An Uncommon Woman

by Laura Frantz

  Mince tarts concluded the meal, served with strong coffee. Maddie and Jude joined them in time, filling the cabin to bursting. Talk and laughter ebbed and flowed, and as the night ripened Hester made her praiseworthy flip, beating up a froth of eggs, ale, and rum. Tessa took the new grater from her pocket and ground a dusting of nutmeg atop each cup, giving Clay an especially generous dash.

  Come morning, would the rest of the Swan clan leave? Or would a spy’s dire report forbid them? For once their slow return didn’t chafe, though she longed to know if Lemuel was well. If she had her druthers she’d take her book of poetry and retreat from so many eyes and ears, feel her soul take flight at a pretty turn of phrase. How she wished for a little of that refinement interwoven with the roughness that was Colonel Tygart. She was all homespun when what she craved was a bit of lace.

  In time, the men began a dice game. Tessa looked on as Clay explained the rules of play to her eager brothers. Inexplicably, Keturah became visibly excited at the rattle of the dice in the wooden cup, hovering over the men’s shoulders and watching their every move. The dice were cleverly painted peach pits, the scoring depending on which number landed atop the table. Here Clay had the upper hand, his every move confirming he’d played it long and well.

  “Mamantuhwin,” Keturah said to Tessa with a touch of pride, as if pleased to be teaching her for once.

  Tessa repeated the lengthy word as Jasper scored and the tension mounted. Would Clay win?

  Candles sank into their holders as the game reached fever pitch. Though Hester was yawning, she didn’t dare bring the rare merriment to an end.

  Quietly, Tessa slipped out into the May twilight to clear her head of the smoke and noise and cure her craving to watch Clay’s every move. Finding a crude bench at the heart of the common garden, she caressed the book’s smooth cover, breathing in the vanilla perfume of sweet rocket and phlox interwoven with the pungent spice of thyme and sage. Night insects winged about in swarms amid the lazy wink of fireflies. Bedtime at the fort was far later than at home. Yet neither Hester’s flip nor the late hour tired her. Lights were snuffed in the surrounding cabins one by one. A dog barked, and a baby gave a plaintive cry.

  ’Twas the first time she’d be sorry to face first light. No longer could she deny the reason why. The fort’s gates no longer spelled freedom but absence. Tonight her whole being stood on tiptoe because a man who’d left her addled by asking her to breakfast had addled her further with some poetry.

  Lightning struck, she was. To the bone.

  13

  Clay left Hester’s cabin not long after Tessa, his gaze circling the fort’s two enclosed acres. Rosemary passed him on her return from the necessary, likely. He doffed his hat. He’d not refer to her as widow as some did. The way Westfall eyed her, she’d not be widowed long.

  Above him, assigned men stood along the rifle platform, one of them yawning. He’d soon mount those steps come midnight watch. Hester’s flip had done its mellowing work for a time, but now his every sense was needlelike in its sharpness.

  Somehow he managed to lose sleep and still function when others fell into a stupor. Seasons of hunger and being on the move with the Lenape had toughened his frame and his temper, another reason this precariously situated fort bore his name.

  He paused at a loophole, scanning the stump-littered clearing that led to the river. The spies still hadn’t returned, a worrisome matter, though any minute they might ride in with good news or ill. If the country continued calm, they might overnight at some agreed-upon rendezvous place till first light. Thankfully there were no shirkers among them anxious to return to the fort for their own comfort. They served the settlement well.

  He walked on through the dark, finding all in order but for the incessant barking of a dog near the spring, the only flaw in the moonlit scene. Most of the fort folk were abed, the cabins shuttered, dark boxes.

  His moccasined feet trod the slight slope to the east corner, where the cur stood at bristle-backed attention as if desirous of charging that lofty picketed wall. Panther, likely. Jasper had spoken of seeing tracks.

  Kneeling, he spoke in Lenape, an old habit he’d never been able to shake around animals. Indians were notoriously fond of their dogs, and he’d come of age with Halfmoon, a lame pup given him at his adoption into the Wolf clan. Of all the things torn from him at his reentry into the white world, he’d missed Halfmoon most.

