Even Caractacus, whose ears rotated to the rear. That one small movement was my only proof that someone shared Papa’s grief with me, carried the burden of it, too. It made no matter that a horse couldn’t speak words of comfort. His very presence, and that turn of his ears, made it possible for me to shoulder my father’s outburst.
Suddenly, Papa wrenched his head away and sat back in the saddle. I swayed from the unexpected movement and the sharing of his rage as it washed off of him and through me, hot and acidic. Papa snapped the reins and shouted, “Ha!”
The stallion startled then obeyed. My stomach tossed as Papa pushed the horse into a gallop. A thin branch whipped against my ear. I cried out and pressed my hand against the wound, but Papa didn’t slow as the branches lashed at us.
My throat went tight with fear. I wanted to hide my face against the horse’s neck, but my father’s arms prevented that. So I twisted my fingers around thick chunks of mane and ducked down, eyes shut tight. I prayed a litany that no one heard. And just when I thought we’d ride straight into oblivion, Caractacus swerved with an alarmed whinny.
A second horse answered. Papa pulled up on the reins, bringing us up hard. In fear and confusion, I raised my head too fast, then swooned. Before I knew what had happened, my body slammed to the ground, knocking awareness into me once again. I’d fallen and there’d been no one to catch me… .
That was the source of my shock. Unlike the day the rattlesnake made Caractacus rear up, my father hadn’t kept from me from falling. He hadn’t been able.
A voice sounded from above, calling my name. I rolled onto my back. Gray light filtered down through gloomy trees towering high above. Then a warm hand smoothed my ear where I had been slashed by the branch.
“Patsy, are you injured?” I blinked. It wasn’t my father who had dismounted to attend to me; it was William Short. “Patsy, say something. Are you hurt?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I think so.”
The young man’s green eyes stared down at me. “You’re bleeding.” He took a kerchief from inside his coat and pressed it into my hand. I accepted the fine linen square and sat up as Mr. Short glanced over his shoulder. “Mr. Jefferson, have you come to harm?”
Papa didn’t answer.
Mr. Short tried again. “Mr. Jefferson, I fear your daughter is concussed.”
Papa’s blank stare betrayed that he couldn’t hear—that he wasn’t even with us. Papa was still in the jaws of his grief, caught in the madness I couldn’t bear for anyone else to discover. I tried to rise, to go to him, but Mr. Short stopped me with a warm hand upon my arm. “Get your head about you, Patsy. I’ll fetch some water.” From the saddlebag of his own mount, Mr. Short withdrew a flask and brought it to me. I wiped my mud-smeared hands on one of the few clean spots on my skirt. What a sight I made, and in front of Mr. Short. Mama would’ve scolded me, but, then, she’d never scold me again for anything… .
I took the water. Cool and clean, it eased the constriction of my throat. With sagging shoulders, I held the flask out to him. “I’m sorry. I’ve muddied the pewter.”
Mr. Short smiled. “Pay it no mind. It’s but a little dirt. Can you stand?”
I nodded and my gaze flicked to Papa, whose eyes were still blank and distant, his hands twitching on the reins like he was restless to move on. When Mr. Short helped me up from the ground, Papa seemed to remember himself at last. “Come, Patsy,” he said, his voice hoarse and strained.
It always sounded that way after one of his secret outbursts, but I think, too, he was ashamed anyone else had seen him this way.
Perhaps Mr. Short was right to say that I was concussed, because when I stepped toward Caractacus, I stumbled. Mr. Short steadied me with his hand at my elbow, then bade me to lean on him. “Mr. Jefferson. If you’ll allow me, I’ll see your daughter to Monticello.”
Papa stared a long minute, his dulled blue eyes moving back and forth between us like we were a puzzle to decipher. Seeing the mud on my dress, as if he’d only just realized that I’d fallen, a flush crept up Papa’s neck. “Yes,” he finally murmured, his hands lifting the reins. “Yes, of course.”
“No!” I cried. The thought of Papa wandering alone filled me with icy dread. In his madness, what would he do?
