An Uncommon Woman

by Laura Frantz

  Once inside Great-Aunt Hester’s cabin, Tessa leaned her rifle in a corner. Cornbread baked a deep buttery gold sat at the hearth, and a pie, likely made of last season’s dried apples, cooled on a table. Pewter plates and tankards were placed just so, the eldest Swan exacting even in old age.

  “Tessa, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Hester said as she bent to poke a pot of beans.

  Tessa gave her a peck on the cheek. “Need a hand, Auntie?”

  “Set out this round of cheese and the last of the quince preserves.”

  Despite Hester’s spinsterhood, the cabin had a comfortable feel full of homespun touches, unlike the temporary quarters of those who dashed in when an alarm was raised, then scurried out again when the country was calm.

  Ross appeared for supper, though her other brothers remained at the wall. A few others joined them, in need of feeding. The Swans were a generous lot, with ties to Williamsburg and Philadelphia. Talk even now turned to overmountain. Tessa reckoned she was one of the have-nots, born and bred on the frontier, hearing about such faraway places secondhand.

  After all but Ross returned to their posts, Hester served sassafras tea. “Two Swan spinsters are too many.” She began her familiar rant, darting a stern look Tessa’s way. “Thankfully, with so few women here, there’s a blessed glut of men to choose from.”

  Tessa breathed in the beloved scent of sassafras as her own cup was filled, shutting out Hester’s timeworn words. Spring tonic, sassafras. When sweetened with maple sugar, no finer remedy could be had.

  “I’d rather talk about Jasper,” Ma said after a sip from her own cracked treenware cup. “He promised to bring flower seed from overmountain. I’ve a mind to plant a tea garden. Liberty tea, it’s called.”

  “Oh? And what is this so-called liberty tea?” Ross teased as he reached for the last piece of cornbread. “We are anything but at liberty.”

  “Likely the Indians will cut down that sort of nonsense too.” Hester’s words were punctuated by a gunshot. “Save your seed for more peaceful times.”

  Tessa said no more as another shot rang out. So, the fracas had begun. Talk was pointless amid so much noise.

  Ross left the cabin, cornbread in hand, shutting the door after him. The women sat listening. A baby cried and the corralled animals near the fort’s front gates began making frightful noises of discontent. Already the biting smoke of black powder snuck between the cabin’s chinking, snuffing the fragrance of sassafras.

  Steeling herself, Tessa bowed her head briefly.

  Lord, let it end soon, please. Spare Tygart, whoever he is, the sorry spectacle of his fort under siege.

  4

  Clay took in the distant, dark silhouette of Fort Pitt. Of all the frontier outposts, Pitt had the most presence. Bordered by three rivers that were nothing short of jaw-dropping no matter the season, Pitt was a behemoth of brick and earth and stone, a formidable stronghold, the celebrated gateway to the west. Now, overfull from the spring thaw, the entangled waters held a special sheen, unspooling to faraway places.

  The Monongahela River he knew best. It flowed north and was a mere hundred or so miles in length, shallow enough to walk across in places, leading south toward Virginia and the fort that bore his name. He preferred the seldom-seen waters farther west, the Indian-sacred Muskingum and Tuscarawas and White Woman of his former life.

  For now, they’d reprovision at Pitt after a week’s travel. Digest any news before journeying on.

  Clay reported to Captain Edmonstone while Jude and Maddie found lodging at Semple’s beyond fort walls. Bypassing swaggering soldiers and sotted traders, steely-eyed Indian guides and half bloods, Clay gained the garrison’s inner sanctum only to be steered beyond its walls to the newest commandant’s house, a fine brick building with cut stone steps.

  “After a brief time of peace following the last treaty, there’s fresh trouble,” Edmonstone told him straightaway, gesturing to a large map spread across a table. He jabbed an ink-stained finger toward the westernmost Virginia border. “Numerous raids, large and small. A great many scalpings and captives taken. Most of the unrest seems to originate with the Shawnee. You’ll muster a much-needed militia at Fort Tygart, where settlement is the heaviest and danger is the thickest. Pick your spies and send them out to scout with care. There are many able bordermen who should serve you and the government well, the Swans, Clendennins, and Schoolcrafts foremost.”

