America's First Daughter: A Novel(124)

“And your father is the president of the United States. It isn’t the same. I understand, but—”

“No, I don’t think you do understand.”

I don’t think anyone did. Which is why I left William standing in the hall and took the newspaper to my father myself.

My father and I had never had an open discussion about Sally Hemings. It wasn’t our way. But now we’d have to. I tapped only once upon the glass-paned door before unlocking and entering the sanctuary of his cabinet, where Papa sat enthroned upon his whirligig chair, his theodolite aimed at the window behind him like a scepter, a number of books open before him. As president he might be a man of the people, but at home, he was a king in his castle. And, glancing at the newspaper in my hands, he knew exactly why I’d come.

“I intend to say nothing about it, Patsy.”

“But, Papa—”

He pressed his fingers to his temples, as if staving off one of his infamous headaches. “I’ve never allowed myself to be compelled to comment publicly on any private matter.”

Certainly, that was the truth. I’d learned long ago that he would never be compelled to speak about anything he didn’t want to. It was a source of great frustration to me as a girl, but a wonderment now that I was grown. I wished I could follow his example, but I didn’t have the self-discipline. “The Federalists are trying to destroy you with this.”

“They’ve been trying for years. They’ve said I’m a mixed breed, a swindler, a coward. Why, they’ve even said I was dead. This is no different.”

“But this is different. This is—”

True, I thought. Those were lies and this was true.

Oh, the papers were wrong about many of the details. But Sally’s children were living, breathing proof of the scandal. My father’s reputation would suffer amongst those who had no understanding of how it was with our slaves. This had a salacious element to it.

I knew perfectly well how damaging scandals like that could be. William’s affair had tarnished him and limited his career. A marital infidelity had damaged the once-formidable Alexander Hamilton’s reputation beyond repair. And an incestuous liaison had nearly sent my sister-in-law and brother-in-law to the gallows.

But there was more to this than bedroom matters. This was about race. The papers emphasized how my father’s relationship with Sally was long-standing. It was to be read as an insult to whites that my father could prefer Sally when he could have his choice of any white woman. Sally had been branded a slut as common as the pavement to imply my father must have a degraded character to have cared for her or enjoyed her for more than one night.

It was a calamity, and I couldn’t imagine how my father remained so calm. “There must be some reply, Papa.”

“No reply is owed. If I’ve stood for anything, it’s that the essence of liberty is to be found in the sanctity of a man’s home and private life.”

My father always held back some part of himself. He didn’t belong to the people wholly. Maybe he belonged to no one, wholly. Not even my mother or me. But I took his reluctance for a desire not to serve up Sally to a slobbering, condemning, Federalist party. “Deny it. Just deny it all.”

Papa said nothing. He merely stared at me with shock and surprise.

“Papa, you must deny it! If you won’t, then let Tom do it. He can publish a letter in the papers saying—”

“Patsy.” My father said my name with such a quiet agony that it silenced me. “I won’t answer the charges. I won’t deny it. The storm will pass, just as all the others do. I don’t care what people think.”

I did not believe that for one moment. My father was, like all Virginians, extraordinarily sensitive to censure. Neither could I agree that the storm would pass. For my father was still tarnished by the lie that he’d fled the British in cowardly fashion when they invaded our mountaintop, a story that had originated more than twenty years before. He was still pained by that, too.

Trying to protect him, I said, “If you won’t deny it, at least send Sally and her children to live with me at Edgehill.”

“Monticello is her home.”

And that’s all he had to say on the subject. He wouldn’t send Sally away, not even long enough to quiet a scandal that threatened the reputation of his whole family. His presidency was meant to prove that we could live freely in a republic, but he was willing to endanger that, too.

He hadn’t been able to let Sally go in Paris and he wasn’t going to give her up now. He wouldn’t send her away. He wouldn’t speak of her or against her. And I didn’t know whether to count him a stubborn, selfish old fool or to admire him for it.

Here we were, once again, in the little chamber where I once watched him pace, fighting with madness when my mother died. When he believed that every private happiness had been torn from him because of his commitment to the cause. But now he’d found some measure of contentment in a woman who ought to have posed no threat to anyone.

He was right, I decided. This part of him belonged to no one but Sally Hemings.

I had decided this even before he said, “I can bear the contempt of others, but the children. . . .”

My children, he meant. His adoring grandchildren.

“They’ll never know,” I said.

He wouldn’t deny it, but I would. To my dying breath.