The afternoon stretched long and hot.
Amara returned to the writing desk after Elias left, her hands still trembling from their conversation. The ledger sat where she'd left it—plain brown leather, worn soft, waiting.
She picked it up again.
Eighty-four enslaved persons, combined estimated value £2,847.
Before, she'd only skimmed. Now she forced herself to read every entry, to see each name as a person instead of a line of inventory.
Old Jenny, age 45, cook. Value: £20. Note: arthritic but still capable.
Old Jenny was worth less than twenty British pounds because her body was breaking down. Less than the cost of a good horse. Less than the silver tea service Amara had seen in the dining room.
And when her joints finally give out, what happens? Does she get retired? Or does she get sold to someone who'll work her until she drops?
Amara turned the page.
Breechy, age 52, house. Value: £25. Note: trained in management, some literacy.
That explained his quiet authority this morning. He was the household manager—educated enough to be useful, old enough to be considered valuable, but not so old that his price had dropped too far.
He can read. How many others can?
Samuel, age 12, house. Value: £30. Note: quick learner, suitable for training.
Twelve years old. A child, valued for his potential to be molded into whatever shape his owners required. Three years younger than Oney. In Amara's time, he'd be in middle school, worrying about homework and video games and whether the girl in math class liked him back.
Here, he was inventory.
She kept reading. Name after name after name. Ages ranging from six months to sixty-three years. Values ranging from £5 for the very old or very young to £60 for skilled men in their prime. Notes written in Martha's neat handwriting—good breeder, prone to illness, runs if not watched, lost three fingers in mill accident.
Good breeder.
Amara's stomach heaved.
She'd read documents like this before. In archives, in libraries, in the climate-controlled storage rooms of historical societies. She'd handled them with cotton gloves and scholarly detachment, had analyzed them for her dissertation, had written entire chapters about the language of dehumanization embedded in plantation records.
But she'd never been the one who wrote them.
These notes are in my handwriting. Martha's handwriting. Which means she sat at this desk and evaluated human beings like livestock and recorded her assessments in this book and probably never once thought of it as evil.
And now that handwriting is mine. These people are mine. This evil is mine.
A knock at the door made her flinch.
"Mistress?" Sally's voice. "Dinner will be served in an hour. Will you be dressing?"
Amara closed the ledger. "Yes. Send Oney up."
"Yes, Mistress."
She sat for a moment longer, staring at the closed book. Then she stood, tucked the ledger under her arm, and headed upstairs.
The bedroom was quiet. Late afternoon light slanted through the windows, casting long shadows across the floor. Amara set the ledger on the writing desk and stood looking at it, feeling its weight even from across the room.
I need to know them. All of them. Not as entries in a book, but as people.
She found paper and ink in the desk drawer. Her hand was clumsy with the quill—writing with a feather pen was nothing like writing with a ballpoint—but she forced herself to copy the names into a new list. Just names, no prices. No notes about breeding potential or work capacity. Just the names of eighty-four human beings whose lives were now entangled with hers.
Old Jenny.
Breechy.
Samuel.
Oney.
Betty.
Beck.
Julius.
Doll...
The door opened. Oney slipped in, silent as a shadow.
"Mistress. Sally said you wished to dress for dinner."
Amara set down her pen. "Yes. But first—" She hesitated. "Oney, I'd like to ask you something."
Oney's face went carefully blank. "Yes, Mistress?"
"The people who work here. In the house and in the fields. Do you know them? Their families, their—their lives?"
Something flickered in Oney's eyes. Suspicion, maybe. Or confusion.
"Some of them, Mistress. I know my own kin. My mother Betty, my aunts and cousins. Some of the field hands I don't know as well."
"Your mother is Betty? The one who does the spinning?"
"Yes, Mistress."
Amara looked down at her list. Betty was there, near the bottom. Betty, age 38, spinning. Value: £35. Note: skilled worker, mother of three.
"And your father?"
Silence. Oney's face hardened almost imperceptibly.
"I don't know my father, Mistress."
Because he was probably white. Because he probably owned her mother. Because that's how this nightmare works.
Amara didn't push. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."
Oney said nothing. Her hands were clasped in front of her, knuckles pale with pressure.
"I want to learn about everyone here," Amara said. "Not as—not as property. As people. I want to know their names and their families and what they need. Will you help me?"
For a long moment, Oney didn't move. Then, slowly, her eyes lifted to meet Amara's.
"Why?"
It was the same question Elias had asked. And just like with Elias, Amara couldn't give her the real answer.
"Because it's right," she said. "Because you deserve to be seen."
Oney studied her with an intensity that made Amara want to look away. This fifteen-year-old girl had survival instincts sharper than any knife—she had to, to have lasted this long without breaking. And she was using those instincts now, trying to determine whether Amara was a threat, an opportunity, or something else entirely.
"I'll help you," Oney said finally. "But Mistress—"
"Yes?"
"Be careful who else you ask these questions to. Some folks won't understand. And some folks—" She hesitated. "Some folks might use it against you."
"Use it how?"
"If the other white folks think you're going soft, they'll talk. And if Master Custis hears that his wife has been asking strange questions about the slaves..." Oney trailed off, but the implication was clear.
Daniel. Her husband. Who's coming home in two weeks.
"I understand," Amara said. "This stays between us."
Oney nodded. The tension in her shoulders eased slightly.
"Now," Amara said, gesturing toward the wardrobe. "Help me dress. And while you do—tell me about your family. Who they are. What they're like."
By the time Oney finished lacing her into an evening gown—pale blue silk this time, with white embroidery at the hem—Amara had learned more about the household than the ledger could ever tell her.
Oney's mother Betty had been born on a different plantation and brought to White Oaks when she was sold at fourteen. She'd had three children—Oney and two younger siblings—and had watched one of them, a boy named Tom, get sold away to pay gambling debts four years ago. She never spoke about him.
Old Jenny had been cooking for the Custis family for thirty years. She remembered when Martha was a child, remembered her first wedding to Daniel, remembered the births and deaths of Martha's four children—two surviving, two in the ground.
Breechy's real name was William, but he'd been called Breechy since he was a boy because of the distinctive way he wore his breeches. He had a wife named Mary who worked in the laundry and a daughter named Sookie who helped in the kitchens.
Samuel was an orphan—both parents dead of fever when he was seven. He'd been taken into the house and trained as a servant because he was "too smart to waste in the fields." He could read a little and write his own name, skills that were technically illegal for enslaved people in Virginia but tolerated when they made a slave more useful.
Each story was a small window into a world Amara had studied but never truly seen. Each name became a face, a family, a life.
And each life belonged, legally and completely, to her.
"Mistress?" Oney's voice broke through her thoughts. "You're crying."
Amara touched her cheek. Her fingers came away wet.
"I'm fine," she said. "Just—tired. The fever took more out of me than I realized."
Oney didn't look convinced, but she didn't press. "Dinner will be ready soon. Shall I escort you down?"
"No. I know the way." Amara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Thank you, Oney. For talking to me."
The girl curtsied—formal, correct—but something in her expression had softened. "Yes, Mistress."
She left. Amara stood alone in the bedroom, surrounded by silk and silver and stolen labor.
Eighty-four people. Eighty-four stories. Eighty-four lives that I now have power over.
And in two weeks, a man is coming home who expects me to be his wife. Who will expect me to run this household, raise his children, manage his property—including the human property—the way Martha always has.
How do I do this? How do I pretend to be her while trying to be better than her? How do I change anything without destroying everything?
She had no answers. Only questions.
And a list of names that felt heavier than anything she'd ever carried.
[End of Chapter 5]