Patriot Hearts: A Novel of the Founding Mothers

by Barbara Hambly

  “The same might be said of Uncle John,” Louisa said. For all that she had lived with her aunt as a dependent for five years, Louisa was no subservient poor relation.

  Abigail smiled. “It can indeed.” She studied her niece’s pretty face, with its sharp Smith nose, its dark intelligent eyes. There was something to her after all of Nabby’s closed expression, as if growing up in the tensions and uncertainties of Will’s disorderly household were not so very different from growing up under threat of the British guns.

  More quietly, she went on, “But what cannot be said of your uncle John is that he would see harm done to his country for the sake of party politics. Mr. Boyne is a Jacobin. The last thing your uncle needs right now is an enemy on his own hearthstone.”

  “Because a man disagrees politically doesn’t mean he is a wicked man. Or that he is an enemy. Or that he would make a bad husband.”

  “Any man adhering to the faction that would split the government of this country—that would turn it into the chaos of disunion that we see in France—is by definition your uncle’s enemy,” replied Abigail. “As he is mine.”

  In the silence that followed, Abigail wondered how far things had gone, between Sam’s clerk and her niece. As far as a kiss? A surreptitious walk in the orchard one evening when he’d come out with a “message” for John? A betrothal?

  Betrayal stirred in her, like coals waked to life around her heart. Louisa had lived under her roof, fed and clothed and educated as if she were the daughter Abigail so dearly missed—the daughter she feared she had lost forever. The young woman had frequently quoted, laughing, the words of Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing: I would rather hear my dog bark at a crow than hear a man swear he loved me.

  Recalling her own brisk disavowals, Abigail had waited in amusement to see her young companion encounter the passion and joy of love.

  But a Jacobin! Abigail felt as disappointed, as betrayed, as if she’d found her niece with her hand in the family cash box.

  And an Irishman, who had no stake in the country to which he’d fled! Who understood only what he was told in those scabrous rags like the Aurora, who wanted to see the bloody French version of revolution spread across the world, so that those who hadn’t worked for their fortunes could take away from those who had.

  Such a man would only bring her unhappiness, thought Abigail. And in its wake, chaos in the family.

  “I’m sorry, dearest.”

  Louisa took a deep breath. “They’ll be waiting for us in the house, Aunt,” she said.

  After supper, Abigail lingered at the table to talk of the state of the country with Cousin Sam, John, and Johnny over coffee. It was then that John spoke to his son once again about entering the diplomatic corps. “I thought it a waste of your experiences and skills, when you left France to go to Harvard,” he told Johnny. “But I knew also that you wanted to go. But to simply remain a lawyer in Boston, with your knowledge of Paris, St. Petersburg, and Holland!”

  Johnny said, rather stiffly, “I felt that I needed what Harvard could teach me.”

  “And you were like to die there of melancholia within a year,” Abigail pointed out.

  “We are, God help us, a provincial nation, a nation of ‘colonists,’ most of whom have never left their native shores,” John went on. “That includes the men who now must cope with negotiations in Europe. God knows when I went to Paris I was provincial enough. Your knowledge of both Dutch and French puts you ahead of five sixths of the men Washington has made ministers, never mind that you’ve been there and know how the people live.”

  “I’ve been there,” replied Johnny grimly, “and I have no desire to return. I am content here.”

  “Content?” erupted his father, turning bright pink as he always did when frustrated. “I was pretty content, too, to remain at home with your mother and let Massachusetts look after itself as best it might. But I didn’t!”

  “Nonsense, John.” Sam accepted the sugar-dish from Abigail’s hand with his easy smile. “You’d have died of chagrin if you hadn’t been elected to the Continental Congress, even had you been married to Cleopatra—who would certainly have suffered in comparison,” he added gallantly, “to your charming Portia.”

  “Your country needs you, Johnny,” insisted John. “It already has plenty of lawyers.”

  “Most of whom can’t make a living,” added Sam, and Johnny’s cheekbones reddened. Though Sam didn’t know it, work for new-fledged lawyers in Boston was so short that John and Abigail had been providing their eldest son with a stipend to keep going, with the argument that he was John’s lawyer.

