The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (11 page)

“This mishmash with Nat Turner is the South's business, isn't it? Let men like Governor Floyd work it out. Who am I to interfere?”

Frederick Douglass looked down at the pages in his hand. “But men like Floyd, fence straddlers, haven't been able to work it out. His attempt at gradual abolition failed, these notes say, because the slave-holding portion of his state threatened to secede from Virginia if pressed about slavery.”

Still perched on the couch, irritation lacing his voice, Henry frowned. “Are we not our brother's keeper, Hattie? You sound like our older sister, Catherine. Do you really believe this is the South's private affair?”

“Maybe she is right.”

“You know better, Hattie! It is fear I hear speaking, not my courageous sister.”

“Maybe Governor Floyd was right. We are staunch abolitionists. But, perhaps, how the South resolves the issue of slavery is their affair—like what happens behind a family's closed door. Maybe we should mind our own business.” Harriet was surprised by her own words and thoughts.

“Nat Turner was the thud against the wall.” Frederick Douglass's voice cut through her efforts to reassure herself, to make room to step away from it all.

“I don't understand.”

“Even with neighbors, who respect one another's privacy, there is a time to step in.” Frederick Douglass rubbed his beard again. “Nat Turner was the black eye, the scream from the apartment next door.” He lifted
The Confessions of Nat Turner
. “This lie and his death say we cannot sit back and do nothing. Because of Nat Turner, we can no longer pretend not to know what is happening right next door to us. Can we turn our backs and pretend we don't hear or see? We cannot leave them to suffer. We must do what we can, even if we must invade their privacy, to end the suffering. Even if it means risking our reputations, or even our own lives.”

The three of them were silent. Harriet heard the clock on the study mantel ticking. “Do you think there will be war?”

Frederick's voice was no more than a whisper. “Though my heart is heavy, I think it is inevitable.” The clock sounded even louder in the silence. “We must do what we can to prevent it.”

Henry stood then and came and knelt before Harriet. He took her hand. “We must summon the courage to speak up, to say clearly who we are and what we believe. We must have the fortitude
to confront lies with truth. We must do all we can, with all that has been given us, to set the captives free. Courage today or there will surely be carnage tomorrow.”

A tear stung her cheek. She looked deeply into the eyes she had trusted all her life. Harriet squeezed Henry's hand.

“When would you like to meet with William again?”

She turned toward Frederick. “I do want to find the real Nat Turner.” If she was going to commit to truth, she might as well begin now. “But William makes me uncomfortable. He alarms me.”

Frederick nodded. “If we would seek after truth and love, the path will lead us through dangerous places, past strangers who frighten us. But if we find the courage to persevere, we will find what we seek.”

Harriet nodded and agreed that Mr. Douglass should arrange a second meeting as soon as possible.

Cross Keys Area, outside Jerusalem, Virginia

Christmas 1830

N
at Turner bowed his head to pray with the others over their Christmas dinner—beans, corn bread, greens, and cabbage flavored with pigs' feet and tails. He dipped his spoon into the food and tasted. He nodded his compliments to Mrs. Hathcock.

Some had criticized him years ago, after his return from the Great Dismal Swamp, telling him they would not return to slavery for anything or for anyone. He looked at the men, women, and children around him—at his wife and at his mother.

Some understood now why he had returned. Others might never understand. He had come back in obedience to God. He had come back for his people.

Nat Turner looked at Cherry, who sat beside him. No matter what, he would never leave her again.

She was Giles Reese's captive now. When she bore children they belonged to Reese to do with as he pleased. Nat Turner turned his head away. He would not think of it. Still, when he was with her now, there was ache in his delight. There was a wound in his side, and life leaked from it.

But he loved her. Only death could force him to leave her. Even the humiliation could not drive him away, even if he could see her only now and then, he would not leave.

He looked around the room at all the people gathered in the small cabin for Christmas dinner. He would remember every face, every movement, every smile, and every tear.

