by Laura Frantz
She chewed on a piece of bacon. “Maddie and Jude don’t eat with you?”
“Sometimes.”
“How’d you make their acquaintance?”
He swallowed a last bite, washing it down with more coffee. “In the last war. Jude was a hostler and Maddie a laundress with the army under Braddock.”
“And you?”
“Spy. Scout. Sharpshooter.”
“How’d you come to talk Indian?” Unlike some, she asked carefully, her voice respectful. Free of distaste.
“I was taken as a boy by the Lenape.”
She stopped eating and refilled her tea. “Like Keturah.”
“Aye.” He steeled himself for more questions, but none came. Yet he sensed they simmered beneath the surface and would be asked and answered in time. He had a few for her, but they too would wait.
For now, it was enough to enjoy the novelty of her homespun company. In this room there were no airs, no pretense, no rules, no noose-tight stock pinching his sunburnt neck. Just a simple man and woman thrust together by a fearsome wrinkle of a woman who might well be hovering outside the blockhouse door.
He couldn’t resist a final, amused parry. “There are so many men here and so few women that your aunt has little reason to ply her matchmaking skills.”
“Aye, but Great-Aunt Hester is besotted with you.”
“And you’re not?”
“Nay.” A downward sweep of her lashes. “I’ve had my fill of five brothers. No need to add a husband.”
“A husband is an altogether different matter than a brother.”
“A man’s a man,” she said quietly. “You’re all a hand at snoring and scratching yourselves, belching, and making a mighty mess of laundry.”
This was uttered with such spirit that he nearly spat out his coffee as he laughed. “Mind if I start calling you the Spinster Swan?”
“Doesn’t pain me.”
“Neither does it cure Hester’s matchmaking.”
“I’d be pleased to tell her you’re promised to somebody overmountain,” she offered.
“That would be a lie.” The perfumed, pampered Miss Penrose flashed to mind and was quickly set aside. He refilled his coffee. “If it eases you any, I’m here to defend the settlement, not marry into it.”
“A shame, Colonel.” A finger of light from the open door turned her eyes purple as a blooming thistle. “If you change your mind, there’s a few unwed women and two young widows within Fort Tygart’s walls.”
He sat back, looking to his desk across the room and the stack of correspondence and ledgers that needed tending. “I’m more in need of spies.”
“Spies are hard to keep alive.” Her face clouded. “You might have better luck with a wife. Then you’d no longer have Hester to do for you and we’d both be free of her badgering.”
She spoke simply. Logically. Like one of her brothers might. Despite her noncommittal words, he was taking too much stock in her company. “How goes it with Keturah?”
Something flickered in her eyes. “She’s quiet. Keeps close to Ma.” A slight smile. “She recollects how to milk.”
A rooster crowed outside, nearly snuffing his words. “I’ve sent a post east to print in city papers about her return.”
“So her kin might happen upon it?” She looked downcast now, staring at her empty plate. “I’d hoped she’d settle here in time. Once I wished she’d make a match with Jasper. He’s nigh on thirty now.”
The eldest Swan. He tripped over her brothers’ names and faces at times, as they looked and spoke alike. “Before the Indians took her, was there some tie?”
“She was awful young back then, but aye, seems like. She always took to Jasper and he was always teasing her. But here lately . . .”
“But?”
“Jasper wants her gone.” Her voice dropped as if she was afraid of being overheard. She fixed her gaze over his shoulder, staring at the buffalo robe pegged to the wall behind him. “Says she’s now more red than white and will likely return to the Indians.”
He mulled this a moment. “What happened to your pa?” Whatever had become of Mister Swan bled through to Jasper’s regard of Keturah, likely.
Swallowing, firming her chin, she answered, “Tomahawked at the ferry three years back. Jasper found him first.”
“I’m sorry.” He meant it. He’d seen his own parents slain as a boy. The horrific memory was like a brand, embedded deep. Nobody could blame Jasper for shunning Keturah, yet Tessa and Mistress Swan made a bold bid to keep her at their cabin. To them she was clearly innocent, a helpless survivor of her circumstances.
