A Place Called Freedom (5 page)

“She may make a troublesome wife,” Robert said.

“Nothing like a mettlesome mare,” Sir George said. “Besides, a husband always has the upper hand, no matter what. You could do a lot worse.” He lowered his voice. “Lady Hallim holds the estate in trust until Elizabeth marries. Since a woman’s property belongs to her husband, the whole place will become her bridegroom’s on her wedding day.”

“I know,” Robert said.

Jay had not known, but he was not surprised: few men would be happy to bequeath a sizable estate to a woman.

Sir George went on: “There must be a million tons of coal under High Glen—all the seams run in that direction. The girl is sitting on a fortune, pardon the vulgarity.” He chortled.

Robert was characteristically dour. “I’m not sure how much she likes me.”

“What is there to dislike? You’re young, you’re going to be rich, and when I die you’ll be a baronet—what more could a girl want?”

“Romance?” Robert answered. He pronounced the word with distaste, as if it were an unfamiliar coin offered by a foreign merchant.

“Miss Hallim can’t afford romance.”

“I don’t know,” Robert said. “Lady Hallim has been living in debt since I can remember. Why should she not go on like that forever?”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Sir George said. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was not overheard. “You know she has mortgaged the entire estate?”

“Everyone knows that.”

“I happen to know that her creditor is not willing to renew.”

Robert said: “But surely she could raise the money from another lender, and pay him off.”

“Probably,” Sir George said. “But she doesn’t know it. And her financial adviser won’t tell her—I’ve made sure of that.”

Jay wondered what bribe or threat his father had used to suborn Lady Hallim’s adviser.

Sir George chuckled. “So, you see, Robert, young Elizabeth can’t afford to turn you down.”

At that moment Henry Drome broke away from his conversation and came over to the three Jamisson men. “Before we go in to dinner, George, there’s something I have to ask you. I may speak freely in front of your sons, I know.”

“Of course.”

“The American troubles have hit me quite hard—planters who can’t pay their debts, and so on—and I fear I can’t meet my obligations to you this quarter.”

Sir George had obviously loaned money to Henry. Normally Father was brutally practical with debtors: they paid, or they went to jail. Now, however, he said: “I understand, Henry. Times are hard. Pay me when you can.”

Jay’s jaw dropped, but a moment later he realized why his father was being so soft. Drome was a relative of Robert’s mother, Olive, and Father was being easy on Henry for her sake. Jay was so disgusted he walked away.

The ladies came back. Jay’s mother wore a suppressed smile, as if she had an amusing secret. Before he could ask her what it was another guest arrived, a stranger in clerical gray. Alicia spoke to the man then took him to Sir George. “This is Mr. Cheshire,” she said. “He’s come in place of the pastor.”

The newcomer was a pockmarked young man with spectacles and an old-fashioned curly wig. Although Sir George and the older men still wore wigs, younger men did so rarely, and Jay never did. “Reverend Mr. York sends his apologies,” said Mr. Cheshire.

“Not at all, not at all,” said Sir George, turning away: he was not interested in obscure young clergymen.

They went in to dinner. The smell of food mingled with a damp odor that came from the heavy old curtains. The long table was laid with an elaborate spread: joints of venison, beef, and ham; a whole roast salmon; and several different pies. But Jay could hardly eat. Would Father give him the Barbados property? If not, what else? It was hard to sit still and eat venison when your entire future was about to be decided.

In some ways he hardly knew his father. Although they lived together, at the family house in Grosvenor Square, Sir George was always at the warehouse with Robert. Jay spent the day with his regiment. They sometimes met briefly at breakfast, and occasionally at supper—but Sir George often ate supper in his study while looking over some papers. Jay could not guess what his father would do. So he toyed with his food and waited.

Mr. Cheshire proved mildly embarrassing. He belched loudly two or three times and spilled his claret, and Jay noticed him staring rather obviously into the cleavage of the woman sitting next to him.

They had sat down at three o’clock and, by the time the ladies withdrew, the winter afternoon was darkening into evening. As soon as they had gone Sir George shifted on his seat and farted volcanically. “That’s better,” he said.

A servant brought a bottle of port, a drum of tobacco and a box of clay pipes. The young clergyman filled a pipe and said: “Lady Jamisson’s a damn fine woman, Sir George, if I may say so. Damn fine.”

He seemed drunk, but even so such a remark could not be allowed to pass. Jay came to his mother’s defense. “I’ll thank you to say no more about Lady Jamisson, sir,” he said frostily.

The clergyman put a taper to his pipe, inhaled, and began to cough. He had obviously never smoked before. Tears came to his eyes, and he gasped and spluttered and coughed again. The coughs shook him so hard that his wig and spectacles fell off—and Jay saw immediately that this was no clergyman.

He began to laugh. The others looked at him curiously. They had not seen it yet. “Look!” he said. “Don’t you see who it is?”