  He ran a callused hand down the dog’s rough back, then gave him a bone he’d picked up on the common. Returning the way he came, he listened, ears taut for the slightest sound. Indians weren’t often night raiders. They mostly struck at dawn after studying their intended target, be it farm or fort.

  He checked the locked magazine, the corralled horses, both gates. Bypassing the blackened hulk of the smithy, he skirted the garden, breathing in the scent of sun-warmed soil.

  A seated silhouette stopped him. Tessa? She’d left the cabin during their dice game, but he hadn’t thought much about it. The moon slipped free of a cloud, casting her in a gentle pool of light. Tonight her pale cap was the only ruffled thing about her. She looked serene, the poetry book he’d lent her in her aproned lap. Other times it seemed she’d rather spit than speak, like this morning when Hester had sent her to make his breakfast. Now she regarded him coolly, shoulders straight, showing no signs of the wear and tear of the day.

  “I thought you’d be abed,” he said in that candid, cut-to-the-chase way he’d never speak to a town-bred girl.

  “Hard to sleep of a night when it feels like summer.” There was no complaint in her tone, just honest appraisal of a stifling May eve.

  “You can tell your great-aunt I won’t be needing breakfast.”

  Her mouth twisted wryly. “Am I that sorry a cook, Colonel?”

  “Hardly. I’ll be out on a scout.” He wouldn’t add that her leaving in the morning was the reason that sent him beyond fort walls. Since sign had been noted near about the Swan homeplace, he wouldn’t rest with a secondhand report.

  She was studying him now—rather, his rifle, as if recognizing it for the work of art it was. Moonlight glinted off the brass inlays and mountings as the gun dangled from his hand.

  “Pennsylvania made, I’d wager,” she said. “Lancaster lines. Stocked in black walnut. Smoothbore. Twenty-nine balls to the pound is my guess.”

  He schooled his surprise. “Aye.”

  “Pa had a cumbersome Jäger.”

  “Have your own rifle?” It was a foregone conclusion, which another nod of her head confirmed. “Something tells me you’re a fine hand in a siege.”

  “I’m at the wall with the men most of the time. You won’t oft find me in the cabin.”

  Raised at the wall, no doubt. Buckhannon born and bred. Somehow it pained him that she had to make do with such. “Have you never left this valley?”

  “Nay.”

  “Ever want to?”

  “Aye.” No hesitation slowed her answer. “In the worst way.”

  Her delight over a small, saddle-bruised volume of poetry bespoke much. She hungered for things she hadn’t had, not all of them material. Namely the freedom to move about, to not dodge shadows. Though she was fresh as spring, she owned that same steadfast wariness that wore down both body and soul before its time. He knew because it owned him too.

  He rested his rifle on the ground. “If you could leave here, where would you go?”

  “Williamsburg or Philadelphia. I’ve a hankering to visit the ocean too, which I’ve only heard tell of. Something tells me you’d make a fine guide.”

  “If I was to squire you, I’d take you to Philadelphia. Bradford’s booksellers and the thriving Blue Anchor tavern might suit. Or the more refined London coffeehouse.” He paused, struck by the pleasure it brought him. “You could lodge at the Indian King, the finest ordinary I know, though I prefer the Conestoga or Black Bear Inn with their wagon yards. If it was fair we’d walk along the waterfront . . .”

  “You paint a pretty pict
ure but for one thing.” She looked down at her lap. “Overmountain I’d be naught but a fish out of water, as Chaucer says.”

  He grimaced and recalled his schooling, his disdain of Chaucer enduring. “If you can manage the frontier, you’d find town quite tame. Especially in a new bonnet to match that pretty petticoat.” His wink was likely lost on her in the darkness.

  “Who told you about my petticoat?” Rather than acting affronted, she gave him a delighted smile. “That rascal Jasper, likely.”

  Tipping his hat to her he excused himself with the deference he used in parlors. She bade him good night with a little laugh that lit up the darkness. What was it about her that made him want to tarry and tease her?

  ’Twas his turn at watch. If not, he might still be here come morning.

  Tessa’s lingering memories of the fort and frolic, particularly Clay’s banter about her petticoat and all the talk about town, were soon swallowed up by the return home and something else far more unsettling. Their first night back, she was kept awake by more than the itch of poison ivy she’d gotten while tending the flax.