Mr. Short squeezed my other hand. “Come along, Patsy.”
“But, Papa—”
“Go with William,” Papa said, his voice cracking. “It’s for the best. He can take care of you.”
“But you’ll be home for supper?” I searched my father’s eyes for a promise.
Papa pressed his lips into a thin line and looked away. “I’ll be home.”
I reached for Caractacus and stroked the stallion, as much to reassure him as myself. “Take care of him,” I whispered. The horse nickered and pressed his big, regal face against mine. It was all the reassurance I had that someone, or something, would look after Papa in my stead.
Papa tugged the reins and turned about, forcing Mr. Short to huff out a breath. “Mr. Jefferson? Your daughter—” My father had already wheeled his horse around, but Mr. Short shouted after him, more fiercely. “Mr. Jefferson!”
The young man’s tone caught Papa’s attention. My father brought the stallion around, almost warily. I remember now that in that moment, William’s hand trembled where it rested atop mine, a small show of nerves.
“Mr. Jefferson, it didn’t—” Short broke off, swallowing hard on a wavering voice. “This loss didn’t happen only to you, sir.”
I couldn’t appreciate the full measure of these words. Not then. That day, I gasped so forcefully at William’s impertinence that I hurt my throat. “Mr. Short!”
Papa blanched but gave a single, tight nod that made my heart feel heavy within my chest. I felt as if that acknowledgment cost him something I couldn’t name.
Then he turned Caractacus and kicked him into a trot.
“Papa, I …” I didn’t think he could hear me. So I shouted, “Papa!”
But he was gone.
Fear drove away concern for manners, and I worried not about offending William Short. I rounded upon him. “How could you?”
At my censure, he merely bowed his head. “He lost a wife, but you lost a mother, Patsy. This cannot go on.”
So he knew.
He knew that Papa had descended into madness. And if he knew, who else did? The heat of shame flooded my face and tears pricked at my eyes at the thought of Papa’s political enemies or even our neighbors gossiping. They wouldn’t understand. Papa was still the bold hero of the Revolution. Still the great man he’d always been. It was only that Mama’s death had laid him low.
Panicked and angered, I no longer felt the cold, the sting of my ear, or the ache in my back. Papa’s outbursts were to have been a secret, between Caractacus and me. I was horrified that William Short had witnessed it, too. “You mustn’t say a word, Mr. Short. On your honor, you mustn’t say anything to anyone.”
Mr. Short stiffened as a Virginia gentleman must when honor is mentioned. “Patsy, I admire your father more than any other man. I’d do nothing to damage his reputation. But your aunt shouldn’t have left you and your sisters in his care. At the very least, Mr. Jefferson should find it in himself to be firmer in your presence. You’re only a child.”
“I’m not,” I stated.
“You are a child, a child who has lost much.”
I looked away, sure that if I didn’t, I’d find myself sharing things better left unsaid, sharing burdens that were mine alone. I couldn’t tell him that I feared Papa was more than mad—that the violence of his emotions might drag him into my mother’s grave with her. I bit back these words, for my mother had asked me to be my father’s solace. No one else.
At my silence, Mr. Short sighed. “Come. I’ll take you home.”
The word home rang between my ears, taunting me with how comforting the very thought of home had been not so very long ago. Even when the British came and we knew not whether Monticello might be burned to the g
round, Mama maintained that feeling of home that families provide, even in the worst of situations. Especially in the worst of situations. But now that role and responsibility fell to me.
I followed Mr. Short to his horse, an old brown gelding with a white star on his forehead. Mr. Short offered me a hand up onto his mount. I paused before accepting it. William Short had always been kind to us, and I hated the idea that I might do something to change that. But the way he spoke to Papa … “You mustn’t take such a tone with my father, Mr. Short. You must never do something like that again. We must comfort Papa in his loss.”
I held his gaze so he would regard me seriously. Perhaps he did.
“I didn’t intend to be provoking, my dear. And I’ll try to hold my tongue. But answer me this.” His smile was small and sad. “Who comforts you in your loss?”
