Trezvant’s face blanched. He looked wildly around the room at the others.
Nat Turner encouraged himself. This was the trial that mattered. He must find strength. He must finish. There was a debt he owed. “This is only a warning, only the beginning. Brother will take arms against brother and fathers against their own sons. You will slaughter yourselves. The rivers will flow red, blood will drip from the corn. The battle is already raging in the heavens. I have seen it with my own eyes. Death will come again to the Tidewater. It will spread across Virginia and across this nation. I have seen it.
“In the end, the captives will be free. Whether freedom comes now or after much bloodshed is your choice. It is for you to decide whether you will walk like Pharaoh in your arrogance or humble yourselves like the Great King Xerxes.”
Trezvant mocked Nat Turner, waving his hands in the air. “O great prophet, spare me! O great One, have mercy on me! Save all of us poor white people from the darkies!” Trezvant shook his head and stuck out his tongue as he laughed. “I am going to laugh as you hang, nigger! My wife and I are going to dance when they hang you from that tree!”
Nat Turner would not allow himself to be distracted. “You will bequeath damnation to your children. Their blood will be on your hands. Look to God, my brothers, you only have to turn.” He was brought to these shores for this moment. He would not die with their blood on his hands. “Turn from your evil ways. Live!”
Even as Nat Turner spoke the pronouncement there was a bitter taste in his mouth. Live? Life for them, forgiveness for them after all the people they had murdered, after all they’d stolen, after all the broken hearts? Mercy? Nat Turner tasted bile.
He had been spit up on the shores of a foreign land among people who hated him and others like him. He would never see his homeland. Never see his grandparents or his sister. He would never smell the wildflowers of Ethiopia or see the green hills. These people, people who stole land that did not belong to them, who stole men and had no sorrow for it—these were the people that God wanted to pardon? Was no one beyond God’s mercy?
How could the Lord shower mercy on people like Trezvant? Nat Turner looked at the proud man sitting before him. How could people like Trezvant and Nathaniel Francis escape punishment simply by repenting—simply by uttering a few words? Simply by feeling sorrow in their hearts for their deeds? After all they’d done? It was not fair.
But God was Father to them all. He was the Father of Cain and Abel. He was Father of the just and the unjust, of Nathan and John Clarke, and loved them both.
Nat Turner would do what he had promised; he would be obedient—his would be the voice that offered the nation an opportunity to repent. “God is the God of mercy, your Father as well as mine. It is He who sends me.
“Congressman, you have desired to be a great man, to have the nation’s attention on you. So, like King Xerxes, like Pharaoh, the fate of the nation is in your hands. You have the power to speak to the people, to the governor, to persuade them to turn. There is still time.
“Virginia boasts that she leads the South and the whole nation. If you turn, if you set the captives free, the others will follow. It is in your hands to stop the coming war. You have the chance to turn the nation. If you do not, the judgment is against you and against this nation, and the blood will be on your hands.
“You stand at a crossroads today, and it is for you two judges to warn the people. If you choose the way of Pharaoh, you will bring judgment on this nation, on yourselves, and on your children. This is the Word of the Lord: ‘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 right and sure judgment of the Lord!
“Open your hearts, open your eyes. ‘He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.’
“Only repentance can change your destiny. Your fate is in your hands!” It was done now. It was finished.
Trezvant looked at James Parker. “We rushed here for nothing. He is a bloodthirsty maniac.”
Remembering his wealthy host, Trezvant rubbed his hands together as though he was finished and motioned to Peter Edwards. “I am done with this scoundrel. Take him away.” He looked down at his glass. “I am famished. Bring me more refreshment.”