Sally Heming (11 page)

It was a nasty day, with sudden bursts of occasional
sunlight. It seemed the right climate for the drama of the trial.

He too had been compelled to this place for reasons he only
dimly perceived. He knew they had something to do with Sally Hemings. He was
here to find out something about her, but also about himself; about Virginia,
about slaves and insurrection and murder. People from all over the Tidewater
region were calling Turner's rebellion an aberration, yet all Langdon's
instincts told him this was not so. This event was logical and inevitable.
There was no mayhem here. Here was systemized homicide as the perfect and
indelible equation to slavery.

There had been talk of slave armies, thousands of men
marching on Jerusalem, killing and raping and burning by the hundreds. The
governor of Virginia had even begun to muster an army to meet the insurgents,
and there had been talk of the federal army marching from Fort Lauredale in
Maryland. Panic had seized the capital, yet Turner had been captured less than
fourteen miles from where he had started his crusade.

The race from Washington City to arrive in time for Nat
Turner's condemnation—one couldn't call it a trial, since he had confessed
beforehand—had also been a sudden decision. Sally Hemings' words had echoed in
his head like the rhythm of his horse galloping toward Jerusalem: "You
haven't understood anything! You haven't understood anything!" He smelled
the restless, straining crowd, the odor of death like singed hair, the
overexcited bodies swaying in some kind of primitive dance of retribution....

Turner was mad! Of course he was. Being an atheist, Langdon
had only contempt for religious fanatics. It was Will Francis, Turner's
aide-de-camp, who fascinated him, for here was pure, unadulterated logic,
unclouded by biblical hysterics. My God! What was he thinking? How could he be
rationalizing insurrection? What had become of him? His eyes narrowed against
the brief glare of the sun, but soon the ray disappeared behind the clouds.

But Francis, ah, Francis ... Francis had killed more than
twenty-five of the fifty-five people murdered.

Langdon was sweating under his greatcoat as he burrowed his
way toward the red brick courthouse. He now had no hope of reaching the courtroom
or getting inside, although he had used what little influence he had to get a
seat.

He had to see Nat Turner and Will Francis with his own
eyes. His very life depended on it. If Nat Turner existed, then all he had been
taught to believe was false.

Nat Turner, the nullifier of his life! Nathan's personal
bewilderment seemed to flow into the larger drama.

Nathan Langdon had thought of Nat Turner as gigantic and
black. But the man who was dragged into sight was of medium size, not more than
five feet eight, slender, and a light-brown color. This visionary had made a
full confession of his crimes. Crimes committed in the name of justice. God
knows how many innocents in Virginia would pay, thought Nathan. He had to urge
the Hemingses to leave Virginia with their mother. She was no longer safe here.

Nathan passed so close to Sally Hemings that day he could
have touched her cloak. Not in his wildest speculations would he have imagined,
however, that the delicate recluse would be in this heaving, bloodthirsty mob.
He had been promised that this could never happen, and that was what he had
intended to tell his sons. Now he wouldn't be able. He stared intently at the
dark figure being dragged through the crowd. Women and men were spitting,
screaming, and cursing— especially the women. The man seemed but a sack of
flesh; all spirit had fled him.

Later, Nathan learned that Nat Turner's body had been
skinned; grease made of the fat, and souvenir money pouches made of the skin.

Eston Hemings knew his mother was in a near-hysterical
state by now, and looked around wildly to find a way out of the crowd. They
were jammed tight into this solid block of humanity. There was no escape. His
mother was screaming that Turner was accusing her of something, but that she
was not guilty. He could not make out what it was she was saying over the din
of people. He bit his lip in exasperation. He was terrified. His bowels were
gripped with spasms as if he were about to be seized and herded with the
insurgents.

He knew in his heart he was as guilty as Turner. They were
all guilty. Every slave or ex-slave had as much murder in his heart. His terror
broke loose and spread out over the crowd, mixing with the miasma of stagnant
hate that rose from the packed bodies. Nausea overcame him. His mother—he must
get her away from here. He must get himself away. Not only away from here, but
out of Virginia, out of the slave states. Madison was right. As long as there
were slaves, there would be murder, and as long as there was murder,
retaliation could fall on anything and anyone who was exposed. That included
all Hemingses.

Eston turned his back on the courthouse and Nat Turner,
placing himself in front of his mother to protect her. He put both his arms
around her and leaned back using all the muscles at his command to secure a
little breathing space around her head. Her pale face was transfixed; small
beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead; she drew her cloak around her.
Her mouth was slightly open, and her eyes glinted.

Eston understood now why she had made the long and
dangerous journey to Jerusalem. Her obsession with Turner's rebellion, his
trial, his execution—all that made sense to him. With the same intensity that
had made her refuse to see Nathan Langdon, she had devoured every scrap of information
she could obtain about Nat Turner. If Nathan Langdon had given a meaning to his
mother's life, then Nat Turner had taken it away. He doubted if Langdon would
even recognize her now. He had seen his mother change from a young woman to an
old one, the amber eyes turn a dull brown, the jet-black hair streak with gray,
almost overnight, the slender body dehydrate and fold like parchment. The glow
of continual fever gave her an iridescent glow like that of a religious
fanatic. But to what or to whom?

She sat for hours now staring into space. She would either
talk to herself or fall silent for days. Sally Hemings had agreed to leave
Monticello. But Eston worried that she would not survive the hardship of the
journey West. He saw life running out of this proud, passionate, and secret
woman.

