America's First Daughter: A Novel

by Stephanie Dray

  Then I went with Nancy to meet her sister in the drive. When Judith stepped out of her husband’s carriage, she cried, “Why Martha! If I’d known you were going to marry my brother, I’d have waited to make it a double-wedding.”

  Nancy scoffed, leading us to the tea table set up in the garden. “Oh, Judy. As if you could wait.” When Judith glared, she added, “I’m just saying you’re too vain to share your day with anyone else!”

  “Well, I might have—” Judith broke off, stooping to pull some plants up by the root. “You’re a disaster as a housekeeper, Nancy. Just look what you’ve let happen to Mama’s herb garden. It’s overrun with weeds!”

  Nancy cried, “How am I to know the difference between the herbs and weeds?”

  Judith sniffed imperiously. “Well, if you paid attention to the medicinal arts instead of burying your nose in tawdry romance novels …”

  I took my seat on a lawn chair, disheartened to hear the way my husband’s sisters bickered, smiling as though they were just teasing, but with a nasty undercurrent. And I was downright scandalized when Judith pointed to a patch of greenery and said, “If you’d had some clippings of that, Patsy, you wouldn’t have had to marry my brother in such haste.”

  My mouth fell quite agape. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Gum guaiacum,” Judy chirped. “Part of my mother’s special recipe for easing colic, but it’s also known to bring on a woman’s flow. So if you feared you were with child—”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, again, this time more sharply.

  “Oh, don’t take offense,” Judith cooed. “You’re married now, and all the gossip in the world can’t undo that.”

  With a flail of my hand that nearly upset the tea service, I cried, “What gossip?”

  Judith put a hand to her hip. “You were scarcely betrothed to my brother a month. It’s only natural for everyone to speculate.”

  “Judy,” Nancy said, in harsh reprimand.

  “Oh, I’m not judging.” Judy lowered onto a seat beside me. “I confess I’m nothing short of pleased at the outcome. I always feared Tom would marry one of those pretty, empty-headed girls who titter behind their fans at the mere sight of him. I never thought he’d take a sensible bride. Why, Patsy, I don’t care how you landed my brother, only that you did! Never mind if people start counting back the months from when your first child is born.”

  My first child. The thought of it nearly stunned me into silence. I knew, of course, it was the duty of a wife to give her husband children. But the reality that I might have a baby growing inside me hadn’t struck me until that very moment. Of course, if I was with child, there was nothing scandalous about it, and the gossips could count backward all they liked.

  SALLY’S BABY DIED AT TUCKAHOE.

  One spring morning, Sally came to me in a panic, holding her infant against her breast. “He won’t suckle and he’s coughing something terrible.”

  We went to Colonel Randolph for help, but he didn’t care one whit about a slave girl’s baby. He didn’t want to send for a doctor, and though there was a cupboard full of dried herbs and medicines, Nancy didn’t know what any of them were for.

  Only my husband offered any real help. A student of science who had learned medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he put his ear to the little baby’s chest. By the fire in the front parlor, cramming his long body into a small rocking chair, he cradled the infant boy, trying to get him to suck at milk from a cloth. But whatever ailed Sally’s baby, the poor little boy wasted away fast. And when he stopped breathing, Sally gave a howl that echoed through that big plantation house like wind in a dead winter forest.

  I’d never heard her make a sound like that. Never before or since. And in spite of the coolness between us since Paris, I found myself holding her tight in my arms, as if I could keep her from flying apart.

  “Poor little baby,” Polly sobbed.

  Poor little baby, indeed. My poor little cousin, brother, and neither. I was to look after him. Both him and Sally. Papa had entrusted them to me. Now my father’s son was gone without ever having become a man, and there was nothing we could ever say to comfort his mother.

  Sally Hemings had returned to Virginia, to slavery, to this life—all for the sake of my father and this baby. Now my father was off serving the president and their baby was gone. She’d made choices she could never take back. Choices none of us ever could. And I had to fight off my own tears to stay strong for her and my sister both.

