The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn

by Benton, Lori

  “Mama, what is all this? Why—” A paper caught her eye, silencing her. The name Sarah was penned near the top, under a date. April 1767. Tamsen snatched it from the box and skimmed the first lines.

  I, Stephen Joseph Littlejohn of the Colony of North Carolina and County aforesaid, owner & possessor of Sarah, a female slave of mixed blood …

  It was a request for manumission. The petitioner was her father.

  Hands shaking, Tamsen checked the date again. A year before her birth. She rifled through the papers, coming up with a more official-looking document bearing the seal of the North Carolina Assembly, dated later that same year.

  The petition of Stephen Joseph Littlejohn praying that the petitioner may have a license to set free and liberate from slavery a certain female slave of mixed blood named Sarah, owned by the petitioner, was preferred and read to the Court, and it being also certified to the Court that the said Sarah is of good and meritorious character; the Court after taking the same under mature consideration do allow the said petition, and do grant the said Stephen Littlejohn license to set free and liberate the said Sarah agreeably to the prayer of said petition.

  Tamsen raced through the convoluted words, trying to make sense of them. A certain female slave of mixed blood. Seconds passed while her mind spun on the edge of an abyss, scrabbling for denial.

  Then her breath caught. Her mother’s arduous breathing had quieted.

  Tamsen lurched for the bed. “Mama?”

  The sunset glow had fled the room, stealing with it the rich hue of her mother’s skin. The flesh across her graceful bones had turned the gray of ashes, the blood on her face darkening to brown. Her eyes were closed, save for slits through which their darkness gleamed, no longer with joy.

  She hurtled into the dusk and crossed the yard to the stable. Inside she halted and looked to the loft ladder down the shadowy, deserted aisle. “Sim—are you there?”

  No reply came, save the ruckle and champ of horses that peered at her over their boxes.

  “Dell,” she hissed, fearing every shadow lest Mr. Parrish step from it.

  Her fear materialized in a tall form coming at her through the stable door, from outside. With a cry she whirled and struck.

  He moved fast, catching her upraised hand. “Easy there.”

  Captured by a man’s grip for the second time that evening, Tamsen yanked with all her might. Pain seared her bruised wrist, making her cry out. Her captor stepped back, opening the stable doors to the failing light, showing her the disconcerting face of the young man in deerskins—this time complete with fringed coat.

  Recognition lit his features. “I didn’t aim to hurt you, miss.” He reached for her, but she cringed back, raising a hand smeared with her mother’s blood. Seeing it, his gaze scrabbled over her as if seeking its source. She’d fled the house in her fine embroidered petticoat, now a bloodstained ruin, nothing up top but her shift and stays. “Are you hurt?”

  “Mama—She—” Desperation tripped her tongue. “She won’t wake up, and I can’t find Sim or Dell.”

  “I doubt you will. You aren’t hurt?”

  “No. Mama is!”

  His eyes swept her once more. “Take me to her.”

  It wasn’t the help she’d sought, but she needed no persuasion to accept it. “Hurry.”

  Her mother lay as she’d left her, battered and still. Wincing at the sight of her, the man pressed his fingers to her neck. He waited, leaning close, an alien presence smelling strong of horse and wood smoke, pines and sun. Yet his calm was some reassurance. Until he straightened and met her pleading gaze. Despair swallowed hope as she saw in his eyes what he had no need to say.

  She tried to push past him. He caught her shoulders between strong hands. “Did your stepfather do this?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes were stricken with shock, outrage. The muscles in his lean jaw hardened, but while she was fast losing her head, he kept his. “Are you in danger?”

  Tears pooled, running from her eyes. She pressed her hands to them. “He means me to marry Mr. Kincaid. Mama was going to tell me a way out of it all, only he came before she could.” She was babbling but couldn’t stop. “He hit Mama for it and she fell. He’s killed her and now … I’m supposed to be getting dressed.”

  With that last word burning her throat like bile, she wrenched out of his grasp and lunged for the blue gown. She ripped it from the bedpost with bloodied hands and hurled it into the dying hearth fire. It caught flame at once. Still she went after it, kicking its silken folds onto the grate.

