Dolley

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Mrs. Madison. Mr. Jones.” He was too tired to raise his voice. “The road out is blocked. You won’t make it to Wiley’s Tavern tonight. He’ll meet you at Reverend Maffitt’s house, Salona.

  “Is he all right?” Dolley asked.

  “He is indeed, ma’am,” Ringgold answered and urged his horse up the road.

  Twilight brought no relief from the heat, and the fading light accentuated their gloom. From behind them they heard a loud explosion. It was eight-thirty.

  “The Navy Yard.” Dolley patted Sukey’s hand as the girl clutched her arm once again. “It’s our doing, not the British, Sukey.” She imagined that William Jones felt a despair as deep as death at the sound of his Navy Yard being destroyed.

  “How come they aren’t riding after us?”

  “They haven’t any cavalry.” Dolley sighed, revealing how much she knew about the British troops, but in their distress no one noticed. “Anyway, they’re doing enough damage on foot.”

  Dolley turned around to look back down the road. They were just west of Georgetown when a huge ball of flame spiraled into the air. Other whirlwinds of fire swirled upward, like an evil red tornado. A distant roll of thunder shook Dolley to her bones. She reached into her pocket and found the dice. She’d forgotten about them. She turned them over and over in her fingers.

  As darkness deepened and the sky east of them glowed with a lurid, destructive light, Dolley and the Jones family fled at a snail’s pace. With shouting and pushing they crossed the Potomac on a bridge sure to be destroyed within hours. At last they arrived at Matilda Lee Love’s house, Rokeby, around ten-thirty. More distant explosions shook the ground; a jet of fire shot up to heaven.

  Matilda rushed out to greet them. “Mrs. Madison, you poor soul, please, please come into the house.”

  “I’m fine, my dear, really. See to the Joneses. The children are done in.”

  Dolley entered the beautifully proportioned house and noticed the servants regarding her and Sukey with undisguised coolness.

  Matilda, followed by the Joneses, bustled into the hall and spoke sharply to the servants. “April, see to beds for the children. Janey, bring Mrs. Madison a cup of coffee immediately, please.” She turned to the Joneses. “Coffee?”

  Eleanor Jones demurred. “No, I’ll put the children to bed and then go to sleep myself.”

  “Of course.” The young, beautiful Matilda, a perfect hostess even during an invasion, rested her eyes on the Secretary of the Navy. “Brandy, Mr. Secretary?”

  “Yes, thank you kindly, after I help Eleanor with the children.” He trudged upstairs after his wife.

  Dolley slumped in a chair, Sukey at her feet.

  Matilda leaned over her. “Mr. Monroe left not over twenty minutes ago. I fed him supper.” She paused. “It’s bad.”

  Dolley nodded. “Yes, it’s bad.”

  “Mr. Monroe said he thought we lost only about one hundred fifty men. The British lost hundreds more but it didn’t matter to them. He said these Redcoats fought better than any he faced in the Revolutionary War.”

  “The British have had more practice since then. They seem to have a natural affinity for war and killing.” An edge crept into Dolley’s voice, an edge Matilda had never before heard.

  “What’s keeping that girl? Excuse me a moment.” Matilda opened the door to her kitchen to discover Janey sitting like a stone.

  “Miz Love,” was Janey’s insolent reply to a hard stare.

  “I asked for coffee!” She took a step toward Janey.

  “I ain’t servin’ that witch nothin’. I got ears. I hears. That no good husband of hers within that no good Armstrong, they sold the country to the British!”

  “Janey, I am grateful that you are not in politics. They did no such thing. I will thank you not to refer to my friend Mrs. Madison as a witch, and I will remind you, with force if I must, that you will do as I say. Now, you make that coffee!”

  Janey shuffled toward the stove, dragging her feet to torment her mistress. “How you know they ain’t sold us out?”

  “Because President Madison is the Father of the Constitution, the man who created the Bill of Rights upon which this country was founded, and because I know him. He picked a scurrilous Cabinet. He doesn’t know beans about war or men, I’m afraid, but he loves his country. If there’s any way to save it, he will.”

