It would be exciting, Emily was thinking, to live in that new president’s palace in Washington. The British had burned it in retaliation for the sack of Toronto by the American forces, but it had been rebuilt, finer than ever, she had heard, and now it was as important as Buckingham Palace. Aunt Rachel had no wish to be a queen in a palace. Only too well Emily knew that aunt Rachel would be an unhappy queen.
“But I would love it!” she said suddenly aloud.
Silks and satins, servants bowing, diplomats with medals and ribbons on their gleaming shirt bosoms, sentries and bands playing, her thoughts raced and thrilled.
If only she and Jack could be guests in that palace! It was wonderful even to think about. She sat in a roseate dream for a chilly half hour, while her own fate hovered near, unfathomed. The fate that would make her, Emily Donelson, a young queen in a palace—and an unhappy queen!
3
On Christmas Eve the servants all grew tense and garrulous with excitement. The field workers, freed from toil for three days, were in and out of their cabins, hanging around the kitchen door till Betty’s sharp tongue sent them packing. The rain had ended but the day was bleak and cloudy with the air bringing a threat of snow. But a wind rose and though it whined in the great chimneys and sent whorls of smoke and ashes drifting out into the rooms, Rachel was grateful for the wind.
At least it would dry up the mud so that the rutted, marshy road out to the Hermitage would be passable for the carriages and wagons of the Christmas guests. Some who had a long way to come would arrive before night, and there was a frantic activity of black women airing blankets, ironing the stored dampness out of bed linen, making down pallets in the upper rooms and even in the hall. George lugged in ticks freshly stuffed with hay and these were beaten flat with whacking brooms before feather beds and quilts were spread over them.
The long tables in the dining room were set with the second-best linen and china. The ceremonial draping with the finest cloths would wait for Christmas morning. In the cellar the General and black Joey counted bottles of Madeira, of good Jamaica rum and peach brandy, broached charred kegs of whisky pounding in spigots, filling jugs that would be set out for the holiday “dram” for every slave on the plantation.
In the smokehouse Rachel directed the slicing of the heavy slabs of fat middling that would go, one to every cabin. There would be a chicken for each family too, and this year every hand on the place would be measured for a new pair of shoes. The shoemaker would come and stay for weeks and the smell of the cured hides would be heavy on the air, but at least every one of the more than a hundred black feet would be shod. That was the big worry for Rachel, shoes. In summer the field hands preferred to trudge behind a plow or drag a cotton sack barefooted, but in winter the frosty ground brought chills and lung fevers and there was an endless sound of coughing in the quarters and inevitably some of the people died.
A fearful responsibility, all these black souls, but today they were all happy and noisy, adding to the confusion in the house by their laughter and singing—singing hushed whenever the voice of the master was heard belowstairs but begun again as soon as a door slammed on him.