  The man stood back, staring at the burning gown, and her, in something like awe. “You aren’t minded to marry this Kincaid fellow?”

  “I’d rather be dead.”

  She turned to stare in horror at the bed. Had she said such a thing, with her mother lying dead right there? Time and the world and her heart shattered, falling to pieces.

  The man was speaking again, but his words were slow to penetrate. “Is there somewhere you can go? Kin to take you in, protect you?”

  Tamsen stared at him. She was alone. The friends she had in Charlotte Town wouldn’t be her friends if the truth she’d just discovered was made known. What was the truth? That her mother hadn’t been the daughter of a Spanish merchant, as she’d always believed, but a slave? She looked down at the innocuous little box, its key still protruding from the lock. She’d always known her mother held the key to their freedom. She hadn’t imagined a literal key. And the box, the papers. Whatever was she to do with them? What could she do? Whatever plan her mother had for the box’s contents, it had died with her.

  “There’s no one.” She clamped her hand across her mouth and fixed her gaze on the only person left who seemed to care about her plight. The young man’s chest rose and fell beneath his deerskin coat, as if his heart pounded like hers, as if he, too, sensed the world knocked off kilter. But when he spoke, his voice was steady.

  “Tell me how to help you. What do you want to do?”

  To be given that choice now, after the one person she’d wanted to make it with was snatched away … It was too cruel.

  “There’s nothing I can do.” Except bury her mother and marry Ambrose Kincaid, and spend the rest of her life trying to lessen the misery of everyone around her … if not her own.

  The man took a step nearer, his eyes holding hers, something growing in them at odds with her panicked, spiraling thoughts. Something strong and calming. “There’s one thing. I can get you away from Hezekiah Parrish. And that planter. You don’t have to marry him. Not if you don’t want to.”

  “You mean run away … with you?” As she said the words, realization burst upon her. “That’s what Sim and Dell have done—run away together.”

  Her mother had known. Her mother had been complicit. Go on out to Sim.

  “I think so,” the man said. “But it’s you I’m worried for. Listen. I can take you where you won’t be found, but it’s got to be now. Right now. If your stepfather gets hold of you, I misdoubt I’ll get near you again.”

  Fear clawed at her. “What about Mama?”

  Compassion moved his face, but his voice held firm. “She’ll be seen to. There’s good people in this town. If I judge your stepfather right, he’ll make a decent show of things.”

  The injustice of it was a wailing in her soul. “He did this.”

  “I know he did. But the truth will keep. Right now we’ve got to get you someplace safe.”

  Tamsen glanced aside at the box her mother had spent her last breaths to tell her of, its soul-rattling contents spilled across the floor. Then she looked back at the man watching her, earnest and ready for anything, it seemed. “You’ll help me? Truly?”

  “I will.” A simple answer, unadorned with explanation, yet it had the power to dispel all but one clear thought: escape.

  “All right.”

  He blinked, as if he hadn’t expected her trust. Then his jaw firmed. “Your stepfather said he’d be back for you? How long si
nce?”

  She couldn’t think. The past moments were stretched and blurred.

  The man reached for her, his grip on her shoulder urgent. “Tamsen, how long have we got?”

  “Half an hour? I don’t know.” She started moving about the room, gathering up a hairbrush, a set of pockets, heading for the clothespress for her riding gown.

  From the doorway he called to her. “What’re you doing?”

  She turned, petticoat and fitted jacket draped over her arm. “Packing.”

  “No time. Just get that cloak. By morning you’ll want it. I’ve all else we need.”

  Dumbly obeying, she stuffed the hairbrush into a pocket and snatched her cloak from the clothespress.

  The box. She couldn’t leave that. Rushing to it, she scooped the papers inside and jammed it shut. The key rattled loose and fell to the floor. She shoved it back into the lock.

  “Tamsen, hurry!”

  She gathered up her clothing and the box and started for the door, only to lurch back to the bed to kiss her mother’s brow. With the faintest scent of cinnamon lingering behind her, she stumbled toward the outstretched arm of the last man on earth she’d have expected to take her away from Morganton.