  “They burnin’ Washington.” Janey was only half convinced.

  “Washington is not the United States. I will see you in the drawing room shortly. Bring out cold meat, biscuits, and whatever else we have.”

  Matilda, with a soft step, walked back into the drawing room. Sukey was already asleep on the floor.

  “Mrs. Madison, the coffee will be here in a moment. I do hope you will honor me with your presence this evening.”

  “I have to meet Mr. Madison. He sent a message to meet him at Salona.”

  “I insist that you stay here.” A firmness filled Matilda’s light soprano. She could see that Dolley, exhausted and emotionally battered, couldn’t safely continue.

  “Matilda, I can’t—”

  “You can and you will.”

  Janey, suspicious but obedient, brought in the coffee and cold meats.

  “Thank you, Janey.” Matilda’s eyes could have burned a hole in Janey’s head rag.

  After setting the food down with no display of friendliness, Janey, with offended dignity, left the room. She glanced over her shoulder as Matilda presented the President’s wife with a cup of coffee. Dolley was so tired she could barely bring the cup to her lips. Matilda did it for her. After a restorative sip, Dolley held the cup and saucer.

  “Thank you.” Dolley savored the aromatic liquid.

  “Now I must insist that you stay here. It’s pitch black out there—”

  “The fires cast a strong light.”

  “It’s dangerous. You’re tired. You know your husband would be distressed if you were injured or took ill. President Madison would hold me responsible for your welfare. I want you to eat a little something and then go to bed. You need all the sleep you can get.”

  Dolley dropped her head and then raised it again. A wave of misery swept over her. “You know, when I turned to look back at the city, it was wrapped in a winding sheet of flame. I could almost feel the sparks. Everything we built and worked for is gone.” Her hand shook and she put the cup back on the saucer. “We’ll build it again.”

  “Yes, we will.” The young woman soothingly agreed. “Please let me show you to your room.”

  Tenderly, Matilda helped Dolley up the stairs. A four-poster bed was in the center of the room and a window looked east. When Matilda Lee Love left her, Dolley was standing at the window, staring at the red rim in the east. The funnels of flame had now become a pulsating red ball.

  Matilda looked in on the Joneses. Eleanor had managed to climb into bed. William was dead asleep sitting bolt upright in a chair next to his youngest child, asleep on the floor. Matilda picked up the child and carried her back to the children’s room. She must have become frightened and wanted to be with her parents.

  Then she walked downstairs, wakened Sukey, and took her to a sweet-smelling cot in the back.

  She opened the front door and stood outside in the night. Not a breath of wind offered relief from the heat. She cast her eyes toward the city she, too, knew so well. Tears spilled over her cheeks. She looked east into the shivering light and wondered what the future would make of this heritage of flames.

  24 August 1814, Wednesday

  The doors of Hell have slipped their hinges.

  D.P.M.

  A brief thunderstorm before dawn settled the dust, but the heat continued, made steamier by the storm. A sinister calm had blanketed the area since Dolley left Matilda’s home.

  She stopped at Salona, but the President had left early that morning. He was looking for his wife, she was told. A pain lodged in Dolley’s chest. She wanted to see her husband—just to see him. She urged the driver on.

/>   Dolley stopped at houses along the way and questioned anyone she saw on foot. One lone traveler said he had seen two men in civilian clothes—one of them an older man, in his sixties perhaps—with a pair of dragoons heading back down the road.

  If the situation wasn’t so painful, Dolley thought, her searching for James and his searching for her would be funny.

  By two o’clock she noticed enormous thunderheads crowding the sky. They were in the northwest, the direction storms usually came from. She also noticed that dogs, which had been running out from houses and plaguing the carriages, had stopped chasing them. The horses, too, were twitching their ears.

  She inhaled deeply. It was work to get the air into her lungs. Sukey, again, was sleepy, her breathing labored. Her fright had turned into a quasi paralysis.

  The clouds rolled closer. Dolley realized that this was no ordinary August thunderstorm. A greenish black color blotted out the sun. The horses snorted air through their nostrils, signaling their nervousness. “Joe, we’ve got to find shelter,” she told the huge-boned driver.

