite, but he’s seen his own haggard reflection in the mirror, so he doesn’t press the point. “I got sick is all.”

“And kidnapped by smugglers, apparently” Angelica adds. “Which you still haven’t explained.”

“I--no, not really. I owed them money,” he says, then, realizing that doesn’t sound much better, rushes on, “It wasn’t my fault, exactly, but their ship was damaged and the Captain insisted I work off the balance, but it was a… or it could have been, an arrangement that we--”

Angelica doesn’t even dignify his feeble retort with a response, which Philip is grateful for.

“... thank you for paying the ransom,” he says, after a few seconds of silence.

“You’re quite welcome,” Angelica says, pouring him more wine to refill his glass. “Anything for my favorite nephew.”

Desperate to turn the conversation to a topic where he can act a little bit less like a petulant child, he asks, “How did you find me?”

The sisters share a look. Some nonverbal communication, which Philip isn’t privy to, occurs, and his mother says, “That’s not important right now.”

Did Theo give him up to his ma? A flash of anger at the thought, but no, that seems unlike her, and if she had, they would have gone to Mount Vernon, not Baltimore Harbor.

“The captain seemed convinced that you were quite ill,” Angelica says. “Was that a ruse on your part, or…?”

“Mostly a ruse,” Philip say airily, taking a stab at the fish on his plate. After vomiting up fish stew the other night… if only this were chicken, he thinks, and then if only this were nothing at all. “I had a touch of, um, swamp sickness, I think it was.”

Both women frown at him with near-identical looks of concern.

“He said he’d lent you his personal cabin so you could rest and recover,” Angelica says, eyebrows raised.

“Oh!” Philip says, the last confusing five or so minutes aboard the vessel finally falling into some sort of sense. “Oh, no, he must have been worried you’d try to bargain down the ransom if you thought I’d been mistreated. They had me chained in the hold.”

A critical error-- the sisters gasp, appalled, in unison, and Angelica says, “Oh, I will cut his ransom, the bastard. I haven’t made the second payment yet. And I suppose he didn’t dose you with anything, either?”

“Well, no, because I got well straightaway,” Philip says, feeling his petulance increasing again but unable to stop it.

“Swamp sickness is often cyclical,” Angelica points out. “How are you feeling now?”

If they would just stop fawning over his supposed mistreatment-- he would rather forget the whole thing. It’s all rather embarrassing. “You’re making far too much of this, really, I’m fine.”

“Fine,” Ma says flatly. “Eat your fish.”

Philip scowls and cuts off a bite with his fork. When he blinks Washington is waiting for him, light gleaming on claws and tusks, and his mother said, just now, that she’d seen the monster before, that she’d known! She should have told him!

He can’t let this go any longer-- he’s so tired and he can’t hold back his horror another moment. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he says. His voice comes out soft, cottony, not at all the ringing accusation he’d intended.

“Why didn’t I tell you what?” his mother snaps. Angelica places a warning hand on hers; Eliza sends her sister a warning glance.

“About their slaves,” Philip says. His tongue feels foreign in his own mouth, his own voice too loud, like the words are breaking out of him.

“You knew they owned slaves,” Ma replies, a perilous, pale calm descending over her face.

“No thanks to you. I had to learn that in school--”

Angelica says, “Philip, eat your fish. Eliza, eat your fish. We’re not having this argument now.”

“What else are you hiding, Ma? Did Dad own people too?”

His mother’s face blanches. She opens her mouth, but Philip cuts her off.

“Were you willing to overlook it for the General’s sake? Was my father? You’ve always taught me that it’s wrong--ever since I was a little boy, you’ve taught me how precious liberty is, and yet you completely neglected to tell me-- you said Washington was liberty’s champion and he owned slaves! Was there a single Patriot who wasn’t a filthy hypocrite? Did none of you not look the other way?”

He stops, his chest heaving, aware that his voice has risen to something like a howl.

“I told you Mount Vernon was a plantation,” Ma says, her voice buzzing like a wasp’s wings. “I told you that Washington had Billy Lee with him during the war--”

“Did you tell me about the padlocks on the door?” Philip roars, standing up and throwing his napkin to the floor. “Did you tell me about the chains? How could you treat a human like that? He was a monster, Ma, and Lady Washington, too, they were monsters--”

The blow knocks his face to one side, his right cheek stinging like fire. He raises a hand to his face, fingers clumsy with disbelief. His mother stands before him, breathing hard, her hand raised, fury in her eyes.

“You… you hit me,” he says, stunned.

She grabs her own upraised hand as though to restrain it, the fury on her face dissolving into guilt. "Philip," she whispers.

Angelica puts a careful hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Eliza, calm down, he’s only--”

“I’m only what?” Philip shouts. “I’m only a child? I only know right from wrong? You taught me that, you’re the one who told me how wrong slavery was, you--”

“You ran away from me,” his mother shrieks, fury snapping back, her voice hardly human, and Angelica throws an arm across her front and physically pushes her back a step. “You could have been dead, or hurt, or caught, and I didn’t know, and you didn’t write, you didn’t care I didn’t know--”

“Of course I cared!” Philip wails. “Ma, what choice did I have? Trapped in that house with, and, and knowing there was more out there of him, knowing I was missing something, and you wanted me to understand him but you only wanted your side and it was impossible, Ma, I couldn’t--” His voice breaks, and he realizes his mother’s crying, folded up in Angelica’s arms with her hands in fists covering her face, and at the same time he realizes tears stream down his own face. “I need some air,” he says.

“Balcony’s that way,” Angelica says, with a toss of her head.

Philip’s so angry, he’s trembling, but leaking in under that anger is sickening guilt that smears over everything he tries to think about. The north wind couldn’t make him any colder; he feels like a poor marionettist for his own limbs. He steps through the bedroom, the enormous bed surrounded with resplendent furnishings, and out onto the balcony. It overlooks the harbor, and the glare of the sun on the water sets his head to pounding. He bends down and presses his forehead against the brass railing, trying to get some relief, but it’s burning hot, and he pulls back.

The summer heat doesn’t relieve his chills, but standing in it exhausts him. He sits down, curling into a ball and resting his head on his crossed arms like he did on the ship.

At some point, his turbulent thoughts become turbulent dreams. Everywhere he looks he sees eyes-- trees, dogs, faces of people, people on the streets, only two apiece and that seems far too few, after the little dog, only two eyes in Philip’s own face that he can’t see--he can’t see his own eyes--he looks all over himself, frantic--are they there, on the palms of his hands, are they there, on the flat of his tongue? Oh, he's lost, he's lost, the British are dissolving him like they dissolved his father, he's lost, lost, lost...

“All right, you can come inside now. I’ve convinced her to give you some space, but it seems you had a similar idea.”

It takes Philip an uncomfortable long moment to realize that the figure standing over him is his aunt. He braces himself against the wall and forces himself to stand, his legs and back aching. Blood rushes in his ears; his vision marches in from the edges. Lord, he can hardly keep his feet.

“Philip? Are you feeling well?”

Philip shakes his head and sets the whole world to spinning. “Strange dream.” His vision tightens and tightens and he thinks my eyes are shrinking and no, that’s not… that’s not possible, that’s... He sags back against the stone exterior of the building, hard against his shoulder-blades.  Something wraps firmly around his waist, and he feels a cool hand against his forehead. Close by, a whistle.

“Come inside, Philip, you’re on fire,” Angelica says, and Philip moans. His vision is slowly coming back, but his head pounds worse than ever, and his legs don’t feel fit to hold him. Angelica’s hold around his waist strengthens, and he gets the idea and leans on her heavily, dragging his feet along as best he can. When his knees bump up against the edge of the bed he collapses straight into it, whimpering and burying his face in the cool bedcovers. Angelica tugs off his shoes and stockings and shoves his legs into the bed after him.

“... get a bucket?” Philip forces out.

There’s a moment’s pause, the sound of swift footsteps, and Angelica returns to his side just in time.

“Right,” she says, setting it down next to the bed, “if you need it, it’ll be--”

Philip gets himself up on his elbows, tips his head over the side of the bed, and gags helplessly a couple times before his hard-fought dinner comes back up.

“...right there,” Angelica finishes. She fetches a handkerchief and helps him wipe his mouth with it, and then he rolls onto his side and closes his eyes and tries to breathe lightly, so as not to disturb his stomach. After a seemingly interminable period, the balance between misery and exhaustion tips in exhaustion’s favor, and he sleeps.

The monster sits on his chest again, only darkness beyond. Out come its talons-- again, Philip watches as he becomes a skeleton. This time, though, the monster kicks in his ribs, gobbles up his beating cherry-pit heart, and Philip cries out in agony.

“Ma,” he sobs, “Ma, help me, I can’t be dead, I’m not done yet!” He has so much-- he needs to save his father, write for the Aurora, further the cause of liberty, real liberty, emancipation indivisible from that-- “I need to write, give me my pen, I need to write--” he howls, his lungs slow to obey, and his mother answers, simultaneously from nowhere and from right behind his ear.

“Shh, shh, calm down, baby, I’m here. You can write later.” Philip looks around, confused, and the bloody scene dissolves. He’s in bed, under a pile of blankets, and his ma is cradling his head with one arm and sponging sweat off his face with the other.

“It tore me apart,” he sobs, clutching at her arm.

“No it didn’t, honey, you had a bad dream.”

“It felt real, or real feels like dreams, or like lies, I don’t know. How can you tell, anyways? From how it feels?”

His ma doesn’t answer quickly enough.

“How do you know?” Philip repeats, panic hanging like the horns of the moon over his head.

“How do I-- baby, just drink this, come on.” His ma glances to the side, at someone Philip can’t see for the pillows surrounding his head, and he thinks Dad, and for a moment he can see him in his mind’s eye, the figure from all of Ma’s sketches that she could never get just exactly right. His father hurries over with a glass of something cool, and Philip can feel his ma smoothing back his wild curls and carefully angling his head, and when he opens his eyes Angelica’s holding the glass. Cool water trickles down his throat. It’s a relief. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, as his ma’s hands gently lower him back to the bed.

