America's First Daughter: A Novel

by Stephanie Dray

  They’d line up in the passageways for a glimpse at Papa. One lady even punched a windowpane with her parasol trying to get a better view!

  Neverthless, I scolded Ellen when she moped down the narrow staircase in the morning, eyes half-lidded. “Be more cheerful in the morning lest your grandfather’s guests think you’re a sullen girl.”

  “You know I hate mornings,” Ellen said, unrepentantly sullen.

  I did know. Indeed, since she was a child my father had made a game of catching her in bed long after sunrise. And I also knew her love for him would make her behave. “Your grandpapa relies upon us to leave a good impression.”

  Ellen plastered a sarcastic smile on her face as we took our places in Papa’s chrome yellow dining room with its wispy white curtains. My daughters were all practiced hostesses at my father’s breakfast, where we had fried eggs and meat, biscuits, tea, and honey. Then, while our guests amused themselves in my father’s book room or by walking our gardens or horse riding in our woods, I made the girls help me tidy up and find places for the strange little trinkets people sent Papa from all over the country just because he might find them fascinating.

  Mary and Cornelia bickered about the proper way to do everything from planning a menu to choosing cloth for the servants, and Ginny goaded them on to avoid doing any of the work herself. Meanwhile, I taught the children from early afternoon until our supper at four or five in the evening. The schoolroom was my sitting room at Monticello, painted a cheerful blue. It’s where I did my sewing, and breastfeeding, too. And where the servants found me to ask for direction at least two dozen times a day.

  All except Sally, of course.

  Sally and I both worked in proximity to my father’s private rooms, where he emerged each day like the glowing Jove to reign over Mount Olympus. The grand patriarch made all the rules for the house—including that the children were to keep out of the flower beds and that no one but Sally was to venture into his sanctum sanctorum.

  Such was my children’s adoration for him that he only had to say do or do not, and they’d all obey. And he adored them in return, playing games with them in the evening. In returning from overseeing cloth production at the textile mill, I’d see my father throw down his kerchief to set the children off on a race on the lawn—sometimes with hoops. And while Sally’s children only ever looked on, the racers were sometimes joined by my sister’s only surviving child, little Francis, whom Jack Eppes finally consented to let visit.

  Jack hadn’t been persuaded by my pleas nor my father’s cajoling. There wasn’t anything any of us could say to convince Jack that his son wouldn’t be exposed to my husband’s lingering ill will. No, it took someone in the Hemings family. My sister’s maid promised that her aunt Sally would watch over the boy. And Jack trusted his concubine in a way he’d never trust me.

  But I counted myself grateful for it, because I never tired of hearing my sister’s laugh in her son’s voice. And every night after Tom returned home and the children were all tucked into bed, we had the best fruits from the orchards with our tea and enjoyed the relative quiet.

  The only blot on our happiness was our son-in-law. When Ann married Charles Bankhead, he’d been a student at the law with a promising future. He’d since quit the profession to better appreciate my father’s stock of wine, leaving us to worry for Ann and my new grandson. But my father was fond of Charles and optimistic about his future.

  Tom was less charitable. “We made a mistake with that one, Martha. He’ll never go farther than a tavern.”

  At the time, I thought it an unkind thing to say, and hypocritical, too, considering my husband so often retreated to drink. I reconsidered my opinion, however, the night my twenty-year-old son came to the table after a day of backbreaking work, during which he nearly put his father into the ground.

  Serving great portions of ham onto his plate, Jeff asked, “Grandpapa, do you think war with England is inevitable, now? We can make enough to eat and drink and clothe ourselves, but we can’t have salt or iron without money. Without a market for our wheat, we just feed it to the horses. Tobacco isn’t worth the pipe it’s smoked in. And whiskey …” He paused, casting a sly glance at Ann’s husband. “Well there aren’t enough drunks in the world to drink it.”

  My son should’ve never given that sly, knowing glance to Charles Bankhead, who guzzled down my father’s brandy as if in defiance of Jeff’s remark. Charles and Tom were both good and drunk that night. So much so that my husband fell into a deep, exhausted slumber before I finished tucking my children into bed in their nursery.

