He sent her there to die. The wagon did not stop when they left the city. The stranger, who had paid $1,200 without hesitation, drove with quiet urgency, guiding the horse away from Savannah's main roads and into narrower paths that seem to exist more for animals than for travelers. Pine trees closed in around them. The air grew thick with the smell of damp earth and rotting leaves.
Sunlight filtered down in thin, dusty beams through the canopy above. The woman Dinah sat in the back of the wagon, her hands no longer bound, but her fear still very much intact. She had not spoken since they left the auction. Men had said kind things to her before. Men had made promises before.
Words meant nothing. Finally, after nearly an hour of winding through the woods, the wagon entered a clearing. A small cabin stood in the center made of rough cut logs, its roof sagging slightly from age. Smoke rose from a stone chimney. The stranger stopped the wagon and climbed down.
Before he could knock, the cabin door opened. An older black woman stepped out. Her hair was wrapped in blue cloth, her eyes sharp and searching. "You got her," she said. "I did," the stranger replied.
She looked past him to Dinah, and her expression softened. "Come inside, child." The cabin was larger than it appeared from outside. A fire burned in the hearth. The room smelled of beans and salt pork. A younger woman sat at a wooden table mending a shirt.
She looked up and froze when she saw Dinah. "Lord have mercy—she's just a girl," the younger woman whispered. The older woman spoke gently. "My name is Sarah. This is my daughter Hannah, and you are safe here."
Safe? That word again. Dinah wanted to believe it. She truly did. But safety was something enslaved people learned not to trust.
She sat down slowly. Her body felt heavy with exhaustion, with confusion, with the strange shock of being treated like a person rather than property. The stranger removed his hat. "My name is Jacob Marsh," he said, "and I need you to listen very carefully." Dinah looked at him without speaking. "I know about Elias Cartwright," he continued.
"I know what he did to you. I know about your daughter. I know why you were sent to Savannah." That made her eyes widen. "How?" she whispered.
"Because someone in Charleston sent word ahead of you. A woman named Bethy. She works in Cartwright's household. She has connections to people who help enslaved people escape."
Dinah felt her breath catch. "The Underground Railroad," Hannah said quietly from the table. Dinah had heard the name before in whispers between enslaved people at night. A rumor, a story, something that sounded too dangerous, too impossible to be real. "It's real," Marsh said.
"And you are part of it now." Sarah moved to a wooden chest in the corner of the room. She opened it and removed a leatherbound journal. The edges of the pages were yellowed with age. "This," she said, placing it on the table, "belonged to a woman named Abigail."
She worked on Thornton Graves's plantation. Dinah's stomach tightened at the name. Sarah opened the journal and turned it toward her. "Read." The handwriting was neat, careful, as though the writer knew she was recording something important. The first entry Dinah saw was dated March 1845.
"Today, they brought another one. Her name is Rachel. She is pregnant. Mr. Graves keeps her in the old tobacco barn at the edge of the North Field. None of us are allowed near it."
"But at night, I hear her crying." Dinah turned the page. "Rachel is gone. They say she died in childbirth, but I heard the baby crying two nights ago. And then I heard it stop."
Another entry. "A new one now. Margaret. Same as before. Pregnant, bought cheap, kept in the barn."
"Mr. Graves goes there every night." Dinah's hands began to shake. "Keep reading," Sarah said. Dinah read on: "Margaret disappeared. They say she ran away, but she was 8 months pregnant."
She could barely walk. Page after page told the same story. Different names, same pattern. Pregnant women bought for suspiciously low prices, kept isolated in the barn, never seen again. Sometimes a baby's cry heard in the night.
Then silence. Hannah spoke quietly. "In 10 years, we know of at least seven women." Dinah looked up slowly. "Seven?"
Sarah nodded. "Seven that we can confirm. There may be more." "What does he do to them?" Dinah asked, her voice barely audible. Sarah shook her head.
"We don't know exactly, but we know enough." Marsh stepped closer. "Thornton Graves is not just a plantation owner," he said. "He's also a slave catcher. He hunts fugitives; he knows the woods, the roads, the people, and he has friends in every county between Savannah and Charleston."
Dinah thought about the way Graves had stared at her in the auction house, the way his voice had carried anger, not disappointment.
He had wanted her very badly. "Elias Cartwright knew this," Marsh said. "He set your price at 19 cents because he knew Graves watches auctions for exactly this kind of opportunity—a pregnant woman marked as trouble, priced so low no decent buyer would touch her." Dinah felt cold all over.
"He didn't send you to be sold," Sarah said softly. "He sent you to be delivered." Silence filled the cabin. The fire popped in the hearth.
Dinah imagined the barn, dark, isolated, far from the main house, a place where no one would hear screaming, where no one would ask questions. She imagined Rachel, Margaret, the unnamed women before them. She imagined their babies. "Why would anyone do this?" she whispered.
"Because the law allowed it," Hannah said. "Because enslaved people are not considered people. Because no one investigates when property disappears." Marsh looked at Dinah carefully.
"When I outbid Graves today, I didn't just embarrass him. I ruined a plan that had been set in motion for weeks. He will want to know why. He will investigate, and if he discovers I am connected to the Underground Railroad..."
He did not finish the sentence. Sarah did. "If Graves finds this cabin, if he learns what we are doing, we will all hang." Dinah looked from one face to another. These people were risking their lives for her, a woman they had never met, a woman who on paper was worth 19 cents. She had never felt more terrified and never more aware that what had happened at the auction was not an accident.