Patriot Hearts: A Novel of the Founding Mothers

MARTHA

Philadelphia

Friday, July 27, 1793

Pray, dearest Aunt, do not think worse of me, for prices of all things remain high here and there have been so many expenses. Would I could hold household as you do always and if you will but help us in our difficulty, in future I will do so, I promise. Little Charlie sends his love to his “dear Nuncle” and to that I add my own, and to you, my dearest aunt.

In deepest love and

gratitude——Your Fanny.

Martha sighed, and set the letter down. In the yard a dog was howling, though amid the constant din and confusion of Philadelphia that could mean anything. There were days when she felt that if she were a dog, she’d sit in the yard and howl, too.

Mount Vernon seemed a hundred thousand miles away.

It had rained that afternoon, and the brick pavement of High Street gave back a dense and humid heat. The whole of the summer had been so, wet and dispiriting. Though that had not stopped the mobs that had roved the city streets and waterfronts, either to cheer the arrival of privateers escorting captured British ships to be auctioned off, or to demand that their President declare war on England on behalf of Revolutionary France.

Since April, Martha had dreamed of being locked in a room watching a gunpowder-trail burn toward piled kegs of explosives, helpless to stop it. The situation—not only in Philadelphia, but in all the cities of the United States—was turning George’s hair white. Even the War, she thought, had not been this bad.

And the man behind it—bumptious, obnoxious, and dangerous “Citizen” Édouard Genêt—would almost certainly be at her reception tonight.

He was the Minister of France; she couldn’t very well have the servants throw Genêt out. Much as she’d like to do so.

Dinner was over. In the front of the house—Robert Morris’s house, which both Benedict Arnold and the British General Howe had occupied in turn—the footmen were clearing up the family dining-room. In the kitchen Uncle Hercules, Mr. Hyde, and Mrs. Hyde were in the process of getting coffee, tea, and Martha’s special plum-cake ready for the guests who would begin arriving at eight. Fidas and Austin were putting fresh candles into the sconces and chandelier of the green drawing-room, while Moll made sure twelve-year-old Wash was clean, powdered, and presentable. It was astonishing how disarrayed the boy could get between six and eight o’clock.

In the office next door, Martha could hear George’s light tread as he crossed from desk to window, then back again. Wary and alert as he had been at Cambridge or Valley Forge. Watching the street, over the wall of the garden. Listening for the too-familiar shouting of half-drunken sailors, singing French songs about hanging aristocrats from the nearest lamp-post. The Americans were singing them by rote, she presumed, since most of them didn’t know enough French to ask for water in that language if they were dying. Not that America had many aristocrats to hang, but anybody to whom the singers owed money would do.

But added to the mobs now were the sailors from the French fleet, in port to refit after an attempt to suppress the slave revolts that for two years had been raging in the Caribbean. Citizen Genêt had started his career as Minister Plenipotentiary by coming, not to Philadelphia to present his credentials, but to Charleston, South Carolina. There he had fitted up privateers to prey on British ships, under the French flag. They’d bring the captured ships back to Charleston and auction the cargoes to Americans, who knew no better than to fuel the growing fire of England’s wrath.

For this appalling piece of meddling, Édouard Genêt had been taken to the unwashed bosoms of the working-class political clubs, the so-called “Democratic-Republican Societies” that had sprouted up in every major city, since the start, four years ago, of the Revolution in France.

Tom Jefferson—George’s Secretary of State these days—insisted the clubs were necessary to educate men in the business of making decisions for themselves. Hammy Hamilton—now Secretary of the Treasury—called them “Jacobin clubs,” after the most radical faction of the French National Convention. But they not only discussed politics. More and more, they noisily espoused “fraternal assistance which would expand the Empire of Liberty” (and incidentally bail France out of the dire financial effects of having declared war simultaneously on Britain, Holland, and Spain when her treasury was empty in the first place).

“Fraternal assistance” meant declaring war on Britain again, which even Martha knew the United States simply could not afford to do. When George had issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, the Republicans had followed the French pattern and begun to demonstrate. They demanded that the Proclamation—and, if necessary, the authority of the President—be set aside for the benefit of their beloved France. Genêt’s presence had only served to fan the flames. Upon the arrival of the French fleet in Philadelphia, the Revolutionary Minister had invited its sailors ashore to join the demonstrators.

The sailors had come armed.

Martha might have been completely apolitical, but she knew the situation was a bad one.

She realized she had been listening, too.

No sound from the streets, at least not of shouting or “La Marseillaise.” In the long summer evenings the din of wagons hauling goods in from the docks and of the voices of passersby didn’t quiet down until nearly nine. But she heard her maid’s light tread in the hall outside her door, then the soft tap on the panels and the heavy rustle of velvet and silk that would be her dress for the evening: “Lady Washington?”

“Wait for me, if you would, please, Oney,” she replied, and slipped Fanny’s letter out of sight into a drawer and turned the key on it. “I’m just going to go up and see how Pollie is doing.”

Three years ago, her granddaughters’ plans to marry off their tutor Mr. Lear had finally borne fruit with the arrival of his childhood sweetheart, Pollie Long from New Hampshire. As Tobias Lear had slipped into the role of George’s secretary, so the pretty fair-haired Pollie had become Martha’s. When the capital had moved from New York to Philadelphia the following year—1791—it was Tobias and Pollie who’d come ahead to make sure the Morris mansion on High Street was ready for Presidential occupancy (it hadn’t been), and it was frequently the tactful, gentle Pollie who made sure that Nelly did her lessons and that bread-and-butter letters went out to the Philadelphia hostesses who entertained the President and his family at dinner.

