by Laura Frantz
“Murderous attitudes.”
Heckewelder nodded in understanding. “Both settlers and Indians, you mean.”
“Most here have known violence and death at Indian hands, or they will. Many seek an opportunity to repay in kind. The rule of law, even military law, is nearly unknown.”
“’Tis understandable in light of their losses, but certainly not biblical.”
“Most prefer ‘an eye for an eye’ and overlook ‘blessed are the peacemakers.’”
“And you, Colonel, are you not a riddle, raised by both Friends and Indians and now defending the westernmost border?”
“My position here is primarily defensive. I have no plans to mount an offensive unless provoked.”
“Has an attack been made on the fort or settlers?”
Clay gave a nod. “Before my coming, aye. I assumed command in early May but have yet to fire a single shot at the enemy. Fort spies regularly report sign, mostly on well-traveled Indian trails, but other than a few stolen horses the country is remarkably quiet.”
“A most peculiar circumstance.” Heckewelder’s calm demeanor continued. “Who are the foremost raiders?”
“Prior attacks were at the hands of the Wyandot, Delaware, and Shawnee living on the upper Sandusky and Scioto.”
“The very places we hope to sow peace.”
They bypassed the powder magazine, hardly a point of interest since the Moravians, like Quakers, were pacifists. Clay pointed out the common garden with corn, beans, and squash in abundance.
“I’m partial to Indian fare.” Heckewelder’s lean frame was in sharp contrast to Cutright, who stood watching them from his storefront. “Succotash in particular.”
“I well remember,” Clay said, never having lost his taste for the Indian dish.
“How long were you with the Lenape?”
“Ten eventful years.”
“And your family? Captive or killed?”
“Killed,” Clay replied without the usual mental flinch.
To his credit, Heckewelder spoke of such things without emotion. The bane of the frontier was that death and captivity were commonplace.
“And what of Miss Braam?”
“Best let her tell you her story, in her own words,” Clay answered as they returned to the west blockhouse.
A week they’d been away from the fort, long enough for the muster-day cake to fade from memory, if not the unexpected kiss. That Tessa kept alive like the broken-winged sparrow she’d once saved in a rude cage of Cyrus’s making, feeding it seeds and refusing to let it perish.
’Twas the same with a pleasurable recollection, was it not, keeping it alive by continual rumination? Or maybe she was simply a weak-willed woman grown too fond of the fluttery feeling the fort’s hero wrought. No matter. ’Twas a marvel that no other man had made her feel so in all her years.
Her fan rested on the little shelf above her bed, another pleasant keepsake from a day gone by. She used it, as did Ma, who seemed right fond of such finery, though Keturah’s turkey feather fan was just as handy.
When a spy delivered the missive summoning Keturah to the fort, Tessa took it from his hand in wonder. She alone could read it, perusing it privately, then pocketing it to share at supper’s end in the soft glow of candlelight.
Dear Swans, read the flowingly bold, masculine hand. Brother John Heckewelder has arrived at the garrison and seeks a meeting with Miss Braam on Saturday morn. Would be wise to have a male escort, Miss Swan included. Yours entire, Colonel Clay Tygart.
’Twas an honor being singled out, yet maybe it was mere courtesy, an afterthought from a man she was unsure of. Still, the summons created a hullabaloo as her brothers debated who would set their work aside and accompany them.
“You’d think you were escorting royalty,” Tessa teased as their arguing grew more impassioned. “Not two homespun women on an old mare.”
“I’d like to meet this Heckewelder, friend to the Indians,” Zadock said, lighting his pipe.
“So would we all,” Lemuel said to their surprise. He was never one to want to trade a day in the fields for even a frolic. “Wish Heckewelder and Colonel Tygart would venture out here instead.”
“Seems like you older rascals always go and I’m the runt who gets left behind.” Ross glared at them good-naturedly, taking another slice of the dripping watermelon.
“I’ve not seen you smile so broadly since that muster-day kiss, Sister.” Cyrus gave a sly wink. “What might the colonel mean, asking for your company?”
“He means to make Keturah comfortable and not leave her at the mercy of you men,” she fired back. “Think no more of it.” She waved her fan about, further amusing them as talk turned to other matters.
