“Then I will tell Papa.”
At this the maid turned her head back toward her mistress and for the last time looked directly into her eyes.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Something in the tone of the young girl’s voice stopped Martha Jefferson; she stared at her for a long time.
“Mon Dieu! What would your mother say, Sally Hemings!”
“It is not what my mother would say, Mistress, but what yours would say.”
Sally Hemings waited for the storm to break over her head. Martha Jefferson was strong. She towered over her slave, and Sally Hemings almost threw up her arms to protect herself. Only pride made her stand and stare up at her owner. Only pride made her still the trembling of her body and cool it with an icy indifference that bordered on hatred. Why, she thought, should I bother to lie to this white woman? Simply because I am expected to calm and soothe her fears? Look how she flounders at the least resistance.
Martha Jefferson waited for the name of her maid’s lover, but her maid remained silent.
Once, just this once, let her lie to herself. With this, Sally Hemings turned her back on the intruder who had violated her sanctuary, her only place of privacy. Even this room was not her own. Let her lie to herself, she thought. And she left Martha standing in the midst of her treasures, a pair of white satin slippers clutched in her hand.
April 18, 1789, The Abbaye Royale of Panthémont
My dearest and most adored Papa,
I respectfully and formally request your permission to enter into the Holy Orders of the Abbaye Panthémont as a suppliant and a novice in preparation eventually to take vows as a nun in the Roman Catholic Church and the convent of Panthémont.
I realize this may be a shock to you, but I assure you, dearest Papa, that I have not taken this decision lightly and have been in daily correspondence with the Papal Nuncio, Comte Duganani, and in daily prayers and consultation with the Abbess Madame Mezieres as regards this matter. I cannot and will not reconcile what I have learned of the world and its frivolous and disreverent and unchristian attitudes with what I know to be the precepts and the Holy Commandments of God and Righteousness. I would rather not live in a world where I must be witness to and condone by compliance such transgressions, or know and not prevent the punishments for such cruel disregard for His teachings.
I embrace you with an Exultant and Joyful heart and Fervent prayers for your accord in this matter and for the Happiness of my Cherished Papa. . . .
Your loving Daughter
James Hemings knew what had been in the note he had delivered to the mansion on the Champs-Elysées several weeks after Martha’s last visit. He had not read the letter, so he could not know if his sister was mentioned by name or by function. He only knew that Martha Jefferson had decided and had told him with passionate tears of joy in her eyes that she wanted to become a nun and enter the convent of the Abbaye de Panthémont. He had listened to her speechlessly as she had told him of her decision.
When James Hemings had entered his master’s cabinet he watched Thomas Jefferson casually read the note from his daughter. James waited in silence. But Thomas Jefferson did not betray any emotion; he sat down at his writing table and wrote quickly, and then rang for Petit. The carriage was ordered to be hitched and brought to the front courtyard. He beckoned James to come with him. They rode into Paris together until they reached the rue Royale. They went from shop to shop buying linen for Martha Jefferson. At the end of the morning, James, walking behind his master, was carrying armloads of fine silks, laces, and chiffons. In anticipation of Martha’s birthday, he had even bought a sapphire ring. He had also bought a silver locket for Sally Hemings. They had spent two hundred and seventy-four francs that morning.
Two days later, James accompanied his master to the Panthémont Convent, the back of the carriage filled with the purchases. James followed as Jefferson moved quickly into the inner courts of the convent, where he was met by a pale and trembling Martha. James tried to signal some comfort, but she had eyes only for her father. Never had his master’s smile been so benevolent, never his manner so tender and charming, never had he shown in public such a fatherly attitude toward his eldest daughter, thought James. Thomas Jefferson kissed her hand and then her cheek, and then turning to the abbess who had entered the somber courts, he disappeared with her into her apartments. Martha and James waited outside the closed oak doors of the abbess’s office. When Jefferson emerged, he was smiling. He told Martha that he had come for her.
