Patriot Hearts (44 page)

That visit was the last time she’d seen John. Nearly a week after that, a letter had reached them from John’s brother James, who had taken his family even farther into the Pennsylvania countryside. His first letter to Dolley had gone astray. With this, his second, came the news that Todd senior was dying; that John’s clerk Isaac Heston, who had been left to look after their Walnut Street house, was dead. After agonized days of waiting, word came from John: His father had died; his mother lay dying.

No one knew why one man sickened and died, and another survived. Through the leaden heat of the summer’s end, all had discussed endlessly what caused the disease, and by what means it was transmitted. The formidable Mrs. Drinker recommended Duffy’s Elixir mixed with vinegar, while Dr. Rush prescribed mercury purges, “heroic” bloodletting, and blisters to draw forth the evil humors. Sometimes a man would greet his friends hale and healthy in the morning, and be carried to his grave before the sun was down. Others lingered for weeks, until the black blood flowed out of their mouths and their souls flickered away like candles going out. Sometimes those who worked among the sick took ill themselves, as Dr. Rush had. Others came away unscathed. Still others, who kept themselves to their homes and walked only down the centers of the streets, died in their isolation.

Dolley laid her baby back into his crib, tenderly peeled off the damp rags from his flesh and began again the process of wringing them out in cool water, rewrapping those sticklike arms and legs. Willie’s eyes were glimmering slits, his face grotesque from the flesh he’d lost. “Thou shouldst be back in bed, child,” said her mother softly, and Dolley only shook her head.

“Thou must be weary thyself, Mama.”

“ ’Tis naught I haven’t seen before.”

Dolley glanced across at her, remembering the three little babies between her brother Isaac and sister Lucy, born in those first years after they had returned to Virginia from the woods of North Carolina where Dolley’s earliest memories lay. She couldn’t imagine going through this three times.

My son,
she thought, caressing the baby’s cheek.
John’s son.

She thought she’d known the depth and breadth of John Todd before they had gone before the Congregation to be approved to partner one another. She had known the steady capacity for affection that made up for his lack of humor, had appreciated the gentle tolerance of others that went hand in hand with his own stringent adherence to the principles of their faith. Though she usually had to explain to him why she laughed at jests or at the foibles of their friends, he would always smile and join in her mirth. After her father’s erratic rages, John’s phlegmatic nature had been a welcome relief. And if she’d felt no passion for him, she took great pleasure in his undemanding company.

Yet for weeks before and after their marriage she had been plagued with dreams of being lost in the woods, of having strayed down the wrong path, wandering farther and farther from the place she truly wanted to get to. Waking, she had never felt the smallest doubt about the strength of her husband’s love for her. But the dreams persisted, ceasing only after she found herself with child.

The boundless, exalted delight that radiated from John Todd from the moment he saw his baby son had taken Dolley completely by surprise. John loved Payne to adoration, carrying him about the streets, buying him trinkets and toys with joyful abandon. As if Payne were a new sun whose light showed John the world in unsuspected colors. Where once John would have said,
Thou canst wear only one ribbon at a time,
he began to surprise her with little gifts.
He hath such joy in a rattle or a ball,
John would say, smiling,
that I think, “My Dolley would have such joy, too.”

He had completely refused to join in the guessing-games played by Dolley and her sisters, about whether her second child would be Little William or Little Mary. Instead he would say,
Since the foundations of Time, God hath known who it were best to send to us. Who are we to guess at His intent?

How can I write to him,
Dolley wondered, stroking the hot, wrinkled skin that felt like the most fragile silk,
and tell him that his son is dead?
Closing her eyes, she saw John standing at her bedside in the flickering glow of the candles, with her mother and the midwife smiling in the background as he rocked Willie in his arms for the first time, and wept with joy.

A wild flurry of stomping in the hall. The door slammed open. “Want Mama
now
!” As Payne flung himself at Dolley, grabbing and dragging the skirts of her wrapper as if by main force he could pull her downstairs, Mary’s voice could be heard in the staircase muttering, “Drat the boy—!”

“Mama,
now
!” pleaded Payne, bursting into tears as Molly tried to seize him. “Want Papa! Want Mama! Want Limberjack!” Limberjack was the wooden stick-puppet whose continuing adventures Dolley would illustrate for Payne at bedtime. As Molly tried to pull him away, Payne began to scream, the frantic wailing of one whose secure golden world has shattered into an incomprehensible exile of loved ones too long absent, and explanations that meant nothing except that he was neglected, rejected by those whose idol he had once been.