On Saturday morn they rode to the fort in response to Clay’s summons. Surrounded, she was, riding between not one but two of her brothers, Zadock leading, Cyrus behind. Today Keturah had her own mount, preferring to ride bareback. A sense of expectancy spurred them through the woods. Everything held that peculiar overripe scent, that final, intense green before giving way to autumn’s rust.
Any comeliness she’d aimed for when pinning her hair beneath her cap or donning her flounced petticoat melted away by the time they spied the fort’s far pickets. Sweat trickled down her neck and bodice and turned her itchy. Dust left a browner cast to her skin. If not for her gladness to go, she’d have let the simmering day turn her sour.
Clay was at the gates when they rode up, as if wary they’d be fired upon or ambushed. The tension of being a moving target drained from her as she slid off Blossom. Theirs always seemed a small victory to be safely within.
“Morning, Colonel Tygart,” Zadock said as he dismounted.
Behind the colonel stood Hester, dwarf-like in his shadow. Would Tessa spend the morning with her great-aunt or be expected to accompany Keturah when she met with Heckewelder?
Hester embraced her like always as Clay tipped his hat to them both. She returned the nod with a small smile, mindful of Hester’s sharp eye.
“We’ll be making the noon meal for Brother Heckewelder and company,” her aunt told her. “From the best of the fort’s garden to boot.”
Was that the reason Clay had asked her here? To help cook? “What of meat?” Tessa asked as they all began walking toward the blockhouse.
“Colonel Tygart has brought down a buffalo. Don’t you smell the marrow bones roasting?”
“Aye, Auntie.” Tessa breathed in a dozen different scents that a blessed breeze mingled, not all of them savory. “Fine feasting, then.”
“You’ll grind the meal and make the bread. I’ve beans to snap and corn to shuck.”
Into Hester’s cabin they went, while her brothers were left to their own business and Keturah disappeared inside the blockhouse.
20
Heckewelder greeted Keturah with the same easy affability that had already won over many of the fort’s inhabitants. If he was surprised by her beauty, her thoroughly Indian ways, even the beads she wore, he gave no sign. She stayed stoic, almost guarded, despite Heckewelder’s humble manner and his fluency in Lenape.
He began, “Would you prefer to converse in English or the language of the True People?”
Clay was unsurprised when she chose Lenape. It allowed her an ease of expression not yet mastered with English. He well knew the struggle of exchanging familiar words for the unfamiliar, a loss not unlike a small death as words and whole phrases in the Indian tongue were abandoned and then forgotten.
“Word reached us at our mission in Bethlehem that you were given up by the People. In fact, some of our brothers and sisters there were overjoyed when they learned you were here. I have come to see if you would consider joining us, at least until word of your family reaches you.”
Keturah eyed him with renewed interest. “Who are these sisters and brothers you speak of?”
“These Lenni Lenape have taken Christian names, though you know them as Neolin, Shingas, Pesquitomen, and Chulili.”
&nbs
p; “They are now”—her pale brows arched in surprise and something akin to alarm—“praying Indians?”
“Aye, Christian Indians. They have heard the Good News of our risen Lord and embrace Him.” Heckewelder smiled as if to lessen her sudden anxiety. “Why don’t we go back to the beginning. Tell me how you came to be with the Lenape.”
They sat before Clay’s desk, their backs to the closed door. Even in the shadows, the sole light streaming through the cabin’s chinking and the loft window, Keturah’s shifting expressions were plain.
“Much I have forgotten.” Her soft voice was tinged with sorrow. “It was corn-planting time. The season of strawberries. I was with my white sisters.” She looked toward Clay. “Tessa Swan . . . another girl named Ruth. I went ahead of them to pick berries. The woods were thick with sounds, and I did not hear the warriors approach.”
She spoke so clearly and precisely that the scene played out in Clay’s head. Heckewelder seemed just as riveted, though he’d no doubt heard such accounts before.
“I was much afraid. These men made motions they might kill me. They took me northwest, toward the Scioto, so very far I knew I could not find my way back again.”
“Many days of travel,” Heckewelder said.