  “What’s all this carrying on?” Colonel Randolph shouted when he heard our lamentations echoing throughout the halls. When Tom told him, his father snorted with a dismissive flick of his hand. “Put a buck on that girl in a few weeks and she’ll breed another.”

  At those words, my chin snapped up. I gave Colonel Randolph a look that could’ve set his whole house on fire, hoping to make him ashamed of himself. It didn’t mean anything to him to see Sally in pain, but it meant something to us. It meant something to me.

  Sensing a brewing rebellion in his parlor, Colonel Randolph snapped, “Do something about your womenfolk, Tom.” Then he stalked away.

  Choked with tears, Sally asked, “Where will we bury my baby? Can’t leave him with strangers.”

  Trying to take the tiny body from Sally, Nancy Randolph said, “He won’t know any different. Why, a little baby like this was only in this world for a few breaths. He won’t remember anything in heaven. It’ll be as if he was never here at all.”

  My sister-in-law meant to comfort, but Sally recoiled from Nancy as if she were the devil. It was Tom who had to reason with her. “Sally, your boy won’t be buried amongst strangers. When my father passes on, I’ll be master of Tuckahoe and Patsy will be mistress here. We’ll be buried here and our children, too. With your baby nearby.”

  That’s what it took to make Sally surrender her baby for burial. And I felt a flare of pride in my husband. He wasn’t good at laughter and levity—what he did best, he did in the dark—but there was a decency about him.

  He said those words to ease the heart of a grieving mother. But when those words got back to Colonel Randolph, they did more damage than I could’ve imagined.

  Maybe it was Nancy who ran telling tales, but it could’ve been any of the miserable souls in that big old house. Whoever reported the conversation must’ve made Tom’s words sound ugly and entitled, like we were wishing for Colonel Randolph’s demise.

  That night in the dining room, my fatherin-law eyed Tom over a glass of liquor and said, “You and your fancy new convent-educated wife have made yourselves quite at home here at Tuckahoe.”

  “We’re very grateful for your hospitality, sir,” Tom replied, stiffly. “Now that the snows are gone, we’ll take Miss Polly to Eppington and make our rounds.”

  Colonel Randolph threw back a gulp of the amber liquid and gestured to a slave to refill his goblet, then he held out his hands, as if in question. “When Mr. Jefferson asked you to call on his relations, did he leave you any horses to take you there or did he expect you to take mine?”

  An awkward tension, one that was sadly common at Tuckahoe, settled over the room like the air growing heavy before a storm. Tom swallowed. “I suppose with all the excitement of the wedding, we didn’t give it much thought.”

  Colonel Randolph sneered. “Well, that is a conundrum for you then, isn’t it?”

  It wasn’t about the horses. And to this day, I’d argue that it wasn’t even about our sense of presumption. The truth was, that for some reason I could never surmise, nothing Tom or his siblings ever did satisfied or pleased that old man.

  “Your new fatherin-law is the sort of man who assumes everything will all work out,” Colonel Randolph continued. “Sunny disposition, those Jeffersons. But ice water in their veins.”

  It was an insult. To me, to my father, and to Tom. For a moment, I thought my husband might actually raise a fist to his father; instead, an emotional chill settled between father and son beyond even that which was there be
fore.

  Tom was still seething by the time we went to bed. “We’re moving to Varina, straightaway.”

  “Aren’t we going visiting at Eppington?” I asked, pouring water into a basin to wash my face and hands.

  “Your sister and Sally can stay there, but we’re going to Varina to make a home. Better than relying upon the generosity of my father one more day!”

  I wondered if Tom had given this plan enough thought. I didn’t know if there was time to get crops in the ground at Varina. I didn’t even know if there was a habitable home there, and without my sister or a maid, what would I do? Why, the only things James Hemings had taught me to cook were French delicacies. “I’m very much averse to this plan. I thought you intended to buy Edgehill from your father and settle near Monticello?”

  “My father’s in no mood to sell anything to me right now,” Tom snapped. “And I didn’t ask your opinion on the matter.”

