Disclaimer: All the characters from the "Magnificent Seven" T.V. series are property of Trilogy Entertainment, The Mirisch Group, MGM Worldwide.
He had almost entirely forgotten about the town.
If it had not been for his visit back some twenty years later, it would have still maintained its anonymous existence inside his mind, possibly arriving at his death without ever being recalled even once before the final curtain descended upon his life. Such forgetfulness was not uncommon for a man like Neil Blackwell. He was very much a creature who had lived life from moment to moment, never worrying about tomorrow and certainly giving little or not credence to the past. The past was this place of vague, forgettable shapes that once overcome, could little effect his future existence.
That is where the town had lived during the expanse of grey that had existed between his first visit there and his return two decades after. When he rode into the place, twenty years after he had first felt its New England atmosphere soak into his skin with the atypical dampness of late spring, he had barely remembered he had ever been here until he came across the inn. At first, there was nothing to recommend it as being any different from the numerous others like it scattered throughout the New England coast. The rest of America branded such establishments with a variety of appellations from hotel, to lodging house, to hostel. In this part of the world, the designation of inn had remained largely as homage to the English forebears who had crossed the North Atlantic centuries before.
The trip back had been fortuitous and not a planned excursion to revisit the paths trodden in his youth. In truth, it was business that had brought him there and though the name of the place had sparked only the barest hint of a pause upon hearing it, he had ridden into town with no suspicion that he had been here before. The venture that was to occur in the sea side community of Grenfell had to do with investments in fishing boats. He had been attempting to legitimise most of his businesses of late and fishing boats seemed the most appropriate opportunity for the region. Always one to assess his holdings personally, owing to the fact that he had little faith in anything he did could not see with his own eyes, Blackwood had left his base of operations in Chicago to make the inspection, as well as take a little vacation.
For him, such journeys were no inconvenience and he normally travelled with his body guard, though he mostly introduced the man as his business associate, since it was less likely to raise an eye from the locals, in particular the law enforcement agencies that might exist in the area. Though he was by no means a wanted criminal, he was indeed a criminal on a grand scale whose holdings were vast and whose ability to evade implication even more impressive. Of late, he had been attempting to mask those illicit beginings by converting all the wealth amassed in his time into more legalised pursuits, to make the transition from criminal overlord to respectable businessman.
The idea of being a magnate amused him.
Until he came across the inn, which was called the Mariner, Blackwood did not realise that twenty years before he had taken refuge in the cosy establishment to escape a night of rain and wind. While the significance of the town and the inn did not seem important, Blackwood remembered that there had been a storm that night, one whose intensity had been so fierce that it was aptly called the storm of the year. A ship had run aground that night and though he had since had opportunity to file his actions that night as a youthful indiscretion, he was certain the young flower who had shared it with him was not to accommodating.
He was almost curious to look her up, see how she fared even though he was fairly certain that his presence would not be welcomed but he was not one who could resist the makings of a little mischief. Thus he found himself taking up lodgings at the inn in order to catch a glimpse of her or at the very least, inquire where she might have gone. His bodyguard or more appropriately, his enforcer, had remarked that there were better lodgings about but Blackwood's curiosity had been well and truly been provoked and there was no changing his mind once it was set on its course.
As expected, the young lady who had been all but sixteen at the time was gone by the time Neil Blackwood had returned to Grenfell. Even the inn was no longer under the ownership of the girl's father, the old man and his wife having passed the veil long ago. Blackwood recalled vaguely that she had been their only child and had been put to work as most young women her age were often required to do, in the upkeep of the rooms that were rented out for the purpose. The new owner, whom Blackwood had struck up conversation with during his stay, had been more than happy to reveal the sordid history of the inn and the juicy morsel of scandal, which revolved around the girl herself.
Blackwood listened in silence, feeling a line of tension running through him, trailing tendrils of ice behind it. He did not speak while the narrator, who appeared to be the kind who found his own pleasure in telling such tales relating the story. The girl had apparently fallen into the family way, suspected of being placed in that unfortunate circumstance by one of the borders who had come through town during the storm. It was the logical deduction since none of the young men in town would admit to the deed and an air of tawdry mystery had risen around the girl's notoriety.
The girl had been publicly disgraced and renounced by her shocked, puritanical parents. There was talk of her leaving town and more salacious rumours had her joining a house of ill repute but there was no fact to these claims and seemed to be the kind of vicious rumour mongering endemic with small communities with nothing better to occupy their time. The father died soon enough and the mother had sold the inn to its present owner before passing on herself some years later. What became of the girl was as much a mystery as the father of her illegitimate child.
