The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn

by Benton, Lori

  Finally her wounded men both slept, and Ambrose left them for a time. A few tapers added to the fire’s glow pushed back the shadows of dusk-fall to the corners, filling the room with the honeyed scent of beeswax. Sound in body and with much to occupy her mind, Tamsen remained wakeful. Thus it was to her that Ambrose came the final time, greatcoat slung over his arm in anticipation of departure, to talk about the land that once belonged to Bryan Kincaid, which had precipitated his journey to Morganton, and their meeting.

  “ ’Tis your husband’s land by right,” he told her, looking at her with eyes that, while no longer dazzled, held a lingering regret. “Send word to me at Long Meadows, when the time is right. We’ll meet in Morganton to settle the deed. For now, here’s something that belongs to you.”

  Standing there in the clothes she’d made in Thunder-Going’s town, still bearing darkened bloodstains, Tamsen took from him what he withdrew from beneath his coat. Her mother’s box. She breathed out in relief and nodded her thanks. Then frowned. The leather whangs that had held it shut were gone. Her eyes sought his, asking whether he knew of its contents.

  “The Trimbles had it among their kit. It took a spill as I was apprehending them.” He’d seen and understood what it had held, his gaze told her. “Can you believe it wouldn’t have mattered, had I known from the beginning?”

  The box tilted in her grasp, emitting the soft clink of coins. Even that he had preserved for her. “That my mother was a slave? I don’t know you well enough yet to say, but I believe you a more honorable man than I once credited you with being.”

  Though never a man she would choose to marry—not when there was such a man in the world as Jesse Bird. Or would he be Alex Kincaid after today? Or simply Wildcat?

  With love and satisfaction swelling beneath her breastbone, she gazed at her husband, asleep beside his foster father, whose name was as much in question at present as that of the orphaned nephew he’d devoted himself to raising. Whatever name Jesse chose, he was hers, and she his, and what God had joined together, no man—kin or otherwise—would ever put asunder.

  “Before I take my leave,” Ambrose ventured, “might I request the privilege of paying a visit on your behalf to Charlotte Town, to whatever persons might claim Hezekiah Parrish as next of kin?”

  He had her full attention again.

  “With the intent,” he added, seeing her questioning look, “of setting right certain misconceptions concerning the death of your mother. It is the least that I can do for you, if you will permit it.” Ambrose settled his hat upon his head, dimming the blaze of his hair in the taper-light. “I ask because I know Grandfather will have his own ideas of what to do, once he’s heard the tale in full. For all that he’s nearing eighty, he is not a man to suffer lightly the slings and arrows cast against those he holds dear.”

  Nor, Tamsen was quite sure, was his grandson and heir, who made her a bow and reached for the door. “You have my permission. But will you tell your grandfather the truth about the fire?”

  Ambrose hesitated, turning to her with bruised, weary eyes. “Perhaps not at once, aside from the fact that Theo and Bryan’s son are found. What I intend to do is set right my father’s wrongs—and your stepfather’s—as far as they can be.” His gaze on her warmed. “Now a certain pair of horse thieves and I have miles to ride before we lodge this night. I bid you farewell, Mrs. Bird.”

  “Farewell for now … Cousin,” she said to his departing back. “God speed you safely home.”

  Surprised by the address, Ambrose Kincaid turned back again, this time smiling.

  He left her with his words full in her heart and the image of an old man she had never met rising up to her defense. She had lost a mother and would mourn her yet awhile and miss her always. But she’d gained a husband, and with him, a father. Now a cousin and that distant, shadowy figure of a grandfather. And before next winter’s snow fell, there would be another to bind their hearts and blood together, God willing.

  With a hand spread across the place where Jesse’s child was cradled, she shut the door, crossed to her husband, and settled on the quilt beside him, setting aside her mother’s box, smiling with her secret. She meant to tell Jesse when he woke, thinking it would be some hours yet, but he stirred now, turning toward her those features sharp and clear as a hawk’s. He reached for her, voice rasped with sleep and lingering pain.

  “He’s gone?”

  “Just now,” she said, softly so as not to awaken Cade.

  Jesse was silent, watching her face, mouth curving in response to the joy she couldn’t suppress. “Is that why you’re smiling?”

