Patriot Hearts (37 page)

Only the autumn before that, 1791, on her way from Philadelphia to Braintree, Abigail had been struck with a rheumatic fever, and had lain for nearly six weeks at Nabby’s, head aching, joints burning as if she had been racked, listening to the newest baby crying and her two undisciplined grandsons—Willie and Little Johnnie—shouting at one another, and wishing she could die.

There had been no servants in her daughter’s house and sometimes, almost no food. Colonel Smith was gone most days and sometimes overnight, and Nabby was very shut-mouthed about what the family was living on. The Colonel’s mother occasionally came over or sent one of her giggling, pretty daughters to help with the cooking or look after the children—apparently nobody bothered with cleaning—and acknowledged that “The dibs ain’t in tune just now,” meaning that the family was almost destitute. “But the Colonel, he’s a knowing one,” she added, and tapped the side of her nose with an expression that was supposed to be wise. “My son’s always got some speculation going. You’ll see.”

On that visit Abigail had seen about as much as she wanted to. She shuddered to think of her grandchildren being raised among that tribe.

It was partly the thought of being taken ill on the road again—of finding herself an enforced guest for who knew how many weeks in that household filled with fictions, pipe-dreams, and promises that turned out to be lies—that decided Abigail not to attempt to travel to Philadelphia last winter, nor again this year.

She realized she, too, had changed, from the woman who’d thrown herself like a dove into the wind to cross the ocean, to be with the man she loved.

John was safe, at least now, at least so far. She turned her head on the pillow, imagining from long familiarity, the pugnacious nose, the sensual lips, every wrinkle and line of his cheeks.

It was her children who were becoming lost to her, body and heart.

Through those long weeks of late summer, Abigail dreamed, again and again, of wandering through the silent streets of Philadelphia, looking for Tommy. The streets were always as she knew them: the neat grid so beloved of the city’s Quaker founders and so different from Boston’s twisting alleys. Sometimes in her dreams the streets were empty, the bricks dotted with dead cats, dead rats, dead birds. In other dreams, they were crowded, and she kept meeting people she knew: Ann Bingham, Martha Washington, her father in his black coat and white clerical bands, the pretty Mme. de Lafayette who had been so kind to her in Paris. All of them were dead, with the faint green rime of grave-mold on their faces. When she’d ask them, “Have you seen my son Tommy?” they would only point.

Then she’d wake and lie in the heat, sweating and praying while John slept at her side.

“At least the yellow fever’s dispersed the mobs,” John told her, the morning after his arrival. “Even those who haven’t money to flee avoid human contact, and walk for safety down the center of the street. If Citizen Genêt can get as many as five men to attend a Jacobin club meeting, I shall be very much surprised.”

As Johnny had said, the sailors of the French fleet were widely blamed for bringing in the fever in the first place. To the further chagrin of the troublemaking French Minister, a large number of those same French sailors, when informed of plans to sail out of New York against Canada and Louisiana, mutinied, burned Genêt’s house, got on their ships again, and set sail for France. Abigail hoped uncharitably they’d carry the yellow fever to Paris as a souvenir. Before President Washington left the Germantown house where he was staying, he informed the French Minister that he had sent a request for his recall.

“Whatever instructions Genêt had from his government,” remarked John, as they strolled along the green shade of the orchard rows, “they won’t be happy that he’s made himself this unpopular—if indeed they’re still alive by this time.”

From his pocket he took the folded sheets of the
New York Advertiser.
“A Correspondent” reported from Paris that after six weeks of intermittent riots and uprisings, the Girondist faction had been expelled from the National Convention, Danton had been ousted from his position on the Committee of Public Safety, and a man named Maximilien Robespierre had taken his place. “Genêt is a Girondist,” John told Abigail. “A number of Girondists, including Genêt’s chief, have been arrested. One could almost feel sorry for the man.”

“One could,” retorted Abigail acidly, “were one not paying attention to what damage is happening in
this
country as a result of his activities.”

She turned her face from him, looked out through the pale gray columns of the apple trees, toward the open pastureland and the stream beyond. Across the road the voices of the hired men drifted as they swung their scythes at the curing yellow wheat-stalks; John had promised to join them no later than noon. At breakfast, though clearly still weary from his journey, Abigail had thought he already looked more relaxed, as if anticipating the joy of having a scythe in his hands again, and sweat on his face.

It seemed almost incongruous, to be standing here knee-deep in orchard grass, she in the faded apron she’d put on to work in the dairy and he in his smock and his braided straw hat, discussing the deadly wranglings of the so-called French government.

Yet why not?
It was as it should be, that a farmer and his wife would understand the meaning of these things. That a farmer and his wife would make the decisions that would affect the whole of the country.

That was the world they had seen, beyond the smoke of the War. The world they had striven to found.

“Tom Jefferson’s an intelligent man,” she said, frustrated, as they walked back toward the house, Caesar trotting, arthritic but game, at their heels. “How can he not see what happens, when factions and parties develop? How can he go on saying that this divisiveness is of any benefit to anyone? We won our freedom by acting
together,
John. The Sons of Liberty, and the people of Boston, took their direction from a small group of men who knew all the facts, who had been educated and took time to study the matter. Now all is anarchy, with the newspapers spilling out the most horrible lies! You remember what the press was in France! Printing filth about anyone they didn’t agree with, only to whip on the mobs, as rags like the
Aurora
and the
Examiner
whip them on now.” Her voice shook with anger.

John regarded her for a moment with watchful eyes. Then he put his arms around her, and said gently, “We’ve found our way through this so far, dearest Portia. We’ll make it safe to harbor. Now tell me, if you will, how Cousin Sam looked, and all his family, and what’s been happening in Boston. I take it there’s no sign there yet of the fever?”

