A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [132]
The service had ended and the congregation was coming out, all in their Sunday best, shaking hands and chattering.
Mack saw Cora right away.
He smiled broadly when he saw her. She certainly had been lucky. The starved, filthy woman he had left on the Rosebud might have been a different person. Cora was her old self: clear skin, glossy hair, rounded figure. She was as well dressed as ever, in a dark brown coat and a wool skirt, and she wore good boots. He was suddenly glad he had the new shirt and waistcoat Lizzie had given him.
Cora was talking animatedly to an old woman with a cane. She broke off her conversation as he approached her. “Mack!” she said delightedly. “This is a miracle!”
He opened his arms to embrace her but she held out a hand to shake, and he guessed she did not want to make an exhibition outside the church. He took her hand in both of his and said; “You look wonderful.” She smelled good, too: not the spicy, woody perfume she had favored in London, but a lighter, floral smell that was more ladylike.
“What happened to you?” she said, withdrawing her hand. “Who bought you?”
“I’m on the Jamisson plantation—and Lennox is the overseer.”
“Did he hit your face?”
Mack touched the sore place where Lennox had slashed him. “Yes, but I took his whip from him and broke it in half.”
She smiled. “That’s Mack—always in trouble.”
“It is. Have you any news of Peg?”
“She was taken off by the soul drivers, Bates and Makepiece.”
Mack’s heart sank. “Damn. It’s going to be hard to find her.”
“I always ask after her but I’ve never heard anything.”
“And who bought you? Somebody kind, by the look of you!”
As he spoke a plump, richly dressed man in his fifties came up. Cora said: “Here he is: Alexander Rowley, the tobacco broker.”
“He obviously treats you well!” Mack murmured.
Rowley shook hands with the old woman and said a word to her, then turned to Mack.
Cora said: “This is Malachi McAsh, an old friend of mine from London. Mack, this is Mr. Rowley—my husband.”
Mack stared, speechless.
Rowley put a proprietorial arm around Cora’s shoulders and at the same time shook Mack’s hand. “How do you do, McAsh?” he said, and without another word he swept Cora away.
Why not? Mack thought as he trudged along the road back to the Jamisson plantation. Cora had not known whether she would ever see him again. She had obviously been bought by Rowley and had made him fall in love with her. It must have been something of a scandal for a merchant to marry a convict woman, even in a little colonial town such as Falmouth. However, sexual attraction was more powerful than social rules in the end, and Mack could easily imagine how Rowley had been seduced. It may have been difficult to persuade people like the old lady with the cane to accept Cora as a respectable wife, but Cora had the nerve for anything, and she had obviously carried it off. Good for her. She would probably have Rowley’s babies.
He found excuses for her, but all the same he was disappointed. In a moment of panic she had made him promise to search for her; but she had forgotten him as soon as she got the chance of an easy life.
It was strange: he had had two lovers, Annie and Cora, and both had married someone else. Cora went to bed every night with a fat tobacco broker twice her age, and Annie was pregnant with Jimmy Lee’s child. He wondered if he would ever have a normal family life with a wife and children.
He gave himself a shake. He could have had that if he had really wanted it. But he had refused to settle down and accept what the world offered him. He wanted more.
He wanted to be free.
30
JAY WENT TO WILLIAMSBURG WITH HIGH HOPES.
He had been dismayed to learn of the sympathies of his neighbors—they were all liberal Whigs, not a conservative Tory among them—but he felt sure that in the colonial capital he would find men loyal to the king, men who would welcome him as a valuable ally and