Arc D'X (2 page)

Thomas resolved after still another summer to leave grief behind and not know it anymore. He made plans to sail with his oldest daughter Patsy for France, booking passage on a ship and reserving all its berths so that they'd sail alone. He decided to take with him Sally's brother James as his personal valet and servant. On the afternoon of departure all the slaves of the household as well as the fieldhands followed the carriage—driven by James and carrying Thomas and Patsy—down the road waving goodbye. Sally's STEVE E R I C K S O N • 13

mother was the last to linger, watching the road until long after the carriage was out of sight.

Thomas' ship took six weeks crossing the Atlantic, docking at Le Havre almost two years to the day after the death of Thomas' wife.

From Le Havre, Thomas and Patsy and James traveled to the French village of Rouen. There they stayed in an inn overlooking the town square. In the middle of the night Thomas woke to a dreadful smell that turned his stomach. Thinking he was going to be sick, he jumped from his bed and stumbled to the window, throwing open the shutters; what filled his lungs wasn't fresh air but the very thing that had awakened him. The night was full of it.

He recognized it as the smoke of the burning black female slave that had risen from the next county thirty-six years earlier; slamming shut the window he backed away from it as though an apparition would appear any moment. Thomas wasn't remotely a superstitious man, so he didn't easily accept the prospect of apparitions. He was, on the other hand, habitually tormented about his slaves, whose ownership he could barely bring himself to accept but whose freedom he could not bring himself to give. He returned to bed and, his face buried in his pillow, to sleep. The next day he was reminded by one of the villagers that, three and a half centuries before, the girlwarrior Jeanne from Arc had been tried and burned at the stake in the square below Thomas' hotel window.

On the road out of Rouen, from his carriage view, he almost believed he could see streaks of ash in the morning rain.

They arrived in Paris a week later, after dark. Their carriage entered the city from the west, through a gateway in the outer wall, and then spiraled its way into the heart of the city along the inner concentric walls. The streets reeked of cognac and sex. Merchants and rabble-rousers, soldiers and whores jostled each other; women opened their dresses and breasts to the passing coach while insurrectionists, ankle deep in open sewers, exploded with streams of incomprehensible diatribe. Down every avenue tunnels wound off into an ominous darkness that was broken only by the flash of light from a door thrown open, in the momentary glare of which could be seen people engaged in acts so unfamiliar it was impossible to grasp just what they were. Patsy shrank from the onslaught. Her father gazed deliriously. The city seemed to Thomas the size of a country. The carriage continued descending n«i thev reached the

A R C D'X • 14

from one ring of walls to the next; by the time they reached the rue d'X and the Hotel Langeac that would be their home over the years to come, Patsy cried for Virginia. Thomas, on the other hand, felt liberated by the way the city had already violated him.

Paris was electrified by the news of Thomas' arrival. Clergy and aristocracy greeted his appearance with alarm, while French radicals and American expatriates made pilgrimages to the Hotel Langeac where they might discuss philosophy and revolution with him.

Thomas spurned the invitations of the French elite who wanted to take his measure and instead passed his time in bohemian circles.

His liaisons with women were limited to bubbly libertines and deeply discontented wives who wouldn't threaten the vow he'd made to his own in her last hour. His most serious affair was with Maria, the wife of an English pornographer who abused her, often leaving her alone in Paris for weeks before snatching her back to London.

The winter after he'd come to Paris, Thomas received the news that Lucy, the last child born to his wife, had died of the whooping cough at the age of two. Not able to trust anyone else to keep at bay the grief he'd resolved never to know, he arranged for the passage to France of his other daughter, Polly. He sent word to his sister in Virginia that Polly was to come as soon as possible, in the care of whatever female slave seemed suitable.

By the time she was fourteen they called her Dashing Sally. She was tall with wide hips and round breasts; her smile was sweet and hushed, her voice watery and melancholy. She had brown eyes with flashes of green, and skin that was too white to be quite black and too black to be quite white. The dark hair that fell down her back she tied with a long blue strip she'd torn from the curtains that hung in the mistress' bedchamber that fatal summer, after they'd been taken down and discarded. Some said that Sally was already the most beautiful woman in Virginia. As is true with any such beauty, it was lit from within by her obliviousness of STEVE E R 1 C K S O N ' 15

it. It stopped men where they stood and pushed to the edge of violence the friction between husbands and wives. But her sexual-ity was still a secret, to no one more than herself.