  He agreed, struck by the eerie stillness of the moment. No birds sang. Not even an insect was in the air. Animal life had disappeared. There were no people on the road either.

  Dolley called out to the Joneses, following behind her in their carriage, “Let’s stop at the next house we find.”

  William Jones waved agreement, and they thought fortune was smiling on them when a house nudged into view just up ahead.

  Joe urged the horses on. When they reached the small dwelling, Dolley, Sukey, and the Joneses hurried inside as a pinkish flash of lightning darted across the sky, a signature of strange color. Within seconds a deep rumble filled the air, deeper and more ominous than the explosions of the night before.

  Joe led the horses into the little stable.

  “Hello, hello, is anybody home?” Dolley called out. When no one immediately answered, Dolley assumed the inhabitants had fled. She walked up the stairs to look out a window, hoping to get a better view of the storm and her location.

  Heavy footsteps and a buzz of voices, including those of the Jones children, filtered upstairs.

  A harsh voice called, “Miz Madison, if that’s you, come down! Your husband’s got mine out fighting, and damn you, you shan’t stay in my house, so get out!”

  Dolley whirled around and went down. The mistress of the house, a small, wiry woman, hands on her hips, yelled at her again. “Get out!”

  “At least let Mrs. Jones and the children stay.”

  As Dolley begged for the children, other women crept into the rooms. They must have been hiding in the cellar.

  “Get out, all of you!” the lady of the house screamed, and as she did, another searing flash of pink lightning gave warning outside.

  The women, now emboldened, cursed Dolley. One ran back into the kitchen, picked up carrots and corn, and came back to throw them at her.

  Dolley ran out into the gathering storm as Sukey hurried back to get Joe. Within minutes they were in the carriage again as the women now hurled everything they could find at Dolley.

  Sukey picked up an ear of corn as she got in the carriage and threw it back. “Traitors!” she hollered at them.

  A worried Joe flicked the reins, and they hurried down the road as the Joneses quickly followed.

  “Slow down for a moment, Joe.” As the Joneses came alongside, Dolley shouted to William, “You stay in the next house. I’ll go on.”

  “No, Mrs. Madison. I can’t leave you alone out here.”

  “Mr. Jones, your first duty is to your wife and children,” Dolley stated firmly.

  “We will all seek shelter together. Wasting our time arguing just means we’ll find it too late.”

  Jones moved ahead and Dolley, with no answer, sat down.

  The lightning tore across the sky like cracks in a green-black windowpane. Still no wind, but the thunder followed more closely. The storm was within minutes of unleashing its power. A huge raindrop splattered on the carriage. This was followed by another and another, and a slight breeze now shook the leaves.

  “Missus, you ever seen the sky look like this?” Sukey craned her neck to look upward as the clouds boiled, so close she felt she could touch them.

  “No.”

  “God’s mad at us.” Sukey shielded her eyes when another jag of lightning burned the sky.

  “This is a blessing.” Dolley, too, peered upward.

  “Huh?”

  “It will put out the fires in Washington.”

  Sukey was far less concerned about Washington at that moment than she was about finding shelter. “What about us?”

  “We’re going to live.”

  As if to prove her point, Wiley’s Tavern, next to an apple orchard, came into view.

  There, finally, Dolley and her people were safe. Joe unhitched the horses and trotted them back to the stable, where he would rub them down and feed them once they’d cooled out. The wind howled, a constant low shriek.

  Inside the tavern, Dolley pulled one of the children away from a window. Branches were torn off trees with a terrible cracking sound. A haywagon turned over and skidded across the field as though a giant’s finger pushed it for play.

  She wondered where her husband was in this black cauldron. Outside, deep groaning added to the horror; whole trees were bending, groaning, fighting to stay alive.

  The door flew open and as William Jones ran over to shut it, James Madison, Richard Rush, and a Navy clerk, Mordecai Booth, all sopping wet, rushed into the tavern.

