Beverly had begun to laugh. He had a laugh like his father’s, she thought, short and abrupt, and likely to bring tears to his eyes if prolonged. Sally Hemings had laughed as well. Her lover had built an inside toilet, which was the object of much mirth among the household slaves. He had invented a way to move his chamber pot by a system of ropes and pulleys and wheels along a tunnel leading from the house to an opening in the ground about twenty-five feet away. It had been christened “The Underground Railway,” over which traveled his “runaways.” She and the other household slaves had elaborated on the theme until now there were “inaugural addresses” pronounced “in-all-urine-ass-dresses,” “states of the union,” “cabinet meeting,” “Federal Reserves,” “Treasury bonds,” “ultimatums,” “levees,” and “Indian Treaties.”
“Aunt Bett found a new name,” Beverly had continued. “She said they were his “manumission papers.” But in that case, he ain’t shat in a long time!”
“Beverly!”
“I named it his Declaration of Indepen—”
“Beverly!”
“Now, Beverly, you want a good switching,” she had said to his grinning face. But she had been laughing too hard for him to believe her. Blasphemy! She had tried to explain to her sisters how the mansion on the Champs-Elysees had been of the most modern construction, and had had as well as bathrooms, lieux anglais, or indoor water closets.
“That may be very well and good in Paris, France, honey, but trouble is, sister,” Bett Hemings had said, “once this thing gets out there, there is still got to be a slave standing there ready to catch it, and empty it! Typical that Thomas Jefferson can’t invent nothing that don’t have a slave on the receiving end of it. . . .”
She saw him now in the distance saddling up one of the bays he loved so much. First thing he had done when he came back from Washington City was to build a new carriage. John had built the body, Joe Fosset had done all the ironwork, and Burwell had painted every bit of it. Only the plating had been done in Richmond, and a finer carriage there was not in Albemarle. That carriage, with its four bays, Diomede, Brimmer, Tecumseh, and Dromedary, each pair guided by a slave, with Burwell outriding on Eagle, was some pretty sight, almost outshining in splendor his cousin John Randolph’s, with his blooded horses and his slaves following with perhaps a dozen more.
The Randolphs.
They were the bane of her existence.
The Randolph blood.
It was the tragedy of her life.
Without it, Martha might never have returned to Monticello and Thomas Jefferson.
Without it, she and Martha might have lived out their lives apart.
The Randolphs, and God knows there were enough of them, were strange people. John Randolph was one of the most eccentric men who ever lived, and Thomas Mann Randolph was well nigh his equal. Like two identical steers. Having Thomas Mann on the mountain permanently didn’t make her sleep any easier. Thomas Mann didn’t like it any better—living with his father-in-law and watching his wife worship the ground her father trod on, any more than Thomas Jefferson liked his son-in-law drinking and acting crazier and crazier. But Martha was in such bliss to be back up here, she didn’t seem to notice that her husband was crazy. Jim, the overseer at Legos, had told her the other day that Thomas Mann had driven Dromedary over to Edgehill and right into a row of haystacks, just like that. Scattering them in all directions and covering himself with straw. When he had reached the overseer and finished his business, he had calmly declared that he thought an old bull must have gotten into the wheat field, ’cause he had seen a good many shocks overthrown and scattered on his way over. As serene as you please, when he had done it himself, she thought. The overseer had laughed, because he knew Thomas Mann Randolph was crazy as a loon! Burwell said he had seen him take Dromedary’s tail and run him up the mountain as fast as he could. And he was in money trouble too. Bad. Selling his slaves for cash.
Then there was Anne Cary, Thomas Mann’s sister. She had been brought to trial for infanticide with her cousin and lover Richard Randolph. That had rocked the gentry!
Her thoughts were interrupted by the screams of the half-naked children who came racing by her; Ceres, the bull terrier, on their heels. Sally Hemings looked up into the lacy greenness of the immense ash trees that shrouded the Big House in shadow—trees planted by her lover before she was born. She loved these trees. Encompassing her in their soft violet shade, they seemed to stand between her and the world. Protecting that strange love which was her secret and her burden.
