We came home at dusk, the sweetest part of the day on the plantation. Candles were lighted in all the windows, and I felt that the old home was trying to be itself and just might yet be restored to what it had been after all.
We took the horses to the barn and Chancy, the groom, took charge of them.
“Look at what we look like,” Violet said. “We’ll catch the devil for sure.”
“Isn’t anybody to hand it out to us,” I said, brushing off my skirt front. To be sure, we were full of dust and grime. Richard would have had apoplexy and likely sent me to my room to reflect on my sins.
“Is my face dirty?” I asked Violet.
“It’s all smudged. I suppose mine is, too.”
I nodded. At that precise moment a bell tolled in the distance. Seven tolls. Well, we weren’t too late for supper. And then, as we were standing on the back porch in the semidarkness, the door opened, spilling light onto us.
Ormond stood there. “Miss Harriet, you have company. You’d best come in now.”
Company? I cast a quick look down at myself. My shoes were muddy, my hair all straggly, and in one hand I still clutched the rolled-up map of Nat Turner’s with my initials on it.
“Who, Ormond? Who is it? Do I have time to change?” Someone wanting to interview me about Nat Turner perhaps. I’d had two such someones in the last month. One from the Richmond Enquirer newspaper and another from the Alexandria Gazette.
“Why it’s your uncle, Miss Harriet. Your uncle Andrew. You’ve been expecting him, haven’t you? He arrived an hour ago. He’s in your brother’s library. Waiting.”
Uncle Andrew! I’d forgotten all about him. Did he still exist? He was from a time of life that I’d labeled “before,” wasn’t he? Before the rebellion.
Without realizing it, I’d made file drawers in my head and put certain people in them. Some who’d been killed in the rebellion were in locked drawers, others were in drawers that were half open, meaning they could still be talked about.
Uncle Andrew was in a drawer I’d left open by mistake. I’d invited him, I recollected, asking him to come, right after the uprising, telling him that everyone here was dead. And he’d settled his business in London, gotten passage, likely on one of my father’s steamers, and come.
And I’d forgotten he was making the long journey. I hadn’t even planned a room for his comfort.
“Violet,” I said, “do something.”
“What would you have me do, Harriet? Just tell me.”
“Richard and Pleasant’s old bedroom. I know it’s clean. See to it that there are fresh sheets on the bed and a fire in the hearth and candles in the windows. Sprinkle some lavender around.”
“It’s already been done, Miss Harriet,” Ormond intoned. “I’ve seen to it. I’ve settled him into the room. I was sure you’d want that room for him since it’s the most commodious one in the house.”
“Ormond, you’re a treasure. Do you think I’ve time to change?”
He shook his head slowly. “I think it best if you present yourself now. I’ve been entertaining him for the last hour, and your brother’s best rum is near gone. I told him I didn’t know where you all were . . . because,” he said, obviously put out about the whole thing, “I didn’t, Miss Harriet. Nobody told me. Or any of us. Winefred held supper. Now you’d best get on in there and you’d best use all your charm. He is growing impatient. And worried. What kind of place is this, he’s about to ask, that nobody knows where the little mistress is? Go now. Quick.”
“Thank you, Ormond.” I gave him a quick hug as I went into the house.
He was seated behind the oak desk that Richard had loved so. He was going over the ledgers that told of the profits and the losses of the plantation. He was sipping some rum.
I stood in the doorway. “Uncle Andrew?”
He looked up. I hadn’t thought of him as tall or as having a full head of hair or as wearing spectacles. He had a long nose and piercing eyes, and yet somehow everything fused together to make him not handsome, but striking. A man of consequence.
“Harriet?”
He stood up and came forward. “Child? Is it you? The writer of all those letters? Why I came as fast as I could when you wrote, ‘everyone here is dead.’” He held out his arms and I went to him.
He enfolded me in those arms so tightly that the hug said things both of us hadn’t even thought of yet. He patted the top of my head. “I’ve been here over an hour, child. Where have you been? All the servants were worried about you.”
I had a lie all ready. I was going to say I and Violet and Owen had been out searching for a lost colt, but something told me that lies had no legs around this man. Besides, it was good to have someone ask me where I’d been with such real concern.
I drew back from him. I was still holding the map of Southampton County. “I went to find Nat Turner’s cave,” I said. “Did anyone here tell you the story about what happened?”
“They didn’t have to. It was in all our papers abroad. What a god-awful shame. And you knew this man? He worked here?”
“Yessir.”
“And you went to get his map, you say?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
He stepped back a bit, his hands on my shoulders. “So that’s why you look as if the cat just dragged you in. You’ve been in his cave. Alone?”
“No, sir, my girl, Violet, and our houseboy, Owen, came with me. I had to find the map, you see.”
“No, I confess, I don’t.” He had an English accent and I enjoyed hearing it. “Suppose you tell me.”
It came to me then that he was asking for an explanation. And that I must answer to him. That he was in charge now and a mite less than happy with my tardiness and my appearance.
“It’s a long story, sir, and they’re waiting supper.”
“They’ve held it up for an hour, at least, they can wait ten minutes more.”
So I told him then how I’d drawn, or rather traced, the map for Nat Turner. How, out of pride, I’d initialed my name in the bottom corner. How he’d told me he was going plantation to plantation to preach, after the public whipping at the Gerard plantation. How he was known as a preacher and I’d never known him to be anything but gentle and kind. I was shamefaced when I was finished. There were tears in the tone of my voice.
I showed him the map. He spread it out on the desk and examined it carefully, especially the notes Nat Turner had made. Then he looked at me.
“The authorities are going to want this map,” he said.
“Please, Uncle,” I begged. “That’s why I went to get it. Please, I can’t let them know I gave it to Nat Turner. Even though I didn’t know what he was going to do. I can’t let people, in years to come, see my initials on it. Please.”
He sat looking at me steadily. “I see you’ve thought this through.”
I nodded yes.
“What were you going to do? Destroy it?”
I said, yessir, I was.
“We can’t do that,” he admonished. “We must give it over to the authorities.”
Tears welled in my eyes and started down my face.
“I’ve always prided myself on being an honest man,” he said quietly. “And now I’m home. And in charge. And head of the plantation. And I must decide what to do.”
I sniffed and nodded.
He took out his handkerchief and wiped my face. “Tell you what, though, I haven’t always been that honest. I couldn’t, though I wanted to be. I’ve lied to you all these months and months, for one thing. Which was a bad thing to do. So, to make up for it, to you, what say I just erase these initials you put on the bottom corner here and then we turn the map over to the authorities? What do you say, hey, Harriet?”
And all the time, there he was, carefully erasing my initials off the map. I just stared at him. My mind was unable to wrap around it all yet. What was it he had said? Why was he erasing my initials? Because he’d lied to me? When? About what?
I asked him then. “What did you lie to me about all these months, sir?”
He pushed the map aside. “Something very important, Harriet,” he said. “You see, I’m not your uncle. I’m your father.”