America's First Daughter: A Novel(131)

MY SISTER’S CHILDBIRTH was no knock of an elbow.

As the bloody child tore itself out of her, Polly’s screams drowned out the howling winter wind. Though I was scarcely recovered of giving birth myself, I held my sister’s hand, mopped sweat from her brow, and coaxed her to breathe when she was too tired to do even that. When the childbed fever ravished her, she had no milk for the child either, so I took my sister’s newborn to my breast with my own. Two precious baby girls. Mine dark-haired, dark-eyed, and plump as a piglet. My sister’s pale, ghostly, and fragile as a flower. I cradled them both in my arms until I was so tired and sore and weary I could no longer feel my arms at all.

But still I held the baby girls. Because it was the only thing I could do for my sister, who tossed and turned in pain that radiated from her empty womb, while she whispered, “Jack . . . where’s Jack?”

I suppose he must’ve set out from Washington City as soon as he got my letter, but it wasn’t until almost the end of February that Jack Eppes walked his half-frozen horse up the road. My son ran out to take the reins, and Jack took giant strides into the house. “Is she—”

“She’s asking for you,” I said, and watched him dash to her, leaving puddles of muddy snow on the wooden stairs in his wake. My sister loved him, and his kisses on her forehead brightened her mood. She seemed happier still to see him take his newborn daughter from my arms and cradle her in his own.

And I began to hope.

At least, until the morning she rasped, “Patsy, take me home.” Perhaps she meant Eppington. I couldn’t be sure. But a journey that far would certainly kill her. Monticello was closer. The air was healthier there. And we could dose her with my father’s sherry. Yes, I decided. Now that the spring thaw had come, we’d take her home to Monticello.

She couldn’t sit a horse, nor could I risk her in a bouncing carriage. So we put her down upon a litter, and slaves carried her the entire four-mile journey. Jack and I followed on foot with all the children, splashing across a muddy stream, and scrambling up a thorny and overgrown mountain path with a fierce determination to make my sister well.

Dear God, I prayed. Make her well.

But I’d prayed this prayer before and reneged upon my bargain with God, and I feared retribution was now at hand.

“Make your sisters keep up,” I said to my eldest.

“Momma, they won’t do as I say unless I holler,” Ann said. “And you told me a lady should never holler.”

Maria whispered from the stretcher upon which she was being carried. “Your momma never has to holler to get anyone to do her bidding. She just fixes you with that sensible gaze, speaks in dulcet tones, and you’re simply overcome by the superiority of her rank.”

I was so unbearably relieved to hear my sister in good humor that I didn’t take umbrage. And more relieved to see Sally come running out into the dreary spring weather to greet our ragtag band of refugees. I’d sent word ahead, so she’d made up a bed for my sister on the main floor, complete with budding spring flowers in a vase on the side table. Wearing an old housedress with her dark hair braided straight down the back, Sally took the children from my arms, then helped me wash my sister of the sweat and grime of our journey before tucking her into bed.

“You’re giving us a terrible fright,” Sally scolded my sister.

“Papa,” my sister said, softly. “Is he . . .”

“He’s riding from Washington City right now,” Sally said. “So we can have a happy reunion.”

“Is Papa coming?” my sister asked, as if she hadn’t heard.

Sally and I did everything for her, in silent conspiracy that no one else should. When my father finally arrived, Maria wanted to be dressed and upright. For twelve days, every morning she woke up and declared that she was on the mend. But on the twelfth night, her fever burned so hot and her pain was so great that she couldn’t speak without her lips trembling on every word.

That’s when she pleaded with Sally and me to dose her with double the laudanum. I knew then that she was dying, well and truly. So did Sally, who looked to me, those hard amber eyes finally softening with anguish. It was Sally who had seen my sister safely across an ocean. Sally who was, in some ways, a sister to her, too.

But I was the one who held the bottle of laudanum.

“Please,” my sister begged, writhing in pain. And when I gave it to her, she sighed softly at my brimming tears. “Courage, Patsy. We mustn’t cry. We must be of good cheer. Our papa is burdened with such sorrows that we must never burden him with our own.”

Those words broke my heart.

Snapped it in two.

For they were my words, spoken after my mother’s death, when we were both still little girls. Words I hadn’t thought she remembered. Heavy words that I had pressed on her delicate shoulders and made her carry all her life.

And they were also the last words I ever heard my sister say.





SALLY AND I WERE BOTH WITH MY SISTER in the early morning, when the nightmare scene of my mother’s death played itself out again. The frail and delicate beauty, pale and gasping upon her pillow. The grieving husband, weeping against her hand. Hemings servants gathered round. And me—in my Aunt Elizabeth’s place—holding my sister’s newborn daughter at the precise moment she was made an orphan in my arms.