Free A Place Called Freedom by Ken Follett Page A

downstairs.
    She wondered nervously whether Jay would keep his word. Something might have happened to prevent him, or he could even have fallen asleep waiting. How disappointing that would be! But she found the kitchen door unlocked, as he had promised; and when she emerged into the stable yard he was waiting there, holding two ponies, murmuring softly to them to keep them quiet. She felt a glow of pleasure when he smiled at her in the moonlight. Without speaking, he handed her the reins of the smaller horse, then led the way out of the yard by the back path, avoiding the front drive which was overlooked by the principal bedrooms.
    When they reached the road Jay unshrouded a lantern. They mounted their ponies and trotted away. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” Jay said.
    “I was afraid you might fall asleep waiting,” she replied, and they both laughed.
    They rode up the glen toward the coal pits. “Did you have another row with your father this afternoon?” Lizzie asked him directly.
    “Yes.”
    He did not offer details, but Lizzie’s curiosity did not require encouragement. “What about?” she said.
    She could not see his face but she sensed that he disliked her questioning. However, he answered mildly enough. “The same old thing, I’m afraid—my brother, Robert.”
    “I think you’ve been very badly treated, if that’s any consolation.”
    “It is—thank you.” He seemed to relax a bit.
    As they approached the pits Lizzie’s eagerness and curiosity heightened, and she began to speculate about what the mine would be like and why McAsh had implied it was some kind of hellhole. Would it be dreadfully hot or freezing cold? Did the men snarl at one another and fight, like caged wildcats? Would the pit be evil smelling, or infested with mice, or silent and ghostly? She began to feel apprehensive. But whatever happens, she thought, I’ll know what it’s like—and McAsh will no longer be able to taunt me with my ignorance.
    After half an hour or so they passed a small mountain of coal for sale. “Who’s there?” a voice barked, and a keeper with a deerhound straining at a leash entered the circle of Jay’s lantern. The keepers traditionally looked after the deer and tried to catch poachers, but nowadays many of them enforced discipline at the pits and guarded against theft of coal.
    Jay lifted his lantern to show his face.
    “I beg your pardon, Mr. Jamisson, sir,” the keeper said.
    They rode on. The pithead itself was marked only by a horse trotting in a circle, turning a drum. As they got closer Lizzie saw that the drum wound a rope that pulled buckets of water out of the pit. “There’s always water in a mine,” Jay explained. “It seeps from the earth.” The old wooden buckets leaked, making the ground around the pithead a treacherous mixture of mud and ice.
    They tied up their horses and went to the edge of the pit. It was a shaft about six feet square with a steep wooden staircase descending its sides in a zigzag. Lizzie could not see the bottom.
    There was no handrail.
    Lizzie suffered a moment of panic. “How deep is it?” she asked in a shaky voice.
    “If I remember rightly, this pit is two hundred and ten feet,” Jay said.
    Lizzie swallowed hard. If she called the whole thing off, Sir George and Robert might get to hear of it, then they would say: “I told you it was no place for a lady.” She could not bear that—she would rather go down a two-hundred-foot staircase without a handrail.
    Gritting her teeth, she said: “What are we waiting for?”
    If Jay sensed her fear he made no comment. He went ahead, lighting the steps for her, and she followed with her heart in her mouth. However, after a few steps he said: “Why don’t you put your hands on my shoulders, to steady yourself.” She did so gratefully.
    As they descended, the wooden buckets of water waltzed up the well in the middle of the shaft, banging against the empty ones going down, frequently splashing icy water