A Place Called Freedom (1995)

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.”