  Having spent the better part of an hour shifting horses and supplies to the settlers’ camp, Jesse had been returning for his own horse when he’d encountered Tamsen Littlejohn in the stable. He brought the horse, saddled, to the back door of the house where she waited. She’d stripped off the bloodied petticoat and donned the plainer clothing he’d seen her in once before.

  It was near full dark. The town folk’s comings and goings centered on the tavern—too close for Jesse’s comfort. He led the horse till they were into the woods, Tamsen holding tight to his coat sleeve all the while, clutching the cloak she’d bundled around her box.

  He stopped beneath a spreading oak. “All right, you mount up. I need to fetch my kit, tell Cade I’m bound away.”

  The girl didn’t raise a foot to the stirrup. “I can’t.”

  In the dark under the tree, he made out the oval of her face, those big eyes staring at him, unblinking as an owl’s. “You were keen to ride last night. You have ridden a horse?”

  “Yes, but I can’t ride astraddle. My ankles will show.”

  Had his heart not been banging into his ribs, Jesse might’ve laughed. “Where we’re headed no one’s gonna see ’em but me—and I’ve seen a woman’s legs before.”

  She hadn’t liked his answer. She backed away.

  Before she eluded his reach, he bent, grabbed the front of her petticoat at the knee, and drew the hunting knife from his belt. “Don’t move.”

  She made a sound like a mouse-squeak as he thrust the knife tip through the linen and slit her petticoat, knee to hem. He sheathed the knife, swooped her into his arms—cloak, box, and all—and hoisted her into the saddle. She clung astride, too shocked to lash out. All the same he backed out of reach of the blue silk shoe dangling below the torn petticoat.

  “I’ll be back by the time you get yourself sorted. Don’t ride off without me.” He didn’t wait for protest but ran into the night, moccasins striking loamy earth. There wasn’t time to lead the horse through the maze of brush and forest and back again before her stepfather found her gone. Still he hated to leave her adrift, mind filled with turmoil and the image of her dead mother. That last haunted him, pumping rage through his blood, tempting him to hunt down Parrish. He sheathed that urge and ran on, skirting yards, passing privies and wash kettles, praying no dog scented him and raised a ruckus. At last he sighted firelight through the trees, shining off faces, canvas. The settlers’ camp. Cade sat at the head man’s fire, sharing supper. He’d been welcomed at their board, such as it was. It eased Jesse’s guilt over what he was fixing to do. But only a bit.

  Sweating under his coat, he circled around to where he’d left their kit. A wagon stood between their small camp and the others. Jesse slipped in. Half by feel he collected rifle, bullet-bag, bow and quiver, knapsack and bedroll, slinging everything crosswise over his shoulders. He circled the camp till he was behind Cade and made a wood thrush’s fluty call. Cade’s head lifted.

  Jesse waited, fretting. Would Tamsen spook? steal his horse and take off for parts unknown? She’d no reason to trust him. That she’d given herself into his care spoke only of desperation. Her life in his hands felt fragile as a bird’s. Lead me on from here. Guard and keep her … even if it’s from my best intentions.

  He quit praying when Cade rose from the fire. Like a man heeding nature’s call, he came toward Jesse’s place of hiding. Jesse waited till he was far enough from the fire, then said with a half breath, “Here.”

  Cade’s sharp ears found him in the dark. “Jesse? What’re you doing? Come on in—”

  “Can’t, Pa.” A breeze threshed the hardwoods, sound enough to cover their talk. “I’m heading out, going to scout the trail.”

  Cade was a shadow at his side. Jesse sensed him stiffen. “You hear tell of trouble? Thought we’d head out on the Catawba trace, then aim for Roan Mountain—”

  “No trouble. Leastwise not on the trace. Can’t tell you why, but I got to start tonight.”

  Cade had him by the arm now, as if trying to sense in his flesh what he couldn’t see for the dark. “You get yourself into mischief back in town?”

  “There’s mischief right enough, but none of my doing.” Parrish had seen his face by lantern light but didn’t know him from Adam. Even if he fell under suspicion, the man hadn’t seen him with Cade. The less Cade knew, the less he’d have to conceal. “You trust me, Pa, that I ain’t done wrong?”

