Jack hadn’t been persuaded by my pleas nor my father’s cajoling. There wasn’t anything any of us could say to convince Jack that his son wouldn’t be exposed to my husband’s lingering ill will. No, it took someone in the Hemings family. My sister’s maid promised that her aunt Sally would watch over the boy. And Jack trusted his concubine in a way he’d never trust me.
But I counted myself grateful for it, because I never tired of hearing my sister’s laugh in her son’s voice. And every night after Tom returned home and the children were all tucked into bed, we had the best fruits from the orchards with our tea and enjoyed the relative quiet.
The only blot on our happiness was our son-in-law. When Ann married Charles Bankhead, he’d been a student at the law with a promising future. He’d since quit the profession to better appreciate my father’s stock of wine, leaving us to worry for Ann and my new grandson. But my father was fond of Charles and optimistic about his future.
Tom was less charitable. “We made a mistake with that one, Martha. He’ll never go farther than a tavern.”
At the time, I thought it an unkind thing to say, and hypocritical, too, considering my husband so often retreated to drink. I reconsidered my opinion, however, the night my twenty-year-old son came to the table after a day of backbreaking work, during which he nearly put his father into the ground.
Serving great portions of ham onto his plate, Jeff asked, “Grandpapa, do you think war with England is inevitable, now? We can make enough to eat and drink and clothe ourselves, but we can’t have salt or iron without money. Without a market for our wheat, we just feed it to the horses. Tobacco isn’t worth the pipe it’s smoked in. And whiskey . . .” He paused, casting a sly glance at Ann’s husband. “Well there aren’t enough drunks in the world to drink it.”
My son should’ve never given that sly, knowing glance to Charles Bankhead, who guzzled down my father’s brandy as if in defiance of Jeff’s remark. Charles and Tom were both good and drunk that night. So much so that my husband fell into a deep, exhausted slumber before I finished tucking my children into bed in their nursery.
I suppose that’s why I was the first to hear the commotion downstairs.
Coming into the dining room in my bedclothes, I found Bankhead hurling abuses at one of the Hemings boys, my father’s new butler, Burwell. The reason? Poor Burwell refused to serve him more brandy or give him the keys to the wine cellar.
I realize now that Ann must’ve been too afraid to intervene, but at the time, I only wondered where my daughter had got herself to while her husband screamed incoherently.
“Charles!” I hissed. “Everyone’s gone to bed. Surely you don’t mean to drink alone?”
“I do,” Bankhead sneered. Then he picked up a silver candlestick. “And I’ll smash this insolent boy’s skull if he won’t give over the keys.”
Fearful of the certain violence in his voice, I stepped between them. “You’ve had enough to drink, Charles.”
Bankhead brought his reddening face close to mine, then gave me such a shove that I fell against the table, sending a tureen crashing to the floor. Shocked and struggling to right myself, I caught a flash of Burwell’s fierce brown eyes just as his fists clenched, as if he meant to come to my defense.
“Burwell!” I snapped the warning, because a black man attacking a white man in Virginia, even for good cause, would end in utter tragedy. “Go fetch Bacon.”
Edmund Bacon was the overseer on our estate—a burly white man who could help me manage my drunk son-in-law. But Burwell glanced at Bankhead, then back at me, and shook his head, as if unwilling to leave me alone with the drunkard. I had to straighten to my full height. “You do as I say, Burwell. You get on!”
Only when Burwell was gone did I face my son-in-law, who was beyond reason. Charles shoved me again, and this time I knocked over a chair before catching my balance. He still had that candlestick in his hand, and he rounded on me, slamming me into the wall, his hand at my throat, nostrils flaring like a bull. Smelling the liquor on his breath, I stayed very still and breathed very shallowly, my pulse pounding in my ears. He’s going to strangle me, I thought. And that thought seemed to stretch on for an eternity.
Footsteps finally sounded out from behind us, and my son-in-law cried, “Gimme that key, you lazy, good-for-nothing—”
That’s when we saw Tom, his eyes bloodshot with exhaustion, alcohol, and rage. What happened next happened so swiftly, I heard it more than saw it. Tom grabbed up a fire iron and the air parted with the swoosh of its arc. A heavy thunk sounded as metal cracked on a human skull. A crash as Bankhead crumpled to the floor, leaving me gasping as I grasped my throat, standing over the body of our son-in-law as a pool of blood fanned out under my bare feet.
“Dear God!” I cried, horrified by the sight of flesh split from bone. The blow had peeled the skin off one side of my son-in- law’s forehead and face. I dropped to my knees in terror. “You’ve killed him, Tom. You’ve killed him.”