A Place Called Freedom (1995)

12

LIZZIE CAME DOWN THE STAIRS WEARING A FUR CLOAK so big that it went around her twice and brushed the floor. She had to get outside for a while.

The house was full of tension: Robert and Jay hated one another, Mother was cross with her, Sir George was furious with Jay, and there was hostility between Alicia and Sir George too. Dinner had been nail-bitingly strained.

As she was crossing the hall, Robert stepped out of the shadows. She halted and looked at him.

“You bitch,” he said.

It was a gross insult to a lady, but Lizzie was not easily offended by mere words, and anyway he had reason to be angry. “You must be like a brother to me now,” she said in a conciliatory voice.

He grasped her arm, squeezing hard. “How could you prefer that smarmy little bastard to me?”

“I fell in love with him,” she said. “Let go of my arm.”

He squeezed harder, his face dark with fury. “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “Even if I can’t have you, I’ll still have High Glen.”

“You won’t,” she said. “When I marry, High Glen will become my husband’s property.”

“You just wait and see.”

He was hurting her. “Let go of my arm or I’ll scream,” she said in a dangerous voice.

He let go. “You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life,” he said, and he walked off.

Lizzie stepped out of the castle door and pulled her furs more tightly around her. The clouds had partly cleared, and there was a moon: she could see well enough to pick her way across the drive and down the sloping lawn toward the river.

She felt no remorse about letting Robert down. He had never loved her. If he had, he would be sad, but he was not. Instead of being distraught about losing her, he was furious that his brother had got the better of him.

All the same, the encounter with Robert had shaken her. He had his father’s ruthless determination. Of course he could not take High Glen from her. But what might he do instead?

She put him out of her mind. She had got what she wanted: Jay instead of Robert. Now she was eager to plan the wedding and set up house. She could hardly wait to live with him, and sleep in the same bed, and wake up every morning with his head on the pillow beside her.

She was thrilled and scared. She had known Jay all her life, but since he had become a man she had only spent a few days with him. She was leaping into the dark. But then, she thought, marriage must always be a leap into the dark: you could never really know another person until after you had lived together.

Mother was upset. Her dream was for Lizzie to marry a rich man and end the years of poverty. But she had to accept that Lizzie had her own dreams.

Lizzie was not worried about money. Sir George would probably give Jay something in the end, but if he did not they could live at High Glen House. Some Scottish landowners were clearing their deer forests and leasing the land to sheep farmers: Jay and Lizzie might try that, at first, to bring in more money.

Whatever happened it would be fun. What she liked best about Jay was his sense of adventure. He was Willing to gallop through the woods and show her the coal mine and go to live in the colonies.

She wondered if that would ever happen. Jay still hoped he would get the Barbados property. The idea of going abroad excited Lizzie almost as much as the prospect of getting married. Life over there was said to be free and easy, lacking the stiff formalities that she found so irritating in British society. She imagined throwing away her petticoats and hooped skirts, cutting her hair short, and spending all day on horseback with a musket over her arm.

Did Jay have any faults? Mother said he was vain and self-absorbed, but Lizzie had never met a man who wasn’t. At first she had thought he was weak for not standing up more to his brother and his father; but now she thought she must have been wrong about that, for in proposing to her he had defied them both.

She reached the bank of the river. This was no mountain stream, trickling down the glen. Thirty yards wide, it was a deep, fast-moving torrent. The moonlight gleamed off the troubled surface in patches of silver, like a smashed mosaic.

The air was so cold it hurt to breathe, but the fur kept her body warm. Lizzie leaned against the broad trunk of an old pine tree and stared at the restless water. As she looked over the river she saw movement on the far bank.

It was not opposite her, but some way upstream. At first she thought it must be a deer: they often moved at night. It did not look like a man, for its head was too large. Then she saw that it was a man with a bundle tied to his head. A moment later she understood. He stepped to the riverbank, ice cracking beneath his feet, and slipped into the water.

The bundle must be his clothes. But who would swim the river at this time of night in the middle of winter? She guessed it might be McAsh, sneaking past the guard on the bridge. Lizzie shivered inside her fur cloak when she thought how bitterly cold the water must be. It was hard to imagine how a man could swim in it and live.

She knew she ought to leave. Only trouble could result from her staying here and watching a naked man swim the river. Nevertheless her curiosity was too much for her, and she stood motionless, seeing his head move slantwise across the torrent at a steady speed. The strong current forced him into a diagonal course, but his pace did not falter: he seemed strong. He would reach the near bank at a point twenty or thirty yards upstream from where Lizzie stood.

But when he was halfway across he suffered a stroke of bad luck. Lizzie saw a dark shape rushing toward him on the surface of the water, and made it out to be a fallen tree. He seemed not to see it until it was upon him. A heavy branch struck his head, and his arms became entangled in the foliage. Lizzie gasped as he went under. She stared at the branches, looking for the man: she still did not know if it was McAsh. The tree came closer to her but he did not reappear. “Please don’t drown,” she whispered. The tree passed her and still there was no sign of him. She thought of running for help, but she was a quarter of a mile or more from the castle: by the time she got back he would be far downstream, dead or alive. But perhaps she should try anyway, she thought. As she stood there in an agony of indecision he surfaced, a yard behind the floating tree.

