A Place Called Freedom (1995)

39

ON THE MORNING OF THE NEXT DAY, JAY JAMISSON walked his horse down the hill to the James River and looked across the water to the settlement called Lynch’s Ferry.

Jay was exhausted, aching and dispirited. He intensely disliked Binns, the ruffian Lennox had hired in Williamsburg. He was weary of bad food, filthy clothes, long days in the saddle and short nights on the hard ground. In the last few days his hopes had gone up and down like the endless hill tracks he was traveling on.

He had been tremendously excited when he reached the South River ford and learned that Lizzie and her partners in crime had been forced to turn back. However, he was puzzled about how they had passed him on the road.

“They turned off the trail somewhere,” Deadeye Dobbs had said confidently as they sat in the tavern beside the river. Dobbs had seen the three fugitives the previous day and had recognized Peg Knapp as the missing convict who had killed Burgo Marler.

Jay supposed he must be right. “But did they go north or south?” he said worriedly.

“If you’re running from the law, south is the direction you need—away from sheriffs and courthouses and magistrates.”

Jay was not so certain. There might be lots of places in the thirteen colonies where an apparently respectable family group—husband, wife and maidservant—could quietly settle down and effectively disappear. But Dobbs’s guess seemed more likely.

He told Dobbs, as he told everyone, that he would pay a reward of fifty English pounds to anyone who arrested the fugitives. The money—enough to buy a small farm out here—had come from his mother. When they parted, Dobbs crossed the ford and went west, toward Staunton. Jay hoped he would spread the word about the reward. If the fugitives managed somehow to give Jay the slip they might yet be caught by others.

Jay returned to Charlottesville, expecting to find that Lizzie had passed through Charlottesville and turned south. However, the wagon had not been seen again. Jay could only guess they had somehow bypassed Charlottesville and found another route to the southbound Seminole Trail. Gambling on that assumption, he had led his gang along the trail. But the countryside was becoming lonelier, and they met no one who recalled seeing a man, a woman and a young girl on the road.

However, he had high hopes of getting some information here at Lynch’s Ferry.

They reached the bank and shouted across the fast-moving river. A figure emerged from a building and got into a boat. A rope was stretched from one bank to the other, and the ferry was attached to the rope in an ingenious way so that the pressure of the river’s flow drove the boat across the river. When it reached the near bank Jay and his companions led their horses aboard. The ferryman adjusted the ropes and the boat began to move back across.

The man had the dark clothes and sober manner of a Quaker. Jay paid him and began to question him as they crossed the river. “We’re looking for a group of three people: a young woman, a Scotsman of about the same age, and a young girl of fourteen. Have they been through here?”

The man shook his head.

Jay’s heart sank. He wondered if he was on the wrong track entirely. “Could someone have passed through here without you seeing them?”

The man took his time replying. Eventually he said: “He’d have to be a heck of a good swimmer.”

“Suppose they crossed the river somewhere else?”

There was another pause, and he said: “Then they didn’t pass through here.”

Binns snickered, and Lennox silenced him with a malevolent glare.

Jay looked out over the river and cursed under his breath. She had not been seen for six days. She had slipped away from him somehow. She could be anywhere. She could be in Pennsylvania. She could have returned to the East and be on a ship heading for London. He had lost her. She had outwitted him and cheated him of his inheritance. If ever I see her again, by God I’ll shoot her in the head, he thought.

In fact he did not know what he would do if he caught her. He worried at the question constantly as he rode the uneven trails. He knew she would not willingly come back to him. He would have to bring her home bound hand and foot. She might not yield to him even after that: he would probably have to rape her. The thought excited him strangely. On the trail he was disturbed by lascivious memories: the two of them caressing in the attic of the empty Chapel Street house with their mothers outside; Lizzie bouncing on their bed, naked and shameless; making love with Lizzie on top, squirming and moaning. But when she was pregnant, how would he make her stay? Could he lock her away until she gave birth?

Everything would be much simpler if she died. It was not unlikely: she and McAsh would surely put up a fight. Jay did not think he could murder his wife in cold blood. But he could hope she might get killed in a fight. Then he could marry a healthy barmaid, make her pregnant and take ship for London to claim his inheritance.