  I suppose that’s why I was the first to hear the commotion downstairs.

  Coming into the dining room in my bedclothes, I found Bankhead hurling abuses at one of the Hemings boys, my father’s new butler, Burwell. The reason? Poor Burwell refused to serve him more brandy or give him the keys to the wine cellar.

  I realize now that Ann must’ve been too afraid to intervene, but at the time, I only wondered where my daughter had got herself to while her husband screamed incoherently.

  “Charles!” I hissed. “Everyone’s gone to bed. Surely you don’t mean to drink alone?”

  “I do,” Bankhead sneered. Then he picked up a silver candlestick. “And I’ll smash this insolent boy’s skull if he won’t give over the keys.”

  Fearful of the certain violence in his voice, I stepped between them. “You’ve had enough to drink, Charles.”

  Bankhead brought his reddening face close to mine, then gave me such a shove that I fell against the table, sending a tureen crashing to the floor. Shocked and struggling to right myself, I caught a flash of Burwell’s fierce brown eyes just as his fists clenched, as if he meant to come to my defense.

  “Burwell!” I snapped the warning, because a black man attacking a white man in Virginia, even for good cause, would end in utter tragedy. “Go fetch Bacon.”

  Edmund Bacon was the overseer on our estate—a burly white man who could help me manage my drunk son-in-law. But Burwell glanced at Bankhead, then back at me, and shook his head, as if unwilling to leave me alone with the drunkard. I had to straighten to my full height. “You do as I say, Burwell. You get on!”

  Only when Burwell was gone did I face my son-in-law, who was beyond reason. Charles shoved me again, and this time I knocked over a chair before catching my balance. He still had that candlestick in his hand, and he rounded on me, slamming me into the wall, his hand at my throat, nostrils flaring like a bull. Smelling the liquor on his breath, I stayed very still and breathed very shallowly, my pulse pounding in my ears. He’s going to strangle me, I thought. And that thought seemed to stretch on for an eternity.

  Footsteps finally sounded out from behind us, and my son-in-law cried, “Gimme that key, you lazy, good-for-nothing—”

  That’s when we saw Tom, his eyes bloodshot with exhaustion, alcohol, and rage. What happened next happened so swiftly, I heard it more than saw it. Tom grabbed up a fire iron and the air parted with the swoosh of its arc. A heavy thunk sounded as metal cracked on a human skull. A crash as Bankhead crumpled to the floor, leaving me gasping as I grasped my throat, standing over the body of our son-in-law as a pool of blood fanned out under my bare feet.

  “Dear God!” I cried, horrified by the sight of flesh split from bone. The blow had peeled the skin off one side of my son-in-law’s forehead and face. I dropped to my knees in terror. “You’ve killed him, Tom. You’ve killed him.”

  I was wrong about that.

  Tom had swung that iron poker hard enough to kill, but it had glanced slightly off to the side, leaving Charles badly injured, but alive. Groaning and sobbing, Charles tried to get to his feet, slipping on his own blood just as Ann stumbled in. Seeing her husband dripping in gore, she let out a blood-curdling scream that drew the servants and even our children from their beds.

  Sally scarcely took two steps into the room before she herded everyone away. Meanwhile, my husband was still in an unthinking and murderous fury, so I threw myself
into Tom’s arms before he used the poker to finish the job. “You saved me,” I whispered, holding tight to his waist, using my body to force him back from the scene.

  But even Tom’s shock as he came more fully awake did not make him relinquish his desire to murder. “You think you can get away from me, Bankhead? Get back here, you dog.”

  “Don’t kill my husband,” Ann sobbed, trying to stop his bleeding.

  I put my hand round Tom’s to make him drop the fire iron, and he roared, “I want him out of this house!”

  Had this been Edgehill, he’d have been well within his rights to be obeyed. Truthfully, I thought he was within his rights anyway. But Ann was hysterical now, with her husband’s blood staining her nightdress and her hands. “This is my grandfather’s house. He’d never send me out with a dying man into the dark. You’ve nearly killed him. You’ve nearly killed my husband!”

