The Seekers

by John Jakes

  “I should think that’s obvious from his speech, Clara. Where do you come from, Master Kent?”

  New England.

  He said it carefully. He didn’t know the identities of these people. Yet there was something about the white woman’s name that struck a responsive note in his mind. What was it?

  They were watching him. He finished his thought. “We have no relatives left back there, so we were heading for New Orleans—”

  “You’ve relatives in New Orleans, then?”

  “No, not a one.”

  A growling in Jared’s belly told him it was empty. But food didn’t matter—nothing mattered except the horror of what had befallen Amanda. And he’d been sleeping a day and a half! Who could say where Blackthorn might have gotten to by now?

  “I just can’t do what that doctor said,” he told the white woman. “I don’t mean to act ungrateful, but I can’t, Mrs.—”

  “Jackson. Rachel Jackson.”

  Jared was startled. Of course that was. it. The judge whom Blackthorn had mentioned was Judge Andrew Jackson, the Tennessee soldier. He should have guessed that was who Blackthorn was talking about. He remembered an account in the Republican that stated Jackson’s home was near Nashville. It was the name Rachel that had almost brought the memory to the surface. From pressroom gossip, Jared knew a few things about this woman who was Jackson’s wife.

  “Mrs. Jackson,” he went on, “I have to go after the man who—attacked my cousin.”

  Clara frowned, glanced sharply at her mistress. Mrs. Jackson asked, “How was your cousin attacked?”

  “She was raped.”

  The woman turned pale at the forbidden word. “And, as you said, she was then carried off—?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “By whom?”

  “A man who claimed he lived in a cabin near here. A man with part of his right ear torn out. He pretended to be a minister. Acted friendly. That was a trick, so he could catch us off guard and steal our belongings—”

  Quickly, Jared searched the puncheon-floored bedroom. He spotted the canvas bag sitting in a corner. The Negress noticed his concern. “Everything’s there. We took your clothes out, though. Boiled ’em good ’cause they were crawlin’.”

  “Tell me the name of the man,” Rachel Jackson said.

  “He called himself Reverend Blackthorn.”

  “Exactly what I suspected,” Mrs. Jackson whispered. “That trash—!”

  “You know him?”

  “Sure we do,” Clara said. “William Blackthorn isn’t any more of a preacher than I’m a broodmare in the judge’s stable. Only way Blackthorn got the title reverend was by givin’ it to himself.”

  Jared looked puzzled. “Why would he do that?”

  Rachel Jackson said, “Visiting evangelists who hold camp meetings are popular up in Kentucky and Ohio. Blackthorn has a certain talent for eloquence, and if he rides into a hamlet a hundred miles from here and identifies himself as a preacher, it’s doubtful anyone asks to see his credentials from a divinity school. I’m afraid he found that masquerading as a minister could pay handsomely. The evangelist keeps the offering money after expenses are met, you see. Blackthorn leaves several times a year and comes home with enough cash for three or four months. The Nashville clergy have sent out circulars to the larger towns, but it isn’t possible to warn every settlement in two states. I pity the poor people who’ve been taken in by his sham piety.”

  “Around here, nobody’s fooled,” Clara said. “Why, just this past year, Blackthorn’s been in the stocks for fightin’ and raisin’ hel—the devil. Like Miz Jackson says—trash.”

  “If he was bound for his cabin, he won’t be there long,” the judge’s wife added.

  “How do you know, ma’am?”

  “Because three days ago, a number of gentlemen in Nashville arranged to have him run out of town.”

  “Yes, he hinted about that. I didn’t know whether to believe him.”

  “It’s true. William Blackthorn is a vicious, illiterate brute. Half crazy, I think. He’s gouged out more eyes and bitten off more fingers than anyone can count.”

  Jared showed his wrapped hand. “He tried that with me. He hit me enough so that I couldn’t stop him. He talked about taking Amanda with him, on what he called his travels. I didn’t understand then—”

  “Now you do,” said Clara in a grim voice.