“The doctor will be here soon,” she says, her fingers brushing his hair. “You’ll be all right in no time, Pip.”

Philip lets himself smile at the old endearment. “...scaring you... ‘m sorry, ma,” he says.

“Oh, honey, don’t worry about apologies right now.” She swoops down and kisses his nose, and Philip grumbles on principle. “Just rest.”

He couldn’t disobey her if he wanted to--a fever-dream has already caught him by the ankles and is tugging him down, down, down…

He plunges straight back into the darkness, his heartless skeleton resting in bed, blood and worse strewn around it, the monster crouched sphinxlike on the floor beside. But as Philip watches, it chokes, roaring and spitting fire and howling like death. Flames catch in its mane and curl along its paws. It burns on the spot, shriveling and twisting in the brick-oven heat, ashes and ashes falling away until it, too, is gone.

An inky-black skeleton is all that survives. Philip had expected something deformed, many-limbed, with far too many eye sockets, with horns and claws. This has none of these. In shape, it’s identical to Philip’s own.

That’s… that means something, that’s significant, he knows it is, but his head has gone hot and rotten-strawberry soft, useless, but he’s got to keep trying, this might be the only opportunity he’s got...

From far away it sounds like someone’s talking, but Philip ignores them. Whatever it is can’t possibly be as important as this. This is a revelation, or it almost is, this is digging in the dirt and the shovel hitting metal, could be coffin, could be treasure, this is the reverberations shaking his arms and the ringing in his ears...

A waft of breeze from the open window-- they’re in Philip’s bedroom back in New York-- stirs the curtains, stirs Philip’s hair, stirs the ashes on the bones. As he watches, the last of the ashes flake off and blow away, and the bones that remain are paper-white like Philip’s-- except written all over with words. Philip draws closer, expecting slanders, or spells, but they are neither. The words are in Latin and Greek, constantly shifting. Philip has no hope of deciphering them, so quickly and strangely do they dance, but he recognizes kalos kagathos rippling by.

One more thing-- the skeleton has a wedding band on its finger. Philip would recognize it anywhere; it’s identical to his mother’s. He wants to reach out and touch it, wants to take it as proof that he was here, but an instinct warns him off, and anyway, the voice is still speaking. Pleading, almost.

“Come on, baby, wake up for me. The doctor’s got something for you to drink,” his mother says, and Philip pries his eyes open and sees her there.

He wants to tell her. He opens his mouth to speak, parting his lips thin to keep his soul from flying out. When he does someone pours in bitter, bitter medicine.

His mother is right beside him, dying-- his mother, with curls like his, except his mother doesn’t, her hair’s not-- the smell of green and heat coming through the window, shadow-patterns made by tossing palm fronds shifting on the floor and his mother hovering over him, I’ve asked too much of him, Angelica, his father away on some other island, his father, gone, his mother dying, his head on her shoulder, weeping, inconsolable; she's dead, his mother, she's dead--

"Shh, baby, shh, I'm right here," she soothes, rocking him, touch light like a ghost's. "Nobody's dead, baby."

"Ma," he sobs, and grasps her arms with all the strength he can muster, which is barely any strength at all. "Don't go. Don't let me go."

"I won't, Pip," she says, fierce in his ear. "Never. You're fine," mine, you’re shine, nine-oh, mine-oh and the words break off into a sound like the hissing of snakes.

Something splits, the smell of green fading, the shifting patterns dissipating before his eyes. His father's spirit circles them like a seabird on the thermals round an island, waiting only for the right breeze to drift inshore. "What are you waiting for?" he gasps, his insides twisting in agony. "What more do you want?"

"Oh, baby, I'm so sorry, baby," his ma says, I’ve asked too much of him, Angelica, and it's too hard to explain who he was talking to. He can't untangle himself from her arms-- not without the dream becoming real again. She's dead in his mind-- only her continued presence argues against that memory, that grief that feels so real. He wonders if she's dead and he's dreaming her, but he decides if that's the case he wants to pretend. He doesn't have the strength to face the fact, if fact that is. But he's drifting back to sleep already, and in sleep his ma is dead. "Talk to me," he says. "Tell me a story. Keep me awake."

"Baby, you need your sleep."

Of course the duty to tell the story falls on him. Will he never escape it?

"The bones are real,” he begins. “Down under the flesh the bones are real and if you take away the flesh the bones-- they kept them."

"Shh, I know--"

She can’t possibly know. Not yet. He hasn’t said it yet. "No, I didn't-- even Washington, and dad, all of them, it’s not that we can get them back, it’s, they’re here, they’ve been here, this whole time they’ve, they’re monsters, ma, they’re the monsters--"

"Honey, try to sleep. Please."

"Ma, I solved it--"

Sleep takes him unwilling.

Chapter Text

Two days. Two days since she found her son again—two days since she nearly lost him. Two days of worry grinding her down like a millstone. Two days since she last slept, and two days since Philip last woke. Two days of delirium and nightmares. She hasn’t been this exhausted since she gave birth to him.

He lays in bed now, sheets tangled round his restless limbs, the sheen of old sweat across his face and chest. But his fever broke about an hour ago; his forehead is blessedly cool. Angelica says that he is out of danger, now—that the Jesuit bark is finally working. Eliza will believe it when she sees it. She dips the edge of a washcloth in warm water and carefully wipes her son’s face.

His eyes begin to flicker under their lids. His mouth turns down in a frown. She traces a thumb across his cheek, like how she used to wake him when he was only a small boy. “Philip?” she calls.  

His eyelids crack just slightly, revealing hazy hazel. Then his brow creases, and he blinks, and suddenly he’s looking straight at her.

“Ma,” he says. His smile lights her up inside, kindles an exhausted and exultant smile of her own. “Ma, I figured it out.”

“I’m proud of you, honey,” she says. “Let’s get some water in you, shall we?” She doesn’t know how long she has until sleep claims him again, so she works quickly, supporting his shoulders and back with pillows, filling the glass only halfway so he can lift it with minimal help. The water seems to rouse him further, his eyes darting around the room.

“Right,” he says, half to himself, “right, we’re in Baltimore.”

“We’re in Baltimore!” Eliza is thrilled. Perhaps too thrilled, and too tired; her eyes sting with tears. Philip had seemed to think that he was in New York City for at least part of his illness. It is a relief to know that his body and mind are once again occupying the same space. To cover her emotion, she smooths back his bedraggled hair and swipes away the gunk from under one of his eyes. But her thumb passes over the mark she left two days ago, an ugly swollen fingernail scratch, and he winces.

Oh, Lord. What a reminder, of what may be the greatest regret of her life. He is far, far too ill yet for this conversation, but she feels that she must say something. Struggling to keep her voice level, she says, “I’m very, very sorry, Pip.”

“Ma,” Philip starts, “it’s fine, I was acting like a spoiled—”

“You were ill,” Eliza says firmly.

Philip gets a look she knows very well: he’s about to talk back.

Before he can speak, she dives in.  “No, Philip, I let my emotions get the better of me. I was angry with you for leaving, but it was because I was afraid of what might have happened to you. And because of that, I overreacted. And I want you to know that I’m… very sorry, and that I love you very much.”

She takes his hand, the gesture feeling overformal and awkward.

Philip nods slowly. He looks… wrong-footed, almost unhappy. But then his face brightens, and he leans forward into her arms, his weight light but solid against her. “I love you too, Ma,” he murmurs. “Let’s fight again when I’m better.”

Favorable winds and fair weather as they board a ship bound for New Haven and points north; it's like the universe has finally decided to have mercy. Naturally Connecticut would not be their first choice for port-of-call, the Hudson route to Saratoga being so much more convenient, but New York harbor remains closed. Philip is still so wrung-out they had to hire a carriage to bring him the two blocks to the wharf, and he can barely keep his eyes open even after that short journey. Eliza hovers in the ship’s snug little cabin with him, mending his ripped clothes as he sleeps and Angelica charms everyone up on deck, gathering gossip.

“What a smug lot of Tories we have on board,” she complains, a few nights in, as she returns to the cabin with a meal for Eliza and one for Philip when he wakes. “They are certain André will prove victorious in the coming campaign.”

“What campaign?” Eliza asks, alarmed, through her first bite.

“Oh, just a few little militias hardly worth the name.” Angelica practically sparkles, but she sparkles like broken glass. “Big, strong André will set them all to rights.” A little more somberly, she says, “He has burned a village in northern Pennsylvania. Said they were harboring fugitives. But of course, we must be good little subjects and remember just how much worse the alternative is.”

Eliza touches her arm, trying to soothe the bitterness at the heart of Angelica’s ferocity. Angelica breathes, marshals herself. “How’s Philip tonight?” she asks at last.

“The usual,” Eliza replies. It’s true that he’s grown stronger, but his sleep hasn’t improved in its turn. Even as they watch, he draws his hands up to his face as though warding off a blow. She only prays it won’t turn into a full-blown nightmare; whenever she and Angelica try to wake him from them, he fights tooth and nail. Eliza has a long, stinging scratch along her cheek to match the healing one she gave him. But even awake, he murmurs and mutters, his eyes a million miles away, and sometimes it seems as though he isn’t fully awake. Eliza swallows hard. “He… he tried to write earlier.”

“Did he!” Angelica says. “Well, that’s wonderful news!”

Any other day, Eliza would fervently agree. Her son is back on the path that she set for him, rather than the disastrous one he devised for himself—surely that is a good thing? But in the long days of rumination his recovery has afforded her, a seed of doubt has grown within her. Why had he gone to Mount Vernon, if not to learn something related to his father, to their nation’s rebellious past? And if he had indeed gone for that reason—was that not the path that she had set him upon, after all? Is this her fault?

She hands a single sheet of paper to Angelica. One line written upon it: the product of all of Philip’s labors for the day, hours of straining with his eyes closed, his lips moving, unresponsive to Eliza’s occasional friendly questions, even to her touch at his hand.

It says, we will never be truly free. Not half an hour ago he wrote it and then dropped off to sleep immediately, exhausted.

Angelica hisses.

“He… he went into a place of darkness, Angelica. Like I did.”

