America's First Daughter: A Novel (23 page)

Silence was my answer. And it stretched on so long that he needn’t have replied at all. I understood his silence as humiliation; he’d hoped to carry on with Sally without being found out.
Maybe that’s why he’d wanted so desperately to send us back to Virginia,
I thought, resentfully.

“There is a terrible hammering in my head,” he finally said in a voice that spoke of true pain. “I cannot begin to describe the agony.”

I made my way carefully to his bedside, sidestepping a round wooden table piled high with books. Was his agony caused by the headache or by the thought of losing his lover? Despite my anger, I’d seen the emotion on his face when he learned of Sally’s condition. He cared for her, maybe even loved her. If he’d been worried about the idea of her remaining in the chaos of Paris before, how much worse might his fears be now that she carried his child?

Pressing a hand to his forehead, I felt his skin warm and dry. There was no fever, but he groaned, as if my touch made it worse.

He didn’t leave his bed that day, nor could he leave it the next. Instead, he lay writhing on his mattress, put into torment by the slightest bit of light. He ate nothing, read nothing, and wanted to see no one but Sally.

And yet, Sally would not come.

I found her in the kitchen, and all but commanded her to go to him. But Sally stayed put, chopping onions the way her brother had taught us both to do, her eyes watering of it. And when I pressed her, we faced each other as if we were equals for the first time. Dropping her hand to her belly, she said, “I won’t go to him until he lets me and the child free.”

So it was the explicit grant of freedom she was holding out for. She hadn’t dared to demand freedom for herself when James did, but for her child, she’d found the courage to defy my father. To abandon him. To torment him, even, for now there was no question that he was ill.

So ill that I heard him retch on water. It was grief that had made him unable to open his eyes. Grief for how he’d tarnished his honor. An unwillingness to face a world in which he’d be vilified as a seducer of a girl in his charge, and the father of a mixed-race child he might never know if Sally left him to pursue life as a free woman, and I felt his naked fear of what might become of them on their own.

Three days my father lay in bed, shut up, alone, in despair.

Then four. Then five.

He called for me on the sixth.

There, in the near blackness of his room, he twined my fingers with his and said, “Patsy, let me tell you where King Louis went wrong. The king of France wants his people’s love so badly that he crushes them in his embrace. He won’t let them pursue happiness. He has to be
forced
to every compromise. I’ve seen enough tyrants in my time to learn from their mistakes, so I won’t thwart the rebellion of the young people in my household, even if it means I must lose the love and comfort of those dearest to me. You and William. Sally and James.”

With a gasp, I said, “Papa, you can never lose our love!”

No matter what I thought about his conduct with Sally, I loved my father dearly. So dearly that just as I’d hated Maria Cosway for rejecting my father, I now felt a festering resentment for Sally, too. It wasn’t the same, of course. This wasn’t Sally’s fault. But she knew how my father was suffering, and she didn’t
need
him to grant her freedom in France. She could take it and he couldn’t stop her. So why couldn’t she at least offer him a kind word before she left us?

“I will lose you,” my father said, with a melancholy sigh. “It’s the way of things, I know. I’m going out of life, and you’re all coming in.”

It horrified me to hear him say that he was
going out of life
. “Let me call for a doctor.”

Papa put his finger over my lips as if just the sound of my voice pained him. “I had this headache when your grandmother died. It’s a penance that must be endured. It reminds me that I’m past the prime of my life, and I must give way. The earth belongs to the living, and your generation has more life left than mine. Though I’ll be lost without you, I won’t stand in the way of you and William, even if it means I’ll lose what is most precious to me. When William asks for your hand, tell him yes with all your heart if that’s your desire.”

“Oh, Papa, you’ll never lose me,” I said, my heart filling with the bittersweet pain of happiness and gratitude, but also sorrow. Because though my father would never lose my love, if I married William, we’d never live together again.

My father must’ve known it, which made it all the harder for him to let me go. “But Patsy, I would ask this kindness of you. Come back with me to Virginia to settle Polly and say your farewells before returning to France for the wedding.”

