She chose to spare me. Just left me lying on the ground in my wet pants, sobbing. It took me a little time to recover my composure, but when I finally raised my head and chanced a look in her direction, I found that the thunder-head was no longer looming over me. She'd covered that furious face of hers and was waiting some little distance from me.

"I'm sorry…" were the first words out of my mouth.

"No," she said, her voice suddenly drained of either music or strength. "It was my fault. You're not a child to be ordered around. It was just that in that moment I saw your father so clearly."

"May… I… ask you a question?"

"Ask anything," she said, sighing.

"That face I just saw…"

"What about it?"

"Did Nicodemus ever see it?"

Despite her fatigue she was amused by this. There was a hint of a smile in her voice when she replied. "Are you asking me if I scared him off?" I nodded. "Then I'll tell you: that face, as you call it, is what he chiefly loved me for."

"Really?" I must have sounded astonished-as indeed I was-because she replied somewhat defensively:

"He had aspects that were just as terrible."

"Yes I know."

"Of course you know. You saw some of what he could do."

"But that wasn't all he was," I said.

"Just as what you saw a moment ago isn't all of me."

"But it's the truest part, isn't it?" I said. Under other circumstances I surely wouldn't have pressed her on this business so closely, but I knew the chances of my having the freedom to interrogate her like this again were nil. If I was to know who Cesaria Yaos was before the house of Barbarossa came crashing down, it was now or never.

"The truest part?" she said. "No. I don't think I have one face that's truer than any other. I used to be worshipped in dozens of temples, you know."

"I know."

"They're all heaps of rubble now. Nobody remembers how I was loved…" Her voice trailed off. She'd apparently lost her point. "What was I saying?"

"Nobody remembering."

"Before that."

"All the temples-"

"Oh yes. So many temples, with statues and embroideries, all depicting me. But not one of them resembled any other."

"How do you know?"

"Because I visited them," she said. "When your father and I had a spat we'd go our separate ways for a while.

He'd go find himself some poor woman to seduce, and I'd go touring my holy sites. It's comforting when you're feeling a little woebegone."

"Hard to imagine."

"What? Me, woebegone? Oh I can be self-pitying, just like anybody else."

"No. I meant it's hard to imagine how it must feel, going into a temple where you're being worshipped."

"Oh it can be wonderful. Wandering among your devotees."

"Were you ever tempted to tell them who you were?"

"I did it many, many times. I usually picked somebody who wasn't a particularly reliable witness. The very old. The very young. Somebody with a sanity problem, or a saint, which is often one and the same."

"Why do that? Why not show yourself to somebody literate, intelligent? Somebody who could spread your gospel?"

"Somebody like you?"

"If you like."

"Is that what your book's going to be: one last desperate attempt to put your father and me back up on our pedestals?" What did she want to hear from me? I wondered. And if I chose incorrectly, would I be subjected to her fury again? "Is that what you're up to, Maddox?"

I decided on the truth. "No," I said, "I'm simply telling the story as best I can."

"And this conversation? Will it be in your book?"

"I'll put it in if it seems relevant."

There was a silence. Finally, she said: "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter whether you do or you don't. Stories; temples. Who cares nowadays? You're going to have fewer readers than I have worshippers, Maddox."

"I don't have to be read to be a writer," I pointed out.

"And I don't have to be worshipped to be a goddess. But it helps. Believe me, it helps." She made a phantom smile, and I-to my great surprise-returned it. We understood one another better at that moment than we ever had. "So, now… Marietta."

"One more question," I begged.

"No, enough."

"Please, Mama. Just one. For the book."

"One then. And only one."

"Did my father have temples?"

"He certainly did."

"Where were they?"

"That's another question, Maddox. But, as you're so curious… The finest of his temples to my way of thinking was in Paris."

"Really? Paris. I thought Nicodemus hated Paris."

"Later, he did. It's where I met Mr. Jefferson, you see."

"I didn't know that."

"There's a great deal about that man you don't know; that the world doesn't know. I could tell you enough about him to fill five books. He was such a charmer. But quiet… so quiet when he talked that you had to strain to hear him. I remember the first time I met him he'd just been given an apricot, which he'd never tasted before. And oh, the blissful look on that pinched face of his! I wanted him to make love to me on the spot."

"Did he?"

"Oh no. He played very hard to get. He was in love with an English actress at the time. What a wretched combination that was: English and an actress. The worst of all possible worlds. Anyway, Thomas toyed with my affections for weeks. There was a revolution going on around us, but I swear I was so besotted with him I barely noticed. Heads being lopped off every hour and I was wandering around in an adolescent daze trying to find a way to make this scrawny little American diplomat love me."

"How did you do it?"

"I'm not sure I ever did. If I were to raise him up now, out of his grave at Monticello, and say to him: did you love me? I think he'd say, at best, for a day or two, an hour or two, that afternoon you showed me the temple."

"You took him to my father's temple?"

"Every woman knows if you fail to get the man you want with words, you show him a sacred place." She laughed. "Usually it's the one between your legs. Don't look so shocked, Maddox. It's a fact of life. If a woman's going to get a man on his knees, she has to give him something to worship. But I knew raising my skirts for Jefferson wasn't going to be chough. He'd had that from his tarty little actress, Miss Cosway. I had to show him something that she could never supply. So I took him to your father's temple."

"What happened?"

"He was very impressed. He asked me how I knew about the place. It was a very secret cult your father had at that time. Noble families, mostly. And of course they'd either fled or lost their heads. So the temple was deserted. We wandered around while the mobs raged on the streets outside, and I think-just for that little while-he was quite in love.

"I remember he asked me who'd designed the place, and I took him to the altar, where there was a statue of your father. It had a red velvet doth draped over it. And I said to Jefferson: before I show you this, will you promise me something? He said yes, of course, if it was in his power. So I said to him: design me a house, where I can live happily, because it'll remind me of you."

"So that's how you got him to design you this place?"

"I made him swear. On his wife. On his dreams of Monti-cello. On his dearest hopes for democracy. I made him swear on them all."

"You didn't trust him?"

"Not remotely."

"So he swore-"

"-and I uncovered your father's statue. There he was in all his tumescent glory!" Again she laughed. "Oh, Thomas was the very picture of discomfort. But to be fair to him, he kept his aplomb and asked me, with great seriousness, if the representation was a true and proportionate likeness. I reassured him that it was an exaggeration, though not much of one. I remember exactly what he said to that. Then I am certain, ma'am, you are a very contented wife.' Ha! 'A very contented wife.'