CHAPTER 35

MONTICELLO, 1806-1808

"Jamey done 'strolled.' "

"What?"

"He gone. Masta, Jim, Bacon, whole plantation knows where he is but ain't nobody going after him...."

As usual, it was Elizabeth Hemings who had the news of Jamey's flight first. Critta's son was now seventeen, the same bitter, bright, violent seventeen that his namesake, my brother James, had been. I wondered when Jamey had decided to run away. Was it when he had witnessed his father and his uncle fighting over his mother? Or had it been that lonely winter when he had been left on the mountain while his mother had fled to Bermuda Hundred with Maria?

For the first time in his life, Thomas Jefferson had had a slave, James Hubbard, flogged severely in public, not just because he kept running away, which he had done with regularity now since he was twelve, but because he kept running away from him.... Yet he must have known in his heart that this one would never be a slave again. He would die first—die being beaten or die running. I, who had written his pass for him, had accepted that. Why did my master not accept something so simple? There came a time in some men's lives when they were simply no longer slave material. If that meant that they were dead men, well, they were dead men. That's all. The imponderable and excessive rage of masters at fleeing slaves mystified me. It was not just a matter of losing valuable property. They all, including my own, acted so abandoned, ready to kill rather than love again. What was it the slave did to the master's pride, I wondered, for him to be so mortally wounded by flight?

"Thomas, you know that Jamey's gone?"

"Yes. Who told you?"

"Mama, of course."

"There were some Mohicans in the neighborhood, and he stole off with them, or was stolen by them!"

"Ran off with the Indians?" I asked it innocently, but he knew as well as I that it was the route many escaping slaves took: refuge with Indians. If they could reach an Indian nation, it was the safest and surest route to freedom.

"They will probably take him across the Mississippi or to another tribe who will get him to Canada. I doubt if he will stay with them. He is white enough to pass for white, so let him stroll."

There was no rancor in his voice, but the chill of desertion was there. Even for Jamey. Jamey had chosen freedom. My master no longer "loved" him enough to go after him. I breathed a sigh of relief. He would not send the patrols after him. Thomas was now seventeen. When had he realized that the master was his father? And how long did I have before he too would stroll?

I did not have long to ponder Jamey's flight, for hard on his disappearance came an event that underlined the mortal danger we lived in on our mountain: a double murder. It was a murder that struck special terror in the gentry—poisoning, the one killer all Southern whites lived in dread of. More than one Big House cook had been hanged in Albemarle County on suspicion, or conviction, of poisoning her white folks.

It was my mother who brought me the news: George Wythe, Liddy Broadnax, and their son Michael Brown had been poisoned.

"Well, like the Richmond papers say," she announced, "it happened a little more than two weeks ago, that is the poisonings happen then, 'cause Masta Wythe, he just died. The bells in Richmond was a-tolling like the end of the world, but poor Michael, he died more than a week ago after horrible suffering. They cut him open—the doctors—and they found the inflammation in the stomach and the bowels that's caused by yellow arsenic, like Wormley use for the moles and groundhogs."

Michael Wythe Brown, two years younger than my Thomas, was now dead. He had been here for James's Christmas emancipation. I picked up eighteen-month-old Madison. There were now two Madisons. Martha had named her last son Madison to cancel out mine in the affections of his father. White vengeance had many faces.

"And what are they saying in the Richmond kitchens, Mama?"

"Well, Masta Wythe's nephew George Sweney been charged with murder and the white folks is up in arms and having a fit. You know how scared they is of poison with all us cooks.... Ain't nothing caused such a sensation in Richmond since the British. You know old Masta Wythe considered a saint in Virginia. You know how well loved he was, how mild and kind and how he done served on the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence, and served on the High Court and all.... Well, he done wrote a will giving his house to Lyddy Broadnax and his property and half his bank stocks to his son Michael Brown. The rest of his money he left to his nephew George Sweney, with the regulation that if Michael died before Sweney, Sweney would get Michael's part, too. Lyddy says Sweney found out about the will the night before Whitsunday, the twenty-fifth. Masta Sweney came as he sometimes did when Masta Wythe was at court, and went to his room and found his keys of his private desk. He opened the desk, and when Lyddy went in she found him reading a paper that her masta had told her was his will. She done tied it herself with a blue ribbon.

