The Letter Writer (12 page)

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 White-head'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.

A week, and then two, went by. News from the outside came to us, from the post carrier, the newspapers, the slave grapevine, and Emaline, who, true to her word, came to supper one night with her husband. Was it proper to entertain so soon after such a tragedy? There were no rules in the books for it. There were no books for it in the first place.

What would they say?
It is advisable, socially, to wait at least a month to serve beef and roasted potatoes and peas from the garden after your brother has had the top of his head slashed off as the result of a slave revolt.

"That Nat Turner hasn't been captured yet," Emaline told us. "They had him for a couple of hours at the Black
Head Sign Post, but he got away. Someone saw him at the Travis place, and the Isle of Wight County Militia went after him, but he was nowhere to be found."

I shivered. We were having dessert.

"It's fearful that he's still out there somewhere, isn't it?" she asked.

"I have my dogs," I told her. "And now all the male negroes on this place know how to use a gun."

"You know what they are saying about Turner's uprising?" she asked me. "They are saying that the faithful blacks on the plantations whipped him more than the whites did. Why, the blacks were on the verandas and behind trees and on rooftops, firing away at Turner and his men. Nat Turner didn't expect that. He expected all the bound servants to join him. But if not for them, he might have taken Jerusalem. He was within a mile of it, they say."

When she left, she kissed me and told me not to be a stranger. "After all," she said, "you were the one who alerted everyone. If not for you..." and she shook her head and sighed. "You were our female Paul Revere that day. We owe our lives to you, Harriet Whitehead."

I blushed and said, "Thank you. I was out of my head."

And she said, "Oh blather, you knew what you were doing. And let me know when your uncle Andrew arrives. We'll have you both over to dinner."

***

The Virginia Militia came to our place the third week Nat Turner was not yet captured and Ormond ushered their commander, a Lieutenant Berry, into the parlor to see me.

"Are
you
the mistress of this place?" he asked me.

"Yes. Everybody else is dead."

"I'd heard that the Reverend Whitehead was killed in the rebellion."

"Yes. His head was slashed. I am the only member of the family to survive. What can I help you with, Lieutenant?"

"We have orders, miss, to search the quarters of all the slaves and free blacks. We're looking for scattered powder and shot, to make sure they weren't involved in the insurrection."

I sighed.
You should be searching my quarters,
I told myself. I called out for Violet and she came. I introduced her.

"Are you free or bound?" the lieutenant asked her.

"She's bound. For now," I said. "I have not yet had time to think about the future."

He nodded. "Pardon me, miss, but you seem awfully young to be making such decisions."

"My uncle Andrew is, at this very moment, on a ship coming from London," I recited. And that pacified him. I also said that Violet would accompany him and his men on rounds, that he was not to upset old Cloanna in her quarters, and that he was to check in with me before he left.

I had heard, you see, of this man and his militia, and how they went on some plantations and planted false evidence to implicate some slaves, and then arrested them and took them away. Just to make it seem as if they were doing something. Because, with Nat Turner still at large, it seemed as if nobody was doing anything at all.

Lieutenant Berry was polite, a true Southerner, if nothing else. He bowed. He saluted. He even kissed my hand. I thought how jealous my sister, Margaret, would be. And then I felt a pang of guilt.

I must, this very afternoon, find out the particulars of her death.

The appearance of the militia at our plantation frightened me.

What would happen when Nat Turner was caught? Would they go through his possessions? Would they find the map with my initials on it? Oh God, I prayed, don't let them go through his things until I can see him.

For if I was the Paul Revere who had saved them all with my warning, I was surely also the Benedict Arnold who had betrayed them all to begin with.

***

I had every intention of asking Violet and Owen about Margaret's death that afternoon. And I knew what they
had to tell me was bad. Nightmare fodder. The stuff of hauntings. Because, since I'd been home, both of them had never quite been able to look me straight in the eye. And whenever Margaret's name came up, as it often did, they either gave the subject a new turn, or excused themselves and left the room.

