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It was still too damnably hot, but Alexander Hamilton was well aware of how much worse it was outside the shade of this farmhouse that the General had requisitioned for his field command, with the open windows letting a gentle breeze brush across his neck above his collar as well as casting light onto his papers.
The General had finished speaking, and stood looking out of that window, hands clasped behind his back, apparently deep in contemplation as Alexander dipped his quill and continued to elaborate on his commander’s directions, the numbers and logistics that Washington needed appearing effortlessly in his flowing script without much thought. He finished and realised his mouth was somehow parched again; he permitted himself to drain the near-empty cup before setting down the pen and assuming a waiting posture.
“Hamilton,” the General rumbled.
“Sir.”
“I am not unaware of your proclivity for returning to work before you are fully well…”
“Have you complaint of my performance, sir?”
“I have not. However I have other aides who were not thrown from their horses, and who did not spend a night stricken ill by overheat and over-exertion. I am more than sensible of the courage and initiative you showed on the field of battle; and I am not such a fool that I cannot see you attempting to conceal the discomfort of your injuries.”
“It is only a little stiffness,” Alexander demurred quickly. “And there is a great deal yet to be done. I must write to Congress…”
“ I must write to Congress,” Washington growled, and Alexander pressed his lips together against the words that immediately bubbled up. Their communications with the Continental Congress might be signed with Washington’s name, but they used Alexander’s phrases, his arguments, sometimes even his strategies. There were times when he felt he held as much responsibility for this war as the General himself, and yet he held a courtesy rank without a command…
“Sir, if my actions on the field of battle yesterday impressed you…” he began.
“ No , Colonel Hamilton,” the General cut him off with a gesture before he could even finish, turning quickly, anger clear on his face. “And I will ascribe the inappropriate nature of your request to a lingering upset of your wits, if you will do yourself the courtesy of considering yourself dismissed until the morning.”
Alexander found himself somehow on his feet, glaring hotly up at his commander. He gritted his teeth, swallowed down a wave of bile, and deliberately lowered his gaze to the square of sunlight on the bare wooden boards by Washington’s boots. “Sir,” was all he could allow himself to say, before gathering up his materials with exquisite control, bowing in lieu of a salute, and leaving the room.
***
Everyone else was in the tavern, because of course they were. Not just the family, but what seemed like every officer in the army, spilling out across the hard-packed dirt and the shade of a few trees. He could see Lafayette gesturing animatedly in the centre of a group; undoubtedly the wine was flowing in celebration despite the time of day.
He did not feel in a celebratory mood, and Lafayette deserved the admiration he was clearly enjoying. No less, in honesty, did Washington himself, who had turned the rout with such indomitable constancy and courage. If only he showed the same qualities of leadership and judgement off the field. And yet he had given Lee the lead, given that egotistical upstart Burr command of a full brigade though his rank was no higher than Alexander’s own, given Alexander himself only the role of a liaison, however greatly he knew he had exceeded his position.
No, he was tired and in no mood to join that noisy throng, nor to drink large amounts of wine that would undoubtedly turn his stomach. Especially as there was so much work to be done.
Hamilton closed his eyes briefly and conjured up the reports in his mind’s eye. He suspected that although they had been left in possession of the field their own casualties were just as high as those of the British, many of them due to the inescapable heaviness of the heat rather than enemy action. Even almost two days after the battle the reports were still incomplete, though… he mentally riffled through the papers, and was darkly satisfied to realise that Burr’s brigade (brigade! The man only had the rank to command a regiment!) had not yet sent in any figures.
He could - entirely unofficially - walk across to that encampment and remind whoever was currently in charge there of the duties due to their commander. It would be a useful thing to do. And scarcely work at all.
***
This was not the first time Aaron Burr had been surrounded by corpses.
The heat of the day had been growing for some time, and yet occasionally turned into a chill that ran through him like a December wind, like touching a hot stove and feeling burned and frozen all at once.
These corpses were decently wrapped, lying in a neat row rather than in broken disarray that was hard to interpret as human. Only a few left, now, at the side of a growing series of furrows, freshly-turned earth that would hopefully one day sprout markers. Another thing to see to, later.
Burr tossed down his shovel and heaved himself out of the grave. For a moment his aching head swam, and he took several deep breaths before forcing himself to his feet. “Jenkins,” he called, and one of the living men scattered exhaustedly among the dead groaned, got to his feet and slid his hands under the ankles of one of the wrapped shapes. Burr walked across and worked his arms under the armpits, dragging the weight upwards with a groan. The rigor was passing off already, the torso limp, and there was a pain in his chest as he struggled to lift the awkward weight. For a moment he felt a flash of cold again, staggering with the once-astute Montgomery’s limp body across his back, head dangling against his ribs, blood on his coat. The field wavered before his eyes and he blinked it back into focus. There was blood on his coat again. He would need to wash it, after.
Jenkins sat down at the edge of the grave, more of a controlled fall. Burr knew he had driven his men hard, had learned in Quebec that there were incapacities that no words and deeds could reach across and spur into action. He lifted the shovel and began to turn the crumbling earth back into the hole he had dug, clay-red on cloth white as snow.