Every several weeks the master's sister would visit the plantation to see that everything was in order. With her she'd bring the master's remaining daughter, who had been living with her since Thomas went to France. Polly liked these visits because she could play with the slave children; in particular she looked forward to seeing Sally, whose skirt she had clutched on the day of her mother's death. Polly trusted Sally and felt secure with her, and was not displeased that she could sometimes order Sally and the other black children around. When Thomas sent for Polly it was assumed she would be accompanied on the voyage by either Sally's mother or one of the other women of the household. Polly, extremely willful at the age of eight, had only dim memories of her father and sister; she had long since stopped missing them and had no interest in leaving Virginia. In protest she threw terrible tantrums.

When it was evident that nothing short of physical abduction was going to get Polly to France, a plot was hatched. All talk of the trip was dropped, time passed, and one day Thomas' sister and Sally's mother took Polly and Sally to look at the big ship docked in the Norfolk harbor. With the permission of the ship's captain, the two girls were allowed to come onto the boat and play. For several hours Polly ran along the keel of the vessel from bow to stern, laughing and shouting until she collapsed on a bunk in one of the cabins and fell asleep. When she woke it was dark and the room was moving. She sat up and started to cry; Sally was on the bunk next to her. "Where are we?" asked Polly.

"We're on the boat," Sally answered.

"I want to go home," the little girl said. She looked around her.

"It's dark."

"I know. It's night."

"I want to go home."

"Well, we're going to see your father and your sister," Sally finally brought herself to say.

"I don't want to go to France!" Polly cried. She jumped up from the bunk and ran to the door of the cabin, flinging it open as the night sea sprayed her face. She looked up at the mast of the ship A R C D'X • 16

swaying in the dark above her. Sally tried to pull her from the door but Polly pushed her away. "You tricked me," she screamed at the older one.

"Yes," Sally admitted.

"I order you to make the ship go back. You have to. You're a slave and I'm a Virginian."

Sally walked across the dark cabin to close the door. By the bed she lit a lantern. "This isn't Virginia," she said, "this is the ocean."

She sat back down on the bed. "I'm sorry we tricked you. It wasn't how they wanted to do it. They never wanted to send you away at all, it's what your father wants. I didn't want to go either." Sally folded her hands in her lap and looked off into the corner, thinking of her brother James. "My mother's not too happy about it."

Polly didn't care in the least about Sally's mother. "You tricked me," she repeated bitterly.

"I know," Sally said.

As the ship crossed the Atlantic, however, Polly reconciled herself to the adventure. They sailed not to France but England, where Thomas was supposed to meet Polly in London and take her on to Paris himself. Sally, it was understood, would immediately return to America. But at the rue d'X it had become apparent to Thomas, over the course of the month, that a rare opportunity to see his lover Maria was about to present itself. When Polly and Sally got to London, Polly's father wasn't there to greet them. This left the little girl even more nonplussed; so, as well, were the American couple in London whom Thomas had alerted to take Polly in. After a few days, just as Sally was about to embark back to Virginia, word came from Thomas that he wouldn't be traveling to London at all and the American couple were to send Polly along to Paris in the company of whoever had come with her to England. On general principles Polly threw the most spectacular fit of her eight-year life, though she was secretly pleased that Sally would be staying.

The American woman, Abigail, was appalled. "It won't do," she said to her husband John one night, "that girl's got to go back home on the next ship."

John pretended to misunderstand. "She hasn't seen her father in over two years," he answered. "He should have come to London to meet her though. Inexcusable."

"I'm not talking about Polly," Abigail said impatiently, "I'm talk-STEVE E R I C K S O IS • 17

ing about the other one." She didn't look at her husband. "She's rather useless. Why they sent her instead of an older woman—"

"I think they explained that," John cut her off. John cut off people all the time, but he never cut off Abigail; they both realized it at once. "It was the only way they could lure Polly onto the boat.