I now took all my meals at a small side table in the parlor. I could not bear to sit alone at the long, polished table in the dining room with the crystal chandelier dripping its blessing down on me. The chairs and place settings for the family were all there, and I tried, a few times, to sit in my place, but I could not eat for seeing Richard at the head of the table and Mother Whitehead to his right.

So I started eating in the parlor. Sometimes before a glowing fire in the hearth, now that October had come.

October. I should be at my lessons. But that would remind me too much of Pleasant, so I didn't go near my schoolbooks. I read for my own pleasure.

Owen kept the fires going for me, and hovered near, keeping a conversation going.

It was Owen then, who told me about the last of the flowers in the small garden to the right of the house, a sort of horseshoe-type garden.

"Sad to see the last of the flowers," he said.

"I'll visit them right after lunch," I told him.

And I did. And that's how I found out how Margaret died.

***

Punch and Judy were tagging after me. The weeds were high in the garden. I must assign someone to pull them. I had never been much on flowers. It was one of Mother Whitehead's complaints about me, and when she wished to punish me for something, she'd send me out here to pull weeds, or lug water in a watering can from the well to water them. Red, blue, or yellow, I didn't know their names.

"You disgrace yourself," she'd told me. "All proper Southern girls know and love flowers."

I was thinking of having Violet pick a bouquet of those purple and pink ones in the far corner when Judy came over to me with a fat stick in her mouth. She was whimpering, as she did when she was especially proud of herself and wanted praise.

"What is it?" I asked her.

She dropped the stick at my feet.

It was actually more than a stick. It was as round and fat as a man's upper arm, and what was that all over it?

It was blood, that's what it was. All over it.

I bent down and picked it up. It was rather heavy. I held it in both hands and brought it into the house, into the parlor where I sat and read of an afternoon, where the fire crackled and I took tea, where I was mistress, and where I could seal out all bad memories.

I called for Violet and Owen.

Owen saw what lay on the Persian carpet between us and looked down at it, shamefaced. "I should have gotten rid of it," he said.

"I thought you did," said Violet.

They spoke of the piece of wood as if it was a murder weapon, which indeed, it was.

"Is this what killed Margaret?" My voice was low, but somehow I couldn't make it any louder.

"No," Owen said.

"Yes," said Violet.

I looked from one face to the other. "Well, which is it? Tell me."

Owen did the telling:

"We were behind the door of the servants' stairway and we could hear and see what was going on down here. They had just killed Mother Whitehead and Emilie. Then they killed Pleasant, who'd come down upon
hearing the commotion, and then they went upstairs to baby William. When Nat came down after Hark killed baby William, he asked for Margaret. Where was she?

"She'd run outside to hide in the garden. Violet and I were in the attic again by then, and we looked out the window down on the garden. Margaret was hiding behind the rose trellis and he'd come out looking for her. He was holding a long sword he got from your father's gun room.

"He saw her and started chasing her. She ran and ran in that garden, from the rose trellis to the pussy willow tree to the zinnia patch and then she slipped and fell and he, he ... he slashed her with his sword.

"But she didn't die immediately. She wouldn't cooperate. And I saw him leaning over and patting her head and then, of a sudden, he picks up this piece of wood and raises it high and slams it down on her head, how many times I don't know, but enough to kill her. Then he leaves her there and takes off with his men around back. To get some horses, I suppose. Because everyone else he wanted to kill was dead.

"I wanted ... I wanted to go down and stop him, but Violet said he'd kill me, too. I had no weapons, and all his men were downstairs, looting and drinking.

"And then I heard, after it was all over, that fifty-seven were killed in the uprising, but that Margaret was the only one Nat Turner killed himself. He killed no other."

I nodded my head. "Thank you, Owen. Now if you could burn this log."

He picked it up and started toward the hearth.

"No," I said. "No. Not in here. Take it outside and burn it. Please."

He did as I said. I was left with Violet.

"I couldn't let him go down and try to rescue her, Harriet," she told me. "Nat's men would have killed him in a minute."

"Fifty-seven dead," I said dully, "and Margaret the only one he killed himself."

"Yes," she said.

"I wonder, did he love her that much?"

"The servants all say he—" and she stopped there.