Jefferson's Sons

  “Well,” said Burwell. “So would anybody who’s been locked up months in jail.” He patted Harriet’s cheek. “Don’t fret. We don’t worry about tomorrow today. You get down and go play. And don’t you climb this roof again without asking me, hear? You could fall.”

  Harriet smiled. She was a wonderful climber, always in and out of trees. “I never fall.”

  “See you don’t.” Burwell held the top of the ladder while she climbed down. He yelled, “Tell your mama.”

  Burwell went back to the railing and picked up his brush. Beverly sat cross-legged beside him. Burwell didn’t speak. Finally Beverly whispered, “What’s going to happen?”

  “He’ll be whipped,” Burwell said. “Maybe that’s all, this time.”

  “Will it be bad?”

  Burwell smoothed white paint over the golden brown wood. He covered three pieces before he answered. “Yes.”

  The overseers brought the field workers to the mountaintop for the whipping, dozens and dozens of people Beverly didn’t know. The mountaintop people, the workers from Mulberry Row, all had to be there too. Beverly asked Mama if he could bring his violin. He thought James Hubbard might like music to take his mind off being whipped, and he thought too that if he was playing he could shut his eyes and only hear the music and not have to think about James Hubbard.

  “Nonsense,” Mama said. “You and Harriet will stand still and behave, just like everyone else.”

  “But I don’t want to,” Beverly said.

  “What you want doesn’t matter,” Mama said.

  The overseers—four of them, all white men—prodded everyone into a sort of half circle around a post. James Hubbard stood with his hands tied to the top of the post, his back toward them. Mama moved to the front of the crowd, and as she did Harriet stepped behind her and hid her face in Mama’s skirt. Beverly tried to do the same, but Mama grabbed his shoulders and held him facing forward. One overseer ripped James Hubbard’s tattered shirt from his back, and a second stepped forward with a long black bullwhip in his hand.

  The whip whistled through the air and came down with a crack against James’s back. James jerked, but didn’t yell. A red welt formed on his skin.

  Beverly turned his face away. Mama pushed it back. “You watch,” she whispered. Crack! Another jerk. Another welt, and a trickle of blood. Crack!

  Beverly wanted his violin. He wanted to run away, back to his cabin or to Master Jefferson’s room with all the books and chairs. Crack! Blood ran down James Hubbard’s back. It soaked into his breeches, the real breeches he’d bought to run away in. They were going to turn red, just like the red suit he’d won for being the best worker in the nail factory.

  Beverly turned his head and vomited down the side of Mama’s skirt.

  Afterward, in the cabin, he cried and cried. Mama rinsed her skirt. She seemed sad, not angry. She patted Beverly’s back and held Harriet in her lap, and when Beverly’s sobs slowed to hiccups she said, “There’s a reason I made you watch that.”

  “’Cause the overseer said so,” Beverly said.

  “No. I could have let you hide your face. I wanted you to watch because I wanted you to understand. That’s slavery. Not this nice life you children have, because of who I am and who you are. That. James Hubbard didn’t do anything wrong. All he wanted was to live his own life, to earn money for himself and make his own choices.

  “I love you children more than life, and I’m going to get you out of Jordan, do you hear me?” Mama’s eyes blazed up, fierce but still not angry. “I’m going to see you live free. What happened to James Hubbard will never happen to you. But you’ve got to understand it. You’ve got to know how things are. When you’re grown you’ll be able to go anywhere you want in this world. Anywhere. Do you understand me?”

  “No, Mama,” Beverly said. The look on her face frightened him. He didn’t understand anything at all.

  “James Hubbard did too do something wrong,” said Harriet in a thin, trembling voice. “He did too. He ran away. Master Jefferson had to punish him. Because he ran away. He wasn’t supposed to—”

  “Master Jefferson didn’t punish him,” Beverly cut in. “The overseers did.”

  Mama looked grave. “The overseers only do what Master Jefferson tells them to,” she said. “Master Jefferson ordered the whipping. It was his responsibility. No one else’s.”

  “That’s not true,” Beverly said. He thought of Master Jefferson’s gentle hands, his soft voice, his warm smile. “He would never do that. He wouldn’t. He’d never whip anybody. He’s not mean like the overseers.”

