Mist hung over the river, blurred the moon. Martha was fighting for air as Nelly led her out onto the piazza and from there down the lawn to the river, where old Moll already stood with Parke, wrapped in a quilt, in her arms, and Puff running worriedly back and forth around her feet like an agitated milkweed.
“It ain’t got a good hold yet,” predicted the old woman, nodding up at the red glare that now shone behind the mansion house. “That new cook couldn’t bank a fire right if the instructions to do so was written on the chimney-breast. That’s the second fire we’ve had in a year.”
That was true, Martha reflected. But it was also true that the first kitchen fire, back in June, had almost certainly been the work of arson—and it had been at that point that George’s nephew Bushrod, Lawrence, and Wash had met to discuss freeing George’s slaves at the end of the year, rather than waiting for her death.
Hours later, Lawrence finished checking the buildings nearest the kitchen and let Martha, Nelly, and Parke go back upstairs. Charlotte, the headwoman of the plantation, very sensibly boiled water in the little hearth of the room where the sewing-women worked, so that Nelly could make tea, which they drank sitting in the Little Parlor. Parke was already making determined little forays to see what was left of the kitchen: “Cookies,” she said worriedly, knowing the kitchen was the place they came from.
“Are you all right?” Nelly asked Martha, when she finally was allowed to lead her upstairs again. “Would you like me to stay here with you for a little while?”
“I’ll be quite all right, dear, thank you.” Martha sat on the edge of the narrow bed, breathless and a little dizzy from the long ascent. “I should imagine Mr. Jefferson’s supporters are lighting bonfires in the streets of the Federal City tonight in celebration, so why should we be any different?”
But after Nelly left, Martha sat up in bed for a time, listening to the house grow quiet again around her. The house she had known, as intimately as she had known George, like a beloved body against whom she had slept for all those many years. Instead of her breath returning, it grew more stifled, until she was panting, as if she had run a mile instead of simply walked down the slope of the lawn. She felt a kind of soft, pushing sensation in the left side of her chest, as if someone were pressing a heavy hand around the muscle of her heart. Dizziness grayed the light of the single candle, until she lay back, gasping, against the pillows.
Then the sensations faded as swiftly as they’d come, like taking off a garment. Except for the dizziness, and the sensation of not being quite able to get her breath.
It was the climb, she decided. The climb up the stairs.
She leaned up on her elbow long enough to pinch out the candle. Even that small effort dropped her back limp.
When she dreamed again, it was of George sitting in the latticed shade of the summerhouse, waiting for that sweet blazing light to return again, and with it the invisible presence, who would lead her back to him.
Mount Vernon
Wednesday, May 5, 1801
“It hath been a most difficult spring for everyone, I see.” Dolley Madison sighed, removing her black kid gloves to accept the tea-cup Martha handed her. “Poor Mr. Madison’s father passed away at the end of February, and Mr. Madison was much taken in settling the estate—and with it, that of his brother Francis, who died this October past. Then he himself took sick—and who could blame him, poor lamb?—with a rheumatism so bad even flannels and temperance could not cure it. And all the while poor Mr. Jefferson like a fly in a tar-box, to have him come and ‘set up the shop.’ Is there aught that I or Jemmy can do, to speed things here or help with the cooking, until the kitchen is restored?”
“It’s good of you to ask, dearest, but no. My granddaughters have the matter in hand.” Martha smiled. “That’s the advantage of an old-fashioned kitchen, you know. If one is cooking over an open hearth, one can do it almost anywhere and get an edible result. I suspect that those English cooks who’ve become completely accustomed to closed stoves and Rumford Roasters would find themselves at a loss if they suddenly had to go back to pot-chains and Dutch ovens.”
She glanced across the Blue Parlor at Nelly and Dolley’s young sister Anna, who had taken it upon themselves to entertain the three Congressmen, a former colonel of the Continental Army and his wife whom Martha barely remembered, and two complete strangers—a married couple from New York City bearing a letter of introduction from Gouverneur Morris—who had turned up at the door of Mount Vernon to “pay their respects” and gape at Washington’s house, Washington’s tomb, and Washington’s widow.