Tessa met his eyes again. “Do you think she’ll return to the Indians?”
Would she? “Time will answer.”
A sudden shadow turned their attention to the door. Keturah stood there in Maddie’s borrowed garments, sunlight illuminating her white-gold hair. She’d wrapped her long braid about her head in a sort of crown. Maddie’s doing?
“Come in,” he told her with a welcoming motion.
Keturah hesitated, gaze rising to the wood rafters. In a touching gesture, Tessa rose from her seat, went to the door, and took her hand, leading her to the table. Sitting down at Tessa’s bidding, Keturah watched as Tessa served what was left of their breakfast.
Keturah tasted the tea with some curiosity, then eyed the bread. “Indian mush cakes?” she asked him in Lenape.
“Hoecakes,” he replied in English, watching as she spread them with butter and poured a generous amount of sweetening on top.
He eyed his desk again, still impatient to begin but feeling pleasantly full of far more than breakfast.
He owed Hester.
12
Tessa began removing dirty dishes, humming beneath her breath the song she and Clay had sung. After setting things in order here she’d best find her brothers, who seemed in no hurry to leave the garrison. With Jasper now captain of the militia, he’d no doubt be at the fort more than their homeplace. Whereas once this would have pained her, now it brought an odd relief. She’d count on Lemuel to light a fire under the others and get them back to the Buckhannon. For now, she must make peace with the sight and sound of Keturah and Clay at the table, speaking mostly Lenape.
“Achsuntuimunschi,” Keturah said, reaching for the molasses.
“The stone tree, aye,” he replied. “The white word is sugar tree. Maple.”
Keturah repeated it in halting tones before taking a bite.
“The stone tree?” Tessa ran a cloth over the table to catch crumbs. “Why is it called such?”
“On account of maple being hardwood,” Clay explained. “Keturah’s sorry to have missed sugar season, being at Fort Pitt.”
Sugar making with the Indians—or the settlers? Returning to the hearth, Tessa banked the hot coals and adjusted the crane, refilling the kettle in case Clay wanted more coffee or tea.
He and Keturah made a striking sight. Did he sense Keturah’s fondness for him? Note the way her eyes followed him? Even now as he pushed back from the table and moved to his desk, she watched him from beneath her lashes.
The significance of it made Tessa’s stomach clench. Was Keturah sweet on the colonel? Well, why wouldn’t she be? He was striking as the day was long with his mismatched eyes. He spoke the Indian tongue, had even rescued her from Fort Pitt. All the makings of a hero, a fairy tale. Though he’d spoken against marrying, Keturah seemed to suit somehow.
“There you are.” Ma hovered in the doorway, smiling approvingly at Keturah’s breakfasting and Tessa’s tidying up. “Both my girls.”
“Morning, Mistress Swan,” Clay said as he inked a quill.
“Fine day to you, sir,” she returned. Behind her appeared Ross, who squeezed past his mother and approached the colonel’s onerous desk.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Hat in hand, Ross eyed the commander with a dash of awe.
Clay signed a document and set aside his quill before turning toward the youngest Swan. “I hear you’re q
uite a hand with a rifle.”
“Fixing and firing them, aye, sir,” Ross replied with a marked flush.
“Can we count on you for the militia muster?”
“Aye, sir.” Ross turned banty rooster before Tessa’s scrutiny. “And more besides.”
Hiding a chuckle, Tessa moved her mother’s way. “Ready, Ma?”
“If the colonel gives us leave to go,” she replied.
“The latest scouting party should return by dusk.” Clay stood, an ink stain on his sleeve. “I’d advise delaying your leaving till we’ve heard their report.”
“Might behoove us,” Ma answered. “I’m sure Hester won’t mind.”
Tessa went outside, breathing deeply of the fresh air. Passing from blockhouse to common, she squinted at the brightness. The damp of the night before had given way to the bloom of day. Heat shimmers would soon skew her view as the day soared to summery heights. Her gaze trailed to Hester puffing on her clay pipe on the cabin’s stone stoop. The pungent smoke held still in the windless air.
“And how,” Hester queried between smokes, “did the colonel like his breakfast?”
“He made no complaint.”