  Jared nodded. “He carried on about selling Amanda. Selling her like a who—a prostitute,” he amended. “I couldn’t believe any man would do a thing like that.”

  “William Blackthorn would,” Rachel Jackson said. “I pity you, but I pity your little cousin more. Ten years old. Imagine—!”

  “She’s well developed for her age. Blackthorn mistook her for older.”

  “When the judge be back, Miz Rachel?” Clara asked.

  “Nightfall or later.” She turned to the boy. “My husband is major general of the state militia—”

  “Yes, ma’am, I know. Some teamsters I met at the ferry on the Cumberland said that he and the militia had beaten Weatherford’s Creek Indians—”

  “At the Horse Shoe Bend. There’s talk the judge may be given a major generalship in the regular army and put in command of the Seventh Military District. The war with the British is going badly in the north and east. Now there’s fear of an attack by sea, somewhere down on the Gulf. Mobile Bay, New Orleans—those may need to be defended. The judge is settling some affairs in Nashville, in case he receives orders from Washington.”

  “The judge ought to be receivin’ orders to rest for a year!” the black woman declared.

  Rachel Jackson smiled sadly. “You know he’d tear any order of that kind to pieces.”

  “But he shouldn’t be so active in his condition! It’s bad enough that he’s got a ball in his lung from duelin’ Mr. Dickinson—”

  “I can’t score him too severely for that, Clara. He published his card in the paper because of me. Because of what Dickinson said—”

  “Any man shot once would rest a while! But he’s carryin’ a double dose of lead!” The black woman explained to Jared, “One of the Benton brothers shot the judge in the left arm last November. Another duel. Then he drank bad water while he was chasin’ the Indians, and he says it’s fluxed his bowels for life.”

  All of that confirmed what Jared had read about the Tennessee lawyer and soldier. Judge Jackson, as he preferred to be called, was a gamester, a brawler, a man who settled affairs of honor by dueling, illegal though that might be. Jared wasn’t overly interested in the judge’s health, however. Amanda was all that counted. If he had to hobble, he was going to hunt for her. He announced that intention—

  And Rachel Jackson again shook her head. “No, young man. You’ll obey doctor’s orders—and speak to the judge when he returns.”

  “Ma’am, I can’t wait for—”

  “Indeed you can. If William Blackthorn actually went to his cabin, he’s probably left again. Didn’t you hear me say he was ordered to leave the vicinity of Nashville? He was given twenty-four hours—I suspect he’s already taken your cousin out of the area. Still, if it will put your mind at ease, I’ll have Culley, one of our nigras, ride over to Blackthorn’s cabin immediately. He’ll be back before the judge is, I expect. When the judge gets home, you can discuss your plans with him. I’m sure he’ll take a personal interest—”

  She smiled, somehow emphasizing the melancholy of her eyes. “My husband doesn’t mind flouting the law and putting a pistol ball through a man’s head. But freestyle fighting—Blackthorn’s forte—is intolerable to him. The judge was one of those responsible for getting Blackthorn out of Nashville.”

  The black woman patted Jared’s hand.

  “You rest. I’ll bring you up some food.”

  The two women left the room. Presently he heard a mule clatter by beneath the window of the log house.

  He obeyed the women’s orders because they made sense. He realized he was still too weak to travel
any distance with speed.

  Yet inactivity tortured him. In his mind, he relived every moment of the rape for which he blamed himself.

  Over and over, he promised himself he’d kill Blackthorn when he saw him. And see him he would. Somewhere. Somehow.

  ii

  When he woke again, around dusk, he discovered a mug of molasses and a dish of berries in honey on the table beside the bed.

  He spooned out some of the fruit and honey mixture, relishing its flavor. The molasses he found thick and unpalatable.

  As he ate, he tried to recall what he knew about the judge’s wife. Some scandal having to do with her marriage, wasn’t it? A scandal twenty years old or better—

  Slowly it came back. She had been married to another man. He had divorced her. Jackson, a rising Tennessee lawyer who had suggested the name for his own state, promptly married the young woman, only to discover that her husband hadn’t obtained a divorce decree at all. He’d merely petitioned for, and received the grant of, an enabling act that would permit divorce if he could show reason why the marriage should be dissolved.

