America's First Daughter: A Novel (58 page)

And I . . . I did nothing.

Numb with grief, overwhelmed by loss, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. “Take some fresh air,” one of my children said; I don’t know which one. I was blind and deaf to everything. I couldn’t feel my limbs. All I felt was the slow calcification inside me, spreading so that I couldn’t move. Someone grasped me at the elbows to prompt me outside onto the terrace; someone else called for the doctor to tend me. And it was there, on the terrace, in the most acute distress, that I heard the pounding of horse hooves.

Papa,
I thought. Was he riding hard upon Caractacus, as he loved to do in his youth? Then the vision swam before my eyes, not of my father, but of my husband. Tom in his youth. A young and handsome horseman, riding up the road toward our house.

I blinked and the vision came clear. It
was
Tom. No longer young or beautiful, but still riding like a demon. Where he’d gotten the horse, I didn’t know. Nevertheless my husband swung down from the saddle of a frothing, pawing animal. “Is he dead?”

At my elbow, the doctor nodded. “Mr. Jefferson expired a quarter after noon.”

To hear it said again, I nearly stumbled. Behind me, the children must’ve gathered, because I heard little George blubber while Septimia choked out tiny, delicate sobs. “Grandpapa is gone.”

“You poor children,” Tom said, a light in his eyes strangely fueled by the sight of our misery. “Look how grieved you are to lose him . . . but not your mother. Her eyes are dry as always. Can’t you shed a tear, Martha? Not even for your father?”

The physician stiffened at my side. “Colonel Randolph!”

Colonel Randolph?
He was entitled to be called that, of course, but I could only think of his father. That’s who Tom had become. A miserable old rotter like the one who begat him.

Tom advanced upon me in a scatter of flies. “Don’t you think it’s unnatural for such a devoted daughter to lose her father without even a tear? And Thomas Jefferson, no less. A great man that the whole of the country will mourn, but not his own daughter.”

The doctor barked again, “Colonel Randolph!”

All that escaped me was a tiny keening sound. And my hus band’s face twisted in feigned concern. “Don’t you see, doctor? She can’t cry. My wife must be suffering from a morbid condition. Won’t you prescribe some medicine to cure her?”

The outraged physician said, “The medicine she needs is
quiet,
sir.”

The admonishment did nothing to dissuade Tom. In fact, a maniacal grin broke over his face. “
Quiet
? Oh, yes, by all means, give her quiet. All the country will be firing cannons, tolling bells, and wailing in grief, but Martha will quietly go on. She’ll quietly persevere. She has ice water for blood—”

“
Enough
, Tom,” I finally said, all the emptiness my father had left filling up with a terrible rage. That my husband had descended into madness was without question. But I was sure to follow him there if I let this go on today, of all days.

“You don’t tell me what’s enough.” Then he began working the muscles of his face, spasming and contracting them, as if to manufacture the sudden tears that swept down his cheeks. “I know you won’t mourn me when I’m dead, but I thought you might be able to muster a tear for the only man you really loved.” Tom sobbed, howling as if to mock me. “And I loved him. He was my father, too, and I loved him.”

“You hated him,” Jeff snarled, having come out of the house with a bang of the door to encounter this scene. “You hated my grandfather in life and you neglected him in death. You’re only here to harangue my mother like some scavenging beast over the corpse. You’re more ferocious than a wolf and more fell than a hyena!”

Jeff put himself between his father and me. The other boys drove my husband off, but I knew he’d be back again for the funeral. It was open to the public, so we couldn’t keep him away. I knew there’d be talk, whether because my lunatic husband was absent or because he was there. There was nothing for it. And I was scarcely sensible enough to care. My world was shattered. The loss I felt unfathomable. And it wasn’t just my own loss, for my father belonged to the people, perhaps now more than ever.

The bells had tolled for my father’s death, and the townspeople closed the city. Donning black armbands, they formed a processional up the mountain that was delayed by the rain. While we waited for people to arrive on the dismal and dreary day, Sally and I stood on either side of the open grave, Papa’s coffin between us, held up on planks.

Huddling with her enslaved family against the rain, Sally wore a plain black dress with the locket my father had given her long ago, her eyes trained not on the coffin but on me. She must’ve known her fate now rested in my hands, but there was nothing servile in her expression. Only an expectation of justice.