She was the only one who could have gotten Polly across the ocean at all. Give her that, at least." He shrugged. "She's not an unpleasant girl."

"What do you mean," said Abigail.

"I mean she's not an unpleasant girl."

"Don't be disingenuous with me."

"What the hell—"

"You know what he's been like since his wife died," she said quietly. "All those stories about his carryings-on in Paris—"

"Political enemies—"

"Yes, I know," she said, "and I don't doubt his enemies make it all much worse than it is. Listen, I think the world of him. I believe I'm closer to him than you are at this point. I've always thought there was something of the saint about Thomas—"

"Well," John began to protest, "I don't—"

"Yes, well, you two have had your differences lately. That's politics, and I defer to you on politics. But I'm talking now about Thomas' passions."

"Do you suppose Thomas has passions?"

She was astounded. "Do you suppose he doesn't?"

"I've never thought of him as a passionate man."

Abigail stood in the doorway of the study looking down the hall, past the stairs, to the back quarters where the slavegirl named Sally slept. She folded her arms. "Thomas is the most passionate man I know," she said into the dark of the hallway. When John didn't answer, Abigail said, "She shouldn't go to Paris." She wanted to ask her husband if he thought Sally was beautiful, but it was a foolish question. The answer was obvious, and whether he told her the truth or a lie it was bound to hurt.

"She's only a girl," John finally said after an uncomfortable in-terval.

"She shouldn't go to Paris."

A R C D'X • 18

They did not know her. The city did not know Sally on the drizzling autumn day the coach delivered her, along with Polly to the rue d'X; the street did not know her when Patsy dashed from the Hotel Langeac into the rain and mud to sweep her baffled little sister up in her arms. "But who are you?" Patsy finally turned to ask Sally amidst the family reunion, as the slavegirl lingered before the fire in the hotel's front room; and Sally answered, "It's me, miss." They had spent many afternoons playing together in Virginia. "Father," Patsy said, looking at Sally from head to foot in consternation, "it's Betty Hemings' little girl!" On the stairs Thomas stood with an elegant young Englishwoman and a black man who Sally realized, after some moments, was her brother; they all regarded her with troubled curiosity. "But why did they send someone so young with Polly?" Patsy asked, though in fact Patsy was only a year older than Sally, and it was Sally who looked like a woman. "Isn't it odd?"

"She tricked me," Polly exclaimed petulantly. It was the first thing she'd said.

"Yes, I'm afraid so," Sally said. James stood at her side, studying his hands nervously. "Miss Polly wasn't at all keen on making the passage. They decided I was the only one who could get her onto the ship."

"It was a shrewd maneuver then," said Thomas.

"It was a bloody trick!" the eight-year-old cried.

"Don't say that word," Thomas admonished, "obviously you spent too much time in England." He disappeared up the stairs with his daughters. James followed in silence with the bags. Sally stood shivering in the foyer as the other woman remained on the stairs watching her. "I'm sure," the woman finally said, "it would be all right with Mr. Jefferson if you wish to warm yourself for a moment by the fire. Then your brother will show you your quarters." The woman left and Sally was completely alone for what seemed a long time. She realized it was longer than she'd ever been alone. No one else was in the hotel foyer; the only sound was STEVE E R I C K S O N • 19

the crackling of the fire and some footsteps upstairs, and the flow and ebb of the din from the streets. She could hear the voices of passersby outside speaking words she didn't understand. This isn't Virginia, this is the ocean, she'd said to Polly on the boat. She looked at the door of the hotel and had a thought she'd never had before; she so terrified herself by it that she immediately left the fire and went upstairs, where she found her quarters across the hall from James'.

It was a tiny room but it was her own. There was a wooden bed with posts; at night she'd take the long blue ribbon from her raven hair and tie it to the post above her head. She'd shake her hair loose and let it cover her bare shoulders. High above the bed was a small window in the shape of a crescent moon, and through it came the light of torches in the middle of the night and the angry tumult of growing mobs.