  Mama said, slowly and deliberately, “All James Hubbard did was try to get free. Running away is against the law, but it’s not wrong. Sometimes laws are wrong. Master Jefferson told the overseers to whip James Hubbard. They wouldn’t have done it otherwise. They wouldn’t have dared.”

  “You’re lying,” Beverly said. “I know you are.” He put his hands over his ears and refused to listen anymore. His father, whip James Hubbard? Beverly knew it couldn’t be true.

  Winter 1805

  Chapter Five

  Great-grandma and the Sea Captain

  Cold weather came. The garden froze and died. Beverly and the other mountaintop boys covered its beds with deep layers of horse manure from the stables. The great house seemed asleep, except for the faint sound of Uncle John’s hammering, hard to hear behind the sounds of the nail boys at their anvils.

  Dawn to dusk was the master’s time; dusk to dawn belonged to the slaves. In winter, days were short enough that folks had time to relax together in the evenings, before they fell asleep, and with Master Jefferson in Washington, Mama stayed with them every night. Usually, after she rocked Maddy to sleep, she told Beverly and Harriet stories.

  “Tell about Great-grandma and the sea captain,” Harriet said. Beverly stretched out on the floor in front of the hearth, close to the dancing flames. Mama’s chair creaked as she rocked in time to her knitting. Harriet drew Mama’s shawl over her head until only her nose peeped out.

  “Once upon a time,” Mama began, “your great-grandma lived free with her family in a place called Africa, over the ocean and far, far away.”

  “Like France,” said Beverly.

  “Farther away than France,” Mama said. “Warmer too. She wasn’t a slave, your great-grandma. She was a free woman, with beautiful ebony skin and beautiful black kinky hair. She didn’t need to carry papers. Everybody in her village, her mother and father and brothers and sisters, her uncles and aunts and her friends, all of them were free.

  “Then evil men came to her village. They kidnapped your great-grandma. She was strong, and she fought them, but they had guns and no one in her village did.”

  “Were they white or black?” asked Beverly.

  “Who?” Mama said. “The villagers?”

  “The kidnappers.”

  Mama paused. “I don’t know,” she said. “Might have been either, or both. Evil comes in all colors. They kidnapped hundreds of people, from all up and down the coast of Africa. They chained them into the belly of a horrible ship, and sailed them all the way to the city of Williamsburg, right here in Virginia.”

  Mama paused before she went on. “And they sold all those people into slavery. Your great-grandma, she was bought by a man named Mr. Francis Eppes.”

  “Who got the money?” Beverly asked. “Who did Mr. Eppes pay?”

  “The kidnappers,” Mama said. “And the people who owned the ship.”

  Beverly bit his lip.

  “Your great-grandma wasn’t born a slave,” Mama said.

  “She didn’t have something wrong with her turned her into a slave. She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t deserve to be captured. You remember that.” Mama paused again, then went on with the story.

  “Mr. Eppes called your great-grandma Parthenia.”

  “But that wasn’t her real name,” Harriet said.

  “No,” Mama said. “Parthenia was what Mr. Eppes called her. Her r
eal name was the one her parents gave her, in Africa. We don’t know what it was.”

  Beverly wished somebody had known his great-grandma’s real name.

  “Some time later, your great-grandma formed an attachment with a sea captain—”

  “A different sea captain,” Harriet cut in. “Not the captain of the slave ship.”

  “A different one,” Mama agreed. “A white man named Captain Hemings, who was captain of a merchant ship from England. He was a fine man, and Parthenia was a woman of uncommon beauty, and together they had a beautiful little girl named Elizabeth Hemings, and that was your grandma.”

  Grandma lived down the hill, in a cabin by herself. She was old, old. It was hard for Beverly to imagine her as a little girl.

  “The captain was at sea when Elizabeth was born,” Mama continued. “He didn’t come back for years. But when he did, he tried to claim his daughter. He wanted to take care of her. But the law said Elizabeth belonged to Mr. Eppes, and Mr. Eppes wouldn’t sell her to the sea captain. She was pretty and smart, and Mr. Eppes wanted to keep her.”

