A Place Called Freedom (32 page)

“It can’t be as good as new land,” she said, but she was not sure.

“It’s just the same,” he insisted. “But if you want to change you’ll have to speak to Mr. Jamisson.”

She hated to let Lennox win, even temporarily, but she would have to wait until Jay returned. Feeling irritated, she said: “You can go now.”

He gave a little smile of victory and went out without another word.

She forced herself to rest for the remainder of the day, but on the following morning she made her usual tour of the plantation.

In the sheds, the bundles of drying tobacco plants were being taken down from their hooks so that the leaves could be separated from the stems and the heavy fibers stripped out. Next they would be bundled up again and covered with cloth to “sweat.”

Some of the hands were in the woods, cutting wood to make barrels. Others were sowing winter wheat in Stream Quarter. Lizzie spotted Mack there, working alongside a young black woman. They crossed the plowed field in a line, distributing the seed from heavy baskets. Lennox followed, hurrying the slower workers with a kick or a touch of the whip. It was a short whip with a hard handle and a lash two or three feet long made of some flexible wood. After he noticed Lizzie watching, he began to use it more freely, as if challenging her to try to stop him.

She turned away and started back toward the house. But before she was out of earshot she heard a cry and turned back.

The hand working next to Mack had collapsed. It was Bess, an adolescent girl about fifteen years old, tall and thin: Lizzie’s mother would have said she had outgrown her strength.

Lizzie hurried toward the prone figure, but Mack was nearer. He put down his basket and knelt beside Bess. He touched her forehead and her hands. “I think she’s just fainted,” he said.

Lennox came up and kicked the girl in the ribs with a heavily booted foot.

Her body jerked with the impact but her eyes did not open.

Lizzie cried out: “Stop it, don’t kick her!”

“Lazy black bitch, I’ll teach her a lesson,” Lennox said, and he drew back the arm that held the whip.

“Don’t you dare!” Lizzie said furiously.

He brought the whip down on the back of the unconscious girl.

Mack sprang to his feet.

“Stop!” Lizzie cried.

Lennox lifted the whip again.

Mack stood between Lennox and Bess.

“Your mistress told you to stop,” Mack said.

Lennox changed his grip and slashed Mack across the face.

Mack staggered sideways and his hand flew to his face. A purplish weal appeared immediately on his cheek and blood trickled between his lips.

Lennox raised his whip hand again, but the blow never fell.

Lizzie hardly saw what happened, it was so quick, but in a moment Lennox was flat on the ground, groaning, and Mack had the whip. He took it in both hands and snapped it over his knee, then contemptuously threw it at Lennox.

Lizzie felt a surge of triumph. The bully was broken.

Everyone stood around staring for a long moment.

Then Lizzie said: “Get on with your work, everyone!”

The hands turned away and recommenced sowing seed. Lennox got to his feet, staring at Mack evilly.

“Can you carry Bess to the house?” Lizzie asked Mack.

“Of course.” He picked her up in his arms.

They walked back across the fields to the house and took her into the kitchen, which was an outbuilding at the back. By the time Mack put her in a chair she had recovered consciousness.

Sarah, the cook, was a middle-aged black woman always in a sweat. Lizzie sent her to fetch some of Jay’s brandy. After a sip Bess declared she felt all right except for bruised ribs, and she could not understand why she had fainted. Lizzie told her to have something to eat and rest until tomorrow.

Leaving the kitchen, she noticed that Mack looked solemn. “What is it?” she said.

“I must have been mad,” he said.

“How can you say that?” she protested. “Lennox disobeyed a direct order from me!”

“He’s a vengeful man. I shouldn’t have humiliated him.”

“How can he take revenge on you?”

“Easily. He’s the overseer.”

“I won’t allow it,” Lizzie said decisively.

“You can’t watch over me all day.”

“Curse it.” She could not allow Mack to suffer for what he had done.

“I’d run away if I knew where to go. Have you ever seen a map of Virginia?”

“Don’t run away.” She frowned, thinking, then she was struck by an idea. “I know what to do—you can work in the house.”

He smiled. “I’d love to. I might not be much of a butler, though.”

“No, no—not a servant. You could be in charge of repairs. I have to have the nursery painted and fixed up.”

He looked suspicious. “Do you really mean it?”

“Of course!”

“It would be … just wonderful to get away from Lennox.”

“Then you shall.”

“You can’t possibly understand what good news this is.”

“For me, too—I’ll feel safer with you close by. I’m frightened of Lennox.”

“With reason.”

“You’ll have to have a new shirt and a waistcoat, and house shoes.” She would enjoy dressing him in good clothes.

“Such luxury,” he said, grinning.

“That’s settled,” she said decisively. “You can start right away.”