***
Hamilton had expected Burr to be in the tavern, invisible in the crowd. Or perhaps at leisure in his tent, reading Cicero while disdaining paperwork exactly as he had in his brief and unsuccessful tenure as clerk. Not filling in a grave while a few of his men sat around him in attitudes of exhaustion.
“Colonel Burr, are you quite well?” he called in a tone of incredulity as he set off quickly across the open ground, momentarily forgetting his injured ankle.
Burr paused, slicing the shovel blade deep into the ground and leaning for an almost imperceptible second on the handle before turning to greet his fellow officer. “Colonel Hamilton,” he said neutrally, his voice ragged. “Quite well, as you see. And busy. Has the General orders for me?”
Hamilton knew Burr mainly from his letters; erudite and importunate, full of demands and suggestions that barely masked contempt for Washington’s abilities. In his time clerking for the General he had been a self-possessed enigma, with the dress and manners of a gentleman but no apparent interest in the company of his peers.
A dishevelled Burr, dark hair hanging in a ribbonless tangle, his uniform torn at the coat and stained at the knees, was a new and unwelcome experience, but Alexander was never at a loss for words.
“You are clearly not well, sir. Where are your surgeons?”
“Resting. They have been working night and day with the injured ,” and Burr’s clipped emphasis was as clear a brush-off as possible between gentlemen and equals. He waited politely as Hamilton approached, one hand resting on the shovel.
Alexander glanced at that hand, noting the whitened tension of the knuckles. He quickly looked back at Burr’s face, squinting to sharpen his sight as he registered the dry pallor, the way the lieutenant-colonel’s gaze seemed to drift behind him for a moment before the amber-brown eyes focused again. Making a split-second decision, pain lanced through his leg from his ankle as he broke into a limping run that was just barely fast enough to catch Burr by the shoulders and cushion his fall as he collapsed.
***
Consciousness emerged slowly from a filthy swamp of dreams. Every heartbeat seemed to pulse his brain against his skull; he wondered whether it might at some point crack like an egg and give him some relief.
Beyond the remorseless pounding there was another sound, an occasional rustle that was somehow too sharp to be borne, that tore straight through his head from ear to ear, preventing him sinking back into unconsciousness.
After an indeterminate length of confused drifting the annoying noise suddenly came into focus as the familiar soft susurrus of a page being turned. Very, very cautiously he turned his head towards the sound and opened his eyes, then quickly slitted them as the glare of the light seemed to burn into the back of his skull.
Alexander Hamilton, of all people, was sitting on a canvas stool beside his bed, a large volume resting on one crossed leg, russet hair drawn back into a neat queue, dapper despite the threadbare state of his uniform.
Burr closed his eyes again, the pain in his head suddenly acute as his muscles tensed with humiliation.
He must have made some noise, or perhaps Alexander hadn’t been quite as engrossed as he seemed, for the rustling stopped and there was instead a slight creak and the soft thud of a book being laid gently down on a wooden surface.
“Colonel Burr,” Alexander’s light voice said, very softly. “Are you awake?”
Burr considered how to answer without triggering unnecessary pain. “I…” he began without opening his eyes, and the intended words caught at his dry throat and triggered a convulsion of coughing.
Immediately there was an arm around his shoulders, steadying him. “Here. You need water.” Cool metal tilted wetly against his lips and he sipped to soothe his throat, suddenly discovering that he was thirsty. The cup was removed before he could take more than a few gulps, and he felt himself eased back against the thin pillow as the fit subsided.
“My thanks, sir,” he said carefully, giving up and opening his eyes since clearly pain was not something he was going to be able to avoid.
Hamilton was kneeling beside his cot, frowning, his blue eyes intent. “I have spoken with your men, sir,” he said, that light, flexible voice still deliberately soft. “They say that you have been in a kind of phrenzy since the battle; that you tended the wounded with your own hands when your physicians insisted upon rest, and that when there were no more wounds to bind you drove yourself unmercifully into the pitiful task of interring the dead.”
Hamilton’s face went briefly hazy as though a flurry of snow had passed between them, and Burr felt lightheaded as if he had been drinking too much wine. He wasn’t sure there had been a question among all those words. “And I still have it to do,” was what he intended to say, but somehow the words ran into one another.
“Colonel Burr, I am neither your commander nor your physician, but it seems necessary that I take it upon myself to stand in proxy for them both. I shall send to the General to tell him that you are injured, and then it shall be his command that you rest.”
“That doesn’t make any…” The cot felt as though it was spinning, and Burr clenched his fingers on the frame.
“Burr? Burr!” Hamilton’s voice sounded urgent, but Burr was suddenly trying too hard not to throw up to respond. He managed to roll over onto his side as his stomach convulsed, and the last thing he was aware of before he fainted again was Alexander’s hands steadying his shoulders.
