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father, though Thomas' "legitimate" family—his daughters and their own children—were bound to deny it, as they would in fact deny that Sally was Thomas' mistress at all. They would have denied Sally's very existence if it had been possible to do so persua-sively. Thomas never acknowledged his children by Sally, nor did he treat them in any fashion differently from the way he treated the other slave children of the plantation. But as Madison grew older he would often, from a distance, be taken by visitors for Thomas himself; and later, as each child turned twenty-one, Thomas quietly fulfilled his agreement with Sally and gave them their freedom, at which point, one by one, they disappeared in the night, to reappear in other places and other lives.

    A R C D'X • 48

    Her own identity, which she'd begun to construct so tentatively as a free woman in Paris, was now given back to the role of possession, without whose possessor life meant nothing. She did not completely forget the person she conspired to make in Paris, in the moments when she wouldn't thank him for a pair of gloves: now, when he returned from his travels, she'd thank him for such gifts by closing the bedroom door and dropping her dress from her shoulders. What life was solely hers she came to pass over the years making jewelry, which she'd store in a black wooden box with a rose carved on the top, or give to the other slaves who came to regard Sally with a nearly mystical awe. It didn't occur to her that this jewelry might have value. She made it for her own pleasure, often from the beads of Indians whom Thomas would sometimes take her to meet in the hills. Thomas had great respect for the Indians' resourcefulness and honor. Sometimes it seemed to her that he felt special kinship with the savagery of their existence and envied the harmony in which they lived with that savagery.
    Sometimes, it seemed to her, he talked of them as though they were white. Sometimes he talked of them as though they were better than white. She noted this with wonder and rage.

    She took charge of his bedchamber and the rest of the house, also as they'd agreed on the rue St-Antoine, the enormous fury of Thomas' daughters notwithstanding. She kept out of the sight of visitors to whatever extent was possible, though the visitors never stopped coming. Often they'd wait for Thomas in the parlor of the house, anxiously anticipating the appearance of the famous fiery philosopher-king while wondering with baffled alarm about the tall beggar who seemed to have wandered into the house from the woods outside and was now shuffling down the hall toward them in rags. The stories of Thomas' eccentricities and quiet outrages only grew with his fame, and inevitably became more frenzied during his campaign for political office. There were stories that he was broke and in debt, which were true. There were stories he hated the clergy, which were true, and God, which were not. There were stories he was going to ride at the head of a great slave army and lead a new revolution. And then, in the shadow of the Nineteenth Century that advanced at twilight across the Virginia hills, there were stories he kept a beautiful black woman in his bedroom. These became the currency of doggerel, newspaper articles STEVE E R I C K S O N • 49

    and songs. With some variations, the name of the woman in these songs was always the same. Dashing Sally, Dusky Sally, Black Sally.

    When Sally heard the stories she feared Thomas would send her away. She thought to confront him one night and ask what he was going to do with her, and to remind him of their contract that he never sell her; but she didn't have the courage and she was too afraid of what he might answer. She lay awake many nights wondering about what was going to happen to the children whom Thomas never acknowledged. Thomas, however, didn't send her away or sell her. He answered none of the charges made about Sally, either publicly or privately, and denied no