  Noting the settlers’ names, Clay studied the map. Though Pitt was virtually immune to Indian attack, word was that the British no longer wanted the encumbrance of so costly an outpost, no matter how well fortified and strategically placed. Ransoming captives, making treaties with the tribes, and supervising the oft-brawling Indian traders was what Pitt did best. Though subject to the king’s and Parliament’s whims and dictates, Pitt turned a blind eye on the tide of settlers flooding west despite the king’s waffling displeasure. The lure of the land was too great.

  That night Clay, Jude, and Maddie sat down in the crowded dining room.

  “Semple’s is becoming quite proper,” Maddie said, eyeing their linen-clad table and fellow diners. “I spy John Connelly, agent of Virginia’s royal governor, over in the corner.”

  “Mistress Semple’s famed kin, aye,” Clay answered.

  Jude picked up a serviette suspiciously, accustomed to his shirtsleeve. “You fancy yourself back in Philly?”

  Maddie offered a wide smile. “After time on the trail, I’m just glad for a fork and a chair.”

  Semple’s did not disappoint. Venison collops and fried catfish aplenty, even mincemeat pie. Dishes were passed even after Clay pushed his plate away.

  Jude took an eager bite of pie. Stopped chewing. Tried to swallow. “That crust wouldn’t break beneath a wagon wheel.”

  Bypassing the pie, Clay tasted the bracing coffee. Black as hades but nothing to complain about.

  “I heard tell Colonel Washington likes to lodge at Semple’s when he’s here,” Maddie said, stirring cream into her cup. “And that the best rooms are reserved for him, some secret bower the rest of us plain folk never see.”

  “He’s one officer I wouldn’t mind crossing paths with again. I ain’t seen Wash since Braddock’s defeat in ’55.” Jude took another stab at the pie. “He’s got some powerful medicine taking four bullets through his coat and two horses shot from under him and living to tell the tale.”

  Clay pondered Washington’s miraculous escape till the commotion in the tavern foyer stole his attention. Unruly dogs barked outside while a burly man in an Indian blanket stood at the dining room’s entrance, gaze settling on Clay.

  Alexander McKee, Fort Pitt’s Indian agent.

  With a slight limp, McKee made his way to their table, shook hands, and took a seat. A harried serving girl brought him coffee, then refilled Clay’s own cup.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Tygart.” McKee drank half the brew in two swallows, hot as it was. “You’re headed for the Buckhannon settlement, Edmonstone tells me. Still aim to leave out soon as you’re provisioned?”

  “Day after tomorrow, likely.”

  McKee said nothing for a full minute. In the time he’d been an Indian agent, he’d absorbed some of their reflective, taciturn ways. “A fortnight ago, a prisoner exchange took place. The Lenape surrendered a young woman thought to be from the Buckhannon River country.”

  Clay remained as stoic as McKee. “Her name?”

  “We don’t know for certain. She won’t speak. One of the men who served in the Buckhannon militia remembers her. Said she’s daughter to a Dutch family by the name of Braam who was raided a few years back.”

  “And you want me to return her to her kin.”

  “If there’s any left, aye.”

  Clay mulled this latest development, making no promises. Former captives were fraught with complications. Some were glad to return to their white families. Others balked. Which would Miss Braam be? And if she didn’t talk . . .

  “Might be a good ti
me to travel with another woman along.” Maddie’s voice was quiet. Thoughtful.

  Clay rubbed his whiskered jaw. “Best make her acquaintance first.”

  “She’s no trouble,” McKee said gruffly. “Keeps to herself mostly. Partial to sewing and beadwork. But quite frankly, I’m concerned for her safety.”

  Clay eyed him with intensity till he explained himself.

  “She draws too much notice. Some of the men even ask for extra guard duty just so they can be near her. I’ve never seen a woman so . . .” He paused, searching for the right word, clearly flummoxed. “Womanly.”

  Maddie smiled. Jude chuckled. Clay tried to gauge just what that meant. McKee was not given to praise or overstatement. Simply put, the returned captive was pretty enough she put herself at risk. Fort Pitt was overrun with soldiers, traders, drunkards, even criminals. Given time, someone would break into the blockhouse or accost her on the street. McKee wanted her gone.