Martha Jefferson looked up at the handsome, smiling man who was her father. His auburn hair was flecked with white, giving it a sandy color when it was not powdered, and it was not this day. It was tied in a queue at his neck with a blue ribbon and hung down his back over the Prussian blue of his frock coat fitted perfectly over his broad shoulders. The long powerful legs were encased in pale ivory chamois and he too had on the red-heeled patent leather pumps of the aristocracy. His long chin was set, his eyes clear and guileless as a summer day. His attitude was one of a determined, but attentive suitor. He smiled, showing small white even teeth and without a word, Martha Jefferson took the proffered arm of her father and mounted the double steps into his carriage, the door of which was held open for her by James.
James Hemings closed the door and mounted beside the coachman. The elegant English carriage of lilac and yellow trimmed in dark gray turned and rattled out of the lonely cobbled courtyard onto the rue de Grenelle. Martha settled back behind the white lace curtains into the brimstone-colored silk upholstery. She looked with wonder at the piles of presents and packages on the seat beside her. Never, as long as she lived, would she mention this incident again. She pulled back the silk tassels and took a last look at the white stone facade of the Abbaye de Panthémont drenched in the rosy spring sunlight.
The education of Martha Jefferson was ended.
CHAPTER 18
SUMMER, 1789
THE TWELFTH OF JULY 1789 was a Sunday. There had been riots and food was becoming more and more scarce. The dismissal of the minister, the defiance of the National Assembly, the stubbornness of the king, all conveyed a sense of impending disaster those first weeks of July. Now, the streets were all plastered with enormous-sized De Par le Roi inviting peaceable citizens to remain indoors.
From my window, I could look down the length of the Champs-Elysées—eight hundred and twenty double steps according to my master—to the place Louis XV. I could also see, around the bronze statue of Louis XV, the dragoons and hussars assembling in their red-and-white-and-yellow uniforms. All sorts of rumors ran rampant, and James went to the Palais Royal every day to see what he could find out. At twelve, the cannon went off as usual when the sun passed its meridian, but this day, its low thunder struck gloom and disquiet in the hearts of almost everyone.
Through my master’s telescope I watched in the distance as a growing crowd, festooned with green cockades, grew and like a flight of locusts filled the place Louis XV. There were some people armed with axes, staves, others with picks and pitchforks. I knew James was some-where in Paris. Perhaps even in the very mob which was now entering the square. I saw the crowd being charged upon by the German Hussars; I heard noises of shots, sabers flashed clearly, and puffs of smoke from muskets rose like tiny clouds over the heads of the men. Then the crowd exploded along what streets and alleys they could, and suddenly the square was empty with the soldiers pursuing agitators and Sunday strollers alike up the avenues. It was a fascinating spectacle and I sat by the window all day.
When darkness fell, all the roads out of the city, including our own Champs-Elysées, were blocked by pickets and barriers. There were stalled carriages and vehicles of all sorts. Traffic, wheel to wheel, immobile from the tollgate all the way to the place Louis XV.
On Monday, Paris was like a tomb. When James and my master went out to investigate, they found that no one had reported for work; all had joined the rebellion. Everything was closed, except for wine and bread sh
ops. James was sent to prowl the Palais Royal he knew so well and to report back to the mansion. When he returned late that evening, he told us that the people were busily sewing cockades to be worn, not the green of d’Artois, but the red and blue of Paris, on a white background which stood for the constitution. They called it the “Tricolore.” Our ministry was ecstatic. The people of Paris had chosen the colors of the American Revolution.
Outside our house, the streets were deserted and silent. That evening, by a special new order, every window was lit in every house. I tried to imagine Paris, a maze of winding narrow streets, deserted, crossed by the large boulevards also deserted, except for the shadows of the National Guard patrolling with their torches and flares. All the lights of Paris, no more than a gathering of fireflies compared to the blazing lights of Versailles, where the National Assembly sat through the night. We slept little and by dawn on Tuesday both James and Thomas Jefferson had abandoned the mansion.
