A Place Called Freedom (38 page)

“They say it’s cowpen,” Lennox said at last.

“I knew it!” Lizzie said.

Jay had no idea what they were talking about. “What do you mean, ‘cowpen’? What’s that?”

Lizzie said coldly: “It means cattle have been penned on the land where the crop was grown. When land is overmanured the tobacco acquires a strong, unpleasant flavor.”

Jay said angrily: “Who are these inspectors who have the right to burn my crop?”

“They’re appointed by the House of Burgesses,” Lizzie told him.

“It’s outrageous!”

“They have to maintain the quality of Virginia tobacco.”

“I’ll go to law over this.”

Lizzie said: “Jay, instead of going to law, why don’t you just run your plantation properly? You can grow perfectly good tobacco here if only you take care.”

“I don’t need a woman to tell me how to manage my affairs!” he shouted.

Lizzie looked at Lennox. “You don’t need a fool to do it, either,” she said.

A terrible thought struck Jay. “How much of our crop was grown this way?”

Lennox said nothing.

“Well?” Jay persisted.

Lizzie said: “All of it.”

Then Jay understood that he was ruined.

The plantation was mortgaged, he was in debt up to his ears, and the entire tobacco crop was valueless.

Suddenly he found he could hardly breathe. His throat seemed constricted. He opened his mouth like a fish but he could get no air.

At last he drew breath, like a drowning man coming to the surface for the last time.

“God help me,” he said, and he buried his face in his hands.

That night he knocked on Lizzie’s bedroom door.

She was sitting by the fire in her nightdress, thinking about Mack. She was ecstatically happy. She loved him and he loved her. But what were they going to do? She stared into the flames. She tried to be practical, but all the time her mind drifted into remembering how they had made love here on the rug in front of the cheval glass. She wanted to do it again.

The knock startled her. She jumped out of her chair and stared at the locked door.

The handle rattled but she had locked the door every night since she had caught Jay with Felia. Jay’s voice came: “Lizzie—open this door!”

She said nothing.

“I’m going to Williamsburg early in the morning to try to borrow more money,” he said. “I want to see you before I go.”

Still she said nothing.

“I know you’re in there, now open up!” He sounded a little drunk.

A moment later there was a thud as if he had thrown his shoulder against the door. She knew that would not achieve anything: the hinges were brass and the bolt was heavy.

She heard his footsteps recede, but she guessed he had not yet given up, and she was right. Three or four minutes later he came back and said: “If you don’t open the door I’m going to break it down.”

There was a bang as something crashed into the door. Lizzie guessed he had fetched an ax. Another crash split the woodwork and she saw the blade come through.

Lizzie began to feel scared. She wished Mack were nearby, but he was down in the slave quarters, sleeping on a hard bunk. She had to take care of herself.

Feeling shaky, she went to her bedside table and picked up her pistols.

Jay continued to attack the door, his ax smashing into the woodwork with a series of deafening crashes, splintering the timber and causing the walls of the wood-frame house to tremble. Lizzie checked the loading of the pistols. With an unsteady hand she poured a little gunpowder into the priming pan of each. She released the safety catches on the flintlocks and cocked them both.

I don’t care now, she thought fatalistically. What will be, will be.

The door flew open and Jay burst in, red faced and panting. With the ax in his hand he stepped toward Lizzie.

She stretched out her left arm and fired a shot over his head.

In the confined space the bang was like a cannon. Jay stopped and held up his hands in a defensive gesture, looking scared.

“You know how straight I can shoot,” she said to him. “But I’ve only got one shot left, so the next will go into your heart.” As she spoke she could hardly believe she was tough enough to say such violent words to the man whose body she had loved. She wanted to cry, but she gritted her teeth and stared unflinchingly at him.

“You cold bitch,” he said.

It was a clever barb. Coldness was what she accused herself of. Slowly she lowered the pistol. Of course she would not shoot him. “What do you want?” she said.