“A mite crowded in there with Keturah.”
“Nay, Auntie. The blockhouse is room enough for the entire militia.” Sensing what would come next, Tessa added, “I’ll not make his noon meal, mind you.”
A sharp cackle. Oddly, Hester seemed satisfied. “No matter. Plenty of meat left from last night. You might fetch some fresh water. This heat turned yesterday’s brackish.”
Taking two pails near the woodpile, Tessa headed toward the far end of the fort, glad for the welcoming shade of the lone elm by the spring. A few women made small talk as they drew water, children wending between their skirts. A peaceful morn after a frolicsome, abruptly ended night.
For a moment she stood, eyes closed, and savored the morning. Maybe in time, when no more bullet lead or arrows flew, these forbidding pickets would be taken down and used to build a dwelling fit for a family.
“Well, if it ain’t Miss Swan.”
The warm voice turned her around. “Morning, Maddie. Just call me Tessa, aye?”
Maddie smiled, brows raised. “Where’d you disappear to last night? All that dancin’ wear you out?”
“I went to hunt for a book.” Tessa set the water pails down. “Betimes I’d rather read.”
“Who learned you?”
“Keturah’s ma.” In the blur of years she’d almost forgotten.
“Next time you go nosin’ around, try the west blockhouse. Clay has a whole saddlebag of books.”
“Army manuals and such?”
“History books mostly. Poems and novels. From Philly-delphia.”
“Is he jealous of them?”
“Jealous? Meanin’ he won’t share ’em?” Maddie gave a decisive shake of her head. “Clay’s many things, but tightfisted he ain’t.”
High praise. Maddie, she was coming to realize, never said a sorry word about anyone. A rare trait in the fort’s close confines. But might she be in league with Hester, wanting to do a little matchmaking through book borrowing? The fanciful thought was quickly cast aside. Maddie knew better than to foist a woman on Clayton Tygart.
“You two seem on friendly terms. Maybe you could borrow a book for me.” Could Maddie read? Most could only mark an X for their name, her brothers included. “I’m the only Swan who can read and write save Hester.”
“You, Hester, and Clay are the only learned folk I know hereabouts. Oh, and that storekeeper, Mister Cutright.”
Maddie’s admiration gave Tessa a quiet pride. “Where’d Colonel Tygart get his learning?”
“At the Friends School in Philly-delphia.”
Plain folk. She’d almost forgotten. “Quakers?”
A solemn nod. “Clay don’t talk much about it. Was took by Indians before that. Once his kin got him back, he was wild as an unbroke horse, and only the Friends could tame him.”
Another missing piece of the colonel’s history fell into place. All that learning made a fine gloss, yet she still sensed an unbowed beat of wildness beneath his cool courtesy.
“I suppose the Friends did themselves proud.” Tessa bit her lip to stem further praise and began drawing water. Balancing the full-to-the-brim buckets, she bade Maddie good day. “Best hasten back. Come by Hester’s and have some flip with us tonight. We shan’t leave out till morning.”
“All right.” Maddie unwound the yellow handkerchief from about her neck, wet it in the spring, and wrung out the cloth before donning it again.
Tessa set down her buckets and lifted her apron to dab at the sweat beading her own upper lip. Near the front gates, Lemuel sat atop his favored white-stockinged bay horse. Was he going home? She watched him depart with a check in her spirit, yet Lem’s heart for the land was always greater than his fear of Indians. Two days away from the fields meant twice the work on his return.
“Hotter than Hades,” he called to them at the last, lifting his hat in farewell as the gates swung open. “I misdoubt even the Indians are about in this heat.”
Ma’s mouth formed a solemn, wordless line as she watched her beloved son ride away. And Tessa wondered, did Ma quietly frame him in her head and heart in case it might be her last sight of him alive?
They returned to their simple tasks within fort walls, the same stroke of uncertainty beneath all they did. Hester read aloud from an old Virginia Gazette as if to distract them from their cares.
“Well, wonders never cease.” She raised her monocle and peered at the paper. “Just listen to this. ‘A newly invented instrument for knitted, knotted, double-looped work, to make stockings, breeches pieces, or silk gloves, cotton or worsted.’”
