by Bob Mayer
Moms closed her eyes, her brain churning.
There were no answers to such questions.
Dominoes. These missions were dominoes lined up: Doc in 1776 had passed it on to her here; Roland and Ivar were in 1863, in the midst of the great war that would play out over what she held in her hands.
History couldn’t be changed. She opened her eyes and saw Hemings staring at her. Waiting.
“I don’t know the Key,” Moms said.
“I do.”
“Then we both share this burden,” Moms said. “I assume you want me to turn the Cipher and discover where the Declaration is hidden.”
“What I want? No one has ever cared about what I want. I’m a slave. We don’t have wants.”
“You have thoughts,” Moms said. “Yearnings.”
“True. I have had many years to think on this,” Hemings said. “The answer would seem simple and obvious, but I’ve had to open my eyes and understand many difficult things in my life. I have listened to many great men speak. As a slave I learned more than a white woman, since they would send the wives out when they lit their cigars and swirled their brandy, and talked of matters they believed only men could speak of. But I could stand there, invisible, and take it in. You have no idea how invisible we are, yet, also, how important.
“The great men didn’t abolish slavery in 1776 because there would be no country if they had tried. The colonies would have fractured. The war would have been lost.” Hemings smiled sadly. “Think on that. We would still be under the King, and there would still be slavery.”
Moms was confused for a moment, remembering that England had outlawed slavery—but the download told her it was not until 1833, seven years from now.
“The great men,” Hemings repeated bitterly. “John Adams felt superior to my Tom. Adams never owned a slave.” She pulled a sheaf of papers off a shelf. She rustled through, and found what she was looking for. “These are that great man’s words, the second President: ‘I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in such abhorrence, that I have never owned a Negro or any other slave, though I have lived for many years in times, when the practice was not disgraceful, when the best men in my vicinity thought it not inconsistent with their character, and when it has cost me thousands of dollars for the labor and subsistence of free men, which I might have saved by the purchase of Negroes at times when they were very cheap.”
She put the papers back. “He didn’t know what he was talking about, of course. Slaves are not cheap. While we are not paid, we must be housed. We must be fed. We must be kept healthy since we are such an investment.
“Adams didn’t believe in slavery,” Hemings continued, “but he didn’t fight against it very hard, either. The great men, the other four of the Five, readily took out the passage Tom wrote condemning the slave trade in his draft of the Declaration of Independence. He, like the others, valued unity and independence for the country over freedom for my people. Even with the terrible vision, even with Tom writing the Declaration of Emancipation, even voting for it among the Five, they jumped when they were offered a compromise that took the burden from them for fifty years.” Her voice indicated her incredulity. “Fifty years. How many of my brothers and sisters have lived in chains in those fifty years? Died in chains? Did that weigh on their conscience?
“They were all men full of contradictions. I heard words from Mister Adams’s own lips that went even further. He opposed legislation in Massachusetts that would have emancipated slaves because he felt the issue was too explosive. His words, and I remember them quite clearly, were that the issue should ‘sleep for a time’. He also didn’t want my brethren to fight against the British when there were freedmen who took up arms.” She shook her head. “The north has made progress in something that was not much of an issue to them to begin. But here and the Deep South? Perhaps it would have died out. But a Massachusetts man, of all people, changed that. The great men didn’t anticipate his device.”
“The cotton gin.”
Hemings nodded. “Now it would be as easy for the South to part with slaves as it used to be to remove the seeds from the cotton by hand before his machine. It is worse now than it was fifty years ago. They did not anticipate that.” She waved her hand. “The matter they did not speak of, but was implicit, was that in fifty years it would not be their problem. It would be their children’s and grandchildren’s problem. It is always an easy decision to make to put something off. It’s not a decision at all.” She looked at the Cipher. “But now, the decision is back upon us. Upon you.”
Moms knew it wasn’t a decision. History was written. “I’ll take the Cipher.”
“And do what?”
“What must be done.” Moms stood, ready to depart and take with her the freedom of millions and the lives of hundreds of thousands.
“A blood of patriots and tyrants,” Hemings said.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s the Key.”
The Cipher became heavier, almost unbearable. Moms put the device back into one of the leather pouches. “I’m sorry.”
“You will do nothing,” Hemings said. “Just like the great men.” She didn’t exhibit disappointment or anger or any emotion, but a lifetime of slavery locked emotions behind a steely stoicism. Moms dared not imagine what Hemings was feeling.
“Slavery will end,” Moms said, a weak argument at best to a woman who would die a slave.
“When?” Hemings asked as if she expected an answer. “Will my children see it?”
“Your children will be free,” Moms said, as clever a truth covering a lie as she’d ever said.
Hemings was no fool. Fools did not flourish in this house. “Because they pass as white.”
“Yes.”
“And those who will never pass?”
“Will be free. Eventually.”
“’Eventually’?” Hemings snorted. “Eventually, we will all die. That’s a sort of freedom. Will I see Emancipation in my lifetime?”
Moms broke the rule again. “No.”
“Another fifty years?” Hemings asked.