"Well, in the morning, when breakfast was nearly ready, Masta Sweney came into the kitchen. Lyddy said he went to the fire and took the coffee pot to the table while she was toasting the bread. He poured a cupful for himself and then set the pot down. She saw him throw a little white paper in the fire. He then drank the coffee he had poured for hisself and ate the toast with some fresh butter. He told her good-bye and went about his business. She didn't think there was anything wrong then. In a little while, she heard old Masta Wythe's bell. 'Lyddy, did I leave my keys in my desk yesterday, for I found them there last night?' he said to her. And she said, 'I suppose so, Masta, cause I saw Masta George at the desk reading that paper you gave me to put there. Masta George said you had sent him to read it, and to tell you what he thought of it.' Old Masta Wythe said, 'I fear I am getting old, Lyddy, for I am becoming more and more forgetful every day. Take these things away, and give Michael his breakfast, and get your own, Lyddy.' She gave poor little Michael his breakfast and as much coffee as he wanted, and then drank a cup herself. After that, with the hot water in the kettle, she washed the plates, emptied out the coffee grounds, and scrubbed the coffee pot bright. By that time she was so sick with cramps she could hardly see, and Lord, she was poisoned and her son and her master as well. And now they're both dead and Lyddy Broadnax wish she was. Her son—her only son—dead. And they had had such hopes for him. Wasn't no boy in Richmond educated like Michael. Masta Wythe didn't spare nothing for his education. And freed him too, from the beginning, and Lyddy as well. He had the finest books...."

For the first time I saw fear in my mother's eyes.

"Who did she tell all this to, Mama?"

"Well, first to the doctor, Foushee, then to the other doctors who opened up poor Masta Wythe and found the same inflammation as in Michael. Then she had to tell it to the Court of Examination. This was after Michael died. Before then she was suffering something terrible and Michael was suffering worse than either her or Masta Wythe. She was so sick that she didn't even know when her son died. It was the Sunday after the poisoning that Masta Wythe, dying himself, found out his son had just died. He cried out, drew a long breath, and said pathetic-like, 'Poor boy.' Well, it seems that Masta Wythe immediately called for his will to change it, since he knew by then he was murdered. 'I am murdered,' he said, and he struck George Sweney from his will. 'Let me die righteous,' were his last words."

The cords on my mother's neck stood out. Her eyes seemed to be on some horrible object far in the distance coming toward her. Her hair was a silvery white, her skin darkened by age, but hardly wrinkled. Rather it seemed solidified. It was neither flesh nor stone, but a thin, fragile, paperlike substance hardly covering her bone and muscle. Her eyesight was intact and she had all of her teeth.

"But that George Sweney, he'll hang for it, won't he?"

"I think not, Mama. Black people and mulattoes can't testify against white people. Lydia Broadnax can't accuse her son's murderer."

"No! It ain't true!"

"Thomas Jefferson made the law himself. He and George Wythe."

"No! Lord God. Lyddy. Lyddy."

"There's no sense calling on God. He only takes white men's testimony," I said with bitterness.

"Oh, Lord Jesus Sweet Saviour have mercy on us black women," she moaned.

My heart burst. Mama, after seventy-three years of slavery still believed in justice. She rose, her body quivering with age and fury; I looked at her helplessly. I could do nothing for her. Just as I could do nothing for myself. Thomas. Michael. Beverly. Madison. What protection did we have from white vengeance?

"Darling," Elizabeth Hemings whispered suddenly, her face gray with fright, "you think they'se trying to kill us all?"

The deaths of Lydia Broadnax's son and lover destroyed my mother. Her spirit broke. She who had always been envious of Lydia's freedom and privilege and her son's education, she who had made freedom and recognition for herself and her children the supreme goal in her life, now saw that being free did not lead one from the dangers of blackness.