I nodded, bringing his weak hand to my lips and kissing it, over and over.

But at my kisses Papa turned his face back to the pillow, as if he felt himself unworthy of them. “Would you—would you send Sally to me?”

I knew what it cost him to ask that of me. To ask me to fetch his mistress. The mother of his child. The woman he had plainly fallen in love with.

His
head
. That is what he said ailed him. But it was his
heart
. How many times had I seen this before? The passionate heart he always forced to submit to his surpassing intellect. His heart, like all of France, was in rebellion against its ruler.

And that’s why he asked again so sheepishly for her. “Tell her to come to me. Unlike King Louis, I’ll treat fairly with her.”

He meant to give her up, too, then. Though he felt abandoned and unloved, he meant to give us all the freedom we desired.

And I worried it would destroy him.

Paris, 17 July 1789

From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine

A more dangerous scene of war I never saw in America than what Paris has presented for five days past.

T
HE
B
ASTILLE HAD FALLEN
and Paris was aflame. Men had been beheaded, their corpses dragged before the mob, and tens of thousands of citizens now marched about with pistols, swords, pikes, pruning hooks, and scythes. The only hope of peace rested upon the shoulders of Lafayette, who had assumed command of the National Guard.

And our tree was gone. The one William had carved. It’d been smashed by cannon fire or hacked to pieces by the hordes of angry citizens in the streets, I knew not which. There I stood at the balcony window, staring down at its fractured stump, mesmerized by the violent destruction of something so dear to me—and the city in which it was born.

“Come away from the windows, Patsy,” William urged, his voice strained with worry.

I choked back a sob. “It’s all torn apart. Everything is going wrong!”

William dared to fold me into his arms, saying again, “Come away from the window. There is no telling with what violence the king’s processional will be met.”

I couldn’t be made to budge. If there was violence, I would see it. I’d bear witness to it as I’d been witness to everything else. Like all of Paris, I was caught up in the spell of waiting. Waiting for something to happen, not knowing if it would bring liberation or despair.

William’s eyes fell upon the ruin of our tree and he held me tighter. “We’ll carve another tree.”

Turning, I blurted, “I have to go back to Virginia.”

“I know you’re frightened—”

“I’m not frightened,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true, but I feared my father’s debilitated emotional state even more than the cannon fire we’d heard outside. I couldn’t tell William about Sally’s pregnancy. Unlike me, he was unlikely to be surprised to learn she’d gotten with child. And Sally’s condition would soon be obvious to everyone, so why couldn’t I tell him?

It was the shame.

William had once asked if we should object more to a man’s affection for his slave than to the fact that he holds her in bondage. But it felt
altogether
objectionable, even though I somehow felt as if my father needed my protection more than ever.

Which is why I bristled to hear William say, “You cannot go back to Virginia with your father, Patsy.”

“Papa has asked it of me—it’s all he’s asked of me.”

“He’ll never bring you back to France.”

I stared at William, half-forgetting to breathe. “Surely, you aren’t saying he won’t keep his word.”

“He’ll ask me to return to Virginia to fetch you,” William said. “I know he says that he’ll finish out his term as minister in Paris, but your father will be offered a position to serve in America as a member of President Washington’s cabinet.”

This was nothing short of stunning news. “Who told you such a thing?”

“It was in a letter I read from Mr. Madison.”

I fumbled for a reply, fumbled to understand what this meant for our future. Or if there was a future for any of us in a city on fire. “Even if Papa is offered such a position, he won’t accept it. He wants to retire from public life. You’ve heard him say it many times.”

“And I wagered a beaver hat that Mr. Jefferson will refuse the appointment. But it’s a bet I’m going to lose. I haven’t the slightest doubt that your father will accept a cabinet position in the new government no matter what he says to the contrary.”

I gasped. “That’s twice you’ve questioned my father’s honor.” The words came uneasily off my tongue, even though Papa’s liaison with Sally had called his honor into question all on its own. And I knew it. “You think he’s lying when he says he wants to finish his work here and return to Monticello forevermore?”