The house slaves were a little grumpy about the party at first. They looked down on the field hands. Sarah, in particular, resented having to cook for “trash that eats hominy and corn pone.” But Lizzie mocked their snobbery and jollied them along, and in the end they entered into the spirit of it.

At sundown on Saturday the kitchen staff were cooking up a banquet. Pepper Jones, the banjo player, had arrived drunk at midday. McAsh had made him drink gallons of tea then put him to sleep in an outhouse, and he was now sober again. His instrument had four catgut strings stretched over a gourd, and the sound as he tuned it was halfway between a piano and a drum.

As she went around the yard checking on the preparations Lizzie felt excited. She was looking forward to the celebration. She would not join in the jollity, of course: she had to play Lady Bountiful, serene and aloof. But she would enjoy watching other people let their hair down.

When darkness fell all was ready. A new barrel of cider had been tapped; several fat hams were sizzling over open fires; hundreds of sweet potatoes were cooking in cauldrons of boiling water; and long four-pound loaves of white bread stood waiting to be sliced.

Lizzie paced up and down impatiently, waiting for the slaves to come in from the fields. She hoped they would sing. She had sometimes heard them from a distance, singing plaintive laments or rhythmic work songs, but they always stopped when one of the masters came near.

As the moon rose, the old women came up from the quarters with the babies on their hips and the toddlers trailing behind. They did not know where the field hands were: they fed them in the morning then did not see them until the end of the day.

The hands knew they were to come up to the house tonight. Lizzie had told Kobe to make sure everyone understood, and he was always reliable. She had been too busy to go out into the fields, but she supposed they must have been working at the farthermost reaches of the plantation, and so were taking a long time to return. She hoped the sweet potatoes would not overcook and turn to mush.

Time went by and no one appeared. When it had been dark for an hour she admitted to herself that something had gone wrong. With anger mounting in her breast she summoned McAsh and said: “Get Lennox up here.”

It took almost an hour, but eventually McAsh returned with Lennox, who had obviously started his evening’s drinking already. By this time Lizzie was furious. “Where are the field hands?” she demanded. “They should be here!”

“Ah, yes,” Lennox said, speaking slowly and deliberately. “That was not possible today.”

His insolence warned her that he had found some foolproof way to frustrate her plans. “What the devil do you mean, not possible?” she said.

“They’ve been cutting wood for barrels on Stafford Park.” Stafford Park was ten miles upriver. “There’s a few days’ work to be done so we made camp. The hands will stay there, with Kobe, until we finish.”

“You didn’t have to cut wood today.”

“No time like the present.”

He had done it to defy her. It was enough to make her scream. But until Jay came home there was nothing she could do.

Lennox looked at the food on the trestle tables. “Pity, really,” he said, barely concealing his glee. He reached out with a dirty hand and tore a piece of ham off a joint.

Without thinking, Lizzie picked up a long-handled carving fork and stabbed the back of his hand, saying: “Put that down!”

He squealed in pain and dropped the meat.

Lizzie pulled the prongs of the fork out of his hand.

He roared with pain again. “You mad cow!” he yelled.

“Get out of here, and stay out of my sight until my husband comes home,” Lizzie said.

He stared furiously at her, as if he were about to attack her, for a long moment. Then he clamped his bleeding hand under his armpit and hurried away.

Lizzie felt tears spring to her eyes. Not wanting the staff to see her cry, she turned and ran into the house. As soon as she was alone in the drawing room she began to sob with frustration. She felt wretched and alone.

After a minute she heard the door open. Mack’s voice said: “I’m sorry.”

His sympathy made her cry fresh tears. A moment later she felt his arms around her. It was deeply comforting. She laid her head on his shoulder and cried and cried. He stroked her hair and kissed her tears. Slowly her sobs became quieter and her grief eased. She wished he could hold her like this all night.

Then she realized what she was doing.

She pulled away from him in horror. She was a married woman, and six months pregnant, and she had let a servant kiss her! “What am I thinking about?” she said unbelievingly.

“You’re not thinking,” he said.

“I am now,” she said. “Go away!”

Looking sad, he turned and left the room.

29

O
N THE DAY AFTER
L
IZZIE’S FAILED PARTY
, M
ACK
heard news of Cora.

It was Sunday, and he went into Fredericksburg wearing his new clothes. He needed to free his mind of thoughts of Lizzie Jamisson, her springy black hair and her soft cheeks and her salt tears. Pepper Jones, who had stayed in the slave quarters overnight, went with him, carrying his banjo.

Pepper was a thin, energetic man about fifty years old. His fluent English indicated he had been in America for many years. Mack asked him: “How did you come to be free?”

“Born free,” he replied. “My ma was white, although it don’t show. My daddy was a runaway, recaptured before I was born—I never saw him.”

