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Colden held on to the table with both hands, as if it were the only thing holding him upright. “No further questions,” he said.

The hands of the clock stood at a quarter past two in the morning.

“Gentlemen of the jury.” Aaron positioned himself in the center of the courtroom, letting them see him in contrast to Colden, calm, collected, unfazed. “I would call to your attention Hale’s guidance on presumptive evidence—which is all the assistant attorney general has to offer you in this case. In some cases, it is true, presumptive evidences go far to prove a person guilty, though there be no express proof, but it must be warily pressed—for it is better that five guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should die.”

Aaron lifted his candle and gestured with it toward Levi, putting a special emphasis on the word innocent.

“Your Honor.” Colden swayed, bumping into one of the tables as he attempted to approach the bench. “Your Honor, I move that we adjourn until tomorrow.”

“The testimony is done,” said Justice Lansing. “Only the summations remain.”

Colden made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I beg of you—I have not slept since the night before the trial began. I have been awake for forty-four hours and I am sinking beneath my fatigue. I beg of you, sir, let us adjourn until tomorrow.”

“I won’t sleep another night on that floor!” shouted one of the jurymen. “He gets to go home to his own bed! What about us!”

“Your Honor,” intervened Aaron. “These poor men have been separated from their homes and families for one night already. They have given generously of their time and attention. Must we ask of them a third day merely because the assistant attorney general failed to sleep?”

Besides, if they adjourned, it would give Hamilton time to pen a proper closing statement.

“Please—the prisoner’s counsel have yet to give their closing address—it might be hours. And then I have first to make my address to the jury. It won’t be until morning.” Sagging like a broken toy, Colden whispered, “I have not the strength to proceed further tonight.”

Hamilton strode forward. Unlike their opposing counsel, Hamilton showed no signs of fatigue. The candles stripped the years away, burnishing his hair, hiding the gray strands that had begun to appear among the red. It brought Aaron back twenty years.

Even then Hamilton had been an annoyance, General Washington’s pet, always assuming his opinion mattered more than anyone else’s and that any glory to be garnered should go solely to him.

“Your Honor,” said Hamilton, turning all the force of his charm toward the bench, “the defense requires no labored elucidation. The testimony speaks for itself. In deference to the lateness of the hour—and the fatigue of the assistant attorney general—the defense cedes our closing statement.”

It was a brilliant bit of bravado. No one would ever guess Hamilton’s generosity arose solely because he had no speech to give.

“The defense rests?” asked Lansing.

Hamilton looked straight at Burr. His lips turned up in a smug smile. “The defense rests.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

The jury then went out and returned in about five minutes with a verdict.

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

New York City

April 2, 1800

“But—the jury should hear observations on the testimony.” Mr. Colden clung to the bench like a drowning man to a spar.

“The jury has heard observations enough—more than enough,” Justice Lansing said with feeling. “We cannot in good conscience keep the jury together another night without the conveniences necessary to repose. Motion denied.”

Caty should have been tired—she hadn’t slept at all last night after that horrible conversation with Hope, only lain awake next to the snoring bulk of Elias—but she was fired by a terrible energy.

This was what she had been waiting for these past three months, ever since Levi had been taken up: the moment when they would finally have justice, when this could finally all be done.

The chief justice peered at the jury through the wavering light of the tapers on the bench. “Gentlemen of the jury, in the normal course of affairs, the arguments of counsel would allow this court time to adjust and arrange the mass of evidence that has been brought into view.”

Why couldn’t he just get on with it? Caty sat bolt upright on the edge of the bench, her whole body straining for that one word: guilty.

The justice appeared to be prepared to discourse at length. “It has, unexpectedly, become my duty to charge you immediately upon the close of testimony. I have agreed to this with reluctance, and only because I am persuaded that, despite that great mass of evidence, there are only a few points on which this case ought to be decided.”

On that, Caty agreed. Elma had said she was to be married to Levi. Elma had left with Levi. It was as simple as that.