“When you’ve set up your forge, you should start with re-shoeing the horses,” he says.

I walk around the side of the house to the front drive where my forge and horses stand, and find Sarah struggling with the child. She’s pulling him in the direction of the house and he’s trying to break free from her, straining to go back toward the stables and the fields, the way they’ve come.

“You can’t go there right now, Master Thomas,” she says. She’s got him by his arm, looking worried but determined as he shouts and flails.

Hearing the noise, his father comes flying around the corner behind me.

He charges up to them. “What do you think you’re doing?” he yells into Sarah’s face.

She cringes away from him, releasing the boy. “Please, Master. He’s too young to see a whipping.”

“I want to see,” the boy howls.

“What whipping?”

“He ain’t but six,” she says.

“Tell me what you’re talking about,” Mister Johnson thunders down at both of them.

“We were over on the hill and heard the lash, down by the quarters at the sycamore tree. But a whipping ain’t for a child.”

Mister Johnson straightens. A quiet anger tightens his mouth, straining the skin around his eyes. “Someone is being whipped on my plantation?”

“Yes, sir,” she says.

“Red!” he bellows in the direction of the stables. “Red!”

A lanky Negro comes loping out at a clip. “Master?”

“Go down to the whipping tree and tell Mulch I’d like a word.”

Red’s eyes go flat and he takes off in a dead run past the coach house and the stables.

Mister Johnson bends down to his son and ruffles his hair. “Sarah was right. There are things you’re not yet ready to see.” He straightens up and speaks to me as if we’ve been in the middle of this very conversation. “Obedience at Jubilee is a firm requirement. I’m a reasonable man. If you have another opinion you can speak to me about it, but if I say a thing will be done, then it will be. I am Master here, and no one else.”

His son pulls at his clothes, hopping about for attention.

Mister Johnson turns to Sarah. “Bring him inside,” he orders.

Sarah takes the boy’s hand and tugs him to the porch.

“But I don’t want to go,” he wails.

She guides him up the porch steps, but when they reach the top the child lurches back, dragging Sarah, making her trip and lose her footing. Flailing her arms, she pitches backward down the steps.

I scramble over, catching her before she crashes to the ground. We’re both panting. Her eyes are wild until they lock on to mine.

“I’ve got you,” I say. She smells of honeysuckle and pine. Like the first warm day of spring. She’s in my arms and I can’t move.

Behind me, I hear Mister Johnson clear his throat, breaking my paralysis. I set her back on her feet, slowly, keeping my hand on her elbow to make sure she’s steady.