***
“Nom de nom,” Alexander cursed in the fashion of Lafayette as he settled the unconscious man back on the cot and wiped his clammy face, genuine worry now gnawing in his belly. There was something more wrong here than overwork.
Something even more wrong that nobody had noticed the lieutenant-colonel driving himself mercilessly for almost two days without food or rest. Had the man no friends?
He quickly ran through actions and priorities in his mind and turned to Burr’s desk; as tidily set up as his own, he had noticed earlier. The man could hardly object to using what was so readily at hand, in the circumstances. He penned two quick notes, folded them, and limped to the flap of the tent, where he immediately came almost nose to nose with several rumpled soldiers.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked hotly, putting one hand across the entrance to bar any attempt at intrusion.
There was a sudden set of belated salutes. “Colonel Hamilton, sir; our apologies,” said one of the men. “Is the Colonel going to be all right? We thought he was only a little stunned, especially when he had such energy after…”
Alexander had no intention of undermining a regiment’s - brigade’s - morale by admitting that he had no formed idea of what was even wrong with their commanding officer, and lying was something that only occurred to him much later.
“I need this message carried to the General,” he briskly diverted them instead, slipping a paper into the hand of one of the soldiers. “And this one to Lieutenant-Colonel Laurens. Now,” he addressed the remaining man, “tell me to what you refer when you say that Colonel Burr was stunned. What befell him?”
***
Something was pulling uncomfortably at his collar. Burr tried to slap it away.
“Lie still, please, Lieutenant-Colonel,” Hamilton’s voice said, sounding oddly cold. “I need to examine your injuries.”
“I am not injured,” Burr said with careful clarity, cautiously opening his eyes. “I do not desire your assistance, Lieutenant-Colonel, so please cease pawing at me.”
“Lieutenant-Colonel,” Hamilton said acidly, sitting back on his heels with an air of dissipating patience, “Somehow nobody vouchsafed to me, nor to anybody else including, I assume, your own physicians, that you were struck by a cannon ball that killed your horse. I studied medicine with Dr. Clossy before I took up arms, though I dare say that it does not take a very great knowledge of that art to realise that being, if you will forgive a repetition that the Roman orators would disdain, struck by a cannon ball, is likely to result in some insult to the body that might be classed as injury.
“I am aware that I may not be the assistant you would have chosen, but I have the very great advantage over all others that I am present and in a case to offer assistance. And I would take it as a very great favour if you would do me the honour of permitting me to attend on you, because I have some small prejudice against letting a man die of unseen injuries when that can be prevented.”
Burr, having stopped listening rather less than halfway through Hamilton’s wordy rant, stared fixedly at the ceiling of his tent but grudgingly twisted a little to allow the General’s favourite to remove his jacket and shirt. He still felt dizzy and sick, but was too overwhelmingly tired to protest at Hamilton’s high-handed assumption of his care, or explain that he had barely been stunned for a moment.
“Does it hurt if I press here?”
“Yes, Hamilton, it hurts,” he said shortly. “My horse was killed by a cannon ball. I took some bruis…” a sudden wave of dizziness rose up inside his head, and he closed his eyes and gripped the sides of the cot, fighting to stay focused.
When the roaring in his ears receded, he became aware that Hamilton was examining his head with careful fingers.
“Did you take a blow to the skull?”
“Possibly.” Burr tried to think back. The charge, the order to retreat, the plunge through the swamp to retrieve his men, the stuttering roar of the artillery, falling… splashing… “Cold,” he whispered. Blood on his coat, the bodies around him, half-invisible in the whirling snow, the need to get… to get… “Have to get him back…”
“Burr!” There was sudden sharp concern in Hamilton’s voice. Burr returned suddenly to the present, blinked at Hamilton’s face bent close over his own. “Are you back with me?”
“Unfortunately,” Burr said with reflexive hostility. But Hamilton’s face relaxed, the smile lines around his mouth deepening slightly. He did not think that Hamilton had ever smiled at him before, and he could not imagine why he might be doing so now.
“There is a contusion on your skull. I cannot feel any damage to the bone, but it is my estimation that your wits have been shaken about more than a little and may take some days to fully settle. Whether that contributed to your insistence on driving yourself into exhaustion digging graves, I cannot be sure…”
“I am responsible for the welfare of my troops.”
“You take too much upon yourself, Lieutenant-Colonel.”
Tired, in pain, and humiliated by his weakness, Burr completely misread the tone of Hamilton’s light voice. “I take only what I have been given, Lieutenant-Colonel, and that without the rank to do so with any effectiveness.”
He had spoken too emphatically; he forced back a groan as pain suddenly exploded behind his eyes.
“At least you…” Hamilton swallowed whatever else he had been about to say. There was a rare moment of precious silence. “You must take some water, and then rest,” he changed the subject. “I will ensure that your brigade is seen to.”
Had there been an emphasis on the word ‘brigade’? Burr wasn’t sure. He lay very still, closing his eyes, breathing lightly and carefully, trying to allow the aches in his side and head to subside. There were some sounds of movement, the short gurgle of pouring water.
