Outside the gate of the Whiteheads’ farm, the captive warriors called in to Reverend Richard Whitehead, pastor of Turner’s Meeting Place. “Come out, Dick!” they mocked him. They knew who he was. They all knew what he had done and that he had hidden it behind his collar, behind his mother’s skirts.
Nat Turner sent men in to get the preacher and the Whitehead women. They brought Richard Whitehead out first. Still in his nightshirt, he jerked and flopped in the darkness like a handkerchief pulled by a string. Will and the others held him, forced him to his knees, and Nat Turner stood over him. “‘Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.’”
Richard was haughty at first. “You black heathen! Don’t you shout scriptures at me! I will see you hanged, you black devil!” He looked at his faithful servant Hubbard. “Get them off of me, Hubbard! Run, Hubbard, get the boys from their houses! We will roust these niggers!”
Nat Turner looked at the Whitehead captives who were gathering, carrying torches. Not one of the captives—Hubbard, Venus, or the others—lifted a hand to help the preacher. Not one took off running to alert authorities, to rescue the family.
Nat Turner looked at the faces, lit by the fire, and spoke to them. “‘My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their resting place.’” Men, women, and children gathered; some Nat Turner had seen only from a distance in the fields. So many broken hearts. There were tears shining in the darkness. One small girl ran forward and spit on Richard Whitehead. So many people covered in shame. “‘All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries said, We offend not, because they have sinned against the LORD, the habitation of justice, even the LORD, the hope of their fathers.’”
Richard Whitehead looked at the captives surrounding him. Some of them had begun to yell, cursing him. He looked at Nat Turner and the captive warriors with him with scythes, posts, hammers, and axes in their hands. He sobbed for mercy. Nat Turner thought of Ethelred Brantley, of the captives in the fields, of so many broken hearts. “You have given no mercy and it is the judgment of the Lord that you will receive none.”
Richard Whitehead was wailing now. “Hubbard! Hubbard, help me! You’ve known me since I was a boy!” He called for his mother.
“‘And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.’ This is the judgment of the Lord!” Will stepped in close, the grim smile still on his face, and swung his axe. Will’s shirt was blood-soaked, his face a bloody mask.
When Richard Whitehead was dead, the men brought out the other heirs of the Whitehead family. One of the girls escaped. Hubbard promised to find her before morning.
Nat Turner wanted to look away. He did not want to spill blood, but he was a soldier. He was the leader. He steadied himself. Kill or be killed. Destroy the root or die. He smelled the blood. He saw the death. Will swung his axe.
Nat Turner felt himself floating above it all. He saw the captors’ bodies on the ground. He saw the captives gathered around, watching, holding torches. He saw himself wield his sword and then a wooden post.
He drifted on the healing brown waters of the Dismal Swamp. “No more slave songs. No more bowing,” he heard Hubbard say below him.
When his band departed, some of the captives from the Whitehead farm joined Nat Turner. Hubbard stayed behind to lead those who would minister to the dead.
Still drifting above them, Nat Turner watched as he and the others made their way to Waller’s still.