She seemed to believe herself a free woman and didn’t lower her eyes in deference. Not even for Tom when he appeared to taunt us. “Here are his two widows . . . and neither of them shedding a tear.”

In that moment, I wished Tom straight to hell and believe Sally did the same.

“Let’s start,” Jeff finally said, fearing my husband wanted witnesses to cause a scene. He wasn’t wrong. Tom quarreled with him that we ought to delay on account of the rain, then held himself over Papa’s coffin, wailing in affected grief while I looked on like a statue in the driving rain.

“You’ve got a heart of stone,” Tom shouted at me.

But his words didn’t pierce me. He was right. Until that moment, I believed my heart was flesh and blood like any other. But my heart
had
turned to stone.

The sky itself might cry, but I wouldn’t. My tears, when they came—if they came—wouldn’t be for Tom. All my life I’d held back my tears. For my father’s sanity, for his reputation, and now for his legacy. However much I wished for release, for a moment to feel the loss, no one would ever see me fall to pieces. No one would ever see that.

Certainly not Tom Randolph.

So I endured his taunts.

I endured the shoveling of dirt over my father’s grave.

And I endured the silence that followed.

Our
silence. Our special silence.

Others would suffer, truly suffer, for what my father hadn’t said in his lifetime. But I’d always divined his wishes in that silence, and could hear his words echoing in it even now. And those words were:

Take care of me when I’m dead.

Monticello, Unknown Date

From Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph

Farewell my dear, my loved daughter, Adieu!

The last pang of life is in parting from you!

Two Seraphs await me, long shrouded in death:

I will bear them your love on my last parting breath.

T
HIS IS HIS LAST LETTER.

I read it often, wondering sometimes if he left one like it for Sally. If there are letters, tokens, evidence . . . well, she has good reason to keep them quiet.

Along with the linens, the artwork, the furniture, and the rest of the slaves at Monticello, she’s been priced for auction. Her value has been set at fifty dollars. But she won’t be sold with everything else.

On the night we buried my father, we faced one another in Papa’s chambers and she gave me the keys she’d claimed as her own for decades. She surrendered to me her dominion over my father’s private sanctuary . . . and her place in his life.

She hadn’t bargained for her freedom in France, only for the freedom of her children.

But she
will
have her freedom. I’ll see to that. I’ll let her walk off this mountain like Harriet and Beverly did. She’ll be given her time.

And her silence is the price.

I make Jeff swear upon God and country and his honor as a Virginia gentleman and upon his grandfather’s honor, too, that Sally will not be sold. He doesn’t ask me why; my son knows better than to ask. I wouldn’t tell him the truth, anyway. If it comes to it, I will lie about Sally to my deathbed.

But in exchange for Jeff’s vow, he demands that I make one of my own. I must agree not to witness the rest of the slaves being auctioned off at Monticello.

I feel as if I should be there. As if I must witness the final destruction of everything. As if I need to see every tear as my father’s people are ripped away from their mountain, from the only home they’ve ever known. I ought to hear their sobbing as the auctioneer calls out their worth. . . .

But Jeff says, “It’s making you sick.”

“I am sick now, but shall be well again.” Because I have to be. My work—my father’s work—remains undone. And as with Ann’s death, I must hold myself together until I’ve finished doing for my father the very last thing that I can do for him in this world.

Jeff puts a hand on my shoulder. “Spare yourself the bitter anguish of seeing his abode rendered desolate, the walls dismantled, and his bedroom violated by the auctioneer. And take the children before my father snatches them from you.”

Perhaps he fears that in my grief, I’ll become as unhinged as his father. Whereas what I fear is his father. I am uniquely vulnerable to Tom as I never was before in our marriage. I am his wife, and he has dominion over me, without having to answer to Thomas Jefferson. His conduct at the funeral is proof enough of his intentions. He will come for me now, either to claim me or tear the children away.

The law would say I must submit to him. The scriptures command it. But I do not wait to lower my head meekly and do what is expected of me. Not after all I’ve seen and lived through. No. I do not stay to see the slave auction and wait for the whirlwind of Tom’s wrath to come down on my head.

Instead, I pack up the children swiftly, and take them to Boston.

