Charles Dickinson had been so young! Rachel ached now with remembering the anguish of dread for her own beloved and for the young wife and baby of the youth Andrew Jackson had set out across the Kentucky line that May morning to kill, if he could—if he were not himself slain by a youth known to be one of the most famous shots in Tennessee.
Duels were illegal in Tennessee so Jackson had started the day before with his friend, John Overton, for the long ride into Kentucky. He had tried to slip away without Rachel’s knowledge, tried to belittle the danger. And he had come home with a bullet close to his heart, too near to be safely removed by the surgeons, and that bullet he carried yet. But Charles Dickinson had been brought home dead and for a year the town had seethed with furious criticism of the man who had survived that duel, Andrew Jackson. The affair had almost ended his public career. Rachel had known some moments when she wished that the tragedy had made it impossible for Andrew Jackson ever to be chosen for any high emprise again.
It had weighed heavily on her heart for years that the affair had been on her account, and there had been a long, unspoken family pact that the duel was never to be mentioned. She had nursed her husband for weeks through that hot summer, and he had hated the inactivity while Rachel was grateful that the spring ran cool and deep and the great trees gave comforting shade, and that she had her husband, wounded and restless as he was, by her side. He had not desired that tragic engagement, she knew. Faced with no honorable means of evading it, he had fought fairly according to the rules and borne his wound without capitalizing upon it.
She put away the old agreement, smoothed her hair and the lace of her collar, rubbed a bit of cotton dipped in rice powder over her swollen eyelids. This was Christmas Eve, the past was past, though Truxton’s colts still ambled over the meadows, some of them growing old as the Jacksons were growing old. Perhaps they would have no more Christmas Eves under this roof, this proud house that they loved. Nothing must mar this holiday. She would hurry out and tell Andy that he was forgiven. The boy was impulsive and thoughtless. He had not meant to wound her.
The house was full of voices; children being led upstairs to bed reluctant and protesting, but outside were voices too, the songs of the black people gathered to sing to their master and mistress. Rachel snatched up a shawl, wrapped her head and shoulders in it and went out to stand and listen.
“Christmas is a-comin’, the goose is getting fat.
“Please to put a penny in the ole man’s hat,” caroled the slaves.
She saw her husband standing bareheaded near the fire, his hair blowing in the winter wind, the firelight casting deep shadows under his eyes. He had a hand on Andy’s shoulder, an arm around Emily. No one heeded the mist that blew on the wind. Some of the older women were already picking their chickens on the lee side of the smokehouse.
“Go down, Moses, ’way down in Egypt’s lan’,” trilled a high voice, Becky’s. The humming chorus swelled, burst into tremendous melody. “Tell ole Phar’oh,—let my people go!”
Go down, Moses! Go down, Andrew Jackson! To Tohopeka, to Mobile, to New Orleans, to Pensacola. Go down, Andrew Jackson, and set a people free! No, no, moaned the heart of Rachel. Never any more. This was home, this was their Hermitage, this was Christmas Eve. Her eyes searched the air, challenged the air, the Heavens, as though somewhere out there in the murky dark lurked fate in wait for them, a prescience that would not lift.