He looked at the cracked feet and imagined the broken hearts he could not see. His son, Riddick, came to him then. Nat Turner wrapped an arm around the boy, rubbed a hand through his hair, and then they shared food from his plate. God had sent him back for his son.

Nat Turner tilted Riddick's head back and kissed his forehead. He smiled at Cherry and then, together, he and his son ate the last of the cabbage on his tin plate. It would be his last Christmas.

When the early night of winter came and they were all full from the holiday dinner, or what passed for full, Nat Turner led the people out. He had been planning for months. Cherry walked beside him. He felt in his pocket for the gunpowder, then took Riddick's hand. He held a piece of burning wood aloft as a torch to lead the way. The people followed behind him, silent with anticipation.

Light from the torch made a golden circular pool against the darkness that bobbled, sometimes lighting the trunks of the dark trees. His feet had thawed in the warm cabin, but they were rapidly numbing again. He looked back at the old people and children who followed, and nodded to encourage them. Nat Turner smiled at Cherry and squeezed Riddick's hand.

Young and old, men and women, they followed Nat Turner along a hidden trail that led to a quiet clearing he knew of deep in the woods. He heard bare feet, hard frozen like clubs, crunching in the snow. Occasionally a child giggled, a woman laughed. He motioned for them to be quiet.

If they were lucky, there would be a patch free of snow beneath the tree branches that arched high above the clearing.

When they reached the spot, there was a bare place as he'd hoped. Nat Turner directed them to form a circle around him, older ones—to honor them—and little ones—so they could see—in the front. He didn't have much of the powder, none to spare.

He dumped it out on the ground and formed it into a mound. He stood then and looked around at them. God had sent him back
for them. “For God who loved us enough to send His son! For freedom!” He touched the torch to the powder and leapt back. There was an explosion and a white flash!

The people stood in awe, their mouths open, their eyes wide. Christmas. Their Fourth of July! One woman raised her hands. Then they shouted and stomped. The children jumped in the air. All the people clapped their hands.

God had spoken. Now Nat Turner waited for the sign.

1856

H
arriet looked around William's Boston shop. She was struck again by the peacefulness of the place. But outside the shop, in Kansas, in the halls of Congress, and even in the streets of Boston, bloody skirmishes continued about slavery and particularly about the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

Her brother Henry and Frederick Douglass insisted she meet with William again.
But there is no one else to do it. People are suffering and you can help them; you have the attention of the world.

During their last meeting at Plymouth Church, they had discussed Governor Floyd being double-minded. But her mind also was divided. Harriet did not want war, and she was committed to working to end slavery. She was willing to write—she had proven that with
Uncle Tom
—and she was willing to accept the ridicule of those who disagreed with her stance. But she was not certain about Nat Turner. She no longer knew what to believe.

For years she, like the rest of America, had believed what she read in
The Confessions
. The document was signed by six judges and the Southampton County clerk. How could it not be true? And if it was a lie, what kind of man was the real Nat Turner?

Harriet was unsure. She only committed to listening.

There had been riots in Boston, Philadelphia, and even in small towns like York, Pennsylvania, when slave catchers had come North trying to reclaim slaves. People like William, a slave refugee from Virginia, and even Frederick Douglass, were at risk—they could be sent back South in chains. But the people in cities and
towns, risking their own freedom, were rebelling against the Fugitive Slave Act and hiding, or even rescuing, the refugees by force. They were so brave, but all she felt was a nagging fear.

“I have not agreed to write his story.” She paused, sizing up William, the man who sat across from her—a coconspirator in Nat Turner's uprising. “They tell me you know more about him than any man alive.” Harriet looked down at her notes. “But you said, before, you did not like him.”

William nodded. “But in the end, he was my friend. He gave me the gift few people would choose to give another. He gave me my life. He gave me hope.”

“Hope?” How could anyone who had been a slave, who had been through what the slaves had been through, speak of hope? She would not have known where to go or where to begin looking. “I cannot imagine.”

