The Letter Writer Read online

  The Letter Writer

  Ann Rinaldi

  * * *

  HARCOURT, INC.

  Orlando Austin New York San Diego London

  * * *

  OTHER NOVELS BY ANN RINALDI

  Juliet's Moon

  The Ever-After Bird

  Come Juneteenth

  An Unlikely Friendship

  A Novel of Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley

  Brooklyn Rose

  Or Give Me Death

  A Novel of Patrick Henry's Family

  The Staircase

  The Coffin Quilt

  The Feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys

  Cast Two Shadows

  The American Revolution in the South

  An Acquaintance with Darkness

  Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons

  The Story of Phillis Wheatley

  Keep Smiling Through

  The Secret of Sarah Revere

  Finishing Becca

  A Story about Peggy Shippen and Benedict Arnold

  The Fifth of March

  A Story of the Boston Massacre

  A Break with Charity

  A Story about the Salem Witch Trials

  A Ride into Morning

  The Story of Tempe Wick

  * * *

  Copyright © 2008 by Ann Rinaldi

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part

  of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact

  or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rinaldi, Ann.

  The letter writer/Ann Rinaldi.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A young girl who serves as letter writer for her blind

  stepmother is haunted by her unwitting role in Nat Turner's rebellion,

  one of the bloodiest slave uprisings in the history of America.

  1. Southampton Insurrection, 1831—Juvenile fiction. [1. Southampton

  Insurrection, 1831—Fiction. 2. Turner, Nat, 1800?-1831—Fiction.

  3. Slavery—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction. 5. Virginia—History—

  1775-1865—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R459Le 2008

  [Fic]—dc22 2008009283

  ISBN 978-0-15-206402-0

  Text set in Adobe Garamond

  Designed by Cathy Riggs

  First edition

  A C E G H F D B

  Printed in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, organizations,

  and events portrayed in this book are products of the author's imagination

  or are used fictitiously to lend a sense of realism to the story.

  * * *

  To Karen Grove, my editor

  at Harcourt for over fifteen years now.

  With thanks for all your help and patience.

  There should be more like you.

  * * *

  Prologue

  He came to me when I was just eleven, Richard Whitehead did, and asked me to be his mother's letter writer.

  "Her eyesight is failing, you know," he said of her. "Within a year she won't be able to write her letters anymore."

  I knew, for I was with her every day. It was my job to know such things. It had, in a household where everyone more or less had a "job," fallen to me to be her companion when I wasn't at my lessons. I had reported her failing eyesight to him a while back.

  "Mother Whitehead bumped into a chair today, Richard. She may have hurt her knee." Or: "She misplaced her notebook, and we spent the morning looking for it, and when we found it, she had to bring it up to her nose to read it, Richard."

  But I had to be careful how I said these things. He had a deep and abiding love for his mother. She was not my mother, you see. We both had the same father, dead now, but different mothers. Though I loved Mother Whitehead as my own.

  Besides, Richard was the eldest, and, at twenty-six, unofficial head of the family. And if all that was not bad enough, he was a Methodist minister and, as such, was not above making me kneel on the gravel on the back drive for an hour if it pleased him.

  And on many occasions, if something was gnawing at his innards, like weevils in the cotton, it could please him. Not only with me, but with my "girl" Violet and even betimes Margaret, his beloved sister whom he so spoiled.

  That gravel was hellish on one's knees.

  When he asked me to be Mother Whitehead's letter writer, he'd had the doctor over to examine her and decided plans must be made.

  "Her correspondence means the world to her," he said to me. "She writes voluminous letters."

  "But I'm only eleven years old," I protested.

  In Virginia, in the year 1830, eleven is considered almost a young lady. You are expected to behave as such. No more tree climbing, no more sliding down the banister, no more playing with dolls, although I line mine up on my bed pillows each morning and still address them by name. Oh, one can still play the game of Lame Chicken or put on men's clothes in disguise at a party, but for the most part one is considered grown-up at eleven.

  "You won't need to start this writing for about three months, according to the doctor," Richard told me, "and anyway I've seen your penmanship and it is, by far, better than any eleven-year-old's that I've seen. Pleasant has done a good job with you."

  Pleasant, his wife, was my personal tutor.

  "What you can do," he suggested, "is start corresponding with someone for the next few months. Improve your writing even more."

  But with whom? He thought a moment while he rifled through the mail that had been set down on his desk. Then he looked as if he had a brilliant thought and took up an envelope of cream-colored paper that looked as if it had traveled through several continents. He scowled at it. "How about this fellow? Writes to me regularly, asking about the crops, the animals, and other matters about the plantation. He's our father's brother."

  "Mother Whitehead says he's touched in the head."