But that was a happy dream. The reality was that when he finally confronted her he would have to make a decision. Either he took her home alive, giving her ample opportunity to frustrate his plans, or he had to kill her.

How would he dispatch her? He had never killed anyone and had only once used his sword to injure people—at the coal yard riot when he had captured McAsh. Even when he hated Lizzie most he could not imagine plunging a sword into the body he had made love to. He had once trained his rifle on his brother and pulled the trigger. If he had to kill Lizzie it might be best to shoot her from a distance, like a deer. But he was not sure he could manage even that.

The ferry reached the other side. Alongside the landing was a substantial wood-frame building with two stories and an attic. Several more well-built houses were neatly ranged on the slope that rose steeply from the river. The place seemed a prosperous small trading community. As they disembarked the ferryman said casually: “There’s somebody waiting for you all in the tavern.”

“Waiting for us?” said Jay in astonishment. “How did anyone know we were coming?”

The ferryman answered a different question. “Mean-looking fellow with one closed eye.”

“Dobbs! How did he get here ahead of us?”

Lennox added: “And why?”

“Ask him,” said the ferryman.

The news had lifted Jay’s spirits and he was eager to solve the riddle. “You men deal with the horses,” he ordered. “I’ll go and see Dobbs.”

The tavern was the two-story building alongside the ferry dock. He stepped inside and saw Dobbs sitting at a table eating stew from a bowl.

“Dobbs, what the devil are you doing here?”

Dobbs raised his good eye and spoke with his mouth full. “I come to claim that reward, Captain Jamisson.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look over there.” He nodded toward the corner.

There, tied to a chair, was Peg Knapp.

Jay stared at her. This was a piece of luck! “Where the hell did she come from?”

“I found her on the road south of Staunton.”

Jay frowned. “Which way was she heading?”

“North, toward the town. I was coming out of town, going to Miller’s Mill.”

“I wonder how she got there.”

“I’ve asked her, but she won’t talk.”

Jay looked again at the girl and saw bruises on her face. Dobbs had not been gentle with her.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Dobbs said. “They came almost this far but they never crossed the river. Instead they turned west. They must have abandoned their wagon somewhere. They went on horseback up the river valley to the Staunton road.”

“But you found Peg on her own.”

“Yes.”

“So you picked her up.”

“It wasn’t that easy,” Dobbs protested. “She ran like the wind, and every time I grabbed her she slipped through my fingers. But I was on a horse and she wasn’t, and in the end she tired.”

A Quaker woman appeared and asked Jay if he wanted something to eat. He waved her away impatiently: he was too eager to question Dobbs. “But how did you get here ahead of us?”

He grinned. “I came down the river on a raft.”

“There must have been a quarrel,” Jay said excitedly. “This murdering little bitch left the others and turned north. So the others must have gone south.” He frowned. “Where do they imagine they’re going?”

“The road leads to Fort Chiswell. Beyond that there’s not much in the way of settled land. Farther south there’s a place called Wolf Hills, and after that it’s Cherokee country. They aren’t going to become Cherokee, so I’d guess they’ll turn west at Wolf Hills and head up into the hills. Hunters talk about a pass called Cumberland Gap that leads across the mountains, but I’ve never been there.”

“What’s on the other side?”

“Wilderness, they say. Good hunting. Kind of a no-man’s-land between the Cherokee and the Sioux. They call it the bluegrass country.”

Jay saw it now. Lizzie was planning to start a new life in undiscovered country. But she would fail, he thought excitedly. He would catch her and bring her back—dead or alive.

“The child is not worth much on her own,” he said to Dobbs. “You have to help us catch the other two, if you want your fifty pounds.”

“You want me to be your guide?”

“Yes.”

“They’re a couple of days ahead of you now, and they can travel fast without the wagon. It’s going to take you a week or more to catch up.”

“You get the whole fifty pounds if we succeed.”

“I hope we can make up the time before they leave the trail and go off into the wilderness.”

“Amen to that,” said Jay.