CHAPTER SEVEN — THE PRICE OF A NAME
The overseer’s name was Warren Pike, and Elijah knew the sound of his boots better than the sound of his own footsteps.
Pike had worked for Silas Whitmore during the years when the pottery shed operated day and night.
He had also been the man who took Elijah away when Silas sold him.
Elijah saw no surprise in his expression now.
Pike had always expected him to return.
The only uncertainty was what the overseer intended to do with him.
Catherine stepped onto the loading platform between the two men.
“Elijah belongs to the estate I inherited.”
Pike smiled.
“Then you should be pleased that I came to recover your property.”
“I didn’t send for you.”
“Your uncle did.”
“My uncle cannot give orders in my name.”
Pike folded the whip once around his wrist.
“Men have been taking his orders for twenty years.”
A merchant carrying an empty crate stopped nearby to watch.
Gabriel took one step toward the loading platform and stood beside Odessa.
Shaw appeared behind the overseer, his face pale with irritation.
“I want this dispute off my premises.”
“Then refuse these goods,” Gabriel said.
Shaw glanced at the yellow bowls.
“I have not agreed to anything.”
Elijah watched him calculate his options.
Shaw wanted the bargain without the questions, but he wanted his reputation even more.
Pike moved toward Elijah.
“Elijah, get in the wagon.”
Elijah held his ground.
“I’m here because the bowls are dangerous.”
Pike laughed.
“The bowls do not concern you.”
“They concerned my father when you made him dig more pigment after the children became sick.”
The overseer’s expression flattened.
“You ought to remember what happened to your father when he refused his work.”
Odessa drew a breath beside Gabriel.
Catherine saw her hands begin to shake.
“What happened?” Catherine asked.
Pike looked at the heiress as though she had asked an impolite question about supper.
“Ben Carter was punished for disobedience.”
Elijah answered before Catherine could speak.
“He died in the work shed with fever after Pike kept him there for three days.”
The loading platform became very quiet.
Catherine remembered her father telling her that a laborer had died after falling from a wagon.
She had never asked the man’s name.
Pike reached for Elijah.
Catherine seized the overseer’s forearm.
“If you touch him, every buyer standing here will see you assault a man under my authority.”
Pike looked down at her hand.
“You are making an expensive mistake.”
“Then put the price on your employer’s account.”
She was frightened enough that her voice sounded strange to her own ears.
Pike removed his hand from the whip and stepped back.
Shaw exhaled, then turned to the driver.
“Unload nothing until the ownership dispute is resolved.”
Gabriel raised his voice.
“And set aside the bowls that have already been sold.”
Shaw’s head snapped toward him.
“Nothing has been sold.”
“Then you will be relieved to have no customers to warn.”
Shaw’s assistant, who had been standing in the warehouse doorway, coughed.
“Mr. Shaw, the yellow dishes went to the hotel on Cherry Street yesterday.”
Shaw spun around.
“You were told those were decorative samples.”
“They were delivered as breakfast bowls.”
A groan went through the bystanders.
Catherine looked at Elijah.
He was staring at the warehouse assistant, not the overseer.
The problem had already escaped Whitmore.
Pike saw it too.
He stepped away from the platform and walked toward the waiting horses.
Elijah called after him.
“Tell Ambrose that the shipment is not hidden anymore.”
Pike did not turn.
He rode away before sundown, leaving the whip hanging at his saddle.
Shaw ordered the warehouse doors shut.
Gabriel insisted that the hotel be warned that evening.
Catherine offered to go with him, and Odessa said she would come too.
Shaw watched them leave with the expression of a man whose bargain had become an illness spreading through his accounts.
Elijah remained beside the loaded wagon.
For the first time in years, the overseer had walked away from him without getting what he wanted.
Pike would reach Whitmore before midnight.
CHAPTER EIGHT — THE HOTEL BREAKFAST
The proprietor of the Cherry Street Hotel was a formidable widow named Louisa Bell.
She listened to Gabriel’s explanation without interrupting until he described the glaze.
Then she rose from her desk and went straight to the dining room.
Every table held one of the yellow bowls.
A young servant was filling them with stewed apples for the evening guests.
Louisa snatched the bowl from his hands.
“Stop serving these.”
The servant stared at her.
“They came in the delivery yesterday, ma’am.”
“I know when they came.”
She called the kitchen staff together and asked where the earlier batch had been stacked.
The cook pointed toward a shelf beside the pantry.
Louisa climbed onto a stool and took down a chipped bowl with a yellow rim.
“This came from Shaw’s shop last winter.”
Gabriel examined it.
“It carries the same maker’s impression.”
Louisa climbed down carefully.
“Last winter my youngest apprentice became sick three mornings in a row after eating porridge here.”
“He ate from that bowl because the other dishes were reserved for guests.”
She turned toward the apprentice, a boy of fifteen named Felix.
“Felix, bring me every yellow bowl in the building.”
The boy disappeared toward the kitchen.
Catherine watched Louisa turn concern into specific orders without wasting breath on shock.
“Will you tell your guests?” Catherine asked.
“Before supper,” Louisa replied.
“And before my cook carries another plate.”
Odessa approached the shelf.
She recognized a shallow basin with a curved handle.
“That design was mine,” she said.
Louisa looked surprised.
“Your design?”
“I shaped the first mold when the kiln began making washbasins.”
“Did you know they would use that glaze?”
“I told them not to.”
Louisa looked at her burn-scarred hands.
“Then I would like you to tell me exactly what you remember.”
Odessa spoke for nearly twenty minutes.