All her life, she had urged me to get freedom for the children; to strive for that magic circle which she thought was safety, only to find that there was no safety for us anywhere. There was only one escape from white will and white justice. And she decided to take it.

"Think I'm going to die now," she said simply one day, and she folded her apron and took to her bed. She refused her food. "They" were trying to poison her and she decided to die before she was murdered.

Martha and I spent the days of the summer watching and listening as she strained toward death, her life running out in rivers of words. And, to the end, she clung to the idea that somebody was trying to poison her. We did everything. We ate her food in front of her. Both of us. Martha. Me. We fed the children out of her refused plate. But she opened her mouth only to speak.

"Put your hand on my chest and push down," she had finally whispered. "My heart won't stop beating."

By the end of August, Mama finally won her battle to die. She was buried in the slave cemetery. I was now all alone and the second legacy of blood and kin fell upon me: not only to love but to survive.

I did not know how my master had taken the death of his well-loved friend and benefactor until he came home for the summer after the murders. He had not written from Washington City of the death of his professor, and it was only upon his arrival that I fathomed his grief and his shock.

I learned that he had been mentioned in Wythe's will. He paced the floor as he told me:

"Such an instance of depravity as has been hitherto known to us only in the fables of poets."

I said nothing. George Wythe had flaunted Michael's intelligence, his education, his beauty, had freed him and, by making him his heir, had advertised his parentage for all to know. Against the most sacred law of the South ... he had gone against the rules and he had paid with what he had loved most: his only son had died before his eyes.

"When I think that we all gathered at the Washington Tavern in the capital in March, less than a year and a half ago to celebrate my second inauguration, and John Page asked George to retire and then proposed a toast to him, praising his wisdom and integrity as a magistrate, his zeal and disinterestedness as a patriot!" My master shook his head. "The hall resounded to nine cheers ... as many as were given to me—" His voice broke. "He had left me his library, his scientific instruments, his silver cups and walking stick—" He paused. "And he had made me a guardian of Michael Brown...."

Oh, God, I thought, not only had the quiet, mild-mannered George Wythe advertised his miscegenation by leaving an inheritance to his yellow son, he had advertised the plight of Thomas Jefferson by placing a yellow boy under his guardianship.

By the time the trial began in September, it was famous throughout Virginia. Edmund Randolph, Martha Randolph's cousin by marriage, defended George Sweney. The outcome was as I had predicted. For the murder of George Wythe, signer of the Declaration of Independence, codifier of the Virginia laws, judge in the High Court of the state, George Sweney was acquitted for lack of evidence, despite forged checks in his uncle's name, despite the arsenic found in his room, despite the eyewitness account of Lydia Broadnax, who was never allowed to testify. If it took only a few minutes for the jury to return a verdict of not guilty of the indictment of murder of George Wythe; the indictment for the murder of Michael Brown was dismissed without a trial. For the forged checks in his uncle's name, George Sweney was convicted and sentenced to six months' imprisonment and one hour's exposure on the pillory in the marketplace in Richmond, but he never served even this sentence.

George Sweney was free. Mama, Wythe, and Michael were dead, still freshly in their graves that September day when I stood posed to mount the staircase to my room. I still remember his voice.

"How painful and melancholy to reflect that a man so pure, so upright, so virtuous, and so beloved should have met an unnatural death."

A flash of disbelief went through me. I turned and almost stumbled. He was lying to himself! He was going to lie to himself even about this! Oh God, when would we stop the lies.

"Unnatural death!" I screamed. "It was murder. Murder! Don't you understand? Oh, Thomas, can't you face your white race this one time?" He looked up. There was actually surprise in his eyes.

Remember Callender! Remember, Goddamn you, Thomas Jefferson! Remember the hate, remember the filth, remember Callender dead in the mud of the James River! This is what you can expect from your white world. Death and hatred and damnation for you, for me, for the children!

"Free us! Free us! Free us, Thomas!"