So they spoke of other things. But all through the day, as Abigail returned to the kitchen and the dairy, fed her finches (this latest pair she’d named Anthony and Cleopatra) and settled down to the task of sorting through John’s laundry for mending, washing, replacing, her mind kept going back to its anger, as if anger were easier to deal with than her fear for the Republic, and dread for Tommy’s sake.

As the day lengthened into a week, and the week into another, she found it was the same. Whenever there wasn’t anything else to occupy her, the fear would return. And in the wake of dread that her son was dead would come anger at Tom Jefferson, or annoyance at the French and the Irish, who were just as vocal about wanting a war with Britain, for obvious reasons of their own. Boston was filled with both.

Fortunately, it was the busiest time of year on the farm, and there was much to occupy Abigail’s mind and time. The corn was brought in, husked, cribbed; the wheat harvested, winnowed, taken to the mill; apples to be picked, cider pressed. There were work-crews to feed, Peter and his men helping John, or John and his men going down the road to Peter’s, or both going to the neighbors. Peter’s wife Mary, and Abigail’s sister, and old Granny Susie would come, to sew and bake and make cheeses.

These summers were and always had been Abigail’s greatest joy. It was as if God had given them to her, like a certain number of gold pieces, as reward for those weeks of being seasick or terrified or exhausted from feeding all those refugees at the time of the Boston siege.

But always she was listening for the sound of hooves. For a message from Tommy, or, worse, from some stranger
about
Tommy. John walked into town daily to check the post, and the newspapers that he brought back were appalling. A hundred people a day were dying in Philadelphia now. In France, the Committee of Public Safety had seized the reins of government: The Republic, Robespierre explained, was the hope of mankind, and if it disappeared, tyranny would prevail forever. Thus it was necessary to preserve Liberty by temporarily suppressing it. Neither he nor anyone else specified for how long.

Émigrés were flooding into Boston and New York, bearing news of the Terror. Abigail tried in vain to learn whether the friends she’d made in Paris, who had made her welcome in their homes, had gotten out: the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and the lovely Mme. de Lafayette.

Even Thomas Jefferson, she thought in disgust, could not ignore what was happening there now.

Or maybe he could.

Twice, to Abigail’s annoyance, Sam’s clerk, young Mr. Boyne, rode out to the farm, with messages for John that contained nothing about Tommy nor about much of anything else. It was only on the third occasion, when Louisa shyly suggested that Mr. Boyne be asked to remain for dinner, that Abigail began to suspect that the young man was the one inventing correspondence for his employer to send.

When Sam drove out to visit, the Monday that the church bells tolled through Massachusetts for the death of John Hancock, Boyne came with him. Cousin Sam—Hancock’s partner since the days the pair had conspired to turn Boston Harbor into a tea-pot and thirteen separate colonies into a single self-governing nation—followed the funeral wagon on foot as far as he was able. Afterwards he, his clerk, and his son-in-law Tom Wells came to Stonyfield Farm to dine.

John was the first to raise his wineglass and say, “To his Excellency the Governor,” and Abigail saw a tear glisten in Sam’s bright gray eye.

How many of the men who made France’s Revolution, she wondered, watching Johnny step around the table to shake Sam’s hand, would end their lives quietly governing their home territories, surrounded by their families, growing grizzled and chubby in peace? Lafayette had been outlawed and had had to flee his own country; he would be killed if he returned. Had M’sieu Danton been permitted to go home to his wife, if he had a wife, after he’d been ousted from power? Would M’sieu Robespierre live to quiet old age?

Somehow, Abigail didn’t think so. She wondered what made the difference. Sam had, by all accounts, been a troublemaker and an intriguer in Congress, but nobody had hustled him to prison and beheaded him in the public square.

Of course, if Jefferson and his faction take over,
she reflected,
who knows?
Few of the men who’d started the Revolution—Sam, Mr. Hancock, Patrick Henry—had real power in this new nation.

She looked around for Louisa, and seeing her place empty, rose to fetch the corn pudding herself. The pro-French newspapers were already full of talk of making Jefferson the next President, though it was clearly John’s right to take the office after Washington stepped down.
Faction again,
she thought, crossing the yard to the summer kitchen, her long skirt rustling in the deep grass. It infuriated her, not only that John might be deprived of the due he had earned, but to know how much that public humiliation would hurt him.
Faction and interest, and refusing to follow the best interests of the country!

In the kitchen, Louisa and Mr. Boyne stood, the young woman with her head bowed, the clerk clasping both of her hands. Neither heard Abigail’s step on the gravel until too late; Louisa looked around, startled, and stepped back hastily at the sight of her aunt’s icy eye. Abigail said, “Please get the cream and some more butter from the spring house, if you will, dear,” in her most deadly tone, and brushed past Boyne without a glance or a word.

With her usual quiet speed, Louisa hurried down the path to the branch, while Abigail loaded a tray with cake, pudding, and the molasses pitcher. Mr. Boyne took a pace toward her and said, “Mrs. Adams, I can explain,” and she fixed him with a glacial regard.

“Oh, I’m sure you can,” she replied in a friendly voice that could have cut glass. “But you needn’t.”

Color flooded up under the thin Irish skin. He turned and strode from the little building; the sinking summer sunlight flashed like a blackbird’s wing on his hair. He didn’t return across the yard to the house; instead, he disappeared through the gates onto the road.

“You didn’t need to send him away, Aunt Abigail,” Louisa said, standing in the kitchen doorway. There was anger as well as sadness in her voice.

“I didn’t,” Abigail answered serenely. “The young gentleman seems to have a regrettably Irish temper, and a great deal of pride.”

“The same might be said of Uncle John,” Louisa said. For all that she had lived with her aunt as a dependent for five years, Louisa was no subservient poor relation.