  Ann didn’t know—hadn’t seen—how it had happened.

  And by morning, Charles was so apologetic and ashamed that Ann felt nothing but pity for him. “He tries to stop drinking, Momma. He swears it off. But then he can’t stop. I don’t know why, but he can’t stop.”

  At her words, I pulled the shawl tighter around my neck, hiding the red marks that had bloomed there just as my clothing covered the bruises Charles’s rough handling had caused. I’d been careful as I’d dressed to ensure Tom hadn’t seen them, either. If any of the men in my family saw my bruises, the violence would erupt all over again.

  Meanwhile, my father suggested Bankhead might be suffering from some sort of illness, that perhaps a doctor could help him. Not knowing the full violence of Charles’s actions, Papa was unfailingly kind to the young man, which infuriated Tom so much, he slammed out of the house and stayed gone for two days.

  My son only made matters worse. Jeff had been away on his grandfather’s errands during the altercation—the trust my father increasingly placed in him to conduct matters of business emboldened Jeff and chafed at my husband, who thought our boy wasn’t ready for such responsibility.

  When Jeff heard about the fight, he said, “Just two drunks having a row, then. I’m sure they’ll patch it up straightaway.”

  I didn’t tell him how it had really been. No one knew but me and Tom and, to some extent, Burwell. To tell my proud and devoted son a thing like that would’ve invited a duel. So I only said, “It breaks my heart to hear you speak of your father that way.”

  Truthfully, Tom had never been more justified in his rage, but there was no question that if the fire iron had hit Charles Bankhead squarely, he’d be dead. Dead on my father’s floor, at Monticello, where the eyes of the whole country seemed to look for example, especially now.

  Because that summer, the United States of America declared war on Great Britain.

  If we’d waited a little longer, we would’ve discovered the British had finally cracked under the weight of my father’s embargo. They’d decided against harassing our neutral merchant ships. They’d surrendered to my father’s policies. But as in the Revolutionary War, the British had come to their senses too late.

  Now there would be blood.

  And both my husband and my son were called to fight.

  LIKE MY FATHER, I’d begun to count things for comfort. Twenty-three was the number of years I’d been married to Tom Randolph. Nine was the number of children we had, with another on the way. Forty-four was my husband’s age the day he declared that he must join the army because if he didn’t fight to defend America, he’d be unhappy for the rest of his life.

  Tom wanted and expected my father’s blessing and encouragement, but Papa worried that my husband was beset with military fever. “His willingness to sacrifice for his country is admirable, but at his age, with all that depends on him—what can be driving him to it?”

  I understood precisely what drove Tom. As my husband, he was doomed to live in the shadow of the country’s greatest living patriot. But a patriot who had never been a soldier. Strip even that away, and Tom was still haunted by the shadow of his father, the colonel. So it didn’t surprise me to see the pleasure Tom took in being commissioned by President Madison as a colonel, and given command of the Twentieth Regiment of the infantry.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that Tom still felt the pull of the grave. I’d kept him from dueling Randolph of Roanoke, but deep down, I feared that my husband was still looking for the bullet that would give him an honorable exit. The night he received his commission, he perched at the edge of our bed, holding papers duly signed and sworn.

  “Martha, I want you to look at this.” I realized with a glance that it was a last will. Bringing both hands to my mouth, I pleaded with my eyes for him not to show me. But he persisted. “If I should die—”

  “Please don’t,” I said, turning toward the wall. I knew Tom could die. Of course I knew. But I was my father’s daughter, so I didn’t wish to speak openly of such things. We didn’t acknowledge them this way. I wasn’t sure I could bear it.

  “Martha.” Tom took me by the shoulders and drew me to face him. “If I should die, I intend to give you everything.”

  Stunned, I asked, “What of the children?” It wasn’t done that widows were left with unfettered power over their husband’s property. It wasn’t done because a widow’s property would pass into the hands of a new husband the moment she remarried, and women weren’t thought to be capable of managing it.

