“And that’s what you do?”
“I, madam, am the patron saint of losers,” said Simon Bonny proudly, punctuating his declaration with a long draft of beer. “Anyway, where were we? Scientia est potentia. That’s the key.” He sniffed and rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Talleyrand,” he said.
“What?”
“Not ‘what.’ Who. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Just Talleyrand. Foreign minister to Napoloen. Cheat. Scoundrel. Visionary. Patriot. Interesting bloke.”
“What about him?”
“Good friend of Alexander Hamilton’s, actually. They palled around together in 1794. He’d come to Philadelphia to get away from Robespierre and ‘the Terror.’ A minor event called the French Revolution.”
Oh no, thought Jenny. A pedant without a leash. “And this has what to do with the club exactly?”
“Wait, darling. You see, Hamilton and Talleyrand were best buddies. They were both realists, interested in the effective exercise of power. Sneaky little shits, really. But smart, dear. Really fucking smart. Napoleon called Talleyrand ‘shit in a silk stocking,’ while Thomas Jefferson called Hamilton ‘an evil colossus who must be stopped at the first instance.’ When Talleyrand returned to France, the two kept up a correspondence. It’s all in my book. Shadow Monarch: Hamilton from 1790 to 1800.”
“I apologize, Professor, but I missed it. My reading’s more toward Jane Austen these days.”
“Whose isn’t?” Bonny dismissed her apology with a good-natured laugh, surprising her. “Be out in paperback next year in the spring. I’m sure you won’t miss it a second time.”
Jenny knew he was trying to be funny, but she could barely bring herself to smile, let alone laugh. Her shoulder throbbed with a vengeance, and she was very much regretting her decision to turn down any pain medication.
“Back to these letters,” said Bonny, coming closer so that his narrow green eyes held hers. “You see, Hamilton is very explicit about going to private-read ‘secret’-meetings in the Long Room at Fraunces Tavern in New York, and the City Tavern in Philadelphia. All the big guns were there: George Washington, John Jay, Robert Morris, and later, Monroe, Madison, and Pendleton.”
“I don’t know a Pendleton.”
“Nathaniel Pendleton. Friend of Hamilton’s. Lawyer and judge. Served as Hamilton’s second at the duel of the century. Hamilton v. Burr.”
“Got it.”
“The meetings took place at the stroke of midnight. First, a prayer was spoken, always Washington’s favorite, which he had invoked at Valley Forge. No drinking was permitted. No cursing. No tobacco. The meetings were gravely serious and often lasted until morning. Afterward, Washington would lead everyone to a dawn service at St. Paul’s Chapel, just as he’d led the members of his cabinet there after his first inauguration.”
“What did they discuss?”
“Hamilton never said exactly-he was too wily a fox for that-but I have my suspicions. He hinted to Talleyrand that the meetings were to come up with ways to help General Washington, then President, circumvent the legislature, or, as was equally the case, to more quickly put into effect what they would vote for six months hence.”
Jenny wasn’t buying it. “This is the same Hamilton who helped write the Constitution and the Federalist Papers? He created Congress. Why in the world would he want to rob it of its power?”
“Made a mistake, didn’t he?” Bonny took a breath and looked around the pub, searching every corner as if needing to find a place to begin. “It’s 1793. Everywhere Hamilton looked, he saw the country falling apart. Too many parochial interests. Every man for himself. The farmers in Pennsylvania wanted one thing, the bankers in New York something else altogether. Hamilton favored a large country. In fact, he was one of the first who saw all lands west to the Pacific as being America’s natural boundary. But the republic was hamstrung. Paralyzed by conflicting interests. All for want of a strong executive able to act decisively without the belabored approval of Congress. ‘Your people, sir, are a beast,’ he wrote in a letter once. He didn’t refute the idea that every man should have a vote, but he wanted something done to lessen the House and Senate’s ability to restrict the ‘Chief Magistrate’ from acting as he saw fit. Jefferson called him a monocrat. Half monarchist, half democrat.”
“But Hamilton didn’t really want a king. He hated the monarchy.”
“To an extent, that’s true. But his words argue the opposite. ‘All communities divide themselves into the few and the many,’ he said to Talleyrand. ‘The first are rich and well-born, then the mass of the people. The people are turbulent and changing. They seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second.’ The ‘permanent share’ he envisioned was the presidency. In his opinion, four years was too short a term. He preferred ten years. If not a monarch, then, a monarch in all but name.”
“But what did they do… Washington and Hamilton and all them? You said you had your suspicions.”
“They killed someone, didn’t they?”
Jenny reacted skeptically. “Are you sure they didn’t just sit around the table and talk?”
“Oh, there was plenty of talk. No doubt about that. But remember who we’re dealing with. These gents were soldiers used to spilling blood. Not an armchair general in the lot. Hamilton had two horses shot out from under him at the Battle of Monmouth, rode the third until it collapsed from exhaustion. Washington took his charger up and down the lines exposing himself to hellacious fire too many times to count. These were men on speaking terms with death.”
“Who was it?”
“A rogue. An upstart. Someone threatening the very life of the republic. Therefore an enemy. Do you remember the Jay Treaty?”
“Vaguely. Some kind of agreement that kept us out of war with Britain.”
“Precisely. Without the treaty, war was inevitable… and if war, the breakup of the states. At the time, you Yanks were much too weak to take on Britain again. You would have had your bottoms soundly thwacked. The country couldn’t have survived it. There would have been a division along the same lines of the Civil War. North versus South. Hamilton knew it. The Jay Treaty’s the most important piece of paper no one knows about.”
“Do you have a name?”
“That’s my secret. Subject of my next book.”
Jenny shook her head skeptically, then winced at a sudden stab of pain.
“What’s the matter with your shoulder?” Bonny asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re coddling it,” said Bonny, reaching a hand toward her.
Jenny turned away, a reflex. “Watch it.”
“What is it, then?” Bonny asked again.
“I was shot.”
Bonny sighed, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. He took a swig of beer, then said, “I’m not kidding, Miss Dance. Really…”
“Someone took a shot at me three hours ago with a high-powered rifle. The doctor said he thought it was a thirty-aught-six. Actually, the bullet only grazed me, but it hurts like…”
“You’re serious?” he said, setting the glass on the counter.
“Yes, I’m serious.”
“Gracious me,” exclaimed Simon Bonny. Suddenly, he was blinking uncontrollably, his lower lip moving as if he were talking to himself. Then he shuddered, and both the blinking and the lip thing stopped. “What in the name of Jehovah are you doing here, then?”
“Trying to find out who it was before they take another one. I don’t figure them as the types to miss twice.” Jenny pointed to his glass. “Mind if I have a sip?”