There are no slaves in Boston.

“There’s more housewifery to do because the servants are unreliable,” Ellen complains, showing me about her luxurious new home on Beacon Hill. “They’re lazy because they know they can leave any time for better wages or any reason at all. Why, I’ve gone through three cooks in the past six months. But I cannot wish to ever return to a slave state.”

“You should
never
.” I catch myself by surprise with my vehemence. “Land and Negroes in Virginia are to nine persons out of ten certain ruin and a vexation of the spirit that wearies one of life itself.”

And I
am
weary of life. I’ve really suffered so much that I cannot comprehend the possibility of better days. Consumed by despair, every morning is a struggle to get out of bed. I do it for the people yet depending on me, while I depend upon Ellen.

She does everything in her power to cheer me. She shows me the city, which has grown enormously since I was here with my father as a little girl. Everywhere I look now is perfect luxury and wealth. The stately homes, though all squeezed together, are unimaginably well furnished. In Ellen’s house, I wash my feet each morning in a plain basin that cost at least thirty dollars, and the water’s deep enough I might take a swim. The dining table glitters with cut glass and silver. And surrounded by such wealth, I’m consumed with guilt for the discomfort in which I left the rest of my family at Monticello.

We celebrate Christmas with trips to the theater and visits. Ellen arranges a party in an oval drawing room with paintings, silk damask curtains, and carved mahogany chairs. We dine on oysters and lobsters and other bounties of the sea. There’s ice cream and every variety of cake in silver baskets. And people keep asking how it is that my father, remembered for his responsible management of the nation’s finances, could have died in penury and embarrassment.

And I always reply, “His public virtue was the cause, if you should call that an embarrassment. I never shall be ashamed of an honorable poverty. It’s the price we’ve paid for a long and useful life devoted to the service of this country.”

Ellen owlishly watches my every move, so I smile for her sake. Until my father’s debts are extinguished, I have no income but the monies earned by my servants, who have all hired themselves out in Virginia. Their wages won’t be enough. Until a sale of my father’s papers can be arranged, I’m now, like Nancy Randolph once was, utterly at the mercy of my relations and their goodwill. So I don’t dare object when Ellen’s husband enrolls Septimia and George in school. The children behave well enough there; it’s only when they return home that they give themselves over to
the Randolph,
bickering like children who have no reason to know how precarious our circumstances are.

My older children know.

When it becomes clear that the lottery will be canceled, Cornelia writes bitterly, “It’s over, then. After sixty years of devoted services, his children are left in beggary by the country to whom he had bequeathed them.”

Ellen impresses upon me that I have no choice but to stay in Boston. “Live with us. You and the children together. My husband rented a place for you in Cambridge so as not to crowd this house. We’ll send for Mary and Cornelia and see them married off well.”

It’s a generous offer, but it makes me uneasy to be a burden to Ellen’s husband, who is already worrying about overcrowding the house. Ellen mistakes my hesitation, holding tight to my hand: “I know it pains you to leave Virginia, but I fear there are no ties which should bind any descendants of Thomas Jefferson to the state any longer.”

She’s echoing the sentiments of my sister’s son Francis. Polly’s precious boy wrote with bitterness over our plight, arguing that the liberality and generosity and patriotism of the Old Dominion has vanished under the influence of
Yankee
notions and practices.

But I don’t blame the Yankees.

The lottery, grudgingly approved, was the only thing Virginia offered my father in his waning days. But the northern states raised money. Donations came from New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia . . . where William still lives.

William sent money—tried to, anyway. But these and all donations Papa refused, out of pride or fear that it’d undermine the lottery.

I burned William’s letter of condolence, filled as it was with tender sentiments and an unwise insistence that I visit him. I don’t trust myself to see him. I’m so unmoored of everything but grief, I don’t trust myself or my virtue. And my virtue must be pristine. For my father’s reputation—and what is imputed to it by mine—is an asset I use shamelessly.

In the outpouring of national grief over my father’s death, I see that Tom is given a public employment. Hopefully an income will restore my husband to his right mind.

More importantly, it will keep him away.

Milton, 6 August 1827

From Thomas Mann Randolph to Septimia Randolph

I have loved your mother, and only her, with all my faculties for thirty-five years next December. I wish to spend some happy years yet, in the decline of life, with her.