“Let me help you sit up a little,” Hamilton said, at least waiting for Burr’s reluctant assent before he slipped an arm around his shoulders and raised Burr’s head enough to take a few gulps from the cup held to his lips. “Now sleep as much as your body needs. That will recover you more than anything else can.”
“You make an unexpected nursemaid.” But sleep was a very welcome prospect. And if Hamilton wanted to dig graves, it must be about his turn…
Once he relaxed his determined grip on consciousness, it took Burr only seconds to fall into an exhausted doze.
***
“Ham?” Laurens poked his head around the entrance flap. “What in the name of…”
“Ssh, shh…” Hamilton gestured his friend quickly to silence as he got up and limped to join him.
“What in the name of the Apostles are you doing in Aaron Burr’s tent playing doctor when you’re on the sick list?” Laurens said in a much quieter voice but without much diminution of incredulity.
“What a real doctor would do if there were any to be had,” Hamilton snapped equally quietly. “I may not like the man, but I can hardly deny that his conduct on the field has been admirable, even if I begin to think it due more to concussion than to rational reflection. And since His Excellency currently has no use for me, I may as well make myself useful here.”
“You cannot just pick up a command as though it were a shell on the beach,” Laurens told him with some vehemence, and Alexander blinked in astonishment.
“I am not …”
“Oh, come, Ham.” Laurens grasped his wrist and drew him out of the tent, which could only mean he was anticipating an argument.
Alexander frowned at him. “I promised the Colonel I would see to his men,” he said before Laurens could begin. “Do you see anyone better suited to doing so?”
“Of course not,” Laurens said patiently. “If anyone knows your ability even better than you, it is I. And if anyone knows your ambition even better than I, it is Colonel Burr. I beg of you, my dear, do not spike his guns again.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Colonel Burr has had every opportunity of advancement…”
“You have never liked the man, Ham. And I know he has been high-handed in his correspondence, begging the General for command…”
“Which he has had!” Hamilton shook his hand free from Laurens and gestured about them. “A full brigade with additional support, John, and him only a Lieutenant-Colonel, no higher than you or I!”
“And how many nights have I and Lafayette and the rest of the family spent listening to you complain about the responsibility you shoulder without the General giving you rank to match it?”
Hamilton paused with his hand in midair, then let it drop to his side, his fingers rubbing together absently as he considered this new idea.
“He came to us from Quebec as the northern campaign stalled,” he muttered to himself as he started to pace.
“Please don't do that,” Laurens said wearily, ”You're not even meant to be on your feet.”
Alexander flashed him a quick sideways smile. “You know how I think by now, John,” he said as he briefly clapped his friend on the arm. His thoughts tumbled over one another and he hurried to place them in the correct order, his feet trying to keep up with his mind.
“He left Arnold on poor terms. His Excellency did not want to take him on, and rightly; the man tried to dictate strategy…” Alexander’s eyes scanned sightlessly over the air as he tried to visualise the correspondence that he had seen. “It was good strategy,” he admitted, “But ill-timed and honestly, my dear,” he looked across at Laurens who was now walking beside him with an air of put-upon patience, “The last time I read such contempt between lines, I had written them.”
The twingeing of his ankle was making him feel slightly sick, but it was more important to think this through.
“General Putnam wrote well of him after the retreat from New York. We were short of good officers. His Excellency refused to allow me to… And, now that you make me think about it, he did not promote Burr either. I think eventually he sent him back under Putnam, and then I forget… I know that his regiment joined us at Valley Forge. Ow.”
“Really, my dear.” Laurens proffered his arm, and Alexander allowed himself to lean on it for a moment. The sun really was very hot.
“I did not say you were wrong,” he not-quite-apologised to his friend. “Only that I need to think. John, you must admit the man's arrogance. His enlisted men were better fed than we were, that winter. The army was in need and he offered us his scraps.”
“His supply raids were very successful,” Laurens noted neutrally.
“Nom de nom. Yes, of course,” Alexander recognised without John having to say it. “His supply raids, supplying his men first. Some of us had an entire army to equip.” He stared across the open ground, for a moment seeing whirling snow in the shimmering haze. “Always it came down to money, and ours would have been worthless even if Congress had sent it.”
Sometime that winter, with men dying all about him of cold, of sickness, of hunger, he had stopped waiting for Washington to dictate. Instead he had written letter after letter to different men, a different argument for each, the most persuasive words he could muster, trying desperately to somehow manipulate a broken system and swearing he would not grapple with one again.
He wondered whether Burr felt the same.
***
Burr had presumed that once he began to recover, he would not see Alexander Hamilton again. And he was recovering.
Perhaps not as quickly as he would like…
Burr lay on his cot, staring up at the familiar stained canvas in frustrated exhaustion. He didn’t mind a lack of sleep; he had never needed over-much. But to be so fatigued, and still to lie awake night after night, while the General waited for him to be well enough for the promotion he knew he could not now be refused; that was insupportable.