  “No,” she said, and bent to kiss the bridge of his nose. “But if you promise to go back to sleep right after, I’ll tell you why.”

  Upper Yadkin River, North Carolina

  Spring 1788

  While support for the State of Franklin crumbled through the winter and into spring, enmity between Overmountain settlers and Chickamaugas grew ever more bloody and fierce, drawing in many of the formerly peaceful Cherokees. Catches Bears went to join Dragging Canoe’s warriors, though Thunder-Going-Away still hoped for peace. As for Cade, Jesse, and Tamsen, they packed their earthly goods, saddled their horses, and left the Tennessee country to its troubles.

  Jesse had an inheritance to claim.

  Dogwood and redbud still bloomed on the high slopes as they crossed the mountains eastward, following the west-flowing Watauga to its headwaters, then striking the east-flowing Yadkin. Tamsen found the journey easier the second time, despite being five months heavy with child. This time she crossed the mountains with two men, three horses and a cow, provisions aplenty—and serviceable shoes.

  It was a day filled with birdsong and the tang of awakening earth, when they reached the long-neglected parcel of land once chosen by Bryan Kincaid to make a life with his wife and infant son. Trailing behind her menfolk and the stock, Tamsen didn’t see the cause of their halting on the trace they’d followed up one of the Yadkin’s tumbling feeder creeks.

  “Are we there?” Leaving off examining a patch of fiddleheads curling up tender from the forest loam, she hurried to where Jesse and Cade stood, one to either side of the lead horse’s halter.

  Cade passed a hand across his beard-shadowed chin. “We are.”

  “And we’ve a welcoming committee,” Jesse said.

  Ahead in a sloping clearing studded with saplings, two picketed horses grazed. Nearby stood a wagon, heaped high and covered in canvas, beside it an open-faced shelter, a fire ring, and the cookery and gear one might expect of a camp where men had lived rough for days.

  At the fire the men in question were rising to their feet, gazes fixed on the trailhead where Tamsen, Jesse, and Cade stood. One, hair blazing in the spring sunlight, dressed in shirtsleeves, neckcloth neatly tied, was Ambrose Kincaid. The other, slower to rise, was an exceptionally tall man, clothed in a coat of green, with white hair worn tailed back.

  Tamsen found she was squeezing Jesse’s hand, not knowing whether she or he had done the clasping.

  “Did you expect this, Pa?” Jesse asked.

  “I did not, but I reckon we’re both man enough to meet it.” So saying, Cade led the way down into the clearing he’d last seen the day he buried the remains of Jesse’s parents and set off for the Shawnees in the north to find his brother’s son.

  They met Jesse’s cousin and grandfather near the wagon, Tamsen bobbing a curtsy, blushing when their gazes went to her thickened waist. She managed a smile for Ambrose, then looked with something akin to awe into the more remarkable face of Alexander Kincaid. Jesse and Cade did have his eyes, though the golden stare of the old man put her in mind less of a hawk than an eagle. Unlike his hair, his brows were still dark and strongly marked, level like Jesse’s but nigh as bold as Cade’s.

  “Theo,” the old man said, gaze settling with hungry intensity on Cade. Then the man turned to Jesse. “Alex.”

  Jesse started slightly at the address. They stared, each waiting for the
other to speak, but what words were there to begin? to bridge twenty years of separation?

  Ambrose found them, though they blurred past Tamsen’s ears, and before she quite knew it, she found herself taken aside and escorted to the wagon while Jesse and Cade lingered with the old man, speaking too low for her to hear.

  Ambrose had kept his word. In company with his grandfather, he had paid a call on Hezekiah Parrish’s kin, as well as his solicitor, in Charlotte Town. Confronted with knowledge of Mr. Parrish’s culpability in the death of Tamsen’s mother and his attempted murder of Tamsen—“and the ire of Grandfather”—all concerned had turned remarkably generous of spirit, eager to compensate Tamsen for her loss and trouble at the man’s hands.

  “Nothing could bring Mama back,” Tamsen said, then at Ambrose’s pained gaze banished the sorrow from her voice. “He had cousins, I think. I suppose one of them was his heir?”

  “The son of a cousin, actually. He’s attempting to salvage what remains of Parrish’s estate, but with most of the slaves having absented themselves during his absence …” Ambrose shrugged, then drew back the oilcloth covering the wagon’s contents. “He sent along these for you, in the hope they should be of some comfort.”

