A Place Called Freedom (1995)

by Ken Follett

  “They all painted the same picture, though,” Mack said. “The river valleys slant from northeast to southwest, just as the map shows, and we have to go northwest, at right angles to the rivers, across a series of high ridges.”

  “The problem will be to find the passes that cut through the mountain ranges.”

  “We’ll just have to zigzag. Wherever we see a pass that could take us north, we go that way. When we come up against a ridge that looks impassable, we turn west and follow the valley, all the time looking out for our next chance to turn north. The passes may not be where this map shows them to be, but they’re in there somewhere.”

  “Well, there’s nothing to do now but try,” she said.

  “If we get into trouble we’ll have to retrace our steps and try a different route, that’s all.”

  She smiled. “I’d rather do this than pay calls in Berkeley Square.”

  He grinned back. She was ready for anything: he loved that about her. “It beats digging for coal, too.”

  Lizzie’s face became solemn again. “I just wish Peg was here.”

  Mack felt the same way. They had seen no trace of Peg after she had run off. They had hoped they would catch up with her that first day, but it had not happened.

  Lizzie had cried all that night: she felt she had lost two children, first her baby and then Peg. They had no idea where she might be or whether she was even alive. They had done all they could to look for her, but that thought was small consolation. After all he and Peg had been through together, he had lost her in the end. Tears came to his eyes whenever he thought about her.

  But now he and Lizzie could make love every night, under the stars. It was spring, and the weather was mild. Soon they would build their house and make love indoors. After that they had to store up salt meat and smoked fish for the winter. Meanwhile he would clear a field and plant their seeds.…

  He got to his feet.

  “That was a short rest,” Lizzie said as she stood up.

  “I’ll be happier when we’re out of sight of this river,” Mack said. “Jay might guess our route thus far—but this is where we shake him off.”

  Reflexively they both looked back the way they had come. There was no one in sight. But Jay was on that road somewhere, Mack felt sure.

  Then he realized they were being watched.

  He had seen a movement out of the corner of his eye and now he saw it again. Tensing, he slowly turned his head.

  Two Indians were standing just a few yards away.

  This was the northern edge of Cherokee country, and they had been seeing the natives at a distance for three days, but none had approached them.

  These two were boys about seventeen years old. They had the straight black hair and reddish tan skin characteristic of the original Americans, and wore the deerskin tunic and trousers the new immigrants had copied.

  The taller of the two held out a large fish like a salmon. “I want a knife,” he said.

  Mack guessed the two of them had been fishing in this river. “You want to trade?” Mack said.

  The boy smiled. “I want a knife.”

  Lizzie said: “We don’t need a fish, but we could use a guide. I’ll bet he knows where the pass is.”

  That was a good idea. It would be a tremendous relief to know where they were going. Mack said eagerly: “Will you guide us?”

  The boy smiled, but it was obvious he did not understand. His companion remained silent and still.

  Mack tried again. “Will you be our guide?”

  He began to look troubled. “No trade today,” he said doubtfully.

  Mack sighed in frustration. He said to Lizzie: “He’s an enterprising kid who’s learned a few English phrases but can’t really speak the language.” It would be maddening to get lost here just because they could not communicate with the local people.

  Lizzie said: “Let me try.”

  She went to one of the pack horses, opened a leather satchel, and took out a long-bladed knife. It had been made at the forge on the plantation, and the letter “J,” for Jamisson, was burned into the wood of the handle. It was crude by comparison with what you could buy in London, but no doubt it was superior to anything the Cherokee could make themselves. She showed it to the boy.

  He smiled broadly. “I’ll buy that,” he said, and reached for it.

  Lizzie withdrew it.

  The boy offered the fish and she pushed it away. He looked troubled again.

  “Look,” Lizzie said. She bent over a large stone with a flat surface. Using the point of the knife she began to scratch a picture. First she drew a jagged line. She pointed at the distant mountains, then at the line. “This is the ridge,” she said.

  Mack could not tell whether the boy understood or not.

