The Seekers (52 page)

“Let go of the stick, Joe,” Franklin Pleasant said. “These—gentlemen and I will retire to the office upstairs and discuss—”

“There’s nothing to discuss!” Jared shouted. “Stovall and his cronies, they’re—”

“Jared, be silent! For the sake of every employee of this company, don’t say another word. Joe—let go of the stick.”

The pressman scowled. But he obeyed the manager. Stovall examined the finish on the stick as Jared wiped his sweating upper lip. He glared at Pleasant. “I won’t let you just surrender—”

“Be silent!”
Pleasant directed the warning not only to the boy but to all the confused and angry men and apprentices. “I am still manager here—”

“In the employ of
the Kents!
”

“My dear boy, you forget—that’s all changed,” Stovall said, strolling past Jared and pushing through the gate in the rail. A huge, tow-haired pressman blocked his path. The young Marylander raised his stick. Sweating, Franklin Pleasant shook his head. The pressman retreated.

Stovall gave a short, brittle laugh and walked on, tucking the stick under his arm again. “The firm of Kent and Son is now irrevocably part of the assets of the Stovall family—to do with as we please. We may wish to change the politics of your paper”—he rapped knuckles against the screw lever of a press—“suspend publication of your books and your gazette altogether”—he approached a type font, grasped the top of the case, pulled; the case crashed to the floor, scattering hundreds of bits of metal—“or raze it to the ground.” Trembling, Jared cried, “You goddamned, conniving—” Pleasant grabbed his shoulder. “I demand that you hold your temper! Nothing will be gained—” Jared flung off Pleasant’s hand and sprinted for the stairs.

The rage in Jared Kent was out of control. He knew Hamilton Stovall wouldn’t be making boasts if he lacked the legal means to back them up. Let Pleasant quibble and delay. He wouldn’t.

As he reached the second floor, he heard contentious voices erupt below. Pleasant was shouting. Some of the pressmen too. And the lawyer—

The voices faded as Jared raced between the towers of books in the warehouse area. At the wall niche in the back, he stood on tiptoe, groped, pulled down the pistol. The English box-lock piece was a good fifteen years old. Six stubby barrels clustered around a seventh, central one. A plate above the trigger guard on the right side carried the maker’s mark, and his name, Nock.

Jared had loaded and primed the pistol before storing it in the niche. He pulled the lock back to cock position; the first shot would discharge the central barrel and one adjoining. He hid the pistol under his shirt, then sped for the stairs again. Stovall would never take the place.
Never!

On the third floor, one of the
Republican
’s reporters glanced up from his copy.

“What’s all the row downstairs, Jared? Pleasant fairly tore out of the office—”

Jared didn’t bother to answer. He dashed into the cluttered office once used by his grandfather, then by his uncle. Mr. Pleasant had installed a convenience lacking until his occupancy—a small Franklin stove that heated the room to oven temperature.

Breathing hard, Jared jerked open the doors of the free-standing stove. His reflection in the smoke-stained windows looked like a goblin’s. He snatched sheets of newspaper copy from the desk, tossed them onto the fire.

Then invoices. More foolscap copy. A book. Another—

He moved with incredible speed. He pitched everything on Pleasant’s desk into the stove. Finally the grate could hold no more. Flames shot from the stove’s front as the fire grew—

Let Pleasant prattle about lawyers! Let him
discuss!
Jared knew it was too late for any of that to help. He knew Stovall.

“For Christ’s sake, Jared, what are you doing?
Catch those things—!
”

The reporter lunged into the office, jerked back as Jared pulled the seven-barrel flintlock from his trousers.

“I don’t want to shoot you, Tommy—”

“Have you gone mad?” The reporter pointed. Two smoldering books and a pile of blazing sheets had fallen out of the overflowing grate. Smoke was curling from the ancient flooring. “You’ll burn the place down!”

“That’s just what I intend.”

The reporter’s sweaty face glistened as the fire brightened. Smoke hazed the office now. The tawny-haired boy—taller than the reporter—crouched with the seven-barrel pistol in his right hand, and something akin to lunacy in his bright blue eyes.

The reporter whirled and fled down the front stairs.