As Martha ascended the back stair that led from the family rooms on the second floor to the offices and bedchambers of George’s secretaries on the third, she heard Tobias’s voice: “…the way the trick riders used to do in ancient Rome, I believe. He rides without saddle, standing on the horse’s back, a lovely gray named Cornplanter…”

By the sound of it, Tobias was keeping Pollie’s spirits up—and her mind off the shouting in the streets—with an account of Mr. Ricketts’s celebrated circus. Pollie had fallen ill three days before, and when her fever was high, the noise of the mobs terrified her. She’d seemed a little better this afternoon, but long experience nursing the sick had taught Martha that fevers frequently shot up as evening drew on.

Her fear was confirmed when she came into the large, light bedroom, and saw Tobias’s face. Pollie turned her head weakly on the pillows. “Lady Washington?”

“How are you feeling, dearest?” Though it was clear by her young friend’s flushed face and restless movements that she was in pain and barely conscious of what was going on around her.

“Lincoln—?” she murmured her little son’s name, and Martha took her hand reassuringly.

“Moll has taken Lincoln down to help her get Mr. Tub ready for the reception, so I imagine he’ll take some dusting off before he can come up to bid you good-night.” Eighteen-month-old Benjamin Lincoln Lear was a general favorite of the household. Since Pollie had taken sick, the boy’d been sleeping in Wash’s room, and Wash had confided to Martha that he was glad to have a little brother to show things to.

“I’ll be up after the reception, to tell you how it all went,” she promised. “In the meantime, I’ll send Moll up with some cool water. I imagine that will make you feel a little better, poor sweet.” Martha had already seen the dishes of rice-pudding and coddled egg, on the tray on the dresser-top, barely touched. “Mr. Lear, I’m sure the General won’t need three secretaries at his side during the reception, so if you’d like to stay here and read to Pollie for a little…You’ll be missed, of course, but it’s entirely up to you to choose. If you want to take a little time at the reception, or just to rest, of course I’ll have Oney come up.”

“I’ll stay here, thank you, Lady Washington.” Tobias got to his feet, to walk her to the door. As they reached it he went on in a softer voice, “She ate nothing of her dinner, and when she uses the chamber-pot there are black streaks in her urine. I know that can’t be right.”

“I shall send Fidas with a note now, asking Dr. Rush to come first thing in the morning.”

Tobias pressed her hand gratefully, and Martha hurried down the stairs in a rustle of silk dressing-gown, cursing again the necessity of appearing at a reception—and having to be polite to Citizen Genêt of all people!—when her place was with her family. With Tobias and Pollie, and poor little Lincoln; with Fanny in the house they owned in Alexandria, coping as well as she could with shaky health and new widowhood. It was no surprise poor Fanny was not doing well: Augustine’s death in February had come barely six weeks after that of Fanny’s father.

Those are the people who need me. Those dear ones, and poor Jacky’s girls—she could hear Eliza’s strident voice crying, “Thief, am I? It is you who seek to rob me, of any chance to achieve my happiness in the world!” and knew she’d be called upon to arbitrate who was going to wear Nelly’s garnets to the reception.

There were times, Martha had confessed to Abigail Adams, when she felt herself to be a State prisoner, forced to watch the sufferings of her loved ones through the bars of her jail.

But George needed her, even more than they. He was a man of iron, but Martha had seen what iron looks like, after four years at the mercy of the sea. At least, in her relatively comfortable cell, she didn’t have to be constantly making decisions of peace or war with a gun held to her head.

George was sixty-one years old. In eight years of leading the Continental Army to war, he had been ill only once. In his first eighteen months in the office of President he had nearly died twice, once when the capital was still in New York, of an abscess whose effects he would simply have shaken off back at Mount Vernon, when he was getting enough rest, and then of pneumonia. And despite that, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Jefferson—whose vicious bickering in the Cabinet had made poor George’s life a living Hell for four years—had both begged George to stand for a second term as President, probably because neither of them could endure the thought of the other possibly coming to power. Martha would cheerfully have assassinated them both and had the servants throw their bodies in the river.

And Jemmy Madison, too, for getting George into this mess in the first place.

And yet as she took her husband’s arm, as muscular in its sheath of black velvet as that of the twenty-six-year-old militia Colonel who had led her to the preacher, thirty-four years ago, Martha had to admit to herself that for the country’s sake, she was glad George had accepted a second term.

She liked John Adams, and the company of his fragile, outspoken, intimidating Abigail had been the only thing that had gotten her through any number of previous receptions. Yet she suspected that the irascible little New Englander would simply have been unable to cope with Citizen Genêt.

“They’re insane! To think that with a single-house legislature the government wouldn’t be torn apart by factions! These political clubs and salons they have—Girondists and Jacobins and Feuillants—all they do is keep the people in a fever—”

“—aristocrats brought it upon themselves, you know—”

“Their treasury is bankrupt! Of course they want the whole of what we owe them paid in a lump—”

Though Martha discouraged politics as a topic of conversation at her receptions, within the first twenty minutes the crowd that gathered in the green drawing-room separated along factional lines like a badly made sauce. The Senators and Congressmen who favored a French alliance and immediate war against Britain—mostly Southerners who mistrusted the strength of the new Federal government and didn’t want to be taxed to pay Massachusetts’s debts—clumped around Thomas Jefferson, who had been Genêt’s champion from the first.

Even in the face of the news in April that the French had killed their King—with a new scientific head-chopping machine, no less!—and had auctioned off locks of his hair from the scaffold, Jefferson would hear no word against the revolutionists in France. The Spirit of Liberty must be served.

