Pike scrambled up. “That man is lying to save himself.”
Silas showed Fiske his tool roll. Inside lay the second pin, cut to the same depth. He described the third pull, the intended collapse, and the delivery of Catherine’s bracelet to Daniel’s drawer. He spoke haltingly, often looking down, but he did not stop.
Pike shouted over him. “He is a hired hand. You will believe him over me?”
Fiske examined the notch once more. “I have spent twenty years around farm machinery,” he said. “I believe what the metal tells me.”
The county men took Pike’s pistol and held him near the door. Catherine looked at Daniel. Dust had settled on his hair and shoulders. His wrists were scarred where the rope had burned them. She opened her mouth, but he turned toward Aaron first.
“Are you hurt?”
Aaron shook his head. “Just afraid.”
“So am I,” Daniel said.
Only then did Catherine speak. “I brought Fiske because I knew the machine was dangerous. I did not know Pike meant to kill him.”
Daniel said, “You knew enough to stop lying about me.”
She looked away. “Yes.”
Alden arrived at the drying house as dawn brightened the windows. He had been awakened by the collapse and came dressed in boots and a coat pulled over his nightshirt. Fiske met him in the yard before he reached the door.
“Your machinery has been tampered with,” Fiske said. “Your overseer is responsible. Your carpenter prevented it from killing us.”
Alden stared at the wreckage. “What has happened?”
“More than a broken machine,” Catherine answered, stepping out of the doorway. “And some of it is my doing.”
She confessed her part in the bracelet accusation in front of her husband, Fiske, Mercy, and the men from the county. She did not embellish her motives or claim she had tried to protect Daniel. She admitted that she had visited him alone, that he had refused her advances, and that she had agreed to a false accusation because she was enraged and frightened of being exposed. She described Pike’s promise to manage the matter quietly and his later threat to reveal her visit unless she supported the sale.
Alden’s face went white, then red. He looked at Daniel as if hoping the man he held in bondage would reassure him that his household still made sense.
Daniel said nothing.
8. WHAT COULD BE BROKEN
Pike was taken to the county seat under guard. Silas went with the men voluntarily, carrying his tools and the spare pin. Catherine’s admission stopped the immediate plan to sell Daniel, but it did not undo his bondage, the marks of the chain, or the years in which the great house had expected him to make useful things without asking what became of him.
