Chapter I: The Shadow on the Wall
“Don’t you scream,” she whispered, pressing her finger firmly against the boy’s lips.
Her voice lacked anger or the cold edge of punishment. Instead, it carried something far more unsettling: a soft, composed smile. Margaret Ashford, the mistress of the most influential estate in Burke County, looked down at him in the dim cabin light. In the rigidly defined world of Georgia in the spring of 1847, her authority over his entire existence was absolute.
Samuel Carter had learned very early in his fifteen years that survival on the Ashford plantation was not a matter of physical strength, cleverness, or luck. Survival required absolute invisibility. You kept your head down. You moved through the grand rooms of the main house like a shadow. You answered promptly when spoken to, but never initiated conversation. You never looked too long at anything belonging to the family, never laughed too loudly, and never wept where anyone could hear.