Whenever he got the chance Mack asked questions about running away. “Is it right what Kobe says, that all runaways get caught?”

Pepper laughed. “Hell, no. Most get caught, but most are stupid—that’s how come they were captured in the first place.”

“So, if you’re not stupid …?”

He shrugged. “It ain’t easy. As soon as you run away, the master puts an advertisement in the newspaper, giving your description and the clothes you were wearing.”

Clothes were so costly that it would be difficult for runaways to change. “But you could keep out of sight.”

“Got to eat, though. That means you need a job, if you stay inside the colonies, and any man that’s going to employ you has probably read about you in the newspaper.”

“These planters really have things worked out.”

“It’s not surprising. All the plantations are worked by slaves, convicts and indentured servants. If they didn’t have a system for catching runaways, the planters would have starved a long time ago.”

Mack was thoughtful. “But you said ‘if you stay inside the colonies.’ What do you mean by that?”

“West of here is the mountains, and on the other side of the mountains, the wilderness. No newspapers there. No plantations either. No sheriffs, no judges, no hangmen.”

“How big is the territory?”

“I don’t know. Some say it stretches for hundreds of miles before you come to the sea again, but I never met anyone who’s been there.”

Mack had talked about the wilderness with many people, but Pepper was the first he felt inclined to rely on. Others retailed what were obviously fantastic stories in place of hard facts: Pepper at least admitted that he did not know everything. As always, Mack found it exciting to talk about. “Surely a man could disappear over the mountains and never be found!”

“That’s the truth. Also, he could be scalped by Indians and killed by mountain lions. More likely he could starve to death.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve met pioneers who came back. They break their backs for a few years, turning a perfectly good piece of land into a useless patch of mud, then they quit.”

“But some succeed?”

“Must do, I guess, otherwise there wouldn’t be no such place as America.”

“West of here, you said,” Mack mused. “How far are the mountains?”

“About a hundred miles, they say.”

“So close!”

“It’s farther than you think.”

They were offered a ride by one of Colonel Thumson’s slaves who was driving a cart into town. Slaves and convicts always gave one another rides on the roads of Virginia.

The town was busy: Sunday was the day the field hands from the plantations round about came in to go to church or get drunk or both. Some of the convicts looked down on the slaves, but Mack considered he had no reason to feel superior. Consequently he had many friends and acquaintances, and people hailed him at every corner.

They went to Whitey Jones’s ordinary. Whitey was so called because of his coloring, a mixture of black and white; and he sold liquor to blacks even though it was against the law. He could converse equally well in the pidgin spoken by the majority of slaves or the Virginian dialect of the American born. His tavern was a low-ceilinged room smelling of wood smoke, full of blacks and poor whites playing cards and drinking. Mack had no money, but Pepper Jones had been paid by Lizzie and he bought Mack a quart of ale.

Mack enjoyed the beer, a rare treat nowadays. While they were drinking Pepper said: “Hey, Whitey, have you ever run into anyone who crossed the mountains?”

“Sure have,” Whitey said. “There was a trapper in here one time, said it was the best hunting he ever saw, over there. Seems a whole gang of them goes over there every year, and comes back loaded down with pelts.”

Mack said: “Did he tell you what route he took?”

“Seems to me he said there was a pass called the Cumberland Gap.”

“Cumberland Gap,” Mack repeated.

Whitey said: “Say, Mack, weren’t you asking after a white girl called Cora?”

Mack’s heart leaped. “Yes—have you heard tell of her?”

“Seen her—so I know why you’re crazy for her.” He rolled his eyes.

“Is she a pretty girl, Mack?” Pepper teased.

“Prettier than you, Pepper. Come on, Whitey, where did you see her?”

“Down by the river. She was wearing a green coat and carrying a basket, and she was getting the ferry over to Falmouth.”

Mack smiled. The coat, and the fact that she was taking the ferry instead of wading across the ford, indicated that she had landed on her feet again. She must have been sold to someone kind. “How did you know who she was?”

“The ferryman called her by name.”

“She must be living on the Falmouth side of the river—that’s why I didn’t hear of her when first I asked around Fredericksburg.”

“Well, you’ve heard of her now.”

Mack swallowed the rest of his beer. “And I’m going to find her. Whitey, you’re a friend. Pepper, thanks for the beer.”

“Good luck!”

Mack went out of town. Fredericksburg had been built just below the fall line of the Rappahannock River, at the limit of navigation. Oceangoing ships could come this far, but less than a mile away the river became rocky, and nothing but a flatboat could negotiate it. Mack walked to the point where the water was shallow enough to wade across.

