Footfalls on the stairs. Billy’s halting, John’s firmer tread.

Abigail looked up.

“It’s a deadlock,” said John.

Abigail had been braced for any news but that. “I thought the House vote was supposed to break the deadlock.” Honestly, couldn’t they even get THAT right?

“The Federalists still control the House,” said John grimly. “The new Congress hasn’t been seated yet. This is the last session that’s voting. And the Federalists who aren’t under Hamilton’s control trust Burr. Tom has eight states—” He ticked them off on his chubby, chilblained fingers. “Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and North Carolina. That’s one short of a majority. Burr has six, and Vermont and Maryland are both deadlocked. They’ve cast six ballots already. Nobody’s moving.”

By eleven o’clock that night, when the Representatives were starting in on their eighteenth or nineteenth ballot, the situation was still the same.

And still the same when Billy Shaw came back in the morning from the all-night session. Men were sending out for food, he said, and for coffee and some for clean linen.

And the vote was still tied. The sky was still clear. The road home still open.

“Fools!” John shoved his breakfast porridge from him, struck the table with the flat of his hand so that all the glasses jumped. “Don’t they see what they’re doing? Weren’t any of them paying attention to what happened in France?”

His face suffused with anger, the “ungovernable temper” that all his life his foes had exaggerated, though Abigail had never found it ungovernable at all. One just had to let him shout himself breathless, and later he’d be perfectly sensible.

“It was divisiveness that brought France to ruin, every man pulling his own way! Stabbing one another in the back! Hamilton’s still holding on to the votes of the men who support his party. He won’t back Burr under any circumstances and he won’t back Tom unless Tom will give him assurances of what to expect, which I don’t think is an unreasonable request. Just the assurance that he’s not an outright advocate of anarchy would do!”



“They’ll all feel very silly,” remarked Sophie Hallam, when she came by later in the day with word that on the twenty-first ballot the House was still split, eight to six to two, “with all the flags put up for the inauguration, if they don’t know who to inaugurate.” She sounded pleased.