Patriot Hearts (33 page)

Martha would have liked to do the same.

Every woman who had been at the reception, however, came to call, and Martha got all the political clamor she—and they—had succeeded in quashing the previous evening. This morning, at least, she was spared red faces, foul language, and the danger of anyone calling anyone out. “It isn’t as if M’sieu Genêt doesn’t know any better,” sniffed Lucy Knox, the Secretary of War’s stout, outspoken wife. “Ann Bingham tells me his father was the head of the Bureau of Translations under the King, and his sister a lady-in-waiting to the poor Queen.”

“I was barely able to shut my eyes all night,” gasped Eliza, “for sheer terror through the dark hours…”

“You certainly gave a good impression of being able to,” said Nelly imperturbably. “You snore. Will you have sweet cakes, Mrs. Knox, or bread and butter?”

“I do not snore!”

“I hear you through the wall.”

“Mrs. Washington.” James the footman appeared in the doorway, imposing in his livery and snowy powdered wig.
He’s coming up on his six months,
thought Martha, in a combination of annoyance and regret. Due to Pennsylvania’s law that any slave dwelling there would be declared free after six months, she found herself obliged to send each of the servants back to Mount Vernon periodically on a variety of trumped-up errands. It played havoc with her housekeeping and irritated her at a deeper level, that the laws of property would be one way in one state, and different in another. Wasn’t that what the new Constitution was supposed to fix? It was particularly maddening because she didn’t want to be living in Philadelphia in the first place. The British had never paid them for slaves they’d carried off during the Revolution, either.

“Yes, James, what is it?”

The footman stepped close—which in itself told her there was some sort of problem that would need sorting out—and held out his salver to her. The single card on its polished surface read,
Mrs. John Todd.
“Two ladies are here asking to see you, ma’am. A Mrs. Todd, and a Mrs. Payne.” His face was absolutely immobile and his voice without inflection.

Something was definitely amiss.

“Eliza, dearest, would you take over for me?” Martha asked. “I shall see Mrs. Payne and Mrs. Todd in the dining-room, James.” Even with all the additions she and George had requested to the red-brick mansion, there still wasn’t really enough room for their extended family, especially when Pattie and Eliza came to visit.

The question of tea for the newcomers would, of course, be decided when she ascertained who they were. It wasn’t only rioters bent on demanding war with France who came to the door of the red-brick house on High Street. As had been the case at Mount Vernon, old soldiers who had served with George would sometimes appear, or visitors from other towns whom Martha had never seen in her life.

Martha seated herself at the family dining-room’s small table and folded her hands. A moment later James ushered in a tall, powerfully built woman in the rusty black of home-dyed mourning: cotton chintz in the cut of a respectable working-woman’s dress. Behind her, the young woman who was clearly her daughter—and taller still—was also in mourning, though her gown was more fashionably cut and of far better fabric. The black must have been hellish in the morning’s heat, but it complemented the younger woman’s porcelain-fair complexion and jewel-blue eyes, and the sable curls neatly confined under a plain cap. Certainly the softer modern lines suited her extremely advanced state of pregnancy.

More advanced, Martha judged, than was proper for a woman to be walking abroad, unless the matter were quite serious indeed.

“Mrs. Washington.” The older woman held out her hand. Properly gloved, Martha saw, though the glove was worn and mended, and, like the dress, home-dyed black. It left smudges on Martha’s lace mitt. “I am Mrs. Payne; please excuse me, that I have no card.” A Virginian, by her soft drawn-out vowels, and well-bred. “My daughter, Mrs. John Todd, the wife of a lawyer of this town.”

“I see thee stare in amazement, Mrs. Washington,” added Mrs. Todd, with a fleeting sparkle in her blue eyes. “But if there can be Quaker generals, surely there can be Quaker lawyers.”

And Martha smiled back, though Mrs. Payne’s lips tightened at her daughter’s wit. Tightened resignedly, as if in losing battle against an incurably spritely nature. The mother went on, “For two years now I have operated a boardinghouse on Third Street; a number of gentlemen of the Congress have rooms there, and many more take their meals with us. Among them is thy nephew, Mr. Steptoe Washington. ’Twas there that he came to know my daughter Lucy.”

Martha shut her eyes. It was an opening line straight out of a romantic novel, the kind that involved some calculating harpy—frequently a boardinghouse landlady—turning up on the doorstep of a silly young man’s wealthy family crying the seduction and rape of her daughter.

Yet one look at Mrs. Payne’s lined face and grief-filled eyes told Martha this was no entangling madame out for a wealthy family’s hush-money.

“What’s happened?” she asked gently. “How far has it gone? And James,” she added, raising her voice slightly, “please bring tea for myself and my guests.”

When the servant left, Mrs. Payne silently handed Martha a note.

Dearest Mother,
said the rather unformed hand.
By the time thou readst this I shall be far from home, and a married woman.

“My daughter is fifteen,” said Mrs. Payne. “We found her bed empty this morning. This note was on the sideboard as we cleared up after breakfast.”

Into Martha’s mind snapped at once the image of her nephew, handing a note to little Aaron Burr. Of the two men leaving together, almost furtively, in the wake of Jefferson’s departure. “Is Senator Burr one of your guests?”

Mrs. Payne seemed startled at the guess. “He is so indeed, and a good friend of our family. Colonel Burr is one of the few men I’ve met who doth share my opinion on the education of young women.”

And how many other notes,
Martha wondered, suddenly effervescent with wrath,
has the Senator carried between my nephew and his landlady’s daughter?