“I’ve seen besotted boys less obsessed with their first mistresses, than he with the French,” remarked Alexander Hamilton, eyeing the tall Virginian with loathing across the double parlor. The cocky, golden-haired Headquarters aide whom George loved like a son had put on a little weight since the War, but his dazzling good looks remained. He had gone on to marry one of New York’s richest heiresses, but his interest in money was more than pragmatic. Alex Hamilton was one of the few men Martha had ever met who understood how national finances actually worked. It was his proposals for a National Bank that had put the new nation on the road to solvency.

Jefferson detested him, the Bank, and the powerful central government that was required to make Hamilton’s financial proposals work. Possibly, Martha sometimes thought, this was because Thomas Jefferson was incapable of balancing so much as a household account-book.

“Tom is a man obsessed with Liberty,” said John Adams. “Wherever it may take root.”

“Obsession in any form is deadly,” Hamilton retorted. “It blinds its victims. And personally, I would rather not have a member of our President’s Cabinet listening blindly to the representative of a foreign government that has been trying since 1775 to gain a foothold in our nation’s territory.”

“Hammy,” said Martha firmly, “this is a social occasion, and a man who enters into a political discussion out of season runs the risk of having charges of obsession leveled against himself.” She tapped his elbow with her fan, and gave him her most twinkling smile.

“Lady Washington—” Hammy pointed his toe and made a profound leg. “Your wish as usual is as the Holy Writ to me.” He had a voice like the god Apollo’s would sound, if the deity were trying to talk a woman into bed or a man into the purchase of Bank of New York stock. “Let us confine ourselves rather to a discussion of the new Minister’s utterly deplorable coat. What is it about the Rule of the People that seems to unravel all sense of sartorial propriety?”

“You shall not entrap me into slandering M. Genêt on the grounds of his taste. For all we know, coats such as he wears may be perfectly acceptable in France, as breechclouts are among the savages of the Pacific Islands. Rather, Mr. Adams, tell me how it goes with dear Mrs. Adams. Is she feeling better? Will she be able to return to Philadelphia next year? We have sorely missed her.”

And as Mr. Adams—who despite years as a diplomat had not the smallest talent for social banter—recounted the news and opinions that the always-entertaining Abigail had sent from Massachusetts, Martha let her eye rove over the rest of the drawing-room, as a hostess must. She picked out at once George’s nephew Steptoe, the obstreperous Harriot’s older brother, a handsome boy of twenty-three who’d studied enough law—barely—to get a job with the lean and rather frayed-looking Edmund Randolph, George’s Attorney General.

It was due to his employment with Randolph, Martha presumed, that Steptoe was on the pro-French side of the room. Her nephew’s very proper black velvet suit and powdered hair stood out among the unpowdered locks and less-formal blues and browns favored by that faction. The only other man clothed with perfect formality on that side of the room was little Aaron Burr, newly elected Senator from New York and reputedly the best trial lawyer in that city (though Hamilton also claimed that title). Martha remembered Colonel Burr from Valley Forge. He’d been one of George’s aides for about ten days at Cambridge, before she’d arrived, but had left the General’s household after George came into his tent one day and found the young man calmly reading the papers on George’s desk.

Looking up at her towering nephew, Burr gave the impression that if he took his shoes off he’d have cloven hooves underneath. Martha saw Steptoe hand him something—a note?—which the little man slipped into an inner pocket with a nod and a conspiratorial smile.

Martha sighed. A love-note, no doubt, from some lady of one or the other’s acquaintance. Burr adored his ailing wife, but that apparently didn’t stop him from bedding almost as many women as Hammy did. Steptoe took his meals at the same boardinghouse as Colonel Burr, and Martha earnestly hoped the boy would have better sense than to be led into either vice or those Jacobin clubs whose views the Colonel was said to favor.

On the other hand, she was pleased to see Jefferson had arrived accompanied, not by Citizen Genêt, but by his younger daughter Maria—Mary, the girl had been christened, and only her father still called her Polly these days. A week shy of her fifteenth birthday and delicately pretty, Maria hurried across the drawing-room to clasp Nelly’s hands—they’d been schoolmates in New York and here in Philadelphia—and exchange kisses of greeting, French-fashion, with Eliza and Pattie. In her wake came her cousin Jack Eppes, who was part of Jefferson’s household and acted as a secretary to him.

Indeed, reflected Martha, there were a number of young people here of the next generation: Steptoe, Maria, fourteen-year-old Nelly and her sisters (Eliza still visibly smoldering over Nelly’s claim on the garnets—goodness knew what had become of the pearls that Martha had bought for her at the same time), and Mr. Adams’s youngest son, twenty-one-year-old Tommy, plumpish and amiable and newly fledged as a lawyer. All following in the footsteps of their errant parents, making their lives the best way they could.

It is the next generation, thought Martha, who’ll have to pick up the pieces if we go to war, either with England or, God help us, with France on England’s behalf. It was for them that George had issued his Proclamation of Neutrality, and neither England nor France seemed to understand the meaning of the word: He who is not with me is against me.

“But don’t you see, the French will help us clear the British out of the Great Lakes forts!” Pennsylvania Governor Mifflin’s voice carried over the subdued chatter as footmen, liveried in white and scarlet, came in to light the candles. “They’ve refused for years to live up to the treaty terms that demand them to leave—”

“And you think having the forts in the hands of those lunatics in Paris is going to be an improvement?” countered Robert Morris. “It’s all very well for the French to swear they’ll be our allies, but considering they can’t even keep their own people from murdering one another I doubt they’d be much help to us if the British came back.”

Across the room, Washington signaled Steptoe with a glance and the two of them moved in on the trouble-spot. Before they could reach the Governor and the merchant, however, the drawing-room doors swung open and Citizen Genêt stood framed in them, clothed, not in the long-tailed coat and knee-breeches of polite society, but in trousers, top-boots, and a coat of such military cut as to give the impression of a uniform. A young man—thirty—of medium height, he was, Martha supposed, good-looking enough, except his skin was bad, his teeth worse, and his manners more deplorable than either.