A dull pain struck her temple. She was almost forty years old. If she lived as long as her mother, there was as much of her life behind her as in front of her. And in those forty years she had had to learn slowly, like her mother before her, like every female before her, the uses of love.
And Martha. Everything would be all right, she thought, if only there were not two mistresses at Monticello, as if there could really be two mistresses of anything.
CHAPTER 39
SUMMER 1812
THOMAS JEFFERSON was happy. He had deeply missed the pleasures of Monticello. He had missed his slave wife. How many times when he had been away from her had he imagined his hands riding over that beautiful body, seizing it as if it were handfuls of his own buff clay Monticello earth; the fragile woman’s landscape of her turning, twisting, rising, and falling under his hands; the long black hair winding like a tributary of his own Ravina River; the golden eyes which turned dark amber in heat, shining upon him like his own Virginia sun, steady and enervating. Those eyes, this mountain, his friends, his neighbors. They were the only places he really felt safe. The mansion, his mansion, was finally finished. His burden of state, his presidency, was over. Only his university remained to be built now, and his family to care for: slave and white. He thought of Anne, soon to be married, and dismissed Sally’s son Thomas, who had deserted him. He turned and beckoned to Beverly. Often, for the last year or so, he had seen Beverly waiting, as he was now, saddled up, hoping to be invited. And sometimes, when he really didn’t feel like being alone, he would take Beverly along with him. Isaac, who held his horse, looked up at him and then over to Beverly, who sped to join his father.
As young as he was—thirteen and a half—Beverly was a splendid horseman, thought Thomas Jefferson. He rode almost as well as Burwell, and certainly better than anyone near his age at Monticello. Sometimes, when they raced, he would rein in Brimmer and let Beverly win. Sometimes. Beverly had grown so much in the past year, the boy’s height would equal his own.
The two bright heads met in the light, Beverly’s hair brighter and blonder than the fading, graying mane of his father. The two bodies were cast from the same mold with their heavy, awkward necks and wrists, their huge hands, and their long legs. Beverly flushed with pleasure and adoration as they rode off silently together. He had taken to riding the fields, asking questions, demanding—yes, demanding—instructions, begging to be taught, calculating, planning, counting, pleading for more knowledge. His father had been surprised at the astuteness of his questions, his quick mind, his grasp of trade, banking, interest, exports, tariffs, yields, crop rotation, loans … everything seemed to fascinate him.
His mother had begged that he be allowed to go to school with the Randolph boys in Charlottesville, if only as a body servant. She had not succeeded in this, but he had finally agreed that Beverly could be tutored secretly after classes by the instructor there, Mr. Oglesby. He was proud of Mr. Oglesby’s reports on Beverly’s progress. Beverly was the only boy he allowed the freedom of his library. Even his grandson Jefferson had to ask first. What power there was in teaching, he thought. His dream now was a university in Charlottesville and he was determined to build it.
Yes, thought Thomas Jefferson, his slave wife would forgive him in time for Martha. He had had no choice, and he had wanted his daughter with him. Peace. He was home. He had returned to the scenes of his birth and early life, to the society of those with whom he was raised and who had alway
s been dear to him. The long absences, the pomp, the turmoil, the bustle, the splendor of office had drawn but deeper sighs for this place; he longed for private life, friends, and family. He had laid down his burden of power and hoped only that he had obtained for himself the approbation of his country. He mused.
He reined in his bay and waited for Beverly.
Thomas Jefferson’s knees and thighs increased the pressure on his mount as Beverly reached him. Then, as they moved together, he cast a sidelong glance at his slave son. The clear, handsome profile was a replica of his own, even to his color. Love. God knows, he loved the boy’s mother. Cherished her. He was bonded to her. She owned him just as surely as he owned her, the only difference being that her possession of him was a gift while his was a theft.
