America's First Daughter: A Novel(145)

When Jeff heard about the fight, he said, “Just two drunks having a row, then. I’m sure they’ll patch it up straightaway.”

I didn’t tell him how it had really been. No one knew but me and Tom and, to some extent, Burwell. To tell my proud and devoted son a thing like that would’ve invited a duel. So I only said, “It breaks my heart to hear you speak of your father that way.”

Truthfully, Tom had never been more justified in his rage, but there was no question that if the fire iron had hit Charles Bankhead squarely, he’d be dead. Dead on my father’s floor, at Monticello, where the eyes of the whole country seemed to look for example, especially now.

Because that summer, the United States of America declared war on Great Britain.

If we’d waited a little longer, we would’ve discovered the British had finally cracked under the weight of my father’s embargo. They’d decided against harassing our neutral merchant ships. They’d surrendered to my father’s policies. But as in the Revolutionary War, the British had come to their senses too late.

Now there would be blood.

And both my husband and my son were called to fight.





LIKE MY FATHER, I’d begun to count things for comfort. Twenty-three was the number of years I’d been married to Tom Randolph. Nine was the number of children we had, with another on the way. Forty-four was my husband’s age the day he declared that he must join the army because if he didn’t fight to defend America, he’d be unhappy for the rest of his life.

Tom wanted and expected my father’s blessing and encouragement, but Papa worried that my husband was beset with military fever. “His willingness to sacrifice for his country is admirable, but at his age, with all that depends on him—what can be driving him to it?”

I understood precisely what drove Tom. As my husband, he was doomed to live in the shadow of the country’s greatest living patriot. But a patriot who had never been a soldier. Strip even that away, and Tom was still haunted by the shadow of his father, the colonel. So it didn’t surprise me to see the pleasure Tom took in being commissioned by President Madison as a colonel, and given command of the Twentieth Regiment of the infantry.

Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that Tom still felt the pull of the grave. I’d kept him from dueling Randolph of Roanoke, but deep down, I feared that my husband was still looking for the bullet that would give him an honorable exit. The night he received his commission, he perched at the edge of our bed, holding papers duly signed and sworn.

“Martha, I want you to look at this.” I realized with a glance that it was a last will. Bringing both hands to my mouth, I pleaded with my eyes for him not to show me. But he persisted. “If I should die—”

“Please don’t,” I said, turning toward the wall. I knew Tom could die. Of course I knew. But I was my father’s daughter, so I didn’t wish to speak openly of such things. We didn’t acknowledge them this way. I wasn’t sure I could bear it.

“Martha.” Tom took me by the shoulders and drew me to face him. “If I should die, I intend to give you everything.”

Stunned, I asked, “What of the children?” It wasn’t done that widows were left with unfettered power over their husband’s property. It wasn’t done because a widow’s property would pass into the hands of a new husband the moment she remarried, and women weren’t thought to be capable of managing it.

Tom swallowed. “I recommend you sell Varina to pay off the debts. You should probably give Jeff the better part of Edgehill and divide the rest amongst the younger boys. But I leave it to your judgment, and to your use, as you think fit.”

I was dumbfounded, both by these spoken words, and the heartfelt ones he’d put to paper. “I place my full confidence in the understanding, judgment, honor, and impartial maternal feeling of my beloved wife Martha.”

God as my witness, every offense Tom had ever given melted away to nothing. This man had worked himself to the bone for me. For my father. For our children. This man had nearly killed to defend me. And he had, with what might be his last official act, placed the trust of everything into my hands. My eyes misted at the well of tender love I felt for him—the depths of which I hadn’t felt in some time. “Oh, Tom.”

He sat taller, bracing himself. “I’d only like to know if you think you might, in the event of my death . . .” He shook his head, clearly uncomfortable. “Would you seek another husband?”

I didn’t think. I only felt. Like my father before me, in that most vulnerable moment, when my spouse contemplated his death, I merely took my husband’s hand and vowed, “Only you, Tom. I swear by God that I’ll have no other husband.”

That was all I said on the subject until it came time for him to leave for an assault on a British-held fortress near the Saint Lawrence River. President Madison said we couldn’t forget the glory of our fathers in establishing independence, which must now be maintained by their sons.

The fathers he invoked were mine and John Adams. It was im portant to the cause—perhaps essential—that my husband and my son join the fight.

Jeff readily agreed. “God forbid that I should be last to come forward in defense of my country, for which I shall be proud to sacrifice my life.”

But for every proud smile and farewell kiss and bland pleasantry about how short this war was sure to be, how we’d repelled the British once and could do it again, I nursed unworthy thoughts I dared not give voice to.