“I found my sister still in bonds, the light stolen from her heart and beaten out of her eyes.” William lowered his voice, his shoulders tensed. “I must decline, for the safety of others, to tell you where I found her or the exact circumstances of my spiriting her away.” He seemed to relax again. “She was the first missing part of me that I found.” The light flickered out in his eyes. “I still have not found my wife. Though I still sometimes muster the strength to hope, there is no sign of her.” His hands clenched and then unclenched.

Silent, Harriet looked around the shop and then back at William.

He cleared his throat. “God gave me back part of my life. He gave me back my sister and, with her, a niece. He gave me a voice.” William lifted his teacup, smiled briefly at Harriet, and then set it back on the saucer. “There is hope for bloodthirsty men.” He briefly flashed another smile.

Moved, she knew she mustn't be so sympathetic that she failed to ask him the difficult questions. Harriet looked toward the other room where her brother and Frederick Douglass were waiting.
The Confessions
described Will as an executioner. How would he react to her questions? “What about all the lives you took?”

Surprisingly, William seemed nonplussed. “How many slave cheeks do you suppose were turned and lives taken? How many knees were bowed and pleas made? But it seems that violent people only understand violence. What remedy would you recommend to God for those who murder His children, or even your own?” The muscles at his temple throbbed. “They justify what they did to us by twisting the Old Testament. How long did they expect to continue before God unleashed Old Testament vengeance?

“Do you think God actually stood back without care and watched as His children were slaughtered?” William straightened his collar.

Though he was silent for a moment, his nostrils flared. “I believe that He wept. I believe from the beginning He planned to deliver us.”

Then William's face was suddenly surprisingly emotionless. “They pretend to be God-lovers, but they are man-haters, and God will not be mocked. How can you torture your brother and say you love him? You cannot imprison others and say you love freedom. You cannot breathe war and say you are a peacemaker.

“It was God's command. War. Judgment. But it was their choice—they could have chosen to repent; they could have chosen mercy for themselves.” His demeanor was placid as he delivered the words. “They held money, property, and power more valuable than men's souls. It was their choice.”

“You seem to doubt that they were or are Christians.”

His eyes bore into hers. “I am no judge, but in the wake of a Christian's footsteps, there ought to be love.”

It was strange to hear William talk about love, to speak words that seemed kin to Henry's. Before her sat a murderer speaking of love; she looked for some sign of insincerity.

“Slavery men are angry and discontent; they do not see themselves. They leave a trail of bitterness and sorrow behind them. They try to make their lives full with more houses, more servants, more lace, more money. They cannot even say they are wrong and
repent to God. They cannot humble themselves and apologize.” A slight smile, an ironic one, played at the corner of William's lips. “I know what it is to be angry, to choose judgment rather than mercy.”

His expression sobered. “I was bound, I was a slave, but the worst bondage was what I suffered inside. The worst was what I had to admit and confess before I could speak again, before I could love again.”

“Love? But you killed so many people.” Harriet looked for something in his eyes, some sign of deceit.

“It was a war for freedom. Nat Turner, the others, and I were sent to do battle with the giant, to warn him that he would fall. They gave no mercy, so received none.”

“What about the baby?”

William looked confused, as though he did not know how to respond.

“The baby. The one you went back and killed. Are you saying God directed you to kill the baby?”

William lifted his shoulders and shook his head as though he didn't understand. Then his eyes widened and sarcasm crept into his voice. “Some folly from
The Confessions
?”

Harriet pressed him. “Did you find satisfaction in… in war… in killing all those people?”

William was matter-of-fact. He did not turn away. “At first. For a moment I was ecstatic—but the pleasure of lust is temporary satisfaction. When I was empty, bloodlust was the only thing that seemed to fill me. But not for long. In time, I repented, as any soldier repents; but I did what had to be done. It only satisfied me when I was not filled with love.”