A Place Called Freedom (1995)

After the cold water her flesh was like hot oil on his skin. Suddenly he felt as if he were in a dream. He was making love to Lady Hallim’s daughter in a waterfall in Virginia: how could it be real?

She put her tongue in his mouth and he sucked it. She giggled, then her face became serious again, and a look of concentration came over her. She pulled on his neck, lifting herself, then let her body sink down again, repeatedly. She groaned deep in her throat and half closed her eyes. He watched her face, mesmerized.

Out of the corner of his eyes he saw something move on the bank. He turned his head and glimpsed a flash of color, then it was gone. Someone had been watching. Had Peg stumbled on them accidentally, or was it a stranger? He knew he should worry, but Lizzie moaned louder, and the thought left his mind. She began to cry out, her thighs squeezed him in a rhythm that went faster and faster, then she crushed her body to his and screamed, and he held her tight and shook with passion until he was drained.

When they returned to the campsite Peg was gone.

Mack had a bad feeling. “I thought I saw someone, down by the pool, when we were making love. It was just a glimpse, and I couldn’t even tell whether it was a man, woman or child.”

“I’m sure it was Peg,” Lizzie said. “I think she’s run off.”

Mack narrowed his eyes. “What makes you so sure?”

“She’s jealous of me because you love me.”

“What?”

“She loves you, Mack. She told me she was going to marry you. Of course it’s just a girlish fantasy, but she doesn’t know that. She’s been miserable for days, and I think she saw us making love and ran away.”

Mack had a dreadful feeling this was true. He imagined how Peg felt and the thought was agonizing. Now that poor child was wandering alone in the mountains at night. “Oh, God, what are we going to do?” he said.

“Look for her.”

“Aye.” Mack shook himself. “At least she hasn’t taken a horse. She can’t have gone far. We’ll search together. Let’s make torches. She’s probably gone back the way we came. Weil find her asleep under a bush, I’ll bet.”

They searched all night.

They backtracked for hours, shining their lights into the woods on either side of the winding trail. Then they returned to their camp, made new torches, and followed the stream up the mountainside, scrambling over rocks. There was no sign of her.

At dawn they ate some of the venison haunch, loaded their supplies on the horses, and went on.

It was possible she had gone west, and Mack hoped they would stumble on her on the track, but all that morning they walked without finding her.

At midday they came upon another trail. It was just a dirt road, but it was wider than a wagon and there were hoof marks in the mud. It ran from northeast to southwest, and in the distance beyond it they could see a range of majestic mountains rising into the blue sky.

This was the road they had been searching for, the way to the Cumberland Gap.

With heavy hearts, they turned southwest and rode on.

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.