  “If you say so, then it’s so. But what of this company? These men expect you to be part of this crossing.”

  “Tell ’em what I’m doing—scouting the trail. I’ll meet up with you. Say, ’round back of Bald Mountain to begin with.”

  “After that?”

  “Depends. I may need to lay low for a time.” A squirrel chittered in the boughs above. An acorn dropped through the branches, skimming Jesse’s shoulder. There came a space of pounding heartbeats while Cade made up his mind.

  “All right, Jesse. Just be where you say you’ll be.”

  Cade’s gruffness told Jesse how far he was reaching to let him go without explaining himself. Jesse felt the burden of that trust as keen as that of the woman waiting for him under the oak, doubtless holding by a thread. He grasped Cade’s arm, felt the sureness of the hand gripping back.

  “I will be. Pray for me.” Jesse broke away, trying for a grin, though it was too dark for Cade to see it. “I’m thinking, after all, you might want to get that cow.”

  Jesse chose a trail out of Morganton unsuited to wagon travel. Few were so, being old Indian traces or buffalo paths that migrated about for miles to vanish high among the rocks and rhododendron, or down in the canebrakes thick along streams. Jesse planned to make confounding use of them.

  Hours later, with the moon risen at their backs, he halted on the steepening trace and dismounted. “I’ll lead us for a bit. Horse can’t go all night carrying double.” When Tamsen said nothing to this, he hesitated, wondering at her mettle. “We got to get deep in the high country before dawn. If’n you need to see to things, now’s the time.”

  Seeming to grasp his meaning, she cast a look into the night-black foliage crowding close. Something rustled in a nearby thicket. She said a hasty, “No.”

  It was past midnight, by his reckoning, first time she came sliding out of the saddle. He’d been picking their way up a stony incline, alone with his thoughts but wide awake with caution. It was her box tumbling from the saddle that alerted him. He let that fall with a clatter, reaching for her instead.

  She was awake by the time he set her on her feet.

  “What?” she yelped, then groaned and swayed, bumping into his chest.

  Jesse gripped her tighter. “Careful. Mountain’s steep here.”

  Even with the cloak she was slender in his arms, pressed so clo
se that the lacy bit pinned to the crown of her head snagged in the stubble under his chin. She pulled away from him, groping for the saddle. Then she turned, face pale in the moonlight.

  “My box. Where is it?” Panic laced the words.

  “It fell. Hold the horse; I’ll hunt it up.”

  She grasped his coat sleeve before he could move. “Please. It’s everything.”

  He put a hand to hers. “Calm yourself now. I said I’d find it.”

  Her hand under his, small and cold, eased its grip and slid away.

  After a quick search, he decided the box had gone over the trail’s edge. Grasping at brush for support, he felt his way down the pine-needled slope, praying it hadn’t fallen far. Praying he wouldn’t go sliding off the mountain in the dark.

  He found it lodged against the pine under which they’d halted. Back on the trace, she took it from him with quiet thanks. He wondered what it was she deemed so precious, but didn’t ask. He got out the canteen and handed it to her. “Want to walk a spell? It’ll help you keep awake.”

  Sleep was what she needed, but she gave him back the canteen and said, “I’ll walk.”

  Pleased with her fortitude, he took the horse’s bridle and started.

  Not a dozen steps on, she gave a little cry. Jesse turned back to find her hunkered on the trail, rubbing at her foot. He’d forgotten she wore those dainty-heeled shoes. He’d have to do something about that. Ahead lay stretches they’d both have to manage afoot. But not yet.

  He went back and offered her a hand. “Come on. Let’s get you up on that horse.”

  He caught her falling from the saddle twice again before the stars faded and the trail grew clear enough to follow without his senses focused on every stone and root and knife-edged drop. A mist had crept up from the hollows. Chill tendrils of it nipped at his heels. They were deep in the mountains and high, with rank on rank of giant hardwoods crowding in, here and there dark pockets of spruce and fir. They hadn’t been seen—by human eyes—but with dawn coming, a change of direction seemed in order.