“You think it has wounded him.”

“It wounded me.”

Angelica hangs her head. It is the first time Eliza has admitted it plainly, that the darkness from which she brought the monster still seems to claw at her heels nearly sixteen years later. Every day after she emerged from that terrible blank of memory, she has been propelling herself forward, forward, forward.

She shakes her head to clear her mind. “Philip was how I got out of it, if indeed I ever did get out of it. Because… because I had hope, you see, for him, and so I did not look back.” She takes a deep breath. “But… but did I not ask him to look back, when I burdened him with this book?”

Mount Vernon exists as an echo of that no-place. If she asks Philip to turn back into it—even if only in his mind—if she asks him to bring the mystery of it all with him, if she asks him to plunge into the strangeness, the grief—the grief that touched him when he was a mote in her womb, that may have been knit into his bones from the beginning—

Will she lose him forever?  

The future will win every time, she remembers thinking, so many years ago. It had been an article of faith for her, that her child must triumph in the end. Her faith that Philip was the future, that the child she made would be a vessel for all her hope. And what has her hope done? Broken him, twisted him, changed him.

“He’s writing, though. Surely—surely he is well enough.” Angelica says, doubt constricting her voice.

Eliza takes a deep breath. “Something’s changed.” Perhaps in Philip—perhaps herself. She feels almost embarrassed, but if she can’t ask this of Angelica, she can’t ask it of anyone. Pitching her voice low, to be disguised among the creaking of the ship’s timber, she asks, “Could you do the spell again?”

“There’s no need of it,” Angelica says sharply. “We have him. Unless… you think…”

“It’s madness, I know it is, but Angelica, I’m worried—”

Angelica takes both of her hands, and Eliza breaks off, feeling the magic already humming through her. She wears a locket round her neck with a lock of Philip’s baby hair in it. As the energy of it surges the locket grows hot. They did this tracking spell so many times, she knows what to do by heart. She thinks of Pip, her Philip, the pattern of freckles on his face, the little gap between his teeth. Mundanities: how he always sneezes twice, the way he liked carrots best when he was a toddler, the look of concentrated bliss on his face when he practices music, the melodies he improvises. And she feels a tug in her feet, a great restlessness, more powerful than any time they tried the spell before. The next thing she knows she’s crashing into something with both shins, tripping and falling onto a bony body with a shriek.

Philip yelps awake, twisting under her, scrambling to one side, his motions frantic—

“Philip! Philip, it’s only me, I’m sorry, dear, I tripped—”

“Ma?” he asks, his breath coming hard. “What—”

She grabs a hand and squeezes. “It’s just me, sweetheart, I’m so sorry to disturb your sleep, I was…clumsy.”

“We brought you supper,” Angelica says, and Eliza is heartened by the way Philip’s face brightens. He stretches and rubs the sleep from his eyes in just the ways he always has. Familiar, perfectly familiar—that’s her boy, so why...

She cuts off the thought, her heart hammering. The tracking spell was a debacle, but it answered her question. In New York, it gave barely a tug, a hint of an intuition that told her to travel south. Tonight, so close to him, it had been a compulsion. Her suspicion was ridiculous—of course Philip is Philip, of course this is her boy. The tracking spell that led them to him runs on his baby hair, on their shared blood, on her mother’s love and her mother’s knowledge. What else could he be?

“Philip,” she asks, surprised by the sound of her own voice, “why did you go to Mount Vernon?”

He looks at her as though he was expecting to be woken from a dead sleep by his mother falling on top of him and asking difficult questions. He takes his dinner plate from Angelica, though he doesn’t begin to eat just yet. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask that.” He lowers his head. “I’m… I’m very sorry to have worried you.”

“Oh, Pip. Come here.” She steps forward and pulls him into a warm embrace. He feels so frail and bone-thin in her arms, the circles dark as bruises round his eyes. She wouldn't begrudge him for turning every hair on her head gray, so long as he came back to her in the end. "I forgive you, all right?"

And now his chin lifts. “But I’m not sorry I went. I wanted… context, I suppose. About Dad.”

Eliza’s heart falls. This is her worst suspicion realized. Philip went for his father—went for her. “But you didn’t find it.”

Philip’s eyes widen. “Oh—no, Ma, I figured it out. How the British won, I mean, and how the monsters work. Maybe how we can fix everything. Did I forget to say before?”

Eliza looks at Angelica in astonishment. Angelica’s expression, she is sure, is a mirror of hers. “You, ah—you said something like that, I suppose, when you were delirious. I had assumed—some dream—”

An eager smile comes to Philip's face. "Yes, yes, it was a dream! The monster tore all my skin off but then it caught on fire and it burned up and there was a skeleton inside it and it was wearing a wedding ring like yours and I think what that means, what that symbolizes, is that when they made the monsters they made them with the human bones, only I thought, what if it's literal? What if those are literally Dad's bones, like, deep down in the monster, Ma, wouldn't that be important, wouldn't that maybe be a way we could get him back? I know you always said that he was dead and we just needed to give him a way out to where God can look after his soul, but what if we could bring him back here and he could live with us?"

At last he halts, that same eager smile still on his face. "Wouldn't that be great, Ma?"

Eliza is speechless. She’d almost prefer his fractured silence to this manic, semi-coherent rant. He makes so little sense—fires, burning, bones? If he were rhyming he’d sound like the monster.

“So, how I got the idea was…” Philip continues, but Eliza can hardly hear him speaking over the ringing in her ears. He talks about Mount Vernon, about the blood-rich soil and the crowned beast, and Angelica replies, some question, and Philip turns in bed to answer her, and all Eliza can do is stand there with the air stolen from her lungs as at last the meaning of his words catches up.

He thinks he can bring Alexander back.

Alexander, back.

It’s too much to hope for. It’s beyond anything she could ever have dreamed. She’d always staked her faith on complete happiness in the next life. In Heaven, where her soul could be reunited with Alexander’s, plucked from the mortal world too soon. To think that she could find it again in this world—

It feels blasphemous.

“—and so you see, because of the tyrannical nature of slavery, the British were able to take that aspect of Washington’s… biography, I suppose, and magnify it—it was their first scratch in his reputation—in his armor, really—when they created the Emperor of America, you see, because Washington really was the Emperor of Mount Vernon, to his slaves, in all the ways that mattered, so there’s that seed of truth, conceptually, in the monster, and that’s the skeleton upon which they build the monster, the metaphorical skeleton is real, and so maybe the physical skeleton is also real, and if that’s true—”

“It’s… true that magic requires physical foci,” Angelica says slowly. Philip hasn’t asked since that first day how they found him, but Eliza knows the tracking spell must be weighing on Angelica’s conscience. “But… literal bones, Philip, that’s a lot, and the idea that… that Washington’s choices with his,”—she clears her throat—“with his labor would… would.”

Philip’s expression hardens. “Are you defending him?” he whispers.

Angelica flushes, but she doesn’t look away. “Philip, what you must understand is that, in a certain class of society, in the South in particular, it’s normal—practically expected, really, to own slaves, and that Washington certainly wasn’t alone or even particularly, ah, unusual in his—”

“What about John Laurens?” Philip interrupts. “What about my dad? What about Lafayette— they weren’t with him, you said they weren’t.”

“Philip, manners.” Eliza’s voice comes out harder than she intends, but by God, she won’t have her son be ungrateful to Angelica, not after she came all this way, not after she’s performed nothing short of a miracle in finding him, not after she spent more money than Eliza may ever see again on his ransom. She wouldn’t want him to have a conscience that could be bought, but his respect, at least—

Angelica’s eyebrows quirk in confusion, and Philip’s jaw drops. “Ma, you said Dad was—well, he was, right? He was against slavery, wasn’t he?”

“The conditions that most people kept their slaves under appalled your father,” Eliza says. “When the war was won, he told me, he wanted to work together for abolition in New York. And he and John Laurens worked together to raise support for a black battalion that would have allowed for the emancipation—”

“Well,” Angelica interrupts, “I wouldn’t go as far as to…” She shuts her mouth and looks uncertainly at Eliza.

“So he didn’t—”

“—suppose it was more Laurens’ project than Hamilton’s, I would say, although of course Alexander was opposed to many—”

“—he expressed to me many times how he couldn’t stand—”

“—but of course during the war—only during the war, you see—the political support of the Southern states was of paramount—”

“—he told me that after the war he wanted to—”

“—but the battalion was really something only Laurens could’ve even hoped to bring off—but you see, even Laurens couldn’t, so your father—”

“—would have been more a liability than an asset, really—”

“—what with his Northern connection, of course, as well as his…” Angelica trails off with another worried glance at Eliza.

“… and the suspicion around his birth,” Philip finishes glumly, his eyes on his hands. That, at least, he can understand very well. Eliza hates how the townfolk whisper, hates how much it affects him, but at the same time she sees no way around it. She knows that she has conducted herself with perfect virtue; in the end, she doesn’t see the worth of worrying about what others believe. The truth is with her. And if Philip could just see it her way, maybe he’d have never allowed himself to be provoked into that fool duel.

She’s distracted from this line of thought by Angelica, heaving a deep sigh. “I think you’re right, Philip,” she says. “About how they lost the war. It makes so much sense. The Patriots declared a battle of ideologies, but the war-that-wasn’t was also a battle of belief. On the one side, a system of freedom and cooperative exchange among equals before God. And on the other, a system of fealty, of obedience of the lesser power to the greater, enforced, ultimately, by violence.”

“Except slavery is the latter,” Philip says. “We were still operating by their rules, and they used that against us.”

“As fast as we could ravel rhetoric, they unraveled just as fast,” Angelica murmurs. “With all our contortions around slavery, we only reinforced their position. We said that the slaves were like children—they said America herself was a child, and Great Britain the mother. That a King is a father to his subjects, and as such has the right to mete out punishment.”

“And we said that Washington would be a father to a new country,” Philip says, “when he should have been America’s son.”

Eliza looks at him in bare astonishment at that casual pronouncement, but he’s already moving on, troubled by something else. “I still don’t like it,” he murmurs. “I wish… I wish you hadn’t said that my father was against slavery if he wasn’t.”