“Fire!
We’ve a fire up here!
”

Jared darted behind the Franklin stove. He touched the top gingerly, gave it a shove. The stove tipped forward, crashed, spilling the contents of the grate. Jared’s face broke into a ghastly smile as the flames spread to the desk, one wall—

The heat was intense. Coughing, Jared backed out of the office. Ran to the head of the stairs—

Men were coming up. He recognized the loudest voices. Stovall and his companion—

He waited, the back of his neck hot from the flames.

The blaze wasn’t yet bright enough to illuminate the lightless stairs. He barely made out dim figures appearing on the landing halfway between the two floors.

But someone down there saw him clearly.
“He’s got a gun—!”

Jared thought he saw a patch of white on the landing, the silk bandana. He aimed the seven-barrel, pulled the trigger. The central barrel and another went off simultaneously, a second after Hamilton Stovall wrenched someone in front of him.

The other man—Walpole—shrieked. Flung his arms wide and fell back to the landing, blood darkening his coat where one or both of the balls had struck. Jared felt the old, devastating nausea sweep up from his belly—

“Murder!” Stovall cried in the confusion below. “The boy’s done murder!”

Jared revolved the barrels on the spindle, readying another shot. His hands shook. The nausea was almost overpowering—

Fire shot from the office door, burning the wall on either side. Stovall had cheated him again.

“Murder! He’s done murder! THE PLACE IS BURNING—”

Stovall’s shout thundered as Jared ran for the rear stairs.

He emerged in the alley behind the building. Fat, wet snowflakes struck his hands and face. Their coldness sobered him a little.

But in his imagination, he still saw Walpole falling, his coat bloodied—

Jared careened across the alley to a fence. He dropped the pistol, shot out his hands. He could find no purchase on the fence planks. He fell to his knees, his palms raking over the wood. Splinters stabbed his skin as the shuddering shook him, spasm after, spasm—

Once the trembling passed, he scrabbled in the snow until he located the pistol. He stuffed it into his trousers, stumbled for the end of the alley.

There he stopped. He glanced right, to the intersection of the narrow cross-street and the one that ran in front of Kent’s. At the intersection, he saw men racing by, heading for the printing house in response to voices crying fire.

He turned and gazed up through the pelting snow to a rear window on the top floor. The window glowed orange. The fire had spread all the way to the back—

Jared’s mouth twisted into a peculiar smile. His ears buzzed. His belly ached. But the trembling was over, and he still felt the intoxication of the rage that had seized him just before he bolted upstairs.

I did what had to be done,
he thought.
Better that Kent and Son burn than fall into the hands of someone like Stovall
—

He wasn’t entirely oblivious to the consequences of his actions, though. He’d shot Stovall’s accomplice. For that, they could hang him—

Like some pursued animal, he spun and ran to the left, slitting his eyes against the snow. The darkness of the narrow street soon hid him.

Observed surreptitiously from the blackness of the Common, the house on Beacon Street seemed quiet enough. The snow was falling harder now.

Jared hurried along Beacon to the end of the block. Cutting left, then left again he approached the house through the small backyard.

His teeth were chattering and his soaked shirt stuck to his skin as he crept from the darkness into the stairwell behind the pantry. Beyond a door to the kitchen, he heard voices. Two or three servants, talking softly. He started up the stairs, testing each riser so it wouldn’t creak.

Fortunately the servants had lit a fire in his room on the third floor. With the door shut, he pulled off his sodden shirt and warmed himself a moment.

On hands and knees, he groped under his bed. He dragged out the small canvas bag he’d brought home from sea duty. Backing up, he knocked over a stack of books.

The books thudded on the carpet. Jared tensed, listening—

A half minute passed.

A minute.

He stood up, carefully opened his wardrobe, found a fresh shirt, a few underthings—

His hand went slack. The clothing spilled to the floor. Blinking, he knelt to pick it up. In that moment, the dizzying anger that had possessed him for the past hour faded—replaced by a full realization of what he’d done.

He had destroyed Kent’s.

Destroyed
it!

Part of the blame was Stovall’s. But only a small part. He, Jared Kent, was the truly guilty one. Surrendering to rage and unreason and the stunning shock of seeing Stovall again, he had behaved as he always did: At the moment when coolness counted most—the moment of crisis—he had been unable to deal with the situation except in one, destructive way. He had failed again.