  Below the ridge she drew two stick figures, then pointed at herself and Mack. “This is us,” she said. “Now—watch carefully.” She drew a second ridge, then a deep V-shape joining the two. “This is the pass,” she said. Finally she put a stick figure in the V. “We need to find the pass,” she said, and she looked expectantly at the boy.

  Mack held his breath.

  “I’ll buy that,” the boy said, and he offered Lizzie the fish.

  Mack groaned.

  “Don’t lose hope,” Lizzie snapped at him. She addressed the Indian again. “This is the ridge. This is us. Here’s the pass. We need to find the pass.” Then she pointed at him. “You take us to the pass—and you get the knife.”

  He looked at the mountains, then at the drawing, then at Lizzie. “Pass,” he said.

  Lizzie pointed at the mountains.

  He drew a V-shape in the air, then pointed through it. “Pass,” he said again.

  “I’ll buy that,” Lizzie said.

  The boy grinned broadly and nodded vigorously.

  Mack said: “Do you think he got the message?”

  “I don’t know.” She hesitated, then took her horse’s bridle and began to walk on. “Shall we go?” she said to the boy with a gesture of invitation.

  He started to walk beside her.

  “Hallelujah!” said Mack.

  The other Indian came too.

  They struck out along the bank of a stream. The horses settled into the steady gait that had brought them five hundred miles in twenty-two days. Gradually the distant ridge loomed larger, but Mack saw no sign of a pass.

  The terrain rose remorselessly, but the ground seemed less rough, and the horses went a little faster. Mack realized the boys were following a trail only they could see. Letting the Indians take the lead, they continued to head straight for the ridge.

  They went all the way to the foot of the mountain and suddenly turned east then, to Mack’s enormous relief, they saw the pass. “Well done, Fish Boy!” he said joyfully.

  They forded a river and curved around the mountain to emerge on the far side of the ridge. As the sun went down they found themselves in a narrow valley with a fast-flowing stream about twenty-five feet wide, running northeast. Ahead of them was another ridge. “Let’s make camp,” Mack said. “In the morning we’ll go up the valley and look for another pass.”

  Mack felt good. They had followed no obvious route, and the pass had been invisible from the riverbank: Jay could not possibly follow them here. He began to believe he had escaped at last.

  Lizzie gave the taller boy the knife. “Thank you, Fish Boy,” she said.

  Mack hoped the Indians would stay with them. They could have all the knives they wanted if they would guide Mack and Lizzie through the mountains. But they turned and went back the way they had come, the taller of the two still carrying his fish.

  A few moments later they had disappeared into the twilight.

  41

  JAY WAS CONVINCED THEY WOULD CATCH LIZZIE today. He kept up a fast pace, driving the horses hard. “They can’t be far ahead,” he kept saying.

  However, there was still no sign of the fugitives when he reached the Holston River at dusk. He was angry. “We can’t go on
in the dark,” he said as his men watered their horses. “I thought we would have caught them by now.”

  “We’re not far behind, calm down,” Lennox said testily. As the group traveled farther from civilization he became more insolent.

  Dobbs put in: “But we can’t tell which way they went from here. There’s no trail across the mountains—any fool that wants to go has to find his own route.”

  They hobbled the horses and tied Peg to a tree while Lennox prepared hominy for supper. It had been four days since they had seen a tavern, and Jay was sick of eating the mush he fed his slaves, but it was now too dark to shoot game.

  They were all blistered and exhausted. Binns had dropped out at Fort Chiswell, and now Dobbs was losing heart. “I should give up and go back,” he said. “It ain’t worth fifty pounds to get lost in the mountains and die.”

  Jay did not want him to go: he was the only one with any local knowledge. “But we haven’t caught up with my wife yet,” Jay said.

  “I don’t care about your wife.”

  “Give it one more day. Everyone says the way across the mountains is north of here. Let’s see if we can find the pass. We may catch her tomorrow.”

  “And we may waste our damn time.”