Though Jemmy and Dolley had paid a visit of condolence just after George’s death—in the dead of winter—she had herself been in a state of eerie numbness. It was good to see, among the gawking strangers, a friend she wanted to see.
“Mr. Jefferson intends to have a cooking-stove put in, at any rate,” said Dolley. “Not to speak of modern water-closets, so that dreadful little privy can be torn down, that stands in full view of Pennsylvania Avenue, for all the world to see. Mr. Madison and I are staying with him, until we can find a house of our own.”
“Are there houses available?” Martha’s own single view of the Federal City had been of marsh and pastureland, carpenters’ sheds and heaps of rubble: a world of cattle, birds, and roving swine through which those sixty-foot-wide avenues cut forlorn swathes leading nowhere.
“Indeed. And more being built every day.”
“I own I’m astonished. Of course Eliza’s husband speculates in land there, but it appears that’s quite a different thing from actually building houses for people to live in.” She tried to keep the tartness out of her voice and didn’t succeed: Mr. Thomas Law was a sore spot in the family. The middle-aged Englishman had arrived in the Federal City five years ago—when it really was only a few sheds and a brick-pit—with a dark-eyed half-caste son in tow, who was now at Harvard. Rumor credited him with two more, and Martha could not rid herself of the suspicion that he’d proposed to Eliza only because he knew she was the President’s granddaughter…
And that Eliza had accepted only because Pattie was on the brink of getting married before her.
Dolley went on, “We shall probably take one of the houses in the same row as the State Department, on the Georgetown road, though Mr. Jefferson would have us stay in the Mansion with him through the whole of his term. I think he doth miss the company of his family. He likes to know there is someone in the house with him.”
Across the parlor, Mr. Waln of Pennsylvania said impatiently, “Yes, yes, General Washington was a great believer in the principles of liberty. But he can never have countenanced the license that would result, were girls educated as boys are! We have all seen what comes of that, in France.”
“He certainly educated the slaves that he released,” pointed out Mrs. Colonel Harris self-righteously.
“That’s not the same thing at all! He didn’t believe in their general education…”
“I shall ask Mr. Lear, when next I’m in Georgetown,” declared Congressman Waln. “He corresponded a good deal with the President, and should know.”
“And I shall write to Judge Washington…”
“Of course that ‘row’ is just six little houses standing in the midst of a marsh,” added Dolley thoughtfully, calling Martha’s worried attention back. “But while I’m under Mr. Jefferson’s roof, I shall attempt to convince him that it is not aristocratical to observe diplomatic protocol, which I gather he came to hate in France. I rather think he feels he owes it to the Democratic-Republicans who voted for him, to have it known that seating at his dinners is pêle-mêle and without regard to rules of precedence. But he needlessly sets back his own cause by offending those who are used to it.”
“It is a great pity,” said Martha, “that he never married again.”
An indefinable expression flitted across Dolley’s blue eyes. “Perhaps he never found a woman of his own station, who could endure to be his wife.” For a moment Martha ha
d the impression that Dolley was thinking of someone specific—surely not that artist’s wife in Paris she’d heard rumor of from Abigail? “And whoever she might be,” Dolley went on briskly, “I think she would have a struggle of it, to supplant Patsy in his heart.”
“Of course,” agreed Martha, recalling what she had gathered of the older daughter’s fierce protectiveness toward her father. “And understandable, of course…But it is a pity that Mr. Jefferson hasn’t someone to temper his Republican ideals with a little social common sense.”
Her eyes met Dolley’s, and Dolley smiled, knowing exactly what Martha meant.