  I’d lived too long with Frenchwomen to lower my eyes and apologize for daring to have thoughts on the matter of where I should live. But I didn’t want to quarrel. So I used the charms I’d learned in the ballrooms of Paris, and the more natural ones I was only beginning to discover in myself. “Well, if you find it necessary to go to Varina,” I began, crawling into bed and reaching for him under the blankets, “I will, of course, comply.”

  “Yes,” he said, gruffly, touching his nose to mine. “You will.”

  But the touch of my fingers turned the heat of his anger into a different kind of heat, which I found gratifying. Tom was an ardent lover, easily distracted by pleasure. So I forced a wide, sweet smile. “It’s my desire and duty, after all, to please you.”

  The edge of Tom’s anger melted away as he glanced at me from beneath lowered lids. “You do, Mrs. Randolph. You please me very well.”

  Later, spent of seed and rage, he laid his head back on the pillow and spoke softly. Regretfully. “I shouldn’t have been harsh with you. It’s only … I’ll always be a boy under his roof, Patsy. That’s why we have to go to Varina. Can’t stay here another day or it’ll come to blows.”

  It seemed an exaggeration, but I suppose family quarrels never look the same from the outside as they do from within. I was only starting to understand the Randolphs; I wasn’t privy to the thousands of injuries they’d done one another, real and imagined. It just seemed to me a silly quarrel over horses between a controlling father and his headstrong son.

  Would that it had been.

  The next morning, I found Sally staring out the window in the direction of the woods where we put her baby in the ground. An unmarked grave at the edge of the tree line—not far from the Randolph family cemetery—where the ground was carpeted in blue wildflowers.

  Softly, I asked, “Should I write to Papa?”

  Her eyes still vacant with shock and grief, Sally gave a quick shake of her head. “I’ll get word to him through my brothers.”

  I’m ashamed to say how relieved I was to hear it, because I didn’t have the first idea of how to tell my father. That was the way of it in Virginia; for all the things we never said aloud, there were even more we never put to paper.

  So when next I wrote Papa, I sent him only reassurances of my love. I wanted to say more, because something felt terribly wrong about this silence. But in the end, that’s all I wrote.

  Chapter Eighteen

  New York, 30 May 1790

  From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph Jr.

  Your resolution to apply to the study of the law is wise. On my return to Virginia in the fall, I hope some practicable method may be devised for your settling in Albemarle. Nothing could contribute so much to my happiness. You might get into the assembly for that county. Meanwhile, a motion has been made in the Senate to remove the federal government to Philadelphia and the French revolution still goes on well.

  MY FATHER WISHED to keep me close to Monticello—and I desired the same—but in marrying Tom, I understood my destiny to be entwined with Tuckahoe. Tuckahoe was the family seat. The jewel of the Randolph fortune. And since Tom was the oldest son, tradition held that he’d inherit the place.

  It would always have a hold on him.

  But the place that had a hold on my little sister was Eppington. Polly didn’t wait for the carriage Colonel Randolph finally lent us to come to a stop before flinging the door open and leaping out into the arms of Aunt Elizabeth—the only mother my little sister remembered. And watching my aunt’s calico housedress billow up as she spun my sister made me forgive her for keeping Polly from us all those years.

  But I confess, it made me a little jealous, too. At least until Aunt Elizabeth grabbed at my hands and I caught a scent of lavender water that she and my mother both used for perfume. “Patsy, you’ve grown so regal, you make us look like peasants. Your mother would burst to see you now.”

  Uncle Frank did his best to make my new husband feel welcome, too, pouring him a glass of his best liquor and asking him about his studies at Edinburgh. And I breathed a sigh of relief to be away from the tension at Tuckahoe. Little by little, my reticent husband relaxed into the company of my family until Uncle Frank said, “Mr. Randolph, you must congratulate your father for me on his betrothal.”

  Tom stared, frozen in surprise, his glass at half tilt. He managed to choke out three words. “My father’s betrothal?”

  Oblivious to Tom’s distress, Uncle Frank lifted his own glass for a celebratory toast. “I’ve yet to set eyes on Gabriella Harvie, but I’m told she’s a young lady of great beauty.”

  It was Aunt Elizabeth who recognized Tom’s expression as horrified shock and she tried to silence her husband with a sharp “Mr. Eppes.”

