America's First Daughter: A Novel(149)

At some point during the surprisingly stiff and chilly conversation, I urged Jane and her mother to call upon us at Monticello, and Mrs. Nicholas asked, “Why ever would we do that?”

Sure that I’d heard her wrong, I only sipped at my tea. But Ann flushed to the tips of her ears.

The rude mistress of the plantation eyed me squarely and said, “My people were merchants. Merchants know that wealth is money. But planters prize land, no matter how useless. And I pray that none of my daughters will bury themselves in Virginia, married to boys who have nothing but an old name and a patch of dirt.”

Jane cried, “Momma!”

Refusing to reveal my own shock, I patted the girl’s hand. “Don’t be upset, dear. Your mother is only speaking her mind, as we’re free to do in the glorious nation my father helped to build.”

Mortified, Jane rose, dragging her mother from the room. “Please excuse us. We must find some biscuits to go with our tea.”

Ann fanned herself furiously against the stifling heat of the fire. “Why, I never.”

From the entryway beyond, where Mrs. Nicholas argued with her daughter, I heard her call me a very vulgar-looking woman. I seethed when I heard her say Ann was a poor stick. And I burned to hear her ask, “Don’t you find it strange that Jeff Randolph, who owns nothing but a small tract of land and five Negroes, thinks he’s ready for a wife? Of all the pretty girls who pant after him, you think he’d choose you?”

Having heard quite enough, I said, “Come along, Ann.” We didn’t wait for Jeff. While Jane and her mother argued, my daughter and I simply climbed into the carriage and rode off.

All the while, Ann kept saying, “I never! They think they’re too good for us. They think Jeff’s after her money!”

“If a girl may be judged by her mother, Jeff is better off without her.”

We were still carrying on this way when we reached the top of my father’s mountain, and someone wrenched open the carriage door. Ann shrieked in surprise to see that it was her husband, drunker than usual. And though the air was chilly, his face ran with sweat as he hauled her out. “Where were you?” Charles demanded.

Wide-eyed, Ann stammered, “We—we went to meet Jeff’s girl. I told you—”

“Are you going to lie to me?” He threw her to the cold, hard ground. “Go on, lie to me.”

“Charles!” I cried, scrambling out of the carriage. But I wasn’t fast enough to stop him. He kicked her. He kicked my delicate daughter in the ribs, and when she tried to rise up, he kicked her in the face, sending a spray of blood from her mouth. “You lying little bitch.”

People would say he had a right to do it. He had a right by law. But I was her mother, and there were other laws than the ones made by men. Seeing my baby girl’s bloody mouth, I reached for the coachman’s horsewhip and lashed at Charles. The whip caught him on the side of the face, where he was still scarred from the blow my husband had given him with a fire iron.

And Bankhead seemed so shocked to see that this time I was the one to lay open a stripe of blood on his cheek that he stood like a stunned ox.

“Run, Ann!” I cried, ducking a swing of his arm. I wasn’t afraid for myself; it wasn’t me he wanted to hurt. So I grabbed hold of him, making myself a dead weight. I might be a vulgar-looking woman, but I was sturdy, and my rampaging son-in-law couldn’t easily throw me off. We grappled while Ann staggered to her feet, and while Burwell and Beverly Hemings went running to fetch the overseer.

“You leave her alone, Charles,” I said, gripping his shirt tight. “You’re mad with drink.”

“You may rule your husband,” Charles snarled. “But Ann’s my wife and I’m going to beat her until she remembers it.” With that, he tore himself from my grip, leaving a patch of his shirt in my hand, then took off after Ann at a run.

Monticello was in an uproar, servants shouting, Bankhead kicking everything and everyone in his way. Chickens went squawking. Dogs yelped and growled. And after a few moments, Sally rushed out of the house to help me up from the ground, whispering, “Charles passed her by. She’s hiding in a potato hole.”

The thought of my daughter, my first baby, hiding in the dirt from her husband made me wish that I’d let Tom kill him. As she helped me to my feet, Sally’s long-ago words about the importance of the man a woman winds up with had never rung more true—because Ann was trapped with a cruel drunkard, and there wasn’t a thing that we could do.

Sally was my father’s mistress, not the mistress of the plantation, and yet it felt right to have her at my side. The drunken brute’s shouts echoed from the house, and Sally and I took the stairs two at a time in the vain hope of getting to him before he got to my father.

Meanwhile, Jeff’s horse came galloping up the road, in a cloud of dust. “What the devil is going on?”

We didn’t stop to answer but burst into the house where the madman screamed, “Show yourself, Ann.”

Jeff was on our heels, gripping his horsewhip. One look at his frothing, bloodied brother-in-law, and no one had to tell him what had happened. And my son went white to the tip of his nose.

“Did you do something to my sister, you rabid dog?” Jeff asked, advancing on Bankhead. “Someone ought to put you down. I think that someone is gonna be me.”