America's First Daughter: A Novel(17)
Peace with Great Britain had been achieved.
A provisional treaty had been signed, and when I heard, I tugged on Papa’s sleeve from my place beside him in the carriage. “Then the war is over?”
“Nearly,” was his soft reply.
After so great a struggle, so many harrowing hours and devastating losses, I thought Papa would be overjoyed at our victory. But he received the news with reserve, chagrined to learn that peace was made without need of his negotiations.
I’ve come to believe that he hoped to regain his honor by ending the revolution he’d helped start. In his guilty grief, he counted my mother as a casualty of that war and felt robbed of his chance to ensure her loss was not in vain. But at the time, I thought the cause of Papa’s melancholy was because we wouldn’t be going to Paris after all, and he didn’t want to go home. Indeed, he seemed to think of every possible excuse to delay, even contriving a visit with our Randolph relations at Tuckahoe.
I wondered if, in this, there was an opportunity. The Randolphs were Papa’s people through his mother, and he’d spent his childhood on Tuckahoe Plantation. Some part of me hoped the Randolphs would be able to see behind the cool blue veneer of my father’s gaze to the dark abyss I still saw. No one at Monti cello had the authority or audacity to question Papa, but I knew Colonel Randolph would have no such qualms.
“You’ll be glad to see Colonel Randolph, won’t you, Papa?” I asked as the carriage jostled along on the long, narrow drive to Tuckahoe under a foreboding canopy of trees. The drive was so narrow, in fact, that if we veered even a little, our wheels would get stuck in the mud.
“He’s a good man,” Papa said, which is what he always said about Colonel Randolph, for the two men had been raised together as boys by my grandfather when he was custodian of Tuckahoe.
Yet, even now, I cannot imagine a less likely candidate for my father’s friendship than his childhood companion Colonel Randolph. Where Papa projected a calm, composed demeanor, the colonel was a militant man, marching impatiently along the white-painted fence in front of his riverside home, barking out his welcome to Tuckahoe plantation. Where Papa wore a gray homespun frockcoat with wooden buttons, we found Colonel Randolph clad in formal dress, colorful as a Tory in a crimson coat and matching embroidered waistcoat. And whereas Papa was the author of our independence, Colonel Randolph was decidedly conflicted about the revolution. “This damned war,” he spat, when my father shared the happy news of a treaty. “The inability to ship tobacco overseas has brought my finances into a very low state. Now, I’ll have to pay a fortune on it in customs duties.”
“The price of liberty,” Papa replied with a tight smile.
Colonel Randolph grunted, waving us into the dark-paneled entryway of his abode. “I fear liberty has impoverished us.” It was a boast cloaked in modesty, much like his wooden plantation house itself. At first glance, Tuckahoe looked to be a modest white-painted house with two chimneys, but circling round the drive revealed it was really two houses connected by a central block, like the letter H. The rear of the mansion was dedicated to entertaining guests in high style, complete with salons and a great hall, which gave the lie to the idea that the Randolphs were in any way impoverished.
A veritable army of well-dressed house servants carried our luggage up the ornately carved walnut staircase, while I drifted into the parlor, entranced by mirrors and polished rosewood and mahogany—every piece so splendid I was afraid to touch. The only thing to mar its beauty was the damaged paneling over the fireplace, and as I stared at it curiously, Tom Randolph, the eldest of the Randolph children, happened upon me. “The British came searching for your father during the war. When we wouldn’t give him up, Tarleton ripped our coat of arms from the wall.”
“Your coat of arms?” I asked.
“My ancestors were great lords in England and Scotland,” Tom said, showing me a leather-bound book opened to a page of what looked to be heraldry. “My people were amongst the first families of Virginia. Better than yours.”
Tom was just an overeager puppy then; if I forget the wolf he became, I can still smile at the memory of the fourteen-year-old boy, tall and lanky, with brown hair and eyes so dark they appeared almost black. Given his imperious pronouncement about his lineage, I felt as if he expected me to curtsy. Instead, I said, “We’re kin, Tom. Your people are my people, too.”
“But I’m also part Indian,” he countered, making of his face an amusingly savage scowl. “That’s why I’m an excellent horseman. I’m descended of Pocahontas. Are you?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied, for I was certain Papa would’ve told me if we had any direct relation to the famous native princess. “But we display buffalo robes at Monticello.”
A hint of genuine curiosity shone in Tom’s black eyes. “I’d like to see those . . . though savage items are hardly fit to display in a home where girls and women are about.”
I bristled with indignation, but this was more attention than a boy of Tom’s age had ever paid me, and though I had weightier worries, I didn’t want it to go badly. “Papa doesn’t agree.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t. After all, your father thinks nothing of carrying you to Boston and back again, when you should be in the care of a woman to teach you domestic arts.”