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would grant… but in this case I cannot do so, because there is not one member of the Council of State in Richmond. Wherefore, the poor wretches must lose their lives by absence of the councillors from their official duties.’”
    Harriet refolded the letter and stuffed it back in its envelope. It was appalling how little care men had for their brothers. “All this is making me ill.”
    â€œAnd indignant, my dear Harriet.”
    â€œBut it was so long ago, Professor. What good does it do to dig it all up now? It is twenty-five years hence and as the governor stated, the poor wretches have already lost their lives. I cannot bring them back.”
    â€œPerhaps, my wife. But the truth is still a precious gem that does not lose value with age. Truth might at least ease the suffering of loved ones left behind.”
    The two of them discussed the diary entries. “They are too detailed for me to doubt them.” When they were finished it was decided. She could not travel to the South to investigate; there was a bounty on her head. Instead, Harriet would travel to New York to share the letter with Frederick Douglass and her brother Henry.

Nat Turner

Chapter 5
    Cross Keys Area, outside Jerusalem, Virginia
    Christmas 1830
    I nside the stove warmed the small cabin that was packed with twenty to thirty people—survival made all of them heroes.
    Nat Turner made his way around the room, greeting them: Sam, Hark, and the freemen. He leaned to kiss his mother on the cheek. In the corner the children played and he walked to join them. On Sundays, after church, he taught them to read. But before he could begin a lesson this day, his wife, Cherry, came to him.
    â€œIt is Christmas, husband, let them play.” She led him to a chair. He looked down at his feet. They felt nothing now, but soon he knew he would feel spiky pain as they thawed.
    Nat Turner looked around the small, crowded living space at the people gathered there. It had been a hard winter—hard for slave owners, brutal for slaves—no longer people but black-draped skeletons. Few of the captors had enough to eat and were hard-pressed to find heart to share the little that kept them alive with captives.
    The warm air in the cabin carried the bittersweet smell of the hardworking people and mixed it with aromas from the kitchen.
    God had sent him back for them.
    Eyes shifted from the stove to conversations and back again. Nat Turner smelled the warm fragrance of baking sweet potatoes from the hosts’ garden. A brine of vinegar and salt water steamed from a kettle on the iron stove. As people entered the cabin, shiveringfrom the cold, they made their way to Thomas Hathcock’s wife, freewoman and hostess, stationed near the pots. One would come with a few precious potatoes, a single squash, or a cup of dried beans. All of it swirled into the kettle. Each one brought a metal cup or pan, and when the food was finished they would share.
    Mrs. Hathcock had a reputation. Though she was known for her preserves, she could make anything delicious. She did wonders with everything she touched.
    Next to the kettle was a large pot of mixed greens—mustard and collards that her husband had rescued from the weather—already tender and kept warming. One of the women brought a small but prized piece of salt pork. Mrs. Hathcock added a tiny, precious portion to the greens to season them. She added lard and a bit of the salt pork to a cast-iron skillet and began to steam-fry a head of cabbage and bits more of it to some of the other dishes to season them.
    Daniel came through the door with his mother, both of them Peter Edwards’s slaves. It was rare, but their master kept them together as mother and son. In her hands was a bundle tied like treasure in a rag. She beamed.
    â€œMy master butchered last week and gave me these.” Two pig ears, a snout, a tail, and four hooves, frozen from the cold. “There’s chitlins,