Robert was the first to realize. “Good God, it’s Miss Hallim in disguise!” he said.

There was a moment of startled silence. Then Sir George began to laugh. The other men, seeing that he was going to take it as a joke, laughed too.

Lizzie took a drink of water and coughed some more. As she recovered, Jay admired her costume. The spectacles had hidden her flashing dark eyes, and the side-curls of the wig had partly obscured her pretty profile. A white linen stock thickened her neck and covered the smooth feminine skin of her throat. She had used charcoal or something to give her cheeks the pockmarked look, and she had drawn a few wispy hairs on her chin like the beard of a young man who did not yet shave every day. In the gloomy rooms of the castle, on a dull winter’s afternoon in Scotland, no one had seen through her disguise.

“Well, you’ve proved you can pass for a man,” said Sir George when she had stopped coughing. “But you still can’t go down the pit. Go and fetch the other ladies, and we’ll give Jay his birthday present.”

For a few minutes Jay had forgotten his anxiety, but now it came back with a thump.

They met up with the women in the hall. Jay’s mother and Lizzie were laughing fit to bust: Alicia had obviously been in on the plot, which accounted for her secretive grin before dinner. Lizzie’s mother had not known about it, and she was looking frosty.

Sir George led the way out through the main doors. It was dusk. The snow had stopped. “Here,” said Sir George. “This is your birthday present.”

In front of the house a groom held the most beautiful horse Jay had ever seen. It was a white stallion about two years old, with the lean lines of an Arab. The crowd made it nervous, and it skipped sideways, forcing the groom to tug on its bridle to keep it still. There was a wild look in its eyes, and Jay knew instantly it would go like the wind.

He was lost in admiration, but his mother’s voice cut through his thoughts like a knife. “Is that all?” she said.

Father said: “Now, Alicia, I hope you aren’t going to be ungracious—”

“Is that all?”
she repeated, and Jay saw that her face was twisted into a mask of rage.

“Yes,” he admitted.

It had not occurred to Jay that this present was being given to him instead of the Barbados property. He stared at his parents as the news sank in. He felt so bitter that he could not speak.

His mother spoke for him. He had never seen her so angry. “This is your son!” she said, her voice shrill with fury. “He is twenty-one years old—he’s entitled to his portion in life … and you give him a
horse?”

The guests looked on, fascinated but horrified.

Sir George reddened. “Nobody gave me anything when I was twenty-one!” he said angrily. “I never inherited so much as a pair of shoes—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said contemptuously. “We’ve all heard how your father died when you were fourteen and you worked in a mill to keep your sisters—that’s no reason to inflict poverty on your own son, is it?”

“Poverty?” He spread his hands to indicate the castle, the estate, and the life that went with it. “What poverty?”

“He needs his independence—for God’s sake give him the Barbados property.”

Robert protested: “That’s mine!”

Jay’s jaw became unlocked, and at last he found his voice. “The plantation has never been properly administered,” he said. “I thought I would run it more like a regiment, get the niggers working harder and so on, and make it more remunerative.”

“Do you really think you could do that?” said his father.

Jay’s heart leaped: perhaps Father would change his mind. “I do!” he said eagerly.

“Well, I don’t,” Father said harshly.

Jay felt as if he had been punched in the stomach.

“I don’t believe you have an inkling how to run a plantation or any other enterprise,” Sir George grated. “I think you’re better off in the army where you’re told what to do.”

Jay was stunned. He looked at the beautiful white stallion. “I’ll never ride that horse,” he said. “Take it away.”

Alicia spoke to Sir George. “Robert’s getting the castle and the coal mines and the ships and everything else—does he have to have the plantation too?”

“He’s the elder son.”

“Jay is younger, but he’s not
nothing
. Why does Robert have to get
everything?”

“For the sake of his mother,” Sir George said.

Alicia stared at Sir George, and Jay realized that she hated him. And I do too, he thought. I hate my father.

“Damn you, then,” she said, to shocked gasps from the guests. “Damn you to hell.” And she turned around and went back into the house.

5

T
HE
M
C
A
SH TWINS LIVED IN A ONE-ROOM HOUSE FIFTEEN
feet square, with a fireplace on one side and two curtained alcoves for beds on the other. The front door opened onto a muddy track that ran downhill from the pit to the bottom of the glen where it met the road that led to the church, the castle and the outside world. The water supply was a mountain stream at the back of the row of houses.

All the way home Mack had been agonizing over what had happened in the church, but he said nothing, and Esther tactfully asked him no questions. Earlier that morning, before leaving for church, they had put a piece of bacon on the fire to boil, and when they returned home the smell of it filled the house and made Mack’s mouth water, lifting his spirits. Esther shredded a cabbage into the pot while Mack went across the road to Mrs. Wheighel’s for a jug of ale. The two of them ate with the gargantuan appetites of physical laborers. When the food and the beer were gone, Esther belched and said: “Well, what will you do?”

