A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [167]
He told Dobbs, as he told everyone, that he would pay a reward of fifty English pounds to anyone who arrested the fugitives. The money—enough to buy a small farm out here—had come from his mother. When they parted, Dobbs crossed the ford and went west, toward Staunton. Jay hoped he would spread the word about the reward. If the fugitives managed somehow to give Jay the slip they might yet be caught by others.
Jay returned to Charlottesville, expecting to find that Lizzie had passed through Charlottesville and turned south. However, the wagon had not been seen again. Jay could only guess they had somehow bypassed Charlottesville and found another route to the southbound Seminole Trail. Gambling on that assumption, he had led his gang along the trail. But the countryside was becoming lonelier, and they met no one who recalled seeing a man, a woman and a young girl on the road.
However, he had high hopes of getting some information here at Lynch’s Ferry.
They reached the bank and shouted across the fast-moving river. A figure emerged from a building and got into a boat. A rope was stretched from one bank to the other, and the ferry was attached to the rope in an ingenious way so that the pressure of the river’s flow drove the boat across the river. When it reached the near bank Jay and his companions led their horses aboard. The ferryman adjusted the ropes and the boat began to move back across.
The man had the dark clothes and sober manner of a Quaker. Jay paid him and began to question him as they crossed the river. “We’re looking for a group of three people: a young woman, a Scotsman of about the same age, and a young girl of fourteen. Have they been through here?”
The man shook his head.
Jay’s heart sank. He wondered if he was on the wrong track entirely. “Could someone have passed through here without you seeing them?”
The man took his time replying. Eventually he said: “He’d have to be a heck of a good swimmer.”
“Suppose they crossed the river somewhere else?”
There was another pause, and he said: “Then they didn’t pass through here.”
Binns snickered, and Lennox silenced him with a malevolent glare.
Jay looked out over the river and cursed under his breath. She had not been seen for six days. She had slipped away from him somehow. She could be anywhere. She could be in Pennsylvania. She could have returned to the East and be on a ship heading for London. He had lost her. She had outwitted him and cheated him of his inheritance. If ever I see her again, by God I’ll shoot her in the head, he thought.
In fact he did not know what he would do if he caught her. He worried at the question constantly as he rode the uneven trails. He knew she would not willingly come back to him. He would have to bring her home bound hand and foot. She might not yield to him even after that: he would probably have to rape her. The thought excited him strangely. On the trail he was disturbed by lascivious memories: the two of them caressing in the attic of the empty Chapel Street house with their mothers outside; Lizzie bouncing on their bed, naked and shameless; making love with Lizzie on top, squirming and moaning. But when she was pregnant, how would he make her stay? Could he lock her away until she gave birth?
Everything would be much simpler if she died. It was not unlikely: she and McAsh would surely put up a fight. Jay did not think he could murder his wife in cold blood. But he could hope she might get killed in a fight. Then he could marry a healthy barmaid, make her pregnant and take ship for London to claim his inheritance.
But that was a happy dream. The reality was that when he finally confronted her he would have to make a decision. Either he took her home alive, giving her ample opportunity to frustrate his plans, or he had to kill her.
How would he dispatch her? He had never killed anyone and had only once used his sword to injure