  "You must understand she was estranged from our father before he died. By the time he had you with your mother in London, things were finished between them. The only reason they weren't divorced then was because he knew it would destroy her social status. The last time she saw him was when he made that visit and left you here. I think it was kind of her to take you in, being that you were the child of another woman and visible proof of his infidelity. Don't you?"

  I felt my face go hot. "Yes," I said. And to myself I added, And you never let me forget it.

  Whether this was the cause, or it was just the nature of our beings, Richard and I were often estranged from each other. The only closeness we had was when he talked about "our father." And when he talked I kept a still tongue in my head and listened, because in spite of his overall meanness, he was the only one who ever explained the hopeless entanglements of my family to me.

  He cleared his throat. "Uncle Andrew has been hinting lately at being invited here for a visit," he said. "So I must admit I have a twofold purpose in asking you to write to him. One, to improve your writing and learning. The man is highly educated. And two, to hold him off on visiting. It would put Mother into shock to see him again. Bring back too many sordid memories. I must
protect her."

  I nodded yes, said I'd do it.

  He was pleased. It didn't take much to please Richard. Just do as he said, with blind loyalty. Like my older sister, Margaret, did. I longed to be able to be like Margaret. If she were a cat she'd be rubbing against his legs. I couldn't be like that, and so I was always in trouble with him.

  But oh, to think he at least respected me for my dignity. To think if I only had that.

  For the next three months I corresponded with Uncle Andrew and got to know him. Or so I thought.

  One

  Dear Uncle Andrew: My name is Harriet, and depending on how much you can abide my chatter, I am going to be writing to you a great deal over the next year or so. My brother, Richard, demands it, and when he demands something, the angels concur. He says you are a very intelligent man, and though Mother Whitehead says you are touched in the head, you suffer that malignancy no more than most of us in this family. At any rate, he says you are also an art dealer. And the engraving we have in our center hallway of Mary Wollstonecraft was given to Mother Whitehead by you many years ago. Good grief, I have been passing by it for years! I am eleven years old, love to ride horses and read books. My best friend is my "girl" Violet, who somehow came to be half white and almost part of the family. I don't know how, but this family is so confused it is like Mother Whitehead's crochet yarn after Piddles, the cat, gets finished fussing with it. Oh, I must go now, they are calling me for Sunday dinner, and if there is anything Richard hates it is one being late for prayers before meals.

  Your servant, Harriet Whitehead

  ***

  Violet was at the edge of the pond in water up to her knees, cutting the cattails. "Oh, look at this one, Miss Harriet," and she snipped it off expertly with a scissor. "This one's a beauty." Her skirt was hitched up between her legs showing her light brown thighs. She didn't wear ruffled pantalets like I did. Slaves didn't wear pantalets.

  I took the cattail in my hands with the three others. It was a good one. I could cut a sharp point and it would prove to make a good pen when dipped in some lampblack. I'd use it to write my next letter, I decided. Maybe this afternoon.

  Neither of us paid mind to the rider approaching on the fat white horse until he was nearly on top of us.

  "What are you doing there in that pond?" Richard demanded. "Getting cattails again? Violet, get out and put down your skirts. Harriet, give over those cattails."

  He reached out his hand. I gave them over.

  "Going to use these for writing, are you?" he asked.

  "Yes," I answered.

  "They're known around as slave pens," he said. "Look on the back of any barn wall and you'll see their scratchings. Or messages, made from cattails and lampblack. You know what lampblack does to your clothing, Harriet. And how Mama hates it. Yet you do persist. Why?"

  "They're more of a challenge to use," I answered.

  He sighed deeply. "Haven't you enough challenges in life? Violet, haven't you anything better to do with your time?"

  "It be the Sabbath, Massa Richard. I done went to church. An' if'n I must say so, you did preach a fine sermon, yessuh." She used the special voice she always used with my brother, the subservient one with the humble tone.

  "Such a fine sermon that you come home and raise your skirts in front of everybody, hey? You're not a child anymore. How old are you now, Violet?"

  She was untwisting her skirt and pulling it down. "Fourteen, suh."

  "That's right, I keep forgetting. You're three years older than Harriet. Well, you keep acting like that and it'll be time to marry you off."

  "But suh, I be Miss Harriet's girl. I been carin' for her since she come to us. And I serve Miss Margaret, too, when she come home from that fancy school in Jerusalem. An' I run and fetch for your mama. They all can't do without me."

  She was begging. And pompous Richard let her beg.

  "At any rate, my sister has letters to write this afternoon. And not with cattails. So you go about your business, whatever it is. And if I catch you with your skirts hiked up again, they won't come down until I've given your legs ten stripes. You hear?"

  "Yessuh." Violet ran.

  I looked at him. "You know Mother Whitehead doesn't hold with having her slaves mistreated."

  "You're scolding me now? Since when do I report to you?"

  "That isn't it."

  "What is it, then? How does Mama think I keep order around here? Somebody has to put the fear of God into them. Tell me, can you recollect the message of my sermon this morning? Or would you rather spend an hour kneeling on the gravel in the drive?"

