America's First Daughter: A Novel(2)
She nods, too, the culmination of a lifetime of conversation between us—sometimes spoken aloud, sometimes in passing glances and measured silences. But now we have nothing left to say. Sally looks one last time at the alcove and my eyes follow the direction of hers, taking note of how his bed sits between his private dressing room and his study—caught between his private and public life, just as he was.
Just as Sally and I have been.
Finally, she shakes her head, as if pulling herself from a memory, and steps toward me. With quick, deft fingers, she unlaces the ribbon at her hip where the key to this room has dangled for nearly forty years. She surrenders it to me, just as my father surrendered to me the fate of everything and everyone that once belonged to him.
Our hands meet in the exchange of the key—her bronzed fingers against my pale, freckled ones—and it feels like a circle closing. We’ve made this whole journey together, from the time we were innocent children on my father’s mountain when this grand house was a mere shadow of itself. I meet her eyes wondering if she knows the sin I’m about to commit and if she would give her blessing, or if she dreads it like I do. But Sally’s eyes are like hardened amber in which secrets are preserved but trapped beyond reach.
She doesn’t grant permission, nor does she ask it anymore.
She merely walks away.
And I let her go, because she’s a part of the story that must remain untold.
I’m then alone again in the quiet of this sacred place where my father’s belongings remain exactly as he left them, as if awaiting his return. The silence is suffocating in both its finality and protection, like a cloak that shelters me against a storm, that protects my very nation.
Returning to his desk, I take my seat once more. And I set my mind to the task I and I alone must do.
For my father was the author of our Independence. His pen unleashed one revolution after another by declaring that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Deceptively simple words—the greatest words he ever wrote.
Perhaps the greatest words anyone has ever written.
Words that inspired men to pledge their lives and fortune to the cause, that inspired women to make countless sacrifices, and that inspired nations to embark upon an experiment of freedom. My father’s words gave voice to a movement. His voice was the voice of a nation. A voice that changed the world.
Who am I to censor that voice?
I am a daughter who must see to it that he is remembered exactly the way he wanted to be. I recall the instructions he’d written for his tombstone: and not a word more.
Which is why I light the wick of a candle in one of the holders—ingeniously, and somewhat dangerously, fastened to the arms of my father’s chair. And with shaking hands, I hold one of his sacred letters above the flame. In so doing, I feel the heat, as if a prelude to hell’s fires awaiting me.
But I have defied God before.
My heart is already heavy with sins and secrets and betrayals. I’m stained with the guilt of slavery. I have counted as a necessary sacrifice the blood of patriots. I have denied the truth written upon my own skin in the black and blue ink of bruises. I have vouched for the character of men without honor. I have stayed silent to avoid speaking the truth. What is one more silence when it preserves all we have sacrificed for?
That will be my legacy.
The service I render my country.
For I’m not only my father’s daughter, but also a daughter of the nation he founded. And protecting both is what I’ve always done.
Part One
The Dutiful Daughter
Chapter One
Charlottesville, 29 May 1781
From Thomas Jefferson to the Marquis de Lafayette
I sincerely and anxiously wish you may prevent General Cornwallis from engaging your army till you are sufficiently reinforced and able to engage him on your own terms.
BRITISH! BRITISH!” These words flew with blood and spittle from the gasping mouth of our late-night visitor, a rider who awakened our household with the clatter of horse hooves and the pounding of his fist upon the door. “Leave Monticello now or find yourself in chains.”
Still shaking off the fog of sleep, my eight-year-old heart could’ve kept time with a hummingbird’s wings as I stared down from the stairway to where my father greeted our late-night guest wearing only a pair of hastily donned calfskin breeches and a quilted Indian gown of blue. “Are you certain the British are so near?” Papa asked.
Standing in the open doorway, bathed in the light of a slave’s lantern, the rider panted for breath. His bloodstained hunting shirt was slashed at the shoulder, leather leggings spattered with mud. And his face . . . oh, his face. It was a grotesque mask of burrs and blood, red and cut open in a dozen places, as if he’d been whipped by every branch in our forest during his frantic ride. “Tarleton and his dragoons are very close, Governor Jef ferson,” he said, still gasping and wild-eyed. “Neither the militia nor the Marquis de Lafayette and his army will arrive in time to defend us. You must go now or be captured.”
My scalp prickled with fear and I clutched the railing tighter. The men of the household—many of them members of the Virginia legislature who recently sought refuge at Monticello—stumbled into the entryway in various states of undress, some shouting in panic. My little sister Polly whimpered, and I put my arm around her shaking shoulders, both of us still in our bed gowns. I softly shushed her so I could hear the conversation below, but I already understood more than the adults thought I did.