America's First Daughter: A Novel(174)
“I know,” I said, without looking up from the flock of birds pecking in the dirt. “I wish Mr. Short could’ve stayed longer, but his early departure leaves us with another bed for Lafayette’s entourage.”
“Your husband is gone,” Sally said, sharply. “Master Randolph packed up his things from the north pavilion and took his leave, asking me to deliver you this message.”
Sending the chickens scurrying with a swish of her skirt, Sally pressed into my hand a letter, and in her eyes I saw a shade of disapproval. She’d been witness to Tom’s rage at the washhouse. No doubt, she’d overheard his accusations.
Perhaps she even believed them.
I didn’t think it was an accident that he’d chosen Sally to deliver his note.
Though numerous men sought her charms—even my cousins the Carr brothers, a thing I always hinted at when any stranger raised the subject of the scandal—Sally never allowed my father to fear that she shared her body, or her heart, with any other man. Not for a moment. Not even when she burned with grief at losing Beverly and Harriet. And if there was a haughtiness in her, it was in that.
I suddenly understood why my father’s enduring attraction ran much deeper than her beauty. Though she was a servant and a concubine, Sally had nearly perfect self-command. She’d borne a lifetime of slavery without allowing anyone to know her beyond what she was willing to be known. She seldom let pass an un guarded word, she kept a near iron rein over her passions—a virtue my father prized and admired more than any other.
It was my strength, too, but in this, Sally believed she’d finally bested me. I could read it in those amber eyes when she said, “I fear it’ll embarrass your father to have to explain why Master Randolph has absented himself for the ceremonies in honor of Lafayette.”
What she feared was that it was Tom’s intention to cause embarrassment and that I’d allowed matters to come to this dreadful crossroads with a lapse in virtue, or at least in judgment. I didn’t defend myself, but broke open the seal and read my husband’s note.
I don’t recall the exact words of Tom’s note now. I burned it straightaway, for it was both obscene and demented, promising vengeance upon me for my betrayals. And it hardened me against Tom, because I’d just sent away the man I loved and admired to honor vows to the husband I no longer respected.
So instead of feeling compassion for a husband in the grip of madness, I felt only relief that Tom was gone. And fear that he’d return.
In the soft golden veil of that Indian summer, my poor father was nearly eight-two years old, and though he never celebrated his birthday—only the birthday of the country—there was no denying anymore the slow and steady degeneration of his body. Thankfully his mind and spirits remained intact, but it pained me to think anything in connection to me might disturb the latter.
“Don’t fret,” Jeff said, chewing uncouthly upon a stalk he’d plucked from the edge of the lawn while the groundskeepers scurried to clip every stray sprig from a bush. “Lafayette will have an escort of a hundred and twenty armed and mounted men. Not even my father is foolish enough to attempt violence with them present.”
The number of this horde astonished me. “A hundred and twenty men?”
Jeff nodded. “At least two hundred more on the east lawn. There isn’t a gentleman in Virginia who doesn’t want to witness this reunion.”
When that glorious and golden November day came, the first thing we saw were the banners of the horsemen in red, white, and blue. A bugler blew his horn in small mimicry of the grand French ceremonies to announce the arrival of the prancing smoky white horses and Lafayette’s elegant calash.
All this delighted my young sons, who were arrayed in their finest clothes, standing next to their sisters, whom I’d dressed in white robes for the occasion.
Until the bugle blew, I’d allowed myself to feel nothing but anxiety that everything should go well. But seeing the cavalry with their pikes and the train of carriages roll to a stop at the edge of the lawn, I found myself longing to see our old friend. And my father, standing at my side amongst the Doric columns of the portico, slipped his aged and shaking hand in mine and squeezed with all his strength.
The footman set down a stair for Lafayette, and the Guest of the Nation emerged gingerly—bulkier than in his youth and without the powdered wig that covered his now cropped graying hair. But it was him. He limped from the wound he’d taken in our war or from whatever they’d done to him when he rotted away in the dungeon at Olmütz.
But at the sight of me helping my father to slowly and painfully make his way down the steps, Lafayette hurried toward him, crying, “Ah, my dear Jefferson!”
At this, my father let go of my hand and his decrepit shuffle somehow became a run. “Ah, my dear Lafayette!”
They fell into each other’s embrace, both of them bursting into tears. By my accounting, no two men in the world had done more for the cause of liberty. Together, they’d changed the world. And I loved them both. These two giants of my childhood now come together in the evening of their lives.
And emotion swelled in my throat, forcing from me a little sob.
I wasn’t the only one caught up in the storm. There wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd as the two men kissed each other’s cheeks in the European fashion and sobbed on each other’s shoulders with abandon.