A Place Called Freedom (1995)

“No,” he said. “They’ll ask you what you’re doing.”

“I can sneak in and out—and I’ve got the men’s clothes I wore down the mine.”

He shook his head. “I’ll not delay here. As soon as I start walking I’ll get warmer.” He started to squeeze water out of a plaid blanket.

On impulse she took off her fur cloak. Because it was so big it would fit Mack. It was costly, and she might never have another, but it would save his life. She refused to think about how she would explain its disappearance to her mother. “Wear this, then, and carry your plaid until you get a chance to dry it.” Without waiting for his assent she put the fur over his shoulders. He hesitated, then drew it around him gratefully. It was big enough to cover him completely.

She picked up his bundle and took out his boots. He handed her the wet blanket and she stuffed it into the bag. As she did so she felt the iron collar. She took it out. The iron ring had been broken and the collar bent to get it off. “How did you do this?” she said.

He pulled on his boots. “Broke into the pithead smithy and used Taggart’s tools.”

He could not have done it alone, she thought. His sister must have helped him. “Why are you taking it with you?”

He stopped shivering and his eyes blazed with anger. “Never to forget,” he said bitterly. “Never.”

She put it back and felt a large book in the bottom of the bag. “What’s this?” she said.

“Robinson Crusoe.”

“My favorite story!”

He took the bag from her. He was ready to go.

She remembered that Jay had persuaded Sir George to let McAsh go. “The keepers won’t come after you,” she said.

He looked hard at her. There was hope and skepticism in his expression. “How do you know?”

“Sir George decided you’re such a troublemaker he’ll be glad to be rid of you. He left the guard on the bridge, because he doesn’t want the miners to know he’s letting you go; but he expects you to sneak past them, and he’s not going to try to get you back.”

A look of relief came over his weary face. “So I needn’t worry about the sheriff’s men,” he said. “Thank God.”

Lizzie shivered without her cloak, but she felt warm inside. “Walk fast and don’t pause to rest,” she said. “If you stop before daybreak you’ll die.” She wondered where he would go, and what he would do with the rest of his life.

He nodded, then held out his hand. She shook it, but to her surprise he raised her hand to his white lips and kissed it. Then he walked away.

“Good luck,” she said quietly.

Mack’s boots crunched the ice on the puddles in the road as he strode down the glen in the moonlight, but his body warmed quickly under Lizzie Hallim’s fur cloak. Apart from his footsteps, the only sound was the rushing of the river that ran alongside the track. But his spirit was singing the song of freedom.

As he got farther from the castle he began to see the curious and even funny side of his encounter with Miss Hallim. There was she, in an embroidered dress and silk shoes and a hairdo that must have taken two maids half an hour to arrange, and he had come swimming across the river as naked as the day he was born. She must have had a shock!

Last Sunday at church she had acted like a typical arrogant Scottish aristocrat, purblind and self-satisfied. But she had had the guts to take up Mack’s challenge and go down the pit. And tonight she had saved his life twice—once by pulling him out of the water, and again by giving him her cloak. She was a remarkable woman. She had pressed her body against his to warm him, then had knelt and dried him with her petticoat: was there another lady in Scotland who would have done that for a coal miner? He remembered her falling into his arms in the pit, and he recalled how her breast had felt, heavy and soft in his hand. He was sorry to think he might never see her again. He hoped she, too, would find a way to escape from this little place. Her sense of adventure deserved wider horizons.

A group of hinds, grazing beside the road under cover of darkness, scampered away when he approached, like a herd of ghosts; then he was all alone. He was very weary. “Going the round” had taken more out of him than he had imagined. It seemed a human body could not recover from that in a couple of days. Swimming the river should have been easy, but the encounter with the floating tree had exhausted him all over again. His head still hurt where the branch had hit him.

Happily he did not have far to go tonight. He would walk only to Craigie, a pit village six miles down the glen. There he would take refuge in the home of his mother’s brother, Uncle Eb, and rest until tomorrow. He would sleep easily knowing the Jamissons were not intending to pursue him.

In the morning he would fill his belly with porridge and ham and set out for Edinburgh. Once there he would leave on the first ship that would hire him, no matter where it was going—any destination from Newcastle to Peking would serve his purpose.