He was stirred as always by the thought of her fragility … her smallness, her smooth round skull he could cup in one great hand, the voice, that lovely voice. . . . He never ceased to be amazed at her beauty that seemed to deepen year by year. She was more beautiful now than at twenty, he thought. As for his own age, he wore it lightly, despite his attacks of rheumatism, his constantly aching right wrist, his bouts of dysentery. His wife had been dead for twenty-nine years, and this woman, whose image was before him in her plain blue gown, he had loved faithfully, with a mixture of guilt and passion, for more than twenty-three years.
Beverly, he thought, would soon be a man. He stared at his second son. A wave of love and bad conscience overwhelmed him.
“And how are your studies coming with Mr. Oglesby?”
“Fine, Master, sir.”
“He’s treating you well?”
“Oh, yes! He’s very kind, Master. He’s … wonderful to me, Master, sir.”
Thomas Jefferson felt a pang of jealousy. It was the Charlottesville schoolmaster Beverly adored, not he. This Scottish schoolmaster was opening the door of the world to him, leading him, not he. . . .
“Come to my study this afternoon, Beverly. I have some books for you.”
“Thank you, Master, sir. Shall I come before my classes?”
“Yes. You can show them to Master Oglesby.”
He took a deep breath but the pain remained. Why didn’t this son, whom he had never called son, and who had never called him father, love him?
Martha Jefferson Randolph was four weeks into her twelfth pregnancy. Twenty years of childbearing, and her eldest about to marry. She sat at the downstairs window of the salon and watched her father ride away with Beverly Hemings.
She wondered where Jeff was. Of course he was in school, she remembered. How stupid. Jefferson was eighteen now, a gentle boy, but not a Jefferson. Simply a Virginia gentleman without any special talent. Soon he would carry on his fragile shoulders the responsibility of the whole estate. Not only his father’s affairs, which were in a dreadful state, but his grandfather’s as well. Martha shuddered. How would he hold up under such a burden? If only Thomas Mann … But Thomas Mann was lost to her, to everyone. He had turned on his family. His delusions of persecution had cast her out. He accused her and the whole family of the most detestable crimes. Yet, he slept in her bed every night, got her with child every year, and made her life hell. She only hoped that Anne would do better. She didn’t trust the handsome, rich, well-born Bankhead. She prayed that Anne would never live to regret her choice.
Why did she feel so old? She smoothed back a strand of hair, already turning gray, into the indifferent coiffure of the morning. She was only months older than Sally. Yet Sally’s face was unlined, and her body seemed as fresh as it had been in her eighteenth year. Her own body felt used and abused, and she knew she had a slovenly air about her. Even her father had said so in so many polite words. Since then she had made a special effort to appear not only neat but with some style, especially at dinner.
Martha felt a burst of loneliness. She tried to conjure up the image of her mother, dead now for twenty-nine years. The unclear face of her mother flickered briefly before her. After Martha Jefferson’s death, her father had gone on a rampage of destruction. There remained no vestige of her portraits, letters, journals, accounts, diaries … everything went. He had never forgiven her for dying and leaving him. But she, Martha, had forgiven her. She strained to remember the face of this woman before the time when, sick and wasted, she had bound her father to a vow which had kept him wifeless and her motherless.
Then, Martha Randolph realized, she did look into the face of her dead mother every day. When she looked into the face of her slave, her aunt Sally Hemings. She had realized it even in Paris, although she didn’t know how long it had been evident to her. There were differences, but there were the same eyes, the same small stature—so different from her own—the same dreamy look, the same steely submission that masked the same taste for luxury and powerful men, except that her slave had more of a taste for politics than her mother had ever had. And if this is what she saw when she looked at Sally Hemings, what might her father see? She would give all of Monticello to be as adored as that. Or would she?
Martha Randolph shifted the weight of her awkward body. She picked up her sewing. Two things Sally Hemings, for all her resemblance to her mother, could never be: she was not white and she was not free. She, Martha, was mistress of Monticello now, and she would rule here, she vowed, until the day she died. Her father could have his pleasure. She would have Monticello, and her children after her, and her children’s children. Monticello would descend upon her children unto the third and fourth generations, she thought proudly.
