Wild Indigo Page 2

  Jacob stood, thunderstruck, in the middle of the Square in the hot June sun. The little wildcat! She had been here all along, through his long wait, through every lot that had been cast. A Single Sister, and available. He should have thought of her himself, but hadn’t because she had lived so quietly among them. Because, to him, she was still that lost child. And because Sister Krause had never mentioned her. She had even denied there were any suitable single women.

  He could see for himself that was not so.

  How old would Sister Mary—Sister Retha—be by now? They had never been sure of her age. As a child, she had neither known nor said. She had spoken little in those days, struggling to learn German. In time, she told of years spent with the Cherokee, the tribe that found her and took her in when she was too young to keep an account of her age. Today she could be seventeen, nineteen, twenty. Of an age to marry, surely.

  Still, what did she know of children? Until her recent marriage, Sister Eva Reuter had taught the girls. Perhaps the Sisters had kept Retha away from children on purpose. Rumors of trouble had stalked her from the first. Rumors that she couldn’t speak, started fires, had been raised by wolves.

  Nonsense to all of that, he thought. Especially to the fires. As the town’s planner and builder, he had organized all fire protection after a rash of minor fires. If a chimney so much as clogged, he knew of it.

  And clearly, Sister Retha had learned to speak German—with his older son’s spirit and his little daughter’s sass. Jacob had the feeling Retha was either’s equal on their worst day.

  The equal of his children! It was a dangerous, powerful thought. He let it rumble around in his head, like thunder from a distant storm. Dangerous. He could fight fire with fire. Powerful. He could manage unruly children with a woman who had lived more wildly than anything in their wildest dreams.

  “Jacob,” Samuel called. “They want you back.”

  Lost in thought, Jacob scowled at his friend’s amused face.

  “Your Board. The Elders.” Samuel pointed to Philip Schopp waving from the door of Unity House. “They want you.”

  Resolutely Jacob crossed the plank walk, for once barely noticing how well his crew had built something. In the meeting room inside Gemein Haus, the Elders arranged themselves along both sides of the long, narrow table. He hung up his flat-brimmed hat and sat among them.

  “Brother Blum, we have consulted the lot,” Marshall began. He turned the wooden bowl reverently in his hands. “We must meet at the earliest time next week. You may ask then about a wife.”

  Beside him, Elisabeth Marshall looked glum. “We recommend no one, however. We have come to the end of our tether. The only other widow is too old to take on children.”

  Jacob felt her unspoken words: children such as yours.

  “And Sister Reuter, whom the lot denied you, truly was our only candidate,” Rosina Krause added, her round face firm. Jacob all but snorted. He knew better. What was the woman trying to hide? “The marriageable among us are spoken for or already married. We have always had more men.”

  Frederick Marshall scanned the Elders’ faces and stopped at Jacob’s face. “We can ask at the farm settlements.”

  “Unless you have a better idea,” Sister Krause added.

  He did. Jacob closed his eyes. Amber eyes dared him, amber hair curled. A slim crooked elbow filled his hand.

  “There is one other,” he said, smiling with relief.

  That night, Retha strained to hear the young wolf’s cry. In the dark, close heat of her attic dormitory, she held her breath and listened. Nothing yet. Around her, half a dozen girls rustled under light sheets as they settled down to sleep. Someone whispered, someone answered, but she couldn’t make out their words. Gossip, no doubt. It used to be about her. Someone shushed them, and the attic door shut softly.

  Pale moonlight shafted through a deep-set dormer window, but Retha needed little light. She rolled out of bed and crawled to the door, the hem of her simple gown bunched in one hand. The door opened quietly, and she praised her own foresight. Bear grease on hinges had done the trick.

  Two flights of steep stairs led to the kitchen in the basement. On the first-floor landing, she paused. Only the sound of someone snoring drifted down the stairs. Old Sarah Holder, already asleep. How many times had Sister Sarah failed to stop her from excursions in the night?

  This time, Retha thought, she had good reason to go. She listened again for the wolf. No sound, but she felt its call.