Eston continued to fight to give his mother breathing
space, but she seemed transplanted to another space, another time.

"O God," she whispered, "now forgive me for
ever loving him." And Eston wondered which man she meant.

CHAPTER 9

ABOARD THE
GREENHELM,
JUNE
1787

I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous
creature, and that power whether vested in many or few is ever grasping, and
like the grave cries give, give.

abigail adams

I never hoped for mercy ... for more than fifty years I
have lived in an enemy country.

john adams

I
believed
myself to be happy. As a child I
was
happy. I was brought up around the Big House at Monticello, and I loved
those around me: my mother and uncles, Martha, Maria, Master Jefferson. Like
all slaves, I was told nothing of my origins, which little by little I pieced
together. Once, when I was eight or nine, my brother James and Martha went off
to play and left me behind. I don't remember the reason, only that I felt
abandoned and was crying.

Master Jefferson came upon me and tried to comfort me. He
said being sad was a waste of time and the best thing to do when you were sad
was to write down everything you saw about yourself, even the tiniest detail,
and then to think about them one by one. By the time you had got halfway
through the list, he said, you wouldn't remember the origin of your misery
anymore. He left then and returned with a smooth pine board and some charcoal.
He sat beside me and we made a list of all the plants, flowers, trees, and
vegetables we could see in the kitchen garden and beyond; all the fish we could
imagine in the little river by the northwest boundary; all the animals we could
imagine living in the pines of the southwest boundary. It was my earliest recollection
of him, and, that moment knowing neither past nor future, I felt only an
immense calm and safety in his presence that rested on my shoulders like a warm
cloak.

When Martha and James came back and found us together,
Martha flew into a rage of jealousy, took off her boot, and started to hit me
with it. The heel of Martha's boot came down above my temple and raked the skin
and broke it. More blood than was warranted by the wound streamed down my
cheek. It mingled with my tears of confusion and grief.

Out of desolation, I ground my teeth to keep from crying
and brought my petticoat up to my ear to stem the flow of blood. But he was
there before me. He held my head and pressed his handkerchief to the wound.
Then he picked up Martha in his arms to keep her from hitting me again.

I remember her bright head meeting level with his great
height in a blaze of red. He had flung her over his shoulder, but his eyes met
mine in an attempt to console me, too. I despised Martha for being jealous of
those few minutes I had had, when she had him as a father forever.... That day
made me a list-maker. And a diary-keeper. I would continue all my life.

The
Greenhelm,
June
17, 1787

It was June seventeenth. I remember that day we were five
weeks out of Norfolk, and we were, as Captain Ramsay would have said,
"becalmed." There was not a sniff of wind; all the great square sails
were furled and bound. The sun was hot on my head, and even now, if I close my
eyes, I can still see the reflection of the sun on that smooth sea, like the
field of white clover that runs down the back toward the river boundary of
Monticello. I had found a wonderful hiding place, and intended to keep it for
myself. It was high up on the forward mast, well, not so high up, but it was
quite a dangerous climb. There was a little niche where I could watch what was
going on below without anyone seeing me. I used to go up there and take off my
bonnet. I can still hear little Polly screaming not to take her bonnet off, for
if she got freckles in the sun, her father had written, he wouldn't love her
anymore. Well, I would take my bonnet off and let my hair down and feel it curl
round my waist. At home I was made to wear it tied up. My charge, Maria
Jefferson, known as Polly, had done nothing but cry and cuff me for the past
ten days. We, that is, her cousin Jack Eppes, Mistress Eppes, and myself, had
lured her on the ship by deceiving her, and she still wasn't over it. She
hadn't wanted to leave her Aunt Eppes to go to her father. Now she found
herself on a strange ship with me, on her way to a foreign country to see a
father she didn't remember, who said he wouldn't love her if she got freckles!
From the time she had awakened, hours out of the port, she never stopped
screaming about being shanghaied. I was just fourteen and Polly was nine. On
the ship she had been left with me, who was as scared as she, and who felt just
as abandoned. We were on our way to Paris, France, and her father, Thomas
Jefferson, the minister to that kingdom. But by then, the worst was over. She
had liked the captain, Mr. Ramsay, who had taken charge of her. She clung to
him.

We were the only females on the ship and were made much of
by the five other male passengers and the captain. For me, it was the beginning
of my real history. From the moment I stepped onto that ship as nurse for
Polly, everything that had happened to me before seemed to recede and grow
smaller, until nothing remained except the sweep of the sea and the vastness of
the sky and those unexpected days of peace and freedom.

I was still quite childish at fourteen, although I looked
older than my age. My childhood days at Monticello—the little school, run for
the white children and the house servants, taught by Mrs. Carr; old Cook's
underground kitchens with all their intrigues and noise and heat—faded away in
the bright sea-sun. I missed my mother. I thought for a while she was going to
take Polly to Paris herself, but finally my mother had decided on me. It had
been a queer choice.

It was Mammy Isabel who was supposed to have gone with
Polly. When Mistress Eppes arrived to fetch her to Norfolk, it became known
that Mammy Isabel was well gone with her eighth child and wasn't fit to travel.
Mistress Eppes, who was altogether distracted anyway about losing Polly and
sending her so far away against her will, was beside herself. First, because
Polly really didn't want to go; and second, because there was no one to take
her.