“Citizen Washington!” Édouard Genêt had a voice trained to cut through the hubbub of gatherings and, presumably, frenzied mobs. Martha saw George’s eyes open wide in startlement at this completely undiplomatic form of address, and, at his elbow, saw Jefferson wince. She could almost feel sorry for the man. He had spent the past three months praising Genêt and trying to smooth over the feelings of those he’d offended—and trying to mediate between the Cabinet, the Congress, and Genêt’s increasingly threatening demands.

“You have toyed with me, avoided me, and set your face against the obligations of your country long enough!” Genêt cried, striding forward. “I must and will speak to you, and remind you of your duty—and your country’s duty—not only to the nation to which you owe your liberty, but to Liberty Herself.”

Stunned silence fell on the room. Jefferson, looking as if he were about to become prey to one of his worst migraines, started to move toward Genêt, but Washington raised his hand. His face wore that calm, stony expression that was worse, Martha knew, than shouting rage.

“Please come into my study, Monsieur Genêt,” he said in his most even voice. “I’m sure we will be more comfortable there than among all these people.”

Martha thought for a moment that Genêt would stand his ground—the Frenchman looked like he’d have preferred to make a speech in front of an audience rather than have a private interview—but since he was about to get the conversation he’d demanded he couldn’t very well complain that he didn’t like the venue. As James opened the door for them to the private quarters at the rear of the house, George bowed to the room and said, “If the company will please excuse me.”

In the silence, the quiet closing of the door was like a gunshot. Martha suspected that every person there, had he or she been alone, would immediately have rushed to the study door and put an ear to the keyhole.

She knew she would have.

Instead, she signaled Nelly with her eye, calling her like a general beating commands to troops with a drum in battle. Picked out others she could trust in the room—the lovely Ann Bingham, at twenty-nine Philadelphia’s most prominent hostess; Hamilton’s graceful wife Betsey; Helena Pennington, the wife of one of the wealthiest Quaker merchants; Elizabeth Drinker, virtual queen of Philadelphia’s Quaker society; Elizabeth Powel and Maria Morris and others who ruled the city’s society. Whether their husbands were pro-French or pro-British, these ladies knew, exactly and instinctively, what they had to do, what any woman of proper upbringing would do in a like situation in her own drawing-room: break up the political claques before the entire gathering degenerated into a shouting-match.

Beside her, Adams had turned bright pink with fury and Hamilton’s blue eyes fairly snapped. “Did you see Jefferson’s face? I swear the man is in the pay of the French!”

“Nonsense, Hammy, if Tom were in the pay of the French he wouldn’t be in debt.” Martha laid a gently restraining hand upon the golden man’s elbow. “Now tell me honestly, do you really think when the year 1800 rolls around, there will be any buildings in the new Federal City for us to occupy? Or will poor Mrs. Adams—” She turned with a smile to her husband’s Vice President, “—be obliged to hold her receptions in a tent?”

Hammy looked as if he were about to rail at her: How could she possibly speculate about domestic architecture when Philadelphia stood on the brink of erupting into flaming riot with an invading force of French sailors? But furious as he was—and Hammy had a vicious temper—the Secretary of the Treasury knew better than to shout at any lady at a reception, much less the wife of the man who had been his Commander in Chief for almost twenty years.

“I’m sure it won’t come to that, Lady Washington,” he replied, with a steely rictus of a smile. “The rest of us may be dwelling in tents, but I’m sure the Senate will organize a barn-raising, as they do on the Ohio frontier.” And he inclined his head to his lovely Betsey, who appeared at his side to take his arm.

Martha had lived on a plantation long enough to know that the best way to keep a bull from charging is to bring his favorite cow into his line of sight. She turned her attention to Adams. The room was quieting down, though no one left. After some twenty minutes the inner door opened again and George returned, escorting Édouard Genêt with every appearance of cordiality through the room—unobtrusively permitting him to talk to no one—and to the head of the stairs. There, after a firm handshake, the footmen took over and saw him out.

Within minutes, Jefferson, Jack Eppes, and Maria made their good-nights. Jefferson was pale and looked ill. “And why shouldn’t he?” demanded Hamilton snidely. “He’s been urging everyone in the Cabinet for weeks to give Genêt money to fund a French expedition against Canada and Louisiana.” He spoke loudly enough to make certain Jefferson heard. Martha saw the Secretary of State’s back stiffen, as he paused in the doorway, but Jefferson didn’t turn back.

In his wake, Aaron Burr and young Steptoe Washington departed together, heads close in soft-voiced talk.

Martha didn’t learn the content of the conversation with Genêt until late the following day, and by that time, she had other matters to worry about. After the reception was over and Oney had undressed her, locked up her jewels, and brushed the powder from her hair, she spent most of the night sitting up with Pollie. She, the maid, and Tobias took it turn and turn about, to sponge the sick woman’s body with cool water, or as cool as they could manage from the well. By morning Pollie seemed to rest a little easier, but there were times when she barely seemed to recognize those around her. Just after full daylight Dr. Rush arrived and bled her. It didn’t seem to relieve the fever, but she did sink into sleep.

Martha would have liked to do the same.

Every woman who had been at the reception, however, came to call, and Martha got all the political clamor she—and they—had succeeded in quashing the previous evening. This morning, at least, she was spared red faces, foul language, and the danger of anyone calling anyone out. “It isn’t as if M’sieu Genêt doesn’t know any better,” sniffed Lucy Knox, the Secretary of War’s stout, outspoken wife. “Ann Bingham tells me his father was the head of the Bureau of Translations under the King, and his sister a lady-in-waiting to the poor Queen.”