  “It is your choice, of course, Son,” added John grudgingly. But in his voice Abigail heard his thought. For him, as for her, there had never been the question of any other choice. One answered the call of one’s country first. One defended its rights, and all other things came secondarily. Farm, family, wishes, husbands, wives.

  Only so could the country remain strong.

  Only when Sam departed did Michael Boyne appear out of nowhere, to climb into the chaise at his side. John and Abigail waved them out of sight as they turned onto the road back to town. Over the rich green countryside, the church bells still tolled for the death of John Hancock, the man who’d stepped up to be the first to sign the declaration of the country’s independence. The first to publicly defy the King.

  Louisa had gone into the house.

  A week later a letter reached them from New Jersey.

  It was from Tommy. He’d gotten out of Philadelphia all right and tight, he wrote, but was now perilously short of cash. Might they send him some?

  SALLY

  Monticello Plantation

  Albemarle County, Virginia

  Wednesday, October 23, 1793

  I love you, Sally. I could ask no greater happiness in this life, than to be your husband. Will you be my wife?”

  The tall man before her bent his head, pressed his lips to her hand. Sun-dapple through the yellowing leaves of the mulberry trees flashed in Sally’s eyes, warmed the tear she felt trail down her cheek.

  It was good, to have a friend.

  She whispered, “Thank you, Lam,” and Lamentation Hawkin raised his head, saw his answer in her eyes. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. But you know I can’t accept.”

  The Charlottesville carter moved his head a little, glancing back up the hill at the two-story red-brick house. “Because of him? Or because of me?”

  “Because of me.” Sally wrapped her other hand around the one that Lam still held, smiled up at him. He was one of the ugliest men she’d ever seen, and had the kindest eyes. She wished very much that she loved him, and wondered if that would make a difference to her answer.

  Probably not.

  “You know I’d take your boy—”

  “I know. It isn’t that.” Although it was, partly. Sally knew to the marrow of her bones that Thomas Jefferson, no matter what his current feelings about the woman he had once loved, would never allow his four-year-old son to be raised by a black man.

  Particularly not one who lived in a town not five miles away.

  Lam was silent. Not asking, Has he taken you back? Not asking, Are you still thinking he will?

  “May I still call you my friend, Lam?”

  Warmth kindled in his eyes as he brought her hand up to his lips again. His fingers were strong enough to bend an iron pot-hook. “To the end of time, girl,” he said.

  As he walked away down Mulberry Row toward the stable-yard where he’d left his wagon, Sally sat again on the bench where he’d come upon her, beside the washhouse door. Almost no one was around, the carpentry-shop silent, the dairy empty, the cleared ground where Mr. Jefferson was having a small nail-factory built deserted. Tobacco harvest was nearly done. Every spare hand, male and female, was down at the curing-barns, sorting and tying the leaves to dry. Only around the kitchen, a hundred feet away on the other side of the Row, was there activity, her brothers Jimmy and Pip gett
ing dinner together for the family at the Big House.

  “Papa, do come!” Patsy’s strong firm alto, drifting clearly down from the unkempt lawn behind the house on the hill’s crest, could still raise the hairs on the back of Sally’s neck. “It’s the cunningest thing! Little Annie’s decided she’s ready to ride Bergère, and poor Bergère isn’t sure what to make of it.”

  Bergère was the shaggy-coated sheepdog Patsy had begged her father to buy for her, just before their return from France.

  Sally picked up the chemise she’d been working on, rolled the tiny hem of its ruffle between expert fingers. Tom was back from the tobacco-barns, then, she thought: Dinner would be soon. She could picture him striding across the ragged grass to Patsy and little Annie, his head thrown back and his smile like the dazzle of the sun.

  Once Pip and Burwell carried the dishes across to the house, it would be safe for her to slip in and distribute the garments she’d been working on all morning: Maria’s chemises, Mr. Jefferson’s shirts, M’sieu Petit’s waistcoat with its new buttons, all to be packed in their trunks for departure. She could be in and out without fear of meeting anyone.