“No. Sooner.” Moms thought of the Civil War and the horrors it wrought.
“Will it come peacefully?”
“No.”
“So, it will come like the vision.” Hemings pointed at the Cipher. “That’s why you’re here.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you weren’t here,” Hemings said, “then the Cipher would be in my hands.”
“You can have it,” Moms said, and was surprised that she actually meant it. “Here.” She held it out.
Hemings took it. She spun a few of the disks, but without focus. “Did you ever meet Mister Adams?”
“I’m afraid not,” Moms said.
“He never came here,” Hemings said, “but when Mister Adams was President and Mister Jefferson was Vice President, they did meet often at the house on Market Street in Philadelphia. Sometimes, I would accompany him. Of course, I had to enter in the rear and take my place among the staff, serving.
“Adams was a good man to so many. So vocal against slavery. His wife, Abigail, was truly against it. One could see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice. Mister Adams was more of a—” She paused in thought, idly spinning the disks. “More of a thought person. He looked down on Tom for owning slaves.”
Hemings looked up from the Cipher. “Once, while I was serving the soup, my finger slipped into the bowl as I placed it in front of him. Mister Adams saw it, but no one else. He didn’t say anything or make a fuss. But he never touched that soup. Do you understand the difference?”
Moms nodded. Jefferson had kissed the finger that had gone into Adams’s soup many times. Felt its caress.
“That is where things stand. Although Mister Adams was against slavery, he still saw me as less than human in the most basic way. I think I would have preferred if he tolerated that which just is, and could have eaten his soup.”
Moms saw why Jefferson had kept he
r at his side all her adult life. He might never have felt the passion for Sally Hemings that he’d had in those six weeks with Mrs. Cosway, but he’d respected Hemings, and that was a much more valuable commodity. Hemings was pragmatic, a counterbalance to the idealism that ruled him.
“Perhaps not being around Negroes made Mister Adams different, but I’ve seen it in many who come here; and many, many people have come here. Famous people. People from all levels of society. People who rail loudly for abolition. Honestly, those who own slaves understand the reality much more than those who don’t.”
Hemings turned the first disk on the Cipher, then the second.
Moms realized her heart was racing. She was compromising her mission, compromising her timeline.
“Slavery is a doomed institution,” Hemings said as she dialed in the third letter, “but what Mister Adams felt when my finger went in that bowl? A piece of paper can’t change that. I’m really not sure what can. Tom didn’t think it could be changed. He felt Negroes should leave. Go to the islands or back to Africa. Our own place. He did not think we could reside shoulder to shoulder, equally, with whites.”
“He did with you,” Moms said.
Hemings looked up from the Cipher. “No, he didn’t. He never claimed our children. He never claimed me. He owned us. But in owning us, he gave us a place. Now, he’s gone, and I know why he didn’t free me.”
“To protect you.” Moms thought of what was coming down the line of history, particularly the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. But even now, if Sally Hemings were freed, she would have to leave Virginia. A twisted law that used the families of slaves as hostages to the system. A slave could be freed and then forced to leave home and family, or remain with family and be a slave for life.
Hemings turned the fourth disk. She lifted her free hand from the Cipher to indicate the room and the house. “And to take care of his legacy, if possible. I’m sure the debt collectors will be hovering like flies as soon as the word gets out.”
That reminded Moms of the body in the room down the short hallway.
Hemings abruptly got to her feet. She went to the fireplace, unscrewed the end of the Cipher then tossed the disks in, one by one. When the last was in the flames, she walked past Moms to open the door. Moms looked at the disks as they began to catch fire.
“A piece of paper isn’t going to change a thing,” Hemings said. “That was the dirty truth none of them dared to utter.”
“The first Declaration did,” Moms said.
“No, it led to a war,” Hemings said, “and this one would too. I don’t think the country could handle that war now. Slaves are too valuable to the South, and there are too many in the North like Mister Adams who say one thing, but if it came to putting his blood on the line for it, I fear he would come up short. And it will take blood. That is what has to change. The hearts of enough white people willing to spill their blood; much more than a piece of paper.”
Moms thought of Uncle Toms Cabin and the uproar and Eagle’s mission. She saw the line between that and this, and didn’t need Doc and Ivar’s Turing Time Computer to understand the linkage.
Hemings walked across the hallway, Moms following into the Entrance Hall, then out onto the East Portico.
“Did you come by carriage?” Hemings asked as they walked outside.
Moms demurred. “My ride will be along presently. Perhaps you’ll give me permission to walk the grounds until it arrives?”
“Certainly.”
“I know it has been a most difficult day for you.”
“It has.”
Moms started to go down the steps of Monticello, but Hemings’s question stopped her.
“How long until we are free?”
Moms looked about. There was no one else nearby. “Four decades.”
“That’s many lives,” Hemings said.
Moms thought of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which he could only make on the First of January in 1863 in the midst of Civil War. Only after the bloodbath of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American history. Even then, it only applied to slaves in the rebelling states, over which, ironically, Lincoln had no control. And Lincoln could only issue it as Commander-In-Chief in war time, not as a President. Two more years of war would follow after that, with a century of Jim Crow before the Civil Rights Act. And even then . . .