  The first husband—Robards, Roberds, something like that—had churlishly waited two years before seeking the actual divorce. His grounds became his former wife’s illegal and adulterous marriage to the young Jackson.

  If Jared recalled the story right, the charge was technically true. The story was frequently circulated in Boston, because Jackson had served in the national legislature, and because the tale illustrated, for easterners anyway, the crudity of western mores.

  The double humiliation of his wife being divorced and branded an adulteress supposedly weighed on Jackson’s mind. Though he and Rachel had been remarried in legal fashion after the divorce, a stigma remained. Insulting remarks about living with a fallen woman were one of the main reasons Jackson was prone to calling out so many men. Jared wondered whether it might also be a reason for Rachel Jackson’s strained look—

  In any case, Jackson’s propensity for shedding blood—his own as well as that of his opponents—was well known in the east. And mocked.

  As Jared was finishing the berries, the black woman brought in a lamp to light the room.

  “Is the judge back?” he asked.

  Clara frowned. “No. Culley is, though.”

  “Did he find—?”

  She shook her head. “Just like we figured—he’s gone. The place is stripped bare. Culley said the tracks of Blackthorn’s horse were ’bout a day old.”

  “Surely someone knows where the man was headed!”

  “I don’t,” Clara answered. “Mebbe the judge will.”

  The door closed with a soft click. Jared pressed both hands over his eyes.

  iii

  A rapping noise wakened Jared sometime later. He started up in bed, seeing a long, grotesque shadow on the wall.

  The figure at the foot of the bed was hardly less grotesque. Jared had never seen a man quite so spindly, with such narrow, almost feminine shoulders and long, high-waisted legs. The man leaned on a cane. Even glanced at, he was a veritable exhibit of afflictions: a left arm held stiffly at his side, a hunched posture—perhaps the ball lodged in his lung pained him? Pox marks pitted his face. One cheek bore a white, badly healed sword scar.

  Yet for all his ungainliness and his general air of physical ruin, the judge—for surely this must be he—had a strangely commanding aura as he stood tapping his cane and studying his uninvited guest. A crest of thick white hair rose above his forehead. His unblinking eyes were a glacial blue. When he spoke, his voice was rather high, almost shrill. But Jared had absolutely no urge to laugh.

  “I’ve heard your story from Mrs. Jackson, Kent. If you’d lamed Truxton—one of my best studs—one of my main sources of income in his racing days—I’d pitch you out of that window yonder.”

  “I apologized to your wife for frightening the horse—”

  “She told me.”

  “You’re Judge Jackson?”

  “I suspect,” the other said in a dry way, hooking a chair with his boot and pulling it to the bedside. “Surely no one else could be such a catch-all of ills and aches and old bullets.”

  He settled into the chair, leaning forward with palms resting on the cane head. The blue eyes pinned Jared.

  “I understand you ran afoul of Blackthorn—whom we should have caned till he couldn’t walk.”

  “Yes, sir. He raped my cousin—”

  “A young girl, I’m informed.”

  “Ten.”

  Jackson sniffed. “She isn’t the first.”

  “Your wife sent a black man to the reverend’s cabin—”

  “Don’t call him reverend! Satan has more right to the title than he does! The only place William Blackthorn’s fit to preach is hell, and it’s a shame he’s taking so long to reach his destination. Yes, the girl’s gone. Blackthorn too.”

  “They thought you might know where.”

  “I do not, because if I did, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be on a horse going after him. I’d see he never maimed a man or molested a child again.”

  Jackson laid a bony hand on Jared’s arm. “I appreciate your anxiety. We’ll do our best to locate the blackguard. I presume you’ll go after him—?”

  “Wherever he is, Judge.”

  Jackson ruminated a moment, scratching the tough white skin of the sword scar.

  “I believe you. I’m not overly fond of easterners, which I understand you are. But you’ve got a certain look about you—determined. It could fool many into thinking you’re a Tennessean. That’s a compliment, in case you missed it.”