“I was barely able to shut my eyes all night,” gasped Eliza, “for sheer terror through the dark hours…”

“You certainly gave a good impression of being able to,” said Nelly imperturbably. “You snore. Will you have sweet cakes, Mrs. Knox, or bread and butter?”

“I do not snore!”

“I hear you through the wall.”

“Mrs. Washington.” James the footman appeared in the doorway, imposing in his livery and snowy powdered wig. He’s coming up on his six months, thought Martha, in a combination of annoyance and regret. Due to Pennsylvania’s law that any slave dwelling there would be declared free after six months, she found herself obliged to send each of the servants back to Mount Vernon periodically on a variety of trumped-up errands. It played havoc with her housekeeping and irritated her at a deeper level, that the laws of property would be one way in one state, and different in another. Wasn’t that what the new Constitution was supposed to fix? It was particularly maddening because she didn’t want to be living in Philadelphia in the first place. The British had never paid them for slaves they’d carried off during the Revolution, either.

“Yes, James, what is it?”

The footman stepped close—which in itself told her there was some sort of problem that would need sorting out—and held out his salver to her. The single card on its polished surface read, Mrs. John Todd. “Two ladies are here asking to see you, ma’am. A Mrs. Todd, and a Mrs. Payne.” His face was absolutely immobile and his voice without inflection.

Something was definitely amiss.

“Eliza, dearest, would you take over for me?” Martha asked. “I shall see Mrs. Payne and Mrs. Todd in the dining-room, James.” Even with all the additions she and George had requested to the red-brick mansion, there still wasn’t really enough room for their extended family, especially when Pattie and Eliza came to visit.

The question of tea for the newcomers would, of course, be decided when she ascertained who they were. It wasn’t only rioters bent on demanding war with France who came to the door of the red-brick house on High Street. As had been the case at Mount Vernon, old soldiers who had served with George would sometimes appear, or visitors from other towns whom Martha had never seen in her life.

Martha seated herself at the family dining-room’s small table and folded her hands. A moment later James ushered in a tall, powerfully built woman in the rusty black of home-dyed mourning: cotton chintz in the cut of a respectable working-woman’s dress. Behind her, the young woman who was clearly her daughter—and taller still—was also in mourning, though her gown was more fashionably cut and of far better fabric. The black must have been hellish in the morning’s heat, but it complemented the younger woman’s porcelain-fair complexion and jewel-blue eyes, and the sable curls neatly confined under a plain cap. Certainly the softer modern lines suited her extremely advanced state of pregnancy.

More advanced, Martha judged, than was proper for a woman to be walking abroad, unless the matter were quite serious indeed.

“Mrs. Washington.” The older woman held out her hand. Properly gloved, Martha saw, though the glove was worn and mended, and, like the dress, home-dyed black. It left smudges on Martha’s lace mitt. “I am Mrs. Payne; please excuse me, that I have no card.” A Virginian, by her soft drawn-out vowels, and well-bred. “My daughter, Mrs. John Todd, the wife of a lawyer of this town.”

“I see thee stare in amazement, Mrs. Washington,” added Mrs. Todd, with a fleeting sparkle in her blue eyes. “But if there can be Quaker generals, surely there can be Quaker lawyers.”

And Martha smiled back, though Mrs. Payne’s lips tightened at her daughter’s wit. Tightened resignedly, as if in losing battle against an incurably spritely nature. The mother went on, “For two years now I have operated a boardinghouse on Third Street; a number of gentlemen of the Congress have rooms there, and many more take their meals with us. Among them is thy nephew, Mr. Steptoe Washington. ’Twas there that he came to know my daughter Lucy.”

Martha shut her eyes. It was an opening line straight out of a romantic novel, the kind that involved some calculating harpy—frequently a boardinghouse landlady—turning up on the doorstep of a silly young man’s wealthy family crying the seduction and rape of her daughter.

Yet one look at Mrs. Payne’s lined face and grief-filled eyes told Martha this was no entangling madame out for a wealthy family’s hush-money.

“What’s happened?” she asked gently. “How far has it gone? And James,” she added, raising her voice slightly, “please bring tea for myself and my guests.”

When the servant left, Mrs. Payne silently handed Martha a note.

Dearest Mother, said the rather unformed hand. By the time thou readst this I shall be far from home, and a married woman.

“My daughter is fifteen,” said Mrs. Payne. “We found her bed empty this morning. This note was on the sideboard as we cleared up after breakfast.”

Into Martha’s mind snapped at once the image of her nephew, handing a note to little Aaron Burr. Of the two men leaving together, almost furtively, in the wake of Jefferson’s departure. “Is Senator Burr one of your guests?”

Mrs. Payne seemed startled at the guess. “He is so indeed, and a good friend of our family. Colonel Burr is one of the few men I’ve met who doth share my opinion on the education of young women.”

And how many other notes, Martha wondered, suddenly effervescent with wrath, has the Senator carried between my nephew and his landlady’s daughter?

She leaned across the table and took Mrs. Payne’s hands. Hard hands, beneath the glove-leather, probably work-calloused the way Abigail Adams’s were by years of lye soap. “Mrs. Payne,” she said, “I promise you, you have nothing to fear. Steptoe is a harebrained boy, but he’s no seducer. His word is his bond.”

Which wasn’t entirely true, at least as far as his gambling debts were concerned. But in this case George would jolly well see to it that Steptoe’s word was his bond, even if it did mean bringing another under-aged child—and the daughter of Aaron Burr’s landlady at that!—into the family, as Jacky had long ago done.

“If he has promised marriage to your daughter, he will indeed hold to it.”

At this Mrs. Payne turned her face aside and wept. Disengaging her hands, she rose quickly and hurried from the room, leaving Martha disconcerted.