He was full of excitement. Who had bought Cora? How was she living? And did she know what had become of Peg? If only he could locate the two of them, and fulfill his promise, he could make serious plans to escape. He had been suppressing his yearning for freedom while he asked after Cora and Peg, but Pepper’s talk of the wilderness beyond the mountains had brought it all back, and he longed to run away. He daydreamed about walking away from the plantation at nightfall, heading west, never again to work for an overseer with a whip.

He looked forward eagerly to seeing Cora. She probably would not be working today: perhaps she could walk out with him. They might go somewhere secluded. As he thought about kissing her, he suffered a pang of guilt. He had woken up this morning thinking about kissing Lizzie Jamisson, and now he was having the same thoughts about Cora. But he was foolish to feel guilty about Lizzie: she was another man’s wife, and there was no future for him with her. All the same his excitement was tinged with discomfort.

Falmouth was a smaller version of Fredericksburg: it had the same wharves, warehouses, taverns and painted wood-frame homes. Mack could probably have called at every residence in a couple of hours. But of course Cora might live out of town.

He went into the first tavern he came across and spoke to the proprietor. “I’m looking for a young woman called Cora Higgins.”

“Cora? She lives in the white house on the next corner, you’ll probably see three cats sleeping on the porch.”

Mack’s luck was in today. “Thank you!”

The man took a watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. “But she won’t be there now, she’ll be in church.”

“I’ve seen the church. I’ll go there.”

Cora had never been a churchgoer, but perhaps her owner forced her to go, Mack thought as he went outside. He crossed the street and walked two blocks to the little wooden church.

The service had ended and the congregation was coming out, all in their Sunday best, shaking hands and chattering.

Mack saw Cora right away.

He smiled broadly when he saw her. She certainly had been lucky. The starved, filthy woman he had left on the
Rosebud
might have been a different person. Cora was her old self: clear skin, glossy hair, rounded figure. She was as well dressed as ever, in a dark brown coat and a wool skirt, and she wore good boots. He was suddenly glad he had the new shirt and waistcoat Lizzie had given him.

Cora was talking animatedly to an old woman with a cane. She broke off her conversation as he approached her. “Mack!” she said delightedly. “This is a miracle!”

He opened his arms to embrace her but she held out a hand to shake, and he guessed she did not want to make an exhibition outside the church. He took her hand in both of his and said; “You look wonderful.” She smelled good, too: not the spicy, woody perfume she had favored in London, but a lighter, floral smell that was more ladylike.

“What happened to you?” she said, withdrawing her hand. “Who bought you?”

“I’m on the Jamisson plantation—and Lennox is the overseer.”

“Did he hit your face?”

Mack touched the sore place where Lennox had slashed him. “Yes, but I took his whip from him and broke it in half.”

She smiled. “That’s Mack—always in trouble.”

“It is. Have you any news of Peg?”

“She was taken off by the soul drivers, Bates and Makepiece.”

Mack’s heart sank. “Damn. It’s going to be hard to find her.”

“I always ask after her but I’ve never heard anything.”

“And who bought you? Somebody kind, by the look of you!”

As he spoke a plump, richly dressed man in his fifties came up. Cora said: “Here he is: Alexander Rowley, the tobacco broker.”

“He obviously treats you well!” Mack murmured.

Rowley shook hands with the old woman and said a word to her, then turned to Mack.

Cora said: “This is Malachi McAsh, an old friend of mine from London. Mack, this is Mr. Rowley—my husband.”

Mack stared, speechless.

Rowley put a proprietorial arm around Cora’s shoulders and at the same time shook Mack’s hand. “How do you do, McAsh?” he said, and without another word he swept Cora away.

Why not? Mack thought as he trudged along the road back to the Jamisson plantation. Cora had not known whether she would ever see him again. She had obviously been bought by Rowley and had made him fall in love with her. It must have been something of a scandal for a merchant to marry a convict woman, even in a little colonial town such as Falmouth. However, sexual attraction was more powerful than social rules in the end, and Mack could easily imagine how Rowley had been seduced. It may have been difficult to persuade people like the old lady with the cane to accept Cora as a respectable wife, but Cora had the nerve for anything, and she had obviously carried it off. Good for her. She would probably have Rowley’s babies.

He found excuses for her, but all the same he was disappointed. In a moment of panic she had made him promise to search for her; but she had forgotten him as soon as she got the chance of an easy life.

It was strange: he had had two lovers, Annie and Cora, and both had married someone else. Cora went to bed every night with a fat tobacco broker twice her age, and Annie was pregnant with Jimmy Lee’s child. He wondered if he would ever have a normal family life with a wife and children.

He gave himself a shake. He could have had that if he had really wanted it. But he had refused to settle down and accept what the world offered him. He wanted more.

He wanted to be free.