  Lennox spooned the lumpy porridge into bowls. Dobbs untied Peg’s hands long enough for her to eat, then tied her up again and threw a blanket over her. No one cared much for her well-being, but Dobbs wanted to take her to the Staunton sheriff: he seemed to think he would be admired for capturing her.

  Lennox got out a bottle of rum. They wrapped themselves in their blankets and passed the bottle and made desultory conversation. The hours went by and the moon rose. Jay dozed fitfully. At some point he opened his eyes and saw a strange face at the edge of the circle of firelight.

  He was so scared he could not make a sound. It was a peculiar face, young but alien, and he realized after a few moments that it belonged to an Indian.

  The face was smiling, but not at Jay. Jay followed the gaze and saw that it was focused on Peg. She was making faces at the Indian, and after a minute Jay figured that she was trying to get him to untie her.

  Jay lay dead still and watched.

  There were two Indians, he saw. They were young boys.

  One of them stepped silently into the circle. He was carrying a big fish. He put it gently down on the ground, then drew a knife and bent over Peg.

  Lennox was as quick as a snake. Jay hardly saw what happened. There was a blur of movement and Lennox had the boy in an armlock. The knife fell to the ground. Peg gave a cry of disappointment.

  The second Indian vanished.

  Jay stood up. “What have we here?”

  Dobbs rubbed his eyes and stared. “Just an Indian boy, trying to rob us. We should hang him as a lesson to the others.”

  “Not yet,” said Lennox. “He may have seen the people we’re after.”

  That thought lifted Jay’s hopes. He stood in front of the boy. “Say something, savage.”

  Lennox twisted the boy’s arm harder. He cried out and protested in his own language. “Speak English,” Lennox barked.

  “Listen to me,” Jay said loudly. “Have you seen two people, a man and a woman, on this road?”

  “No trade today,” the boy said.

  “He does speak English!” Dobbs said.

  “I don’t think he can tell us anything, though,” Jay said dispiritedly.

  “Oh, yes he can,” Lennox said. “Hold him for me, Dobbo.” Dobbs took over and Lennox picked up the knife the Indian had dropped. “Look at this. It’s one of ours—it has the letter T burned into the handle.”

  Jay looked. It was true. The knife had been made at his plantation! “Why, then he must have met Lizzie!”

  Lennox said: “Exactly.”

  Jay felt hopeful again.

  Lennox held the knife in front of the Indian’s eyes and said: “Which way did they go, boy?”

  He struggled, but Dobbs held him tight. “No trade today,” he said in a terrified voice.

  Lennox took the boy’s left hand. He hooked the point of the knife under the nail of the index finger. “Which way?” he said, and he pulled out the nail.

  The boy and Peg screamed at the same time.

  “Stop it!” Peg yelled. “Leave him alone!”

  Lennox pulled out another fingernail. The boy began to sob.

  “Which way to the pass?” Lennox said.

  “Pass,” the boy said, and with a bleeding hand he pointed north.

  Jay gave a sigh of satisfaction. “You can take us there,” he said.

  42

  MACK DREAMED HE WAS WADING ACROSS A RIVER TO A place called Freedom. The water was cold, the river bottom was uneven and there was a strong current. He kept striding forward but the bank never got any closer, and the river became deeper with every stride. All the same he knew that if he could just keep going he would eventually get there. But the water got deeper and deeper, and eventually it closed over his head.

  Gasping for breath, he woke up.

  He heard one of the horses whinny.

  “Something’s disturbed them,” he said. There was no reply. He turned over and saw that Lizzie was not beside him.

  Perhaps she had gone to answer a call of nature behind a bush, but he had a bad feeling. He rolled quickly out of his blanket and stood up.

  The sky was streaked with gray and he could see the four mares and two stallions, all standing still, as if they had heard other horses in the distance. Someone was coming.

  “Lizzie!” he called.

  Then Jay stepped from behind a tree with a rifle pointed at Mack’s heart.

  Mack froze.