“A knitting-machine frame?” Ma shook her head. “I’ll take my two hands, thank you.”
Tessa’s own knitting needles flew, her face turned to the window to catch a cooling breeze. To rest her eyes, she sometimes paused and looked out the window. The fort’s activity was never dull, its commander never idle.
Even now Clay walked with a purpose as he left the blockhouse, stooping to the humble chore of redding up the common as he walked. He spent a fair amount of time with Ruth’s blacksmith father at the smithy, where the ring of the hammer and the hiss of the quenching bucket never ceased, though he seemed most preoccupied with the magazine, the garrison’s precious store of gunpowder. Her brothers accompanied him at times as they examined this or that. All watched the gates as if anticipating the return of the spies.
An afternoon at the window had gained more gawking than knitting. An unfinished pair of stockings was proof. Tessa hid them in the basket she’d brought from home. She rubbed her neck, stiff from looking sideways so long.
As the sun sank behind the westernmost trees, Hester prepared stew for supper, the kettle a-simmer with wild onions, potatoes, and leftover meat from the frolic.
“Set out nine bowls and spoons,” Hester told her. “Then make extra cornbread.”
Glad for another task, Tessa emptied the cupboard of dishes, then went about making batter from the corn Keturah had ground.
“Serve those persimmon preserves I’ve been saving for company. The pickles and head cheese too.”
Company meant more than Keturah, likely. With Lemuel gone, she counted eight at supper. Was the extra place, the head of the table, reserved for the colonel?
Time soon told. Changing out of her grease-spackled apron for a clean, cambric one of Hester’s, Tessa noticed her great-aunt didn’t squawk at her borrowing as she sometimes did. The mirror’s cracked reflection had her repinning her flyaway hair and cap, the ruffled edge as ragged as she herself felt. Closing her eyes, she found her thoughts full of a fragmented verse.
Strength and honor are her clothing . . . she shall rejoice in time to come.
’Twas one of Ma’s beloved Scriptures, oft spoken at wit’s end when heartache and uncertainty pressed in. To remember it now seemed to renew her courage, strai
ghten her shoulders. She wasn’t fancy, but she had the Bible to bolster her. She would be a woman of strength and honor, however humble.
When Clay appeared in the cabin’s open door, holding something behind his back and looking cleaned up, her insides did a little dance. He greeted her mother and Hester, saying something in both Lenape and English to Keturah, who responded in kind.
“Miss Swan.” His voice turned her away from the looking glass.
Had he seen her preening? How like her mother she sounded with her formal words, “Colonel Tygart, do come in.”
The women around them stayed busy while Tessa crossed the distance, hating the fire he’d raised on her face. She wished her brothers would come tumbling in.
“What have you behind your back?” she asked him.
His gaze lit with mischief. “Guess.”
She drew back a bit. “I’m used to men—boys—hiding things. Snakes and toads and the like.”
He chuckled, stepping aside as Zadock entered. “A small gift for the Spinster Swan.”
The teasing in his tone tickled her. “Give me a hint, aye?”
He paused, a small scar she hadn’t noticed before stealing her attention. It ran like a whipstitch beneath his blue eye. This close she saw that he had especially long, dark lashes, maybe even longer than her own.
He held out a small, brown-skinned book. Maddie had told him of her hankering to read, then. Could he tell she was glad to the heart?
“Does poetry suit you?” He regarded her intently as if ready to return to Philadelphia or at least the blockhouse for something else instead.
“Aye, though I’ve had little of it.” Taking the offering, she clutched the book to her chest. “I’ve yet to meet a borderman with poetry in his soul.”
“A few words, aye. ‘Beside some water’s rushy brink with me the Muse shall sit, and think.’” His voice, agreeable enough in song, was doubly so in verse. “The poet Thomas Gray.”
She pinked again despite herself. His sudden intensity was not the antidote she needed to root out this sudden and silly enchantment. Nor did it help when Hester placed them side by side at supper. As if sensing Keturah’s fondness for the colonel, Hester seated her by Ma at the table’s opposite end.
