“Fetch my horse,” he instructed the servants in a tone that brooked no opposition. “Eagle.”
Eagle was a far more accommodating mount than the spirited Caractacus had been, but still we worried. The servants wouldn’t oppose Papa, but Ellen did. “Grandpapa, it’s cold and dark. You can’t go galloping into the winter night!”
But that’s exactly what my seventy-five-year-old father did, hurtling himself up into the saddle like a man half his age, applying the whip, and, with only the moon as his guide, disappearing in a clatter of hooves off into the snowy forest.
THEY BROUGHT MY SON HOME IN A WAGON, my heart breaking with each turn of its wheels on the icy road. The servants rushed to lift the makeshift stretcher upon which my boy lay covered in dried blood, one limp hand dragging in the snow.
Jeff was still alive, but barely. We had him carried into the bedroom opposite my sitting room, onto the alcove bed, which the girls stripped of its damask bedspread. He’d been stabbed in the hip and arm. He’d lost so much blood that he was as pale as a newborn babe, and I still remembered Jeff that way. My father’s little namesake, the baby who made me realize for the first time that I loved my husband. The little boy who, from his first breath, embodied hope for my family.
If he died, so would everything hopeful or loving in me.
While the physician rebandaged Jeff’s wounds, servants got a fire burning and warmed sherry for him. Meanwhile, my daughters crowded in the doorway. “I hope Charles swings for this,” Cornelia said, her dark eyes flashing with the Randolph. “I hope he’s tried and convicted and that I’m there to witness him at the end of a noose!”
Ann recoiled, sobbing into a handkerchief. “You don’t mean that. He’s the father of my children. Surely you don’t mean that!”
“Of course she doesn’t,” I said, very calmly. My daughters were Randolphs; their tempers ran hot. But mine ran cold. “A trial would cause a sensation and bring shame down upon your grandfather’s good name. Instead, we’ll hire a keeper to prevent mischief, lock Charles in a room with all the whiskey he desires, and let him finish himself off.”
My words made Ann shudder. She eyed me with scarcely disguised horror, backing away, as if she had apprehended a monster in me she’d never known dwelt there before.
But I meant every word. I’d done my daughters no favors hiding behind feminine virtues, allowing men to do as they pleased with little more than sarcasm and secrecy for protest. Seeing my son half-dead, something changed in me—my willingness to obey, my willingness to accept, to let the men handle it was gone.
When the doctor went out, I went in. On a moan, Jeff tried to rise up on the arm that wasn’t nearly severed from his shoulder. And I snapped, “You lay back down! Jane will be here soon or we’ll take you to her when you’ve recovered.”
“My arm.” Jeff groaned, falling back against the pillow. “The doctor says I’ll never be able to use it again.”
I held my breath, trying to imagine my boy maimed. My strong son with his broad back who prided himself on his ability to outwork his father … diminished forever in his abilities. And I didn’t care so long as he lived. Stroking his hair, I murmured, “My precious Jeff.”
He gritted his teeth. “Where’s Bankhead?”
“He’s been arrested for attacking you.”
“He didn’t attack me.” Jeff closed his eyes in an excess of emotion that might’ve been shame. “When grandfather found me lying in my own blood, he bent his head and wept. He wept for me, and I couldn’t disappoint him. I couldn’t tell him the truth.” Jeff cried in anguish. “I struck the first blow. I swung down off my horse with my whip and advanced on Bankhead. We quarreled about some things he said about my wife, and I swore that if he did violence to my sister again I’d beat him down like a slave. He shouted that he could kill Ann dead and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. So I hit him with my whip and I remember nothing else till Bacon was pulling us apart.”
“Oh, Jeff,” I said, one hand to my cheek.
“Charles isn’t guilty. I am.”
“You’re guilty of nothing,” I whispered. I didn’t care what the law might say. I never felt prouder of my son and wasn’t about to let him think he’d brought this misery upon himself. “Jeff, you’re remembering it wrong. Your pain is bending your mind. Rest easy with a clear conscience. Overseer Bacon says Charles attacked you.”
