“She is more dangerous to them than any one paper,” Esther said.

“She knows which signatures were forged and which men accepted money.”

A bell sounded from Riverbend, signaling the noon meal.

Elijah looked toward the trees as if Richard might be listening.

“What does Lydia want from me?” he asked.

Esther pointed toward the estate.

“There is a ledger beneath the coal platform in the cellar.

She left a sign to show where it was moved.” Elijah thought of the name Catherine had found.

“Her name on the wall?” Esther nodded.

“The writing marks the direction of a concealed compartment.

The final stroke points left.” Elijah had helped build the coal platform, but he did not know about any hidden compartment.

That meant another carpenter had altered the space after his work was finished.

“I cannot simply walk in,” he said.

“The overseer has the key.” Esther answered, “There is something else she told me.

The colonel has set a date for the next movement.

It is tomorrow night.”

Elijah’s first impulse was to carry Naomi and the children into the woods and never return.

He knew the danger to them was immediate.

He also knew that the people held in the cellar might vanish before anyone could name them.

Esther saw his hesitation and did not call it cowardice.

“You have a family,” she said.

“So do the people behind that door.” Elijah looked at the water passing around a fallen branch.

His father had vanished in daylight under an ordinary sky.

Nobody had recorded the names of the men responsible.

Elijah folded the list into the lining of his tool bag.

“Tell Lydia I will look,” he said.

Esther’s face tightened.

“I cannot promise I will see her.” “Then tell whoever survives long enough to hear.”

Chapter 7: What Catherine Remembered

Catherine spent the night awake, her ankle wrapped and elevated on a cushion.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the pale letters scratched into the cellar plaster.

Lydia had used that backward hook since childhood.

Catherine remembered discovering it on a page of school exercises when they were ten and twelve, laughing as Lydia explained that ordinary letters looked too obedient.

Their father had disapproved of such remarks.

Richard had disliked them more openly, although he had once pretended to admire Lydia’s intelligence.

On her last visit, Lydia had accused him of treating human beings as entries in a merchant’s notebook.

Richard had ordered the dinner servants away before their argument grew worse.