“I was in the attic. With Owen. Under the bed,” Violet told me. “I didn’t see it. Please, Harriet, ask someone else. I can’t talk about what I did see.” Tears were coming down her face and she wiped them away with her hand.
“I don’t want someone else. You’re my closest friend. I want to hear it from you.”
She sat on the floor, at my feet. She hesitated only a moment and then the words came, or rather tumbled, off her tongue.
“Like I said, Owen grabbed me the minute we saw them coming into the house. Somehow he knew that Nat had turned into a crazy man and wasn’t the Nat who had helped him in the past. ‘There’s a place in him I hoped he’d never go,’ he told me. ‘I sensed it all the time. Like he was teetering on a ledge and deciding whether to jump. And now he’s jumped, Violet. So let’s get out of here.’
“I suggested my room upstairs. Few people even know there’s an attic in the house. But for safekeeping we went under the bed. All we could hear were voices and screams from below stairs. We both knew your brother, Richard, was already dead. And we knew he was killing Mother Whitehead and Emilie. Out the window we could see the cotton field burning and some slaves trying to put the fire out.
“Then Owen said we should take the servants’ stairs down and see what we could do. It was chancy, but a good idea. Besides, Pleasant was on the second floor with baby William. Maybe we could help her.”
“But they killed Pleasant,” I objected. “At least in my head they did.”
She nodded her head very vigorously. “We crept down the servants’ stairway and peeked through the door, just a crack. Turner was there in the hall with one of his henchmen, who had his sword drawn, and Pleasant was facing them. ‘Kill me if you wish,’ she was saying, ‘you’ve already killed my husband. And he was good to you. You might as well kill me, too.’
“So,” and here Violet gulped some air and continued, “the henchman did. Right there in the hall. Then Turner looked around asking for Margaret. He wanted Margaret real bad, like. He was ready to gather his men and leave, and then the baby cried from the bedroom.”
There was a moment’s silence. I heard the tolling of more than one church bell now, and we waited, listening. So different from my imaginings, but no less cruel. Then Violet continued.
“Somebody said, ‘What about the baby?’ At first Nat said, ‘Never mind,’ then he changed his mind and said, ‘No, we must get the baby, too. Babies grow up and take revenge.’ And then he and one man went into where the baby was, and from where Owen and I were hiding, we dared not move or talk or even breathe, but we heard baby William’s screams, and then silence.
“Then they left. I’m so sorry, Harriet. We should have done something about baby William.”
“There was nothing you could do,” I told her.
I sat, studying on the whole thing. But I could not wrap my mind around it. It was too terrible, too out of my circle of possibilities. “I don’t think anything like this has ever happened before in Virginia,” I told her.
She nodded her assent. “Owen said he heard that fifty-seven people were killed.”
“What was he trying to do? What did he want?”
“I don’t know. I think he wanted to capture Jerusalem. That’s what all the servants are saying. And collect an army and kill some more.”
“And now?”
“Now they’re hunting him. We should pray they catch him.”
I had a thought then. “Did he attack the Gerard place?”
“Yes,” she said. “Everybody over there is dead.”
I did not ask how she knew. The negro grapevine traveled faster than the wind. My tears wouldn’t come and my mouth was dry. “Could I have another cup of tea?” I asked.
Apparently a few servants had been standing in the hall, outside the parlor, listening to Violet’s recitation.
“I’ll get the tea, mistress,” Connie said.
“She called me mistress,” I whispered to Violet.
“Yes, you are mistress now of this plantation,” she said.
“I’m not even mistress of myself,” I thought aloud. “But I know I can do it.” I smiled at Violet. “Do you think I can do it?” I asked.
“We’ll all help you. Everybody has their job and knows how to do it. And for anything else you want, you must assign the tasks. Tell us what it is that you wish us to do.”
That afternoon I held a meeting in the kitchen. It had started to rain outside and that seemed fitting. Everyone crowded around.
“I want Walley to be the overseer, as I heard Richard say one time he would be a good one. And I want you to take over with the house, Winefred. Connie is to be the cook. And Ormond knows what his job is. Owen, you are to help Ormond and answer doors and keep him supplied with wood for the hearths, just as you’ve been doing. And I want you to tell me now, Violet, what happened to Cloanna?”
“She’s alive,” Violet said. “Turner never went to the quarters.”
“Then you must visit her as soon as you can. Bring her a side of ham and some small beer. As for work, it must go on. The rest of the cotton has to be picked and bundled and shipped. The apples, too. The animals must be cared for. And we must plough in the stubble of the first wheat field and sow buckwheat, forty acres in thirteen ploughing days.”
Walley looked hard at me. “Where did you get that from, miss?”
I raised my chin. “I learned from writing Mother Whitehead’s letters. I must contact her cotton factors, Jenkins, Middleton, and Pierce, and set a date for the cotton to be delivered, too. We must get our heads together on that date, Walley.”
“Yes, miss.”
“You see,” Violet said to me later when we were alone, “you make a fine mistress.”
When I wasn’t being “mistress” I sat in Mother Whitehead’s chair in the parlor for days, it seemed. I could not move. I did not want to speak to anyone. I just wanted to stare out the ceiling-to-floor windows through the leaden air of the last days of that August and adjust my mind to the new world I had been dragged into, screaming.
One morning Ormond was wiping off the glass panes of the lower parts of the windows in the parlor, for the dogs were kept inside now at my request. They were good watchdogs, but their nose prints were on the glass panes.
I had always wanted them in the house. Mother Whitehead would never allow it. They were of the large type, with loud barks, and I felt safer with them around me. They slept at my feet, days, and by my bedside, nights, and were alert to every noise. They were clean and devoted. Punch and Judy, their names were. And that’s what Ormond was doing that morning. Cleaning the windowpanes in the parlor.
“Did they mess the windows again?” I asked.
“It’s all right, Miss Harriet. They give you comfort.”
“What’s that on the rag? Blood?”
He looked at the rag in his hands. “Yes, miss, from the bottom windowpane.”
I understood immediately, as I understood his discomfort. “From that day?” I asked.
“Yes, miss. Left on the window. I must have missed it the last time I . . .”
“It’s all right, Ormond. It is, truly.”
Blood on the corner of a windowpane, from the day Mother Whitehead was killed. Would the memories ever be cleaned out of this house? Out of our minds?
Already they were in print in all the newspapers in the East. Already all the rumors that had circulated that day were being put to rest. That the British were attacking, that there were piles of dead children’s bodies being buried in a common grave near Jerusalem. That Governor John Floyd received word there was an insurrection in Richmond, that one slave who refused to join Nat’s army had his heel strings cut so he couldn’t run and alert anybody.
And soon, following those articles and the rumors, would come the investigations, Violet and Owen told me.
And my initials were on that map. Nat Turner was still running free. I tried not to think about all that, although I did worry the matter about Nat Turner still being free.
Would he come back here? The idea took hold of me and I became frightened. When I told Connie and Winefred and Ormond about it, they suggested we put a trundle bed in my room and have Violet sleep with me.
I liked that idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it? Then I had another. I knew that Ormond used to hunt with Richard and, therefore, knew how to use a gun. So we purchased new firearms and I asked him to arm whatever negroes he thought trustworthy and teach them to shoot. Because I was still frightened.
It was a big step, but hadn’t I heard that faithful negroes on the attacked plantations had fought back at Nat Turner’s army and some had driven them away?
Things had changed. We must change with them, I decided. We must be prepared.