And the new Jared he’d worked so carefully to create—the Jared who could be proud of his self-control—proud of finally giving the lie to everything Aunt Harriet said about him—he had destroyed that Jared Kent along with the printing house.

What a fool I was,
he thought, still kneeling but seeing nothing around him.
A fool to think I could change
—
that I had the strength to change.
He remembered the terrible nausea moments after the pistol discharged. The punishing sickness was proof once again that all his old feelings about his worthlessness were correct, and that for the past months, he had only been deceiving himself—

An almost animal cry burst from his lips then. He buried his head in both hands.

After another minute or so, he lifted his head, drew a long breath.

All right. It’s done. You are what you are. Now you have to save yourself as best you can
—

He fumbled with the clothing, stood up unsteadily, trying to assess the situation calmly. That Stovall, his intended victim, had let someone else die in his place only compounded his problem. No magistrate would put much importance on Jared’s contention that he meant to shoot the man who had cheated his family. Murder was murder. He’d be sought and arrested if he didn’t run—

Despairing, he gazed down at something he’d pulled from a drawer in the wardrobe without being aware of it. The medal and the broad green ribbon—

His feeling of having betrayed Gilbert’s trust was sharp and hurtful. He touched the tea bottle on the medal’s obverse. Rubbed his thumb slowly back and forth over the raised Latin legend.

Take a stand and make a mark.

Well, I’ve made a mark,
he thought.
But it’s not one to be proud of—even if it is the only kind I’m capable of making.

And because of it, what kind of life is left for me
—
?

The door opened suddenly. Jared’s hand constricted on the medal as he whirled. “Amanda!”

It took him a few seconds to realize that her face looked raw, her eyes puffy.

“Come in and close the door!”

With a peculiar, lethargic slowness, his dark-haired cousin shuffled into the room. He shoved the fob into his bag, then added the sheathed Spanish knife and a few more items of clothing.

“You mustn’t tell anyone you’ve seen me here, Amanda.”

She didn’t respond. But she recognized the contour of the pistol butt showing beneath his shirt. “Is that your gun, Jared?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you putting things in the bag?”

“Because I’m leaving, and you mustn’t tell Aunt Harriet you saw me.”

“Leaving? Where are you going?”

“Away from Boston. As far as possible as fast as possible.”

He jerked the drawstring tight on his bag. Then, seeing that his curt tone had alarmed her, he dropped to his knees beside her, touched her face.

“I don’t want to leave. I must. I’ll be all right. Promise me you won’t tell your mama—”

Amanda whispered, “Mama’s dead.”

“Dead?”

His hand fell away from her cheek. His mouth hung open. He understood why her face was tear-reddened. Yet he somehow couldn’t believe what she’d told him. “I hope you’re not making up a story. Death is a very serious—”

“She’s lying in the sitting room this minute! Florence said I mustn’t look at her. She said I had to stay in my room until someone takes Mama away. But I heard a noise in here—”

“Where’s Mr. Piggott?”

“I don’t know. I was alone when he came home this afternoon. Then Mama came home, and there was a terrible fuss. Shouting and cursing and crying—Mr. Piggott hit her. Then Mama ran out into Beacon Street. A wagon was coming along, very fast. She fell in front of it—”

“Oh my God.”

“Mr. Piggott ran away just like you’re doing.”

The boy was speechless. Amanda flung her arms around his neck.

“Please don’t go away and leave me, Jared. I’m frightened of Mr. Piggott. What if he should come back?”

Jared guessed the reason for Piggott’s abrupt flight. And for the quarrel. Harriet must have found out about her husband’s last, disastrous wager.

“Jared—?”

“I doubt he’ll come back.”

“Why won’t he?”

“Never mind!”

Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Don’t talk to me that way, Jared.
Don’t be cross
—”

He patted her arm clumsily. “I’m sorry. I’m—upset, that’s all.” He stood. “I must go—”

Yet he couldn’t move. His eye traveled from his cousin’s face to the cheerful hearth, then to his display cases. On one of the glass fronts, the fire twisted his image into an ugly distortion.