The President's Daughter (25 page)

If I should fail at this, I am lost. Perhaps I'm lost at any rate, but, oh God, how I love her.

Jimmy

MASSON'S, PHILADELPHIA

1800

Adrian, old friend,

She despises me.
Me!
Not him.

She accused me of making her world a bordello when all I have ever
wanted was the opposite. “My whoredom,” she said, “is yours and you know it.” She is right, and it never leaves me, even in sleep.

What will become of me, who needs her freedom more than I need my own? I am not a man, if I cannot free her.

Have booked passage for Barcelona, on the English ship
Supreme
in three days. I must think. I only despair on American soil.

Jimmy

A series of letters from the capitals of Europe followed. Letters full of descriptions of Madrid and Barcelona, of great houses in Calabria and Avignon. All with the same refrain. How could he free my mother? What could he do to persuade her to leave Monticello? And then . . .

RICHMOND

1801

Adrian,

I'm home for good this time. I've got a plan. Think back to our conversation on the quay. I've decided to go through with it. I'm compelled to. As it is, my life is worth nothing. She'll thank me in the end.

Love me as I love her,

Jimmy

It was dawn before I slipped the letters back into their envelope.

Mr. Fitzgerald ignored a visible pull on his fishing line, which he had cast over the railing amidships. “One day, very soon, your country will spread from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific Ocean. On the east and west, its limits are those of the continental shelf. On the south it advances to the tropics, and it extends upward to the icy regions of Newfoundland. But Americans do not form so many branches of the same stock as in Europe. The three races of Americans are naturally distinct and, I might add, naturally hostile to each other. Insurmountable barriers have been raised between them by education and law, origin and characteristics, but fortune has placed them on the same continent where they do not amalgamate.”

We were sitting side by side. The light danced on the water and, far out at sea, we could see the backs of dolphins.

“I believe that the Indian nations of North America are doomed to perish, and that by the time the Europeans shall be established on the shores of the
Pacific Ocean, that race of men will have ceased to exist. They had only two alternatives, war or civilization—in other words, to destroy the Europeans or become their equals. The Narragansetts, the Mohicans, the Pequots—who formerly inhabited New England—exist now only in memory. The Lenapes, who received William Penn upon the banks of the Delaware only a hundred and fifty years ago, have disappeared. The last of the Iroquois begged alms from me. I penetrated more than a hundred leagues into the interior of the continent without finding a single Indian. They are destroyed.

“But the Negroes' destiny is interwoven with that of the Europeans. These two races are fastened to each other without intermingling; and they are unlikely to separate entirely or combine entirely. The presence of a black population upon its territory is the most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union.”

“How can you say that, Mr. Fitzgerald? It is not a black problem, but a white one. The two races arrived here at the same time. It is plainly not blacks who threaten the Union. And if slavery were
not
black, it would
still
threaten a democracy and a republic. I repeat, it is not the blacks; it is slavery.”

“Miss Petit, in the state of Maine,” Mr. Fitzgerald continued, “there is one Negro in three hundred inhabitants; but, in South Carolina, Mr. Hammond's home state, fifty-five percent of the inhabitants are black. It is evident that the more southern states of your Union cannot abolish slavery without incurring great dangers which the North had no reason to apprehend when it emancipated its black population. The North managed this feat by keeping the present generation in chains and setting their descendants free. But it would be difficult to apply this method to the South. To declare that all the Negroes born after a certain period shall be free is to introduce the principle of liberty into the heart of slavery; imagine, for one moment, a person maintained in a state of slavery from which his children are delivered! The North had nothing to fear because blacks were few in number there. But if this faint dawn of freedom were to show three million black men of the South their true position, the oppressors would have reason to tremble. After having enfranchised the
children
of their slaves, the South would very shortly have to extend the same benefit to
all
black men.”

Imagine, for one moment, a person maintained in a state of slavery from which his children are delivered. . . .

“Little Miss Virginia—why so gloomy? This won't happen in our lifetime, but I believe it will happen with violence and in war. If I were called on to predict the future, I should say that the abolition of slavery in the South, however it comes about, will, in the common course of things, increase the repugnance of the white population for the blacks. I base my opinions upon
my observations throughout your country. I have seen that northern whites avoid Negroes with increasing care as the legal barriers of separation are removed by the legislature; and why shouldn't the same result take place in the South? In the North, the whites are deterred from mingling with the blacks by an imaginary danger; in the South, where the danger would be real, I cannot believe the fear would be less.”

“And you believe slavery will not last forever?” I whispered.

“It appears probable that in the West Indies islands, the white race is destined to be subdued. Upon the continent, the blacks. Do you believe slavery will persist, Miss Virginia?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, your own origins are showing at last!”

“No, Mr. Fitzgerald. I believe slavery will last because it is
black.
If it were
white,
it would have been abolished long ago—like indentured servitude.”

“America is all a parody,” said Lorenzo, “a mimicry of her parents; it is, however, the mimicry of a child, tetchy and wayward in its infancy, abandoned to bad nurses and educated in low habits. The South considers itself the frontier, the guardians of the cherished ideals of laissez-faire and private property, of small government and fierce independence. They think they can roll back time or stop it, but they can't.

“It is a nation derived from so many fathers that in commingling the thoughtless, the dissolute, and the turbulent of all nations, they neutralize one another, resulting in a people without wit or fantasy. And without fantasy, the race problem will never be solved.

“Whatever may be the efforts of Americans in the South to maintain slavery, Miss Virginia, they will not succeed. Slavery is now confined to a single track of the civilized earth, attacked by Christianity as unjust and by political economy as prejudicial and by the principles of democratic liberty and the intelligence of our age as inhuman and criminal. By the act of the master or the will of the slave, it will cease; and in either case, great calamities will ensue. My indignation does not light upon men of our own times, who are instruments of these outrages, Miss Virginia. I reserve my execution for those who, after a thousand years of freedom, brought slavery back into the world.”

