CHAPTER 39

SUMMER 1812

Thomas Jefferson was happy. He had deeply missed the pleasures of Monticello. He had missed his slave wife. How many times when he had been away from her had he imagined his hands riding over that beautiful body, seizing it as if it were handfuls of his own buff clay Monticello earth; the fragile woman's landscape of her turning, twisting, rising, and falling under his hands; the long black hair winding like a tributary of his own Ravina River; the golden eyes which turned dark amber in heat, shining upon him like his own Virginia sun, steady and enervating. Those eyes, this mountain, his friends, his neighbors. They were the only places he really felt safe. The mansion, his mansion, was finally finished. His burden of state, his presidency, was over. Only his university remained to be built now, and his family to care for: slave and white. He thought of Anne, soon to be married, and dismissed Sally's son Thomas, who had deserted him. He turned and beckoned to Beverly. Often, for the last year or so, he had seen Beverly waiting, as he was now, saddled up, hoping to be invited. And sometimes, when he really didn't feel like being alone, he would take Beverly along with him. Isaac, who held his horse, looked up at him and then over to Beverly, who sped to join his father.

As young as he was—thirteen and a half—Beverly was a splendid horseman, thought Thomas Jefferson. He rode almost as well as Burwell, and certainly better than anyone near his age at Monticello. Sometimes, when they raced, he would rein in Brimmer and let Beverly win. Sometimes. Beverly had grown so much in the past year, the boy's height would equal his own.

The two bright heads met in the light, Beverly's hair brighter and blonder than the fading, graying mane of his father. The two bodies were cast from the same mold with their heavy, awkward necks and wrists, their huge hands, and their long legs. Beverly flushed with pleasure and adoration as they rode off silently together. He had taken to riding the fields, asking questions, demanding—yes, demanding— instructions, begging to be taught, calculating, planning, counting, pleading for more knowledge. His father had been surprised at the astuteness of his questions, his quick mind, his grasp of trade, banking, interest, exports, tariffs, yields, crop rotation, loans ... everything seemed to fascinate him.

His mother had begged that he be allowed to go to school with the Randolph boys in Charlottesville, if only as a body servant. She had not succeeded in this, but he had finally agreed that Beverly could be tutored secretly after classes by the instructor there, Mr. Oglesby. He was proud of Mr. Oglesby's reports on Beverly's progress. Beverly was the only boy he allowed the freedom of his library. Even his grandson Jefferson had to ask first. What power there was in teaching, he thought. His dream now was a university in Charlottesville and he was determined to build it.

Yes, thought Thomas Jefferson, his slave wife would forgive him in time for Martha. He had had no choice, and he had wanted his daughter with him. Peace. He was home. He had returned to the scenes of his birth and early life, to the society of those with whom he was raised and who had always been dear to him. The long absences, the pomp, the turmoil, the bustle, the splendor of office had drawn but deeper sighs for this place; he longed for private life, friends, and family. He had laid down his burden of power and hoped only that he had obtained for himself the approbation of his country. He mused.

He reined in his bay and waited for Beverly.

Thomas Jefferson's knees and thighs increased the pressure on his mount as Beverly reached him. Then, as they moved together, he cast a sidelong glance at his slave son. The clear, handsome profile was a replica of his own, even to his color. Love. God knows, he loved the boy's mother. Cherished her. He was bonded to her. She owned him just as surely as he owned her, the only difference being that her possession of him was a gift while his was a theft.

He was stirred as always by the thought of her fragility ... her smallness, her smooth round skull he could cup in one great hand, the voice, that lovely voice.... He never ceased to be amazed at her beauty that seemed to deepen year by year. She was more beautiful now than at twenty, he thought. As for his own age, he wore it lightly, despite his attacks of rheumatism, his constantly aching right wrist, his bouts of dysentery. His wife had been dead for twenty-nine years, and this woman, whose image was before him in her plain blue gown, he had loved faithfully, with a mixture of guilt and passion, for more than twenty-three years.

Beverly, he thought, would soon be a man. He stared at his second son. A wave of love and bad conscience overwhelmed him.

"And how are your studies coming with Mr. Oglesby?"

"Fine, Master, sir."

"He's treating you well?"

"Oh, yes! He's very kind, Master. He's ... wonderful to me, Master, sir."

Thomas Jefferson felt a pang of jealousy. It was the Charlottesville schoolmaster Beverly adored, not he. This Scottish schoolmaster was opening the door of the world to him, leading him, not he....

"Come to my study this afternoon, Beverly. I have some books for you."

"Thank you, Master, sir. Shall I come before my classes?"

"Yes. You can show them to Master Oglesby."

He took a deep breath but the pain remained. Why didn't this son, whom he had never called son, and who had never called him father, love him?

