The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (8 page)

Her mother drew a shaky breath. “I have little doubt of it coming to that, Tamsen. And I believe ’tis here, in Morganton, where we must make the attempt. But not in secret. It must be done openly, with as many as we can muster to bear witness.”

This wasn’t making sense. At long last her mother wanted to break free of Mr. Parrish, but she didn’t want to run away in secret? What other option was there?

Her mother read her bewilderment. “There’s something I have never told you, Tamsen. Something that could prevent your marrying Mr. Kincaid, or any man like him. But more importantly, it should free us both from Mr. Parrish, if we can convince the right people to believe it. But ’tis a risk, all the same.”

Tamsen could barely catch her breath. She grasped her mother’s wrist. The pulse beneath her fingers beat hard. Her mother’s dark eyes met hers, wide with fear but something else that made them shine. Hope?

“Mama, tell me.”

“Where do I start? There’s so little time. First I must tell you about your father, about what Stephen did for me when—”

“Shut—your—mouth!”

Unheralded in their distraction, Hezekiah Parrish had returned. He crossed the room, snatched her mother’s arm from Tamsen’s grasp, and with the sound of tearing seams, yanked her to her feet.

“You swore to me, Sarah. Why are you breaking your word?”

Pain thinned her mother’s lips. “We were speaking of Mr. Kincaid’s slaves. I was explaining to Tamsen—”

“You were speaking of
Stephen Littlejohn
.” He spat the name as if it tasted foul. In its wake fell a silence so complete Tamsen heard her heart slamming against her tight-drawn stays. She stared, a coldness in the pit of her belly, as her mother smiled.

“I made you no promise never to speak of my husband,” she said with a calm that raised the hairs on Tamsen’s arms—in the seconds before Mr. Parrish drew back his fist and hit her mother full in the face.

Her fall toppled the chair on which she’d sat, her heavy petticoats tangling with its legs. The crack of her head hitting the hearth was audible over the chair’s crash.

For an instant Tamsen couldn’t move, so cruel was the blow, so shocking its results. She gaped at her mother, sprawled and still. “Mama?”

Sarah Parrish made no sound. Blood spilled from her nose, running rivulets across her mouth and chin.

“Stephen Littlejohn is dead,” Mr. Parrish shouted at her mother. “You are mine, and you will do as you are bid. You and your daughter are
mine
.”

While behind her Mr. Parrish raged, Tamsen stared at her mother’s blood, a red stain that blossomed until it filled her vision. Filled her soul. With a screech of rage, she flew at her stepfather, fingers clawed to rake his face, gauge his eyes, tear him into a thousand pieces.

She never even scratched him. He caught her neatly, thick fingers closing over her wrists with appalling strength. Their faces were inches apart, his dark with fury. He freed one hand and clouted her, just above the ear. Where a bruise wouldn’t show.

Tamsen plowed into the bed. Grasping the coverlet, she pulled herself onto the tick and rolled over, head ringing. Her stepfather hadn’t pursued her.

“Repair your hair. Put that on.” Issuing orders as though his violence against them had affected him not in the least, Mr. Parrish shoved a finger toward the gown hanging from the bedpost. “Ambrose Kincaid will see you. You’re to apologize for your previous indecorous behavior. If he should offer again, you will accept his proposal of marriage.”

“I won’t.” It came out a sob, not the blazing defiance she’d intended. “He’s the one who should apologize.”

Mr. Parrish advanced to the bed. Leaning over her, he grasped her chin with squeezing fingers, forcing her to look at him. To her humiliation, a whimper escaped her lips. “I’m sorry.”

“I am not the one who cares to hear that lie out of your pretty mouth.” He released her and withdrew, leaving behind a cloud of stale breath. “You will make your apologies—convincingly. You will give him every encouragement to repeat his offer of marriage.
Every
encouragement.
Should he do so, you will answer him with an immediate acceptance. Am I clear?”

Tamsen risked a glance at the hearth. Her mother hadn’t moved. “Yes sir. But … Mama.”

Hezekiah Parrish was already at the door, too consumed with the fly at the edge of his web to concern himself with the one long caught. “Let the maid see to her. You’ve an hour to make yourself decent.”

Unsteadied by the ringing in her head, Tamsen lurched across the room before the front door had shut. “Mama!”

Conscious now, Sarah Parrish’s mouth sagged as she gasped in breath, a wet, labored sound, more alarming than the blood seeping from her swelling nose.

“Mama, you’re choking. Can you sit up?” Tamsen slid a shaking hand behind her mother’s head to help raise her. Seeming dazed, her mother pushed herself off the hearth to sit, slumped in a tangle of petticoats. Blood spattered the nutmeg silk.

“I’m all right.” Her voice was as thick as her breath.

Tamsen stared at the hand that had cupped her mother’s head. Blood slicked her fingers. “You aren’t all right, Mama. Look.”

Sarah’s head swayed like a flower too heavy for its stem. She put a hand to her temple. “I don’t know …”

Tamsen got her mother on her feet and half-carried her to the bed. She lowered her head to a pillow, smearing blood over the coverlet and her embroidered petticoat. “You need help, Mama. I’ll find Dell.”

Where was the maid?

Go on out to Sim
. The stable. Before she took a step, her mother grasped her hand. “Dell’s gone her way.”

“Mama—” Tamsen faltered, looking back at her mother’s battered face. At first she thought it was the light—the sun was setting, casting the room in a swelling amber glow—for a youthful gloss had flushed her mother’s skin despite the cruel effects of her stepfather’s blow. A gloss she hadn’t possessed in years. But it wasn’t the light. It came from within.

It was joy. Her mother glowed with it, smiling through the blood on her mouth and chin.

“Has Stephen come? Where is your papa?” Her mother was staring at a corner of the room, as if Dell, their troubles, and her injury were matters too insignificant to concern her now. As if something long anticipated was about to transpire there. Fear slipped cold down Tamsen’s spine.

“What are you saying? Mama, look at me. Where is Dell?”

“Tamsen …” Her mother’s voice was losing strength, though her grip still anchored Tamsen to the bedside. “Get the box.”

“What box?”

Sarah’s fingers fluttered to the bodice of her gown, fumbling for something tucked beneath her blood-spattered kerchief. There was a cord around her mother’s neck, tucked into her bodice. Tamsen pulled it free. On it hung a key, small and dark. From the clothespress Tamsen grabbed her mother’s scissors, left out for repairs to the gown. She snipped the cord. The key dropped into her hand, warm from her mother’s body.

Sarah’s eyes strayed again to that corner, seeing something Tamsen couldn’t. Behind their almost feverish glow, urgency glittered. “In my trunk …”

“Mama, whatever this is, it can wait—”

“You have to know.
Hurry …
”

Sick with dread, Tamsen went to her mother’s trunk, pushed against the wall where Sim had left it. She knelt and rummaged among the few contents still unpacked until she found what she thought her mother meant—a box the size of a bread loaf, dark with age, hinged with iron. She set it on the floor and fumbled with the key. The lock was rusted. The key wedged tight. She wrenched it sideways. Finally it sprang. Inside were papers. Letters with broken seals. She fingered through them, heart hammering, the need to dump them in a heap and run for help all but overwhelming. How long had her stepfather been gone? Five minutes? Ten?

“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
.”