She described how the foreman ordered the glazers to use a mineral powder purchased in unmarked sacks.
She explained that the glaze ran at the edges, that the fired color varied from bright lemon to dull orange, and that chipped pieces left yellow dust on a wet cloth.
She spoke of mothers who stopped using the vessels in secret and of supervisors who punished women for breaking them.
Catherine understood why the shard collection had mattered.
The families had saved fragments because the broken pieces could remain hidden when whole bowls were confiscated.
Louisa took notes in her own handwriting.
She did not pretend those notes could make Odessa safe.
She did something simpler and more immediate.
She removed the wares from service and sent Felix to warn two other lodging houses that had bought from Shaw.
At dusk, Elijah arrived at the hotel with Esther.
They had learned from the warehouse assistant that the Friday shipment would be twice the size of the first.
It was already packed at Whitmore.
Ambrose intended to sell every remaining piece before Catherine could stop him.
Louisa listened to their account, then asked Gabriel how much of the glaze could be tested.
“There is a laboratory attached to the medical college in Augusta,” he said.
“A chemist there can examine scrapings for the minerals we suspect.”
“How long?”
“Several days at least.”
“Then we cannot wait for a laboratory to protect tonight’s guests.”
She gestured toward the covered table of rejected dishes.
“These stay locked away until we know what they are.”
Elijah asked whether Louisa would put her warning in writing for the merchants in Macon.
She nodded.
“On my own letterhead, with my own name, and without asking anybody here to carry blame that belongs to me.”
Catherine looked away at the words.
She had spent her first weeks at Whitmore letting Ambrose speak for decisions that bore her family name.
Now the first person willing to stand openly beside Odessa was a woman who had never been to Whitmore.
The realization was painful, and it needed to be.
They made a plan to return at dawn.
Louisa offered them breakfast and a safe place to rest.
Elijah accepted a plate of food without bargaining for it, though he ate standing near the open door.
Before they left, the proprietor pressed a small brass key into Gabriel’s palm.
“This opens the hotel pantry,” she explained.
“If somebody tries to buy the dishes back from me tonight, they will have to explain themselves in front of my entire staff.”
The key was no secret weapon.
It was one more person refusing to make a dangerous sale easy.
CHAPTER NINE — THE EMPTY CABINS
Whitmore looked different when they returned.
Three cabins near the pottery yard stood open, their bedding removed and their cooking fires cold.
Children watched the road from behind the smokehouse.
Elijah crossed the yard so quickly that his injured leg nearly buckled beneath him.
Odessa followed, leaving Catherine to stand alone beside the carriage.
A boy named Jonah ran toward Elijah.
“Pike took my aunt and the little ones to the packing house.”
“Who else?”
“Mrs. Ada, Ruth’s two girls, and the Johnson family.”
Elijah’s face tightened.
Those families had saved the earliest shards.
They had also spoken most openly when illness swept the cabins twelve years earlier.
Ambrose had not chosen them by chance.
Catherine went directly to the main house.
She found her uncle in the dining room with the estate solicitor, Mr. Harrow, and a merchant whose boots were covered in red clay.
Ambrose did not rise when she entered.
“You have returned,” he said.
“Where are the families from the east cabins?”
“They are being prepared for transfer.”
“I did not authorize any transfer.”
“I have authority to settle the debts.”
“Not to separate people because they spoke against the kiln.”
The solicitor looked uncomfortable.
Ambrose leaned back.
“You have been listening to lies from a damaged man and a woman who cannot sign her own name.”
Catherine placed Gabriel’s description of the glaze on the table.
“Your first shipment has been refused.”
The merchant beside Harrow stopped moving.
Ambrose glanced at the page, then pushed it away.
“Refused by whom?”
“By the buyer who realized your labels were false.”
The solicitor cleared his throat.
“The descriptions on the manifests should be accurate, Mr. Whitmore.”
Ambrose’s eyes narrowed.
“You are my solicitor, Harrow.”
“I am obliged to tell you the truth when you are making a sale.”
The merchant rose abruptly.
“I have no interest in purchasing disputed stock.”
He left before Ambrose could answer.
Catherine turned toward Harrow.
“Can my uncle sell the families without my consent?”
Harrow hesitated.
“The estate is under an unsettled debt arrangement.”
“That is not an answer.”
“The property may be subject to claims before the final inventory is accepted.”
Ambrose slapped the table.
“Enough.”
Catherine held her ground.
“I want every transfer stopped until the inventory is complete.”
“Then you will bankrupt the plantation.”
“It may already be bankrupt.”
Harrow looked toward the door.
Ambrose rose slowly.
“Your father understood what ownership required.”
“My father hid sickness beneath a polished dining table.”
“He preserved the estate.”
“Then why did he die owing half the county?”
The question landed harder than she expected.
Ambrose crossed the room, and for a moment she believed he would strike her.
He stopped close enough that she could smell the tobacco on his breath.
“You will remain in this house until I decide whether your conduct has endangered the creditors.”
He turned to a servant and ordered her room secured.
Catherine watched the servant’s face.
The woman was named Miriam and had worked in the house since Catherine was a girl.
Miriam did not look at Ambrose.
She looked at Catherine, waiting for the next command.
Catherine understood that refusing the lock would put Miriam in danger.
“I will go upstairs,” she said.
Ambrose stepped back.
“And you will stay there.”
As Catherine climbed the stairs, she heard the sound of wagon wheels beyond the house.
The families were already being moved.
She had spoken loudly in a room where powerful men could ignore her.
Elijah would have to find another way.