And I vowed that Bacon would keep on saying it.
When the laudanum did its work and Jeff drifted to sleep, I ought to have been too weary to stand. But anger is a kind of fuel, and I went in search of my father. I found him in the greenhouse, near a carelessly abandoned stack of clay pots and digging tools, feeding seeds to his newest mockingbirds, who serenaded him with a French tune.
“What are you doing out here, Papa?” I asked, rubbing my arms against the cold.
Looking over the dried-out stalks the gardener had yet to prune for next year’s planting, he murmured, “It’s winter. A time when everything we’ve planted withers and dies on the vine.”
No. I would not hear it. I would not. Choking back tears, I said, “Jeff is strong. He’ll live.”
My father hung his head. “Ah, Patsy. What tragedy that two young men of my own family have come to this.”
“They aren’t both family,” I snapped. “Vows were said, but if Charles were Ann’s husband in truth, would he put hands on her the way he does?”
I waited for my father to utter some optimistic platitude, but his shoulders slumped. “I fear she’ll meet her end at his hands unless we keep her here.”
“She won’t go back with him,” I insisted. “Not after this. We won’t let him take her.”
But by morning, Ann was gone.
“DON’T TELL ME I CAN DO NOTHING!” my husband shouted, love for his son showing itself as pure, unadulterated fury. “I’m the governor of the goddamned state.”
Charles had made bail and fled the county, taking Ann and our grandchildren with him. And having returned from Richmond to hear this, Tom was an inferno. “I wish I’d caved in his skull, even if it ended in my swinging from the gallows.”
A savage part of me understood just how he felt, but I wouldn’t trade my husband’s life for Bankhead’s blood. We were promised that if Charles set foot in Albemarle, he’d be jailed. Meanwhile, neighbors were feeding a steady stream of gossip and my poor son begged us to let the matter drop. It was because Jeff carried guilty secrets with less alacrity than I’d always done, but my daughters all believed it was a gallant gesture to protect Ann. And they privately blamed her for taking Charles’s part with a ferocity only sisters can. Cornelia confided that if justice wasn’t served, she hoped never to see Mr. or Mrs. Bankhead ever again.
Though I had a babe still in diapers to care for, little children who ran about like wild things, and a plantation full of servants to manage, I spent that spring and early summer dedicated entirely to helping Jeff use his arm again. Jeff tried riding, but couldn’t do it without assistance. Each night, he’d collapse in my sitting room, suffering, inside and out. “It’s no use.” He stared with withering scorn at the offending limb. “I’m maimed.” And when his wife pressed a cloth to his forehead he shouted, “Leave it alone, Jane! I’m good for nothing.”
When she scurried from the room, Jeff sulked in my chair.
A boy might rightly expect coddling from his mother—to be taken against her soft bosom to weep at cruel fate. But it was a soft heart that brought my family to this place. “How would you feel if you heard your father speak to me that way?”
Jeff’s eyes blazed. “I have heard him speak to you that way.”
There was no use denying it. “Well, I suppose you have, but the way you hollered at Jane just now … that’s how your sister’s husband behaves. Except that you’re sober and don’t have the excuse of Charles’s madness.”
Jeff lowered his eyes. “I feel so useless, Mother.”
I rubbed at his sore shoulder. “You can’t afford
to be useless. Too much relies on you. Don’t you know how important you are? There’s a reason you’re named Jefferson, you know. Your grandfather hurt his wrist twice. It was never the same after, but he never let it leave him maimed. Use your arm until it heals, every day, even if you feel weak as a newborn pup.”
Jeff’s head jerked up. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“The blame is on Charles,” I insisted.
“I’m talking about Jane. I brought her into this family, and now, because of it, I’ve led us all to disaster.”
Had the laudanum dulled his wits? “Your wife is lovely!”
Jeff seemed unable to swallow over the emotion. “Grandfather keeps these things from you, but—”
My hands stilled on his shoulder. “You’re scaring me, Jeff.”