  “I’ve seen a lot of women, Indian and white, French and British and half bloods. She’s an uncommon one,” McKee concluded.

  Jude rubbed his furrowed brow. “Why you reckon she don’t speak? Been gone so long she forgot her mother tongue?”

  McKee finished his coffee and stood. “Mayhap she doesn’t want to remember.”

  The next forenoon, Clay and Maddie trudged through a steady spring rain with its accompanying ankle-deep mud to Fort Pitt’s westernmost blockhouse. An armed sentry stood guard at the blockhouse’s massive door.

  “We’re here to see the returned captive,” Clay said.

  With a nod, the sentry thrust the door open. Clay and Maddie stepped into a shadowed interior lit by lantern light. His gaze fell on a figure sitting on an Indian blanket along one far wall. Shoulders slightly bent, the young woman did not look up, engrossed in the beadwork trailing across her lap and in her hands. Her world seemed to extend no farther than her trade blanket.

  Maddie hung back as Clay moved forward. Taking a cue from the former captive, he lowered himself to the floor just beyond one woolen edge. Only then did she look up. And in that fleeting, lantern-lit instant, Clay understood the Indian agent’s concern.

  Flawless.

  Mesmerizing azure eyes. Braids of woven white-gold. Bone structure a bewitching blend of lofty lines and pleasing angles, lips full and unsmiling. Even seated, he could tell she was tall and lithe. Yet bosomy and narrow-waisted. And dressed as a Lenape down to the thunderbird and tortoise design on her moccasins. On each high cheekbone was a dot of red paint gotten from the bloodroot plant. Her parted hairline bore a telltale red streak.

  He swallowed past his astonishment and gave the customary Lenape greeting. “Hè, kulamàlsi hàch?”

  She looked away from him, and he sensed her surprise though she did not show it. And then her attention returned to her handwork. Nary a word did she speak.

  Reaching out, he took a cluster of wampum beads in hand. He’d always been partial to purple. Small baskets were scattered around her, each holding the decorative items the Indians were so fond of. Dyed quills. Glass beads. Small, metal tinkling cones. Bright ribbon. Trade silver. Feathers. Even a small pot of vermillion, the prized color of every tribe. How long had she been with the Lenape? The artistry of her handwork bespoke years.

  He continued quietly in Lenape. “Tomorrow when the sun is two fingers high we will follow the Monongahela south to the back settlements. Just you, me, the woman you see behind me, and a man named Jude. You’ll ride a mare with your belongings. My intent is to return you to your white kin.”

  Her slender hands stilled.

  “The Indian agent here believes you are called Miss Braam. Your people settled along the Buckhannon River in western Virginia prior to the raid that took you away from them years ago. If you know different, you need to tell me, else we’ll begin a fruitless chase.”

  Her lips parted. Would she speak? A voice seemed the very soul of a person. Much could be had by its pitch and tone, its peculiar resonance. Like a moccasin print, no two alike, a voice was one’s own unique possession. And if it was as fetching as all the rest of her . . .

  He released the wampum he held, the beads making a faint tinkling sound. His last look at her before he pulled himself to his feet left him gut-wrenched.

  A single tear slid down her pale cheek, trailing to her jawline, then falling to a dark splotch on the coarse weave of her blue duffel skirt.

  All at once, Maddie was beside him, holding out a brightly dyed Philadelphia handkerchief. But would the woman take it? Lashes lowered, she reached out gracefully, even gratefully, and accepted the offering.

  A good beginning.

  Clay paused. Repeated the hour of their leave-taking, this time in English. Best get used to the white man’s talk if she was to live among them.

  Miss Braam, if that was who she was, did not look his way again.

  5

  Two days the siege wore on and then the shooting sputtered to a slow stop on both sides. Sleepless, Tessa grew winded in running hot bullets in her apron to waiting guns, finally replacing a man at the wall whose elbow had been shattered by a musket ball. Sighting and firing, she ignored the thudding of a headache determined to crack her skull. A smoky haze lay about Fort Tygart, not all of it from the discharge of black powder. The Indians had set ablaze a few outlying buildings, namely the corncribs, which held the little sustenance left to them at winter’s end. Till the gardens came in, the settlers would live on game and more game till their whole being cried out for bread.

