A wagon entered the clearing.
Its load was covered with a tarpaulin.
Silas stepped down and unlocked the back door of the mill.
Two workers lowered a wooden crate to the ground.
The crate was long and narrow, with ventilation holes near one end.
Daniel felt Isaiah stiffen beside him.
A faint cough sounded from within the crate.
It was not cargo.
It was a person.
Silas looked toward the woods.
The two men remained motionless.
After the crate was carried inside, Silas shut the door and set a watchman on the path.
Daniel wanted to move immediately.
Isaiah gripped his arm.
“We go now and get ourselves taken, or we go back and find a way that works.”
Daniel hated the truth of it.
He remembered his father’s warning.
“The floor is not the bottom.”
He allowed Isaiah to lead him away.
Behind them the mill stood silent again.
Only the creek made noise, pushing at the waterwheel as if time itself had begun to force the building open.
Chapter 7: The Woman Called Hester
The next morning Daniel sought Eunice while she prepared bread for the household.
He showed her the name on his father’s paper without revealing where he had found it.
Eunice read slowly.
“Hester Vale,” she said.
“That’s Margaret’s maid.”
“Was she there when Margaret died?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Did anyone see her afterward?”
Eunice’s knife stopped.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Because her name appears beside my mother’s.”
Eunice studied his face for a long moment.
Then she put down the knife and sent a younger worker to fetch more flour.
“Margaret brought Hester here the summer before she disappeared,” she said.
“Hester was a free woman hired as a companion, not somebody Richard could claim to own.”
Daniel knew a free Black woman’s legal position in Virginia could be precarious and threatened by people with influence.
The distinction mattered, but it did not guarantee safety.
“Hester wrote letters for Margaret,” Eunice continued.
“She could read books the minister wouldn’t lend the rest of us.”
“Why did Margaret need her?”
“Because she was collecting names.”
Eunice lowered her voice.
“The children in the western house weren’t the only ones missing.”
Daniel felt the kitchen close around him.
Margaret had apparently discovered a network of false sales that concealed people moved outside official records.
Some were held temporarily to extract money from relatives.
Others were transferred so that their testimony could not reach a court or newspaper.
