“Not everyone,” Paddy said.
“Hooray!” Tucker jumped up as she heard the truck coming down the driveway. “Mom’s home.”
“Paddy, come on in. Harry likes you.”
“Yeah, get out of here, useless,” Simon called down from the loft.
The owl poked her head out from under her wing, then stuck it back. She rarely joined in these discussions with the other animals since she worked the night shift.
The dog bounded ahead of them.
The tuxedo cat and the tiger strolled at a leisurely pace to the front door. It wouldn’t do to appear too excited.
“Ever wish we were still together?” Paddy asked. “I do.”
“Paddy, being in a relationship with you was like putting Miracle-Gro on my character defects.” Her tail whisked to the vertical when Harry called her name.
“Does that mean you don’t like me?”
“No. It means I didn’t like me in that situation. Now, come on, let’s get some supper.”
20
The upper two floors of Monticello, not open to the public, served as a haven and study for the long-legged Kimball Haynes. While most of the valuable materials relating to Mr. Jefferson and his homes reposed in the rare books section of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, the Library of Congress, or the Virginia State Library in Richmond, only a small library existed upstairs at Monticello.
One of Kimball’s pleasures consisted of sitting in the rectangular room above the south piazza, or greenhouse, which connects the octagonal library to Jefferson’s cabinet, the room he used as his private study. Kimball kept a comfortable wing chair there and a private library, which included copies of records that Jefferson or his white employees kept in their own hand. He pored over account books, visitors’ logs, and weather reports for the year 1803. As Mr. Jefferson was serving his first term as president during that year, the records lacked the fullness of the great man’s attention. Peas, tomatoes, and corn were planted as always. A coach broke an axle. The repairs were costly. The livestock demanded constant care. A visitor assigned to a third-floor room in November complained of being frightfully cold, a reasonable complaint, since there were no fireplaces up there.
As the night wore on, Kimball heard the first peepers of spring. He loved that sound better than Mozart. He thumbed the copies blackened by the soil on his hands. Ground-in dirt was an occupational hazard for an archaeologist. He had used these references for years, returning to the rare books collection at the University of Virginia only when he’d scrubbed his hands until they felt raw.
After absorbing those figures, Kimball dropped the pages on the floor and leaned back in the old chair. He flung one leg over a chair arm. Facts, facts, facts, and not a single clue. Whoever was buried in the dirt at Cabin Four wasn’t a tradesman. A tinker or wheelwright or purveyor of fresh fish, even a jeweler, wouldn’t have had such expensive clothing on his back.
The corpse belonged to a gentleman. Someone of the president’s own class. 1803.
Now, Kimball knew that might not be the year of the man’s death, but it couldn’t be far off. Whatever happened politically that year might have some bearing on the murder, but Kimball’s understanding of human nature suggested that in America people rarely killed each other over politics. Murder was closer to the skin.
He recalled a scandal the year before, 1802, that cut Thomas Jefferson to the quick. His friend from childhood, John Walker, accused Jefferson of making improper advances to his wife. According to John Walker, this affair started in 1768, when Thomas Jefferson was not yet married, but Walker maintained that it continued until 1779, seven years after Jefferson had married Martha Wayles Skelton, on January 1, 1772. The curious aspect of this scandal was that Mrs. Walker saw fit to burden her husband with the disclosure of her infidelity only some time after 1784, when Jefferson was in France.
Kimball also remembered that upon Jefferson’s return from France, he and John Walker began to move on separate political paths. Light-Horse Harry Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, later volunteered to mediate between the two former friends. As Light-Horse Harry loathed Thomas Jefferson, the result of this effort was a foregone conclusion. Things went from bad to worse with James Thomson Callender, a vicious tattletale, fanning the flames. It was at this time that the infamous allegations against Jefferson for sleeping with his slave, Sally Hemings, began to make the rounds.
By January of 1805 these stories gained enough currency to cause the New-England Palladium to castigate Mr. Jefferson’s morals. Apparently, Mr. Jefferson did not stand for family values.
The fur flew. Few cocktails are more potent than politics mixed with sex. Drinks were on the house, literally. Congress wallowed in the gossip. Things haven’t changed, Kimball thought to himself.
To make matters murkier, Jefferson admitted to making a pass at Mrs. Walker. Acting as a true gentleman, Jefferson shouldered all the blame for the affair, which he carefully noted as having occurred before his marriage. In those days, the fellow accepted the stigma, no matter what had really happened. To blame the lady meant you weren’t a man.
Thanks to Jefferson’s virile stance, even his political enemies let the Walker affair go. Everyone let it go but John Walker. Only as Walker lay dying at his estate in Keswick, called Belvoir, did he acknowledge that Jefferson was as much sinned against as sinner. By then it was too late.
The Sally Hemings story, however, did damage the president. A white man sleeping with a black woman created a spectacular conundrum for everyone. A gentleman couldn’t admit such a thing. It would destroy his wife and generate endless jokes at his expense. Let there be one red-haired African American at Monticello and the jig was up, literally. That little word-play ran from Maine to South Carolina in the early 1800s. Oh, how they must have laughed in the pubs. “The jig is up.”
It did not help Mr. Jefferson’s case that some fair-skinned African Americans did appear at Monticello bearing striking resemblance to the master. However, as Kimball recalled, Thomas wasn’t the only male around with Jefferson blood.
So what if a cousin had had an affair with Sally? Bound by the aristocratic code of honor, Jefferson still must remain silent or he would cause tremendous suffering to the rake’s wife. A gentleman always protects a lady regardless of her relation to him. A gentleman could also try to protect a woman of color by remaining silent and giving her money and other favors. Silence was the key.
One thing was certain about the master sleeping with a slave: The woman had no choice but to say yes. In that truth lay lyric heartache sung from generation to generation of black women. Broke the hearts of white women too.
Stars glittered in the sky, the Milky Way smeared in an arc over the buildings as it had centuries ago. Kimball realized this murder might or might not have something to do with Thomas Jefferson’s personal life, but it surely had something to do with a violent and close relationship between a white man and a black woman.
He would go over the slave roster tomorrow. He was too sleepy tonight.
21
The Crozet Lutheran Church overflowed with people who had come to pay their last respects to Wesley Randolph. The deceased’s family, Warren, Ansley, Stuart, and Breton, sat in the front pew. Kimball Haynes, his assistant Heike Holtz, Oliver Zeve and his wife, and the other staff at Monticello came to say good-bye to a man who had supported the cause for over fifty of his seventy-three years.