Ruth's baby came in the spring of 1767.
A boy. Small but healthy, with his mother's eyes and a cry that could wake the dead. They named him Daniel—not after Amara's late husband, Ruth said, but after her own father, who'd been sold away before she was old enough to remember his face.
"It's a good name," Amara said, looking down at the infant in Ruth's arms. "A strong name."
"He'll need to be strong." Ruth's voice was tired but fierce. "This world doesn't give Black boys much room for weakness."
No. It doesn't.
Amara had arranged for a midwife—a free Black woman from Williamsburg who knew her trade better than any of the white doctors. The birth had been difficult but not dangerous, and both mother and child had survived.
One more life. One more person who exists because I was here to make it possible.
Is that enough? Is anything ever enough?
"Rest," she told Ruth. "I'll have Jenny bring you something to eat."
"Mistress?" Ruth's hand caught her sleeve. "Thank you. For everything."
"Don't thank me. Just take care of yourself. And him."
She left before Ruth could see her crying.
Bess had grown.
At four years old, she was no longer the terrified toddler Amara had saved from the slave traders. She was bright-eyed and curious, following her mother everywhere, asking questions about everything.
"Why is the sky blue?"
"Where do babies come from?"
"Why do white people have big houses and we have small ones?"
That last question stopped Amara cold.
She'd been walking through the gardens when Bess appeared at her side, small hand tugging at her skirt. The question came out with the innocent directness of childhood—no accusation, no anger. Just genuine curiosity.
What do I say? How do I explain slavery to a four-year-old?
"That's... a complicated question, Bess."
"Mama says you know lots of things. She says you're smart."
Your mother gives me too much credit.
Amara crouched down to Bess's level.
"Some things in the world aren't fair," she said carefully. "Some people have more than they need, and some people don't have enough. That's not right, but it's how things are. For now."
"Can you fix it?"
The question cut deep.
"I'm trying, Bess. I'm trying very hard."
Bess considered this with the solemnity of a child weighing adult words.
"Okay," she said finally. "I'll help."
Then she ran off to find her mother, leaving Amara alone in the garden with a lump in her throat.
I'll help.
God. This child. This world.
The political situation had calmed—temporarily.
The Stamp Act was gone, but tensions remained. In letters from Williamsburg and beyond, Amara tracked the slow buildup of resentment. The Declaratory Act hung over everything, a reminder that Parliament still claimed absolute authority over the colonies.
Washington visited less frequently now—his own plantation demanded attention, and there were rumors that he was considering a run for the House of Burgesses. But when he came, they talked for hours.
"The situation can't hold," he said during one visit, pacing her study with restless energy. "The Crown keeps pushing. The colonies keep resisting. Eventually, something will break."
"What do you think it will take?"
"I don't know. Another tax, perhaps. Another overreach." He stopped pacing. "But when it happens—when the break finally comes—we need to be ready."
"Ready for what?"
Washington looked at her. In his eyes, she saw something new—a hardness that hadn't been there before.
"Ready for whatever comes next."
The Townshend Acts arrived in June of 1767.
New taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, tea. New customs enforcement. New powers for British officials to search colonial homes and businesses without warrants.
The reaction was immediate. And this time, it was organized.
"Non-importation agreements," Mason explained during a meeting at Mount Vernon. "We stop buying British goods. We make our own clothes, our own tools, our own everything. We starve them economically until they listen."
"Will it work?" Martha Washington asked—the real Martha, sitting quietly in the corner, her needlework forgotten in her lap.
"It might. If we hold together." Mason looked around the room at the assembled planters and merchants. "But it requires sacrifice. Real sacrifice. Are we prepared for that?"
The room murmured with uncertain assent.
Amara caught Washington's eye across the room. He nodded slightly—an acknowledgment, a question.
Yes, she thought. I'm prepared. Are you?
That autumn, Amara made a decision.
She'd been thinking about it for months—ever since Ruth's baby was born, ever since Bess asked her question in the garden. The small changes weren't enough. The individual rescues weren't enough. She needed to do more.
She started writing.
Not letters this time, but essays. Anonymous essays, submitted to the Virginia Gazette under a false name. Essays about liberty and tyranny, about the rights of man, about the hypocrisy of slaveholders who complained about their own enslavement by Parliament.
You speak of chains, she wrote, while you hold the chains of others. You cry out for liberty while denying it to those who work your fields and build your homes. If freedom is a natural right—if it belongs to all men by virtue of their humanity—then it belongs to all men. Not just the wealthy. Not just the white. All.
The essays caused a minor sensation. People debated them in taverns and parlors. Some called the anonymous author a dangerous radical. Others called him a prophet.
No one suspected that the author was a woman. Or that she was writing from first-hand experience of a system she couldn't fully escape.
It's not enough, she told herself. Words are never enough.
But words are how ideas spread. And ideas are how the world changes.