“It is,” Moms said. She retraced her route, up the stairs until she stood level with Sally Hemings. Moms extended her hand. “It’s been a privilege meeting you.”
Hemings shook her hand.
“You did the right thing, Mrs. Jefferson,” Moms said.
Hemings’s lips curled. “If I’d have been Mrs. Jefferson, I’d have turned the rest of the disks. If he’d have said my name, not Cosway’s, with his last breath, I’d have turned them. No matter his love for me, even my Tom, the great Jefferson, was the same as Adams in the end. I wonder if we’ll ever be ready.” She turned abruptly and went back into Monticello.
Moms stood at the base of the stairs, finally understanding, and then time came for her.
Gettysburg, 4 July 1863
Roland saw them just before noon. A cluster of riders, silhouetted on top of the ridgeline. Armistead was mounted, the wounds in his arm and shoulder bandaged. He was using the uninjured arm to point. Meade was next to him.
Meade had 65,000 men. Lee had 45,000 left. President Lincoln, who would come here and make such an epic speech, was currently livid with Meade for not counterattacking and crushing Lee’s army. But Lincoln was a politician, not a soldier. Meade had more men, but not a significant number more. Yes, there were militia and other units in the area that could bring his total to six figures, but he would have to gather them, and they weren’t regulars.
Meade’s men were exhausted after three days of non-stop fighting. Of eleven Corps commanders, only four were riding with Meade and Armistead, arguing the day’s future. Down through the ranks, the Union army’s leadership had been similarly decimated.
Meade had also only been in command of the Army of the Potomac for three days when the battle started. He’d done a more than a fair job for someone so new to such immense responsibility. He’d actually considered retreating the evening of the Second. He’d presented that option to his Corps commanders, but they had decided to fight it out and thus Pickett’s charge.
And now, there was Armistead. Gesturing, exhorting Meade.
Roland wondered if Armistead had been visited by a Valkyrie during the night while he was laid up in a Union field hospital. Did he think an angel had visited him and given him a vision of a way to end the war, to end the pain and suffering? It could simply have laid out the reality of the next two years to Armistead. Any sane man would see it was pointless. Sherman had seen it: War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
Meade had written his wife this very day: The most difficult part of my task is acting without correct information on which to predicate action. What information was Armistead giving him? That Lee had sent in his last reserves? That the Confederates could not expect any reinforcements? Both were true.
The Shadow excelled in using the truth from future history to try to change it.
Roland glanced to the left at the dead kid, Tad as his Ma and Pa had called him, by the boulder. To Drawl and First Minnesota, also dead by his hand.
No more suffering there.
He rested his cheek against the stock of the Whitworth, the wood damp and warm. He sighted down the long barrel, centering on Armistead.
Roland took long, slow breaths. His heartbeat slowed down and he found the rhythm.
With his thumb he flicked aside the oilcloth and pulled back the hammer.
There was no wind, just steady rain.
Roland adjusted for the altitude difference.
His finger caressed the trigger.
Exhaled. Didn’t inhale. In between heartbeats, Roland smoothly pulled the trigger back.
Vicksburg,
Mississippi. 4 July 1863
“Oh my poor dear,” Louise said as she gathered her son in her arms. Buster growled at her, but she ignored the dog.
“You killed your son,” Ivar said, as if saying the words made some sense of it. “You killed Joey.”
“I saved him,” Louise said.
Ivar felt the point of a sword touch his back.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Pemberton said. “Why are you here? Why did Johnston send you? Did he even send you? Or did the devil send you? Who are you? The Angel told us to beware someone bearing false witness. A stranger.”
“The Lord, who commands the Angels, sent me,” Ivar said, a calmness settling over him that was disconcerting as it was functional. “Not General Johnston.”
“What?” Pemberton’s voice quavered.
“You know no one can sneak through the Yankee lines and then your lines without being spotted,” Ivar said. “It’s impossible.” He felt the pressure from the point of the saber grow less, but it was still there. “The Lord wants me to fix this. To tell you that an Angel was also sent to Grant. That Grant will honor the terms of the agreement. That there is no need for the soldiers and people of Vicksburg to make the sacrifice.” Ivar couldn’t take his gaze off Joey’s body, the vacant look in the boy’s eyes.
“You lie,” Pemberton said.
“I’ve talked to Grant,” Ivar said, a truth. “His word is his bond.” Ivar looked over his shoulder at Pemberton. “General, we should leave Louise alone to mourn her son for a few moments. There is something I must share with you in absolute confidence. Something of the utmost importance related to your plan.”
Pemberton looked past him at the woman holding her child on the bed. He nodded, pulling the saber back slightly. “Come.”
They walked across the main cave, to the entrance. Pemberton shoved the blanket aside to reveal the first light of dawn.
Thomas, the sentry, snapped to attention and fumbled with his musket, bringing it to present arms. Pemberton didn’t return the salute. The General pointed with the sword. Ivar walked along the path in the indicated direction until they turned a corner, into an isolated area.