He dropped the ax. “To bed you one time before I leave,” he said.

She felt sick. The image of Mack came into her mind. No one but he could make love to her now. The thought of doing it with Jay was horrifying.

Jay grasped her pistols by the barrels and she let him take them away. He uncocked the one she had not fired then dropped both.

She stared at him in horror. She could not believe this was going to happen.

He came close and punched her in the stomach.

She let out a cry of shock and pain, and doubled up.

“Never point a gun at me again!” he yelled.

He punched her face and she fell to the floor.

He kicked her head and she passed out.

35

A
LL THE NEXT MORNING
L
IZZIE LAY IN BED WITH A
headache so severe she could barely speak.

Sarah came in with breakfast, looking frightened. Lizzie sipped some tea then closed her eyes again.

When the cook came to take the tray away Lizzie said: “Is Mr. Jamisson gone?”

“Yes, madam. He left for Williamsburg at first light. Mr. Lennox gone with him.”

Lizzie felt a little better.

A few minutes later Mack burst into the room. He stood beside her bed and stared at her, shaking with rage. He reached out and felt her face with trembling fingers. Although her bruises were tender, his touch was light, and he did not hurt her; in fact she found it comforting. She took his hand and kissed his palm. They sat together for a long time, not speaking. Lizzie’s pain began to ease. After a while she fell asleep. When she woke up he had gone.

In the afternoon Mildred came in and opened the blinds. Lizzie sat up while Mildred combed her hair. Then Mack came in with Dr. Finch.

“I didn’t send for you,” Lizzie said.

Mack said: “I fetched him.”

For some reason Lizzie felt ashamed of what had happened to her, and she wished Mack had not gone for the doctor. “What makes you think I’m sick?”

“You spent the morning in bed.”

“I might just be lazy.”

“And I might be the governor of Virginia.”

She relented and smiled. He cared for her, and that made her happy. “I’m grateful,” she said.

The doctor said: “I was told you had a headache.”

“I’m not ill, though,” she replied. What the hell, she thought, why not tell the truth? “My head hurts because my husband kicked it.”

“Hmm.” Finch looked embarrassed. “How’s your vision—blurred?”

“No.”

He put his hands on her temples and probed gently with his fingers. “Do you feel confused?”

“Love and marriage confuse me, but not because my head’s damaged. Ouch!”

“Is that where the blow landed?”

“Yes, damn it.”

“You’re lucky to have so much curly hair. It cushioned the impact. Any nausea?”

“Only when I think about my husband.” She realized she was sounding brittle. “But that’s no concern of yours, Doctor.”

“I’ll give you a drug to ease the pain. Don’t get too fond of it, it’s habit-forming. Send for me again if you have any trouble with your eyesight.”

When he had gone Mack sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand. After a while he said: “If you don’t want him to kick your head you should leave him.”

She tried to think of a reason why she should stay. Her husband did not love her. They had no children and it seemed they never would. Their home was almost certainly forfeit. There was nothing to keep her.

“I wouldn’t know where to go,” she said.

“I would.” His face showed profound emotion. “I’m going to run away.”

Her heart missed a beat. She could not bear the thought of losing him.

“Peg will go with me,” he added.

Lizzie stared at him, saying nothing.

“Come with us,” he said.

There—it was out. He had hinted at it before—“Run away with some ne’er-do-well,” he had said—but now he was not hinting. She wanted to say “Yes, yes, today, now!” But she held back. She felt frightened. “Where will you go?” she said.

He took from his pocket a leather case and unfolded a map. “About a hundred miles west of here is a long mountain range. It starts way up in Pennsylvania and goes farther south than anyone knows. It’s high, too. But people say there’s a pass, called the Cumberland Gap, down here, where the Cumberland River rises. Beyond the mountains is wilderness. They say there aren’t even any Indians there, because the Sioux and the Cherokee have been fighting over it for generations and neither side can get the upper hand long enough to settle.”