“But he was against it,” Angelica says. “Philip, he absolutely was. Do you think he and John Laurens would have got along as well as they did with such a disagreement between them?”

“I don’t know,” Philip shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know John Laurens."

“He was like you, baby,” Eliza says, ruffling his hair.

“What do you mean?”

“Not much inclined to compromise,” Angelica chuckles, and Eliza feels a cold start of fear at the reminder: Philip is the type who’ll break before he bends. They can’t push him too hard tonight, not when he’s still so fragile.

“Fine, but I wish…” He gestures with his hands, a kind of opening-closing movement. “I wish I’d’ve… I wish you’d…Washington… he wasn’t some hero like I thought he’d be. Like you let me think he’d be.” A frustrated noise escapes him. Eliza thinks she remembers him trying to get at this earlier, at their disastrous fish dinner. She’d shouted and slapped him, and then immediately felt awful about it. And ten minutes later, Philip had collapsed…

Well, she certainly isn’t making the same mistake again this time. “Darling,” she says, soft and gentle, “the world isn’t made up of completely good and completely bad people. Washington was complicated. You’re complicated. I am, and so is Angelica. And so,”—she gets a lump in her throat, admitting it—“was your father. There were things he could have done better in his life, I’m sure. All of us are frail in some ways—not a soul on this earth is perfect. That is why we must hope for God’s mercy and forgiveness.”

“Which he’s beyond the reach of right now,” Philip says wretchedly. He hangs his head. “I—I’m trying, Ma. I’m trying so hard. It’s like—it’s like I’m a bird, and there’s this storm, and I’m over the ocean but I know there’s an island nearby, I know it’s out there but I can’t say where—or maybe I’m the island, and he’s the bird, but we’re close, I know we are; when I was sick I swear I could… it was like he was here.”

“Darling, you were delirious,” Eliza says, trying to conceal her alarm at his peril and his grief, reaching deep into the very place where words don’t reach. “I wouldn’t—”

“It was real, Ma,” Philip says vehemently, and grimaces and claps a hand to his temple. It’s so easy when arguing with him to forget that he’s just a boy—a sick boy, for that matter. In this moment, though, frailty is all Eliza can see. Her once-healthy child, now thin and wild-eyed like a man who has wandered in the desert for forty days and come back with nothing but a parched throat and bad dreams.

“Your head hurts?”

Philip nods soundlessly, his grimace deepening, his hand contracting into a fist with his knuckles digging into his skull.

“Here, baby,” she whispers, prising his hand away. She reaches up and gently kneads at his temples with her thumbs. With a little pressure she guides him to lay down in bed.

He’s survived so much. She should focus on that, on how grateful she is that he’s still alive. He deserves peace and quiet and something approaching a normal life, and a chance to recover not just from his recent illness but whatever... whatever this is. Stability, and the responsibilities and burdens appropriate for a child of his age. She’s asked too much of him—and God, she knows he’s capable of great things. But she asked for them too early, and her impatience had gambled with her son’s life and his sanity. Now’s the time to repair the damage done. Everything else—everything else—can wait. Forever, if that's what's best for him

Angelica appears at her side. Eliza hadn’t noticed her leaving the room, but she’s got a mug of tea in her hands. “Good for headaches,” she says. “And sleep.”

Philip makes a face at the bitter taste but otherwise drinks uncomplainingly. Eliza settles a blanket over his shoulder and he throws it off almost immediately, a sure sign that he’s feeling more himself.  

She clears her throat, and Philip’s eyes crack open. “Don’t worry about the book,” she says, all in a rush.

Philip stares at her, uncomprehending. “You mean… the Iliad?” he says, at last.

“Your father’s biography,” Eliza clarifies. “Don’t—don’t worry about it.”

Philip looks at her like she’s growing a second head, like she’s mutating, like she’s turning into a drooling babbling monster before his eyes. “Are you feeling well, Ma?”

“I’m fine. I just think that it would be best if you and I both… stopped worrying about this project so much, just for a little while. Let’s take a break.”

“But Ma, it’s your life,” Philip says, outraged. He sits up, wincing and touching his head. “It’s my life, we can’t just—”

“There will be enough work on the farm to keep us occupied. There’s the piano, there’s your books…”

“But Aunt Angelica—she came all this way to—”

“I came all this way to support my family,” Angelica says firmly, and Eliza feels a sweeping relief that someone has her back. She knows how eager Angelica is to have Alexander safe—what that declaration must cost her. She takes her sister’s hand and squeezes.

“But think of Dad,” Philip croaks, his voice rough with unshed tears. He sounds like a child. “Think of how far we’ve come.”

“We've come a long way,” Eliza says. “All the way to Baltimore and back. And after a long journey, it’s most important to rest.” She uses her sternest motherly voice, but sees the stubbornness building behind his eyes, and softens. “I’m not forbidding anything, Philip. Only asking that you please, please take a break. We can talk more about it later, if you want.” When your eyes stop looking like bruises.

Philip scowls, but it’s clear he’s exhausted, and the herbal tea didn’t exactly help matters on that front. Within minutes, he’s snoring.

Within an hour, he’s whimpering in his sleep.

Philip’s nightmares only grow worse.

All the long weary way back to Saratoga, they haunt him. He wakes sometimes two, three times in a night, growing bones-and-rags thin, the territory under his eyes purple and swollen.

“Philip,” Eliza pleads, morning after morning, “please, let Angelica try to quiet these dreams. You can’t go on like this.”

Philip only looks stricken. "But... I mean... I don't want to stop having them."

Eliza thinks of Philip wailing in the night, his hands claws, up to defend his face, and says, "Baby, they’re hurting you, you can’t—"

Philip makes a face. "They're... I admit, they're a lot. But I think I'm learning? They're important."

Eliza struggles to conceal her anger. "Learning what, exactly?"

He never has an answer for her. It’s all just feelings. Not ready for words, yet, he says.

And every day, he grows thinner and farther away.

Eliza had always taken comfort in the closeness between Pip and herself, ever since he was a little boy, but it seems that the connection they once shared, her easy understanding of his childhood fears and desires, has vanished, and now she watches the vague shape of her son’s spirit moving on the other side of a great piece of smoked glass. She knows it would be self-deception to attribute the change solely to her son’s recent traumas. He’s been drawing apart from her for longer than that. The duel was the final rupture, but this dreadful pane of glass has been darkening up her for much longer; if only she’d had the eyes to see it before! She can only stand with her hands pressed against the cold surface, straining her eyes for any sign of the boy she knows.

Sometimes now, as they bump along in a hired carriage, or walk from one small hamlet to another to avoid the floods of redcoats in the area, Philip walks with eyes unfocused, muttering nonsense under his breath: the same phrase repeated over and over, or sometimes iterating through the circling hours: dark to stain, lark to pain, stark to shame. It reminds her of the monster, and the symmetry of it is monstrous—the son, stepping into his father’s shadow, consumed in the end by the shadow of his father. Why must the ones she loves disappear from her down this strange road, not into ordinary death, where she might one day expect to follow, but into misunderstanding, into oblivion? And how strange, that word oblivion, that means nothing and forgetting all at once. Is Philip forgetting who he is, in his desperation to reach Alexander? Will her son be blotted out by the memory of his father?

She prays not.

As they draw closer to Saratoga they hear more and more reports: cattle snatched, dependable dogs missing, the mangled carcass of a doe left rotting in the road for the scavengers. Eliza cringes with each account. So far, at least, it seems that no people have gone missing. But she fears it is only a matter of time, and this quickens her step.

Angelica, meanwhile, is more concerned with reports of battles and massacres and militias. Andre stalks the area, and though he was popular as a valiant, young, handsome, charming, war hero governor could be, he has quickly burnt through all his goodwill with the people of New York. Still, folk say, wherever they go, high and low, he is better than the alternative.

Amazing, Eliza thinks. In terms of life and property he has made himself a hundred times more obnoxious than her monster, and yet the people still prefer him. The war-that-wasn’t has left a powerful mark on them indeed, to steal their powers of observation and reason with respect to the Revolution, still, after sixteen years. She cannot even take heart that Philip’s generation will see it any better, because they are being taught history by all those whose minds were rearranged. It is becoming clearer and clearer to her with every interaction that he is the Revolution’s best hope— but God, she cannot let herself go thinking like that!

“How are you tonight, dear?” she asks, as he settles into bed in the latest of a succession of inns.  

"I think Dad's nearby," Philip murmurs, frowning slightly.

"Oh. I see. Did you… see that in a dream?" Eliza asks, her stomach sinking.

Philip rolls over to face her. "No." His voice is almost amused. "I think he took the doe."

"You... You think he..." The innkeeper had described the mangled doe in graphic detail, and Eliza shudders at the thought that Alexander would do such a thing. Not to mention, the utter impossibility of him even affecting events in this plane of existence.  "Philip, you—what can you mean?"

"It's something Washington does," Philip says. "He wants Martha, of course, but he can't catch her, so he kills everything else."

“You mean… you mean the monster?” Eliza thinks she understands his words, but they make so little sense, she almost wishes she didn’t.

“I mean Washington,” Philip says obstinately. “Washington, who is a monster.”

"Philip, what are you saying?" Eliza has to work hard to keep back her tears. "That's not Washington, that's the monster that—you’re not saying that our, that our monster is, is literally your—"

"That's what I've been saying this whole time! They have his bones, it's made from him, and we shouldn't be calling it an “it,” he's a “him” and he's Dad!"

Oh, Philip. Oh, son, not my son. "That's—" Eliza's voice cracks. She can't think of anything to say. She babbles instead. "All right. All right. Go to bed, baby."

"You don't believe me."

"You've been very sick, baby."

"I'm better now." But a long day of traveling has sapped his strength. He's returned to his usual position on his back, his eyes already closed. "I'll show you, ma. I promise, I'll show you."

Eliza swoops down to place a gentle kiss on his forehead. "Shh, shh. You don't need to prove anything to me. Just rest. I love you, Philip."

