The Seekers

by John Jakes

  As she finished brushing her hair and walked to the wardrobe to select a gown in which to greet her new husband, she resolved that in the boudoir, too, she would rule. She had accepted Mr. Piggott because he seemed a decent, pliant man of good social connections—a man who would understand her wishes and accede to them. She meant to make sure he did—

  A noise in the outer room startled her. The latch!

  She darted back to the dressing table so he wouldn’t see her in her chemise.

  “Andrew? Is that you?”

  “Indeed it is.” He had a deep, mellow voice. A little too mellow right now, she decided. He had imbibed somewhat heavily at the reception.

  “I won’t be ready to receive you for at least a quarter of an hour.”

  He laughed. “Don’t trouble yourself with bed clothes, my dear—”

  Andrew Piggott appeared in the dressing room entrance, gazing at his wife with alarming directness.

  He was about Harriet’s age, with good features and a ruddy complexion. His eyes tended to be squinty, and he carried a fair amount of flesh on his frame: some might even describe him as portly. But that mellow voice charmed everyone, compensating for the small signs of self-indulgence: a florid nose, the beginning of a paunch.

  Harriet caught her breath as he studied her. Mr. Piggott had already discarded his dark green clawhammer tail coat with its elegant black velvet collar. She saw it on the bedroom floor behind him. He stood before her in his pea green waistcoat, fluffy stock, fawn trousers and gartered pumps. His eyes moved slowly from her throat to her breasts.

  Undone by the sudden interruption and his candid stare, Harriet crossed her arms over her bosom.

  “The clothes will come off soon enough anyway,” Piggott said with a genial smile. The dreaded moment had come—too quickly.

  Harriet Lebow Kent Piggott was terrified.

  ii

  “I wish you would retire and permit me—” she began.

  “Nonsense.” Piggott waved. “We’re married now. Very enjoyable affair, too.”

  “I noticed you dipping into the punch quite often.”

  Piggott’s eyes grew a bit less cordial. “That’s my business, I think. By the way—your nephew refused to say more than a couple of words to me.”

  Turning her back, Harriet hurried to the wardrobe. “You can be sure Jared will hear about that.” She was less than confident that a reprimand would do any good, though.

  “Not necessary,” Piggott said. “If he persists in his rudeness, I’ll speak to him. We will come to an under standing, I promise.”

  Piggott’s tone made Harriet glance around. His smile remained fixed. But his eyes were humorless.

  “I mean to say, if he doesn’t show proper respect for his new father, I’ll take him aside and thrash him.”

  “Jared has grown to be a very strong boy—”

  “Headstrong is more like it. Sea duty quite inflates his hat size, I think.”

  “He’s like his mother now. She was an arrogant creature—”

  “Well, I can deal with him. Gentleman at Yale don’t spend all their hours musing over the classics! They’ve been known to fight free-for-all—”

  Piggott rubbed the fingers of his right hand against his palm, as if in anticipation. Then he walked toward her.

  “Time enough for that in the weeks to come. At the moment our concern is pleasure.”

  Harriet was afraid she might swoon. She noticed a disgusting lump under Piggott’s trousers. She groped behind her for a gown—

  Piggott seized her around the waist, pulled her to him sounding a shade annoyed. “Let’s not concern ourselves with false propriety, my dear. I trust you are happy to be Mrs. Piggott—?”

  “Of—of course.”

  His dark eyes focused behind her, on a shelf of the wardrobe.

  “Not sufficiently happy to wear one of my wedding gifts.”

  His clasping fingers hurt her waist. She writhed away spun to the shelf, plucked down the pair of white linen tubes decorated with bright red ribbons. “I have certain standards, Andrew—”

  “Pantalets are coming into fashion.”

  “But false pantalets are worn only by dancers an harlots.”

  He nodded, his face enigmatically empty of emotion “I’ll forgive your reluctance. If you’re less reluctant in bed—”

  He took hold of her waist again. She realized that he might be drunk. She smelled the ginned punch on him, blending with the odor of his cologne. As he dragged her against him, she felt something stiff press her flesh through the chemise.