She began to feel excited. “How would you get there?”

“Peg and I would walk. I’d head west from here to the foothills. Pepper Jones says there’s a trail that runs southwest, roughly parallel with the mountain range. I’d follow that to the Holston River, here on the map. Then strike out into the mountains.”

“And … if you were not alone?”

“If you come with me we can take a wagon and more supplies: tools, seed, and food. I won’t be a runaway then, I’ll be a servant, traveling with his mistress and her maid. In that case I’d go south to Richmond then west to Staunton. It’s longer, but Pepper says the roads are better. Pepper could be wrong but it’s the best information I’ve got.”

She felt scared and thrilled. “And once you reach the mountains?”

He smiled. “We’ll look for a valley with fish in the stream and deer in the woods, and perhaps a pair of eagles nesting in the highest trees. And there we’ll build a house.”

* * *

Lizzie packed blankets, woolen stockings, scissors, needles and thread. As she worked, her feelings seesawed from elation to terror. She was deliriously happy at the thought of running away with Mack. She imagined them riding through the wooded country side by side and sleeping together in a blanket under the trees. Then she thought of the hazards. They would have to kill their food day by day; build a house; plant corn; doctor their horses. The Indians might be hostile. There could be desperadoes roaming the territory. What if they got snowed in? They could starve to death!

Glancing out of her bedroom window she saw the buggy from MacLaine’s tavern in Fredericksburg. There was luggage on the back and a single figure on the passenger seat. The driver, an old drunk called Simmins, had obviously come to the wrong plantation. She went down to redirect him.

But when she stepped out onto the porch she recognized the passenger.

It was Jay’s mother, Alicia.

She was wearing black.

“Lady Jamisson!” Lizzie said in horror. “You should be in London!”

“Hello, Lizzie,” said her mother-in-law. “Sir George is dead.”

“Heart failure,” she said a few minutes later, sitting in the drawing room with a cup of tea. “He collapsed at his place of business. They brought him to Grosvenor Square but he died on the way.”

There was no sob in her voice, no hint of tears in her eyes, as she spoke of the death of her husband.

Lizzie remembered the young Alicia as pretty, rather than beautiful, and now there was little remaining of her youthful allure. She was just a middle-aged woman who had come to the end of a disappointing marriage. Lizzie pitied her. I’ll never be like her, she vowed. “Do you miss him?” she said hesitantly.

Alicia gave her a sharp look. “I married wealth and position, and that’s what I got. Olive was the only woman he loved, and he never let me forget it. I don’t ask for sympathy! I brought it on myself, and so I bore it for twenty-four years. But don’t ask me to mourn him. All I feel is a sense of release.”

“That’s dreadful,” Lizzie whispered. Such a fate had been in the cards for her, she thought with a shiver of dread. But she was not going to accept it. She was going to escape. However, she would have to be wary of Alicia.

“Where’s Jay?” said Alicia.

“He’s gone to Williamsburg to try to borrow money.’ ”

“The plantation hasn’t prospered, then.”

“Our tobacco crop was condemned.”

The shadow of sadness crossed Alicia’s face. Lizzie realized that Jay was a disappointment to his mother, just as he was to his wife—though Alicia would never admit it.

“I suppose you’re wondering what’s in Sir George’s will,” Alicia said.

The will had not crossed Lizzie’s mind. “Did he have much to bequeath? I thought the business was in trouble.”

“It was saved by the coal from High Glen. He died a very rich man.”

Lizzie wondered whether he had left anything to Alicia. If not she might expect to live with her son and daughter-in-law. “Did Sir George provide for you?”

“Oh, yes—my portion was settled before we married, I’m happy to say.”

“And Robert has inherited everything else?”

“That’s what we all expected. But my husband left a quarter of his wealth to be divided among any legitimate grandchildren alive within a year of his death. So your little baby is rich. When am I going to see him, or her? Which did you have?”