Mack sighed. Now that the question had been posed directly, he knew there was only one answer. “I’ve got to go away. I can’t stay here, after all that. My pride won’t let me. I’d be a constant reminder, to every young man in the glen, that the Jamissons cannot be defied. I must leave.” He was trying to remain calm, but his voice was shaky with emotion.

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Tears came to Esther’s eyes. “You’re pitting yourself against the most powerful people in the land.”

“I’m right, though.”

“Aye. But right and wrong don’t count much in this world—only in the next.”

“If I don’t do it now, I never will—and I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting it.”

She nodded sadly. “That’s for sure. But what if they try to stop you?”

“How?”

“They could post a guard on the bridge.”

The only other way out of the glen was across the mountains, and that was too slow: the Jamissons could be waiting on the other side by the time Mack got there. “If they block the bridge, I’ll swim the river,” he said.

“The water’s cold enough to kill you at this time of year.”

“The river’s about thirty yards wide. I reckon I can swim across in a minute or so.”

“If they catch you they’ll bring you back with an iron collar around your neck, like Jimmy Lee.”

Mack winced. To wear a collar like a dog was a humiliation the miners all feared. “I’m cleverer than Jimmy,” he said. “He ran out of money and tried to get work at a pit in Clackmannan, and the mine owner reported his name.”

“That’s the trouble. You’ve got to eat, and how will you earn your bread? Coal is all you know.”

Mack had a little cash put aside but it would not last long. However, he had thought about this. “I’ll go to Edinburgh,” he said. He might get a ride on one of the heavy horse-drawn wagons that took the coal from the pithead—but he would be safer to walk. “Then I’ll get on a ship—I hear they always want strong young men to work on the coalers. In three days I’ll be out of Scotland. And they can’t bring you back from outside the country—the laws don’t run elsewhere.”

“A ship,” Esther said wonderingly. Neither of them had ever seen one, although they had looked at pictures in books. “Where will you go?”

“London, I expect.” Most coal ships out of Edinburgh were destined for London. But some went to Amsterdam, Mack had been told. “Or Holland. Or Massachusetts, even.”

“They’re just names,” Esther said. “We’ve never met anyone who’s been to Massachusetts.”

“I suppose people eat bread and live in houses and go to sleep at night, the same as everywhere else.”

“I suppose so,” she said dubiously.

“Anyway, I don’t care,” he said. “I’ll go anywhere that’s not Scotland—anywhere a man can be free. Think of it: to live where you like, not where you’re told. To choose your work, free to leave your place and take another job that’s better paid, or safer, or cleaner. To be your own man, and nobody’s slave—won’t that be grand?”

There were hot tears on her cheeks. “When will you go?”

“I’ll stay another day or two, and hope the Jamissons relax their vigilance a bit. But Tuesday’s my twenty-second birthday. If I’m at the pit on Wednesday I’ll have worked my year-and-a-day, and I’ll be a slave again.”

“You’re a slave anyway, in reality, whatever that letter said.”

“But I like the thought that I’ve got the law on my side. I don’t know why it should be important, but it is. It makes the Jamissons the criminals, whether they acknowledge it or not. So I’ll be away Tuesday night.”

In a small voice she said: “What about me?”

“You’d better work for Jimmy Lee, he’s a good hewer and he’s desperate for another bearer. And Annie—”

Esther interrupted him. “I want to go with you.”

He was surprised. “You’ve never said anything about it!”

Her voice became louder. “Why do you think I’ve never married? Because if I get wed and have a child I’ll never get out of here.”

It was true she was the oldest single woman in Heugh. But Mack had assumed there was just no one good enough for her here. It had not occurred to him that all these years she had secretly wanted to escape. “I never knew!”

“I was afraid. I still am. But if you’re going, I’ll go with you.”

He saw the desperation in her eyes, and it hurt him to refuse her, but he had to. “Women can’t be sailors. We haven’t the money for your passage, and they wouldn’t let you work it. I’d have to leave you in Edinburgh.”

“I won’t stay here if you go!”

Mack loved his sister. They had always sided with one another in any conflict, from childhood scraps, through rows with their parents, to disputes with the pit management. Even when she had doubts about his wisdom she was as fierce as a lioness in his defense. He longed to take her with him, but it would be much harder for two to escape than one. “Stay a little while, Esther,” he said. “When I get where I’m going, I’ll write to you. As soon as I get work, I’ll save money and send for you.”

“Will you?”

“Aye, to be sure!”

“Spit and swear.”

“Spit and swear?” It was something they had done as children, to seal a promise.

“I want you to!”

He could see she meant it. He spat on his palm, reached across the plank table, and took her hard hand in his own. “I swear I’ll send for you.”

“Thank you,” she said.