"Love you too, Ma," he whispers. A moment later, and he's asleep.

Eliza looks up at Angelica, who had spent the length of the conversation frozen in the background. Eliza's composure wavers, seeing the stifled alarm in her sister's expression, and Angelica darts across the room and takes her by the shoulder. "Hallway, come now," she says.

In the hallway, Eliza breaks down, and Angelica wraps her arms around her. "I hurt him," she sobs. "He's getting worse, Angelica, I'm losing my boy!"

Angelica only holds her close.

Home.

It’s been less than a month since she and Angelica set out after Philip, but it seems like an alien place already: the little house with its paint peeling, the green woods all around with their cool blue shadows, the fields with their summer corn pushing up through the earth surrounded by weeds, the orchards with their cherries abandoned to the birds. Will the monster even be there, still? Will she have to find it and drag it home the same way she did with her wayward son? She prays not. All she wants is some time to rest and put all their spirits back in order after the violence of the early summer.

Her worries about the monster, at least, are put to rest the moment they turn from the main road to the long, uphill track that leads to the farmhouse. There he is, sprawled out in the middle of the dirt track—sprawled across the track, with the partially-dismembered skeleton of a white-tailed deer lying like a toy before it. The creature is bigger than she’s ever seen it, and more warlike, somewhere between a panther and a great crab in body plan, all bloodstained claws and armor and teeth and a cluster of eight eyes on every limb. When it sees them it snorts out a great angry gout of smoke.

Eliza feels sick just looking at it. The number of people who must have seen it, as it wreaked havoc on the countryside while they were gone—the tales must be growing. This is exactly what she hoped to avoid when she brought the thing home, when she locked it away in the barn all those years ago.

Philip’s face lights up. “Dad!” he cries, and rushes forward.

The monster freezes for a moment—and then it dances back, shying away from Philip’s outstretched arms, looking confused.

Philip comes up short, uncertain. “You remember me, right?”

Eliza follows him forward, placing a restraining hand on his shoulder. If the monster wants its space, she will be damn sure Philip gives it space. “Come on, Philip. Let’s get inside and get supper going.”

“He’s bleeding,” Philip points at a messy inkstain, almost like a series of vertical scratches, dark along the creature’s flank. “He’s bleeding, please, Ma, we need to help him—”

“He’s bled before,” Eliza says, and kicks herself for not saying it. “Doubtless some fool thought they could kill it.”

“Ma, please, no—and there, look, his front paw too, he’s hurt, please—” Philip sounds on the verge of tears, and Eliza finds herself torn. Does she indulge him in this bizarre fantasy, in the hopes that he will come out of it in his own way? Or does she refuse to tolerate it, try to stamp it out?

Her mouth goes dry at the memory of the last time she tried to stamp out a notion in her son. No. Much safer to let this madness run its course naturally. Philip is a sensible boy. He will realize eventually that he is wrong, but for now, maybe this is his way of coping with the horrors he saw at Mount Vernon. Maybe he needs to believe that the monsters are human, deep down, because the alternative is that he defied his mother, traveled hundreds of miles, nearly died, and learned nothing. Maybe, after time, and a return to his normal routine, and his mother’s unconditional support begin to heal that wound—maybe then he will come back to his senses.

And there is nothing the matter with treating a creature with kindness. Even if it is not, strictly speaking, God’s creature. “Fine,” she relents, and Philip springs forward, holding a hand out for the monster to cautiously sniff.

The thing whines piteously. “Fremble rememble?” it says. “Stumble bumble humble onion?”

“I’m going inside,” Eliza says stiffly, turning up the path to the house. Angelica follows, and before they can go three steps she’s caught up and grabbed Eliza by the elbow.

“Eliza,” she whispers, “that wound—those are words.”

Eliza continues stumbling forward on her own momentum. Could Philip—could Philip be right? No. No, Alexander coming back, that is too much to ask for, that is too much hope, she cannot bear that much hope—

Philip shouts after her. “Can he come in for supper?”

Eliza freezes mid-step, incredulous. There is hope, and there is forbearance, and then there is allowing a twelve-foot-long ink-dripping smoke-snorting reminder of her failures as a wife and mother into her home. She looks pleadingly to Angelica. “Philip, dear, I don’t think it can fit in the door anymore.”

“He can if he folds the spikes in, I bet!” A brief pause. “We could… eat on the porch?”

Eliza can only look heavenward, and sigh.

Chapter Text

Like many things too terrible to be believed it happens on a sun-drenched morning with the birds all chirping. Eliza is out of the house with Angelica, standing at the far edge of the meadow where the blackberry bushes thrive under the shade of great trees, when the Bishop of New York and his men ride up to steal Philip away from her.

Hearing the clatter of their horses’ hooves Eliza turns, the basket hanging loose from her juice-stained fingers. When she sees their red coats and the flash of the sun off their buttons she drops the basket and pelts down to the house, Angelica panting in her wake. But they’re too late: he’s already inside.

“I’ll go around back,” Angelica says, seizing her arm. “They won’t expect me. The axe—"

By the woodpile. Eliza nods, gives Angelica half a second to disappear round the corner of the house, and charges in the door. It swings open behind her, sunlight and the forest breeze at her back.

As she steps inside the men raise their weapons; Seabury waves them down in a trice. “Ah, here she is,” he says, his voice crisp and businesslike.

Two men appear at the top of the stairs, Philip in his nightshirt between them, their huge hands gripping his arms. His feet hardly touch the wood as they bring him down, though he squirms. His hair is wild.

Hopeless slugabed, Eliza thinks in despair, and wonders if she will ever have the joy of thinking it again. She doesn’t acknowledge Seabury. She tries to catch Philip’s eye, but her son stares straight forward.

“Miss Schuyler,” Seabury says, and some tiny part of her curls its lips back in a snarl. “We are here for an incident involving your son. If you leave now, you will not be harmed. This matter does not concern you.”

Eliza holds her head high, feeling fey and dangerous. She hears the scuttling of claws and fingers on the porch behind her, wonders if the soldiers have any idea what it is. “Do I appear unconcerned, sir?”

“Burn, sir. Learn, sir. Worm, sir,” comes Alexander’s voice, and the Bishop gives a violent start.

He’d forgotten. Oh, Eliza is going to make him pay for that.

“Press latcher, dress patcher, trespasser!” the monster howls in many-voiced dissonance. “Verse, durst, worst, cursed.” Again the scuttling behind her. Eliza dares not take her eyes from the pistol pointed at her son, but she feels the monster brushing against her skirts. One of the redcoats gives a cry of dismay, and the others hiss and pale and shrink back.

Philip, who had been staring at the monster, finally looks up at Eliza. Her heart almost breaks. She recognizes the look on her face from countless dreams; it is the very look Alexander wore, the last time he took leave of her, the look of a man who knows his doom is upon him. Her poor, brave, addled son.

“Brave. Brave and beautiful, beasome boy. Brother-bringer harbinger star singe-er—”

“Dad—don’t,” Philip cries. “Don’t be afraid, it’s okay. Don’t be afraid of him,” he says, raising his voice to the redcoats in the room. “He looks scary but he’s harmless, please—”

“My son’s wits are disturbed,” Eliza says, speaking over him, her voice as cold as the blowing snow, even as Philip’s eyes fill with tears at her words. “Whatever he has done, he was not in his right mind, and you should let him go at once. And as you do it you should be very careful of the thing that you made in place of my husband,” she continues. “It is unfriendly, as a host, and a host unto itself.” She puts a steadying hand on top of its head, praying fervently that it won’t rush forward. Philip would be dead in an instant.

Seabury’s mouth twists into a dissatisfied line. “Miss Schuyler, now is not the time to be making threats.” He nods to the two brutes holding Philip. As one, they wrench his arms further back, forcing a cry from his lips as his head is pushed down. The man with the pistol moves to stand behind him, the muzzle inches from the back of Philip’s head.

“Don’t!” Eliza cries, flying forward, but a redcoat steps smartly between her and Philip, and the monster’s grating, furious howl brings her up short. She can’t risk it. Not with a pistol so close to Philip’s head that the muzzle touches his curls.

Seabury walks over to Philip, snapping his fingers in front of his face, making him blink. “Why were you at Mount Vernon?” he asks. “I will not ask nicely again.”

Philip trembles. He says nothing.

Seabury forms his hand into a fist, and Philip gasps. Eliza feels magic stirring, tightening like bands around her baby, around her boy—

“Stop it,” she cries. “Stop it, stop it, don’t—"

A redcoat grabs her arm, but unhands her immediately at Seabury’s furious glare.

“I wanted to help my dad,” Philip gasps, the words dragged out of him unwilling, his face contorting as he tries to fight back. “I thought—the monster. I thought I could get my dad back if only I could find the right—the right words.”

“How did you learn about the monster?”

Philip looks confused. “The… the monster, I suppose?”

Seabury rolls his eyes. “How did you know it was related to your father?”

Philip stays close-lipped at that, but Seabury tightens his fist again and he writhes, his feet leaving the ground for an instant as the brutes on either side support his weight.

“I told him!” Eliza cries in anguish, throwing herself forward, nearly bowling over the redcoat who holds her back. “I told him when he was twelve, I couldn’t bear him not knowing anymore—his own father—and if you need to punish someone for that, please punish me, don’t hurt Philip, he’s just an innocent boy—”

“Your boy is far from innocent, madam,” Seabury says softly. “Your transgressions pale in comparison to his. Unless… boy, did your mother know you were going to Mount Vernon?”

“No!” Philip cries immediately. “How did—how did you know that?”

“The British Empire has eyes everywhere,” Seabury says. “Answer.”

“No, she didn’t know! I snuck out, she was so angry, she said that I should never have gone!” He glances up at her a moment, eyes pleading. Don’t speak, Ma.

He’s trying to shield her.

“It’s true that he went without my permission,” Eliza says, “but you can see quite clearly that I’ve brought him home. He poses no danger to you now. Please, Bishop Seabury, I’ll—I will stop at nothing to convince you, sir. Don’t hurt my boy. He’s everything to me.”