  Mama smiled. “Everyone always loved your grandma.”

  “Tell us about France,” Beverly said. He was sick of hearing about Great-grandma and the sea captain. Why couldn’t Grandma Elizabeth belong to her daddy, the way Beverly belonged to his? “Tell us about the French soldiers,” Beverly said.

  So Mama told them about the French soldiers, who wore feathers on their helmets and guarded the city gate near where she lived in Paris. She told them about the fancy people who lived in France, lords and ladies and even a king, and how she used to watch them when she was lady’s maid to Miss Martha.

  “You saw a king?” Beverly asked. He knew kings were like presidents, only with crowns.

  “No,” Mama said. “Master Jefferson met the king, but Miss Martha never did, so I never did, either. I went to parties with Miss Martha, as her chaperone. That’s how I got to see things. The maids had to stay off to the side, but we used to sit together and laugh at all the fancy goings-on.”

  “Did she go to lots of parties?” Harriet asked.

  “Not at first,” Mama said. “At first she was away at school. But when she grew up and had her come-out, our last year there, she went to parties two or three times a week.”

  “Were they fancy?” asked Harriet.

  “Fancier than you can imagine,” Mama said. “Fancier than anything that’s ever happened in Charlottesville. Silk dresses and silk ribbons, and everyone with powdered hair.” She tweaked Beverly’s hair. “Wouldn’t you look fine with your hair dusted white? Should we ask Uncle Peter for some flour?”

  “Mama,” Beverly protested.

  Mama laughed. “That was the fashion. Even the soldiers powdered their hair. The skirts of the ladies’ dresses stuck out sideways on wooden hoops, so wide they could barely get past the door.”

  Harriet giggled. “Did your dresses do that?”

  “No,” Mama said with a smile. “Maids’ dresses weren’t that fancy. But I did have beautiful silk dresses. Maids had to dress fine, to be a credit to their employers.”

  “What’s an employer?” asked Beverly.

  “A person that’s paying you to work for them,” Mama said. She bit her lip. “Servants are paid in France. There are no slaves there.”

  Beverly said, “You were paid?”

  “I was,” Mama said.

  “But not anymore,” Beverly said. “Not here.”

  “No,” said Mama.

  “But Mama,” said Beverly, “why—”

  “Here,” Mama said, getting up from the rocker. She opened the trunk Beverly and Harriet weren’t allowed to touch. “I kept one of my old dresses. I’ll show you.” From the bottom of the trunk she pulled out a real dress, like Miss Martha wore, made of shiny, bright-colored cloth. Harriet rubbed it between her fingers. Beverly just stared. He tried to imagine Mama wearing such a dress.

  “Did you buy that?” he asked. “With your pay-money?” Mama shook her head. “I could never have afforded silk,” she said. “Master Jefferson bought it for me, once I needed clothes to be a proper chaperone. He took me shopping. He had wonderful taste. Still does.” She smiled.

  Beverly stiffened. “He never takes you shopping here.” Mama got cloth for their clothes at the give-out time, same as everybody else on the mountain.

  “Of course not!” Mama said sharply. “It’s different here, you know that.”

  Beverly didn’t know it. He knew what it was like here, but he didn’t know what it had been like in France. Sounded pretty fine.

  “Maybe we should have stayed there,” he said.

  “Master Jefferson had to come back,” Mama said. “His term there was over.

  “I could have stayed,” she continued softly, almost as though speaking to herself. “I knew it too. I spoke French, and I knew how to find a good job. But my family was here, my mama and my brothers and sisters, and I was expecting a baby—your brother, the first one, that died.” Mama sighed. “I was only sixteen.”

  She smiled at Beverly. “It’s a good thing I came back. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been born. Nor Harriet, nor Maddy.”

  Beverly nodded. “You would have been lonely.”

  “I would have,” Mama said.

  “Did Miss Martha like France?” asked Harriet.

  “She loved it,” Mama said. “She wanted to stay forever. She told Master Jefferson she felt a vocation to become a Catholic nun. He didn’t like that!” Mama shook her head. “Miss Martha was happier there. She was happier then.”