“Colonel Burr, sir!” called a familiar light voice from outside the canvas. Because as if it were not enough that he could not conceal his continuing infirmity, that upstart Hamilton must be continuing witness to it.
“Please enter, Colonel Hamilton,” he said politely, because he must, and hurried to stand up to greet him, the swift movement causing a dizziness that he firmly ignored.
Hamilton was elegant as ever, clean-shaven, his long reddish hair bound in a queue as always. At least Burr knew that this time he matched him, his own dark hair sleek against his scalp, his new coat tailored to his slight frame and showing well by comparison to Hamilton’s faded and slightly loose one. They had all lost weight over the campaign.
Those intense blue eyes darted across him, and Burr raised one eyebrow slightly.
“I am pleased to see you much recovered, Colonel,” Hamilton acknowledged, although his voice contained more politeness than actual pleasure.
“As you see.” Burr waited.
“Do you still suffer from spells of faintness, and difficulty in sleeping?”
“My physicians tell me I shall be fully recovered soon,” Burr parried smoothly. “Do you know if the General has made any decision on my next appointment?”
“No more than he has on my own, sir,” was the entirely unexpected answer. Before Burr could respond, Hamilton continued. “I know our intercourse has rarely been cordial, Colonel, although you have always exhibited the manners of a gentleman. While we are both at some leisure, I had wondered whether a more frank exchange of views might lead to an improved mutual understanding. It has struck me forcibly of late that we may have more in common than I had appreciated from our initial introduction.”
Was the man trying to make a friend of him? For what end? Burr’s first reaction to the quick-spoken words was offence; but he could not deny he was also intrigued. And if Washington’s favourite was willing to forgo his customary opposition…
“By all means, sit down.” Burr gestured to the stool, and as Hamilton sat he fetched two cups and filled them with wine. For one moment his vision rippled with the surface of the liquid, and he was seeing his reflection not in claret but in slowly clotting blood, pooling in an impossible amount from too many men.
His mind cleared and he gave his head a quick shake as if throwing off a passing thought. He sat down on his cot, picked up one of the cups, and lifted his brows enquiringly. “So what is it you would like to discuss, Lieutenant-Colonel?”
“Do you feel yourself slighted by the commands that you have been given since you left His Excellency’s personal service?”
Hamilton had a reputation for straightforwardness, but Burr was still shocked that the man could be so blunt.
“His Excellency knows my abilities,” he temporised urbanely. “If I had expected greater preferment in the past, I nevertheless hope that my performance at Monmouth may give the General reassurance of my ability to lead in the future.”
“That was no answer, Colonel,” Hamilton pressed, his delicate features looking suddenly hawk-like.
“Well, what would you have me say, Hamilton?” Burr asked, placing his cup down so that he could spread his hands. “I have made no secret that I believe my service has deserved better reward. I have never failed to offer my advice where I have thought it useful, and usually it has been disregarded. No decent man could be easy with such an evaluation, but I serve at the will of the General and have no recourse nor desire but to continue to do so - and to trust that all the talent and courage a man can demonstrate will eventually prove a worth equal to my ambitions.”
Heat kindled in his chest at the thought of how many times he had flawlessly executed an inferior strategy, let down by those who should have led… The anger caught in his throat and it was suddenly unexpectedly difficult to breathe past it. He picked up his cup again and sipped the wine to cover the moment. Fortunately Hamilton was frowning at the table, rather than looking at his face.
“I have made no secret of my own ambitions,” the General's favourite said, looking up again and directly at him, and Burr once again had no idea where this ‘frank exchange of views’ was going. “I need a command, but I have not been given a role in battle since Princeton and nor is there any prospect of one in the future. His Excellency refuses me.”
“Your work…” Burr began cautiously, but Hamilton cut him off with a vehement gesture.
“Do not think me innocent of the importance of my work in this military endeavour,” the slender man said emphatically, his eyes meeting Burr’s own, a deeper blue than his coat. “I know that I am the General's will written in ink. When he needs numbers, I calculate them. When he needs eloquence, I pen it. I know the prices of every loaf of bread, every horseshoe needed by this army, and how far our necessities outstrip our means. You see I offer you no pretence at modesty, Colonel Burr.”
“That is very clear, Colonel Hamilton, to an extent that could almost be considered offensive.”
“Perhaps so, though it was not my intent.” Hamilton flapped a hand in mollification, straightening up a little. “My point is merely that all of that - talent and courage, were your words - is so much chaff without the recognition of rank. And see?” He smiled, suddenly, and Burr was surprised at how it transformed his face to almost sweetness. “We are in the same position.”
Burr had to think about that. His head was aching again; he sipped his wine to give himself a moment. “And what exactly does this mutual understanding change, Hamilton?” he asked tiredly, deciding to cut through the niceties himself for once.
“You may have thought me your enemy, sir, and at times I may have, from inattention and misunderstanding, done you the disservice of an enemy, though I assure you it was never my intent. But I am not your enemy, and I had far rather do you the services of a friend.”