As Payne, still screaming, grabbed at Dolley’s hands, Willie began to wail, too, the thin feeble protest of inexpressible pain.

“Here,” said Dolley, seeing her mother’s face cloud with anger. “Here, I’ll take him.” Payne clutched at her neck, grabbed handfuls of her hair, wrapped his short chubby legs around her waist as she lifted him despite her mother’s protest. Payne was sobbing something that could have been either
Mama
or
Papa.
He refused to release her, as Mary tried to take him.

“Now, Payne, thy mama shouldn’t be picking thee up, thou’rt grown too big—”

“It’s all right.” Dolley cast a quick look back over her shoulder, at the wet, crimson, sobbing little bundle of Willie now gathered in her mother’s arms. “I’ll be back directly.”

By her mother’s dark glance she could tell Molly didn’t believe the older child would turn his mother loose anytime soon.

But Dolley understood. Payne and John had shared a secret world, from the moment Payne was born, a pact of absolute unquestioning mutual adoration. John had been Payne’s world, as Payne was John’s.

And John was not here.

To a boy twenty months old, four weeks is eternity. As it was, Dolley reflected, to a woman of twenty-five.

John had written that old Mother Amy, who had remained behind to watch over the now-deserted boardinghouse, would come to help him nurse his mother, and did the cooking and washing while John made forays through the stricken city for either money that was owed him by law clients, or food to buy with the little that he had.

As fewer and fewer would take produce into the city, bands of looters raided abandoned houses for the contents of their storerooms. Ships at the wharves, whose crews had died or fled, provided rations of stolen rum. Flour, potatoes, and oatmeal could be bought, but for frightening sums. Dolley heard rumors of families trading silver or clothing for a few pounds of corn.

John’s last message had been a brief note, saying that his mother had died, and that he was going to gather up what money he could and return to them.

That had been ten days ago.

“Limberjack,” whimpered Payne pitifully, tugging on Dolley’s shoulders as she sat with him beside the cold downstairs hearth. So Mary fetched Limberjack from the corner where Payne had flung him in a temper, and Dolley forced cheer back into her voice as she recounted the wooden puppet’s adventures. Fortunately she was widely read: Limberjack had already encountered Cyclopes, battled infuriated Lilliputians, defeated giants cleverly disguised as windmills, and rescued any number of princesses from threats shamelessly gleaned from Greek myth and King Arthur—Payne listened in open-mouthed delight. But every time Dolley would attempt to finish and go back upstairs, he clung to her and wept afresh, and she had not the heart to push him away.

“I’ll see how he’s doing,” Mary would whisper, and scurry upstairs. Thunder boomed heavily in the distance, and instead of bringing coolness the air grew muggy and thick as treacle. Payne followed Dolley upstairs and stood jealous guard in the hallway while she washed her face and dressed. Waited, clinging to her skirt, with ill-concealed tears in his eyes as she visited Willie again, and began at once to weep and fret for his dinner.

“I shall have to go up and lie down again,” said Dolley, as she sat once more with Payne after dinner. Payne, too, was exhausted. Still he clung to her hand, his mouth turning stubbornly down.

“And I shall have to go back to thy brother,” she added, as firmly as she could. “Willie is littler than thee, Payne, and needs his mama more.” Before Willie’s birth, John had carefully explained to Payne that another little soul was standing beside the gates of Heaven, eagerly waiting God’s signal to fly to earth and join their family, to be Payne’s dear brother or sister. Payne had smiled and hugged him, and had seemed to accept. But then, Payne would accept anything, from John.

“Thou’rt all but a man.” She smiled, and patted his golden curls. “ ’Tis for a man to possess himself of patience. Dost not wish to play with thy aunt Anna?”

A tear slid from the huge blue eye. “Mama—”

Shadow winked past the window, gone before Dolley could turn her head. She heard the splat and thud in the muddy gravel outside, as if something had fallen; got to her feet and started to cross to the door. Someone knocked, flat hard sounds as if struck not with the knuckles but with an open hand.

Someone ill.

Some sojourner from the city.

Her stride lengthened on the stone-flagged floor:
He will have a letter from John…

Her visitor was John.

In that first instant Dolley thought,
Why do I think it’s John? That isn’t John’s face—

In that first instant, Dolley wondered if she had slipped into sleep again, and if this was a nightmare, where no one looked like they did in waking life.