  Downstairs, the kitchen’s clay tiles cooled her feet. She could smell supper’s cabbage and burnt ashes from spent fires. Moonlight seeped through high windows, lighting neat rows of tables set for morning. But the great hearth’s black maw revealed nothing. The larder’s door was black too. She knew its contents well. She opened it and took a little bear grease, a knob of forcemeat, a small marrow bone.

  She hadn’t taken a thing in years, she thought, justifying herself. And tonight her cause was a good one. Half-healed, her young wolf was far from independent. Its wild golden eyes, trusting and wary all at once, stirred her soul. One day on a woodland search for dyes, she had seen a flash in the corner of her vision. A gray shape had dived into the dark recesses of a nearby cave. She had followed, coaxing it to her with a small piece of salt bacon she had brought for a meal.

  Tonight she wrapped its food in a length of muslin, knotted the cloth around her wrist, and left the house. The air was hot, heavy with rain that would not fall. She slipped across the Square, crouching along the fence line, one eye out for watchman Samuel Ernst. Sure enough, he turned the corner, a great conch shell in one hand. Off and on all spring, soldiers being everywhere, he would sound it to alert the town. But never because he sighted her. Unafraid, she knelt behind a newly planted linden tree.

  She watched Brother Ernst peer down a narrow alley between two half-timbered homes before looking straight at the little tree that hid her. Or at her. She stilled herself. For the longest time, he stared, then started toward her. She gripped her package tighter. A raucous burst of voices stopped him in midstride. He hurried toward the Tavern.

  Safe again. Her fingers eased their grip, and she scooted across the dusty street, flattening herself against the rough brick-and-timber wall of one of the homes.

  Brother Blum’s home, she thought, with unaccustomed pleasure. He had been odd today, a great golden bear rushing to her rescue when she needed none. How his square-jawed handsome face had flushed when she pointed to his hand holding her arm fast.

  Samuel Ernst disappeared into the Tavern. She slipped past Brother Blum’s house and onto the sloping field that led to Tanner’s Run, the creek that fed the Red Tannery. She passed the bark sheds, the scouring building, and the vats.

  Tonight at Singstunde, the evening song service, Brother Blum had made up for his earlier awkwardness. As his rich baritone lofted through the oak-beamed ceilings of the Saal, his gaze had riveted her to her bench. Why look at her now? she wondered. Always before, he gazed off into the air when he sang, rapt, enraptured. For years she had watched him, listening with hushed admiration, wishing she could learn German faster, wishing she could sing like that.

  Wishing a man like him would take her from the Single Sisters into a home of her own.

  Not Brother Blum himself, of course. Until just last year, he had had that plump, happy wife, the first Moravian woman to soothe her fears. The one who died in the smallpox epidemic, leaving him in sole charge of their dreadful children. Everyone was talking about Jacob Blum’s problems with them. Carefully, because he was an Elder. Even kindly, because he was well liked. But talking all the same.

  Barefoot, she welcomed the creek’s lukewarm water as she crossed it. A dwindling flow glinted in the moonlight. Whimpers greeted her as the young wolf propped on its front legs and dragged itself toward her.

  Cautious, it slurped bear grease off her palm. When she teased it with the forcemeat, it growled.

  “You’re getting stronger, girl,” she said, pleased
with its show of spirit. One hugely swollen hind leg grazing the ground, it lurched onto three rangy legs, struggling to wag its tail and balance on three huge feet all at once.

  So brave, she thought, with a catch in her throat. And like her, a foundling.

  Downstream, she had come across its pack, mangled by some farmer scared of wolves, and left for buzzard bait. The cruelty and waste tore at her heart.

  Still wary, the young wolf let her stroke its plush fur.

  Leaving it to gnaw a marrow bone, she lifted her gown to clear the creek. She was so glad to be outside. Down here the air was almost cool. She had never understood why white men slept in houses. On hot nights the Cherokee would lift bark flaps to the evening breeze. They had been her family, and she missed them, even though she had never truly been one of them.

  Life had been simple, and she had been free, before the soldiers had massacred the clan that had adopted her.

