Patriot Hearts: A Novel of the Founding Mothers

by Barbara Hambly

  Before she was even well, she recalled, she had crept from bed to sit holding her frail tiny son in her arms. Nights and afternoons blurred into one long half-dream. Willie had seemed a little better when they removed to Gray’s Ferry, for the family cow could get good fresh grass out here and her milk was better: To Dolley’s mingled sadness and relief, her own milk had dried.

  But he hadn’t put on weight as a baby should. And last week, his bouts of fever had returned. Dolley had sat up with him last night and the night before, til the hot lamplight swam before her eyes and the whine of the single mosquito in the room had seemed like the drawn-out note of a hellish violin. She didn’t know what time it had been, when her mother had forced her to go to bed.

  Her hands trembled as she reached across to where her wrapper lay on the bed. Just standing up made her pant. Has John come back? she wondered, as she gathered up her long black braid into a loose knot at her nape. And is Willie silent because he’s sleeping at last, or because…?

  She pushed the terror away and crossed to the door, only to have it open as she reached it: Anna, her gray dress and white apron water-spotted, a pitcher in her hands. “Sister—!” She was clearly as startled as Dolley had been. “Art well?”

  Dolley nodded. “Willie—?”

  “Sleeps.” Anna’s voice cracked a little on the word.

  A truth, but not the whole truth.

  Without a word Dolley brushed past her, hastened down the hall.

  The house at Gray’s Ferry was a simple one, built of stone, its plastered walls whitewashed rather than painted. The large room on the east was hers and John’s, with a truckle-bed for Payne. At her mother’s insistence, they’d set up Willie’s cradle in her mother’s cubicle next door, so that Dolley could rest—as if anyone could rest, reflected Dolley, too weary even to feel annoyed, with the sound of her child crying, and the constant frightening shuffle of comings and goings that brought her out of bed a hundred times a day to ask, Doth he better?

  The cradle stood near the window, where the light was best. Her mother sat on the edge of the bed beside it, a basin near her feet and on a tray a pile of rags. Molly Payne was working steadily, mechanically, as she and Dolley had worked all last night and the nights before, wringing the rags out in the water, and gently laying them on the little body. From the doorway Dolley could hear what she had not, in her own room next door: the faint, sobbing whimper of an infant too exhausted to make any other sound.

  Molly looked up. She was crying as she worked, without breaking the movement of what she did and without making a noise. Dolley came to her side. From downstairs in the parlor she heard Payne’s shrill voice, insisting, “Mama!” and Mary, with artificial brightness, “Now, sugarplum, thy mama is laid down on her bed. Dost not want the hobbyhorse?”

  “Want Mama now!”

  Payne had made no secret that the acquisition of a tiny brother—and one who did nothing but cry—was not an acceptable exchange for a mother who no longer had the time to play with, fuss over, or sing to him. Through her illness and fatigue, Dolley had always made time in the evenings to play with Payne before she slept. It was not her son’s fault that his world had turned topsy-turvy.

  Molly got to her feet, crossed to close the bedroom door against the high-pitched insistent protests. Dolley lifted tiny William Temple Todd from the damp mattress on which he lay, sat with him on the edge of her mother’s bed. She didn’t need to touch him to know he was burning with fever. He was bone-thin, unable since yesterday to swallow either gruel or milk. She wrapped him in the crib’s sheet and held him against her shoulder, rocking him gently, knowing in her heart that it was time to say good-bye to her son.

  “No word yet from John?”

  “Nothing. Mrs. Ridgley tells me that none come or go from Philadelphia now, and that it is like a city of the dead.”

  Dolley shivered, trying to imagine any situation worse than the one she had seen there nearly four weeks ago. At John’s request she had returned briefly to Philadelphia, to witness his ailing father’s will. She shivered at the recollection of the empty streets, of the choking miasma of burning tar, sulfur smudges, waste and garbage left in streets because there was no one to cart them away. She had never warmed to her father-in-law, whom she considered too quick with his schoolmaster’s rod—one reason, she suspected, for John’s profound gentleness with Payne. But she carried enough of the love she had felt for her own father to understand John’s deep love for the stern Todd senior, and his stubborn loyalty when the old man had fallen ill.

