Work Text:
September 1793
“Bring out your dead!”
The clanging of a bell cut through the quiet morning, nearly drowning out the booming voice hollering from the horse drawn wagon as it clattered past the President’s Market Street residence. Washington reached out a hand to still the fluttering mountain of pleas and petitions upon his desk. For a moment, he considered closing the window, then decided against it. The cool fall breeze was refreshing in his stuffy upstairs office and closing it would do nothing to halt the reality of the outside world.
The stranger’s voice echoed eerily as the cart rolled further down the street, the bell still sharp even from a distance. At least the cart hadn’t stopped too nearby. None of the close neighbors had yet needed its services.
Not so long ago, the sickness had been confined to the rundown shacks along the wharf. The disease had spread from the waterfront with startling rapidity this year. Soon men were collapsing all along Philadelphia’s neat cobbled streets. Whole families succumbed in one fell swoop, leaving no one to care for them as they languished in their beds, waiting for death to claim them. And death was all too happy to oblige; the death toll was rising by the minute, with hundreds dying each day.
Washington reached for the next letter in his towering stack. He squinted at the address for a long moment, confused. When he called for his aide, the young man bustled in, bright-eyed and overeager despite the obvious pique in the President’s voice.
“Yes sir?”
“Did I not give orders for this letter to be delivered to Mr. Hamilton’s office yesterday?”
“You did, sir,” the young man confirmed.
“Why was it not delivered?”
“Mr. Hamilton wasn’t there, sir. He left with his family for the country, or so Mr. Wolcott said. He did leave that for you, though, sir.” He gestured to the letter sitting underneath the returned correspondence. Hamilton’s familiar scrawl decorated the front, yesterday’s date in the upper corner.
“I see.” When the aide didn’t leave immediately, Washington shooed him away, reaching for Hamilton’s answer.
Cracking the wax seal, he unfolded the note and scanned it quickly. A perfectly ordinary update regarding the functioning of the Treasury. He nearly set it aside, ready to move on to something more pressing, when his eye caught the postscript: “Mrs. Hamilton joins me in extending Mrs. Washington and your family our compliments. We will soon be retiring with the children out to the country. I am exceedingly unwell and fear I may be in the early stages of the prevailing fever.”
Washington felt his heartbeat quicken.
The bell rang out in the distance.
No. Surely not.
Hamilton had always had a worryingly delicate disposition. The memory of the boy huddled near the fire in army headquarters, a handkerchief in one hand and blanket wrapped round his shoulders as he worked at some important correspondence, came easily to Washington’s mind. How many times over the years had he watched one of his other aides fighting to test Hamilton’s temperature or attempting to force tea upon the sickly Colonel?
While that delicate disposition may have left him vulnerable to the prevailing fever, it could just as easily mean he’d fallen prey to some other, less serious illness, could it not? Perhaps Hamilton was experiencing merely an autumnal fever, or, more likely yet, simply the effects of stress. And besides, Rush had the fever well in hand, did he not? Hamilton was one of the most senior men in the government; he wouldn’t be left to rot in the streets like those other unfortunate souls.
His imagination conjured the scene for one horrible moment: Hamilton sprawled out in the alleyway by the Treasury building, pale and still; horses whinnying as people flew past on the nearby street, desperate to get out of the city; flies buzzing curiously around the body.
He closed his eyes, shaking away the image.
That wouldn’t happen. Couldn’t happen. No reason for panic. No reason for his heart to be stuck in his throat as it was. He took a long, deep breath. Pushing the letter aside, he reached for fresh paper and set down his quill.
He read over the note when he’d finished, pleased he’d been able to express concern without undue panic. The invitation to dine at three o’clock that afternoon with Mrs. Hamilton was perhaps too hopeful, but, oh, if the boy would only come and relieve the pit of dread now building in his chest.1 Sending the letter off immediately with the rest of his finished letters, he sat back at his desk and started on the next letter in his heap. He could do nothing but wait and hope.
Not an hour later, he heard a soft rap upon his office door. “George?”
“Come in, Patsy,” he said without bothering to look up.
“I’ve just had a note,” Martha said. “From Mrs. Hamilton, thanking us for the invitation.”
Relief swept over him. “Yes, yes. I invited her and Alex to dine with us today. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“George.” The note of fear in her voice sent his heart up into his throat all over again.
“What?”
“It’s Alex.” She stepped closer to him, her face full of compassion. “He’s ill, George. He has the fever.”
He shook his head, though the news should hardly have been a surprise. “An autumnal fever, perhaps. He’s usually poorly this time of year, poor lad. I’m sure he’ll be—”
“No, George.”
“He’s…but….” The words trailed off into nothing, the cocoon of denial cracking around him. “Patsy.”
Martha’s arms wrapped around him in a comforting embrace. “Eliza says he’s a bit better today. More lucid than he was last night, at least. An old friend of his is helping him through, a Doctor Stevens. I’ve sent over three bottles of our aged wine, and three more of our better bottles. And I told her to write to us, or Mrs. Emerson after we’ve gone to the country, if they need anything more. I wasn’t sure what else to offer. The poor boy. And she’s like to run herself ragged looking after him. We can only pray she doesn’t’ fall victim herself.”2
He felt Martha turn her face into his hair, in need of taking comfort as much as she was giving it. Her maternal feelings towards the pair easily rivaled his paternal affections, he knew. He patted at her arm, the horror of her news still sinking in.
“Doctor Rush isn’t with him?”
“No. Doctor Stevens,” she repeated. “A childhood friend of Alex’s, according to Eliza.”
He stood up.
Martha’s arms slipped away from him, though she remained close by his side. “George?”
“I’m going over there.”
“You can’t.” Her hands gripped at the lapels of his coat.
“He’s sick. I have to do something.”
“It’s nearly an hour’s ride out to Fair Hill where they’re staying. And what will you do when you get there? Nothing but risk your own health. He has his wife to mop his brow, and a doctor to see him well.”
“I have to do something,” he repeated, desperation creeping into his voice.
“We must put our faith in God now. There’s nothing else to be done.” Her hands clutched tighter at the fabric of his coat. “I can’t lose you to this plague, George. I wouldn’t survive it.”
He remained standing up, purposeless, even as he understood she was right. Outside the still open window, he heard the dreadful bell clanging in the distance as the cart circled past the house once again. His eyes squeezed shut against forming moisture.
“Bring out your dead!”