While the Hôtel de Langeac was locked and barred, the hot July sun rose and the National Guard prepared to march on the Hôtel des Invalides. By the end of the day, the Bastille, the fortress dungeon which was the very symbol of the king’s unlimited power, had been stormed and taken.
James was an eyewitness to that event, which had marked the turning point of the rebellion. Later on, James, like Monsieur de Tude, would often drink and dine out on the tale of the storming of the Bastille. That night, in the oval salon of the hôtel, servants and masters alike were held in thrall to the present. Even James’s own highly developed imagination could not embellish the drama of that siege. How much he actually saw and how much he heard about, I would never know, nor would any of his audience, but as he told his tale, we fully sensed the extent of the drama. We sat, Martha, Polly, Mr. Short, Petit, our professors, and all the other servants, spellbound while, in his strangely accented French, he recounted the Fourteenth of July.
He had slipped out of the mansion in the middle of the night and joined his comrades at one of the cafés near the Palais Royal. He had slept on the floor for the rest of the night, rising again at six. Hot rum had been served. Someone had pinned a tricolor cockade on him; the women had stayed up all night sewing. He had taken a butcher’s knife from the kitchen as his only arm, and now he joined the milling militia as they surged halfway up the Champs-Elysées and turned toward the Invalides, where someone had said there were arms to be had. James, still in the light-yellow livery of the Hôtel de Langeac, unwashed, already lightheaded on the morning’s rum like the rest, became one with the thousands of marching men and women. A strange elation had stolen over him, he said, his heart had beat in rhythm with that of his neighbor, as if everyone were one huge crawling animal of which he felt one particle of skin, one strand of hair.
The mob arrived at the walls of the Invalides, and the garrison did not fire upon them as the walls were scaled and the gates flung open. They had rushed in, spreading through all the rooms and passages of the great building. A roar went up as the place where arms had been was found and seized. Those nearest snatched, struggled, and clutched at them. There was no order, no leaders, no officers as James looked around him and saw thousands of firelocks hoisted onto thousands of shoulders with the cry of “On to the Bastille!” The dreaded prison-tomb with walls nine feet thick which was the Bastille had been battered down, the drawbridge lifted and manned with a cannon since Sunday. Since early morning the cry had been, “On to the Bastille!” and as the cry went up again the whole suburb of Saint-Antoine was marching as one man. The people, now armed, turned as a flock of wild geese, homing toward the eight grim towers that one could see over the rooftops of Paris from almost every point in the city. The new army arrived at the drawbridge of the Bastille at one o’clock. By five o’clock, all the soldiers were covered with blood. The wounded and the dead were being carried into the houses along the rue de la Cerisaie. For four hours the crowd howled before the gates.
Cannon and musket shots from the towers hit at random, crumpling men and women who sank and then were crushed under the weight of others pressing forward. The crowd increased until it spilled down and over the quais of the Pont Neuf. Then, without warning, a cry rumbled back like a wave over the sweating, bleating heads … the Bastille had surrendered.
The Bastille was taken. The Bastille had fallen.
James threw up his arms. We were all hanging on to his every word. The forward motion of the mob, like a wave, surged headlong toward its goal, and had not the National Guard wheeled around and leveled its guns against its own, the mob would have plunged suicidally by the thousands into the moat of the prison. The governor of the Bastille tried to kill himself but was taken prisoner. His captors meant to take him to the Hôtel de Ville through the cursing, clutching crowd; only his bloody scalp, held up in a victorious hand, arrived. The head, aloft on a pike, was now traveling through the streets. The rest of him had been torn to pieces.
The evening sun was setting, and James, feverish and exhausted, battered and dirty, fell quiet as did his awed audience. The word of the fall of the Bastille had begun to spread over Paris, and, amid gunfire, we heard the sound of music. The people of Paris were dancing in the streets.
