Sally Heming (25 page)

"We've tried everything ... Mademoiselle ... except
your return.... I pray that it will relieve him."

"Why did he not look for me?"

"I do not know."

"And James?"

He ransacked Paris for you."

"But I was at Madame Dupree's!"

"She swore you were not. She even let him enter and
search the rooms."

I smiled. How had she managed to fool James with me
installed in her attic?

"Come," he said, not unkindly. "You'll have
to face him sometime." Then, turning toward me just as we arrived in front
of the apartment, he said, as if in explanation of the state in which I would
find my master:

"You dealt him a blow I would not have thought
possible." Now he seized my shoulders gently and turned me toward the
door.

I entered the apartment. The curtains were tightly shut and
my eyes were unaccustomed to the darkness. In the room, there was the same
undefinable odor of gunpowder that had stalked the streets of Paris three weeks
before. I recoiled as it smote me, and turned to flee. His voice sounded and
held me there.

"Why did you do that to me."

The long ashen figure, fully dressed, sat up on the bed,
and the face I looked into was one of such desolation my heart almost stopped.
The voice was husky and scarred. The fury was barely controlled.

"Why did you do that to me?" he repeated evenly.

"I'm with child. That is why I ran away."

I threw this at him, meaning to convey to him all the despair
and loneliness of the past week of rebellion, but instead a fierce joy took
hold of me.

"Sally..."

"I will not give birth to a slave! I am free now. I
will never birth slaves!"

A flush of color came into his deathly-pale face. I stood
apart from him—some yards—afraid to approach, stubborn, and poised for flight.
It was he who then fell back in pain. I wavered, but held my ground.

"I know ... that I cannot hold you against your will.
Our ... your child I consider free and will always consider free. You have my
word. I recognize that you are free, as free as your heart permits."

I was lost. My heart was his, and he knew it. I faltered,
cornered, weak.

"I want him born on French soil...."

"We must go home, Sally, but it is only temporary. We
will return."

"That is not enough ... I want—"

He began to speak very softly to me, drawing me nearer and
nearer. Making me strain to hear until I knelt beside him. His voice was low
and sweet, as if he were maning a young wild falcon to the block. There were
tears streaming down his face and promises on his lips.

His promises mingled along with mine in the sultry
darkness. No, I would not leave him again. No, I would not die in childbirth.
No, I would not claim my freedom.

Yes, my children would all be free. When? At twenty-one.
Twenty-one. Five years more than I had been on this earth.

His voice and his face hovered over me, held me. He touched
and pained me with his terrible loneliness. Never would I cause such pain
again. My own needs, my own loneliness, seemed nothing compared to his—his
needs were so much mightier than my small ones, his space in the world so much
more vast and important than any place I could imagine for myself. Slowly, I
succumbed to his will.

"Promise me you will not abandon me again."

"I promise, Master."

"I swear to cherish you and never desert you."

"Yes, Master."

"I promise solemnly that your children will be
freed," he said. "As God is your witness?"

"As God is my witness."

"Bolt the door," he said.

We returned once more to Marly, my master and I. We stood
side by side on its heights and looked down for the last time, feasting on the
panorama. The September landscape was deep and still; I fixed this vision in my
mind, vowing to return to it. Here, I still believed, anything was possible. I vowed
to keep this dream.

I sensed the same languor invading us both: it was like the
rustling of leaves, deep and continuous, barely audible except to the soul; a
sweetness that surprised both of us, for I knew he felt it, yet it never
occurred to either of us to speak of it. There would always be such silences
between us, partly from prudery or because of our temperaments, but also
because there were so many things that must remain unsaid. All our lives. I
turned toward the immense figure in dark blue standing silently beside me, and
between me and the world. I was beginning to understand this strange,
impulsive, melancholy man, full of contradictions and secrets, this man who
owned me, my family, and my unborn child.

How did it matter that he was master and I slave? That he
loved me and risked much for me? That he took more space in the world than most
men did, did not concern me, neither his fame nor his power. I cherished him.

My hand was taken in his. I let it lie where it had been
placed. The future and our happiness, like Marly, stretched out before me,
total and shoreless. The surrounding fragrance drugged me, and made me careless
of what awaited me just beyond my view.

CHAPTER 20

THE
WAYWARD,
OCTOBER
1789

The passports
with the king's
signature had been delivered. Thomas Jefferson, his two daughters, and his two
servants were going home. Everything was to leave on Sunday by river diligence
for Le Havre.

Petit checked the list again. If he had calculated right,
there were eighty-two crates. And his master claimed he was only going back for
a visit! Petit shrugged. He was responsible for the safe arrival of the baggage
at Le Havre, not Monsieur Jefferson's future plans.

He edged his way toward the south corner of the courtyard,
where three carpenters were at work on the packing crates for the great phaeton
to be shipped back. The carriage itself, which would be driven to Le Havre,
stood in solitary splendor outside the stable door. Poor Trumbull, thought
Petit. That carriage had almost driven him to distraction. His master had
ordered it from London through his good services.