The pretty Mrs. Todd rose, as if to follow her, then turned back. “Mrs. Washington, I thank thee, more than I can say, and my mother, too. I know thy nephew’s a well-meaning boy—I am often at Mama’s house, and know many of her guests. ’Tis not that Mama is ungrateful, to thee or to the President, for whatever thou canst do on Lucy’s behalf. But Mama—She is a good member of the Congregation of Friends, and hath spent her life trying to lead us in the path of righteousness. And for marrying outside the Congregation, Lucy will be ‘read out,’ ejected from the Meeting and from all the Society. In saving her daughter’s honor, my mother hath lost her child, and I my sister.”

She held out a gloved hand to Martha: black kid, newer than her mother’s, and leaving no mark where it touched. “Nevertheless I thank thee, ma’am. And though I see in thine eyes that thou hast thy doubts—as who would not, for Steptoe is but a boy—I can at least promise thee, that thou wilt have for thy niece one of the sweetest jewels that ever God made.”

When the two ladies had gone Martha returned to her drawing-room, excused herself to the ladies there, and drew Nelly aside. “I need you to come with me to your cousin Steptoe’s lodgings—and not a word to the others, please. We’ll take Richmond with us, I think. Goodness knows, after last night, what sort of trouble may be brewing in the streets.”

But as they walked the three or four blocks to Steptoe’s lodgings the streets were quiet, though men clustered around the doors of the taverns favored by the Democratic-Republicans, and angry voices could be heard inside. When George had refused to pay the French the whole of America’s war debt to fund an invasion of Spanish Louisiana, broadsides had begun appearing. They called the American people to rise against Washington’s “despotism”—to overthrow it, if necessary, in the cause of a liberty that only a strong alliance with France could provide. The freedom of this country is not secure, trumpeted the Columbian Gazetteer, until that of France is placed beyond the reach of accident.

God only knew where it would end. It was said that the French Queen was in one of the most wretched prisons of Paris now, awaiting execution. The whole world, it seemed, stood on the brink of flames.

At Steptoe’s lodgings, the landlord informed them that young Mr. Washington had departed early that morning. He would be gone some weeks, he had said. No, he hadn’t said where.

“Harewood,” said Martha grimly, as she, Nelly, and Richmond retraced their steps back toward High Street. Harewood Plantation—originally owned by George’s younger brother Sam whose death back in 1782 had thrown the care of Steptoe, Lawrence, and Harriot onto George in the first place—lay in the western part of Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. It was a week by carriage. “When your grandpapa returns we’ll see about sending a messenger. Not Mr. Lear,” she added, her face clouding. Since Dr. Rush had left, Martha had been upstairs to Pollie’s room two or three times, and found the girl whispering with fever, even in her sleep.

“Will Pollie be all right?” asked Nelly. Walking at Martha’s side in her schoolgirlish white muslin, she had already, Martha reflected, the demeanor of a young woman. And then, more softly, “Will everything be all right, Grandmama?”

Martha tried to remember the things that had troubled and frightened her when she was fourteen. Her father’s constant worries about his debts to British factors and whether the tobacco-crop would cover them; the never-ending fear of a slave uprising, or of individual slave vengeances. The fact that, at fourteen, she was being fitted with the corsets and dresses of womanhood with an eye to finding her a husband.

Nothing like the new and uncertain world Nelly faced.

“There have been many times in my life,” she answered, “when I’ve wondered if things would be all right. When your grandpapa rode away to the Congress for the first time, and ran the risk of being hanged as a traitor to the King. And later, every summer during the War, when I’d hear of this battle or that, or that dreadful winter at Valley Forge when the Army was deserting a regiment at a time.”

When Patcy died, and all the world was darkness…

“And things all did work out, you know,” she went on briskly. “For better or for worse, spring always came after winter. I suspect it will again this year.”

“You’re right, Grandmama.” Nelly took a deep breath, and straightened her shoulders. In a very grown-up voice she added, “One must keep these things in due proportion.”

They turned the corner onto High Street, and behind them, Martha could hear the voices of the French sailors, shouting around the taverns: “Vive la Liberté!” and the smashing of glass.

When they reentered the house, with the thick heat of afternoon stifling in the high-ceilinged hall, Martha’s first question of James was, “How is Mrs. Lear?” and then, before she even removed her bonnet, “Is the President home yet?”

“Mrs. Lear’s no better, ma’am, but no worse I don’t think.” The footman’s eyes flickered nervously as he spoke, as if he had heard some kitchen rumor—about the rioting? about Pollie’s sickness?—from other slaves. “The President come in a few minutes ago. He’s up in his study.”

George’s study was part of the private area of the house, divided off from the rest as their bedroom and dressing-room were at Mount Vernon. Since his days as a retired Hero of the Revolution, they had learned that this was the only way in which he could ever get anything done.

“Patsie.” He stood as she came in, then bent his tall height to bestow a kiss on her cheek.

“Did you speak to Mr. Jefferson?”

He nodded. “I found him in his office, with M. Genêt, who seemed to be repeating to him all he had said to me last night. Which was, in effect, that the Proclamation of Neutrality annulled the most sacred treaty with the French people, by which they’d sworn to defend us and which they had honorably kept.”

Martha had suspected as much, but George had been far too angry last night before bed to give her details.

“I suspect he was trying to pump Tom for information about my plans,” George went on, seating himself again at his desk and drawing Martha down to sit on his knee. The office’s curtains were shut, in an effort to keep in some of last night’s fugitive cool. In the shadowed corners of the room Martha could hear the whine of mosquitoes, which hovered in brown clouds around every puddle and rain-barrel in the city.

“When Genêt was gone, Tom offered to resign.”

