“As well as can be expected.” Years, matrimony, and bereavement didn’t seem to have changed Sophie much. She appeared little altered from her days of advising Abigail on the purchase of inexpensive ambassadorial china in Paris. Those cool eyes still regarded the world—or at least the United States—with amused derision. “She took the General’s death very hard. And since those years when the capital was in New York she’s never been really well.”

“Who among us has?” Abigail drew her own thick collection of black shawls and cloaks more tightly about her narrow shoulders. “I swear there was something in the air of that city that gave everyone who lived there an ague. I’ve certainly never gotten over it.”

For a moment an elusive expression flickered on Sophie’s face: Abigail almost had the impression she was about to say, Served the traitors right. But she said instead, “I doubt this new ‘Federal City’ will prove more healthily situated. My father always said these Potomac lowlands bred fevers. I suppose it’s well enough now, when every house is at least half a mile from its nearest neighbor and there’s room for air to circulate. But how it will answer in the future, to have built a city for the enrichment of Southern land-speculators, remains to be seen.”

“Had they not,” replied Abigail, “the government would even yet be at a standstill while they squabbled over payment of the Virginians’ debts to the English—I think that’s how the deal was worked.”

“It is how all such deals are worked,” answered Sophie, with her sidelong cynical smile. “I suppose the placement of the Parthenon in Athens had something to do with which Archon’s brother-in-law owned the land it was to stand on.”

As they crossed the ferry to Georgetown the wind blew up with a bitter chill, though the day remained clear and bright. Abigail shivered, and Louisa pulled up the lap-robe more closely around her. The gray stone houses of the little tobacco-port looked bleak among the bare trees. Beyond the new wooden bridge the woods closed in, the carriage-team floundering in the soupy ruts. “On our way here we were lost for two days, trying to find our nation’s capital,” remarked Abigail drily. “I shall suggest to Mr. Adams that funds be asked from Congress for signposts.”

“One must admit, though, it’s a beautiful situation for a city.” Louisa folded her gloved hands. “And it is indeed a new thing in the history of the world, to have a capital city purpose-built for a new nation, instead of taking history’s hand-me-downs. There is much to be said for that. I expect,” she added, as the carriage emerged from the brown-and-silver shadows of the woods, “it will be beautiful in spring.”

Beside the little clump of buildings that housed the State Department’s seven employees, their driver paused to rest the team. Brushy pastures foraged by cows stretched before them. Here and there buildings rose, inconsequential in the open wilderness, like toys set down and forgotten by giant children. “That’s Mr. Moore’s farm, there among the trees,” pointed out Sophie. “He’s a more reliable source of produce than the markets, if you get on his good side. And General Washington’s friend Mr. Tayloe has just finished a quite handsome town house, and is now waiting for the town to arrive.”

“I count myself lucky the plastering and painting were actually finished in the President’s House before John arrived last month,” remarked Abigail, as the driver clucked the horses into motion. “We keep all twelve fireplaces going, and that helps, though God only knows how we’re to afford to heat the place when winter really sets in. And instead of a grand front staircase, we have a lovely cavern in the front hall, no doors in half the rooms, and not a bell in the house. I suppose its unfinished state simply means Mr. Jefferson will have less to tear down before he starts to make changes.”

She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. Only days after John had gotten on the road for the Federal City in October, someone had brought her Alexander Hamilton’s newly printed pamphlet, A Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams.

Long usage had partially inured her to the spectacle of her husband being called doddering, fat, monarchist, and insane by the people for whose freedom he had broken himself—and sacrificed his own happiness and that of his family—the whole of his life. But coming from a man of his own party—from the man whom many Federalists looked up to as the true leader of America—Abigail knew this meant John’s almost certain defeat in the upcoming contest for President.

Almost certainly, the victor would be Jefferson. And with Jefferson would come the mob-rule that Abigail had feared since the days of Citizen Genêt’s street-riots.

“And the irony of it is,” she sighed, as the horses stopped again so that Sophie could get into her own chaise near the corner of a dilapidated country graveyard, “for all that wretched little man’s venom about John being incompetent, a treaty with France has finally been signed.”

“It’s official, then?” Sophie raised her brows. “I’d heard it printed in the newspapers, but—”

“It’s official,” said Abigail. “First Consul Bonaparte drank a toast to our envoys and dismissed the riots in our streets and the seizures of our ships as a ‘family quarrel’ which will not be repeated. No family of mine.”

“No,” murmured Sophie as she descended from the carriage. “And one wonders what England will have to say on the subject.”

“ ‘Sufficient unto the day,’ ” replied Abigail wisely, “ ‘are the troubles thereof.’ ”



The Mansion bestowed by the country upon its executive stood isolated in a wagon-rutted field, surrounded by heaped stone, building debris, and weeds. Smoke trailed from its chimneys but Abigail wasn’t fooled: It would be cold as a tomb inside. At least, she thought, trying to rub the ache of rheumatism from her shoulder, she wouldn’t be expected to put on many entertainments in the great half-finished pile. At the far end of the brushy two-mile vista of what was pompously referred to as Pennsylvania Avenue, she guessed rather than actually saw the movement around the tiny pale bulk of the Capitol. Electors gathering, to cast their States’ votes for the new President.