  Her mouth went dry. Her eyes blurred. She gasped.

  Visibly annoyed, Piggott stood back.

  “What’s this? You are reluctant.”

  “No. No, it’s—a vaporish dizziness. Just give me a moment—”

  She moved quickly to the dressing table, sank down, eyed Piggott in the glass. His features had hardened—exactly as his flesh had hardened beneath his trousers. He stared at her in an accusing way; he wasn’t deceived by her lie.

  He took two steps, came up behind her, deliberately thrust that bulge against her back while his hands slipped under her arms. He started fondling her breasts. She blurted the first thought that came into her head. “Has Amanda retired?”

  Piggott jerked his hands away. He laughed, a harsh sound.

  “Amanda, Jared—who else shall we discuss, Mrs. Piggott?”

  “I only wanted to know—”

  “Is that what you propose to do this evening? Talk? It’s not what I propose to do!”

  “I thought—I thought you respected my wishes—”

  “Yes! But I remind you that we’re married. I have rights.”

  In a faint voice, she said, “And I’ll permit you to exercise them—”

  “Well! That’s generous of you! My dear, there’s no permitting about it.”

  Seeing her shocked expression, he forced another smile. But the way he raked a hand through his thick black hair revealed his anger. “To answer your blasted question—yes, Amanda has gone to her room.” Piggott ran his tongue over his lower up. “Quite a fetching little creature now that she’s started to fill out. She’s begun to bleed, I assume—?”

  “Andrew—!”

  “It’s a fact of life, isn’t it? And she has, hasn’t she?”

  Harriet swallowed. Not even Gilbert had ever posed such a frank question. It was all she could do to answer. “In—in April. Prematurely.”

  “Thought so from the way those breasts are popping out. Your daughter’s going to be a beauty. I’ve noticed the way she glances at men. Teases them with her eyes.”

  Harriet could hardly believe what she was hearing; Piggott sounded almost lustful.

  “I venture she’ll be tumbled before she’s twelve. And enjoy it!”

  “That’s vile!” Harriet cried. “Such talk isn’t suitable even between husband and wife.”

  “Then shall we try something that is suitable between husband and wife? You’ve jabbered enough!”

  He dragged her up, wrapped one arm around her waist and drove his tongue between her lips.

  iii

  What had begun as a day of nerves and worry ended as an utter nightmare.

  Mr. Piggott wouldn’t be denied. He carried her bodily into the bedroom, refusing her even the decencies of drawing the curtains or dimming the lamps. The harder she struggled, the rougher he became.

  He flung her on the turned-down bed and sprawled beside her, nuzzling her throat, her temple, her eyelids—

  Thick-fingered hands rubbed and pinched her nipples. He pulled up her chemise, forced one hand between her legs.

  “By God you’re a prime one,” he groaned as he fingered her. “But I’ll have you craving more before we’re finished, Mrs. Piggott—”

  He seized the bodice of her chemise, tore it. She lay exposed on the bed, her nipples wrinkled as prunes. She was incapable of speech. She rolled her head from side to side, making small, incoherent sounds.

 
Piggott shed his clothing. He had soft white skin. He pulled her legs apart and flung himself over her body.

  Harriet’s dry flesh hurt when he assaulted her. Piggott could feel that. But he kept thrusting in spite of it. His fingers found her bosom again. Harriet moaned under the hard caress of his thumbs—

  Piggott moaned too, jerking back and forth as the rhythm quickened. Harriet felt a muscle jump in her awkwardly bent left leg. Piggott’s whole midsection seemed to pummel her. And there was not even darkness to conceal his noisy rutting—

  He jammed his hands beneath her buttocks and squeezed. “Ah—ah—”

  When he withdrew and rolled on his side, she dragged herself toward the opposite edge of the bed. He shot out a hand, seized her hair. “Where are you going, Mrs. Piggott?”

  “To find—clothes. I trust you’ll—allow that. You’ve satisfied yourself—”

  “Not by half, my dear!”