“Mr. Madison doesn’t understand either, of course,” Dolley said softly. “Though I think, neither doth he understand why Mr. Jefferson is so determined to answer his own front door himself in his bedroom-slippers. I have heard Mr. Jefferson speak many times against women trying to influence politics—having seen how the ladies of the French salons could make or disgrace the King’s ministers there. But men will build society wherever they are, and be influenced by it for good or ill. And even a Philosopher King surely hath need of a hostess, not only to make calls on the wives of those who shall be useful to his policies, but to make sure that none who come to his door feel slighted.”
“Well,” agreed Martha, “it is the women who actually run things, you know, whether Mr. Jefferson likes it or not.”
Dolley chuckled. “Think what influence Citizen Genêt might have wielded, had he brought with him an amiable wife!”
They both laughed at that, and at the first natural break in the conversation on the other side of the parlor, Dolley invited an opinion of Mrs. Harris, to draw the talk into a general group. Watching Dolley charm the Honorable Representatives from New York and Pennsylvania, Martha reflected again that pro-French or pro-English—and she had certainly entertained enough Frenchmen around the ill-lit dining-tables at Valley Forge and the Hudson Heights—or whatever one felt about alliances and treaties and the National Bank, it took more than a man to govern the country.
There almost had to be a woman beside him and only half a pace behind, to make sure things were run smoothly. Whatever Mr. Jefferson liked to think, politics did not exist in a vacuum. They were a part of men’s hearts, and as such, they existed side by side with the other things men kept in their hearts, like the desire for friendship and good company in the evening.
She smiled at the thought of her young friend welcoming diplomats in the blaze of candlelight, and presiding over dinners that were more than simply dinners. Invisibly setting the stage upon which the nation’s leader would be seen to speak his lines.
Guard my back, George had said to her, long ago in this parlor: through the soft birdsong of the May morning she could almost hear the sob of that January wind around the eaves. And guarding a general’s back—and a ruler’s—was a hero’s task in itself.
Abigail had guarded her John’s, admirably.
And Patsy Jefferson having given over the position in favor of a husband and children of her own, Dolley would, Martha thought, do an admirable labor of guarding Mr. Jefferson’s. Or rather, the pair of them, Dolley and Mr. Madison working as a team, Dolley socially and Mr. Madison—that crafty little kingmaker—politically.
As she bade Dolley and the other company good-bye after dinner, Martha reflected she would never have believed she’d welcome into her heart the wife of the man who had stolen her peace.
Which only went to show that one never knew what “happily ever after” was going to consist of.
The Honorable Congressman Waln was still squabbling with Colonel Harris and his wife about whether or not George would have advocated education for young ladies—he’d certainly paid for Harriot’s—as they were climbing into their own carriages, each of them quoting examples as if every word George had spoken had been holy writ. The Pennsylvania Congressman’s insistence that he was going to ask Tobias Lear about it—the former tutor had spent most of the past year sorting through George’s correspondence—brought back to Martha the ugly memory of the private letter Jefferson had sent a friend, in which he’d expressed his opinion of George’s support of the British constitution, likening him to Samson having his head shorn by the “harlot England.” The friend, good Democratic-Republican that he was, had published it, to score a political point. Completely aside from George’s hurt feelings—the matter had very nearly come to a duel—the political implications had been horrific.
The recollection of some of the things George had called various Congressmen over the years in letters to her brought home to her what had to be done…
And why.
“Lady Washington?”
She looked up, to see Dolley watching her with concern in her lovely blue eyes. Colonel Harris’s chaise, and Mr. Thompkins’s rented vehicle, stood already a little way off on the potholed circle of the drive—which Lawrence had sworn he’d given orders weeks ago to be repaired. Dolley’s carriage waited, with young Anna, and the other two ladies, invited to share the ride as far as Georgetown, already inside.
“Is all well with thee, madame?”
Martha made herself smile, though in fact she felt crushed by the fathoms-deep weariness that had come on her first the day after the kitchen fire. “Quite all right, dearest. But I have something for you.”
And from her pocket she brought out the small golden mirror. She pressed it into Dolley’s gloved hand.