Philip goes very still as she’s speaking, his eyes back on the floor. She wishes he would look at her.

“Do you harbor any ill will towards His Majesty King George III?” Seabury asks him.

“Of course I do,” Philip spits. “He killed my dad.”

Seabury licks his lips guiltily and glances Eliza’s direction before the next question.

“And do you wish for the overthrow of Royal power in these colonies?”

As long as he’s being compelled to honesty, Philip seems thrilled to make his case. “You mean, do I want those vicious carrion birds out of my town? Of course! It’s not like America belongs to England forever just because.”

Seabury flinches and looks away. “Do you know how the monster was made?”

The monster interrupts with a snapping snarl that startles everyone present. All the redcoats’ pistols train on it, and Philip nearly breaks free in the confusion. But one of the men holding him lands a hard blow to his stomach, and he doubles over.

That was my chance, Eliza thinks, already almost tipping over into the hollow valleys of grief. That was my chance, and I missed it.

“Twice now I ask you,” Seabury says, his voice shading into ominousness as Philip cries out, his limbs all curling in agony. “Do you know the arcane methods by which monsters such as your father’s are made?”

“I know you did it, and André wrote the script,” Philip snarls. “I know you used his bones. But I don’t know how. I couldn’t do it myself.”

Seabury’s face goes red. He turns back to Eliza, his expression almost pleading. “Miss Schuyler, you’ve heard it yourself. Your son has admitted under compulsion of truth that he intended to meddle in military magics put in place by the Crown for the express purposes of quashing a rebellion that your son has now endorsed.”

“He’s young,” Eliza pleads, because she must, no matter how dire the situation may seem, she must not give up on her boy. “He misses his father, please, Bishop, the Lord asks us to forgive—”

Seabury looks down. “The Lord may ask us to forgive, but I also have earthly responsibilities of obedience to my King, which I must faithfully discharge. And this is clear-cut treason.”

He snaps his fingers. Philip’s chest heaves, and the men on either side bear his weight for a moment before he gets his shaking legs under himself again. He shakes his head, as though to clear the spell from his mind.

“It is time to pass the sentence,” Seabury says gravely. One of the two redcoats not occupied in holding Philip’s arms pulls out a sheet of paper and inkwell, dons a pair of spectacles, and makes himself comfortable at their dining room table. When he’s ready, he nods at Seabury to begin.

“Being the sentencing of Philip Hamilton, this eleventh of July—”

“I won’t allow this,” Eliza says. Her mind has gone odd, everything crystalline clear and slow.

The men pretend not to hear her.

Seabury drones on, as the spectacled man transcribes his words. There he goes writing history again, Eliza thinks numbly. “Although this boy most certainly intended to meddle, his intentions seem to have been the understandable desire of a boy to know his father. His theoretical grasp of the Arts involved seems minimal. We have no cause to be alarmed about a general breach in our technology. Mercy is a tempting option.”

Eliza waits. She doesn’t hope. Not anymore.

“Be that as it may,” Seabury says, his voice growing heavy, “and most, most regrettably, this has gone too far. Ignorance of the possible metaphysical consequences of his actions does not excuse this young man. Though unwittingly, he has become perhaps the single greatest threat to the Empire’s control of the narrative in these colonies since the rebellion itself. Such a threat simply cannot be allowed to continue. For this reason I pronounce the sentence of death upon Philip Hamilton.”

At Seabury’s sentence all the monster’s human mouths open at once, babbling in voices strident and shrill. The words sound like pure gibberish to Eliza, but she hopes they’re terrible curses.

Philip doesn’t even react. His seems to be staring at the floor, but his whole face looks strained, his breath labored.

“I won’t allow this,” she says, louder than before. Her whole body feels like a crystal of ice, sharp but shatterprone. “You will not harm my son.”

Philip slowly lifts his head. With apparent difficulty, he focuses his gaze on Eliza. Some of the harshness in his expression, in his breath, falls away, and it seems that the divide between them vanishes. She looks into his eyes and sees not madness, not torment, but just Philip, her Philip, trusting and sweet as she knew he always was. Deep emotion wells in his eyes, and he smiles, “Ma?” hesitantly, as though he’s just heard some outlandish secret about her that he needs her to confirm.

The redcoat behind him raises his pistol.

The monster cries out, a shriek like a wounded catamount, and for one horrid moment it rears its crablike form back on its hind legs. Every eye in the room is drawn to the sight. The redcoats, panicked, aim their weapons. Seabury turns to the one of them and makes a harsh gesture to the one behind Philip. The one holding the—

(One)

The soldier had been looking squarely at the monster and the pistol had followed his gaze, so before he can kill Philip he will need to move his arm six inches to the right and squeeze the trigger. That’s

(Two)

instants and Philip will be dead. He’s surrounded on

(Three)

sides, but the redcoat in front of Eliza has stepped back, out of reach of the monster’s scything claws. That leaves her a clear path, and with all her strength she hurls herself

(Four)

ward, knocking her son to the floor and throwing her body over his. He doesn’t resist—it’s almost like he folds under her, like she’s flinging a scarecrow to the ground, but that still leaves

(Five)

men standing over them, any among them capable of ending their lives, but then comes a terrible howl, and screams, and Eliza remembers, no, there are

(Six)

in the room other than herself and Philip; there is the monster, there is the Alexander that is not hers, and now she’s facing the back hall and she sees Angelica there, axe at the ready with a strange blue glow about her, and Seabury raises his arms and begins a word and Angelica joins the fray against him and now there are

(Seven)

and it shatters, it breaks, it all shatters, and when it’s over and Eliza raises her head at last Philip is still underneath her, and Angelica’s shaking her shoulder and screaming her name, and not a single man in the room is left standing.

“I’m fine,” she snaps, throwing off Angelica’s helping hand. There’s something wrong with Philip, he isn’t moving, he isn’t moving… Eliza rolls off him and kneels at his head. His eyes are mostly closed, only the whites visible. His chest rises and falls steadily.

“Philip?” she calls. Angelica kneels at his other side. “Pip? Baby?”

He doesn’t stir.

Was he hit? There are no obvious wounds on his front, but that’s something easily missed. She lifts Philip by the shoulder, turns him on his side so she can check for blood. He rolls without complaint, limp as a doll. There’s no blood on the floor, none on his back or his legs.

“What did you do to him?” Angelica snarls. Eliza glances up, realizes her sister’s talking to Seabury, who’s propped up against the dining room wall about six feet away, an axe handle sticking up out of his belly. A quick look around the room reveals four corpses in varying states of mutilation and the monster laying on its side, human-red blood all over its front claws and dog’s muzzle. Its breath is labored, ink splattered all around it from black wounds.

She returns her attention to her son, kneeling behind him and laying a careful hand across his forehead. It’s warm to the touch, but not burning or clammy—nothing like when he had the swamp sickness.

Seabury laughs, wet and hysterical. “What did I do?”

“Yes, you,” Angelica says, rising to her feet and stalking over to where he lays. “Sorcerer.”

“If you think I can… strip the life out a boy…like that… you overestimate me...witch.” He coughs, a sound even wetter than his laugh. He reaches up a hand, rests it lightly on the axe handle. “In fact… I do believe… you’ve killed me.”

Eliza doesn’t look up. She runs her fingers through Philip’s hair, feeling his skull for bumps or blood. She doesn’t think he hit his head on the way down but she’s not sure, she’s not sure, and he’s still not moving—

“Well, then,” Angelica says, “it looks like you’d best have a thought for your immortal soul.” Though Eliza can’t see her, all-focused as she is on Philip, she can well imagine Angelica’s face as she whispers, like a knife-blade, “You wouldn’t want to die unforgiven, would you?”

“Come on, baby,” she whispers, brushing his hair back from his temples, gently shaking his shoulder. There’s nothing physically wrong with him that she can find. He must just be… overcome, by all the noise and the violence. He always was a sensitive child, under all the rambunction. He’ll come out of it any second now. “Come on, wake up for Ma, come on, Pip.”

A few feet away, the monster moans and attempts to rise. It falls back to the floor with a wail.

“Do you see what a ruin you made of her life, with your tyranny?” Angelica continues. “She could have been the happiest woman in the world as well as the kindest, but you’ve visited cruelties far beyond death on the people she loves the most. You erased the very memory of her husband from the earth and sent her a calamitous beast in exchange. You pushed her son to the point of madness and then—”

“I did nothing… to the boy.”

“Then you still have plenty to atone for,” Angelica snarls. “Give us something on Alexander.”

The movement of Philip’s chest grows alarmingly shallow. Eliza has to hold her hand under his nose to make sure he’s still breathing. Very gently, she peels back one eyelid with her thumb. His face doesn’t so much as twitch, his eye a flat hazel disc. “Come on, baby,” she says, her voice cracking.

Seabury laughs again, a hideous sound. “You think I… on my deathbed… would betray my king?”

“Your King is not George III,” Angelica says, her voice quiet and stern. She reaches down to his collar, draws out the cross on the thin silver chain round his neck and places it in his twitching outstretched hand. “Do I believe that you yearn for the opportunity to earn forgiveness? To set right the greatest wrong you ever did? Yes, I do.”

Philip exhales, and there’s a long pause before he inhales again. Eliza seizes his hand, rubs his back like she did when he was so sick and sobbing and she got him through that, though she didn’t sleep all night, she’ll get him through this—

“Eliza, listen!” Angelica cries, frantic, and Eliza looks up.

“He won’t wake,” she says, her voice hardly human. “Angelica, he’s not waking up—”

“My name is… Samuel Seabury, and this was my part in it,” Seabury says, his voice cracking. He clears his throat. “I present free thoughts… on…well...” A long, gasping pause. Evidently he decides to skip forward; when he begins again, he sings with broken notes. “Heed not the rabble… who scream revolution, they have…”

Eliza turns her full attention back to Philip. Philip, whose lips are moving.

“Pip?” Eliza cries, her fingernails digging into his hand.