  He told her what he wanted next.

  “Dear God, you must be mad!”

  “Mad for a taste, Mrs. Piggott,” he laughed.

  She had no strength to fight him. The buzzing in her ears became a roar. She tried to pretend he wasn’t doing what she felt him doing: a filthy, unnatural act—

  There was no rest for her until well after two in the morning. Piggott assaulted her twice more. The last time seemed endless. He’d worn himself out, yet he wouldn’t halt the pounding that tortured her body and numbed her mind. After the first time, he’d blown out the lamps. But that no longer mattered.

  Finally, he convulsed, groaned, withdrew. He crawled under the covers, chuckling. “For a wife, Mrs. Piggott, your behavior is exceedingly odd.”

  “Yours—” She could barely speak. She lay on her side, her spine toward him. She clutched her stomach, the stickiness of him an abomination between her legs. “Yours is an animal’s.”

  That generated a deep laugh. How had she misjudged him so badly?

  Until today, his caresses had been discreet, almost hesitant. Seldom had he done more than peck her cheek.

  His frantic desire for—copulation was the only word she allowed herself to think—gave him a bestial quality.

  And he was laughing about it!

  The mellow voice boomed in the darkness. “I am always a gentleman in public, Mrs. Piggott. But in the bedroom, I have my appetites—yes, I do. D’you honestly believe they’ve never heard of fucking at Yale College?”

  “Oh, your vile mouth. Your vile, vile—”

  “Be quiet, woman! You make me sick.”

  “I—I will never again permit—”

  “Oh yes you will. This is one area of our marriage in which I mean to call the tune. I’ve quite a few more novelties to show you.”

  “Novelties? Indecencies!”

  “Call ’em what you will, Mrs. Piggott. We shall indulge, never fear. Good night.”

  After a noisy plumping of his pillow and a few moments of heavy breathing, he began to snore.

  Harriet Lebow Kent Piggott lay rigid in the warm air of the bedroom. She listened to the wheels of another carriage speeding along Beacon and wondered how she could have been so deceived. So misguided as to have married the kind of debased man who slept beside her now in perfect contentment.

  What a ghastly mistake she’d made. What a ghastly—and irrevocable—mistake.

  iv

  News of some encouraging developments in the west reached Boston in the autumn of 1813.

  An officer of talent had at last replaced the bunglers who had led the western army. William Henry Harrison, the same man who had routed the Shawnee at Tippecanoe, was commissioned a major general of militia by the alarmed Kentucky settlers, then given a national command by Secretary of War Eustis in September. With the rank of brigadier general and a force of some ten thousand soldiers, he was ordered to retake Detroit.

  But it remained for a twenty-eight-year-old naval officer, Captain Oliver Perry, to make that possible. Perry handed a crushing defeat to the British blockade squadron at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie. The dispatches said the flagship of Perry’s small flotilla flew a pennant inscribed with Lawrence’s dying words aboard Chesapeake. But the dispatches also carried an even more positive slogan that was soon on the lips of every literate citizen. At the end of his bloody three-and-a-half-hour battle, Perry had sent a message from his heavily damaged ship to General Harrison somewhere on the Sandusky River. In it he wrote, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

  Sweeping the British from Lake Erie permitted Harrison to advance on Detroit. He found the enemy had evacuated it and slipped across the river to Upper Canada. Harrison followed. A battle at Moravian Town on the north bank of the Thames River caused only a few deaths on either side. But one of those, deaths brought great relief to the western settlers. Never again would the Shawnee Tecumseh terrorize the frontier.

  Harrison and Perry helped end the threat of an Indian confederation manipulated by the British. They cleared the enemy from the northwest. The redcoats withdrew all the way to the Niagara frontier.

  Harriet Piggott read the news items in the Kent paper from time to time. But they had no power to excite or even interest her. A much more personal battle was being waged in her own household.