Miraculously, his bundle was still tied to his head. He was no longer able to swim with that steady stroke, though: he splashed about, waving and kicking, gasping air in great ragged gulps, spluttering and coughing. Lizzie went down to the river’s edge. Icy water seeped through her silk shoes and froze her feet. “Over here!” she called. “I’ll pull you out!” He seemed not to hear but continued to thrash about as if, having almost drowned, he could think of nothing but his breath. Then he appeared to calm himself with an effort, and look about him to get his bearings. Lizzie called to him again. “Over here! Let me help you!” He coughed and gasped more and his head went under, but it came up again almost immediately and he struck out toward her, thrashing and spluttering but moving in the right direction.

She knelt in the icy mud, careless of her silk dress and her furs. Her heart was in her mouth. As he came closer she reached out to him. His hands flailed the air randomly. She grabbed a wrist and pulled it to her. Grasping his arm with both hands, she heaved. He hit the side and collapsed, half on the bank and half in the water. She changed her grip, holding him under the arms, then dug her dainty slippers into the mud and heaved again. He pushed with his hands and feet and, at last, flopped out of the water onto the bank.

Lizzie stared at him, lying there naked and sodden and half dead like a sea monster caught by a giant fisherman. As she had guessed, the man whose life she had saved was Malachi McAsh.

She shook her head wonderingly. What kind of man was he? In the last two days he had been blasted by a gas explosion and subjected to a shattering torture, yet he had the stamina and guts to swim the freezing river to escape. He just never gave up.

He lay on his back, gasping raggedly and shivering uncontrollably. The iron collar had gone: she wondered how he had got it off. His wet skin gleamed silver in the moonlight. It was the first time she had looked at a naked man and, despite her concern for his life, she was fascinated to see his penis, a wrinkled tube nestling in a mass of dark curly hair at the fork of his muscular thighs.

If he lay there for long he might yet die of cold. She knelt beside him and untied the sodden bundle on his head. Then she put her hand on his shoulder. He felt as cold as the grave. “Stand up!” she said urgently. He did not move. She shook him, feeling the massive muscles under the skin. “Get up, or you’ll die!” She grabbed him with both hands but without his volition she could not shift him at all; he felt made of rock. “Mack, please don’t die,” she said, and there was a sob in her voice.

Finally he moved. Slowly he got on all fours, then he reached up and took her hand. With a heave from her he struggled to his feet. “Thank God,” she murmured. He leaned heavily on her but she just managed to support him without collapsing.

She had to warm him somehow. She opened her cloak and pressed her body up against his. Her breasts felt the terrible coldness of his flesh through the silk of her dress. He clung to her, his broad, hard body sucking the heat from hers. It was the second time they had embraced, and once again she felt a powerful sense of intimacy with him, almost as if they were lovers.

He could not get warm while he was wet. Somehow she had to dry him. She needed a rag, anything she could use as a towel. She was wearing several linen petticoats: she could spare him one. “Can you stand up alone now?” she said. He managed a nod between coughs. She let go of him and lifted her skirt. She felt his eyes on her, despite his condition, as she swiftly removed one petticoat. Then she began to rub him all over with it.

She wiped his face and rubbed his hair, then went behind him and dried his broad back and his hard, compact rear. She knelt to do his legs. She stood up again and turned him around to dry his chest, and she was shocked to see that his penis was sticking straight out.

She should have been disgusted and horrified, but she was not. She was fascinated and intrigued; she was foolishly proud that she was able to have that effect on a man; and she felt something else, an ache deep inside that made her swallow dryly. It was not the happy excitement she felt when she kissed Jay; this was nothing to do with teasing and petting. She was suddenly afraid McAsh would throw her to the ground and tear her clothes and ravish her, and the most frightening thing of all was that a tiny part of her wanted him to.

Her fears were groundless. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He turned away, bent to his bundle and drew out a sodden pair of tweed breeches. He wrung most of the water out of them then pulled them on, and Lizzie’s heartbeat began to return to normal.

As he started to wring out a shirt, Lizzie realized that if he put on wet clothes now he would probably die of pneumonia by daybreak. But he could not stay naked. “Let me get you some clothes from the castle,” she said.

“No,” he said. “They’ll ask you what you’re doing.”

“I can sneak in and out—and I’ve got the men’s clothes I wore down the mine.”

He shook his head. “I’ll not delay here. As soon as I start walking I’ll get warmer.” He started to squeeze water out of a plaid blanket.

On impulse she took off her fur cloak. Because it was so big it would fit Mack. It was costly, and she might never have another, but it would save his life. She refused to think about how she would explain its disappearance to her mother. “Wear this, then, and carry your plaid until you get a chance to dry it.” Without waiting for his assent she put the fur over his shoulders. He hesitated, then drew it around him gratefully. It was big enough to cover him completely.