Sally Hemings held her straw hat in one hand and shaded her eyes with the other. She watched Beverly Hemings ride down the mountain with his father. The small head glistened in the slanting sun, the smooth brow furrowed with the effort of following father and son as far as she could see. Sally Hemings was in the summer of her life. There was a voluptuous richness about her. The yellow eyes had darkened to gold with a glint of steel, and the ivory skin to a delicate amber. The soft, pointed chin and dimpled mouth had the set now, not only of authority but of confidence. Her children were all born. Each birth had been difficult, but she had always recovered quickly. She had inherited the robust constitution of her mother and the vicious will of her father, so that pain had never stopped her from anything.
Thomas Jefferson was sixty-nine years old. Their passion, she knew, would diminish. She would not regret it. He had been an amazingly virile and passionate man, and their life together had been rich and full. But the body tired. The body simply refused. She would never take another lover. She had been one man’s only. His. And if they were now like father and daughter, their contours, she thought, would always blend into that entity which was the human couple.
The summers seemed to pass more quickly. Europe was at war. Her beloved France was at war. The United States and its territories were at war with England. James Madison had been re-elected. Her master had reconciled with John, but not Abigail Adams. And now there was a fourth generation of Hemingses on the mountain. Little Sally Hemings and Maria Hemings, as well as her Harriet, had been sent to the weaver’s cottage to learn to spin this summer.
She looked out over the land. They plowed in terraces now, following the contours of the hilly land instead of the straight rows up and down which had allowed the precious soil to run down into the river. Black hands plowed horizontally, following the curvatures of the hills and hollows on dead level; each furrow acting as a reservoir to receive and retain the rainfall. At least, thought Sally Hemings, in point of beauty, nothing could exceed that of these lines and rows winding and unwinding along the landscape. She stood contemplating it all for one more moment, and then, with that quickness of motion her lover had always remarked, she swung around, the heavy iron ring of keys at her waist jangling like a tambourine, and entered the mansion.
CHAPTER 40
WINTER 1819
BEVERLY HEMINGS’ eyes roamed the hilly, hard-to-work farmland that stretched to the east. It had once been worth fifty to a hundred dollars an acre, but now w
ith the Panic, it was worth barely twenty. His father was in money trouble. It had dawned on him more than three years ago, the day they had packed up his library and shipped it up to Washington City, the library that had been Beverly’s only real education, aside from Mr. Oglesby.
My father needs money, he had suddenly thought. That realization had brought terror with it. Money troubles for the master meant only one thing for the slave—the auction block. His hands had trembled as he, along with Burwell, Harriet, and his mother, had carefully wrapped and packed the books into the cases that had been prepared by his Uncle John and Dinsmore, the master carpenter. The Randolph girls—Virginia, Cornelia, and Ellen—had helped as well. When they had finished all the packing, there had been sixteen wagonloads of books—three thousand pounds each—forty-eight thousand pounds of his father’s life. Each book had been handled, read, and touched by him.
No, Beverly was sure, he would never have sold his library, even to the United States government, if he hadn’t needed the money desperately. The British had burned the Library of Congress when they had burned the Capitol during the war. He remembered with what horror and rage his father had received the news, and now all his books were leaving. . . . Beverly had burst into tears; his grief was not only caused by the sudden loss of “his” books but the meaning behind it all. His father had let him take out his favorites from the lots, but had made him promise never to reveal this to a soul.
“If everyone were allowed to take out their favorite books, me included, I would have nothing to sell to the Congress. . . . You understand, Beverly, I have made a promise. I can’t except anyone from the rule, even you. . . .”
From that day on, Beverly had had only one thought: how to keep his father, and thus himself and his family, safe from the threat of financial ruin that seemed to hang like a pall over Monticello. He had studied and looked and listened and planned and prayed as he saw the net drawing tighter and tighter around them all. And now the Panic had made everything ten times worse. There was real fear in the air.
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