  But my uncle blundered on in confusion. “Didn’t you just ride out from Tuckahoe? Surely your father shared the happy news of his forthcoming remarriage. Everyone else in the countryside has heard by now.”

  Tom curled slightly inward, as if he’d been run through with a sword and didn’t want anyone to see how badly he was bleeding. I reached for him, my own mind reeling, but he pulled from my grasp, excused himself, and begged leave to take Uncle Frank’s bottle with him.

  Tom strode off to the stables and I followed, half-afraid he’d hop on a horse and ride off. Realizing I was following, he picked up his pace, but so did I.

  “My mother is only a year in her grave,” Tom said, taking two swallows straight from the bottle. “And my father has set his mind to marry a girl younger than his own daughters.”

  There was nothing unusual about that; older men of means took young wives. No, Gabriella Harvie’s youth wasn’t the trouble; it was that her father was a landed gentleman of Virginia who would expect his daughter and any children she bore to reap the rewards of this marriage at the expense of my husband and his siblings.

  Tom took another swallow, his dark eyes burning. “My mother gave him three sons and seven daughters, but now he wants to start a new family.”

  I stepped closer. “Doesn’t mean he’ll neglect the one he’s got.”

  “Yes he will,” Tom hissed. “He’ll start fresh and forget us, since we’ve ever been such a disappointment to him. He’s done this to hurt me, I promise you that.”

  I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Tom. And, frankly, it seemed impossible that any son would ever please that old man. “Colonel Randolph is a widower. Is it possible he’s just lonely?” I suggested, trying to be more generous.

  It was the wrong thing to say. Tom shrugged away from me and threw himself down on a hay bale. “Patsy, you’ve only had a taste of how malicious my father can be. You haven’t the faintest notion of how miserable he’s made me and you wouldn’t care if you knew. So go to bed and leave me be.”

  Something in his eyes frightened me, and left me no room to argue. So I went into the house, fretting the whole while. I did care that my husband was miserable. Of course I cared. But I didn’t know how to help him.

  By the time Tom came to bed that night, he was drunk. He wasn’t gentle. But b
efore I could scold him for putting a tear in my nightclothes, he buried his face in my hair, sniffling and sobbing barely coherent apologies. Some part of me was horrified to see him weep like that, a big strong man curled up against me like a boy. But another part opened up to love him just a little.

  His loss was altogether too familiar for me not to feel compassion. My mother had died years ago, but Tom’s pain was still fresh. So I held him without resentment while he sobbed how much he loved his mother, and how bitterly he resented his father for never having loved her at all. “Patsy, I regret every little neglect I ever made in my affection to my mother. No one will ever love me like she did.”

  I knew that pain, so I stroked his back, realizing he now feared to lose what little of his father’s love he’d ever had.

  That’s what Tom feared.

  But as my husband fell asleep on my shoulder, my fears were entirely financial. I married him, in part, because he was the heir to Tuckahoe, as grand a place as there was in Virginia. But I’d seen greater estates fall to ruin in France. How Colonel Randolph’s lands would provide for his remaining unmarried daughters was already a matter of concern. As the eldest son, Tom would take the largest share, but how many more ways would the colonel have to divide his holdings if he had more children?

  Because my husband’s inheritance—and what might be left of it—was a thing of peculiar interest to me now that I suspected I was soon to have a child of my own.

  COLONEL RANDOLPH’S IMPENDING REMARRIAGE worked itself like a poison into my husband’s blood. My family opposed the idea of setting up housekeeping at Varina, but Tom was now more determined than ever. He’d gone ahead of me to get crops into the ground and expected me to join him soon. And I dreaded it, because it was a hot summer and I was swelling with child and didn’t want to live in such proximity to the Randolphs… .

  “I don’t understand it,” Aunt Elizabeth said, sitting on the porch, teaching me some tricks of mending while we watched Polly play with the dogs in the summer sun. “You need a maid when you’re in this condition, Patsy. Every Virginia gentleman gives one to his daughter on her wedding day. Sally should be tending you. Is your father saving her for your sister?”