  Where the meadow leveled out and the grass had been grazed short, she spun in place. She hadn’t been old enough to join the ball-play dance of the Indians who had raised her. Perhaps they wouldn’t have taught it to her, a white child. But they had let her watch. She remembered its stately rhythm, their hypnotic chants, all day and through the night. And tonight she danced as women danced, advancing toward men who weren’t there for her, and whirling and dancing away.

  In her mind she heard the tribe’s soft, insistent drum and their gourd shakers’ happy rattle. Her body moved to memory.

  “Sister Mary Margaretha!”

  Rosina Krause’s harsh whisper stunned Retha to a stop.

  “Not only have you no permission to be out—” Rosina continued.

  “—but there are soldiers everywhere, dear.” Sarah Holder shakily took her arm. “Redcoats, Tories, deserters.”

  “Their persuasion wouldn’t matter a jot if they laid their hands on a pretty young thing like you,” Rosina scolded.

  Retha’s joy from the dance curdled. What if the Sisters had seen her wolf? She stole a glance at the creek. No sign of it now. Breathing in little gasps, she lowered her head.

  On her shoulder, she felt Sarah Holder’s trembly hand. Old age, Retha thought, hoping she had not frightened that sweet old woman and wishing she had been more discreet.

  “I didn’t mean to alarm you.” She had not meant to anger them either. But she would leave the house again for her wolf. She willed it to hide, be safe, be well until she could come back with more morsels from the pantry.

  Slowly, deferring to Sister Sarah’s arthritic tread, she walked up the field toward Brother Blum’s house.

  “You have gone too far this time, Mary Margaretha,” Rosina Krause said softly. “What were we thinking to let you roam the woods for dyes?” The measured scolding raked Retha’s nerves.

  “Even that is far too dangerous now,” Sarah added solemnly.

  Retha bit back words. It was not dangerous for her. They could never know how safe she was, her feet silent on secret paths as Singing Stones had taught her.

  “My thought exactly,” Rosina said, brisk with authority. “You have worried me all spring. You take too many chances, Mary Margaretha. Traugott Bagge’s store has no need of so many dyes.”

  “And the rest of us, we can do without,” Sarah added.

  Sarah’s hand on her shoulder, Retha plodded up the slope.

  “Out in the backcountry, people have been killed while sitting at their own hearths,” Rosina said ominously. “We are fortunate neither side has occupied our town. It may yet come to that.”

  Sarah nodded her nervous agreement. “’Twill be safer for you here, dear, and we will feel so much better.”

  Rosina went on, ignoring Sarah’s concern. “I will not even ask what you were doing out at this late hour!”

  Good, Retha thought. Because she had no intention of telling. But her mind raced. How would she care for her wolf?

  As they squeezed through the alley, a door slammed shut. Sarah shrieked, Rosina jumped, and Retha’s heart pounded.

  Caught, and caught again.

  “I came to help,” a deep melodic baritone sounded around the corner. Jacob Blum’s voice! His large body loomed over Retha and her keepers. Her eyes well adjusted to the night, Retha peered at the massive shape to make sure it was him.

  It was. Inspecting the alley, he held up his torch. The older women moved into its light, closing ranks in front of Retha.

  “Sisters,” he began, with a note of surprise on seeing women out after dark. “Is aught the matter?” He identified them one by one. “Sister Krause. Sister Holder. And Sister—?”

  He lifted his torch higher but obviously couldn’t see past them to her. Retha didn’t want him to. Lowering her head to hide her face, she saw a waterfall of white. Her shift. It shone in the torch’s light. Brother Blum would think her brazen as a nanny goat. This afternoon she had taken a certain delight in embarrassing him. He didn’t look embarrassed now.

  She was in a fine pickle. Best to own up.

  She lifted her eyes to his. “I fear ’tis I, Brother Blum.”

  Jacob suppressed a laugh with difficulty. His prospective bride sounded contrite, but her eyes weren’t.