We put James to bed and, despite the bath, the smell of the gunpowder hovered over him. He sat propped up on his pillows grinning. His eyes seemed to say this: This slave from Virginia’s made history today. This slave ran with the Revolution! His eyes said to me: I am mine. We are going to take ourselves to freedom. If God let me do this, then He will leave us take our freedom without running. Take ourselves, without stealing. We are going to be free. Everything is changed.
He smiled and I smiled back.
CHAPTER 19
SEPTEMBER 1789
IT WAS AMIDST the ceremonies and processions that followed the fall of the Bastille that I found I was with child.
“Tu es enceinte,” said Marie-Louise. She looked at me with kindness and exasperation as I stared at her in disbelief. She had warned me and now she was afraid all her concoctions of parsley, rue, and camphor, or any of her other remedies would be of no avail.
I roamed the streets in a daze, weakened by the cramps in my stomach and the constant nausea. Te Deums filled Notre Dame every day, and procession followed procession, with gay young women in white muslin tied with tricolor sashes moving among the crowds. The processions and the bread lines grew longer. One day I decided never to return to the mansion.
I took refuge with Madame Dupré on the rue de Seine.
She guessed at once what had happened; she took me in her arms, and urged me to return to the safety and comfort of the Hôtel de Langeac.
“Sooner or later,” she said, “you will be forced to abandon your child. Paris is notorious for that.” She paused. “There are three thousand abandoned children a year in Paris. Surely you don’t want to add to that sad number?”
“But you don’t understand,” I replied, “this is not just a bastard child, it is a slave bastard. It will belong to my master, Monsieur Jefferson.”
“But of course it is his!”
“No, Madame, that is not what I mean. I mean it is his not only by blood but by property. It is his property to do with what he likes, just as he can do with me what he likes. I am not free, Madame.”
There was a long silence as Madame Dupré tried to assimilate this information.
“You mean you are a slave, like the Africans in Martinique and Santo Domingo?”
“Not like the Africans. I am African. I am black.”
At this, Madame Dupré seized me and dragged me into the light of the window. She looked searchingly at my face and body, at my hands and nails. At the texture of my hair.
“Then you are a métis?”
“Yes.”
“Go back to him. Go back and demand your freedom and that of his child. Demand it in writing and stay here in Paris. You will find a protector. I promise you that. On French soil you are free and you shall stay free. But return to him. Give him the chance
to express his instincts as a father and a lover. You may be surprised. He loves you.”
“I don’t want to be loved. I want to be free.”
“Do you really, my child? You love him as well, and there is no freedom in that.”
She looked at me with her wise, cynical eyes and shook me gently by the shoulders.
“Rentre à la maison,” she said to me. “Go home. Tu veux rentrer, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui,” I answered, “I want to go home.”
A week after my departure I returned to the mansion. I had stolen myself and now I tried to replace the stolen object quietly, as if it had never been taken from its owner. I entered through the courtyard and servant quarters in trembling expectation of meeting my brother James, but it was Petit that I met in the reception hall. He looked at me without surprise, but with studied annoyance. What havoc I must have wrought in the household to have put any expression, let alone anger, on those cold features … as I searched his face, looking for a clue as to what awaited me, a warm expression stole over his face.
“Do not be alarmed, but … he is ill. He has been in grips of a migraine headache for almost a week with no relief. . . . James has gone again to fetch Dr. Gem.”
I remembered from Monticello the violence of these sudden headaches that were powerful enough to render my master senseless. I tried to remember what remedies had been used at Monticello to ease him.
“Petit,” I said, forgetting my own predicament, “it is possible to get camphor and ice and …”
“We’ve tried everything … Mademoiselle … except your return. . . . I pray that it will relieve him.”
“Why did he not look for me?”
“I do not know.”
“And James?”
He ransacked Paris for you.”
“But I was at Madame Dupreé’s!”
“She swore you were not. She even let him enter and search the rooms.”
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