A Place Called Freedom (1995)

Mack looked up to see a young woman wearing a dress the color of an orange.

Peg said: “Hello, Cora. I was rescued by a handsome prince. Meet Scotch Jock McKnock.”

Cora smiled at Mack and said: “Thank you for helping Peg. I hope you didn’t get those bruises in the process.”

Mack shook his head. “That was another brute.”

“Let me buy you a drink of gin.”

Mack was about to refuse—he preferred beer—but Dermot said: “Very kind, we thank you.”

Mack watched her as she went to the bar. She was about twenty years old, with an angelic face and a mass of flaming red hair. It was shocking to think someone so young and pretty was a whore. He said to Peg: “So she shagged that fellow who chased you, did she?”

“She doesn’t usually have to go all the way with a man,” Peg said knowiedgeabry. “She generally leaves him in some alley with his dick up and his breeches down.”

“While you run off with his purse,” Dermot said.

“Me? Get off. I’m a lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte.”

Cora sat beside Mack. She wore a heavy, spicy perfume that had sandalwood and cinnamon in it “What are you doing in London, Jock?”

He stared at her. She was very attractive. “Looking for work.”

“Find any?”

“Not much.”

She shook her head. “It’s been a whore of a winter, cold as the grave, and the price of bread is shocking. There’s too many men like you.”

Peg put in: “That was what made my father turn to thieving, two years ago, only he didn’t have the knack.”

Mack reluctantly tore his gaze away from Cora and looked at Peg. “What happened to him?”

“He danced with the sheriff’s collar on.”

“What?”

Dermot explained. “It means he was hanged.”

Mack said: “Oh, dear, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me, you Scotch git, it makes me sick.”

Peg was a real hard case. “All right, all right, I won’t,” Mack said mildly.

Cora said: “If you want work, I know someone who’s looking for coal heavers, to unload the coal ships. The work is so heavy that only young men can do it, and they prefer out-of-towners who aren’t so quick to complain.”

“I’ll do anything,” Mack said, thinking of Esther.

“The coal heaving gangs are all run by tavern keepers down in Wapping. I know one of them, Sidney Lennox at the Sun.”

“Is he a good man?”

Cora and Peg laughed. Cora said: “He’s a lying, cheating, miserable-faced, evil-smelling festering drunken pig, but they’re all the same, so what can you do?”

“Will you take us to the Sun?”

“Be it on your own head,” said Cora.

A warm fog of sweat and coal dust filled the airless hold of the wooden ship. Mack stood on a mountain of coal, wielding a broad-bladed shovel, scooping up lumps of coal, working with a steady rhythm. The work was brutally hard; his arms ached and he was bathed in perspiration; but he felt good. He was young and strong, he was earning good money, and he was no one’s slave.

He was one of a gang of sixteen coal heavers, bent over their shovels, grunting and swearing and making jokes. Most of the others were muscular young Irish farm boys: the work was too hard for stunted city-born men. Dermot was thirty and he was the oldest on the gang.

It seemed he could not escape from coal. But it made the world turn. As Mack worked he thought about where this coal was going: all the London drawing rooms it would heat, all the thousands of kitchen fires, all the bakery ovens and breweries it would fuel. The city had an appetite for coal that was never satisfied.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the gang had almost emptied this ship, the Black Swan from Newcastle. Mack enjoyed calculating how much he would be paid tonight. This was the second ship they had unloaded this week, and the gang got sixteen pence, a penny per man, for every score, or twenty sacks of coal. A strong man with a big shovel could move a sackful in two minutes. He reckoned each man had earned six pounds gross.

However, there were deductions. Sidney Lennox, the middleman or “undertaker,” sent vast quantities of beer and gin on board for the men. They had to drink a lot to replace the gallons of fluid they lost by sweating, but Lennox gave them more than was necessary and most of the men drank it, gin too. Consequently there was generally at least one accident before the end of the day. And the liquor had to be paid for. So Mack was not sure how much he would receive when he lined up for his wages at the Sun tavern tonight However, even if half of the money was lost in deductions—an estimate surely too high—the remainder would still be double what a coal miner would earn for a six-day week.

And at that rate he could send for Esther in a few weeks. Then he and his twin would be free of slavery. His heart leaped at the prospect.