  A moment later Sidney Lennox appeared with a pistol in each hand.

  Mack stood there helpless. Despair engulfed him like the river in his dream. He had not escaped after all: they had caught him.

  But where was Lizzie?

  The one-eyed man from South River ford, Deadeye Dobbs, rode up, also carrying a rifle, with Peg on another horse beside him, her feet tied together under the horse’s belly so she could not get off. She did not seem to be injured, but she looked suicidally miserable and Mack knew she blamed herself for this. Fish Boy was walking alongside Dobbs’s horse, tied by a long rope to Dobbs’s saddle. He must have led them here. His hands were covered with blood. For a moment Mack was mystified: the boy had shown no sign of injury before. Then he realized that he had been tortured. He felt a wave of disgust for Jay and Lennox.

  Jay was staring at the blankets on the ground. It was obvious that Mack and Lizzie had been sleeping together. “You filthy pig,” he said, his face working with rage. “Where’s my wife?” He reversed his rifle and swung the butt at Mack’s head, hitting him a bone-crunching blow to the side of the face. Mack staggered and fell. “Where is she, you coal-mining animal, where’s my wife?”

  Mack tasted blood. “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t know I might as well have the satisfaction of shooting you through the head!”

  Mack realized Jay meant it. Sweat broke out all over him. He felt the impulse to beg for his life but he clamped his teeth together.

  Peg screamed: “No—don’t shoot—please!”

  Jay pointed the rifle at Mack’s head. His voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “This is for all the times you’ve defied me!” he screamed.

  Mack looked into his face and saw murder in his eyes.

  Lizzie lay belly down on a grassy tuft behind a rock, with her rifle in her hand, waiting.

  She had picked her spot the night before, after inspecting the riverbank and seeing the footprints and droppings of deer. As the light strengthened she watched, lying dead still, waiting for the animals to come to drink.

  Her skill with a rifle was going to keep them alive, she reckoned. Mack could build a house and clear fields and sow seed, but it would be at least a year before they could grow enough to last them through a winter. However, there were three big sacks of salt among their sup
plies. Lizzie had often sat in the kitchen of High Glen House watching Jeannie, the cook, salting hams and haunches of venison in big barrels. She knew how to smoke fish, too. They would need plenty: the way she and Mack were behaving, there would be three to feed before a year passed. She smiled happily.

  There was a movement in the trees. A moment later a young deer came out of the woods and stepped daintily to the water’s edge. Bending its head, it stuck out its tongue and began to drink.

  Lizzie cocked the flintlock of her rifle silently.

  Before she could aim, another deer followed the first, and within a few moments there were twelve or fifteen of them. If all the wilderness is like this, Lizzie thought, we’ll grow fat!

  She did not want a big deer. The horses were fully loaded and could not carry spare meat, and anyway the younger animals were more tender. She picked her target and took aim, pointing the rifle at its shoulder just over the heart. She breathed evenly and made herself still, the way she had learned back in Scotiand.

  As always, she suffered a moment of regret for the beautiful animal she was about to destroy.

  Then she pulled the trigger.

  The shot came from farther up the valley, two or three hundred yards away.

  Jay froze, his gun still pointed at Mack.

  The horses started, but the shot was too distant to give them a serious scare.

  Dobbs brought his mount under control then drawled: “If you shoot now, Jamisson, you’ll warn her and she could get away.”

  Jay hesitated, then slowly lowered his gun.

  Mack sagged with relief.

  Jay said: “I’ll go after her. The rest of you stay here.”

  Mack realized that if only he could warn her, she might yet escape. He almost wished Jay had shot him. It might have saved Lizzie.

  Jay left the clearing and headed upstream, gun held ready.

  I have to make one of them fire, Mack realized.

  There was an easy way to do that: run away.

  But what if I’m hit?

  I don’t care, I’d rather die than be recaptured.

  Before caution could weaken his resolve he broke into a run.

  There was a moment of stunned silence before anyone realized what was happening.