America's First Daughter: A Novel(144)

I suppose that’s why I was the first to hear the commotion downstairs.

Coming into the dining room in my bedclothes, I found Bankhead hurling abuses at one of the Hemings boys, my father’s new butler, Burwell. The reason? Poor Burwell refused to serve him more brandy or give him the keys to the wine cellar.

I realize now that Ann must’ve been too afraid to intervene, but at the time, I only wondered where my daughter had got herself to while her husband screamed incoherently.

“Charles!” I hissed. “Everyone’s gone to bed. Surely you don’t mean to drink alone?”

“I do,” Bankhead sneered. Then he picked up a silver candlestick. “And I’ll smash this insolent boy’s skull if he won’t give over the keys.”

Fearful of the certain violence in his voice, I stepped between them. “You’ve had enough to drink, Charles.”

Bankhead brought his reddening face close to mine, then gave me such a shove that I fell against the table, sending a tureen crashing to the floor. Shocked and struggling to right myself, I caught a flash of Burwell’s fierce brown eyes just as his fists clenched, as if he meant to come to my defense.

“Burwell!” I snapped the warning, because a black man attacking a white man in Virginia, even for good cause, would end in utter tragedy. “Go fetch Bacon.”

Edmund Bacon was the overseer on our estate—a burly white man who could help me manage my drunk son-in-law. But Burwell glanced at Bankhead, then back at me, and shook his head, as if unwilling to leave me alone with the drunkard. I had to straighten to my full height. “You do as I say, Burwell. You get on!”

Only when Burwell was gone did I face my son-in-law, who was beyond reason. Charles shoved me again, and this time I knocked over a chair before catching my balance. He still had that candlestick in his hand, and he rounded on me, slamming me into the wall, his hand at my throat, nostrils flaring like a bull. Smelling the liquor on his breath, I stayed very still and breathed very shallowly, my pulse pounding in my ears. He’s going to strangle me, I thought. And that thought seemed to stretch on for an eternity.

Footsteps finally sounded out from behind us, and my son-in-law cried, “Gimme that key, you lazy, good-for-nothing—”

That’s when we saw Tom, his eyes bloodshot with exhaustion, alcohol, and rage. What happened next happened so swiftly, I heard it more than saw it. Tom grabbed up a fire iron and the air parted with the swoosh of its arc. A heavy thunk sounded as metal cracked on a human skull. A crash as Bankhead crumpled to the floor, leaving me gasping as I grasped my throat, standing over the body of our son-in-law as a pool of blood fanned out under my bare feet.

“Dear God!” I cried, horrified by the sight of flesh split from bone. The blow had peeled the skin off one side of my son-in- law’s forehead and face. I dropped to my knees in terror. “You’ve killed him, Tom. You’ve killed him.”

I was wrong about that.

Tom had swung that iron poker hard enough to kill, but it had glanced slightly off to the side, leaving Charles badly injured, but alive. Groaning and sobbing, Charles tried to get to his feet, slipping on his own blood just as Ann stumbled in. Seeing her husband dripping in gore, she let out a blood-curdling scream that drew the servants and even our children from their beds.

Sally scarcely took two steps into the room before she herded everyone away. Meanwhile, my husband was still in an unthinking and murderous fury, so I threw myself into Tom’s arms before he used the poker to finish the job. “You saved me,” I whispered, holding tight to his waist, using my body to force him back from the scene.

But even Tom’s shock as he came more fully awake did not make him relinquish his desire to murder. “You think you can get away from me, Bankhead? Get back here, you dog.”

“Don’t kill my husband,” Ann sobbed, trying to stop his bleeding.

I put my hand round Tom’s to make him drop the fire iron, and he roared, “I want him out of this house!”

Had this been Edgehill, he’d have been well within his rights to be obeyed. Truthfully, I thought he was within his rights anyway. But Ann was hysterical now, with her husband’s blood staining her nightdress and her hands. “This is my grandfather’s house. He’d never send me out with a dying man into the dark. You’ve nearly killed him. You’ve nearly killed my husband!”

Ann didn’t know—hadn’t seen—how it had happened.

And by morning, Charles was so apologetic and ashamed that Ann felt nothing but pity for him. “He tries to stop drinking, Momma. He swears it off. But then he can’t stop. I don’t know why, but he can’t stop.”

At her words, I pulled the shawl tighter around my neck, hiding the red marks that had bloomed there just as my clothing covered the bruises Charles’s rough handling had caused. I’d been careful as I’d dressed to ensure Tom hadn’t seen them, either. If any of the men in my family saw my bruises, the violence would erupt all over again.

Meanwhile, my father suggested Bankhead might be suffering from some sort of illness, that perhaps a doctor could help him. Not knowing the full violence of Charles’s actions, Papa was unfailingly kind to the young man, which infuriated Tom so much, he slammed out of the house and stayed gone for two days.

My son only made matters worse. Jeff had been away on his grandfather’s errands during the altercation—the trust my father increasingly placed in him to conduct matters of business emboldened Jeff and chafed at my husband, who thought our boy wasn’t ready for such responsibility.