“You know about the panic in the banks. Well, Jane’s father has become indebted.”
“What’s that to do with us?”
“Grandfather signed as a guarantor on one of his loans.”
Virginia gentlemen did this sort of courtesy for one another—especially when there were family ties between them. It didn’t surprise me that the former governor would take a loan or that my father would help him do it. Only that a man of his means would need my father’s surety. “Are you saying Mr. Nicholas can’t make the payments?”
Jeff nodded. “Because of the panic, they’re calling in the loan in total. Hamilton is dead, but his banking system is still ruining the country.”
My stomach twisted. “Jane’s father has property … surely he can pay his own debt.”
Jeff actually trembled. “I fear the burden is going to fall entirely upon my grandfather. It could be a crippling blow to his finances.”
It seemed impossible that Papa would suffer for another man’s debt. “How much?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
I nearly swooned away again. Twenty thousand dollars was so much money, I couldn’t fathom what might be done to raise it.
Chapter Thirty-six
Monticello, 22 April 1820
From Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes
There’s not a man on earth who’d sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from slavery, in any practicable way. But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
EVERYONE’S SO SAD,” Ginny cried, swishing into my sitting room. “We’re estranged from Ann. Jeff’s afraid to look Grandpapa in the eye. And Ellen’s so dispirited she’s thinking of teaching school.”
Ann, Jeff, and Ellen. My oldest three understood harsh life. While Papa put stock in the assurances that Mr. Nicholas wouldn’t leave us on the hook for even a dollar, Ellen and Jeff refused to pretend that all was well. If Ann was with us she’d have done the same.
But the rest of the children—their memories were here at Monticello where they’d always lived in luxurious comfort and their grandfather’s cheer. “All this sadness and strife can’t be borne,” Ginny chirped. “For Grandpapa’s sake, we should be happy and gay! So I’m inviting you to a dance.”
I allowed frustration into my tone. “A dance?”
“Yes, a dance,” she replied. “On Saturday next, the youngsters of Monticello will adjourn to the south pavilion and dance to Beverly’s music. I’d like to invite Jeff’s wife, who must be mortified that her relations put ours in jeopardy. After the stabbing and now this, we’re in need of cheer. And so is Grandfather. All this gloom can’t be good for his health.”
That I couldn’t argue. I wondered if Papa could weather such distress at his age. “Well, if your grandfather has no objection—”
“He doesn’t!” Ginny clapped her hands. “He’s going to invite scholars from the university to form up like soldiers and have Ellen make a speech for him. Perhaps in Greek. But he said if you object, we must give up the idea.”
I’d never deny my father anything that would add to his happiness. If he wanted a dance, he’d have a dance. So we gathered on the terrace with a mountaintop view of the countryside below so clear that it was as if we could see the whole nation my father helped build. A nation as beautiful, imperfect, and unfinished as every other project my father ever undertook.
And it was there we gathered to listen to Beverly Hemings play his violin. While Beverly worked his bow and filled the air with music, from the corner of my eye, I caught Papa staring at Beverly with fatherly pride. Sally watched with pride, too—and it broke my heart, because the servants didn’t know what was coming.
If Papa was forced to pay even half of the twenty-thousand-dollar debt, slaves would have to be sold. Jeff would have to undertake it on Papa’s behalf; he’d start with the field hands, but what about the families on Mulberry Row? Not the Hemingses, of course. Papa would never agree to sell them if it weren’t by their own choice. But what of those who worked in the textile mills or Papa’s nailery? Those slaves we knew, we saw their faces every day. The idea of selling them was barbarous.
Yet, we fiddled and danced and laughed because it would have done no good whatsoever to cry.
WHEN EVENING FELL, I followed my father into the house, leaving the young people to their festivities. We stopped together in the empty book room, alone together for the first time in a good while.