  She tried to stay still, mindful of Keturah’s soft snoring on the floor beside her. Toward dawn, she woke, the pink haze of morning on the horizon, the trundle bed empty. She blinked, adjusting to the cabin’s dim lines. Had Jasper’s prediction come true? Had Keturah run off?

  By the time she reached the door, her dismay was bone deep. With Indian sign along the Buckhannon of late, why had Keturah risked the door being open? Because she was now more red than white and even her thinking had altered?

  As Tessa pondered it, her brothers began to stir on the other side of the log wall. If Jasper had been the one to find the door ajar, Keturah would no longer be welcome.

  Raising her rifle, she pushed open the door farther with her foot, body tucked to one side of the door frame. The cabin clearing was still heavily shadowed, but nothing seemed out of place. No queer bird call or movement marred the sultry morning.

  Already her shift stuck to her in places, though it fell just below her knee and would allow her to run if needs be. She waited. Watched. Stepped outside. Snuff came out from behind the woodpile, tail wagging.

  Safe, then.

  She lowered her gun and went in search of Keturah. A footprint in the moist dirt by the smokehouse pointed north. Through the brush she trod, unsurprised when she came into the tangled overgrowth of the abandoned Braam homestead.

  Keturah was near the well, head bent like a broken flower stem. Crying—more a keening—turned the dawn eerie, the sound unlike any Tessa had ever heard as it bespoke anguish.

  Setting her rifle aside, Tessa walked toward her, wishing Ma was near. Tears were so contrary to her nature she felt bewildered in the face of them. Her brothers’ unwavering stoicism was far easier to take.

  Kneeling on the ground beside Keturah, she felt the heavy dew wet her shift. Might it be time to use the one word she knew in Lenape, thanks to Clay? She’d practiced saying it in private till the word became natural on her tongue.

  “Winkalit.” Unsure of what it meant, she awaited some response.

  Keturah raised her head and studied her, her welling eyes a spectacle of pain.

  Tessa repeated the word, praying it held some meaning, some solace.

  “Winkalit.” Keturah nodded, chin quivering. “Friend . . . you are my friend.”

  Bereft of other Lenape words, Tessa pulled the discarded doll from her pocket. A flicker of recognition? Keturah’s fingers wrapped round the offering in unmistakable wonder. She brought the doll to her chest, her watery gaze returning to the empty cabin. Unable to look at her friend for the ache in her chest, Tessa stared unseeing at the ground. In the forlorn light of early morn came a shared, crushing sorrow. For girlhood. For what was gone, never to be regained. Tessa bit her lip till it nearly bled.

  “Ma will worry,” she finally said softly. “Best be home.”

  In time they got to their feet. Tessa retrieved her rifle, then took Keturah by the hand much as they’d done when they were small. Together they wended through the woods to the Swans’ clearing, where they were met with the whack of an axe and two belled cows ready for milking. Ma stood in the doorway, her watchful expression fading to relief when she saw them. The taint of burnt toast sent her back inside.

  Breakfast was a somber affair as if all sensed Keturah’s turmoil. Though dressed, hair braided, the old doll tucked in her pocket, Keturah kept her eyes down and ate but a few bites of porridge.

  Jasper shot Tessa a questioning look. Aggravated by his stance regarding Keturah—mightn’t he be the reason for Keturah’s sudden sorrow?—Tessa regarded him coldly. Of all her brothers, Zadock seemed the most moved by Keturah’s plight. He sat across from her, regarding her kindly as if wishing he could help in some way. Betimes he tried to talk to her.

  “Colonel Tygart mentioned a large party needed ferrying,” Cyrus spoke into the silence. “Seems they’ve all got Kentucke fever.”

  “Best leave out then.” Ross looked at Tessa as she finished her crust of blackened bread. “Care to lend a hand, Sister?”

  No one naysayed her going. They abandoned the table, taking the well-worn path to the river. Ross, usually chattering like a squirrel, seemed sunk in tongue-tied reflection.

  “Something the matter with Keturah?” he asked in time, clearly uneasy about such matters.

  “Nothing but returning to the place that bore her and finding it empty,” she replied a bit testily, as angry with the circumstance as with Jasper. “And having to reside with a hostile instead.”