“He’s been offering to do that,” remarked Martha tartly, “since he himself stepped off the boat from France.”

“This time I accepted.” George rubbed a big hand over his eyes. Every time Martha had waked last night, she’d seen him awake, sitting by the tight-shuttered window, or visible only as the wan ghost of a single candle’s light reflected through the door of his study.

Yet he’d been up as usual in the gluey half-dark before dawn, when through the window the first sounds of milk-carts rattled up from the street and the clank of the well-chain sounded in the yard.

“I don’t believe for a moment the rumors that Tom’s in French pay, any more than I believe the ones that Mr. Hamilton sells information to the English. Yet Jefferson knows Genêt has gone too far. I have asked him to stay on until the end of the year, since he is the man most knowledgeable about the French, and he has agreed. And I’ve called a meeting of the Cabinet for tomorrow. We will draft a formal letter to Danton asking for Genêt’s recall. A letter of which I will not inform M. Genêt,” George added quietly, “until just before the Congress adjourns in September, lest one of his pet privateers should accidentally sink the vessel carrying it, somewhere on the high seas.”

“So what will happen?”

“That remains to be seen. But as I told M. Genêt, neither I nor the Congress will be dictated to by the politics of any nation under Heaven.” He was silent for a moment, gazing into the gloom of the study, and the sharp blade of light where the curtains fell imperfectly together. Then his arm tightened around her waist, as if for reassurance that whatever his Secretary of State might do and however badly the nation to which he had given his life might fracture, Martha at least was there, as she had been through all the years of the War.

“A trying morning,” he said. “I trust you passed a more pleasant one?”

“Well,” said Martha slowly, “not precisely.”

The following morning, the French fleet sailed. For New York, it was said, to refit and reprovision. It was also said, in the newspapers favorable to Washington, Hamilton, and a British alliance, that their intention was to divide, and use New York as a base from which to attack Spanish Florida and Louisiana, and British Canada.

Only a fool would fail to see that it was against New York that the British would counterattack, with the largest and strongest Navy in the world.

The United States had not a single ship.

The same day—muggy, hot, and whining with mosquitoes—Martha ordered the light town-carriage harnessed, and, accompanied by Nelly, was driven down High Street, past the old brown-brick steeple of the former State House where the Congress now met, to the pleasant brick house on Walnut Street where the lawyer John Todd lived with his wife.

“I do thank thee for coming.” Dolley Todd rose from her chair in the neat little parlor—what was locally called a “tea-room”—and held out her hands to Martha as the girl who’d met them at the door showed her and Nelly in. Though fairer and more delicately made than Mrs. Todd, the girl had the same porcelain complexion and tip-tilted eyes. And because, like Mrs. Todd, she, too, wore black, Martha guessed that it was their father who was lately dead. “My mother thanks thee for thy trouble, and for the honor of thy coming. I know ’tis not a usual thing, for the wife of the President to pay calls. Yet Mama sends her regrets, that she is not able to meet thee here. Please excuse her,” the younger woman went on, her blue eyes filled with compassion and concern. “This matter of Lucy hath grieved her deeply. Too deeply, I think, for her to speak to anyone just now. Indeed, she hath said to me, more than once, that my sister is to her as one dead.”

Dolley Todd led Martha to one of the room’s comfortable chairs, upholstered in straw-colored dornick; though plain, as all Quaker dwellings were supposed to be and frequently weren’t, the room radiated simple comfort and exquisite taste. Muslin curtains were hung over the book-case against the city’s summer dust, and also mitigated the glare and heat of the windows. The tea-pot and cups that the young girl—“My dearest sister Anna,” Mrs. Todd introduced her with a smile—brought in were blue-and-white China-ware, and the tea, first-class.

While Anna drew Nelly into quiet conversation on the other side of the room, Mrs. Todd poured out tea for herself and her older guest: “Hast thou heard anything, of thy nephew and Lucy, Lady Washington?”

Martha nodded. “The President sent another of his nephews in pursuit of them. We did manage to find the minister who performed the ceremony, so you can at least reassure your dear mama that a ceremony was performed.”

“I had no doubt that it had been,” replied Dolley softly. “As I said yesterday, I have met young Mr. Washington at Mama’s, and I knew well before thou said it, that he is no seducer—at least not of an innocent girl,” she added, with a wry twinkle of regret with which Martha heartily concurred.

As for roving young matrons or ladies of a certain class, well, thought Martha, that might be a different story. Of course she couldn’t say so, but meeting Dolley’s eye, didn’t think she needed to.

She began to like this young woman tremendously.

“ ‘Minister,’ thou sayst,” went on Dolley after a moment. “Not a Quaker, then?” and Martha shook her head.

“Anglican. But perfectly respectable—”

“Oh, yes, yes of course!” Dolley hastened to agree. “And yet, to the Meeting, a ‘hireling priest,’ as they say.” And she fell silent, caught as her mother was, between her faith and her love. “We are taught—we girls—that we must wed within the Congregation, or if we wed outside of it, as my mother did, we must bring our husbands to the fold.” Her half-bemused smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, as if in spite of her grief something irrepressible inside her couldn’t help catching a glimpse of the joy of life. “I think we may agree that this is, in the case of young Mr. Washington, unlikely in the extreme.”

Martha said slowly, “I understand—at least, I should like to think I understand your mother’s feelings: I should be most upset for instance if Nelly took it into her head one day to marry a Mohammedan, though I assume there are good men and bad in every faith. Yet I have lost a daughter myself. And though I would never say as much to your mother, it is one thing to declare ‘She is dead to me’ because she’s left the Church or the house, and another for that child, that daughter, to actually be dead. There is…no coming back from that.”

“No,” whispered Dolley, and laid a hand, in an almost protective gesture, on her belly where her own child slept. “No, I know that.”