She leaned across the table and took Mrs. Payne’s hands. Hard hands, beneath the glove-leather, probably work-calloused the way Abigail Adams’s were by years of lye soap. “Mrs. Payne,” she said, “I promise you, you have nothing to fear. Steptoe is a harebrained boy, but he’s no seducer. His word is his bond.”

Which wasn’t entirely true, at least as far as his gambling debts were concerned. But in this case George would jolly well see to it that Steptoe’s word
was
his bond, even if it did mean bringing another under-aged child—and the daughter of Aaron Burr’s landlady at that!—into the family, as Jacky had long ago done.

“If he has promised marriage to your daughter, he will indeed hold to it.”

At this Mrs. Payne turned her face aside and wept. Disengaging her hands, she rose quickly and hurried from the room, leaving Martha disconcerted.

The pretty Mrs. Todd rose, as if to follow her, then turned back. “Mrs. Washington, I thank thee, more than I can say, and my mother, too. I know thy nephew’s a well-meaning boy—I am often at Mama’s house, and know many of her guests. ’Tis not that Mama is ungrateful, to thee or to the President, for whatever thou canst do on Lucy’s behalf. But Mama—She is a good member of the Congregation of Friends, and hath spent her life trying to lead us in the path of righteousness. And for marrying outside the Congregation, Lucy will be ‘read out,’ ejected from the Meeting and from all the Society. In saving her daughter’s honor, my mother hath lost her child, and I my sister.”

She held out a gloved hand to Martha: black kid, newer than her mother’s, and leaving no mark where it touched. “Nevertheless I thank thee, ma’am. And though I see in thine eyes that thou hast thy doubts—as who would not, for Steptoe
is
but a boy—I can at least promise thee, that thou wilt have for thy niece one of the sweetest jewels that ever God made.”

When the two ladies had gone Martha returned to her drawing-room, excused herself to the ladies there, and drew Nelly aside. “I need you to come with me to your cousin Steptoe’s lodgings—and not a word to the others, please. We’ll take Richmond with us, I think. Goodness knows, after last night, what sort of trouble may be brewing in the streets.”

But as they walked the three or four blocks to Steptoe’s lodgings the streets were quiet, though men clustered around the doors of the taverns favored by the Democratic-Republicans, and angry voices could be heard inside. When George had refused to pay the French the whole of America’s war debt to fund an invasion of Spanish Louisiana, broadsides had begun appearing. They called the American people to rise against Washington’s “despotism”—to overthrow it, if necessary, in the cause of a liberty that only a strong alliance with France could provide.
The freedom of this country is not secure,
trumpeted the
Columbian Gazetteer, until that of France is placed beyond the reach of accident.

God only knew where it would end. It was said that the French Queen was in one of the most wretched prisons of Paris now, awaiting execution. The whole world, it seemed, stood on the brink of flames.

At Steptoe’s lodgings, the landlord informed them that young Mr. Washington had departed early that morning. He would be gone some weeks, he had said. No, he hadn’t said where.

“Harewood,” said Martha grimly, as she, Nelly, and Richmond retraced their steps back toward High Street. Harewood Plantation—originally owned by George’s younger brother Sam whose death back in 1782 had thrown the care of Steptoe, Lawrence, and Harriot onto George in the first place—lay in the western part of Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. It was a week by carriage. “When your grandpapa returns we’ll see about sending a messenger. Not Mr. Lear,” she added, her face clouding. Since Dr. Rush had left, Martha had been upstairs to Pollie’s room two or three times, and found the girl whispering with fever, even in her sleep.

“Will Pollie be all right?” asked Nelly. Walking at Martha’s side in her schoolgirlish white muslin, she had already, Martha reflected, the demeanor of a young woman. And then, more softly, “Will
everything
be all right, Grandmama?”

Martha tried to remember the things that had troubled and frightened her when she was fourteen. Her father’s constant worries about his debts to British factors and whether the tobacco-crop would cover them; the never-ending fear of a slave uprising, or of individual slave vengeances. The fact that, at fourteen, she was being fitted with the corsets and dresses of womanhood with an eye to finding her a husband.

Nothing like the new and uncertain world Nelly faced.

“There have been many times in my life,” she answered, “when I’ve wondered if things would be all right. When your grandpapa rode away to the Congress for the first time, and ran the risk of being hanged as a traitor to the King. And later, every summer during the War, when I’d hear of this battle or that, or that dreadful winter at Valley Forge when the Army was deserting a regiment at a time.”

When Patcy died, and all the world was darkness…

“And things all
did
work out, you know,” she went on briskly. “For better or for worse, spring always came after winter. I suspect it will again this year.”

“You’re right, Grandmama.” Nelly took a deep breath, and straightened her shoulders. In a very grown-up voice she added, “One must keep these things in due proportion.”

They turned the corner onto High Street, and behind them, Martha could hear the voices of the French sailors, shouting around the taverns:
“Vive la Liberté!”
and the smashing of glass.

When they reentered the house, with the thick heat of afternoon stifling in the high-ceilinged hall, Martha’s first question of James was, “How is Mrs. Lear?” and then, before she even removed her bonnet, “Is the President home yet?”

“Mrs. Lear’s no better, ma’am, but no worse I don’t think.” The footman’s eyes flickered nervously as he spoke, as if he had heard some kitchen rumor—about the rioting? about Pollie’s sickness?—from other slaves. “The President come in a few minutes ago. He’s up in his study.”