CHAPTER FIVE — THE WAGON WITH NO MARK
Catherine told Ambrose she needed new sheets and lamp wicks from town.
He approved the trip reluctantly after insisting that a driver accompany her.
The driver he chose was Mercer, a man loyal to the overseer and accustomed to reporting private conversations.
Catherine asked Odessa to come as her seamstress.
Ambrose objected until she suggested that Mercer could accompany them both.
Elijah watched the carriage depart from the stable lane and waited another ten minutes before taking the old mule cart through the southern fields.
He traveled slowly enough that a worker in the cotton rows had time to tell him which road the overseer was using.
Odessa had found a way to hide her shards beneath folded linen.
Catherine had memorized the shop’s address.
A young worker named Esther had arranged to take extra feed to the market so Elijah could return without having to explain where the mule had gone.
When Catherine reached Milledgeville, Mercer insisted on waiting outside the cloth merchant’s shop.
She purchased a spool of thread and told him she wanted to visit a dressmaker on the next street.
Odessa carried the bundle while Catherine walked beside her.
At the corner, they turned away from the dressmaker and hurried toward Gabriel Finch’s pottery shed.
Gabriel stood beside a wheel, shaping a broad jar with hands gray from clay.
He looked at Odessa and stopped the wheel immediately.
“Your brother wrote about you years ago,” he said.
“Then he knew more than I did,” she answered.
Gabriel took the shards from her linen bundle.
He examined the underside of the first one.
“Whitmore’s work.”
“How can you tell?” Catherine asked.
“Most potters cut the base after firing, but the Whitmore kiln trimmed the clay while it was damp.”
He turned the piece in his hand.
“The ridges remain under the glaze.”
Odessa produced another fragment, bright yellow at its center.
Gabriel studied the surface and frowned.
“Where did this come from?”
“From a bowl used when my youngest was sick,” Odessa replied.
Gabriel set both fragments beside his wheel.
“The color is too strong for a stable household glaze made with the materials that yard normally used.”
“Can you prove it is dangerous?” Catherine asked.
“I can show that the mixture is inconsistent and that it contains material no careful potter should put into a vessel meant for food.”
He opened a cabinet and removed three test tiles.
The first was pale cream, the second dark amber, and the third matched the garish yellow of Odessa’s fragment.
“An old glazer taught me to test mixtures on tiles before selling a single cup,” he explained.
“Your family’s foreman purchased mineral pigment from a man who sold it for decorative roof ornaments.”
“Roof ornaments?”
“Objects that never held food.”
Catherine stared at the yellow tile.
“So the color is the trouble.”
“The trouble is using a glaze without knowing what leaves it when food or acid touches it.”
He placed a drop of vinegar on the fragment and showed how the glossy finish dulled where the liquid rested.
“This is enough to stop me selling it,” he said.
“It is not enough to tell exactly which sickness came from which bowl.”
Odessa nodded.
“We never asked for an impossible promise.”
From outside came a mule’s bray.
Elijah stepped through the workshop door, followed by Esther.
Catherine started in surprise.
“I thought you were staying home.”
“I did not say that,” Elijah answered.
Gabriel looked from him to Catherine and understood the shape of their arrangement.
“You brought everyone who can speak to this material,” he said.
“Not everyone,” Odessa replied.
“Not yet.”
They spent the next hour comparing shards, stamps, and a notebook Gabriel used to record his own glazes.
Then Esther returned from the street with troubling news.
A wagon bearing no merchant’s mark had passed through town before dawn, carrying crates from Whitmore’s eastern road.
Its driver had told a stable boy the load was intended for a merchant named Reuben Shaw in Macon.
Catherine frowned.
“Friday was supposed to be the first shipment.”
“Friday may be the public shipment,” Elijah said.
Gabriel put down the fragment.
“If Shaw sells those bowls to innkeepers and families before anyone asks questions, more people will eat from them.”
Esther pointed toward the road.
“The wagon will reach the Macon crossroads by nightfall.”
Catherine calculated the distance.
“We cannot outrun a loaded wagon in this heat.”
Elijah looked at the mule resting beneath a tree.
“We do not need to outrun it.”
“Then what do we need?”
“We need to learn who is waiting at the other end.”
