Ken Follett - A Place Called Freedom

More praise for
A PLACE CALLED FREEDOM

Follett skillfully combines tension, eroticism, and an unusual locale.

Detroit Free Press

Follett keeps the pace fast and the writing crisp.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

A richly colored plot Entertaining.

Lexington Herald-Leader

Superb storytelling.

West Coast Review of Books

The action and the tension should keep fans happily turning pages.

Booklist

This book contains an excerpt from the hardcover edition of The Third Twin by Ken Follett. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the hardcover edition.

A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright 1995 by Ken Follett
Excerpt from The Third Twin copyright 1996 by Ken Follett

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Maps courtesy the Bettmann Archive

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-96170

eISBN: 978-0-307-77519-1

This edition published by arrangement with Crown Publishers, Inc.

v3.1

Dedicated to
the memory of
JOHN SMITH

Contents

I

Scotland

S NOW CROWNED THE RIDGES OF H IGH G LEN AND LAY on the wooded slopes in pearly patches, like jewelry on the bosom of a green silk dress. In the valley bottom a hasty stream dodged between icy rocks. The bitter wind that howled inland from the North Sea brought flurries of sleet and hail.

Walking to church in the morning the McAsh twins, Malachi and Esther, followed a zigzag trail along the eastern slope of the glen. Malachi, known as Mack, wore a plaid cape and tweed breeches, but his legs were bare below the knee, and his feet, without stockings, froze in his wooden clogs. However, he was young and hot-blooded, and he hardly noticed the cold.

This was not the shortest way to church but High Glen always thrilled him. The high mountainsides, the quiet mysterious woods and the laughing water formed a landscape familiar to his soul. He had watched a pair of eagles raise three sets of nestlings here. Like the eagles, he had stolen the lairds salmon from the teeming stream. And, like the deer, he had hidden in the trees, silent and still, when the gamekeepers came.

The laird was a woman, Lady Hallim, a widow with a daughter. The land on the far side of the mountain belonged to Sir George Jamisson, and it was a different world. Engineers had torn great holes in the mountainsides; manmade hills of slag disfigured the valley; massive wagons loaded with coal plowed the muddy road; and the stream was black with dust. There the twins lived, in a village called Heugh, a long row of low stone houses marching uphill like a staircase.

They were male and female versions of the same image. Both had fair hair blackened by coal dust, and striking pale green eyes. Both were short and broad backed, with strongly muscled arms and legs. Both were opinionated and argumentative.

Arguments were a family tradition. Their father had been an all-round nonconformist, eager to disagree with the government, the church or any other authority. Their mother had worked for Lady Hallim before her marriage, and like many servants she identified with the upper class. One bitter winter, when the pit had closed for a month after an explosion, Father had died of the black spit, the cough that killed so many coal miners; and Mother got pneumonia and followed him within a few weeks. But the arguments went on, usually on Saturday nights in Mrs. Wheighels parlor, the nearest thing to a tavern in the village of Heugh.

The estate workers and the crofters took Mothers view. They said the king was appointed by God, and that was why people had to obey him. The coal miners had heard newer ideas. John Locke and other philosophers said a governments authority could come only from the consent of the people. This theory appealed to Mack.

Few miners in Heugh could read, but Macks mother could, and he had pestered her to teach him. She had taught both her children, ignoring the gibes of her husband, who said she had ideas above her station. At Mrs. Wheighels Mack was called on to read aloud from the Times , the Edinburgh Advertiser , and political journals such as the radical North Briton . The papers were always weeks out of date, sometimes months, but the men and women of the village listened avidly to long speeches reported verbatim, satirical diatribes, and accounts of strikes, protests and riots.