  Parched, she took a long swallow from a gourd dipper and piggin that Ruth brought round.

  “It’s finally dying down.” Ruth looked as beleaguered as Tessa felt. “Maybe by morning we’ll shed this place.”

  If so, Fort Tygart had done its namesake proud. Not one man had fallen and only a few injured. Spirits stayed high, and a good deal of talk during the lull was about the coming of the war hero. Scraps of it returned to her now as she resumed her place at the loophole, her gaze on the still, smoky clearing.

  Tall, Tygart is . . . From fine Philadelphia stock . . . English Quakers . . . Acquitted himself well in the Battle of the Wilderness by using Indian tactics, even war paint, during ambushes . . . Rescued valuable papers and a military chest containing thirty thousand pounds from the French . . . Known to shoot a man at 250 yards, the enemy fleeing like chickens before a fox . . . A devilish brave fella.

  All thought of a pretty petticoat was pushed aside.

  Then came the hour that wreaked the most havoc in Tessa’s spirit, the pall after the siege, that chancy hour when the newly hewn gates of the fort were cautiously opened. First a crack as they waited for a flicker of opposition, then flung treacherously wide to allow the unshaven, exhausted, bleary-eyed settlers out. The hair on the back of Tessa’s neck rose at such times, though her brothers surrounded her, some afoot and some on horseback.

  She missed Jasper, the eldest, with a soul-clenching fierceness. Was he on his way back to them, laden with salt and needful things from parts east? Circling her and Ma were Ross, Lemuel, Zadock, and Cyrus, each reminding her of Pa in different ways. Jasper, possibly the most fearsome of the Swans, was sorely needed.

  She tensed for a sudden commotion—outright ambush—during the league home, as wary fellow settlers sought their own outlying farms. Once at Swan Station there’d be animals to tend, the ferry to check, supper to fix. All within easy reach of a rifle. For now, the woods were downright boastful, bedecked in blossoming dogwood and redbud at every turn.

  “Tessa,” Ma remarked when they broke the silence within view of their cabin, “Hester asked about you coming to the fort for a spell.”

  “What for?” she asked, dismounting.

  “I expect she has courting in mind. Way out here . . .” Ma left off.

  The age-old concern weighed on Tessa’s spirit.

  Way out here, busy from daylight to dark with nary a man in sight, what prospects have you for a husband, a family?

  “I’ll
scout the ferry.” Ross spoke in measured tones. “See if any more mischief’s been made along the river.”

  “I’m in,” Lemuel replied, the two melting into the newly leafed brush.

  “May’s a-wasting,” Zadock muttered. He was always the last for meals and worked far into the dusk, hating labor lost from Indian unrest. “Glad we weren’t gone at corn planting.” He and Cyrus moved carefully into the clearing, taking quiet account of their cabin and outbuildings, the outlying gardens and fields and fences.

  Tessa betook herself to her favorite place, the springhouse. ’Twas Pa’s legacy as a stonemason, a two-story stone marvel built over a limestone spring that bubbled up in a cellar, passed out an opening in the wall through a long, deep trough, and then meandered away through the western meadow. Always cool, unmoved by arrows or buckshot or fire, the springhouse seemed a promise of peace, of better days to come despite the loopholes in its walls.

  Shutting her eyes, Tessa breathed in the smell of cold water and crockery, a reminder of her need to gather splint wood for baskets, particularly yellow birch when the new sap was running. Tarry too long and the wood wouldn’t budge. She had in mind to plant a tea garden like Ma said, if Jasper remembered to bring the coveted seed. Little solaced her like harvesting and hanging bunches of herbs to sweeten the place.

  Returning to the cabin, Tessa drew an easier breath. All was as they’d left it, save some critter had gotten to the abandoned corncakes on the table, a scattering of crumbs left to sweep up. These she fed to the birds outside their door, her favorites being the mourning doves beneath their west eave, cooing again in late morn.

  All the while she held her breath as the steady routine of life took hold. No more rifle fire and choking smoke. No Indian cries that curdled the blood. No vexed, harried settlers obsessed with powder and bullet lead. No squalling babies and restive animals. Just quiet. Calm. Birdsong. The sigh of the wind around the cabin’s corners.