  Tamsen recoiled from the pair of wooden trunks at the rear of the crowded bed. “I want nothing from them.”

  Understanding curved Ambrose’s mouth, but his eyes sparkled. “Open them before you decide. Their contents were chosen by one of your stepfather’s slaves who remained at her post, one who held your mother in high regard and knew what of her personal effects—and your own—you would wish to have.”

  Tamsen stared, then reached to touch the nearest trunk. “These are my mother’s things?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Ambrose unclasped and raised the lid, giving Tamsen a glimpse of its contents. It wasn’t the sight of them that brought the rush of tears. With the lid’s lifting, a scent had wafted forth, faint but unmistakable. A smell almost of cinnamon. “Oh, Ambrose.”

  “Gowns, petticoats, quilts, linens, a great deal of sewing paraphernalia, a few books,” he said, visibly pleased she was so moved. “The rest is from Long Meadows, and Grandfather, for your home.” He tugged the oilcloth back farther, revealing a feather tick, a clothespress, another trunk, an array of household goods. “Speaking of homemaking …”

  Ambrose met her look with a determined cheerfulness as her hand went naturally to the child. It was but a fortnight since she’d first felt it move, like the flutter of tiny wings. Baby Bird, she and Jesse had taken to calling it.

  “My congratulations,” Ambrose said.

  Behind her Jesse said, “Thankee kindly, Cousin.”

  Startled, Tamsen looked past Jesse to see Cade and his father standing alone beneath a copse of silvery birches, their backs to the clearing. Beneath the birches lay two stone mounds, clearly placed by human hands. Cade’s, over twenty years ago.

  “Thought it best to give them a moment,” Jesse said.

  Tamsen showed him his grandfather’s gifts, though she didn’t open the trunks that held her mother’s things again. The three wandered over to Cade and Jesse’s grandfather. As they came within sound of their voices, Tamsen noticed a larger stone at the head of each grave. One was scratched with the faint remnants of a B, the other, an F.

  “… hold to the hope that you will come again to Long Meadows,” Alexander Kincaid was saying. “Not in secret this time.”

  “To live?” Cade turned to face the old man. “I couldn’t.”

  The elder Kincaid didn’t take his gaze off the graves at their feet, so all Tamsen could tell of his reaction to this refusal was through his voice, disappointed but persistent.

  “Let us call it a visit, then.” When Cade gave no reply, Alexander Kincaid put a hand, gaunt and rope veined, to his son’s strong arm. “Spare it thought, Theo. Will you do that?”

  Impossible to tell what Cade felt upon seeing his father again, free man to free, being called by that old name, presented a choice he clearly never looked for. “Maybe” was all he said.

  The old man seemed to accept that, turning now to Jesse.

  The look of the man was formidable—perhaps as Jesse might look should he see such an age. There was a resemblance beyond the eyes. It was in the way they stood, the set of their heads, the carriage of their straight backs. She knew her husband well enough to realize he sensed his kinship with the man, however untried was the ground between them.

  “I should think, for you especially,” said the old man, “this has come as quite the shock.”

  “It has, sir. Not necessarily a bad shock.”

  Cade’s mouth curved at that, but he held his peace.

  “One which I’m sure we’ll all come to weather happily,” Tamsen put in, drawing the eagle’s gaze.

  “Young woman, Ambrose has acquainted me with the particulars of your remarkable union with my grandson. If you’ll permit an old man the observation, I’ve grown rather proud of you, though we’d yet to meet until today.”

  That eased her pounding heart a bit but sent warm blood rising to her face. “And I’m proud to be Mrs. Jesse Bird.” A twitch of the old man’s brows made her eyes widen. “Oh … I suppose I’m actually Mrs. Alex Kincaid?”

  “That depends on my grandson.” The old man looked amused, but behind the look Tamsen read a consuming interest in the question now raised.

  Jesse cleared his throat, meeting it head on. “While I’m grateful to know you, sir, and for your generosity …” He swung his gaze to Cade, who, Tamsen saw, was waiting with as keen an interest for Jesse’s reply. “I’m rather partial to the name you gave me, Pa.”

