Lottie Reed waited beside a narrow skiff, holding a lantern behind a folded cloth.
“We have to cross before the moon rises,” she said.
“Hawthorne’s people are searching the roads.”
Caleb looked back toward the line of trees.
“Did Ruth get away?”
“I haven’t heard yet.”
His stomach tightened.
Lottie placed a hand on the boat’s gunwale.
“You can wait here and be caught, or cross and be able to help when we know more.”
“I promised her I wouldn’t leave her.”
“You did not choose the separation.”
Caleb stepped into the skiff.
The river smelled of wet leaves and cold stone.
They pushed off as the first stars appeared.
Halfway across, a horse whinnied on the far bank.
Lottie lowered the lantern and whispered for Caleb to duck.
A voice called from the shore.
“Who’s on the water?”
Josiah answered from the bank behind them.
“A fisherman, if he’s lucky.”
The man cursed and rode away.
Caleb stayed crouched until Lottie touched his shoulder.
When they reached the opposite bank, a young Black woman stood waiting beneath a sycamore tree.
She wore a traveling cloak and held a small cloth bag.
Caleb thought for one impossible moment that she was Ruth.
Then she stepped into the lantern light and said, “My name is Mercy Dobbins.”
Caleb recoiled.
“Dobbins?”
“My aunt is the woman who carried the baby into Hawthorne,” she said.
“And I know why Mrs. Whitmore wants you alive.”
Chapter Eight: Mercy’s Story
Mercy Dobbins was nineteen, sharp-eyed, and exhausted from traveling.
She had spent the previous two days avoiding the roads where hired riders questioned women carrying infants.
Her aunt, Augusta Dobbins, worked as a midwife in three counties and had assisted Eleanor through an earlier pregnancy that ended in loss.
Mercy had apprenticed beside her for several years, learning how to boil instruments, recognize dangerous fevers, and reassure women who feared the pain of labor.
She had also learned how often families with money demanded that doctors hide conditions that would embarrass them.
“I didn’t carry a child into Hawthorne,” she said as they walked through the trees.
“My aunt did.”
“Whose child?” Caleb asked.
Mercy stopped.
“A woman named Miriam Cole gave birth six weeks ago.”
“Who is Miriam?”
“She worked in the colonel’s stables.”
Caleb remembered a young groom with quick hands and a laugh that carried across the yard.
“Miriam was sold last spring.”
“She was sent to my aunt’s house when she became ill.”