“If he’s lying, it’s only to himself,” Mr. Short replied evenly. “Your father will let his friends persuade him, because his mind’s already made up. He’s the only one who doesn’t know it.”

Heat came to my cheeks. “I cannot agree.”

“Patsy, all the world thinks of your father as a man of cool temper. Some assume that because he dabbles in
everything,
he holds true passion for
nothing
. We know better. The abiding passion of his life is a government that derives its authority from the people. These past few months here, in Paris, working to enlist France in the spirit of revolution—have you ever seen him more himself?”

“No,” I whispered, for it was true, even if government was not the
only
thing for which he held a passion. Not since my mother’s death had my father been so alive. What part did Sally play in that? And what would happen to him when he accepted that she and the child were both lost to him?

William continued, battering at my weak defenses. “We treat your father like a living monument because he was born to do important work. You’re his daughter and he says I’m his adoptive son. But the American Experiment is the child he birthed and will never abandon. So he can wax prosaic about the joys of private domesticity on his mountaintop all day, but in the end, he’ll join the president’s cabinet. And he won’t return to Paris, with or without you.”

“You’re just impatient for us to be together,” I said, desperate to deny it all. Almost as desperate as the people on the streets below, anxious for the answer of their king. “We’ve waited this long and you don’t want to wait any longer. But this is all my father asks of me. To return with him to Virginia and settle Polly there before marrying you.”

“And all I’m asking of you is not to go.”

I’d loved William all my life, but never had I been angrier with him. As shouts from the crowd rose up to our window, I said, “That’s not all you’re asking of me. You want me to give up my father, my sister, and my country. You’re asking all these things of
me,
but all I’m asking of
you
is to wait for me to return.”

It seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable argument, one that might have persuaded a man in love. Even a man as stubborn as William Short. But his chin jutted out willfully. “I’m thirty years old, Patsy, and what do I have to show for it? No career, no wife, no fortune. I have done everything your father has asked of me save return to Virginia, and still he would keep us apart. Still I am lectured to, by your father, as if I were a boy. And maybe he thinks it right because when he was my age, your father was building Monticello. Already had a wife and child. Had already written
A Summary View of the Rights of British America
—”

“You can’t compare yourself to my father!”

His eyes narrowed with . . . something that looked like disappointment, and he shook his head. “All my friends have said you’re still too young—”

“What friends say that?” I snapped, anger boiling now.

“That’s not important. What’s important is that you can be a wife and mother or you can be a devoted daughter all your life. You can’t be both. Not when Thomas Jefferson is your father. You have to choose, Patsy.”

His words echoed the very debates that I’d been having with myself for weeks. And that horrified me. Because he was saying that I couldn’t have them both. “You’re asking me to choose you over everything else and blaming my father for it.” My voice cracked. “My papa isn’t asking me to choose, but
you
are.”

William didn’t even lower his eyes at my rebuke. “You’re right. I am. If you go to Virginia, two months will become six. Six will become a year. We’ll never be together. So if you leave France, know that I won’t be waiting.”

Just then the trumpets blared to announce the king’s procession, and we fell silent, watching the street below. Mesmerized by the sight of the surging crowd. Not knowing if it would come to open war, then and there. The people wanted their freedom; they strained for it. Were willing to fight for it in bloody struggle.

But, like a father of the nation, the king had come to Paris to restore order. And between these two forces, between the carriage of the king and his people, was caught the Marquis de Lafayette.

In proud uniform, a cockade of red, white, and blue just like the one I wore pinned to my own gown, he rode at the head of the processional. It required courage and honor in its rawest form to ride as he did, defending the very king whose authority he sought to strip away against an armed mob with whom his heart belonged. And my eyes filled with tears at the thought that Lafayette might falter and be torn to pieces by the crowd.