Dolley turned it to the light, openmouthed. “ ’Tis beautiful! Art thou sure? What—?”
“I’m sure. And I’ll explain another time.” She closed her friend’s fingers around it again, and patted her hand gently. “I think this needs to be yours now. Keep it safe. It has a…a rather interesting tale. Yes, I should like it to belong to you.”
She lifted her hand to them, as the carriages jolted and rattled away.
Guard my back.
There was one thing left to do.
She hated to do it, though she had long known she must. She remembered, as she passed the door of the Little Dining-Room, how much joy she’d always derived from opening the black wooden chest beneath her bed and reading George’s letters. Her own as well, for George—who was not sentimental—always returned them to her when she arrived in winter quarters, or when he got back from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon again. The letters made a sort of diary, a recollection of cares that had seemed colossal at the time, like Harriot completely ruining that straw-yellow muslin dress trying to catch the stable cat, or George’s grim despair at trying to extract ammunition from Congress when Congress kept telling him to stop drawing away from the British and attack them.
He’d trusted her, with everything that had been in his heart.
He trusted her still.
And she’d be with George soon, she reminded herself, pausing halfway up the first flight of stairs to catch her breath. Very soon, she thought.
Then she’d be able to talk to him about all that had happened, and to remember it all, good and bad, in its true context.
And nobody else would be able to go prying through their words to one another: what they had thought, what they had feared, how they had loved.
But I can’t let myself read even a word of them now, she told herself, as she reached her attic room at last. If I do I’ll be drawn back into that world—of Cambridge, of Valley Forge, of Philadelphia—and Nelly or someone will stop me.
So she lit a fire in the Franklin stove and gently fed the letters into it, unopened, one by one. Kissing each good-bye and then releasing the past to ashes and smoke: his occasional despair and the anger she’d sometimes felt at him, forty years of love and misunderstandings. The secrets of his heart that he knew she would keep.
The burning took longer than she’d thought. The heat seared the backs of her fingers painfully as she fed and poked, fed and poked, breaking up the fragments until all were consumed: as Prospero had said of his phantoms, leaving not a wrack behind.
The stuff that dreams were made of.
When it was done, and the floor around the stove and her chair littered with the faded ribbons in which she’d had the packets tied, she was so tired that she couldn’t even rise to walk to the bed.
She bowed her head and wept silently, the furnace-blaze of burning paper slowly fading in the stuffy room. Wept because what she’d done was, like all events in time—Patcy’s death or the hesitant smile in George’s eyes when first he’d walked into Mrs. Chamberlayne’s parlor to meet her—irrevocable.
When she at last raised her head, she saw that there was still daylight in the garret bedroom. Going to the window, she saw the evening’s golden brightness beyond the shadow of the house.
Time enough to go down and sit a little with George, before night came on.
The Federal City
Wednesday, May 5, 1801
“Is it really the women who actually run things?” Anna, quiet for much of the drive back to the city, turned to Dolley as Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Thompkins waved farewell from the windows of their husbands’ carriages and those vehicles pulled away. Both of those ladies had clearly subscribed to their husbands’ view—and that of Congressmen Platt and Waln—that men made politics and the womenfolk merely made them comfortable when they got home from more important work.
“Of course it is.” Dolley smiled. “Look at Montpelier. Jemmy’s father owned the land, and made all the decisions about how much wheat to plant and how much tobacco, and should they buy another mule, but thou knows ’twas Mother Madison who’d say to him in their bedroom at night, ‘You’ve got to do something about getting the kitchen rebuilt,’ or, ‘ ’Tis time to buy new cloth for the slaves’ winter things.’ And for all Jemmy wrote to the newspapers and to everyone he knew about Mr. Jefferson being elected, nothing would have happened had not Jemmy made sure he knew every one of those Congressmen whilst we lived in Philadelphia. Had we not had them to our house there, and later up to Montpelier, to discuss things informally instead of listening to each other’s speeches in Congress.
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