"I would have to banish you from me ... by law, and I cannot...."

"Oh God, how can you keep me ... us, in such an abomination?" I stood, my back to the staircase as he came toward me. "By loving you," he said quietly. "Why do you do it?"

"Because I love you." Love me and remain a slave.

"And what do you wish me to do about that?" I whispered. "Love me."

"You think love pardons everything."

"Does it not?" he replied gently, reaching for me.

"Have I not loved you since I was a girl of fifteen, Thomas?"

Love me and remain a slave.

"This is the only way I have to love. This is the only way I have to love and protect you. This is the only way I have to keep you safe."

"The only way?" I whispered. "But you are the President of the United States!"

He said not a word. He had turned stone-white. I reached up and brought his face down to mine, searching his eyes for hope. But I found none. There was no safe place for us. He could no more protect me than my mother could! He thought my safety was in slavery. She had thought it was in freedom. Now I knew that both of them were wrong. His country hated me and my race enough to do murder. His friends had sanctioned the killing of the man Thomas Jefferson had loved liked a father. And his son. If they had done this to their own ...

What would they do to me? And my children?

White America meant to destroy me, my lover, and my children. These people meant murder. Lydia had known it. Mama had known it, and now it would be my turn. I was alone. I could expect no help from Thomas Jefferson. He had been warned, and he had chosen to disdain this warning; but I vowed never to forget it. Never. There would be no freedom, no recognition, no emancipation, no flight, only stubborn silence would rule our lives from this day hence. If I had ever hoped that somehow, someday, my lover, who stood before me like a monument, would avow his yellow children, I laid that hope to rest in the graves of Michael Brown and Elizabeth Hemings. As for me, I could no longer afford his grief, his misery, his plea for forgiveness. Their deaths had unearthed the long forgotten specter of emancipation and his abnegation had sealed it.

I would not be destroyed, I would survive. I would survive Marly, mother and master.

He began to cry in rage and I took him in my arms. So he too had thought we had a safe place.

That winter, he unleashed the Embargo of 1807 upon the country after the frigate Chesapeake was attacked by the British.

"Now they have touched a cord which vibrates in every heart," he said. "Now is the time to settle the old and the new."

The embargo lasted two years and ruined Virginia.

Once more he stubbornly proposed to a stubborn Congress the prohibition of the African slave trade. He welcomed home with joy Meriwether Lewis, returned safely from his expedition in Louisiana. And he tried Aaron Burr for treason.

The bitterness and resentment I felt against my lover, against my fate, I turned against Aaron Burr. When there were so many white men to hate, why did I choose Aaron Burr? Was it because of that one frank stare of lewdness that day in Philadelphia? Was it because he was the first man, black or white, who with one look of contempt had insinuated that my whoredom was of my own asking?

I hated him. I badgered my master for news as he sought affidavits against Aaron Burr from New Orleans to Maine, from Indiana to New Jersey. I wrote to him constantly, always stressing the danger of assassination from this man, of the duel with Hamilton, of his hatred, of his threat to my master's power. And he wrote meticulous letters home describing his progress in gathering evidence. He commanded me to burn the letters. But these letters, like all the others, I vowed to keep until my dying day.

Aaron Burr was brought to Richmond for his trial, which had the air of a country fair. People swarmed into the city. Balls and dinners were given in his honor. He strode the streets with his daughter Theodosia on his arm, the immaculate dandy. Besides himself, his defense lawyers were Edmund Randolph and George Wickham, the defenders of George Sweney. The trial opened with a hundred government witnesses, and my master's arch enemy John Marshall presiding. I followed the trial passionately, but like the trial of George Sweney, the outcome had been predetermined by Chief Justice John Marshall. The jury returned a verdict of "not guilty because, not proven guilty."

The great treason trial was over. And by the end of that trial, in January 1808, the African slave trade was abolished. I was again with child. My seventh. The next May I gave birth to a son, whom I called Eston, my only child born in the presence of his father, who celebrated his birth as if he were white.