‘Damn hard work. Damn hard! But there’s joy in a job well done!’
I smiled as if in agreement. ‘Just as soon as I see the president.’
‘The president! Remarkable man! Remarkable. But by rumour not all that financially prudent himself. Spends beyond his means, what? Word has it he’s ordering bric-a-brac for Monticello out of excitement with his new executive salary while retaining no real financial understanding. The man, like most Virginians, is chronically in debt! Chronically, sir!’
‘I hope he doesn’t want a loan from me.’
‘Mention my advice, Gage. Tell him how I’ve helped you. I could straighten Jefferson out, I’m sure of it. Discipline! That’s the only secret.’
‘If our talk turns to money, I will.’
He beamed. ‘See how men in high places help each other?’
I knew Zebulon Henry meant well, of course … but to live your brief life for compound interest seemed wrong somehow. I’m a man cursed with the compulsion to toss the dice, to bet all on the main chance, to listen to dreamers. I believe in luck and opportunity. Why else was I allied with Bloodhammer? Why else did I orbit Napoleon?
Magnus did say this hammer, if it existed, might be worth money, or power, or something. So treasure hunting was an investment of another kind, was it not? It’s not that I’m lazy, just easily bored. I like novelty. I’m curious to see what is over the next hill. So I resolved to let my lunatic have his say, nod encouragingly – and put it all in Jefferson’s hands.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The President’s House, smart enough on the outside with its limestone sheen and classical decorations, was still just half-finished without and half-occupied within. The pile was a grand two-story affair, ostentatious for a democracy, with a little republican rawness provided by a plank walkway that reached the posh porch and pillars by crossing a yard of mud and sawdust like a drawbridge. The house had two rows of ten grand windows each on the north side where we entered – hellish to heat, I’d bet – and the lower row was capped by fancy narrow pediments like eyebrows. The panelled door itself was unexpectedly human-sized, not some bronze gate, and when we pulled a cord to ring its bell the modest oak was opened not by a servant but by a secretary, in plain suit. He was a shy, strapping, strong-chinned young man with prominent nose and small, thin-lipped mouth who looked out at the pillars as if surprised at his own surroundings. His hair was neatly clipped in the Roman fashion I now favoured myself, and his feet were shod in moccasins.
‘Howdee-do,’ he said in the patois of the frontier, pulling us in. ‘I’m Meriwether Lewis. Only arrived a few days ago from Fort Detroit and still exploring. You can make an echo in this pile. Come, come: President Jefferson is expecting you.’
The entrance hall had eighteen-foot ceilings but was barren of furniture or paintings. Like the Capitol, it still smelt of paint. Directly ahead was a panelled door leading into a rather elegant but empty oval room, its windows framing a view of the Potomac. Lewis led us to the right, past stairs that I assumed led up to the president’s private quarters, and into a smaller salon with a couch and side table. ‘I’ll tell him you’ve arrived.’ The secretary stepped through another door with the stride of a hunter, his experience as a frontier soldier obvious.
Magnus looked about. ‘Your president isn’t much for furniture, is he?’
‘Jefferson’s only just moved in, and Adams lived here only a few months. It’s a challenge to decide what fits a republic. He’s been a widower for nearly twenty years.’
‘He must rattle around in here like a pebble in a powder horn.’
Then we heard a bird call.
A door to Jefferson’s office opened and we were beckoned again. This room, in the southwest corner, was more inhabited. The mahogany floor was bare of any carpet but a long table covered with green baize occupied the room’s middle, and fires burnt at either end. Three of the walls were occupied by bookshelves, maps, writing tables, cabinets, and globes; the fourth was windows. One shelf bore an elephant tusk of extraordinary width, curled at its end in a peculiar manner. Others displayed arrowheads, polished stones, animal skulls, Indian clubs, and beadwork. On tables by the windows on the south side were terracotta pots, spring shoots just poking through the black dirt. There were also bell jars, boxes of planting soil, and, in one corner, a bird cage. Its inhabitant sang again.
‘The most beautiful sound in nature,’ Jefferson said, rising from a chair at the table and putting a book aside. ‘The mockingbird inspires me while I work.’
Close up, Jefferson was more commanding than he’d seemed at the inauguration: tall, with a planter’s fitness, his striking red hair matching his ruddy complexion. The speech I’d heard was one of the few Jefferson would ever give; with his high voice he preferred to communicate by letter. But his eyes had a bright intelligence more arresting than any I’d seen. Napoleon had the gaze of an eagle, Nelson a hawk, Djezzar a cobra, ageing Franklin a sleepy owl. Jefferson’s eyes danced with curiosity, as if everything he encountered was the most interesting specimen he’d ever seen. Including us.
‘I’d not expected the president’s office to be a naturalist’s laboratory,’ I said.
‘My habit at Monticello is to bring the outdoors in. Nothing makes me more content than tending my geraniums. I am a student of architecture, but nature’s architecture has the most pleasing proportions of all.’ He smiled. ‘So you are the hero of Mortefontaine!’
I gave a slight bow. ‘No hero, Mr President. Merely a servant of my country. May I introduce my companion from Norway, Magnus Bloodhammer?’
Jefferson shook our hands. ‘You look like your Viking forebears, Magnus. Not entirely inappropriate for your mission, perhaps?’ The American commissioners in Paris had written him of our coming, and we’d sent a note ahead ourselves explaining our quest for evidence of early Norse explorers.
‘I’d be honoured to emulate my ancestors,’ my companion said.
‘Not with a war axe, I hope!’ Our host had a sense of mischief. ‘But I admire your spirit of inquiry; it would do Franklin proud. And you, Gage, of Acre and Marengo? Most men are content to ride with just one side. How do you keep it all straight?’
‘I have odd luck. And my fame, I’m afraid, pales beside the writer of the Declaration of Independence. Few documents have so inspired men.’
‘Compliments all around,’ the president acknowledged with a nod. ‘Well. My gift is words and yours action, which is why I’m delighted you’ve come. We’ve much to talk about. I’m anxious to hear your impressions of France, where I, too, served – just after our revolution and before theirs. Extraordinary events since then, of course.’
‘Bonaparte is a meteor. But then you’ve done well, too.’
‘This house is a start, but Adams and his architects had no sense. A privy outdoors? The man hung his laundry there too. Most undignified for a chief executive. I wouldn’t move in until they installed a water closet. There are a hundred improvements needed to make this a proper place to receive dignitaries, but first I must pry out of Congress more than the $5,000 they’ve allotted. They have no concept of modern expenses.’ He looked about. ‘Still, there is elegance here, a balance between national pride and republican sensibility.’
‘The place needs furniture,’ Magnus said with his usual bluntness.
‘It will fill up, Mr Bloodhammer, just as our capital and country will. But enough about housekeeping! Come, good dinner makes better conversation!’
He ushered us into an adjoining dining room for our mid-afternoon repast, Lewis coming too. As soup was served by Negro servants, I began mentally rehearsing the carefully edited description of the Great Pyramid I typically shared, certain Jefferson would be curious about Napoleon’s mystic experience in that edifice. Then a word about Jerusalem, an observation on French military success, some comments about my experience with electricity, an assessment of Bonaparte’s government, something learnt about one of Jefferson’s wines …