The point of light from the candle on the desk suddenly seemed very bright, stabbing into Burr’s eyes and making his vision swim a little. He blinked to clear it. “If you have a desire to be my friend, Colonel Hamilton, then I will certainly make no objection.”
“I am very glad to hear it, and I will be even happier to hear you continue to call me Hamilton, as my friends do.”
Burr caught the ironic lift of one eyebrow, realised that Hamilton had noticed the slips in his address, and actually laughed. “I will be very content to do so, Hamilton . And I expect you will do me the return favour of referring to me as Burr.” He reached out his hand to the slender, intense man, registering a little too late the slight trembling in his fingers. But Alexander seemed not to notice as he simply smiled, clasped Burr’s hand in his own, and shook it firmly.
“Burr.” He drained his cup and stood, and Burr followed suit. “You will please do me the honour of calling upon His Excellency’s field headquarters, whenever you feel the slightest desire to be social. We of the family are so much together, we wear out one another’s company.”
“Just so.” Burr lifted the tent flap to let Hamilton out, before returning to his cot wondering what exactly had just happened. To his even greater surprise, he did not have to wonder for long before sleep claimed him.
***
“Mon ami,” Lafayette said softly, his eyes on the chessboard between Burr and Laurens, “Burr is a very clever fellow, and I do not deny it is pleasant to have another friend who can converse with me in a civilised tongue, but you do know that he is not well?”
Hamilton finished his wine and decided against pouring any more. “I know,” he said.
Burr hid it well, but in the time of their closer acquaintance Alexander had noticed the way his face would still occasionally become a little drawn with pain; the way his hands sometimes began to tremble before Burr found something to occupy them; the late nights and early mornings; worst of all, the way Burr sometimes seemed to go somewhere else for a few moments before coming back into focus in the present.
“And does the General know?”
“I do not believe we have ever discussed it.”
“Petit lion, you have never before shirked a responsibility, even such an unsavoury one. The General is considering assignments even now.”
“You are asking me to betray my friend.”
“Your friend or your army, mon ami.”
“Neither of those options is acceptable.”
“And yet they are all the options that you have, unless you have the ability to pull a third out of the air.” Lafayette mimed the action with one hand.
At the table, Laurens moved his bishop threateningly and Burr, relaxed and unhurried, shifted the awkward knight that had looked so much like a mistake earlier. “Check.”
“Wait, how…”
“Would you like to reexamine the last few moves?” Burr asked courteously. “Or would you prefer to return after the checkmate I will have you in in another three?”
“A third option out of the air,” Hamilton said thoughtfully. “Well, if that’s all that’s needed…”
Lafayette laughed softly. “And do you yet have any idea what that third option will be, mon cher?”
“No.” Hamilton sat up, mind suddenly racing. “But it seems I have about three chess moves to think of one.”
***
By the time Burr had finished Laurens off, Hamilton had returned, as he so often did, to studying, scanning the pages of one of the huge, heavy volumes that he seemed so fond of.
Lafayette and Laurens sighed with a long-suffering air, bid Burr polite farewells, and went upstairs, Laurens giving Hamilton a friendly clap on the shoulder as he left. Hamilton raised one hand in absent response without his eyes ever ceasing to flicker across the dense print.
Burr had occasionally considered asking to borrow that particular tome; he had an idea that mercantile interests would flourish after the war, and Hamilton clearly believed the same. But merely the idea of reading two volumes of instruction in trade and commerce seemed to bring back his headaches and fatigue in force. He had no idea how Alexander stood the tedium after long days of clerical work.
So instead he finished his wine and started to stand.
“Burr.”
He paused and turned; Hamilton lifted a finger in a silent request for him to wait a moment, then finished his sentence, closed the volume, and sat looking at him with a considering gaze.
“Do I have a beetle in my hair, Hamilton?” Burr inquired, a little sharply.
“Unlikely, I believe they were all served up at dinner.” Against his will, Burr felt the corners of his mouth crease in a slight smile.
“Then what is it?”
“What do you think of His Excellency’s proposed strategy?”
“And how would I know His Excellency's strategy?” This had been a pleasant evening up until now; annoyance flooded through Burr at Hamilton's insistence on always pushing.
“While I honestly have no idea how you would penetrate the precautions of confidentiality around the General's councils, somehow I have no doubt that you have.” Hamilton rested his chin on both hands as he regarded Burr with that unnervingly focused gaze. “You would make an excellent intelligence officer.”
Burr made a cutting gesture with one hand. “There is no glory to be gained in intelligence work.” He dropped back to rest his hip on the bench, his upper body half-turned to face his… possibly… friend. “Our preparations are for a campaign against Clinton in New York. I have some affection for the idea; it is one I myself urged some time past…” His suggestion had not even been dignified with a response. He tapped the fingers of one hand on the table in a staccato beat. “Except that the British, having found that we can stand toe to toe with them in a full engagement, will move to the South, where they will be able to rampage at will with little resistance.”
“So you disagree with His Excellency’s plans?” Hamilton’s voice was neutral, but his expression was hawklike, his eyes hooded in the candlelight.