I am always reading letters now. My father’s to me. Mine to him. His to everyone else. Letters from his friends. Condolences. Tributes. Poems. And now I’m reading another letter, having nothing to do with my father at all.

A letter from Tom expressing his wishes to reconcile.

I linger over the part where he writes he has loved me and
only
me
. On its surface, a tender sentiment. But I know it’s also an accusation. I loved Tom, but not only Tom. Not ever. And I feel no regret for that. Especially because Tom’s declaration is to guard himself against divorce.

My son-in-law Mr. Coolidge explains, “I’m sorry to inform you that even in Boston the only grounds for divorce are consanguinity, bigamy, impotence, and adultery. None of which apply, I assume.” I flush, shamed to even be discussing it, but he continues, “On the other hand, you may obtain a legal separation for cruelty or desertion.”

Tom has certainly been cruel. And I’d argue that he deserted me—that he always deserted me—in times of need. But it’s equally true that I’ve deserted him. I fled to Boston in the darkest hours of my grief, and now, there must be an accounting for it. “Tom will want to see his children and I can’t keep them from him forever.”

He would take them from me forever, if I tried.

Ellen’s husband replies in his cool, flat Boston accent. “You can keep the children from Mr. Randolph for a few years at least. Then they’ll be too old for him to force to his will. Unless there are grounds for legal separation, there must simply be a separation of miles. Even if Mr. Randolph comes for the children, I can see to it that they’re hidden away at some distance where he can’t get them into his hands.”

There seems something immoral about this scheme. As well as impractical. I married the man and gave him children. The law puts me completely in his power even though he’s destitute.

As if sensing my hesitation, my son-in-law says, gruffly, “You needn’t fear him. From what I hear, Mr. Randolph is holed up miserably in a little house with much liquor and without a second blanket for his bed. Nicholas Trist will keep him from Monticello, and I’ll keep him from here.”

Far from alleviating my fears, this strikes me as profoundly unjust. Tom barred from Monticello, as unwelcome there as he was at Tuckahoe? Monticello is, until we can find a buyer for it, my home. And if it’s mine, it must also be my husband’s. That was always my father’s intention. It was our vow to Tom, implicit and explicit.

“I cannot countenance abandoning Mr. Randolph to poverty,” I finally say.

“Then he’ll take your money,” is my son-in-law’s harsh reply.

In honor of Papa, the states of Louisiana and South Carolina have voted me $20,000 in bank stocks for my upkeep—not enough to save Monticello, but perhaps enough to support those who depend upon me. It’s a generosity I hadn’t solicited but which makes me the target of opponents who think me unworthy, as my father wasn’t a soldier and I wasn’t his widow.

I suppose they believe I’ve done nothing, and meant nothing, to this country.

It’s a sentiment that has made me redouble my efforts to edit my father’s papers. And it’s made me think hard upon my own character. “So long as property is vested in me, and Tom is destitute, I must make some effort for his support.”

“Surely you aren’t thinking of returning to live as his wife,” my son-in-law replies. “He can make no mischief for you or the children in Boston, but I can’t keep that animal away from you in Virginia.”

Ellen winces, carefully turning her head so her husband doesn’t see how calling her father an
animal
causes her distress. Whether it’s for love or shame, I cannot say.

I suppose I must now be beyond both love and shame. What matters now are my children, my grandchildren, and my slaves.

There’s an option that my son-in-law hasn’t considered.

One I learned from my father.

Negotiation.

And I’m my own best ambassador.

So in the spring of 1828, I return to Virginia and step into the now dilapidated white house in Milton to find my husband drunk and unkempt in the middle of the day. “Patsy?” Tom asks, squinting at my appearance in the doorway, as if I were a hallucination.

I want to be angry. I want to remember that this is the man who destroyed himself with resentments. The man who struck me and beat my children. The man who tormented me at my father’s funeral. But when he tries to get up from a threadbare chair and his knees nearly buckle under him, I’m nearly undone with sorrow to see the ruin of him.

I’m shocked by the sight of him, so pale and haggard. Truly shocked. He’s so emaciated I cannot think he’s had a meal in weeks. Why hasn’t anyone told me how very ill he is?