It had taken more than a year to build, with all the
changes and additions that had been made, but it was undoubtedly one of the
finest, most original carriages in France; and in Virginia it would, without a
doubt, cause an absolute sensation. Petit walked around the carriage, admiring
it, and flecked a speck of dust off the shining lilac body. At once the
coachman growled to a standing position. Petit only smiled and bowed with great
ceremony. He was not supposed to touch the carriage.... It was a new crane-neck
carriage. How splendid. Petit turned back to supervise, not without pride, the
hampers of wine to be taken back to Virginia.

He shuddered at the thought of the long sea voyage. Water,
any body of water bigger than the reflecting pools at Versailles, terrified
him. Discreetly he crossed himself.

He glanced again at James Hemings, who was busily
supervising the closing of the wine crates, making sure that no bottles found
their way out of the crates and into the blouses of the workmen. James, who was
in his shirtsleeves, sweated over these crates and the trunks, piling up in the
noisy courtyard of the Hotel de Langeac. The Hotel de Langeac was not the only
fashionable hotel whose courtyard bustled and burst that day with packing
crates and trunks. Recent events had been the signal for the first great exodus
of aristocrats toward England, Belgium, and Austria.

He shook his head. He was sorry that Jim-mi was returning
to Virginia. So much fire and intelligence wasted on servitude. He, Petit, knew
himself to be valuable as a second in command, much like an aide-de-camp to a
general. He knew his worth. He was an incorruptible, and silent.
Voila tout;
his entire life.
As for James, he was of another race. Like a thoroughbred horse, he would never
survive as a servant, as a slave. Besides, he was now a first-class chef and
could surely command the best place and the best salary. But James, for reasons
Petit could not fathom, had decided to return to Virginia with his sister who
was carrying the child of his master, according to Marie-Louise. Petit was sure
that James would never again see the shores of France. From one of the upper
windows overlooking the courtyard, Petit saw Martha Jefferson. She was calling
to James, waving him frantically into the house. Again Petit shook his head. It
was only with the return of Sally to the mansion that he had learned the true
relationship between the Hemingses and the Jeffersons. James was Martha Jefferson's
uncle! The whole Byzantine story of this strange American family had finally
been related to him in great detail by Jim-mi. He, who was quite inured to the
bizarre nature of French aristocrats, had been profoundly shocked at this odd
genealogy.

That blue and black blood would mix was nothing more than
the nature of things, but that it would continue into the second and now the
third generation seemed to him beyond propriety, even aristocratic propriety!

There was something uncivilized, raw, and brutal about it.
On one hand, they hated and despised blacks, and, on the other, they were the
objects of the most violent and emotional desires and obsessions....

That the defection of a chambermaid could bring low a man
like Thomas Jefferson ... Adrien Petit pursed his lips in distaste. He would
never understand this American family.

James Hemings felt as if he had been raped. His face held
the same blankness of defeat. Men raped men, he thought, as well as women....

He had had his "explanation" with his master and
had been left humiliated and outmaneuvered. All his resistance had dissolved in
the face of his enemy! His master as a diplomat was as unconventional,
imaginative, resourceful, and tough as the best Old World courtiers. His
arguments were turned against him, his reasoning inside out. He had become
tongue-tied. How could he have been so abject! He had practically thanked
Thomas Jefferson when he had said that he, James, would be freed by his grace
as soon as he had trained another cook at Monticello to take his place. This,
his master had argued, was the least James could do to repay the training and
education of these past years. And he had accepted. He would have been a
"monster," a "serpent at my breast," a "traitor"
if he had refused. James, like his sister, was now locked in a promise of more
years of servitude. But he clung obstinately to this one shred of what he
considered his essential dignity.

I will never steal myself! he thought. He has no right to
force me to do so... to make a criminal and an outlaw out of me who has served
him for so long and with such loyalty. He must free me legally and openly.

The disappointment of his return burned his chest.
Suddenly, tears splashed onto the large leather trunk he was filling with
silver. With an uncontrollable sob he flung himself behind the bulk of the
crates.

But there were two people who saw him crying: the discreet
and ever-watchful Petit, and, from her window, Martha Jefferson.

Neither James nor Sally Hemings could shake a sense of doom
as the small party set forth for Le Havre and England. As for their master, he
was buoyant and optimistic, giving instructions to William Short about his
return to France in a few months. But all four young people stood there in
silence, each in his own anguish. Martha, because her father seemed at last
willing to separate himself from her and Polly and return alone to France.
James, because he, despite all his vows to the contrary, had further servitude
to look forward to. If Sally Hemings was apprehensive about returning to
Virginia, she was also doubting her lover's promises that they would return
together to France.

Even before their arrival in Le Havre two days later there
was a bad omen: the axle on the phaeton broke, and they were stranded on the
road for hours.

The day after they finally arrived, a vicious storm broke
out and continued unabated for six days. Hail and slashing rains and cold
sleet, accompanied by unseasonable thunder and lightning—everything the heavens
had to offer—came pouring down. The unceasing wind that whistled day and night
brought everyone to the edge of endurance. Only Thomas Jefferson remained calm
and cheerful, and on the fourth of October, during a lull in the storm, he had
their baggage put on the packet for England. But again they were delayed when
the storm suddenly returned.