  Before Richard Rush could ask for room, Dolley ran into her husband’s arms. Sukey, to her surprise, was overjoyed and ran over to Madison, too. The President hugged them both with a fierce tenderness.

  Two other refugees from the storm politely allowed the Madisons the use of their room. The President informed them he would be leaving at midnight, and all hoped the storm would have blown itself out by that time.

  The innkeeper brought food. After meetings with Rush and Jones, James finally yielded to Dolley’s persuasions to come upstairs and rest for a few hours.

  “It’s no use.” Madison opened his eyes again. “I can’t sleep.”

  “Well, lie there and talk to me then. You’ve been in the saddle for three days, fifteen to twenty hours a day, Jemmy.”

  “I’ve got my leg back.” He smiled. “I think I could ride one of Dr. Thornton’s blooded horses now.”

  “Bet you could.” She stroked his cheek; three days of white stubble made him look fuzzy.

  “I’m so glad to find you here. We left Salona and rode to Wren’s Tavern and then back to Salona, where you’d passed on your way here.” The wind devolved from a howl to a steady hiss. “Dolley, I couldn’t live without you.”

  She bent over and kissed him. “Nor could I without you.”

  “You’ll have to, my dear. I’m seventeen years older and I can’t go on forever.”

  “No one’s calling you an old man now.”

  “They’re calling me worse. When I rode back from Bladensburg, men shook their fists at me, and the filth they called me …” His eyes searched hers imploringly. “I could say nothing in return.”

  “You did everything you could.” Her voice was soothing.

  “Those soldiers were beyond the refinements of politics. I couldn’t blame them. I was as angry and as confused as they were. John Armstrong was worse than useless, he was an obstruction. And poor Winder, he did what he could. There’s not an ounce of cowardice in the man. Even after the rout he tried to reform the lines. I’ve got to get to him.” He sat up.

  “Later. Lie down. You’ll find him. An Army doesn’t just vanish.”

  “Ours did.”

  “Officers will round them up; you’ll see.”

  “What impressed me, Dolley, were the British. I always believed that a freeman will fight better than will the servant of a king or a hired soldier. Well, I was wrong. There’s no substitute for professional soldiers. Cannon didn’t deter
them. Nor heavy fire. They kept coming and they knew what to do. And the discipline held under fire. The way they closed ranks each time we blasted a bloody hole in them—”

  “What were you doing close enough to see all that?” Dolley interrupted.

  “I was safely out of range.” Madison told a white lie. He shifted. “I don’t know what’s left of Washington.”

  “If the Russians could rebuild Moscow after Napoleon, we can rebuild Washington.”

  “I think they’ll head for Baltimore now. We can’t lose Baltimore.” He turned his head to the wall. “You know, there will be people who will want me to resign as President. There will be those who will want to impeach me. There will be people who will want me to make peace with the British. I won’t, you know. These are terrible times, but we haven’t lost the war. Jackson is in the South and we’re having some success in New York. I won’t give in, Dolley.”

  “I know that.” She smiled. “Uncle Willy is with the Seruriers. He missed you.”

  Madison looked back at her, a light in his eyes. “I seriously doubt that Uncle Willy missed me, but I’m quite sure he misses you. No one can spoil him as much as you do. Or spoil me.”

  “I love you.”

  “Love at first sight—for me. I know it wasn’t for you. There I was, a short man with a funny nose. Not a handsome man at all, forty-three years old, never married. I did, however, wear a handsome coat. My shoes were shined, too.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I have often wondered how I must have seemed compared with John Todd. I’d inquired about him, you know.” She didn’t know that. “I heard he’d seen to it you and the children were safely away from Philadelphia, and about the way he continued to travel back into the city to care for his parents and to help those he could. I heard, too, what a fine, strapping fellow he was. And young. Everyone who knew John Todd said two things about him: how handsome he was and what a good Quaker he was, a true Christian man.” He sat up and leaned against the headboard. “He would have to be handsome to win you, you’re so beautiful. And you are as beautiful today as the day I met you. Your skin and your eyes, those merry blue eyes. They were the first things I noticed about you. You will never grow old to me, and I still don’t know why you married me.”