“I will obey His Excellency’s plans,” Burr returned, the relaxation he had enjoyed this evening ebbing away into the familiar slight tension of control. “I am very familiar with New York, and if the General sends me there I will make every effort to furnish his plans with success.”
“That wasn’t an answer, Burr.”
“It is strange, Lieutenant-Colonel, that you should address me in the manner of a friend while offering the less than friendly attentions of attempting to provoke me into inappropriate criticism of our commanding officer.” Shivers ran through his body, and he could feel his hands beginning to tremble. Hamilton’s eyes glanced down only briefly, but a faint vertical line appeared between his brows and Burr knew the man had noticed. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to remain in an attitude of apparent relaxation.
“Forgive me this, Burr,” Hamilton said in a strangely changed tone that made Burr suddenly wary. “And if your commanding officer ordered you into a situation that you believed to be militarily insupportable?”
The room suddenly seemed very close, the wooden walls pressing in about them. Walls that could hide anything behind them. The candlelight flickered; was that a glint of metal?
“I like to think…” Burr attempted to begin, but his voice seemed breathless and very far away. Light, damned light, that was what had given them away… “Douse those lights,” he said sharply, knowing it was already too late. Springing up he turned, seeking the General, knowing it was imperative to pull him down before…
Someone grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms, and Burr twisted to throw him off.
“Burr, stop!” the man holding him snapped quickly in an unmistakable tone of command that Burr recognised as high-handed and misguided.
“The guns,” he hissed. “We are exposed.”
The hands let him go. “Where are you, Burr?” the familiar light voice asked with a strange intensity.
He… Something wasn’t right. None of this was right. He felt confused, and he was never confused. “I… where am I?” he returned the question, aware of his heart pounding, his breath ripping at his chest, the sweat breaking out on his torso.
“Elizabethtown. A farmhouse. You are not on the field of battle, Burr, no matter where your mind seems to have taken you. Sit down.”
Burr hesitated for a moment then, for lack of other impetus, sat. Smooth wood. The edge of a table. Pale hands, trembling in his lap. He watched them distantly as the snow in his mind cleared. For a few moments he only breathed, as evenly as he could, in and out. Then, finally, he forced himself to straighten his back and look directly up at Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton never could conceal anything, and his appalled expression was all that Burr had dreaded.
***
Hamilton felt himself almost as tense as Burr clearly was. The man’s face was white and defiant; neither of them were under any illusions about what had just happened.
“So now we know where we stand,” Alexander said at last. He wanted to drop down onto the bench beside Burr, but instead he whirled and started to frantically pace the short length of the bench, tapping his fingers together, peripherally aware of Burr slowly standing and watching him. After a few moments he stopped again, whirling to face Burr. He reached out and grasped him by the upper arm, and Burr jolted.
“This will not do,” Alexander decided.
“No, Hamilton,” Burr said in a bitter tone that failed to clarify whether he used the name out of friendship or fury, “I am very aware that this will not do. I am far from insensible of the consequences should I… suffer a lapse on the field. You may rely on my honour as a soldier to present His Excellency with my resignation at his first convenience.”
“I cannot imagine for a moment that that is what you desire.” Hamilton glared into Burr’s stubborn face, faintly surprised to register that their eyes were at the same level. He had somehow thought Burr was taller.
“Do not be ridiculous.”
“Then we should proceed.”
“Proceed?” Burr raised one eyebrow, a dangerous note in his deep voice.
“To rid you of this affliction.” Alexander put one hand on Burr’s shoulder. “I will bear the consequences of my actions, but I did not provoke you without cause or intent.”
“You…” Burr sat down suddenly, slumping with his elbows on his knees, rubbing both temples with his forefingers.
Alexander dropped down beside him. “Where did you go in your thoughts, Burr?” he asked softly. “What is this poison we need to draw?”
He was not sure that Burr would answer him. Their acquaintance was too new and far too fragile to be tested in this way. But the man had pushed himself through injury and exhaustion; he would push himself through a conversation if he knew it necessary.
“Quebec,” the other man said at last, his voice even and controlled. “Since Monmouth, I have been seeing Quebec. And given the strategy by which you chose to provoke me, I am sure I do not need to explain further.”
“I am aware of the engagement as it was reported here.” Which was not at all the same thing, and Burr must know it. “The attack failed, and you attempted to retrieve the body of General Montgomery.” And, because Alexander had read the reports, he added, “It was a foolish plan, with very little prospect of success. I can only assume it was the result of some desperation.”
Burr laughed softly. “Yes. The weather was declining to cooperate, and our army was falling apart. That is not an excuse; there were other options.”
“I would have insisted upon taking them.”
“As did I, Hamilton.”
“Arguments of logic and reason...”
The other man glanced at him sideways with an expression of utter disgust. “And have you found those so effective with Congress?”
There should have been a way. Alexander was certain it must have been possible. And yet, at Valley Forge it had been Burr who had found a way, while he himself had expended all his eloquence to pitifully little avail.
“Will you tell me what happened?” he said carefully.