  And the day after tomorrow, they’d be gone.

  “They dyin’ in Philadelphia.” Betty Hemings’s quiet voice spoke at Sally’s elbow, and her mother stepped around the corner of the washhouse, with an armload of newly ironed shirts. “Sixty, seventy people a day, the newspaper said.”

  There were masters who would whip the possessor of any newspaper they found in the quarters, but Thomas Jefferson wasn’t one of them. Her mother’s news was no news to Sally.

  “Takes two weeks to get to Philadelphia.” Sally measured out thread from the spool and snipped it with the little scissors Abigail Adams had given her in London, six years ago. “First frost’ll come by then. That always kills the fever, Lam says.”

  Patsy’s voice lifted again, rejoicing in her tiny daughter. Even Socrates might ride on a stick with her without being ridiculous, Jefferson had said of his first grandchild’s sunny charm.

  She heard her mother’s skirts rustle, smelled the mingled pungence of soap and starch in her clothes as she sat at her side. Glancing sidelong at the older woman, she saw her mother, too, watching the kitchen door, in her case because she’d promised to lend Pip a hand in getting the dinner ready for serving. Two years younger than Jimmy, Pip had been chosen to act as his assistant and to learn from him all the skills of Parisian cooking, before Jimmy could get his papers as a free man. Jimmy was still in charge, but today was one of “Jimmy’s days,” as everyone said around the quarters. Meaning that Jimmy had started drinking earlier than usual.

  “Lam’s a good man, Sally. And you don’t have to go down live with him seven days a week. If you ask, Mr. Jefferson will give you your freedom, and you can stay here a few days a week to look after Little Tom, til he’s old enough to be left. Mr. Jefferson made no trouble over Mary going.”

  Sally’s half-sister Mary—daughter of that Wayles slave who’d also fathered Martin the butler, and their sister Bett—had been leased to Tom’s friend Colonel Bell in Charlottesville while the family was in France. By the time the family returned, she’d had two children by him, in addition to the two she’d borne earlier at Monticello. Last year when Bell had offered to buy Mary—and Mary had added her request to his—Jefferson had complied, and had included the two Bell children in the bargain.

  Would Tom “make no trouble,” she wondered, if she asked him leave to marry another man?

  Patsy would see to it that he didn’t.

  “And if you want to talk to him, now’s the time to do it.” Betty’s face, still beautiful in her fifties, was grave, her dark eyes wise with the wisdom of a woman who has survived and kept her family together against staggering odds. “They leaving Friday, and he might not be back for a year. A lot can happen in a year, first frost or no. Mr. Jefferson’s daddy died when he was a younger man than Mr. Jefferson is today. You think he’s got it in writing anywhere, that you and Little Tom’s to go free? You really want to end up bein’ sold off by Mr. Randolph, to settle Mr. Jefferson’s debts? You and Little Tom both?”

  Sally said nothing. The French lawn of Maria’s chemise lay like silk over her fingers, thin enough to show through it the warm café-au-lait of her flesh.

  Paris seemed like a thousand years ago. Except for Little Tom, with his sharp Jefferson features and red hair, those years could have been something Sally had dreamed, no more real than the fairy-tales she and Polly used to tell each other at night.

  Except for Little Tom, and the deep-smoldering pain that never left her heart.

  The voyage back from France in 1789 had been a nightmare.

  Jefferson had taken two tiny cabins on the Clermont, one for himself with a pallet for Jimmy, one for the girls and the extremely pregnant sheepdog Bergère. Departure had been delayed for two weeks due to storms, though once on the sea the voyage was fast, if rough. Sally kept herself bundled up in the damp cold of the autumn sea, and stayed out of sight of the other passengers when she could. Patsy—almost certainly at Jefferson’s request—had subtly conspired in the pretense that her maid was suffering nothing more than mal de mer. It was no more than could be expected of any good Virginia lady faced with the mortification of a serving-maid who’d found herself pregnant, no matter who by.