Blackwood returned to Chicago the very next day, unbelieving in what he had learnt and faced with a situation he could not help but feel hopelessly drawn towards. The young girl herself meant nothing to him but her circumstances did and he immediately set his man to make inquiries with the notable Pinkertons Agency. Pinkertons armed with the hefty retainer that Blackwood had provided them with went to work immediately. The trail was almost twenty years old but for an agency whose creator was largely responsible for the formation of the secret service and almost every other governmental intelligence agency, it merely meant challenge not impossible.
She was tracked down to the East, to New York. To Blackwood, that made perfect sense. New York after the war was rife with new faces, some coming from the other parts of the ruined northern states where war was raging, while some came from across the ocean in search of a new life. For a young woman in her present state, it was the kind of place where she could be forgotten and forgotten she had to be if she was to forge any sort of life for herself and for her unborn child. There was hardly any need for her to change her name. The difference between ruin and respectability lay in one word; Mrs.
Taking on the mantle of widow whose husband was lost in the war, she began work as a parlour maid, saving every cent she had in order to keep herself and her child fed when the infant made its arrival. Judging by her living arrangements at the time, there had to be some outside assistance and the detective investigating the case, believed that the girl's mother had been sending her money in order to support herself during her pregnancy. In the meantime, she had taken pains to write letters all across the state in order to find a permanent placement.
Pinkertons soon reported that she found employment as a maid at an expensive boarding school for young boys in the outskirts of the city. Whilst there, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy and continued her employ there for the next nineteen years, although it was reported that the difficult delivery had weakened her considerably and she was never quite recovered from the experience. Eventually she was elevated to the role of housekeeper while her son earned his keep as a stable boy. The school administration allowed him to attend the classes so the young man did possess something of an education even though he was made perfectly aware by his classmates that he was of different class and ultimately inferior.
Inevitably, she passed on in his eighteenth year and the young man remained long enough to bury her before he disappeared into the West and the trail went cold for quite some time. Blackwood maintained the investigation, determined to find the boy, feeling this urgent need which had never before existed inside him, suddenly pressing so hard against his spine that for a time he could think of nothing else. Blackwood's universe contained only himself. Coming from a questionable background, he had escaped a life of poverty by surviving anyway he could, sacrificing anyone to pull himself from the gutter into the life of luxury it had taken so long to build. He was proud of what he had accomplished and regretful for none of it, not even when his success was built upon the bones of those he had ground in the dirt.
However, time changes a man.
The older he got, the more the trappings of his mortality began to beckon at him and until he discovered that foolish young woman had been pregnant with child, had never even considered that his life might lacking. However, now that the boy's existence was known to him, Blackwood could think of nothing else. For months after finding out about her and her child, Blackwood would think of that night.
The night of the storm.
Everyone had gone to see the ship that landed on the rock. Through the rain and howling wind, the clipper had run aground on the jagged shore of the New England coast, tearing the wood from its hull like a fish that had been gutted. Cargo, men and the like had spilled out of the ship and the locals had flocked to view the spectacle of tragedy through a curtain of pounding rain. He had remembered having very little interest in any of it, concerned only with the occasion because it had left him alone in the house with her. She had wanted to go to and had rushed to her room to get a shawl when news had broken. The others had gone ahead and she had lagged behind, never knowing how much of a mistake that would be.
He liked them young.
Even when he himself was young, there was nothing more arousing that a girl whose maidenhead had yet to be taken. They all seemed to exude a lingering scent of raw sexuality that was unmistakable and completely irresistible. When he had approached her and whispered his soft words in her ear, she had been taken by surprise but had responded because she was still a girl with girlish dreams and romantic notions of passion and desire on a night that seemed made for it. He did not rape her but what transpired what well beyond her expectations and in the aftermath, when she lay weeping and lamenting that what she had done was wrong and that she only wanted to forget it, he was only too happy to oblige.
He remained in the town a day longer, sniggering to himself at her inability to meet his gaze each time they came across one another, in an empty hallway or even in a crowded room. The blush of shame in her cheeks ensured that there would be no retribution for his brief dalliance, that she would tell no one of their encounter and would most likely take what they had shared to her grave. When Blackwood had left Grenfell, he was already starting to forget the young woman and time would erase any traces of her from his mind entirely, since she had been one excess out of so many.
However, when he had returned to the town after twenty years, Blackwood had realized that what she had done would ensure that he never forgot her. That in itself was almost unforgivable; for he had regretted nothing in his life and this girl, this one night affair he had no reason to think back upon had suddenly became the most important thing in the world to him.
Because somewhere out there in the West, Neil Blackwood had a son.