  I thought desperately. Something about servants. Yes. Oh yes. "Slaves, obey your masters," I said.

  He looked disappointed.

  "Mother Whitehead wants you to keep order," I said bravely, "but she also wants you to do right by them."

  His face got red, not a good sign. Still, he controlled himself. "Now you go on," he said with quiet dignity, "and look in on Mama. She's on the front veranda. See if she needs anything. And the less you have to do with Violet, the better off you'll be. Slaves have no morals. I mean it, Harriet. I can forbid her from being around you if you think I'm fooling."

  "I know you're not fooling. You never fool. You have no sense of humor."

  He glared at me. I knew he was warring inside between his man-of-the-cloth instincts and his basic brotherly anger, and it tore at his innards. Because I was the only one who caused him such conflict.

  I really believe that I was the only one in the family who made him, on occasion, sorry that he had become a minister. I squared my shoulders and walked away.

  ***

  I always wished I could be as accomplished as my almost-mother, Catharine Whitehead, blind as she was. I wished I could be mistress of a plantation like Whitehead Farms, respected by all, copied in dress and style of living, mistress of sixty negroes, living in a white-pillared house, with a dead husband who owned a fleet of ships.

  And all those apples on the ground out there, piled up under the trees and ignored while everyone complained about being poor because the Virginia soil was worn-out from hundreds of years of tobacco growing. (Not us, thank God, we had the income from Father's shipping business.) And all the while the apples were falling down and hitting people on their heads, until they finally woke up from their tobacco dreams and said "cripes" or whatever it is that one says when God Himself strikes you.

  "Cripes, what are we complaining about? We've got apples to make into brandy." And so in all those barns of all those plantations appeared stills to convert the apples into applejack.

  'Twas the apples that brought us prosperity again. I say "us" because there's no use in having money if those around you don't have it.

  And it was the apples that brought us Nat Turner. But I get ahead of myself.

  Mention Nat Turner and I must make mention of my sister by half, Margaret. You see, we don't do anything in wholes in this house, though we pretend to. Looking at Margaret, older than me by four years, you know she's nobody's half, but her own whole self. Beautiful and composed and hitting you on the head with her presence when she walks into a room. And she is only fifteen.

  Margaret is out to torture Nat Turner. And there he is again, creeping into the conversation, just like he crept into our lives, loaned to us when everyone got on their feet after the business with the apples. Loaned to us from Mr. Travis, his master, to make furniture for the front parlor. He is good at making furniture.

  Margaret treats him like this whole family treats darkies. She won't give him a second glance, though she taunts him by swishing her skirt when he passes, by dropping her handkerchief, then bending over to pick it up, only he retrieves it first for her and she thanks him and stays bent over so he can get a good look at her bosoms from her low-cut dress.

  I've confronted her about it. "You can't do that with negroes," I told her, "like you can with white men."

  "Why?" she asked. "Because they aren't in charge of their senses?"<
br />
  "No, because if he's caught looking at you later, or smiling at you, he can be whipped. And Richard will have it done. It isn't fair."

  Margaret isn't one for fairness.

  But here I am, Harriet Whitehead, eleven years of age, only half belonging to them, half of me a part of them and half I don't know what. Nobody has ever told me about that half. My father, Mr. Whitehead, Richard and Margaret's father, and Mother Whitehead's late husband, is dead, lost at sea on one of his many vessels.

  Perhaps he would have told me about the other half had he lived long enough.

  Why is he called "the late Mr. Whitehead," I used to wonder. I know now. Because it is too late for him to tell me from whence I come. Too late for him to help Mother Whitehead by writing her letters for her to her business associates. Too late for him to tell Margaret to cover her bosoms, and too late to tell Richard to let up on me and stop making me kneel and pray for my sins.

  So I take refuge in making up from whence I come. At night I lie in bed and do it. One night my mother might be a princess from India. My father's ships went there, didn't they? Another night she is closely related to British royalty, and so on.

  If it is on a day when I have written a letter to Malta for Mother Whitehead, I just know my mother came from there.

  You see, this job that has fallen to me to do, I don't mind doing. It is something that awards me a sense of dignity. Because I know all Mother Whitehead's personal and business activities. She writes to almost everyone in Southampton County. She is friends with people in important places. She can tell you who is going to have a child, whose marriage is not going well, who has a terrible sickness, and whose son was put out of Harvard for bad behavior.

  There is no one who wouldn't do her a favor.

  The week of Christmas last year, Mr. Fitzpatrick, the local drunk, came knocking on the back door. Richard wanted to put him out, but Mother Whitehead insisted he be let in. He begged her for some money. He had four children and no money to buy them presents. Mother Whitehead gave him a sermon about drinking. He promised he would stop, though both he and she knew he wouldn't.