“Twenty-nine,” counted Martha finally. “Papa, there should be thirty. I know. I counted them twice in Washington.”
“Something has been lost or stolen,” he worried, “and I won’t know what it is until I have emptied every box.”
“I know what it is!” she cried, studying the pile. “It’s that wooden box we packed in your bedroom—there at the last. The one that had all your Indian writing in it.”
“My comparative study of all the Indian languages,” he fretted. “Some one must go back at once. Thomas, send two boys down the river in a canoe tomorrow to search the bank where all these parcels were unloaded from the barge. That Indian work could be valuable. I meant to pursue it further. It must not be lost.”
The lost box was found a few days later. It had been torn open on the muddy river bank and obviously the thieves, seeking for money, had been disappointed in the contents, for the precious papers were torn and scattered far and wide. What little could be salvaged, Martha dried and pressed but little was legible on the sodden sheets.
Thomas Jefferson’s years of study of the Indian tongues was forever lost.
3
Monticello: Summer, 1809
Spring came burgeoning over the Virginia hills, warming quickly into promise of summer. The bulbs Thomas Jefferson and his lost wife Martha had planted so long ago pushed up through the damp earth and the children came running excitedly to call him whenever a bud showed, tight and green-sheathed above its protecting sword blades.
“Grandfather, come quick! The Roman Empress tulip has a big bud showing and a teeny one.”