“…not your interest at heart,” Seabury labors heedlessly. “Chaos and bloodshed—”

“—already haunt us, don’t—”

“—let them lead… you astray—”

“—and you talk about—”

“—Congress does not…” Seabury breaks off, gasping. “I—I can’t do it, I—”

“You did,” Angelica says, staring at Philip in shock. She lays one hand on the bishop’s forehead, like a benediction. “You’re done, Seabury. Thank you.”

Eliza stares down at the boy, dumbstruck. That voice: that was… that was…

Philip’s eyes squeeze shut, and abruptly he shudders and attempts to curl in on himself. Eliza pulls him back, propping his upper body on her lap, cradling his head. Angelica hurries over and kneels at his other side.

Philip’s eyes open, first finding Eliza, then darting over to Angelica. A smile comes to his face—a smile Eliza hasn’t seen in a long time.

She takes his hand.

“The Schuyler sisters,” he murmurs, and God, how long has it been since someone called them that? Since she’s heard that tune? “I knew it.”

Angelica gasps and covers her mouth, her eyes filling with tears.

Eliza can hardly believe this is happening. “It was Philip,” she says, and it’s so strange to address those words to Philip’s face, “it was our son, Alexander, it was Philip—”

“I know,” he says, squeezing her hand. “We met, just now. I got to know him a little.” He smiles—exhausted, exultant. “Our kid is pretty great.”

“He is,” Eliza nods, through a veil of tears.

“She raised him right,” Angelica says, reaching across, taking his other hand, gripping Eliza’s shoulder tightly. “Alexander… where is he?”

“He’s here,” Alexander says, looking queasy. “It’s… uncomfortable. There’s not… space for us both. Long-term.” He glances over at the wounded monster. “I think he wanted me to go there, but—there’s not room.”

Not room? Eliza wonders, but there’s no time to sort that out. “Alexander, I think Philip’s in danger,” she says, her voice cracking. “I think you need to— to go on.”

“I know,” he says. “I… I’m running out of time, and there’s so much—but I just want to say that I love you.”

Eliza lowers her forehead and touches it to his. “I love you. We’ll have eternity to say that and everything else that needs saying, Alexander.”

“Thanks to you both,”—he squeezes Angelica’s hand before looking back to Eliza— “and our son. I’ll—I see you on the other side. Don’t rush to join me, all right? Any of you. I’m… I’m very willing to wait.”   

How unlike you, is the gentle joke on Eliza’s lips, but then the body in her arms swoons, head falling to one side, a long sigh escaping. For one terrifying moment, Philip’s ribs fail to rise again, but then he gasps, the breath almost violent. His eyes fly open, and they’re wild, unaware.

“Pip?” she asks, tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear with shaking fingers. “Is that you, baby? Can you hear me?”

His eyes blink, slow and unsure, but then they come up to focus on her face. “Ma,” Philip whispers. “That was… really strange.”

Angelica lets loose a sob. Eliza has no such luxury. She holds her child as tight as she can and rocks back and forth with him safe in her arms, and refuses to think on what might have been.

“Ma, I’m sorry, you’re squishing me,” Philip gasps, his breath puffing against her shoulder. “You’re going to say I’m crazy, but I think Dad might be here.”

“I saw him, honey,” Eliza says, tears threatening to spill over. “How did you do that?”

Philip closes his eyes. “I—I’m not really sure,” he says. “No, I remember. I started feeling really strange right after you said that they wouldn’t harm me. I… I believed you.”

“You believed I could keep them from… from hurting you?” Eliza asks, flattered but incredulous.

“I don’t think so,” Philip says, with a sheepish smile, “though it seems like you… you did?” He presses a hand to his own chest, as though surprised to find himself unwounded. “Um… it was more like… I knew that wherever I went… no matter how far or dangerous… you’d find me there, and so I wasn’t afraid. That’s what Dad believed. That’s the piece I was missing, before.”

Eliza’s throat wells up. All she can do is wrap her arms back around him, more gently this time. He places palms on the floor like he wants to rise, so she levers him up, watching carefully for any signs of distress.

Of course, it’s difficult not to be distressed by the scene in front of them. Philip’s eyes go wide at the carnage.

“What—” His eyes fall on the monster. “No!” he cries. He crawls to its side, seeming not to know what to do with his hands. So much ink, still oozing from wounds. Which to stanch first, when so much damage has been done?

The monster moans. “B—beasome boy,” it gasps, through one of its human mouths. Eliza’s heart gives a violent twist, because of course, now that Alexander has passed on to the other side—now that the lie has been destroyed—there’s nothing left to anchor the monster to life. Somehow, she’s glad for the beast—that it lived long enough to see the fruits of its labor, that Philip is still alive, that the redcoats haven’t managed to harm a hair on his precious head.

“Y—you’re not…it didn’t...”

“Philip, what are you—" Angelica begins, placing a hand at his elbow. He whirls around.

“Where’s Dad?” he cries. “Where’d he go, if he didn’t—I thought—”

Angelica and Eliza exchange a look, and Angelica’s hand rises to rest on Philip’s shoulder. “He—he had to leave,” she says.

Philip’s face crumples. Eliza rushes forward, encircling him in her arms, and he falls soundlessly against her. “Philip. Philip, listen to me. Your father is in Heaven now. He’s in Heaven and he loves you—he told me himself, he’s so proud of you, you did it, baby, you saved him—” Even as she says the words she can hardly contain her tears—but unlike Philip’s, hers are of joy, not grief. She’s done what she set out to do—what she promised Alexander she would do, all those long years ago. Philip has drawn his soul out of those ink-empty pages, back out of the horrid stasis of history books and into human life and death

A guttural sob escapes her son. “I wanted him to stay,” he says. “The monster—I thought maybe it was a part of him, twisted—that somehow he could change it back, shift its shape—the bones are his bones—that’s what anchors the magic, that’s how he was forced out. I think that’s why it loves you, Ma, it always loved you, and me. I thought we could be a family…”

Eliza pulls back. She takes Philip’s chin in her hand and forces him to look her in the eyes. “You—look at me, Pip. Look at me. We are family. Angelica is my family. You’re enough.” Her voice wavers. “I should have told you that more often. You’re more than enough. I love you so much, Philip.”

Philip bows his head, and his hands at last settle on the monster’s heaving flank. His fingers trace a few hesitant inches, and some of the monster’s rolling eyes manage to settle on him, like it can’t bear to look away.

“He saved us,” Eliza says, finding an animal ear and stroking the fur. She clears her throat and addresses the dying creature. “You saved us, monster. You saved Philip. From the deepest part of my heart, thank you.”

“It didn’t have Dad’s soul, though,” Philip murmurs. “It wasn’t ever him, was it? So… so I was wrong.”

“You were right that it loves you,” Eliza says fiercely. “That’s what mattered, in the end.”

Philip lets out a sob and leans forward, draping himself across the monster’s body as though he could somehow protect it. He throws his arms round one of the monster’s necks, burying his face in its mane. The monster makes an inquisitive little chicken squawk, and Philip lets out a choked laugh and squawks back, and one of the monster’s strange, taloned humanlike hands reaches back and tangles in his hair. The creature’s human mouths smile, some smirking, some sneering, some satisfied, as though deep in the workings of its monstrous heart this was the end it had always imagined. One gasps out, “Mine son, fine son, shine son,” with less and less breath every moment.

Eliza swallows a sob and laces her other hand into the creature’s wiry mane. She didn’t believe, she’d never believed, not really, not the way Philip had. But maybe the monster had believed, too, in its own strange way, that it was more than a monster. And somewhere along the way that belief had turned to love, and love to grace—grace, from the most graceless creature Eliza has ever laid eyes on.

Eliza sees, dripping fresh from the monster’s wounds, red blood, not black ink. Alexander is free. Alexander is free, and his monster yet lives, and, “Angelica, how is this possible? If the monster is… is the lies, and the lies have been broken now, then how is it still...”

She closes her mouth. It seems a cruel thing to ask, in Philip’s hearing, how is it still alive?

Angelica crouches down beside her, a comforting arm round her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she says slowly. “But I have a guess.” She pauses a moment to gather her thoughts. “One of the most fundamental principles of magic is that the things we make are not our own. The… the power of the lies against Alexander has died. But the creature has become more than those lies. You took it in. You fed and sheltered it. Philip was its friend, even. And when you did those things, you shaped the monster until eventually it could shape itself.”

And suddenly Eliza remembers what Alexander said. I think he wanted me to go there, but there’s not room.

Because there was something occupying that body already. A soul. The creature's soul.

Eliza has come to learn over these sixteen years the incredible gulf between intention and consequence, the way feelings and meanings twist beneath her fingers. To suit its circumstances the monster rewrote itself invisibly, black words on black paper, and nobody saw, not the British, not Eliza, maybe not even the monster itself. Black words on black paper, writing itself into her family…

Family. Her little family, Angelica and Eliza and Peggy and Philip and—that’s all. Eliza and Philip and—

It’s not enough.

She rises.

“Eliza?” Angelica asks. Philip doesn’t look up—still comforting the monster with slow gentle hands, still whispering, still hoping.

That’s the thing about family: it goes both ways. Maybe if the monster could change itself for love, then she could change herself. Maybe she should.

Yes. Absolutely, she should.

“I’ll be back,” she says. She takes the stairs to her bedroom, finds the key to the drawer where she keeps Alexander’s letters to her, the ones that ran black with ink years ago, the ones that have been lost to her and locked away ever since. Out the window it’s still a fine green morning, with no sign of anyone approaching on the road, but oh, she can feel the hills echoing with something. Rise up, rise up, rise up! Something’s given, something’s turned over. The Bishop of New York dead, the barrier between history and the present cast aside for just a moment, Alexander’s soul freed and hope for all the rest. Hope for the past, now, and hope for the future.

She turns the key in the lock and opens the drawer, and it’s just as she thought it would be. Ink beads like rain on the surface of the pages; she shakes it off in an instant, splattering the desk and floor. Alexander’s letters. Quickly she takes them from the drawer, straightens the stack with a bang on the desk. Then she goes to Philip’s room and plucks a quill from the stand. Then back down the stairs.