  “Something’s about to boil over, aye.” Ross blew out a breath. “You think Jasper might—”

  “Hatred clouds a man’s mind. Makes him do things he’ll soon regret.”

  “Maybe you should talk to Colonel Tygart. I’ve seen the way he regards you. It’s clear he respects what you have to say.”

  “If Tygart is half the man I think he is, he doesn’t need telling.” Though Ross’s words warmed her, she had no desire to dwell on the colonel. “Saw you dancing with that Parker girl at the frolic.”

  “Her pa won’t let her out of his sight.”

  “Stands to reason. She’s his only daughter.” Head down, she watched where she stepped. Just yesterday Lemuel had killed a copper snake, the largest they’d ever seen.

  Ross shouldered his gun. “Tired of old Hester trying to foist you on Colonel Tygart?”

  “He needs none of Hester’s help, able as he is in any matter.”

  “He sure beat all our britches at the dice game.” Ross grinned. “I ain’t seen Cyrus so het up since Schoolcraft bested him shooting.”

  They emerged onto the riverbank, where the ferry house, always a mournful sight as it marked Pa’s passing, stood stalwart. The ferry rested partly on the bank, the green water lapping at one end edged with a lacy ruffle from the west wind. Tessa exchanged her rifle for a setting pole, as did Ross, both looking east to the buffalo trail becoming wide enough for wagons.

  Already overwarm, Tessa dipped a sun-browned foot in the cold water. “Hear any more about those Kentucke-bound folks?”

  “Nary a word. Cyrus is a bit sparse with details.”

  Kneeling, she set down her pole and splashed cold water on her blistered hands. Already the rash was creeping across her arms and reddening her neck.

  “Best allow Ma a look,” Ross said, slapping at a mosquito. “Reckon they’re plagued with poison vine and insects in the city?”

  She made no reply, ears tuned to the expected pack train, the clamor of harness and horses. But ’twas a lone rider, one who made her completely forget her enflamed skin. For such a powerfully built man, his horse was smallish, more Indian pony about fifteen hands high, but nonetheless a sturdy, dun-colored stallion with black points.

  Ross called out a greeting. Tessa stayed silent, pleasure edging out surprise. This was the colonel’s first visit to the ferry that she knew of. He dismounted, never at a loss for words, she was learning,
though he often spoke only a pointed few.

  “Morning,” he greeted them, removing his felt hat. Sweat had run riot with his hair, amassing it into inky wisps and waves beneath the brim. He raked it back with a quick hand.

  She took care not to stare. ’Twas unmaidenly, Hester oft scolded. But what a sight he made, standing in a shaft of sunlight that called out every single angle of him.

  “First passenger of the day?” Clay queried.

  “First, aye, sir,” Ross replied with a grin. “And no ferrying fee either.”

  “Obliged. You lend a hand often?” Clay pinned Tessa with a gaze that left no question as to how he felt about the matter.

  “I’m no town-bred miss, mind you.”

  Ross’s grin faded to mortification. “Best take care not to sass the colonel, Sister.”

  Clay merely chuckled, and she began loosening the mooring lines. He helped Ross position the horse atop the boat’s cleated bottom, then reached for her setting pole like he was born to it. She startled slightly at the touch of his hands on hers.

  “Allow me,” he said. At her amusement, he added, “Rather, give me the pole. Betimes my parlor manners follow me onto the frontier.”

  She curtsied in reply, earning his appreciative wink. When he turned his back to her, she blew out a silent sigh. Just when she had him boxed up in her thoughts, contained to a quiet corner, out he’d spring again and surprise her, leaving her topsy-turvy.

  They shoved off just as effortlessly as they’d done since Pa was alive. Clay threw the heft of his muscled frame into the crossing, and they reached the west shore in record time, a feat that left Ross wide-eyed.

  “Ever lost a passenger or animal?” Clay asked.

  “In a sudden squall, aye,” Ross replied. “A sow and a goat but no two-legged folk.”

  Clay was studying the far shore from which they’d embarked, eye on what Pa had called the River King. It was a towering, fully leafed hardwood, lightning struck at the center but still standing strong.