Ten years he had had before she faded away, and he had been too much away from home in those years. First as a member of the rebellious House of Burgesses that had been peremptorily dissolved by Governor Dunmore. That assembly had marched off to hold meetings in the tavern and out of their angry discussions had grown the idea of the Colonial Congress.
Their first year had brought him his little daughter, the other Martha who had been promptly called Patsy because there were already two Marthas, her mother and her aunt, Jefferson’s sister.
For too much of the time, Jefferson knew now, he had kept to himself when he was at home, shut away with his books. Out of the works of the old and new philosophers and historians he had striven to evolve some plan that could help a troubled America. While hammering went on around him, as the house of his dreams slowly took form and shape, he had struggled to put his ideas into words. But the essay he finally evolved with much labor was called too bold by the members of the assembly. Then, in that miasmic summer of ’73, the fever had laid him low and his best friend, Dabney Carr, had died.
I left her too much alone, he told himself as he watched the fire burn low. She had been ill so often, weak and sorrowful because of the loss of three children, two stillborn, while he was off riding for days to reach Philadelphia, there to have a part in the birth of the new nation. Now that nation lived, but a part of his life was forever dead and lay on that grassy slope down the climbing road.
A loud knock at the door broke off his gloomy reverie. The door was pushed open and Burwell pushed his head in hesitantly.
“Mister Tom, it past one o’clock,” the old Negro complained, “and they got that horse out here waiting for you so long he done pawed a hole mighty nigh deep enough to bury hisself.”
“Sorry, Burwell.” Jefferson jumped up. “I was just sitting here thinking about old times. I’ll ride now as soon as I change my breeches.”
“Yes, suh, Mister Tom. I done looked everywhere for you. Then I seen this little bitty smoke comin’ out this yere chimney. Ain’t been nobody in this little room for a time now ’cept Miss Martha. She fetch the gals in here to clean it up good before you come home.”
“There won’t be anybody in here from now on, Burwell. Cover this fire so it will be safe. This place is too full of ghosts and ghosts are sad company when you are getting old.”
“Law, you ain’t old, Mister Tom,” protested the slave, shoveling ashes carefully over the dying embers. “You peert as a lot of young men. Might get you a young wife yet. Out in the quarters the people been saying, now Mister Tom come home for good likely he get him a lady of his own. Miss Patsy, she a fine woman but she got Mister Tom Randolph and all them chillen and you ain’t got nobody.”