  “Sister Retha,” he nodded courteously, marshaling his amusement as the Sisters tried to hide her thin summer shift behind their outspread skirts. Too little and too late. He had glimpsed her dancing, and the sight had propelled him into the night. For her safety, he told himself. “I trust that you are quite all right.”

  “I am very well, thank you.”

  “Ah. I was thinking of the soldiers this afternoon.”

  “What soldiers?” the older women asked in unison.

  Jacob noticed Retha move from one bare foot to the other. “Two soldiers blocked Sister Retha’s way across the Square this afternoon and I—”

  “No, they didn’t.” Retha cut him off. “I was safe as safe could be. They only brought more laundry—”

  “—and I sent them on their way,” Jacob concluded.

  The two older women stepped aside with her, and all three whispered violently. Jacob couldn’t make out their words, but he knew trouble when he saw it, Retha’s—and his.

  Lantern light gilded her hair, which flowed unbound over her shoulders and down her back. Lush, beautiful hair. It was a sight for her husband and no one else. He looked away, but not soon enough. How it had fanned in the moonlight as she danced. His insides twisted with longing to touch it.

  A man should have a woman. He needed one. This one.

  He had no idea why Sister Retha would have crossed the creek, but he had seen it all, wakeful and restless, thinking about the complaints made against his children at his meeting with the Elders. Moonlight washed the night, but they slept soundly. Even Anna Johanna, whose sad little dress he had just hung up to dry.

  The three women returned, grimly silent. He hadn’t caught a whispered word but recognized the tone. Chastisement. Retha was in trouble. Somehow his presence made it worse.

  Of course. Sister Krause knew that he had asked for Retha by the lot. Now she found Retha outside at night, half-dressed.

  And he had the great misfortune just then to step out of his house. What was Sister Krause thinking?

  For that matter, what should he think?

  He tried to catch Retha’s gaze, but she studied the plank walk. Defiantly, he thought. When the Sisters nudged her to leave, Jacob offered to escort them all across the Square.

  “Thank you,” said Sister Krause, firmly placing herself between him and Retha.

  Jacob recognized the tactic. The Single Sisters were formidable in defense of their own. At the low stoop of the Sisters House, Jacob pleasantly said his goodnights in order of seniority. “Good night, Sister Holder. Good night, Sister Krause.” Then he glanced down.

  An enticingly slender, outrageously bare foot paused at the threshold.

  What could he think?

  “Good night, Sister Retha,” he mustered.

  She looked at
him with daring, questioning eyes darkened by the night. Intimate eyes.

  His heart leaped. She wanted something from him, but what?

  “Good night, Brother Blum,” she whispered, and disappeared from him for the second time that day.

  Her unasked question kept him awake till moonset.

  CHAPTER 2

  Retha had thought she could bear blood.

  Against the hot afternoon light flooding the scullery of Gemein Haus, she held up the lieutenant’s dripping linen shirt and shuddered. Blood stained one shoulder down to the narrow tucks that marched across its breast. The brown stain reminded her queasily of the blood oozing from her wolf’s injured leg.

  Shaking her head to dispel a fear she couldn’t name, she drenched the shirt in the waist-high wooden washtub. Better to think about her present predicament than allow that nameless fear to gnaw at her. To think about the Single Sisters catching her last night, about facing the consequences this morning in Rosina Krause’s immaculate office, about losing freedoms she had worked for all these years.

  Sister Sarah Holder had broken the news. “You know we have only your best interests at heart.”

  “We need help in the laundry anyway,” Rosina Krause added.

  “But my dyes—”

  “Your dyes and whatever else you were up to last night have gotten you into a great deal of trouble.”

  “Trouble! The town depends on my dyes. I make money for us.” Retha ground her teeth. She knew more about dyes than anyone in Salem. After the town’s appointed dyer had been dismissed, she had supplied Traugott Bagge’s store.

  “That’s not the trouble I meant,” Sister Rosina said.

  Her tone sparked rebellion in Retha’s heart. For a moment she considered the stoic forbearance she had learned from the Cherokee. She had done no wrong.

  “Besides, there really is a lot of laundry since Sister Eva has left us to become Sister Ernst,” old Sarah added cheerfully.