Page 35

“It might be anyone’s daughter,” said Hamilton, which was palpably untrue. Elma Sands wasn’t anyone’s daughter. She was the illegitimate child of goodness only knew who, which made her, in a way, no one’s daughter.

Rather like Hamilton.

“By that logic, might not Levi Weeks be anyone’s brother? The boy is personable; the girl is dead. Witnesses—many witnesses—saw her threaten to drain a bottle of laudanum.”

“If a thing is to be done, it should be done right,” said Hamilton stubbornly. And by right, as Aaron knew all too well, Hamilton meant his way. If there was one thing of which Hamilton was assured, it was that he was right and everyone else was wrong, co-counsel be damned. “To merely acquit the boy isn’t enough; we ought to bring the guilty to justice.”

“Unless,” Aaron pointed out, “the girl was the means of her own destruction.”

Hamilton’s chin jutted out. His nose was very red in the cold and beginning to drip. “If the girl was the instrument of her own destruction then Weeks has nothing to fear by my investigations.”

It was truly impressive how quickly Hamilton had gone from inviting himself to participate in the case to taking charge of it. Or so he thought. Aaron was willing to allow him to think so. Up to a point.

It was a delicate balance. On the one hand, it was very useful to have Hamilton occupied. On the other. . . . It was well that the prosecution was being headed by Cadwallader Colden, who could be trusted to see only the obvious, and that only if it was put directly in front of him.

“My dear Hamilton, your eloquence has persuaded me.” In truth, it was less his eloquence, and more the chill, which was making itself felt beneath Aaron’s greatcoat, jacket, and waistcoat. His current lodgings were uninspiring, but they were warmer than the steps of the Stadt Huys. And there was work to be done, a great deal of work. “I believe I see the general’s sleigh.”

General Schuyler had sent his own sleigh to carry his son-in-law to the family homestead, as if Hamilton were an errant schoolboy being brought home.

“My regards to the general and Mrs. Schuyler.” Nothing annoyed people more than courtesy from a foe.

Hamilton looked at him uncertainly. “Might I offer you a ride to your lodgings?”

The poor man; the courage it took him to offer the hospitality of his father-in-law’s sleigh.

Aaron might be in debt to creditors from Philadelphia to Boston, but at least he was his own man. “The walk is short and the night is clear. I’ll see you here tomorrow.”

On nights like this, Albany was full of ghosts. If Aaron closed his eyes, he could be back nearly twenty years ago, in the large but inconvenient house to which he’d brought his Theo as his bride. They’d married here in Albany, he in his old coat, Theo in borrowed ribbons. Even the parson had been borrowed. They had been married in a double ceremony with Theo’s half sister Catherine and Dr. Joseph Browne.

But that was all in the past. Theo had been gone these six years now, and he refused to give way to mawkish sentimentality. Theo would have mocked him for it more than anyone, more even than he mocked himself.

The veil between past and present was too thin; he missed her unbearably.

It would pass.

There was a summation to write for tomorrow—let everyone see how cool and reasonable he could be compared to his excitable co-counsel—and lists to draw up of potential donors to his Republican faction. Oh yes, there was plenty of work to occupy him—and a letter to write to his Theodosia scolding her for not writing more frequently in his absence.

Aaron set his face against the wind, trudging down the road to his lodging house as a brightly lit sleigh jingled past him in the darkness.

Chapter Eleven

Mr. Williams testified that at the request of the Attorney-General, he had made an experiment in what time a man might drive a horse the most usual route from Ring’s to the Manhattan Well, and from there back again to Ezra Weeks’s down Barley-street, and that although the roads were bad, he performed it once in 15 minutes and once in 16, without going out of a trot.

—From Coleman’s report of the trial of Levi Weeks

New York City

February 24, 1800

Cadwallader pulled out his watch as the sleigh jingled to a stop just a few yards away from Ezra Weeks’s property.

John Williams, from the livery stable, stood up in the seat, shouting, “The time?”

“Fifteen minutes!” Cadwallader called back, and a cheer went up from the motley crowd of onlookers who had somehow assembled as John Williams and Sylvester Buskirk had raced a sleigh—as close in kind to Ezra Weeks’s as Cadwallader could find, pulled by a horse of similar power—from the Ring boardinghouse to the Manhattan Well to Ezra Weeks’s lumber yard.

He felt a moment of misgiving that this experiment had become so public. He knew it had always been a risk running it right under Weeks’s nose and had deliberately picked a day when he knew Weeks and his crew to be at James Cummings’s house. It had never occurred to him that the sight of a sleigh pounding ventre à terre down Barley Street, not once, but three times, might eventually draw a crowd. Some even clutched hot cups of mulled wine. Vendors had followed the sounds of excitement, turning Cadwallader’s sleigh trials into an impromptu public outing.

But he had the results he needed.