  Tom swallowed. “I recommend you sell Varina to pay off the debts. You should probably give Jeff the better part of Edgehill and divide the rest amongst the younger boys. But I leave it to your judgment, and to your use, as you think fit.”

  I was dumbfounded, both by these spoken words, and the heartfelt ones he’d put to paper. “I place my full confidence in the understanding, judgment, honor, and impartial maternal feeling of my beloved wife Martha.”

  God as my witness, every offense Tom had ever given melted away to nothing. This man had worked himself to the bone for me. For my father. For our children. This man had nearly killed to defend me. And he had, with what might be his last official act, placed the trust of everything into my hands. My eyes misted at the well of tender love I felt for him—the depths of which I hadn’t felt in some time. “Oh, Tom.”

  He sat taller, bracing himself. “I’d only like to know if you think you might, in the event of my death …” He shook his head, clearly uncomfortable. “Would you seek another husband?”

  I didn’t think. I only felt. Like my father before me, in that most vulnerable moment, when my spouse contemplated his death, I merely took my husband’s hand and vowed, “Only you, Tom. I swear by God that I’ll have no other husband.”

  That was all I said on the subject until it came time for him to leave for an assault on a British-held fortress near the Saint Lawrence River. President Madison said we couldn’t forget the glory of our fathers in establishing independence, which must now be maintained by their sons.

  The fathers he invoked were mine and John Adams. It was important to the cause—perhaps essential—that my husband and my son join the fight.

  Jeff readily agreed. “God forbid that I should be last to come forward in defense of my country, for which I shall be proud to sacrifice my life.”

  But for every proud smile and farewell kiss and bland pleasantry about how short this war was sure to be, how we’d repelled the British once and could do it again, I nursed unworthy thoughts I dared not give voice to.

  I’m going to lose them, as I lose everything, to the cause of this country.

  I’d lost my mother, my siblings, my childhood. I’d lost my first love and my financial future. And, now, pregnant again and half out of my mind with fear, I couldn’t bear to sacrifice another thing.

  I’m not proud of it now. Nor was I then. But I went to my father and together we hatched a plot against my husband’s military career.

  DOLLEY FOLDED ME INTO HER ARMS to welcome me to Montpelier. “Why, Patsy, I didn’t expect you in your conditio
n. Then again, you’d never go anywhere if you waited until you weren’t with child.”

  Papa chuckled. “At this rate, we ought to put her in a nunnery.”

  It was an entertaining jest in spite, or because, of the fact that I’d once desired to be a nun. But such was my fear for my husband that I couldn’t find the heart to laugh. Papa gently squeezed my shoulder to reassure me of his intention to speak with Mr. Madison about my plight. It was left to me to prevail upon Madison’s wife.

  All my life, I’d gotten by with smiles and pleasantries. But the moment the gentlemen were out of hearing, I wept into my kerchief. Dolley was so startled by my uncharacteristic outburst that she teared up herself. “Oh, my dear, whatever can be the matter?”

  “I’m so low-spirited,” I wept, unbearably relieved to tell the truth. “I fear this baby is going to be the end of me and I’ll never see my husband again. One of us is going to die before we’re reunited.”

  “You mustn’t think that way,” Dolley said, stroking my hair. “Why, you have a perfect constitution. You’re not due until the new year, and when the army retires to winter quarters, Tom will come home for the birth.”

  “At a time like this, every able-bodied man must be called upon, but my father thinks perhaps Tom could serve in the Virginia militia, closer to home.” I held my breath in anticipation of her reaction, my stomach sick with worry and guilt.

  For a long moment, Dolley was quiet. She should’ve told me that this was men’s business. She should’ve pretended not to have any sway. But she simply tapped her fan against her cheek until an idea came to her. “What the president needs is tax collectors. Wars need to be paid for, and when we don’t send men of prominence to collect, they’re just run out of town on a rail. Your husband, with his name and connections and service, why, he’d make an ideal choice.”