“My comparative study of all the Indian languages,” he fretted. “Some one must go back at once. Thomas, send two boys down the river in a canoe tomorrow to search the bank where all these parcels were unloaded from the barge. That Indian work could be valuable. I meant to pursue it further. It must not be lost.” The lost box was found a few days later. It had been torn open on the muddy river bank and obviously the thieves, seeking for money, had been disappointed in the contents, for the precious papers were torn and scattered far and wide. What little could be salvaged, Martha dried and pressed but little was legible on the sodden sheets. Thomas Jefferson’s years of study of the Indian tongues was forever lost. 3 _Monticello: Summer, 1809_ Spring came burgeoning over the Virginia hills, warming quickly into promise of summer. The bulbs Thomas Jefferson and his lost wife Martha had planted so long ago pushed up through the damp earth and the children came running excitedly to call him whenever a bud showed, tight and green-sheathed above its protecting sword blades. “Grandfather, come quick! The Roman Empress tulip has a big bud showing and a teeny one.” “Fine, Virginia.” She was one of the younger ones, still small enough so that he could toss her on his shoulder. “We’ll go and see but not touch.” “We know. They turn brown and don’t open out to be flowers. Francis pinched the Queen of the Amazons last spring and it never bloomed at all.” “And some little girl tattled, which isn’t nice, do you think?” he teased, waiting for the others who invariably like hungry chicks came flying out several doors whenever he walked on the lawn. “Francis thinks he is kind of special because he doesn’t live here all the time,” said Ellen, “but he does stay for long times and he has lessons with us and so he shouldn’t be any different.” “Francis,” explained Jefferson, “does not have a lot of people to love him. He’s not rich in love like all the Randolphs. Now let us look into the case of this foreign woman, the Roman Empress.” He bent over the bed where the nubby little buds ventured up into the thin, warming sun of spring. An old pain, long kept hidden deep stirred again in him, stabbing at his heart, clasping icy fingers at his throat to make an aching cramp there. Martha, his own Martha, so long gone, so always present and living still in that deep place where no person, no plaudit, no antagonism or ambition had ever been permitted. He could almost see her long white fingers now, as they had pressed the warm earth down lovingly over the dry, somnolent bulbs, always so delicately careful not to break an embryo root or smother too deep the promise of the crown.