“DONE LOST HIS MIND,” one of the servants said in a harsh whisper. The words froze me outside the cellar kitchen door. “Bringing pox into this house … he’s gonna kill them babies.”
“Maybe it’s what he wants, so he can follow them to the grave,” another said.
A chorus of agreement from the others sounded out, making my heart fly. Papa had talked about the threat of the pox for days and argued inoculation was the only way to guard against it. But could the slaves’ suspicion be based in truth? Could Papa really want to—
“Hush right now!” Mammy Ursula said, as if she knew I was listening.
Forcing my feet to move, I entered the kitchen, finding the group of women gathered in front of the hearth. In many ways, the kitchen was the domain of the slaves, and even before my mother’s death, it was the cook’s habit to shoo me away when she was busy so that she could gossip with the others. Now, the cook froze by the fire at the sight of me, her wooden spoon clutched in her hand, midair. The other slaves went silent, also stilled.
All of them but Mammy Ursula, the sturdy black laundress and pastry chef whose innate sense of authority was such that the other slaves obeyed her like a queen. With her hair tied tight and regal atop her head in a red-checkered handkerchief, Mammy snapped, “Why are you sneaking about, Miss Patsy?”
I hadn’t been sneaking about at all, so despite the nervousness that the slaves’ words and Mammy’s tone unleashed in my belly, I simply folded my hands over my apron as I remembered my mother doing and met her stern gaze. “Dr. Gilmer is here. Papa wants your help.”
Inoculating us was the first decision my father made about anything since the day my mother died over two months before, and it was a decision that came upon him suddenly and with the utmost urgency. Of the slaves carried off by the British, almost all had perished from smallpox and other fevers.
Perhaps it was the stories of how our people had suffered that put my father into a singular fervor that his daughters must be guarded against this illness, no matter how terrifying the treatment. Mammy Ursula had been my nursemaid when I was a babe, so I wanted her to tell me this treatment was a needful thing, and not part of my papa’s madness. Instead, Mammy brushed flour from her apron, wiped her dark hands on a cloth, and silently followed me to fetch Polly and the baby.
We found Papa in an agitated state, pacing in front of the clean-linen-covered table where Dr. Gilmer’s knives gleamed silver and sharp. In an echo of my wildly beating pulse, a November rainstorm pitter-pattered against the windowpane, and I stole a glance at the menacing little glass vial of noxious pus from a victim of the pox.
With steady hands, Papa tugged up the white linen sleeve of my shift to bare my arm for the physician, and I asked, “Will it hurt?”
Papa stilled, his bleak gaze lifting to my eyes. His lips pursed. “I wish your mother …” He shook his head and sighed. “Your mother would know better how to … what to …”
I hung on the edge of his words for a long moment, then finally looked to Dr. Gilmer. “It will be little more than a scratch, my dear,” Dr. Gilmer said as he removed his black frockcoat and placed it over the back of a wooden chair. “When it pains you, you must bravely set the example for your sisters so they won’t be frightened when their turn comes.”
I glanced at Papa for reassurance, but his expression had gone distant again, his fingers cold as he held fast to my wrist so Dr. Gilmer could bring his knife down on the tender underside of my arm. I hissed as the first slash drew blood, then yelped at the throbbing pain that followed. I clenched my teeth to hold back my cries lest they frighten my little sisters, waiting on the other side of the door, an effort that left me shaking.
Dr. Gilmer buried a thread soaked in the infected fluid between the folds of my rent flesh, then bandaged over it with a linen strip, tying off the ends. “There, there, Patsy. You did very well.”
I wiped away a mist of tears and tried to give a brave smile when Ursula came in carrying the baby in one arm and leading Polly with the other. But neither my brave smile nor Ursula’s presence did any good when it was Polly’s turn. My willful little sister screamed and fought and even tried to bite Dr. Gilmer before Mammy wrestled her still.
Papa drifted to the window, pinching the bridge of his nose. He still had his back to Dr. Gilmer when the physician took his leave.