“I do not feel well, Hamilton,” Burr said harshly in response.
The man did not look well. His face was colourless, sweat slicking escaped strands of dark hair to his cheek. His eyes were closed, and he was swaying a little where he sat.
“A moment, then?”
“A moment.”
Which meant he intended to tell him.
Alexander put one arm around Burr’s shoulders. The other man tensed briefly at the touch, but did not pull away. “When we build our new nation,” Alexander said conversationally, “It will not do to have a government like the current Congress, that takes weeks to decide upon an idea and then can only beg the states for the resources to put it into practice. It is all but impossible to prosecute a war on this principle; far less to enact legislation, raise necessary moneys, deliver justice.” He could feel the movement of Burr’s ribcage as he breathed, how it grew slowly less uneven.
“I do not know how many have thought beyond this damned war, beyond being no longer British and towards what it should mean to be American. And a government ill-executed is, whatever ideals it may uphold, in practice a bad government… You seem a little easier.”
“I wondered why you studied trade and commerce. You should read more Plutarch.” Burr took a few deep, even breaths and opened his eyes.
“Then I shall impose upon my friend for a loan,” Hamilton said matter-of-factly, and felt Burr relax a little further at the implication.
“Quebec was always going to be a murder hole,” He began suddenly, without preamble. “It relied on the British being foolish enough to be drawn completely off by feints, and they weren’t. I volunteered…” His voice drifted off briefly, and Hamilton realised his eyes were closed again.
“I think you should look at me,” he said. “The sight of familiar surroundings might help keep you in full awareness of where you are.”
Burr grunted skeptically, but raised his head to look at him. Hamilton slipped off the bench and knelt in front of him, taking both hands in a firm grip. Burr responded by straightening his spine. For a moment, the two men just looked at one another with what Hamilton was beginning to suspect were identical expressions of determination.
“You volunteered for almost certain death,” Alexander prompted.
“I had argued so long against the plan, to avoid the place would have looked like cowardice. So yes, I volunteered. My men with me. Filthy weather, snow everywhere, nobody could see a damn thing. We got through into the street, we had the palisade at our backs, no cover at all.” Burr’s voice was as even and remote as if he were reciting a daily supply report, but his hands felt freezing despite the heat and his dark eyes kept darting past Hamilton before returning to meet his own and hold them.
“Are you still here?” Alexander checked.
“Mostly,” the normally-urbane man said in a composed voice. “If I don’t look at the walls. We were caught between buildings, you see. They fired from one. We were out in the open. It only took one volley. Montgomery went down in front of me… I still don’t know how they missed me. I was the only one. There was blood all over me, I could taste it - none of it mine. The General was in my arms, I tried to get him back, but the snow was too deep, I didn’t have the strength. I don’t know why they let me go. The honour due to the burial party, I imagine.”
Burr’s unadorned words and neutral tone were trying to minimise the horror, but Alexander was adept at seeing the detail behind bare reports. His quick mind was already throwing up images; the solitary walk back through a narrow street crowded with broken things that had been people, the limp and bloody burden. Like a hurricane, sudden and unavoidable and devastating.
Burr was looking at him warily, the lines at the corners of his eyes a little creased with pain and exhaustion. He squeezed Burr’s hands before letting them go. “I appreciate this confidence. I am not surprised the event haunts you. It is not a weakness in you; it would be a sign of gross indelicacy of sentiment if you were not affected. And I would like to draw your attention to the fact that you are still here with me in Elizabethtown.”
“A feat that most attain without the need to expend such effort.”
“But still that may lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence.”
“Abstinence has never been a virtue assumed of me; far less the marriage bed.”
Hamilton could not contain a crow of joy as his heart seemed to crack inside him. How had this reserved, broken man parried his quotation straight back at him with such effortless cleverness? “You would be wasted in New York,” he hissed almost viciously, and held out his hand to help Burr rise. Suddenly the desperate clawing for answers was gone, replaced by a shining genius that he knew, without examining it, was perfect. “I know where the General needs to send you.”
Burr, looking a little pale and unsteady, nevertheless raised an eyebrow. “You’re making me nervous, Hamilton.”
***
Burr leaned onto the rail of the frigate, gazing west. After a few moments, he could feel someone come up to stand next to him - “Bonjour, mon ami,” he said without turning to look, in perfect, unaccented French.
“Bonjour, mon brave,” Lafayette responded with his usual warmth, coming to grasp the rail beside him, both of them staring intently towards their destination. The months in Paris had been glittering, the clever subtleties of the diplomatic dance satisfying beyond measure, but it felt good to be going home.
“Do you approve my plan?”
“No, mon brave, I love your plan. It is elegant, it is daring, and most importantly it will succeed.”
Burr permitted himself a small smile of satisfaction. “Then let's turn south to find notre petit lion and liberate him a new country to shape.”
White seaspray flew up from the bow, feathering their faces with cold moisture. Distracted by thoughts of the campaign ahead, Aaron Burr barely noticed that it felt nothing at all like snow.