Twelve

Before Nat Turner could put his plan into motion, however, another incident happened that gave us all pause about our practice of slavery.

Two slaves ran off from the Gerard plantation down the road, the one where Mr. Gerard had died and his wife, Charlotte, was now living with his doctor in a cottage on the grounds. The place from whence Emilie came.

“It must be chaos there,” Richard said at supper the evening I gave Nat the map. “I understand their overseer rules with an iron fist, which is why the slaves continually run away.”

We had supper in near silence. Pleasant said she thought Richard should take a ride over there and see what was going on. “Just your presence helps,” she reminded him. “All you have to do is ride into a barnyard and it has a calming effect. The slaves all know who you are.”

Richard puffed up at the compliment, as he was meant to do. “We’ll see,” he said.

Then a courier came with a note for Richard, brought to the table by Owen. Richard excused himself to sit there and read it, then raised his eyes and looked at his mother. “It’s an invitation to all our slaves to witness a beating,” he said.

Mother Whitehead scowled. “A beating?” she asked.

“Yes,” Richard answered, as quietly as if it were an invitation to a barbecue. “A hundred lashes. Charlotte’s overseer wants me to bring all our slaves to witness the whipping of Ebban, one of the slaves who ran away. It seems that he attacked one of the patrollers. They want to set an example.”

“Richard!” exclaimed Pleasant. “You can’t. You can’t bring all the slaves.”

“And why not?” he wanted to know.

“Because,” she said. And oh I did admire the way she stood up to him. “Not the women, anyway. I mean, think of what that means. It means Violet and Cloanna and . . .” She was counting on her fingers.

Richard said, “I should think it a good thing for them to see.”

“What about Nat Turner?” she asked.

“He doesn’t belong to me,” he said quickly. I think he was a little afraid of Nat Turner. “The overseer of Charlotte’s says he wants to do this tomorrow. Get it over with. Charlotte,” and he glanced again at the note, “adds a line here that says can we please fetch Emilie to stay over tonight as she doesn’t want the girl to see this. I’ll go fetch her. It isn’t far.” He stood up. “I’ll go tell the courier yes to all of it.”

“Da, Da,” said baby William, waving his fat little arms. He was daft over his father. Pleasant set him down on the floor, and he toddled out of the dining room after Richard.

Richard brought Emilie home that night. “Mother won’t put a stop to this,” she said between tears when we had her safely ensconced upstairs. “She’s so taken with Dr. Gordon, she cares about little else. She lets Harry, our overseer, handle everything, and he is such a cruel man. When my father was alive, he kept him reined in, but now Harry is determined to have his way and make a show of it. Oh, I hate him, and Dr. Gordon, and everyone.” She burst into tears and hid her face in the bedcover. She slept overnight with Margaret.

The next morning at breakfast Emilie was composed at least, if not happy. Pleasant allowed her to play with baby William and even feed him breakfast, and it turned out she loved babies. It was William who got her to laughing again and who claimed her attention even while the big commotion of Richard’s gathering the slaves was going on outside. And then, against a canopy of a great deal of dust and a symphony of low moaning, the slaves were herded out onto the road and driven like cattle, by Richard and other slaves whom he trusted, in the direction of the Gerards’.

Then our place was eerily silent, for the women had gone, too. Even Violet, who was half slave and half white. I personally knew she would not be able to take this.

I brought second rounds of breakfast coffee out to the veranda for Mother Whitehead and Pleasant, Emilie, Margaret, and myself. There was also breakfast cake and I told Mother Whitehead how I thought Violet would never make it through without fainting.

“No man will live through one hundred lashes,” Mother Whitehead said quietly, stirring sugar into her cup. “He’ll die before they reach seventy-five. It’s a calculated way to kill him.”

“Violet is only half colored,” I said. “The half of her that’s white will cry and faint.”

“The half of her that’s white is likely stronger than the half that’s colored,” Mother Whitehead said. And it made me think that she knew who Violet’s father was.

“What will they do if he dies?” Pleasant asked.

“Say it was accidental,” Mother Whitehead answered calmly. “You are not allowed to murder your slave in this state, but if it is accidental, they can’t blame you. Then likely they will burn him so no one can exhume the body and see how mauled he was with the whip.”

She spoke so calmly, I wondered how many times she had seen this happen. We drank our coffee and continued to just sit there as if we were afraid to go back into the house when the servants weren’t about. As if they owned it and we were just guests.

So we sat there. Pleasant rocked William and put him down for a morning nap in a cradle kept on the veranda for the purpose. Margaret fell asleep on the settee. Mother dictated a letter and I wrote it down. Emilie just sat there staring into space. Soon a strange smell started to fill the air.

Emilie sniffed and sat forward and looked around. “What is that?” she asked. “That vile smell?”

Mother Whitehead sniffed, too, with her delicate nose but kept silent.

I breathed in. It smelled like something rotten. “Like something dying,” I said to Mother Whitehead.

Her blue eyes sought mine. And in an instant we both knew. And Emilie didn’t. At first it seemed that Mother Whitehead was not going to tell her, but then she had a change of heart.

“They’re burning him,” she said.

At precisely that moment Nat Turner came from the cool inner house, like one of its shadows, stepping out onto the veranda. He just stood there, tall and quiet and knowing, looking at us. “Mayhap y’all best get inside,” he suggested, “so you all don’t get sick from that smell.”

“A good idea, Nat,” Mother Whitehead said. And for all their concern they could have been talking about the slaughter of pigs on the first cold day of winter.

He helped her up. He took her coffee cup and set it on the tray and handed the tray to me, and then took her arm and brought her inside. He brought her into the front parlor and closed whatever windows were open and even drew the curtains. Then he went outside to wake Margaret and fetch her, Emilie, and Pleasant inside. He carried in the cradle with William in it.

He took Margaret aside for a moment and spoke to her, low and soft, before he brought her in. I think he was explaining to her what the smell was. I think the calmness and reasoning in his voice prevented her hysterics. When he brought her in and sat her down, he offered to make a new pot of coffee, assuring Mother Whitehead that he knew how. She said yes, and oh how nice, and before we knew what had transpired, Nat brought the coffee in along with washed cups and more cake.

I tried to catch his glance, to see the expression on his face, but I could not. He was like a stone idol, carved out of granite by someone who had more memories than they could bear and was carving them on his face to get rid of them.

He left us there in the parlor with nothing to talk about now, with nothing to do but wait for something terrible to happen, only we didn’t know yet what it was to be.