  Jared couldn’t even articulate a thank-you. The judge made him more than a little nervous.

  Jackson’s stare remained fixed and hard. “How old are you, Kent?”

  “Sixteen this coming October.”

  “And you trudged all the way here from the east?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you have any money?”

  “Only what I made working along the way.”

  Jackson thumped his cane on the floor. “By God, at your age that’s quite an accomplishment! You must have had a mighty good reason to undertake such a trip.”

  Worried that he might face this kind of questioning, Jared had barely heard the judge’s praise. He kept his voice as level as possible. “Yes. Our kin—my cousin’s and mine—are no longer living. We were making our way to New Orleans.”

  Jackson scrutinized him a moment.

  “What are you running from?” he asked abruptly.

  In confusion, Jared answered, “Is it that obvious—?”

  “No youngster would travel as far as you have without a compelling reason. You said your kinfolk are dead—”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “Are you a runaway apprentice?”

  “No, Judge.”

  “In trouble with the law?”

  Jared knew he couldn’t lie successfully for long. He nodded. “The Massachusetts law.”

  “Serious trouble?”

  “I shot a man.”

  Silence. Then: “In good cause?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Another pause, even longer. At last Jackson shrugged. “Well, I’ve done the same. We won’t pursue it unless you want to—”

  “I’d rather not, sir.”

  “All right. I, like your cut so we’ll leave the matter closed. However, I’d advise you to steer shy of the Gulf Coast for a while.”

  Relieved, Jared said, “Your wife did mention possible military action there—”

  “I have a feeling the British will attack somewhere on the Gulf. The numbskulls in the department of the army have thus far botched all engagements with the enemy, and I reckon it’s going to be up to the west to do the work right. It’d be just like Johnny Bull to sneak around the back way, thinking we’re napping out here. If I get command of the Seventh District, we won’t be napping.”

  Again he stabbed Jared with those glacial eyes. “Were you ever in the
military?”

  What in the world did that have to do with Amanda? the boy thought, resentful. But the judge’s intimidating stare, plus Jared’s feeling that he owed the man politeness, made him answer the question.

  “The navy, for two cruises, under Captains Hull and Bainbridge on Constitution.”

  “Well, our seamen have acquitted themselves better than the fools and charlatans in charge of the army. By the Eternal, if they just give me a chance, I’ll show those redcoats how Americans can fight!”

  The emaciated man—nearly fifty, or at least looking it—screwed up his features into a caricature of menace. Only Jared guessed Jackson was serious.

  “I despise Englishmen damned near as much as I do the butchering Cherokees and that lot.” He touched the old scar. “I got this in the Revolution—”

  Abruptly, Jackson compressed his lips and shook his head.

  “You’ll forgive me. I’ve been thinking about nothing except the Red Sticks for months, and now that we’ve cleaned up that business, the other enemy’s on my mind.”

  Still trying to be courteous, Jared said, “I understand. My grandfather was in the Revolution too, as a matter of fact.”

  “Was he!”

  “At Monmouth Court House, a British ball gave him a limp for the rest of his life.”

  “I acquired this charming mark when I was fifteen, riding dispatch in the Waxhaw district of South Carolina. Some of Tarleton’s dragoons caught me. One of his snotty subalterns sabered me because I wasn’t properly deferential. My brother Hugh died of wounds in the war, and my brother Robert of illness. My mother went aboard one of those British prison hulks to nurse the American captives and contracted ship fever and she died—”

  “I’d say you have plenty of reason for wanting to do the British damage.”

  “I hate every goddamned one of them!” Then he smiled, wryly. “I do tend to get carried away on the subject. However, I realize another subject is of more importance to you. So if you’ll forgive my preoccupation with my enemy, we’ll see what we can discover about yours—”

  He stood, leaning on his cane and coughing, his head averted toward the open window. The mellow darkness billowed the scent of apple blossoms into the room. Distantly Jared heard soft, slurred voices singing an unfamiliar melody.