  On a Tuesday in late October, Franklin Pleasant called. The face of the graying general manager was unhappy. “Mrs. Ken—forgive me. I meant to say Mrs. Piggott—”

  Wan, Harriet lifted a hand to wave aside Pleasant’s embarrassment. “I wish it were Mrs. Kent again, Franklin. I don’t doubt the whole town’s laughing about the way a foolish widow was victimized.”

  “I pay no attention to that kind of nasty gossip,” Pleasant declared. “However, a problem has arisen at the company, and I thought you should know. Actually there are two problems. Let me take the more serious one first.”

  Harriet’s dull-eyed silence showed she expected the worst.

  “This morning,” Pleasant said, “I was served with papers. One of our six book presses is to be removed. It seems your husband—”

  “Who has not been in this house for three days.”

  “Yes? Well, I believe I might have some grasp of the reason. Evidently he’s been engaged in another of his gaming sessions.”

  “Cards?”

  “Aye. At the end of a losing streak, he”—Pleasant swallowed—“he refused to retire gracefully. It’s not my place to say it, but Mr. Piggott’s fondness for alcohol evidently leads to rash decisions. He insisted on continuing in the game. To finance his play, he signed a chit wagering the press I mentioned.”

  “Wagering the press?” Harriet whispered. “Is that legal?”

  “The claimant sent a lawyer to Kent and Son this morning, and I asked the same question. I’m afraid it is quite legal. I verified that by consulting Mr. Benbow before I came to see you.”

  “Who is this claimant?”

  “I’ve since discovered that too. His name means nothing, but he’s known for loitering in the coffeehouses—striking up friendships with prosperous-looking people—and drawing them into games for high stakes.”

  “Which he wins by cheating?”

  “There is that suspicion—but no evidence has ever been brought forward. Very likely his victims are too humiliated—”

  “And our lawyer can’t block this—act of robbery?”

  “He cannot. Had Mr. Piggott won his game, there’d be no problem. But he continued to lose. The press will be taken from the premises, and sold.”

  Harriet covered her eyes. “Oh dear God, Franklin. It’s all my fault—”

  Pleasant touched her hand. “Don’t score yourself. We all make errors in judging other people. You were—you’ll forgive me—not at all yourself during those weeks in which you kept company with your present husband.

  Mr. Gilbert was dead. It’s only natural you’d want someone to fill his place. But what’s done is done. We can make do without the press. I’d urge you to speak to Mr. Piggott, however. Insist that he refrain from similar wagers.” Plea
sant’s smile was feeble. “Else he’s liable to strip us to the walls.”

  After a moment Harriet said, “I’ll speak to him.”

  “Good.”

  “But I have no legal means of compelling him to do anything.”

  “You mean—there was no agreement signed before marriage to limit his access to your property?”

  Sadly, she shook her head. “I believed his lies about wanting no part of the business. Kent and Son is as much his as it is mine.”

  “Then—if I might suggest—” He stopped, red-faced.

  “Yes?” Harriet prompted.

  “I am correct in assuming you’re not entirely happy with your husband’s character, am I not?”

  Harriet almost burst out crying. She cried often these days. Piggott had dropped his mask of gentility. He treated her as a chattel. He was absent from the house more than he was present. But almost every time he returned, he demanded his rights in bed. Of late she’d taken to retiring to her room by five o’clock, and locking the door.

  “That hardly covers it, Franklin,” she said. “I have been duped. I was a willing, even eager accomplice, but the fact remains—I have been duped. And I don’t seem to have any legal recourse.”

  Pleasant’s eyes turned shrewd. “Perhaps we can establish one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Only that I’d like your permission to have one of our reporters do another bit of probing into Mr. Piggott’s background and behavior. A little more thoroughly this time. It may yield nothing. But if there’s evidence of immorality at these card games, for instance—women present—” He shrugged, his cheek still deep pink.

  Harriet said, “You have my permission.”

  “I’m happy to hear you say that. Now we come to the second matter. The day before yesterday, Mr. Piggott called on me in person—”

  “Whatever for?”

  “To inform me ahead of time that the press would be attached, and that I should not cause any difficulties. I’m afraid he and your nephew got into quite a heated argument. They do dislike one another—”