A Place Called Freedom (1995)

He rode around to the stables and dismounted. He patted the gelding’s neck. “He’s no steeplechaser, but he’s a well-behaved mount,” he said to the groom, handing over the reins. “I’d be glad to have him in my regiment.”

The groom looked pleased. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

Jay went into the great hall. It was a big, gloomy chamber with dim shadowy corners into which the candlelight hardly penetrated. A sullen deerhound lay on an old fur rug in front of the coal fire. Jay gave it a nudge with the toe of his boot and made it get out of the way so that he could warm his hands.

Over the fireplace was the portrait of his father’s first wife, Robert’s mother, Olive. Jay hated that painting. There she was, solemn and saintly, looking down her long nose at all who came after her. When she caught a fever and died suddenly at the age of twenty-nine his father had remarried, but he never forgot his first love. He treated Jay’s mother, Alicia, like a mistress, a plaything with no status and no rights; and he made Jay feel almost like an illegitimate son. Robert was the firstborn, the heir, the special one. Jay sometimes wanted to ask whether it had been an immaculate conception and a virgin birth.

He turned his back on the picture. A footman brought him a goblet of hot mulled wine and he sipped it gratefully. Perhaps it would settle the tension in his stomach. Today Father would announce what Jay’s portion would be.

He knew he was not going to get half, or even a tenth, of his father’s fortune. Robert would inherit this estate, with its rich mines, and the fleet of ships he already managed. Jay’s mother had counseled him not to argue about that: she knew Father was implacable.

Robert was not merely the only son. He was Father all over again. Jay was different, and that was why his father spurned him. Like Father, Robert was clever, heartless, and mean with money. Jay was easygoing and spendthrift. Father hated people who were careless with money, especially his money. More than once he had shouted at Jay: “I sweat blood to make money that you throw away!”

Jay had made matters worse, just a few months ago, by running up a huge gambling debt, nine hundred pounds. He had got his mother to ask Father to pay. It was a small fortune, enough to buy Castle Jamisson, but Sir George could easily afford it. All the same he had acted as if he were losing a leg. Since then Jay had lost more money, although Father did not know about that.

Don’t fight your father, Mother reasoned, but ask for something modest. Younger sons often went out to the colonies: there was a good chance his father would give him the sugar plantation in Barbados, with its estate house and African slaves. Both he and his mother had spoken to his father about it. Sir George had not said yes, but he had not said no, and Jay had high hopes.

His father came in a few minutes later, stamping snow off his riding boots. A footman helped him off with his cloak. “Send a message to Ratchett,” Father said to the man. “I want two men guarding the bridge twenty-four hours a day. If McAsh tries to leave the glen they should seize him.”

There was only one bridge across the river, but there was another way out of the glen. Jay said: “What if McAsh goes over the mountain?”

“In this weather? He can try. As soon as we learn he’s gone, we can send a party around by road and have the sheriff and a squad of troops waiting on the other side by the time he gets there. But I doubt he’d ever make it.”

Jay was not so sure—these miners were as hardy as the deer, and McAsh was an obstinate wretch—but he did not argue with his father.

Lady Hallim arrived next. She was dark haired and dark eyed like her daughter, but she had none of Lizzie’s spark and crackle. She was rather stout, and her fleshy face was marked with lines of disapproval. “Let me take your coat,” Jay said, and helped her shrug off her heavy fur. “Come close to the fire, your hands are cold. Would you like some mulled wine?”

“What a nice boy you are, Jay,” she said. “I’d love some.”

The other churchgoers came in, rubbing their hands for warmth and dripping melted snow on the stone floor. Robert was doggedly making small talk to Lizzie, going from one trivial topic to another as if he had a list. Father began to discuss business with Henry Drome, a Glasgow merchant who was a relation of his first wife, Olive; and Jay’s mother spoke to Lady Hallim. The pastor and his wife had not come: perhaps they were sulking about the row in the church. There was a handful of other guests, mostly relatives: Sir George’s sister and her husband, Alicia’s younger brother and his wife, and one or two neighbors. Most of the conversations were about Malachi McAsh and his stupid letter.

After a while Lizzie’s raised voice was heard over the buzz of conversation, and one by one people turned to listen to her. “But why not?” she was saying. “I want to see for myself.”

Robert said gravely: “A coal mine is no place for a lady, believe me.”