  But in private, Sally could have cut the atmosphere in the little cabin with a knife.

  Between morning sickness, being kept out of sight, and the daunting logistics of proximity, there was of course no question of seeing more of Tom than a couple of friendly words exchanged, and Patsy made sure she never left her father’s side. Only her resolution that she would somehow, some way, find the means to return to France with him in the spring—surely the King would have put down the rioting by then—enabled Sally to get through the journey without flinging herself over the side from sheer wretchedness.

  The first thing that greeted them when they reached Norfolk, Virginia, was the froth of rumor that the new President, General Washington, would ask Mr. Jefferson to be his Secretary of State.

  Sally didn’t need to ask what that would mean. A Virginian might take his mulatto mistress to France with him, and establish her discreetly in rented rooms somewhere near his Hôtel. No Virginian would bring a colored woman to the nation’s capital where his neighbors and their families were going to live.

  Not even a man who spoke and wrote so eloquently of—and truly believed in, Sally knew—striking out into the unknown territory of the future, rather than living in bondage to the past.

  Sally had long ago guessed that though Tom could be a poor judge of people—especially people who professed the same ideals as his—he had an almost womanly perception of the unspoken currents of gossip and public opinion: how they spread and mutated and dyed people’s thought. For all his idealism, he knew what things a gentleman simply could not do, if he wished to marry his daughters into respectable families.

  The washhouse stood downslope from the Big House, part of the long row of cabins and workshops shaded by mulberry trees that Jefferson had planted when first he’d come to the mountain twenty-two years before. Sally remembered how little and thin the trees had been in her childhood, and how bare and raw the cabins had looked. For three years now Sally had waked every morning to the sound of the birds in their branches. That daily beauty had gone far toward soothing the hurt of betrayal, and had helped her put her anger in its place.

  A gaggle of children dashed around the coal-house. She glimpsed Davy and Kit and Jenny’s Lew, Aunty Isabel’s Aggy and Eddy, Molly’s Bart and Cannda, and dashing along in the rear Little Tom, three and a half years old, a toddler still but long-legged like a baby gazelle. The sight of him brought a smile to her face. If she had lost Tom, Little Tom’s presence in her life more than made up for it.

  Would I go through all that again, to know I’d have my boy at the end of it?

  Yes, a thousand times.

  And like any slave
-woman who sees her child, she felt the chill on her heart.

  Promises are cheap, especially a man’s promises made four years ago, to a woman he has ceased to love.

  Her mother’s voice was soft as she rose. “You still have the chance to do what few of us ever get to do,” she said. “Little Tom—well, Mr. Jefferson’s gonna do about him whatever he’s gonna do, and there’s nuthin’ you can say that’ll change it. And you know, even should harm befall her daddy, Miss Patsy got too much regard for what the neighbors would say to sell him off. But as for you—you’d be a fool not to take the chance to go.”

  Halfway up the slope from Mulberry Row to the hilltop, the door of the kitchen opened in the bottom floor of the little brick pavilion that had been the first dwelling on top of the mountain, the tiny house to which Tom Jefferson, in the long-ago days before the War, had brought Miss Patty as his bride. Pip stepped out, looking harassed. Jimmy must be sliding from idly talkative to argumentative.

  “You better go, Mama. I’ll get these done before dark.” She patted the folded stack of garments.

  She was a fool, Sally thought, as she began to work an eyelet, not to take Lam up on his offer. Lam had been free for ten years, and owned his own livery stable in Charlottesville. He’d been making it his business to seek her out, to talk with her, every time he came up to the mountain since Jefferson had departed last September, presumably when word got around that Jefferson hadn’t lain with Sally on that home visit, either. At thirty-five he was steady, gentle, no genius but reasonably well educated, didn’t drink, and—a big plus, though Sally was a little embarrassed to put it in so many words—had good teeth and sweet breath.

  I’m twenty years old, she thought, looking in the direction of the stable, where her son and his friends had vanished. What am I waiting for?