Sally Heming by Barbara Chase-Riboud Read Free Book Online

and crying. I guess this decided Martha
to move to Williamsburg with the masta and then to Richmond, where she again
got pregnant. This left the plantation for me and my son Martin to run alone.
Never knowing when the soldiers would show up or nothing. Coping with slaves
running to join the English right and left, and taking everything they could
eat and anything that weren't nailed down. In November eighty, Martha come home
and Lucy Elizabeth, the first, was born."
     
     
    "Lord, here come the British again. They showed up
again in June eighty-one. Jack Jouett rode all night to reach Monticello with the
news that the British general, Tarlton as I recall, was coming to capture
Thomas Jefferson. Jouett was all cut up from the thickets. He carried them
scars on him to his grave. He was in a state that morning. I cleaned him up and got something to eat in him and then
off he rode. Masta Jefferson sent off Martha and Patsy and Polly and all the
white people to Poplar Forest. You remember that, Patsy? Sally, you stayed with
me. You was scared and trembling something terrible. Thomas Jefferson sat and
had his breakfast at his leisure and then when he saw through his telescope
that the English was coming up the mountain, he got his horse saddled and rode
off toward Carter's mountain. I was the one who met the English at the door.
But I made Martin open it for me. But before that we was running around getting
the silver together for Caesar, who was hiding it under the floorboards. The
English was banging on the door and Martin, he let the plank drop on poor
Caesar, leaving him under the house, trapped underneath the floorboards. He
told me later that he could hear them boards groaning and creaking under them
dragoons' feet. One of the soldiers put a gun to Martin's chest and said he'd
fire if Martin didn't tell him in what direction Masta Jefferson had rode out.
Martin said 'Fire away then!' And poor little Sally thought she was about to
see her half brother shot dead, and she started screaming, but they didn't
shoot anybody. They rode out the next day just as nice as you please, not
taking anything and leaving me and Martin in charge. If I had thought, we could
have hid Thomas Jefferson in Caesar's place! I've often laughed with the masta
about that.
    "Masta Jefferson, he didn't have no more heart for
governing after that. Them militia weren't fighting properly, breaking and
running and deserting, and half of them couldn't shoot straight no-how.
Wouldn't let the slaves fight, those Virginians, although slaves was fighting
on both sides in Maryland and Pennsylvania and Carolina. But those militia
boys, they was just farmers and yeomen and backwoodsmen. They didn't know
anything about fighting a real army with real uniforms and all. It was just a
mess. Then to top it all off, Masta Jefferson fell off Caractacus and was laid
up for six weeks. He's had six horses in his life.
    He loves them bay horses, especially that tall horse with
white hind feet. Well, anyway, he was a changed man after the British raided
the capital. Martha, she was in heaven and hell—that is she was with child
again, even after all the troubles we had after Lucy Elizabeth. This here was
her seventh pregnancy. I didn't leave her for the whole nine, and Masta
Jefferson neither.
    "He put his office up in the little room next to hers
at Monticello to wait it out. Started writing a new book on Virginia. Heard it
said he didn't care much for black folks mixing with white folks. Anyway, about
that time Masta Jefferson sent Martin out after that slave boy Custer, who had
run off to Williamsburg—never did catch him. In May of eighty-two, Martha gave
birth to another girl child and named it after the one she had lost, Lucy
Elizabeth. I didn't say nothing, but I didn't want that name for that child. It
seemed to be a bad omen, and I was right. Lucy survived until the age of four,
but Martha didn't live to see her face but for another seventeen months. Martha
knew she was