  After the will was signed, both she and John had tried to talk John’s mother into taking refuge with them in Gray’s Ferry. She would not leave her sick husband’s side. Nor would John desert his father, despite Dolley’s pleas. As her closely shrouded carriage had rolled through the streets once more, the rattle of its wheels in the deathly silence had sounded to her like the echo of pursuit.

  That visit was the last time she’d seen John. Nearly a week after that, a letter had reached them from John’s brother James, who had taken his family even farther into the Pennsylvania countryside. His first letter to Dolley had gone astray. With this, his second, came the news that Todd senior was dying; that John’s clerk Isaac Heston, who had been left to look after their Walnut Street house, was dead. After agonized days of waiting, word came from John: His father had died; his mother lay dying.

  No one knew why one man sickened and died, and another survived. Through the leaden heat of the summer’s end, all had discussed endlessly what caused the disease, and by what means it was transmitted. The formidable Mrs. Drinker recommended Duffy’s Elixir mixed with vinegar, while Dr. Rush prescribed mercury purges, “heroic” bloodletting, and blisters to draw forth the evil humors. Sometimes a man would greet his friends hale and healthy in the morning, and be carried to his grave before the sun was down. Others lingered for weeks, until the black blood flowed out of their mouths and their souls flickered away like candles going out. Sometimes those who worked among the sick took ill themselves, as Dr. Rush had. Others came away unscathed. Still others, who kept themselves to their homes and walked only down the centers of the streets, died in their isolation.

  Dolley laid her baby back into his crib, tenderly peeled off the damp rags from his flesh and began again the process of wringing them out in cool water, rewrapping those sticklike arms and legs. Willie’s eyes were glimmering slits, his face grotesque from the flesh he’d lost. “Thou shouldst be back in bed, child,” said her mother softly, and Dolley only shook her head.

  “Thou must be weary thyself, Mama.”

  “ ’Tis naught I haven’t seen before.”

  Dolley glanced across at her, remembering the three little babies between her brother Isaac and sister Lucy, born in those first years after they had returned to Virginia from the woods of North Carolina where Dolley’s earliest memories lay. She couldn’t imagine going through this three times.

  My son, she thought, caressing the baby’s cheek. John’s son.

  She thought she’d known the depth and breadth of John Todd before they had gone before the Congregation to be approved to partner one another. She had known the steady capacity for affection that made up for his lack of humor, had appreciated the gentle tolerance of others that went hand in hand with his own stringent adherence to the principles of their faith. Though she usually had to explain to him why she laughed at jests or at the foibles of their friends, he would always smile and join in her mirth. After her father’s erratic rages, John’s phlegmatic nature had been a welcome relief. And if she’d felt no passion for him, she took great pleasure in his undemanding company.

  Yet for weeks before and after their marriage she had been plagued with dreams of being lost in the woods, of having strayed down the wrong path, wandering farther and farther from the place she truly wanted to get to. Waking, she had never felt the smallest doubt about the strength of her husband’s love for her. But the dreams persisted, ceasing only after she found herself
with child.

  The boundless, exalted delight that radiated from John Todd from the moment he saw his baby son had taken Dolley completely by surprise. John loved Payne to adoration, carrying him about the streets, buying him trinkets and toys with joyful abandon. As if Payne were a new sun whose light showed John the world in unsuspected colors. Where once John would have said, Thou canst wear only one ribbon at a time, he began to surprise her with little gifts. He hath such joy in a rattle or a ball, John would say, smiling, that I think, “My Dolley would have such joy, too.”

  He had completely refused to join in the guessing-games played by Dolley and her sisters, about whether her second child would be Little William or Little Mary. Instead he would say, Since the foundations of Time, God hath known who it were best to send to us. Who are we to guess at His intent?

