Barbara Hambly - Patriot Hearts - A Novel of the Founding Mothers

“General Jackson doth seem to be a force of nature,” agreed Dolley.

Sophie sniffed. “The boiled-down quintessence of the worst of the Revolutionary patriots mixed with the worst of the French radicals. No wonder Jefferson came down from his mountain to greet him the other day. You managed to miss him when he was in Congress—Jackson, I mean—not that he was in town long before he resigned and went home in high dudgeon. Jackson and his over-mountain men will run the last of good manners out of the government like a house-fire.”

Dolley thought about what she said, as Eliza Custis Law—who had the distinction a few years ago of being the first woman in Washington City to be divorced—came surging out of the crowd to regale Sophie with the tale of her own sufferings and heroism last August.

It was true, as Payne had said, that Jemmy tended to disappear in crowds. Had Dolley not known where to look—in the corner by the chimney—she wouldn’t have been able to find her husband at all. As it was, it was only because he was with tall Jim Monroe that he was even visible. What kind of Presidentress would the aloof and sickly Elizabeth Monroe make? An epileptic who hesitated to go out into company at all? Sophie said she’d seen a miniature of young Mr. Adams’s wife Catherine—beautiful and accomplished, by all accounts….

“Excuse me, ma’am.” A soft voice spoke at her elbow, with the gentle accent of Virginia. “Are you familiar with this establishment? Could you tell me if there’s so much as a square foot where I might retire and rest, just for a minute—”

“Of course!” Dolley sized up the woman beside her instantly as one of the throngs who’d come pouring into the town to see the General and his family: a planter’s wife from the western counties of Virginia, to judge by the old-fashioned cut of her gown. Her own age, and getting stout, but still very pretty: dark hair framing a soft rectangular face, kindly dark eyes with an echo in them of hardships that had left her weary. “A sort of little parlor lieth just off the stair-landing, that they always set aside for ladies here—at least I hope they’ve remembered to do so tonight! My experience is that whenever one hath a headache, or had someone step on one’s flounce, that’s the occasion when one’s hosts have decided to put the retiring-room in the broom-closet or a corner of the scullery….”

“At least in a public hotel one isn’t going to find the broom-closet’s been turned into a dormitory for the guests’ servants—”

Dolley laughed, remembering the crowds of overnight guests at Montpelier for Francis’s funeral, or at Monticello when Maria wed Jack Eppes.

“To be honest,” her new protégée went on, “if I could return to our lodging I would—I’m not much use at parties. And traveling, I’m always afraid our son will wake alone in a strange place—he’s only six—”

“What’s his name?” asked Dolley, liking the lilt of joyful pride in this woman’s voice when she spoke of her child.

“Andrew. For his father.” And at the sound of General Jackson’s voice from the other side of the room, her eyes softened and changed, and Dolley realized who this had to be.

“Thou’rt not Mrs. Jackson?” she exclaimed.

The woman hesitated, genuinely unwilling to put herself forward, then said, “Yes, I am. I’m sorry—”

Dolley held out her hand impulsively. “And I’m Mrs. Madison. Drat these public assemblies where they haven’t a proper receiving-line. I have so wanted to meet thee.” She recalled someone—Sophie?—telling her there had been some scandal attached to Rachel Jackson’s name—bigamy? But her impression was that the woman had been more sinned against than sinning. In any case General Jackson had already fought a number of duels whose ostensible cause was his wife’s reputation.

And this soft-voiced Virginia lady was a far cry indeed from the pipe-smoking frontierswoman she’d been led to expect, although of course it was perfectly possible that Mrs. Jackson did smoke a pipe in the privacy of her own front porch. She herself would certainly have killed for a pinch of snuff at the moment.

“Rot!” She heard Jackson’s strange, hoarse voice slash out over the general din. “That’s the business of the States, not the Congress. There’s no reason on earth why a State shouldn’t have the sovereign right to—”

Dolley’s eyes met Mrs. Jackson’s. The two women wheeled as one toward the far end of the room, where the red-haired General seemed to be working himself up to the point of physical assault on Congressman Webster beside the punch-bowl. Rachel Jackson headed straight for her husband with the air of one who has matter-of-factly defused a thousand such arguments.

Before Dolley could reach the scene, her sister Anna had appeared as if by magic at Webster’s elbow; Dolley could almost hear her asking breathlessly, as Dolley had taught her, for some information about farming—specific to Webster’s own New England acres. Jackson turned aside at the touch of his wife’s hand on his sleeve.

Beside her, Dolley heard Eliza Custis Law’s booming voice declare, “ Horribly common—”

“Yet men will follow him,” murmured Sophie, reappearing at Dolley’s other side. “I take it the lady in blue is Mrs. Jackson?” Watching the pair of them together, Dolley was startled and touched at the transformation of the General’s cold blue eyes, as he looked down into the face of his wife. “I have this for you,” she added, taking something from her reticule. Dolley saw that it was her old tortoiseshell snuffbox, the one she’d left in the desk-drawer at the Mansion before her flight.

When Dolley looked at her in astonishment, Sophie went on, “I found it only this afternoon, in a pawnshop in Alexandria, when I went to fit Mrs. Harrison for that red dress she’s wearing that makes her look like an animate petunia.”

“A looter must have got to the parlor desk,” said Dolley wonderingly, “before the Mansion was burned. I wonder if they took the Queen’s mirror as well? It was in the same drawer—”

“And is obviously worth twenty times as much,” Sophie reminded her. “I believe we can safely assume that in time, the mirror, too, will return to the light. So it might do to alert Mrs. Jackson to be on the lookout for it, when she returns to Washington as Presidentress herself.” She glanced sidelong at Dolley, then back at Jackson, and sniffed. “God help you—us—all.”

Dolley turned the snuffbox over in her gloved fingers, her own gaze following Sophie’s across to the General and his Rachel.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, I believe God will help us all. In spite of ourselves. Jemmy hath always said that the point of the Constitution—the point of all that we have sacrificed ourselves for—is that no matter who is captain, the ship is able to move forward. And it is the ship, and her cargo, that is important.”

She looked back, smiling, into her friend’s eyes. “They shall play their part, as we have played ours: thou and I both, Sophie. I trust,” she added quietly, “that thou wilt remain to see it?”

“To tell the truth,” drawled Sophie, “I came here tonight intending to tell you that I was returning to England. Since my business here seems to be at an end.” She didn’t say what business, and Dolley didn’t ask.

“But do you know,” she went on, looking about her at the candle-lit room, the illuminated city in the darkness beyond, “I just might find another business, and stay.”

Dolley couldn’t resist the urge to say, “Possibly even dressmaking?” and caught a sidelong glance of startled enlightenment, before Sophie’s features softened into a smile.

“Maybe even that,” Sophie agreed.