  “How about you?” Beverly wanted to know. “Were you happier then?”

  “Of course not,” Mama said. She reached down and scooped him into her lap, and rocked him like he was the baby, not Maddy. “Look at my beautiful children. I’m happier now.”

  Christmas 1805

  Chapter Six

  Home for Christmas

  In late December Miss Edith came home in Davy Hern’s wagon. James was a beautiful baby, bigger than Maddy, and just as bright-eyed. Joe Fossett couldn’t take his eyes off them, James or Miss Edith, either one. He held Miss Edith on his lap and kissed her neck, and she laughed and smiled. He bounced baby James on his knee.

  Beverly wished Master Jefferson would come to their cabin, hold Mama on his lap, and bounce Maddy on his knee. He wished Master Jefferson would smile at him as often as Joe Fossett smiled at baby James. It was hard, knowing Master Jefferson was right there in the great house, and not getting to see him at all.

  Of course the great house was full of all kinds of people, not just Master Jefferson. Miss Martha, who had lived with him in the President’s House all fall, came to Monticello for Christmas, instead of going to her own farm only three miles away. She brought her grumpy husband and all six of her children with her, and a slew of maids and nurses. Friends of Master Jefferson came too. They filled the great house, top to bottom, side to side.

  Field hands didn’t work on the days around Christmas, but up at the great house there was more to do than ever. When Mama came back to the cabin at dawn, she prodded Beverly awake. “Get up and help Burwell,” she said. “Fetch firewood.”

  Beverly groaned. All the bedrooms in the great house had fireplaces. Beverly hauled armload after armload from the woodshed to the house, up the narrow twisting staircases to the second and third floors. He took wood to Master Jefferson’s room, the parlor, and the dining room. After that he carried armfuls to the kitchen, where Uncle Peter was stirring and chopping and cooking fit to bust. Then he ran errands, to the stables where the guests’ horses were, or to the big storeroom or the smokehouse. Then Uncle Peter told him to wash the dishes and dry them and stack them up without breaking one, as though he weren’t almost eight years old and didn’t know how to stack a dish.

  All the time, all he could think about was Master Jefferson. He longed to see him. Sometimes he imagined conversations with him. They could talk about violins or music or France. Maybe Beverly could tell him how a
wful James Hubbard’s whipping had been. Then Master Jefferson could explain that the overseers had made a terrible mistake, and that Master Jefferson would never let it happen again.

  But no matter how hard Beverly hoped, he never got to speak to his father. He hardly even saw him from afar.

  The guests at Christmas ate so much that Master Jefferson didn’t have enough food in his cellars to feed them. That was good news for the slaves. On the Saturday before Christmas, Uncle Peter sent word all over the mountain that Miss Martha was buying for the great house.

  All year long, everyone except Beverly’s mama grew vegetables or raised chickens for their own. The field hands did it so they’d have something to eat besides the cornmeal, fatback, and salt fish that was all the overseers gave them, but even they saved extra to sell. Now they slit the throats of the oldest of their chickens, or dug into their store holes for sweet potatoes or turnips or eggs. They stood in a long line by the back door of the great house, holding whatever they could scrounge for sale.

  Miss Martha stood on the porch, pursing her lips while she chose. She took coins out of her purse and dropped them into people’s hands. Beverly collected whatever she bought, and carried it to Uncle Peter in the kitchen.

  Uncle Peter was feeling fine. “Some turkeys would be tasty, did anybody catch any,” he told Beverly. “And I’d never say no to possums or nice fat raccoons.”

  “I didn’t see any turkeys,” Beverly said. You could catch them sometimes in snares. Raccoons and possums were hunted at night, but they were hard to find in winter when they holed up in their dens. “I saw lots of folks with sweet potatoes,” he said.

  Peter grunted. “You tell Miss Martha I need a whole bunch. Tell her to buy every sweet potato she can.” He grinned at Beverly. Beverly grinned back. He knew Peter already had all the sweet potatoes he could use, but Miss Martha didn’t know it. “Whatever you see people holding, you tell Miss Martha that’s what I need,” Uncle Peter said. “Got that?”