“Eliza,” Angelica says, her face grim. Philip’s arms are tight around the creature, his forehead buried against it. The monster’s eyes are blinking slowly, some sliding shut. Death rattles in its throat. Blood from its wounds puddles on the floor. Eliza kneels and fills the pen as well as she can from the mess.

“Right the table,” she says, and Angelica, seeing what she’s about to do, leaps to obey, picking up the table from where it toppled to give her a surface to write on. Eliza smooths out one of the pages and presses the pen to it, just under Alexander’s postscript, where there are a few inches of blank space. She thinks absently of Theo’s letters to Philip, all written between the lines. For a moment the ink refuses to flow, but then the nib of the pen bites, and a line scrapes across the page.

Eliza turns it into a T, and continues. Though the creature was sorely wounded, she writes, it was not fated to die that day. Cruel words had made it, but over the years it had become more than words only. It had gained a heart, and a soul, and a family that loved it, and it had defended them well. Its family wrote their own words, powerful words on sacred paper, words to save it from death and from pain and from hurt.

Eliza takes a deep breath. Time to test her idea. Time to see if she’s right.

And so, she writes, the creature healed.

The sound of labored breath comes to an abrupt halt. Eliza closes her eyes and prays.

A moment later, Philip lets out a wild cry. When Eliza opens her eyes and draws her courage to look, he’s sitting up, and so is the creature, and his arms are still flung around it, and he’s laughing, and a few of the creature’s tails are thumping the floor. Angelica’s hand is clutched to her chest, and she’s laughing, too. Philip turns to look at them both in confusion, yipping as the creature gives him an affectionate lick on the face.

“What was that?” he asks in wonder.

Eliza holds up the piece of paper. Philip reaches out a hand and takes it, his eyes darting over the words. He looks up again, eyes agoggle.

“Your father’s letters,” Eliza explains.

“Oh, Ma…”

She shakes her head. “I’ll see him again, Philip, thanks to you. In the meantime, we have work to do, and very little time to waste.”

“Seabury’s sure to have had more men close by,” Angelica says. “We need to leave, and quickly, if we want to survive.” She goes to the door and falls back, swearing.

“What is it?” Eliza asks, hurrying to her side, “More redcoats? Do we—oh. Oh, my goodness.”

The sky outside has gone white.

Philip follows them, gasping at the sight. He touches her elbow. “What is it, Ma?”

“That’s what the sky looked like,” she says, swallowing hard. “When.”

“You did that?” he asks, his voice small.

“My God,” Eliza whispers. “I did.”

“We have the narrative,” Angelica breathes. “We took it from Seabury.”

Eliza sits down in the doorway with a thud, the sheaf of Alexander’s letters still clutched in her hands. Control of the narrative—it is a power she has scarcely dreamed of. She could turn André into a monster. Wipe his army out. Erase his memory as he and Seabury erased Alexander’s—turn them all into Patriot loyalists the way he made them all into Tories. Now that Alexander’s hope has been fulfilled, these might serve another purpose, might launch a second revolution, one redeemed of all the lies, and premised on fewer, unriddled by hypocrisy, worthy of God and His love.

The things we make are not our own. Not children, not stories, not monsters.

Not nations.

The sky is white like bones, and bones are good, bones are more than they’ve ever had before.  After all, was not Eve, mother of all the world, made from a single rib?

Her heart is racing, her stomach churning. “Let me think a moment,” she says. “Philip, why don’t you head up to the pond with the creature and wash the poor dear off.”

“Good idea,” Philip says, clearly eager to be away from all the blood. He holds out a hand, beckoning the creature to follow him and it scampers after him out the door. “Come on!”

Eliza takes a seat in the rocking chair, braces the paper on the porch rail. Is she imagining the sound of marching feet? Are the Redcoats coming?

Suddenly she realizes her fear is unmerited. All the British troops occupying the rebellious colonies suddenly became quite homesick, she scribbles, ink splattering in her haste. They put down their weapons and decided to go home as soon as they safely could, never to harm another on American soil again.

Angelica, reading over her shoulder, gives an approving snort. “Well that’s… practical. Clean up the mess in the kitchen while you’re at it, too?”

“Who’s practical, now?” Eliza mutters. But she writes, The corpses in Eliza Hamilton’s kitchen returned to dust with a greater than usual alacrity and were blown out the back door in a sudden breeze.

In an instant her hair is blown back, her skirts whipped flat against her legs. The front door opens with a slam, an identical sound coming from the back of the house. A loud, metallic clatter, and then silence.

The sisters exchange a look. As one, they lean in the front door to survey the results. Other than a slight derangement of the curtains—to be expected from a powerful gust—the inside of the house is clean. Bloodless. The axe rests on the living room floor, gleaming silver.

“Lord have mercy,” Eliza whispers. “I can do anything.”

Angelica turns on her, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “You brought a supernatural creature back from the brink of death and then dissolved an army in two sentences, but it’s cleaning the house that impresses you?”

 “Let me think a moment,” says Eliza for the second time in two minutes. Emotions bolt around her chest like wild horses, trampling over thought, over reason. This is more than she ever wanted—this is too much for anyone. This is madness. Alexander was here. Alexander is gone. Alexander is free, and she has his letters back, for the first time since that first white sky, sixteen years ago—and also, Philip nearly died, and Seabury is dead, and André’s power is broken, and she holds America in the palm of her hand.

She startles at Angelica’s touch on her shoulder. “Why don’t you sit down,” her sister says kindly, “and I’ll get you a drink, and you can take all the time you need.”

She sits in the rocking chair on the porch all day, presiding over a great sweep of green rendered uncanny by the blank above. The birds warble from the trees nearby. The wind stirs her hair. Alexander’s words come back to her as she reads them again and again, devouring his love, or letting it devour her. She laughs anew at his witticisms, his youthful effusions of feeling—which are not exaggeration, for she knows the size of his heart. His sentences flood her senses anew. And when he bares that heart to her, she feels that same answering rush of love and affection that brought her into his arms when she was scarce more than a girl, and he scarce more than a boy.

She is a different woman now than she was then. Her love beats just as powerful, but these long years have made it more patient, more wise. So much of the world has been revealed to her since she set out sixteen years ago to claim even Alexander’s most twisted shadow for her own.

Angelica and Philip check on her every once in a while—a glass of water here, a bite to eat there— but for the most part she is left alone.

The sun grows lower in the paper-white sky. Only a few faint scribbles visible, off in the vastness and almost mistakable for clouds.

Eliza takes up the pen.

People of America, she writes, between the lines of one of Alexander’s letters. Your consciences are now your own. You are equals before God. I return to you the freedom of your minds and souls, which was taken from you in the war-that-wasn’t, and humbly request that you apply yourselves towards the good.

She taps the letters against the railing to even the stack, then rises and returns to the house. The creature sprawls out napping on the rug, its limbs occasionally twitching as it dreams of the chase. Back in the kitchen, Angelica and Philip are making supper—or, rather, Philip is bossing Angelica around, on the basis of her lack of experience with cooking in a manor house will a full kitchen staff. Angelica, Eliza can tell, is humoring him, but reserving at any moment one of those teasing remarks that she so loves to wrong-foot young men with. The scene warms Eliza’s chest, brings her mind fully into the present. A broad smile forms on her face, and she walks up behind Philip and captures him in a hug.

“Ma!” he cries reproachfully, but makes no effort to escape. Instead, he places his hands over hers and hugs back.

“So,” Angelica asks, her voice nearly casual, “What did you decide?”

“You don’t know if she’s decided,” Philip points out.

“She’s smiling. Of course she’s decided.”

Eliza hands over the relevant page. Angelica reads the words over once, twice, thrice, before nodding decisively and handing the page to Philip. When he finishes, he gasps and looks up.

“You just—left it up to them?” he asks.

“I didn’t erase anything,” Eliza says. “I put back what was there before, and I let them make up their own minds.”

“You suggested they be good,” Angelica says, smirking playfully.

“Only suggested,” Eliza says, shrugging in what she’s sure is the least sincere expression of meekness in human history. “I didn’t try to tell them what good meant.”

Angelica shakes her head slowly, a look of enormous affection on her face. “Eliza, you are a wonder,” she murmurs. And then a spark of mischief comes to her eyes. "So! What comes next, now that the truth is out there?”

“For the country?” Eliza laughs. “I haven’t the faintest.”

“Um,” Philip cuts in. He fidgets as both sisters’ eyes fall on him. “I think… well, I think Theodosia and I have some ideas.” He pauses for a moment and then says, more forcefully, “Theodosia and I definitely have some ideas.”

“Well, then,” Eliza says, completely unsurprised, “we shall have to find Theodosia, as our first order of business. Angelica, what do you think?”

“I’ll go wherever you go,” Angelica says, with conviction that wrings Eliza’s heart. “Now, what of Alexander’s letters?”

Eliza takes a deep breath, the giddiness knocked straight out of her. She's known what she must do now since almost the moment she realized their power. She’d made up her mind what to write within the first half-hour on the porch. She’d spend her time reading and reading and rereading, committing Alexander’s words to her heart, because she'd already known the next step.

"They’re too dangerous," she says.

Angelica nods. "I thought you might say that. If they were to fall into the wrong hands—"

"There are no right hands," Eliza says. "We've put right what was wrong. It's time to let go now, and let folk and fate decide the future for themselves." Her gaze falls upon Philip. “If there’s one that I wish I’d known when I was younger, it is that this is not under my control. There comes a point when one must let go.”

She stands and straightens the letters. Angelica nods, resolution and grief stamped upon her face. Philip looks at her, eyes big and beseeching. She takes his hand and squeezes it.

“You’ll be all right?” he whispers.

“I’ll be all right, Philip,” she says, drawing him into an embrace.

And then it’s time. She spares one last longing glance at her love's words, at his raw, loving heart spilled fine and true across the parchment.

She feeds Alexander's letters to the fireplace, one by one, and watches with Philip and Angelica as they burn to ashes. Out the window, the sky pulses with embers and fades from white to deep black, bright with stars.

Eliza sleeps easy that night. When she wakes the next morning the sun has risen, and the sky is blue, and history has turned its page.

THE END