I didn’t brush those tears away as Lafayette’s horse passed under our window. And though he rode in a crowd of thousands, he looked up at me. I imagined that our eyes met—that I saw in Lafayette’s white-faced grimness an acceptance of his fate so long as he never betrayed his cause.

Then he bowed to me, and I knew I had not imagined it.

He bowed to me, and his honor and courage became my own.

The spark of his
devotion
lit a fire inside me that burned away my doubts.

My hand fell away from William’s grasp, and my voice no longer wavered. “I’m going to Virginia with my father, and if you love me, you’ll wait for me a little longer.”

O
UR TRUNKS WERE PACKED
and I took a last look at the inventory list of books, busts, pictures, and clocks to be shipped ahead of us. The Hotel de Langeac was strangely bare and quiet. And I kept hoping—hoping desperately—for William. No matter how angry he was at my leaving, surely he’d see us off!

I lingered near the door, jumping up at the sound of every passing carriage in the street. And when a carriage finally pulled inside our gates, I ran out to meet it. It was not William inside that carriage but Marie, her expression bleak. “Has Mr. Short changed his mind?” she asked, coming into the house with a hat box. “Has he agreed to wait for you?”

When I shook my head, she lowered the hat box and her eyes filled with tears as she rained curses down upon William’s head. Finally, she asked, “With all the men who pursued you, is there no other offer that might keep you in France?”

No, there was no one for me but William. That morning, a messenger wearing the livery of the Duke of Dorset had presented to me a parting gift—another ring, this one a simple silver band, with a note begging me to accept it as “a feeble proof of my fond remembrance.” I had nearly burst into tears on the spot because the duke thought to send me a token of farewell, whereas I had nothing but angry silence from William. But if I told Marie about
that
, then I surely
would
burst into tears, so I only shook my head.

“Then you will not come back.” She choked on a sob, utterly undone. “I have not wanted to believe it, but now I cannot bear to part with you, and I cannot stop crying.”

“Oh, Marie!” We embraced and held one another tightly, our hearts pounding against one another as we fought off tears.

Finally, Marie murmured, “I shall throw myself into a river without you.”

I drew back abruptly. “You must never say anything that, Marie. Never.”

She looked abashed, brushing away her tears with her thumbs. “Of course. I am the one who first taught you to pretend at happiness in Paris. Now we must both pretend.” She straightened, sniffling into a kerchief. “I’ve had a hat made for you, because yours are all out of style. They don’t indent hats in the front anymore and yours with the rosette is good for nothing. You must wear this one and think of me. And we must promise to write letters.”

We promised. We exchanged tokens of remembrance. Then we parted, abruptly, as Marie fled from me in tears. I had not offered her any hope that I would return to France, as I now feared there was none. I think it was the excruciating fear that William might truly let this be the end of it between us that left me so confused to see Sally in the foyer with her own satchel of belongings.

All she owns in the world,
I thought. I was moved by her plight, not only because I was fond of her, or even only because she was, in the way of the Hemingses, near kin to me. But also because the truth of our situation was leaking around all the barricades I’d put up against it.

Inside her, she carried my little brother or sister. One I could never acknowledge and might never see born. At least the baby would be born in France—born free. That heartened me, and seeing glimpses of pain and anxiety in her amber eyes, my heart went out to her—the warmth of sympathy and concern a welcome balm from the cold ache of William’s absence.

“You won’t become destitute,” I promised with a small smile, twisting the ring Papa bought me from my finger and pressing it into her hand. “You keep this for a day you need it, but you won’t. I’ll send a letter to Marie and Madam de Tessé and the Duchess Rosalie to find a place for you as a lady’s maid. Until then, why not stay on here at the Hotel de Langeac? Mr. Short won’t put you out in the street—”

“James and I are going home with you to Virginia,” Sally said, stunning me into silence. “Your papa has made us an offer.”

My throat tightened. What offer could he have made them? Though they were his slaves, the Hemingses had the laws of France on their side, not to mention the laws of God. And I found it hard to imagine my dignified father bargaining with any slave, much less his own.