Alicia had obviously left London before Jay’s letter arrived. “A little girl,” Lizzie said.

“How nice. She’s going to be a rich woman.”

“She was born dead.”

Alicia offered no sympathy. “Hell,” she swore. “You must be sure to have another, quickly.”

Mack had loaded the wagon with seed, tools, rope, nails, cornmeal and salt He had opened the gun room with Lizzie’s key and taken all the rifles and ammunition. He had also loaded a plowshare. When they reached their destination he would convert the wagon into a plow.

He would put four mares in the traces, he decided, and take two stallions in addition, so that they could breed. Jay Jamisson would be furious at the theft of his precious horses: he would mind that more than the loss of Lizzie, Mack felt sure.

While he was roping down the supplies, Lizzie came out.

“Who’s your visitor?” he asked her.

“Jay’s mother, Alicia.”

“Good God! I didn’t know she was coming.”

“Nor did I.”

Mack frowned. Alicia was no threat to his plans but her husband might be. “Is Sir George coming?”

“He’s dead.”

That was a relief. “Praise be. The world is well rid of him.”

“Can we still leave?”

“I don’t see why not. Alicia can’t stop us.”

“What if she goes to the sheriff and says we’ve run away and stolen all this?” She indicated the pile of supplies on the wagon.

“Remember our story. You’re going to visit a cousin who has just started to farm in North Carolina. You’re taking gifts.”

“Even though we’re bankrupt.”

“Virginians are famous for being generous when they can’t afford it.”

Lizzie nodded. “I’ll make sure Colonel Thumson and Suzy Delahaye hear of my plans.”

“Tell them that your mother-in-law disapproves and she may try to make trouble for you.”

“Good idea. The sheriff won’t want to get involved in a family quarrel.” She paused. The look on her face made his heart race. Hesitantly she said: “When … when shall we leave?”

He smiled. “Before first light. I’ll have the wagon taken down to the quarters tonight, so that we won’t make much noise as we go. By the time Alicia wakes up we’ll be gone.”

She squeezed his arm quickly then hurried back into the house.

Mack came to Lizzie’s bed that night.

She was lying awake, full of fear and excitement, thinking of the adventure that would begin in the morning, when he came silently into the room. He kissed her lips, threw off his clothes, and slipped into bed beside her.

They made love, then lay talking in low voices about tomorrow, then made love again. As dawn approached Mack drifted into a doze, but Lizzie stayed awake, looking at his features in the firelight, thinking of the journey in space and time that had brought them from High Glen all the way to this bed.

Soon he stirred. They kissed again, a long, contented kiss, then they got up.

Mack went to the stables while Lizzie got ready. Her heart raced as she dressed. She pinned up her hair and put on breeches, riding boots, a shirt and a waistcoat. She packed a dress she could quickly slip on if she needed to revert to being a wealthy woman. She was frightened of the journey they were about to take, but she had no qualms about Mack. She felt so close to him that she would trust him with her life.

When he came for her she was sitting at the window in her coat and three-cornered hat. He smiled to see her in her favorite clothes. They held hands and tiptoed down the stairs and out of the house.

The wagon was waiting down by the road, out of sight. Peg was already sitting on the seat, wrapped in a blanket. Jimmy, the stable boy, had put four horses in harness and roped two more to the back. All the slaves were there to say good-bye. Lizzie kissed Mildred and Sarah, and Mack shook hands with Kobe and Cass. Bess, the field hand who had been injured on the night Lizzie lost her baby, threw her arms around Lizzie and sobbed. They all stood silent in the starlight and watched as Mack and Lizzie climbed on the wagon.

Mack cracked the reins and said: “Hup! Walk on!”

The horses took the strain, the wagon jerked and they moved off.

At the road Mack turned the horses in the direction of Fredericksburg. Lizzie looked back. The field hands were standing in complete silence, waving.

A moment later they were gone from sight.

Lizzie looked ahead. In the distance, dawn was breaking.