But Samuel’s wife, the second Elizabeth, had other plans.
Still in widow’s weeds, Elizabeth Turner stopped Nat Turner on his way to the fields. “They treated you too kindly, like a family member and not as the slave you are,” she snarled. “But now your fate is in my hands.” She motioned to the man beside her. “I have sold you this day to this fine gentleman, Thomas Moore.” She pointed and sneered behind her veil.
Nat Turner opened his mouth to protest. But disbelief left him stunned, mute.
He was a freeman. How could this be happening? His brother’s widow had no right to sell him. She had not been bequeathed Cherry, his mother, Nancie, or him and his son.
She snarled at him. “Not one word! Not one, Nat!”
“Nat Turner,” he insisted.
“I said, ‘Nat’! And if you make things difficult, if you run, I will sell your mother away.” She waved the handkerchief in her hand. Elizabeth had sold him to a man without scruples. “And you needn’t worry about your wife, Cherry. I’ve made arrangements for her also. She and your son will become the property of Giles Reese.
“It was hardly worth the bother. Less than one hundred dollars for both of them.”
Nat Turner pleaded with Thomas Moore to purchase his wife also. He would live as a slave. Nat Turner and Cherry would both be his slaves, if they could be together.
Thomas Moore shrugged. “The arrangements have already been made.”
One hundred dollars. Even old people and children brought more than one hundred dollars. Elizabeth Turner could have given Cherry to Moore for nothing or sold her to him as a breeder.
But Elizabeth Turner was making a point about who was master and who was property. She despised Nat Turner—who he was, who God had made him. She hated him because Old Benjamin had dared to list him first—Nathan Turner before Samuel Turner, before her husband—on the church-house deed.
The order lessened her, along with her husband, and their standing in the community. Through the sale Elizabeth Turner was simply correcting things. “Stay in your place,” she told him.
She was sending the white men of Southampton a message: There were rules that even white men had to obey. There was a certain divine order. Slavery and life favored white men and there were certain indignities white women had to bear. But no white woman would stand for such public shame and humiliation. There was an order and everyone had to play his or her part. No white man, no matter how bewitched he was, had better put a black bastard before any of his lawful white children. Elizabeth Turner simply set things to right.
She was sending Nat Turner’s mother a message. Old Benjamin was gone now and Nancie had no voodoo magic, no womanly magic, that could control Elizabeth Turner. The entire Turner family had been shamed long enough—all because of Nancie’s darkie bastard.
Elizabeth Turner would sell Nat Turner away—out of sight, out of mind, almost as though he never existed. But not too far—she wanted to enjoy his pain. She would sell him to a man who held him in no special esteem—who was not enthralled with his reading, his writing, or his gift for language. Then, to seal it, she would sell his wife to a man who wanted to breed her.
Nat Turner was strong-willed and he would find a way to make peace with being sold. But losing Cherry would bring him to his knees. Alone, each day he slaved he would be reminded of his place in civilized society.
Elizabeth wanted him to obey the rules. She wanted him to be who she thought him to be. She needed to affirm that she was naturally better and more powerful.
Nat Turner was not a man; he was property. He was not a trustee. He had no right to a church—he was forbidden to even enter. He had no right to a wife or to a marriage. She needed him to know—he would never be anything but a slave. Cherry’s sale would teach him.
Elizabeth Turner was right. It was not the plow or the rod that broke him. It was losing Cherry and his son.