  How can I write to him, Dolley wondered, stroking the hot, wrinkled skin that felt like the most fragile silk, and tell him that his son is dead? Closing her eyes, she saw John standing at her bedside in the flickering glow of the candles, with her mother and the midwife smiling in the background as he rocked Willie in his arms for the first time, and wept with joy.

  A wild flurry of stomping in the hall. The door slammed open. “Want Mama now!” As Payne flung himself at Dolley, grabbing and dragging the skirts of her wrapper as if by main force he could pull her downstairs, Mary’s voice could be heard in the staircase muttering, “Drat the boy—!”

  “Mama, now!” pleaded Payne, bursting into tears as Molly tried to seize him. “Want Papa! Want Mama! Want Limberjack!” Limberjack was the wooden stick-puppet whose continuing adventures Dolley would illustrate for Payne at bedtime. As Molly tried to pull him away, Payne began to scream, the frantic wailing of one whose secure golden world has shattered into an incomprehensible exile of loved ones too long absent, and explanations that meant nothing except that he was neglected, rejected by those whose idol he had once been.

  As Payne, still screaming, grabbed at Dolley’s hands, Willie began to wail, too, the thin feeble protest of inexpressible pain.

  “Here,” said Dolley, seeing her mother’s face cloud with anger. “Here, I’ll take him.” Payne clutched at her neck, grabbed handfuls of her hair, wrapped his short chubby legs around her waist as she lifted him despite her mother’s protest. Payne was sobbing something that could have been either Mama or Papa. He refused to release her, as Mary tried to take him.

  “Now, Payne, thy mama shouldn’t be picking thee up, thou’rt grown too big—”

  “It’s all right.” Dolley cast a quick look back over her shoulder, at the wet, crimson, sobbing little bundle of Willie now gathered in her mother’s arms. “I’ll be back directly.”

  By her mother’s dark glance she could tell Molly didn’t believe the older child would turn his mother loose anytime soon.

  But Dolley understood. Payne and John had shared a secret world, from the moment Payne was born, a pact of absolute unquestioning mutual adoration. John had been Payne’s world, as Payne was John’s.

  And John was not here.

  To a boy twenty months old, four weeks is eternity. As it was, Dolley reflected, to a woman of twenty-five.

  John had written that old Mother Amy, who had remained behind to watch over the now-deserted boardinghouse, would come to help him nurse his mother, and did the cooking and washing while John made forays through the stricken city for either money that was owed him by law clients, or food to buy with the little that he had.

  As fewer and fewer would take produce into the city, bands of looters raided abandoned houses for the contents of their storerooms. Ships at the wharves, whose crews had died or fled, provided rations of stolen rum. Flour, potatoes, and oatmeal could be bought, but for frightening sums. Dolley heard rumors of families trading silver or clothing for a few pounds of corn.

  John’s last message had been a brief note, saying that his mother had died, and that he was going to gather up what money he could and return to them.

  That had been ten days ago.

  “Limberjack,” whimpered Payne pitifully, tugging on Dolley’s shoulders as she sat with him beside the cold downstairs hearth. So Mary fetched Limberjack from the corner where Payne had flung him in a temper, and Dolley forced cheer back into her voice as she recounted the wooden puppet’s adventures. Fortunately she was widely read: Limberjack had already encountered Cyclopes, battled infuriated Lilliputians, defeated giants cleverly disguised as windmills, and rescued any number of princesses from threats shamelessly gleaned from Greek myth and King Arthur—Payne listened in open-mouthed delight. But every time Dolley would attempt to finish and go back upstairs, he clung to her and wept afresh, and she had not the heart to push him away.

  “I’ll see how he’s doing,” Mary would whisper, and scurry upstairs. Thunder boomed heavily in the distance, and instead of bringing coolness the air grew muggy and thick as treacle. Payne followed Dolley upstairs and stood jealous guard in the hallway while she washed her face and dressed. Waited, clinging to her skirt, with ill-concealed tears in his eyes as she visited Willie again, and began at once to weep and fret for his dinner.