She picked up his bundle and took out his boots. He handed her the wet blanket and she stuffed it into the bag. As she did so she felt the iron collar. She took it out. The iron ring had been broken and the collar bent to get it off. “How did you do this?” she said.

He pulled on his boots. “Broke into the pithead smithy and used Taggart’s tools.”

He could not have done it alone, she thought. His sister must have helped him. “Why are you taking it with you?”

He stopped shivering and his eyes blazed with anger. “Never to forget,” he said bitterly. “Never.”

She put it back and felt a large book in the bottom of the bag. “What’s this?” she said.

“Robinson Crusoe.”

“My favorite story!”

He took the bag from her. He was ready to go.

She remembered that Jay had persuaded Sir George to let McAsh go. “The keepers won’t come after you,” she said.

He looked hard at her. There was hope and skepticism in his expression. “How do you know?”

“Sir George decided you’re such a troublemaker he’ll be glad to be rid of you. He left the guard on the bridge, because he doesn’t want the miners to know he’s letting you go; but he expects you to sneak past them, and he’s not going to try to get you back.”

A look of relief came over his weary face. “So I needn’t worry about the sheriff’s men,” he said. “Thank God.”

Lizzie shivered without her cloak, but she felt warm inside. “Walk fast and don’t pause to rest,” she said. “If you stop before daybreak you’ll die.” She wondered where he would go, and what he would do with the rest of his life.

He nodded, then held out his hand. She shook it, but to her surprise he raised her hand to his white lips and kissed it. Then he walked away.

“Good luck,” she said quietly.

Mack’s boots crunched the ice on the puddles in the road as he strode down the glen in the moonlight, but his body warmed quickly under Lizzie Hallim’s fur cloak. Apart from his footsteps, the only sound was the rushing of the river that ran alongside the track. But his spirit was singing the song of freedom.

As he got farther from the castle he began to see the curious and even funny side of his encounter with Miss Hallim. There was she, in an embroidered dress and silk shoes and a hairdo that must have taken two maids half an hour to arrange, and he had come swimming across the river as naked as the day he was born. She must have had a shock!

Last Sunday at church she had acted like a typical arrogant Scottish aristocrat, purblind and self-satisfied. But she had had the guts to take up Mack’s challenge and go down the pit. And tonight she had saved his life twice—once by pulling him out of the water, and again by giving him her cloak. She was a remarkable woman. She had pressed her body against his to warm him, then had knelt and dried him with her petticoat: was there another lady in Scotland who would have done that for a coal miner? He remembered her falling into his arms in the pit, and he recalled how her breast had felt, heavy and soft in his hand. He was sorry to think he might never see her again. He hoped she, too, would find a way to escape from this little place. Her sense of adventure deserved wider horizons.

A group of hinds, grazing beside the road under cover of darkness, scampered away when he approached, like a herd of ghosts; then he was all alone. He was very weary. “Going the round” had taken more out of him than he had imagined. It seemed a human body could not recover from that in a couple of days. Swimming the river should have been easy, but the encounter with the floating tree had exhausted him all over again. His head still hurt where the branch had hit him.

Happily he did not have far to go tonight. He would walk only to Craigie, a pit village six miles down the glen. There he would take refuge in the home of his mother’s brother, Uncle Eb, and rest until tomorrow. He would sleep easily knowing the Jamissons were not intending to pursue him.

In the morning he would fill his belly with porridge and ham and set out for Edinburgh. Once there he would leave on the first ship that would hire him, no matter where it was going—any destination from Newcastle to Peking would serve his purpose.

He smiled at his own bravado. He had never ventured farther than the market town of Coats, twenty miles away—he had not even been to Edinburgh—but he was telling himself he was willing to go to exotic destinations as if he knew what those places were like.

As he strode along the rutted mud track he began to feel solemn about his journey. He was leaving the only home he had ever known, the place where he had been born and his parents had died. He was leaving Esther, his friend and ally, although he hoped to rescue her from Heugh before too long. He was leaving Annie, the cousin who had taught him how to kiss and how to play her body like a musical instrument.

But he had always known this would happen. As long as he could remember he had dreamed of escape. He had envied the peddler, Davey Patch, and longed for that kind of freedom. Now he had it.

Now he had it. He was filled with elation as he thought of what he had done. He had got away.

He did not know what tomorrow would bring. There might be poverty and suffering and danger. But it would not be another day down the pit, another day of slavery, another day of being the property of Sir George Jamisson. Tomorrow he would be his own man.

He came to a bend in the road and looked back. He could still just see Castle Jamisson, its battlemented roofline lit by the moon. I’ll never look at that again, he thought. It made him so happy that he began to dance a reel, there in the middle of the mud road, whistling the tune and jigging around in a circle.

Then he stopped, laughed softly at himself, and walked on down the glen.