Ethan Saunders
All the world wished to be at the Bingham gathering, and I was not invited. This was of no moment, for I had no doubt getting in would be the easiest thing in the world. As I approached on Market Street I observed the lanterns lit all along Bingham’s mansion. Here was one of the jewels of the city, a private residence of remarkable splendor and taste, hardly less massive and grand than the Library Company building. For those Europeans who believed America to be a country of fur-clad man-beasts, possessing nothing of arts or subtlety, I should defy them to see our finest architecture, of which this house was certainly an example-a monument to American sturdiness, modesty, and opulence.
A queue of coaches made its slow, important way through the circular path along the front of the house, but I would not join with them. Instead, Leonidas and I went around back to the servants’ entrance. Much to our surprise, this was locked. I had anticipated a busy stream of servants moving in and out, among whom we could be lost, but apparently the Binghams had prepared long in advance.
Leonidas asked not my plans nor made snide remarks upon my lack of preparation. He knew me too well to think I would regard this locked door as any sort of impediment. I reached into my right boot, in which I kept a hidden pouch containing several useful lock picks. I found the one best suited for the device before me, and within a minute the lock sprang and I turned the knob. Replacing the picks in my boot, I pushed open the door. Here we found a dozen or more cooks, chefs, and servers hurrying about not in chaos, but with a kind of mechanized determination. Upon the stoves, steam billowed forth. From the ovens came fiery blasts of heat. One woman set pastries upon a white porcelain tray. Another used a massive pair of tongs to pull small fowl from a pot of boiling water. Into this fray we ventured, and I commenced a lecture to Leonidas on the proper placement of cheeses, a lecture that lasted the breadth of our stroll through the kitchen. If anyone considered it remarkable that a man should walk through this room lecturing a Negro on the art of serving food, no one mentioned it to me. Thus, emerging from the kitchen, we found ourselves in the massive house, where we had only to follow our ears and ascend a set of stairs to reach the main body of the festivities. Thus settled, I sent Leonidas to find where the other servants were gathered.
There were several dozen guests in attendance, and in addition to the room that had been cleared to create a space for the dancers, the revelers were spread throughout three large rooms that appeared to have been furnished with such gatherings as this in mind. Each room contained pockets of chairs and sofas, so guests might sit and converse, and every chandelier, sconce, and candleholder was stuffed with a fat taper, lighting the room so that it seemed almost daytime. In one room, several tables had been set out with cards for gaming. Wine and food was served freely, a trio of musicians played in one corner, and our beautiful hostess, the incomparable Mrs. Bingham, beautiful and elegant, enfolded in her massive nimbus of golden hair, flitted from guest to guest. In the ballroom, the great and important and pompous of the city, and so the nation, turned about with elegance or clumsiness.
I minded neither the candles nor the food nor the fiddlers nor even the dancing. I was less comfortable with the company, for here was nearly every man of substance in the city. There was Mr. Willing, president of Hamilton ’s bank. There the great windbag John Adams, the vice president, with his agreeable wife, Abigail, by his side. Missing, much to my simultaneous disappointment and relief, was the great man himself, Washington. It was said he avoided such gatherings, for he alone had to forge the public role of the President and knew not if it would be too frivolous for the leader of a republican nation to attend a gathering of this sort. It was for the best, I decided. In my fallen state, how could I face a man revered by all, and by me more than any other?
However, there was Hamilton, standing next to his wife, Eliza. I had flirted with her many years before, but if she recognized me, she made no sign of it. She was still vaguely pretty, but she’d grown a bit plump and dowdy, having given birth to so many children I believed even the parents had lost track. The two of them bred Federalists like rabbits. It was an easy enough thing to mock him, but when I observed the happiness with which she looked upon her husband and the comfort he took when he held her hand, I felt keenly why I was in that room. I was there for Cynthia and for all I had lost, all that had been denied me.
I took a goblet of wine from a passing servant and acted as though there were nowhere else in the universe I belonged so well. I wished above all things not to be noticed, for there were many men in that room whom I did not know well but who might yet recognize me, might yet recall my name, my face, and the crime of which I had been accused. I wanted to do what I must before being generally seen.
I was not to be so lucky, however. I had only begun to scan the room when I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to face Colonel Hamilton himself, with Eliza still by his side. Diverting her gaze for a moment, she smiled at me. “Captain Saunders, it has been many years.”
I bowed to her. “Far too many, and yet while I have aged, you look no different than when last I saw you. I trust you are well?”
So went our exchange of nothings. She, politely, made no mention of my having been disgraced since I last saw her. Very polite woman. After a moment of this, Hamilton excused himself from his wife and pulled me a few feet away. “What are you doing here?”
“I did not mention I was invited? It’s strange. You know, sometimes I think we are not so close as we used to be.”
“Saunders, I don’t want you muddling things. You have no business here. I don’t want you making enemies.”
“What do you care if I make enemies or no?”
“I don’t want you making enemies for me,” he clarified.
“Oh,” I said, noting that his eyes moved past me to nearly the other end of the room where stood a man of about the same stature of Hamilton. He had red hair and a handsome face that beamed with pleasure, in no small part, I thought, because he was surrounded by a small group of men who appeared to hover over his every word.
“Why, that’s Mr. Jefferson,” I said, more loudly than Hamilton would have wished for.
“Please leave,” Hamilton said.
“You know,” I said, “if you did not wish Jefferson and his minions to associate the two of us together, all you had to do was ignore me. Now here we are in close conversation. Looks quite bad for you.”
“That is the least of my worries,” he told me. “I want you to go.”
Across the room, Jefferson appeared to note Hamilton ’s attention, and the Secretary of State offered the Secretary of the Treasury a stiff bow. As Hamilton returned it, the hatred between the two seemed to me an almost physical force, as solid as steel, as hot as the sun. If a man had stepped between their searing gazes, he would surely have been incinerated.
Jefferson looked away, and I turned to say something to Hamilton, but he too had walked away, having wasted, perhaps, enough energy on me already. I could not help but think there was something of a kindness in his words, as though he had asked me to leave for my own good rather than his own, and I wondered if I ought to take it to heart. I continued to wonder as I crossed the room, and I might have kept on wondering to the point of departure if I had not observed the man I had come to molest.
Huddled with a small group of men was Mr. Duer, and his rugged associate was nowhere to be seen. I took a glass of wine from a passing servant, finished it, found another, and began to approach the speculator.