  “I shall have to go up and lie down again,” said Dolley, as she sat once more with Payne after dinner. Payne, too, was exhausted. Still he clung to her hand, his mouth turning stubbornly down.

  “And I shall have to go back to thy brother,” she added, as firmly as she could. “Willie is littler than thee, Payne, and needs his mama more.” Before Willie’s birth, John had carefully explained to Payne that another little soul was standing beside the gates of Heaven, eagerly waiting God’s signal to fly to earth and join their family, to be Payne’s dear brother or sister. Payne had smiled and hugged him, and had seemed to accept. But then, Payne would accept anything, from John.

  “Thou’rt all but a man.” She smiled, and patted his golden curls. “ ’Tis for a man to possess himself of patience. Dost not wish to play with thy aunt Anna?”

  A tear slid from the huge blue eye. “Mama—”

  Shadow winked past the window, gone before Dolley could turn her head. She heard the splat and thud in the muddy gravel outside, as if something had fallen; got to her feet and started to cross to the door. Someone knocked, flat hard sounds as if struck not with the knuckles but with an open hand.

  Someone ill.

  Some sojourner from the city.

  Her stride lengthened on the stone-flagged floor: He will have a letter from John…

  Her visitor was John.

  In that first instant Dolley thought, Why do I think it’s John? That isn’t John’s face—

  In that first instant, Dolley wondered if she had slipped into sleep again, and if this was a nightmare, where no one looked like they did in waking life.

  The face of the man was a stranger’s, gaunt instead of squarely plump, stubbled with a week’s worth of beard. The skin was ghastly orange-yellow where it could be seen at all under the streaks of mud and rain-thinned black vomit. He’d vomited on his clothing. The rainwater spread the horror; flecks of it clung to his chapped lips.

  From a skeletal face, blue eyes stared at her. John’s eyes. Begging her to recognize him.

  Dolley caught him as his knees buckled, dragged him inside. Payne ran forward, crying “Papa!” and stopped abruptly, the horror hitting him like a club. Dolley called out, “Mama! Get some water, quick. Get Mama—”

  Through his clothes John’s body radiated heat like a smoldering log. His face, pressed to her bare throat, seemed to scorch the skin. Dolley whispered, “Oh, dear God,” as they sank together to the floor before the open door, the tail-end of the afternoon rain spattering in around them.

  John whispered, “Dolley,” and fumbled for her hands.

  She caught them, pressed them to her breast. Footsteps shook the enclosed wooden staircase and she felt rather than saw her mother and Anna come running out; heard her mother say, “Open the bedroom door,” meaning the door of the downstairs “best bedroom” where guests woul
d sleep. Anna raced to obey; young Johnnie came dashing in, face pallid with shock. “Get him to the bed,” said her mother, and Dolley whispered, “No,” as John’s body convulsed in her arms, his fingers crushing her hands.

  Black vomit began to flow out of his mouth again, not in spasms, but like a dirty stream. Around it he whispered, “Payne?”

  “He is well,” answered Dolley. And because she knew it didn’t matter, she added, “Willie also.” The stench was absolutely appalling. Dolley gathered John’s head to her shoulder, as she had only minutes ago held Payne’s.

  “Dolley,” he said again, or something she assumed was her name. Then he convulsed again, writhing and striking, his elbow ramming her belly, the strength of his arm nearly breaking her back. To hold him away would only expose her to more injury and she wouldn’t throw him aside to flop like a dying fish on the floor. Instead, she closed her arms tight and held on, with all the strength of a farm-girl who has done the work of the slaves her father freed.

  It felt like minutes but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Then he seemed to slither down, his weight like the weight of a sack half filled with corn.

  How long Dolley sat on the wet stone of the floor, her husband’s body cradled in her arms, she never afterwards knew. It felt like hours—it actually could not have been more than a few minutes. When her mother tried to make her stand she pulled away from her hand, tightened her hold around John’s chest, unable to speak, or cry, or make a sound.

  At last her mother got her to her feet, and led her from the room.