A Place Called Freedom (1995)

5

THE MCASH 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.