Dragging a chair close to my father, I collapsed into it, then took his aging hand in mine—the one that had been broken and disfigured for foolishness in France over a different married woman. “Papa, I’ll never let you do this thing.”
His chin bobbed up. He was the president. The most powerful man in the country, and a master of his own destiny. Who could stop him from doing anything? Certainly, it wasn’t the place of a daughter to tell a father what he must or must not do. But it was my place. It had always been my place to pull him back from the abyss.
Perhaps he knew it, because his expression crumbled. “Oh, Patsy.”
“You wrote to me because you knew I’d never let you duel Mr. Walker. So what does he want other than your blood?”
My father’s shoulders rounded and drooped. “He wants me to publicly admit my fault and declare his wife innocent—which she was. She rebuffed my advances. The wrongdoing was entirely mine.”
“Perhaps then, you ought to confess it.” I’d advised him to deny Sally Hemings, but Mrs. Walker was a white woman, and the circumstances were not ongoing. An appeal to pragmatism was unlikely to move him, given his guilty heart, so I argued, “Admit it for Mrs. Walker’s sake. If she’s innocent, a gentleman would do no less than clear her name.”
His gnarled fingers tightened on mine, but he didn’t answer.
“That will have to be enough for Mr. Walker, Papa. Because dueling isn’t for fathers or for those charged with other great moral concerns. Do you remember in Paris how you pleaded with me to choose you over a life in the nunnery, though I felt called by God?”
He nodded, made sheepish by the reminder.
“Well, you’re only being called by Mr. Walker.”
My father sputtered in soft laughter, and brought my hand to his lips to kiss. “He’s one of a thousand hounds baying for my blood.” He still felt besieged. He had virulent enemies in Congress, not least of whom was the pretentiously styled Randolph of Roanoke. “I need you there with me, Patsy. In Washington City. I hesitate to ask it of you, because I know you’ve long wished that I wouldn’t seek public office . . . but I need you with me.”
“You must never hesitate to ask anything of me, Papa,” I said, making my mind up at once. Your father needs a first lady, Dolley Madison had once said to me. I hadn’t wanted to hear it. I’d spent half my life resenting my father’s political career. Why, I hadn’t even congratulated him when he was elected to the presidency.
Some part of my resentment was worry for how public service had dwindled our family fortune. Another part was the sullen memory of a young girl in France whose father answered her every political inquiry with silence. But I was no longer a girl, and he’d never dream of discouraging my political curiosity now; if anything, he filled his letters to me with all the news of the day to ensure I was informed.
My father had changed, and so must I.
My mother, in her final breaths, had tried to make me understand that my father was a great man. But he might not be remembered as one if his presidency failed. I couldn’t let it fail— not if everything my family had suffered and sacrificed were to mean something in the end.
Papa and I were seated like that, close and affectionate, when Tom burst in the door. “Martha!” Tom cried, fixing me with a glower. Then, to my father, he said, “She rode out like a madwoman before I could stop her.”
“Just in time to pull me back from the edge,” Papa murmured.
I’d always done it and I always would.
TOM DIDN’T WANT ME TO GO TO WASHINGTON CITY.
He had good reason, in that our financial situation was bleak. As a congressman, Tom only made six dollars a day, and saved on expenses only by living in the President’s House with my father and Jack Eppes. Meanwhile, the Hessian fly had come to Virginia and laid waste to our wheat, leaving us nothing to sell, and scarcely enough to make bread or lay grain away to feed us for the year. Tom’s sister Jenny found an upright man to marry, which meant my husband felt honor bound to pay an enormous dowry.
And because Tom wasn’t willing to sell Varina, our creditors were at the door. Add the fact that I was pregnant again, and my husband had good reason to worry about the expense of bringing his growing family to Washington City.
By this time, baby Mary was talking. Six-year-old Cornelia was already an artist with her pencils. Whip-smart Ellen had moved on from Latin to debating with her grandpapa. Jeff was old enough to run errands but not yet strong enough to be a real help to his father. And my pretty Ann was now a lady of fourteen, of age to come out into society.