With a worried glance at my father, Ursula hurried to see the physician out. As if Papa had commanded it, she promised to compensate Dr. Gilmer with some of her special bottled cider. I realize now that I wasn’t alone in trying to maintain the illusion that Papa was still master of his plantation—and himself.
Because Polly was still crying, I nuzzled her close. “Hush, it’s all over. Now we can go out and play.”
“No,” Papa said without turning. “You and your sisters must be confined for the next few weeks. Then we’re leaving Monticello.”
My gaze jerked up. “Leaving?”
“I’ve accepted an appointment to Paris to negotiate the end of the war.”
Scarcely anything he could’ve said would’ve surprised me more. I remembered his promise to my mother that he’d retire from public life. That he’d retire to his farm, his books, and his family, from which nothing would ever separate him again. Just two months before, hours before my mother’s death, he’d angrily refused his election to the Virginia legislature. But now everything had changed, and I was left to wonder if his promises had died with her.
I didn’t want to leave. Neither did I want Papa to go without us. “Must you serve, Papa?”
My father gave a curt nod but said no more.
In the days that followed, my sisters and I suffered from nothing more than boredom, cooped up when we would rather have been romping through piles of autumn leaves.
Then the illness came upon us, fast and merciless.
And all Papa’s cool reserve melted away. He held the pail for our vomit, wiped the fevered sweats from our brows, and offered hushed, soothing words. Often when I surfaced from delirious dreams, the sound of his violin or his soft, rasping tenor as he sang comforted me back to sleep. Having already taken the treatment, Papa would let no one else care for us, lest we spread the contagion. And he cloistered with us together in the small makeshift infirmary, our world narrowing again to only one another. Our little surviving family of four.
As we shivered in our beds and groaned with aches, we couldn’t have asked for a more attentive nurse than our papa.
When any bitterness steals into my heart for the choices I’ve made in devotion to my father, I remember that even in the depths of his stupor and despair, he found it within himself to protect us the best way he knew how.
At some point in my delirium, I awoke to the soft, mournful strains of his violin. The notes ached with a sweet sadness. Forcing my eyes open, I lifted my head from a sweat-soaked pillow. “Didn’t the treatment work, Papa?”
He lowered his instrument. “The science is sound. It asks us to suffer a milder form of the illness to guard against the more virulent attack.” He explained more, but the words were beyond my reach and my head ached intolerably. I must’ve said as much, because he glanced up at
the ceiling, closing his eyes. “Patsy, suffering strengthens our constitutions and builds inner fortifications so that we never fall prey to the same agony twice. We must take upon ourselves a smaller evil to defend against the greater evil. We must take upon ourselves a smaller pain in order to survive.”
I was too young, then, and too overcome with illness to realize that the agony he spoke of was not smallpox. But his words weren’t madness, and they stayed with me long after the fever had passed. Even now they help me understand why my father felt the need to rip us from our home and hasten away with such urgency.
It pained him to leave Monticello.
But what would have survived of him if he’d stayed?
Chapter Four
Ampthill, 26 November 1782
From Thomas Jefferson to Chastellux
Before the catastrophe that closed this summer, my scheme of life had been determined. I’d folded myself in the arms of retirement, and rested all prospects of future happiness on domestic objects. A single event wiped away my plans and left me a blank I had not the spirits to fill. In this state of mind an appointment from Congress required me to cross the Atlantic. My only object now is to hasten over those obstacles which retard my departure.
AFTER THREE MONTHS of searching every brine-scented port in the colonies, Papa couldn’t find a ship willing to undertake the perilous winter voyage through waters filled with enemy vessels. And more than a few ship captains muttered darkly at my father’s persistence, wondering if he was a man chasing after an icy death.
It shames me still that I cannot say they were wrong.
Indeed, I feared they had exactly the right of it. We’d left Polly and Lucy with Aunt Elizabeth at Eppington, and though I missed my sisters, I was glad they didn’t have to witness this latest manifestation of Papa’s grief. While my father no longer stared down his pistols in the dead of night, he braved the brigand-infested roads with a recklessness that terrified me.
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