“He’s twenty-one,” Papa said. Beverly, he meant. The boy’s birthday had come and gone in the chaos of stabbings and debt. I hadn’t remembered it. My father obviously had. Papa was kind to Sally’s children, but he wasn’t in the habit of showing them fatherly affection. At least not in front of me. So I was surprised to hear him say, “He can read and write and play music. He takes as much joy in science as I do. And if he’s pressed, he knows carpentry, and how to make nails and how to be useful on a farm. Beverly’s grown to be a fine man, hasn’t he?”
“I believe so,” I said, cautiously, wondering if I’d feel the pull of jealousy at my father’s pride in his son. But all I felt was the truth of the sentiment. Beverly was a fine young man. “The overseer complained about him not going to the carpenter’s shop for about a week or so, but I’ve never heard another word spoken against him by anyone.”
My father’s expression betrayed great anxiety. “Beverly knows his freedom has been promised. It’s time, but I worry… .”
I refused to let myself calculate Beverly’s monetary worth and the loss it would mean to my father’s estate. “What worries you?”
Papa looked stricken. “I’m worried about the explanations that’ll be demanded of me when I petition the legislature to grant Beverly permission to live and work in the state of Virginia as a free man.”
That’s when his anxiety infected me. Since the last slave revolt years ago, freed Negroes couldn’t live in Virginia without special dispensation. And the moment my father asked for that dispensation, there’d be a thousand questions. Beneath my sheer linen cap, a cold sweat broke across my brow. “You mean to acknowledge him?”
My father’s lips tightened into a grim line. He knew—surely a man of his political genius knew—that to ask for dispensation would be to acknowledge Beverly as his son. And every old story about his Congo harem would be splashed again on the front page of every paper in the country. Had pleas from men like William Short finally reached into my father’s guilty heart and shaken something loose that he would want to admit to his relationship with Sally after all these years?
“Papa, after all the denials …” He’d left his friends and family to deny it. I’d have denied it and defended him anyway, but a great many people were likely to feel deceived. They’d never forgive any of us. It’d taint his legacy and our whole family. “You chose to keep this secret long ago.”
He lifted his tired blue eyes to mine. “I also made a promise to Sally.”
Did he think me so heartless that I’d want him to break it? Somewhere inside me was still the naive girl in Paris who so ardently wished for all the poor slaves to go free. But my concern was my f
ather. He’d promised to let Sally’s children go free, but he hadn’t promised to sacrifice himself on the altar of public opinion. If Beverly wanted his freedom, there were other ways to get it. “Can’t you just … let him walk off this mountain?”
“I’ve considered that,” Papa said, quietly. “I could call him a runaway and never send anyone looking for him. But then he could never return and this is the only home he’s ever known. Where else could he go and make his way?”
Beverly was a capable young man, I thought. He could make his way anywhere. Washington, maybe. He might enjoy living as a free man in a city that our father brought into being. “The capital isn’t so very far away.”
“Far enough we’ll likely never see him again,” Papa snapped.
Was he angry with me, with Beverly, or himself? Papa had always been possessive; he’d never forgiven Sally’s brothers for insisting upon the formality of their freedom, when he’d allowed them to live as free men in practice. Did he resent Beverly for insisting upon the same?
But when Papa turned his head to hide a sudden welling of tears, I realized it wasn’t resentment of Beverly’s freedom that upset him. It was love. Beverly shared his looks, his temperament, his taste in music, and his interest in science. Beverly was a young man who was always aware—much as I was—that our father had penned the lines that began: All men are created equal.
My father would’ve been a monster not to feel a prick of pride that his son wanted liberty. But the price of that liberty was steep. “Papa, Beverly can live as a freed black man here in Virginia, with your reputation in tatters, or he can forge a new identity as a white man anywhere else. It seems to me that you ought to ask Beverly his preference. It’s his future, after all.”
That had seemingly not occurred to Papa, so I left him pondering, congratulating myself that I’d handled the situation with as much grace as might be expected of me and done right by Beverly besides.
So it was with alarm that I awakened the next morning to find Sally Hemings inside my bedroom, her back stiff against the door, her hands behind her on the handle, as if to steel her nerve, and her eyes filled with fury.
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