“You were fortunate to have found a man you loved within the Congregation,” said Martha after a moment.

The lovely blue glance touched hers for a moment, then ducked away. “Aye,” Dolley said. “For five years poor John courted me faithfully. He is a good man.”

Did Mr. John Todd, like Dolley’s mother, purse up his lips at his wife’s bubbling humor or admonish her on the stylish cut of her gowns? Would he, like the widowed Mrs. Payne, refuse to admit the erring Lucy to his house, when and if she returned to Philadelphia? He is a good man is a very different statement from, I love him, though it was clear that this beautiful, sparkling woman was a loving wife. But the light of joy shone from her face only when she touched her belly again, and smiled at the thought of the baby there.

“When will he be born?” asked Martha, who could never see a baby or a child without a pang of envy, a surge of joy.

“She, if it please thee!” And both women laughed. “Mother, and John, and Anna—” She nodded with a smile at her sister, “—talk as if ’tis inscribed in gold somewhere that I’ll birth another boy. But since I know the child I bear is matchlessly perfect…” She gestured like a tragedienne at the exaggeration, “…it cannot be a son, for I have already borne the most perfect son the world has ever seen, at least for nigh onto eighteen hundred years. Although,” she added with a sigh, “Mama would have it that I do little Payne no good by telling him so. And perhaps she is right.”

The news that there was another child in the house had its usual effect on Martha, and little Payne Todd, seventeen months old, was immediately sent for, accompanied by the fourth Payne sister, a bright-eyed twelve-year-old named Mary. It was wonderful to spend an hour with a toddler, and this one seemed to have inherited all his mother’s considerable charm. Soon Martha found herself calling Dolley “dearest” and slipping into the Quaker “thee” and “thine,” and Nelly, Anna, and Mary gave up trying to carry on ladylike conversation and got out a game of Fox and Geese, at which Anna beat Martha and everyone else soundly.

“It feels like months since I’ve laughed so much,” remarked Martha, as Dolley walked her down the stairs. “It reminds me of how much I miss Mount Vernon, and my niece and her little boy, and quiet evenings out on the piazza instead of holding court every Friday night.”

Dolley’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ve not spoken to a woman in Philadelphia who hath not said thy receptions are marvelous.”

“Thank you, my dear.” Martha tucked up a strand of hair under her cap, which little Payne’s happy fingers had dislodged. “I’m glad people think so, for I do like to do a good job of work. And it is my work, you know, the way it’s your mother’s work to make sure all those poor Senators and Congressmen who’re away from their wives get a decent dinner.”

Dolley nodded, her sunny face thoughtful as she opened the door onto Walnut Street. “Rather like the man who dresses the stage at the theater, in fact. People don’t see just the actor who speaks, but the whole of the stage, though I don’t think but one in a hundred doth realize ’tis so. They’ll listen differently to—and think differently of—a speech if ’tis said on a wild heath or a battlefield, than if it’s spoken in a drawing-room with dirty curtains.”

“Exactly!” This young woman was the first person, Martha reflected, who understood, other than George. Even Nelly—at the moment bidding farewell to Anna and Mary on the flagway beside the carriage, and kneeling to kiss little Payne. Though she strove to be a good organizer, Nelly regarded their task as a social one rather than political. It was something every man’s wife, in good society, must do.

But in the eyes of this Quaker lawyer’s wife, Martha saw something else: the comprehension of how a political theme must be played—and constantly improvised—in a social key.

“It is my work to make the President look his best. It is my work to make those Spanish and Danish lords go away from the mansion saying, He may not have been born a King, but the office—and the nation—has a dignity that I must respect. To make Congressmen say, Here is a man of worth, whose words are not only important, but true. And you can’t get people to say things like that by telling them so, because people frequently don’t believe things they’re told—except by those dreadful newspapers! People must be shown, in order to believe things in their hearts.”

“What a marvelous task.” Dolley’s eyes were shining.

Martha was about to retort, YOU try getting a roomful of politicians to stop arguing when a scoundrel like Citizen Genêt walks in and insults your husband, but she didn’t.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, it is.”

“And one no man could do.”

Their eyes sparkled in mutual complicity, and impulsively, Martha clasped her tall hostess’s hands.

“Steptoe and Lucy will be welcome guests in my home whenever they come to Philadelphia, you know.” Austin helped her into the cream-colored carriage. His livery and powdered wig, and the fineness of the chestnut horses, were yet another unspoken message, for all the town to see. “I shall send you a note, shall I, when they’re in town? Perhaps Mr. Todd might be prevailed upon to dine?”

“I doubt John would,” replied Dolley. “He hath a most conscientious regard for the opinion of the Congregation.” But her blue eyes warmed at the thought of a venue in which she might see her sister again, away from the censure of the disappointed family. “He can have no objection to my paying a morning-call, though.”

“Then you shall pay as many morning-calls as you please. And please bring little Payne, and his new sister, as well.” As Austin clucked to the horses, Martha looked back to see Mrs. Todd in her black dress on the step, holding Payne by the hand, her sisters flanking her, and everyone waving as if they’d all been friends for years.

She would have to write Lucy a note at Harewood, thought Martha, and ask the new bride to come soon. And she needed also to write to poor Fanny, not only sending her the money she’d asked for, but reassuring and advising her. She felt a pang of regret that Dolley Todd would in all probability not be able to visit until after her confinement. It would be good to have babies in the house again.

But before Martha’s letters were even sent, all things had changed, and even the deadly antics of Citizen Genêt came to seem like those of an ill-mannered child banging on a pot.

Two days after Martha’s visit to Dolley, Pollie Lear died.

And within days, other people, rich and poor, black and white, began to die, all over the town.

The fever summer had begun.