A Place Called Freedom (1995)

Mack loved his sister. They had always sided with one another in any conflict, from childhood scraps, through rows with their parents, to disputes with the pit management. Even when she had doubts about his wisdom she was as fierce as a lioness in his defense. He longed to take her with him, but it would be much harder for two to escape than one. “Stay a little while, Esther,” he said. “When I get where I’m going, I’ll write to you. As soon as I get work, I’ll save money and send for you.”

“Will you?”

“Aye, to be sure!”

“Spit and swear.”

“Spit and swear?” It was something they had done as children, to seal a promise.

“I want you to!”

He could see she meant it. He spat on his palm, reached across the plank table, and took her hard hand in his own. “I swear I’ll send for you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

6

A DEER HUNT HAD BEEN PLANNED FOR THE FOLLOWING morning, and Jay decided to go along. He felt like killing something.

He ate no breakfast but filled his pocket with whiskey butties, little balls of oatmeal steeped in whiskey, then stepped outside to look at the weather. It was just becoming light. The sky was gray but the cloud level was high, and there was no rain: they would be able to see to shoot.

He sat on the steps at the front of the castle and fitted a new wedge-shaped flint into the firing mechanism of his gun, fixing it firmly with a wad of soft leather. Perhaps slaughtering some stags would be an outlet for his rage, but he wished he could kill his brother Robert instead.

He was proud of his gun. A muzzle-loading flintlock rifle, it was made by Griffin of Bond Street and had a Spanish barrel with silver inlay. It was far superior to the crude “Brown Bess” issued to his men. He cocked the flintlock and aimed at a tree across the lawn. Sighting along the barrel, he imagined he saw a big stag with spreading antlers. He drew a bead on the chest just behind the shoulder, where the beast’s big heart pumped. Then he changed the image and saw Robert in his sights: dour, dogged Robert, greedy and tireless, with his dark hair and well-fed face. Jay pulled the trigger. The flint struck steel and gave a satisfactory shower of sparks, but there was no gunpowder in the pan and no ball in the barrel.

He loaded his gun with steady hands. Using the measuring device in the nozzle of his gunpowder flask he poured exactly two and a half drams of black powder into the barrel. He took a ball from his pocket, wrapped it in a scrap of linen cloth, and pushed it into the barrel. Then he undipped the ramrod from its housing under the barrel and used it to ram the ball into the gun as far as it would go. The ball was half an inch in diameter. It could kill a full-grown stag at a range of a hundred yards: it would smash Robert’s ribs, tear through his lung, and rip open the muscle of his heart, killing him in seconds.

He heard his mother say: “Hello, Jay.”

He stood up and kissed her good morning. He had not seen her since last night, when she had damned his father and stormed off. Now she looked weary and sad. “You slept badly, didn’t you,” he said sympathetically.

She nodded. “I’ve had better nights.”

“Poor Mother.”

“I shouldn’t have cursed your father like that.”

Hesitantly Jay said: “You must have loved him … once.”

She sighed. “I don’t know. He was handsome and rich and a baronet, and I wanted to be his wife.”

“But now you hate him.”

“Ever since he began to favor your brother over you.”

Jay felt angry. “You’d think Robert would see the unfairness of it!”

“I’m sure he does, in his heart. But I’m afraid Robert is a very greedy young man. He wants it all.”

“He always did.” Jay was recalling Robert as a child, never happier than when he had grabbed Jay’s share of the toy soldiers or the plum pudding. “Remember Robert’s pony, Rob Roy?”

“Yes, why?”

“He was thirteen, and I was eight, when he got that pony. I longed for a pony—and I could ride better than he, even then. But he never once let me ride it. If he didn’t want to ride it himself, he would make a groom exercise Rob Roy while I watched, rather than let me have a go.”

“But you rode the other horses.”

“By the time I was ten I had ridden everything else in the stable, including Father’s hunters. But not Rob Roy.”

“Let’s take a turn up and down the drive.” She was wearing a fur-lined coat with a hood, and Jay had his plaid cloak. They walked across the lawn, their feet crunching the frosted grass.

“What made my father like this?” Jay said. “Why does he hate me?”

She touched his cheek. “He doesn’t hate you,” she said, “although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.”

“Then why does he treat me so badly?”