Martha Jefferson Randolph was four weeks into her twelfth pregnancy. Twenty years of childbearing, and her eldest about to marry. She sat at the downstairs window of the salon and watched her father ride away with Beverly Hemings.

She wondered where Jeff was. Of course he was in school, she remembered. How stupid. Jefferson was eighteen now, a gentle boy, but not a Jefferson. Simply a Virginia gentleman without any special talent. Soon he would carry on his fragile shoulders the responsibility of the whole estate. Not only his father's affairs, which were in a dreadful state, but his grandfather's as well. Martha shuddered. How would he hold up under such a burden? If only Thomas Mann ... But Thomas Mann was lost to her, to everyone. He had turned on his family. His delusions of persecution had cast her out. He accused her and the whole family of the most detestable crimes. Yet, he slept in her bed every night, got her with child every year, and made her life hell. She only hoped that Anne would do better. She didn't trust the handsome, rich, wellborn Bankhead. She prayed that Anne would never live to regret her choice.

Why did she feel so old? She smoothed back a strand of hair, already turning gray, into the indifferent coiffure of the morning. She was only months older than Sally. Yet Sally's face was unlined, and her body seemed as fresh as it had been in her eighteenth year. Her own body felt used and abused, and she knew she had a slovenly air about her. Even her father had said so in so many polite words. Since then she had made a special effort to appear not only neat but with some style, especially at dinner.

Martha felt a burst of loneliness. She tried to conjure up the image of her mother, dead now for twenty-nine years. The unclear face of her mother flickered briefly before her. After Martha Jefferson's death, her father had gone on a rampage of destruction. There remained no vestige of her portraits, letters, journals, accounts, diaries ... everything went. He had never forgiven her for dying and leaving him. But she, Martha, had forgiven her. She strained to remember the face of this woman before the time when, sick and wasted, she had bound her father to a vow which had kept him wifeless and her motherless.

Then, Martha Randolph realized, she did look into the face of her dead mother every day. When she looked into the face of her slave, her aunt Sally Hemings. She had realized it even in Paris, although she didn't know how long it had been evident to her. There were differences, but there were the same eyes, the same small stature—so different from her own—the same dreamy look, the same steely submission that masked the same taste for luxury and powerful men, except that her slave had more of a taste for politics than her mother had ever had. And if this is what she saw when she looked at Sally Hemings, what might her father see? She would give all of Monticello to be as adored as that. Or would she?

Martha Randolph shifted the weight of her awkward body. She picked up her sewing. Two things Sally Hemings, for all her resemblance to her mother, could never be: she was not white and she was not free. She, Martha, was mistress of Monticello now, and she would rule here, she vowed, until the day she died. Her father could have his pleasure. She would have Monticello, and her children after her, and her children's children. Monticello would descend upon her children unto the third and fourth generations, she thought proudly.

Sally Hemings held her straw hat in one hand and shaded her eyes with the other. She watched Beverly Hemings ride down the mountain with his father. The small head glistened in the slanting sun, the smooth brow furrowed with the effort of following father and son as far as she could see. Sally Hemings was in the summer of her life. There was a voluptuous richness about her. The yellow eyes had darkened to gold with a glint of steel, and the ivory skin to a delicate amber. The soft, pointed chin and dimpled mouth had the set now, not only of authority but of confidence. Her children were all born. Each birth had been difficult, but she had always recovered quickly. She had inherited the robust constitution of her mother and the vicious will of her father, so that pain had never stopped her from anything.

Thomas Jefferson was sixty-nine years old. Their passion, she knew, would diminish. She would not regret it. He had been an amazingly virile and passionate man, and their life together had been rich and full. But the body tired. The body simply refused. She would never take another lover. She had been one man's only. His. And if they were now like father and daughter, their contours, she thought, would always blend into that entity which was the human couple.

The summers seemed to pass more quickly. Europe was at war. Her beloved France was at war. The United States and its territories were at war with England. James Madison had been re-elected. Her master had reconciled with John, but not Abigail Adams. And now there was a fourth generation of Hemingses on the mountain. Little Sally Hemings and Maria Hemings, as well as her Harriet, had been sent to the weaver's cottage to learn to spin this summer.

She looked out over the land. They plowed in terraces now, following the contours of the hilly land instead of the straight rows up and down which had allowed the precious soil to run down into the river. Black hands plowed horizontally, following the curvatures of the hills and hollows on dead level; each furrow acting as a reservoir to receive and retain the rainfall. At least, thought Sally Hemings, in point of beauty, nothing could exceed that of these lines and rows winding and unwinding along the landscape. She stood contemplating it all for one more moment, and then, with that quickness of motion her lover had always remarked, she swung around, the heavy iron ring of keys at her waist jangling like a tambourine, and entered the mansion.