  Cade did his best to hide the grin that sought to shatter his self-control.

  “But I’ve no objection to adding a few to it,” Jesse added.

  “Jesse Alexander John McLachlan Wildcat Kincaid Bird,” Tamsen said, “is a bit much for any man. Perhaps we’ll save a few for Baby Bird, if it’s a he?”

  Ambrose spoke up for the first time since they’d joined his grandfather and Cade at the graves, asking Jesse, “What name will you sign to the deed, once we head down to Morganton?”

  Jesse didn’t answer the question until a fortnight later when—with a sturdy, three-room log house raised and roofed with the help of Cade, Ambrose, and his grandfather, still hale enough at eighty to split shingles—he and Ambrose made the journey south to Morganton, closing a circle he’d traveled unknowingly for twenty years. There, Bryan Kincaid’s land passed to his son, who for the first time set down in writing a name that, to his mind, blended the life he’d had before, and the one a chance encounter with Tamsen Littlejohn on the streets of Morganton had restored to him.

  Alexander Jesse Bird Kincaid.

  Though of course their meeting hadn’t truly been by chance. Not to Jesse’s reckoning.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Until relatively recently I had never heard of the State of Franklin, often called the Lost State of Franklin. Lost seemed an apt description to me the day I stumbled across mention of this first post–Revolutionary War attempt at independent statehood by a group of veterans, politicians, frontiersmen, and citizens of the fledgling United States: Tiptonites and Franklinites; old State and New State; courthouse raids, fisticuffs, siege, and battle. For a little over four years (1784–89), the people of the Tennessee region lived under the jurisdiction of two governments vying for the same territory. How, I wondered, could such a situation result in anything but chaos—and a setting that begged for a story to be woven through it?

  During the research that led me to “discover” the Lost State of Franklin, my primary focus was on a slightly later period in North Carolina’s history. In order to keep track of those tantalizing hints of conflict surrounding the failed statehood attempt I’d come across in passing, I started a file and called it something like the Franklin Book. Creating such a file pretty much guarantees the setting, historical event, or story nugget it’s buil
t around will keep nudging me from time to time, suggesting further possibilities. This State of Franklin file was obviously no exception. Gradually a cast of characters clustered around it, they began to speak to me, and The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn took shape.

  In writing this story, I knew early on that I wouldn’t focus on the political intricacies of the Franklin movement and its opposition, nor on the primary historical figures involved, such as John Tipton and John Sevier. Instead, I would show what it might have been like for those men and women attempting to wrest a living from that frontier land, to provide for and protect their families, during those few tumultuous years in the Tennessee country. It appealed to me not only as an intriguing and, I think, little-known era of Unites States history but also as a unique complication in the flight and pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn and Jesse Bird. So I proceeded to discover everything I could about the time and place, the key players and events, pinpointing as many occurrences in the historical record that could possibly, and plausibly, be woven into my characters’ story without overwhelming it—including Tipton’s raid on the Franklin courthouse, and the necessity to marry under both governments. I chose to end Tamsen and Jesse’s story concurrent with the Battle of Franklin, the skirmish that occurred at the home of Colonel John Tipton on February 29, 1788. Afterward, the Franklin movement unraveled until its collapse early in 1789. John Sevier, war hero of Kings Mountain, was eventually arrested and brought east to Morganton to stand trial for treason. He escaped (or was released) before the trial, returned Overmountain, and eventually became the first governor of Tennessee when that state was added to the Union in 1796.

  Just as I’d overlooked this brief but fascinating history, I was in store for another, more personal surprise in connection with the Franklin statehood movement. In the pages of one of my most helpful resources on the subject, The Lost State of Franklin: America’s First Secession by Kevin T. Barksdale, I found mention of a relative of mine living the history that forms the backdrop of Tamsen and Jesse’s story. From page 24 of Barksdale’s book: “Captain Thomas Amis, one of the most successful early merchants in Tennessee, moved his family from Bladen County, North Carolina, and opened a small store and tavern in present-day Rogersville.” Later, in August of 1787, during a hotly contested election that nearly brought the region to open war, Thomas Amis ran for a seat in the North Carolina legislature. He was my distant cousin. We’re both descended from another Thomas Amis, who purchased land in the Colony of Virginia in the sixteen hundreds.