We sat, as we always did, Lorenzo with his face toward the sun, mine turned away to protect my complexion, extracting its last feeble warmth as we drew farther north and farther into autumn weather. Our large hats were no longer of straw but of felt. Mine was tied securely with James's scarf, which wound around the crown of the hat and under my chin. Mr. Fitzgerald's was secured by a leather strap attached to his brim. As we watched
for seagulls, whales, and shark fins, I felt very close to unburdening myself. I dragged the melancholy weight of my uncle's fate with me everywhere on the ship. My throat closed and I murmured Lorenzo's curse under my breath: “God damn the man who brought slavery back into the world after a thousand years.”

The
Montezuma
was in sight of the cliffs of Dover before I found the courage to open Charlotte's package to find a gold locket and a letter from Thance. The packet had lain on my night table next to Uncle James's letters night after night for almost six weeks, forbidding and accusingly silent.

Now that there were, according to Lorenzo Fitzgerald, three thousand miles between me and Thance, perhaps it was safe at last to open his letter. I turned it over slowly in my hand then shoved it deep in my skirt pocket next to my dagger. No, I thought. Not yet. I'll think about it tomorrow. . . .

The locket contained a portrait of Charlotte's pretty face, and opposite hers was the image of Thance, staring up at me forlornly. When had they had time to order expensive miniatures? Surely as a wedding present, I thought, not as a farewell. But even so, Thance didn't look happy, or was I simply reading sorrow into a face retrospectively, as one does when one gazes at a portrait of a someone you loved who has died. It was in his eyes. Death. Abandonment. Pain.

I placed the locket around my neck. I was glad I hadn't worn it until now, the end of the journey. I walked up to the weather deck and there, almost blocking the sky, were the cliffs: a mountain of deathly white stone that sprang out of the sea like towers of salt, their tips lost in the mist, their fogged silhouette like dagger points, piercing the surrounding blue of the Atlantic. Suddenly the whiteness loomed down on me, and I stepped back in terror, my hand on my throat.

“Magnificent, are they not, Miss Petit?” said Lorenzo Fitzgerald, who had joined me on the weather deck.

I wanted to be alone, yet I put my arm through his. “Please. Call me Harriet. We're almost to London.”

He said nothing, but I felt a tremor of surprise run through him. It was unfair, I thought. I would never love anyone but Thance Wellington. Nothing would change that. Lorenzo could draw me all the continents in the world. Tonight, my last night aboard, I would read Thance's letter.

An eerie light struck the massive cliffs as the sun disappeared, turning them a navy blue, and we passed between them into the North Sea. We passed so close I smelled their hoary breath. A flaky ash settled upon the boat and
melted into the waves from the chalk boulders above me, distributing a fine veil of powder on my ungloved hand, so white, resting on the rail next to the chamois-sheathed one of Lorenzo's.

For now, I had passed through the straits into the singular identity of a white American.

I suppose Lorenzo Fitzgerald felt me shiver, for he put his hand over mine and squeezed it gently. It was a brotherly gesture, intimate only in its human warmth, but I withdrew my hand quietly, hoping not to offend him, but determined to keep my distance from him. I had let down my guard once and fallen in love just as I'd dreamed. The rude awakening was more than I could bear a second time. I loved Thance with an aching, desperate certainty that I could never love anyone else.

PHILADELPHIA

THE LAST NIGHT

Harriet,

It seems that I should not despair. At least that is what Thor tells me. I will leave with him for Cape Town as soon as we can book passage. This will put even more miles between us, which God knows is necessary. Africa, my brother tells me, is God's cradle for pain—especially for white men. He created it so.

And I release you from your promise to marry me. You are free. Because I love you.

Thance

They mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange it for all the frigid speculations of their lives.

Thomas Jefferson

We arrived in London in time for a funeral. The last hero of Trafalgar, a famous lord admiral, had died, and his catafalque was being towed up the Thames by a score of harnessed black horses in silver trappings and stiff-plumed headdresses moving in unison like a sea of black wheat. As the
Montezuma
glided toward London Bridge, we passed white stone palace after white stone palace, each draped with black bunting. Flags flew at half-mast and the peals of hundreds of church bells filled the air, as if a thousand silver coins had been flung upward and now rained down.

The ship's orchestra had ceased to play, and the captain had lowered his colors to half-mast. The body, we were told, was being taken to Westminster Abbey, where it would lie in state for three days, near all the other national heroes buried there.

“The only thing he regretted,” murmured a fellow passenger beside me, “was that the Napoleonic Wars only cost England forty thousand dead. ‘Cheap victory,' he always said.

“I suppose one could call this a bad omen,” I said to Lorenzo.

“Not at all. What it means is that Napoleon's ghost has finally been put to rest after ten years, and Europe is for the moment at peace.”

The orchestra resumed playing the prelude from
La Traviata,
which they had played on the wharves of Philadelphia, as the gangplank was lowered. I
rushed to join Mrs. Willowpole. As we slowly descended, arm-in-arm, I tried to imagine my mother at fourteen, leading Maria toward the Adamses waiting for them on the quay, thirty-eight years ago. Carefully, I placed my foot on English soil. I brought my gloved hand to my lips and then, pretending to stumble, dropped to my knee as I placed the kiss on the terra firma of the London docks. My white gloves came away with the imprint of the sooty, wet cobblestone. I stared at them. They had hidden my fingerprints. My movements had been so speedy and disguised that Mrs. Willowpole hadn't noticed my gesture, and thinking I hadn't been observed, I turned toward her, only to find Lorenzo at my side. He had seen everything.
What are you hiding?
his eyes asked.