“Yes. When I came to the one village, my white clothes were taken away. I was led to a river and told I was their new daughter, all my whiteness washed away.”
Clay’s own story was much the same, though it had begun more violently with the firing of his family cabin. When he’d reached that last Lenape village, he’d run a gauntlet, dodging sticks and clubs. He’d stayed standing, earning him the respect of watching warriors before his own river cleansing.
“My Lenape mother was good to me. She taught me many things. My Indian father, the sachem Netawatwees, was kind. Still, my heart was on the ground. No one came for me from the white world. I had to learn Indian ways. Indian words. My thinking became more red than white.”
“How long were you among them?” Heckewelder asked.
Again she looked to Clay. Time was not counted in minutes and months but by moons and seasons.
“Ten or twelve years, by my reckoning,” he answered.
Heckewelder nodded thoughtfully. “Long enough to make you forget much of your family and life along the Buckhannon.”
Keturah toyed with her braid. “I have little memory of Keturah but became Yellow Bird. There was much to see and do. We camped many places but mostly along the big waterfalls for a night’s lodge.”
Brow furrowing, Heckewelder looked at Clay for confirmation. “The same as a night’s watch?”
“Aye, a stay of one year in Indian time. Along the Cuyahoga River.” It had been his favored camp, heavily timbered with wide, cascading falls. Plentiful game and fertile places to plant the three sisters.
“Cuyahoga Town?” Heckewelder asked. “’Tis what we Moravians call it.”
“The True People live on the north side of the river,” Keturah told them. “The Iroquois live to the south.”
“And Netawatwees is—was—your adoptive father. I heard the same from your friends at Bethlehem,” Heckewelder said. “Is it also true that you had a husband?”
The question, gently stated, startled her nonetheless. Expecting a nay, Clay reached for his pipe and started to take out the tobacco pouch a Shawnee had given him. Keturah’s attention swiveled to Clay as he filled the bowl with Indian tobacco, the këlëkënikàn made fragrant with sumac leaves. He did it if only to ease her, as the questions turned more personal and mayhap more painful.
“My husband . . .” She swallowed and looked to her lap. “He is a warrior. A chief.”
“So, he still lives,” Heckewelder asked quietly, “or was alive when you were returned to Fort Pitt?”
Her prolonged pause had Clay on tenterhooks, pipe forgotten in his hand.
“Alive, yes.” She nodded. “He is Tamanen of the Wolf Clan.”
Her revelation flew by quickly, but Clay nearly choked on his pipe smoke as her words came clear.
Tamanen.
Another echo from another world. Tamanen. Warrior. His Lenape brother, born to his Lenape mother. Raised alongside him. And now a chief.
Clay turned toward Keturah so suddenly her eyes met his. The fragrant smoke circled in lazy rings between them but did not cloud his sharp surprise or the telling awareness in her gaze.
“He was against my going to Pitt. Nothing would move him to part with me until the redcoats said they would kill him lest he give me up. Even then he vowed to reclaim me.” Her voice held a tenderness Clay hadn’t yet heard. “He was a good husband. A good provider. I was never in want. He is far more than the warrior the redcoats say he is.”
Clay said nothing, letting Heckewelder talk on while he grappled with the dire ramifications of this new truth. Keturah had been taken from one of the leading men among the Lenape, a chief well known among Indians and whites for his intense resistance to white encroachment. It did not bode well for them.
“May I ask if you had children while in captivity?” Heckewelder said next.
Another pause. “A son.” Again Keturah was visibly moved. “Taken by the white man’s disease. The running sores sickness.”
Smallpox. Another strike against them. A wife lost. And a son. Clay drew on his pipe, the stem clamped between his back teeth, remembering Tamanen’s strength of will and depth of feeling. If he had wept when Clay was returned to the whites by force years before, what would be the toll of a missing wife and lost son?
“I wish I could restore him to you,” Heckewelder told her. “I fully believe your child is now healed and in heaven.”
Keturah’s chest rose and fell with a suppressed sigh. The anguish of her loss seemed to gather round them like a coming storm.
Clay was relieved when Heckewelder changed course. “It is said you are a healer of some renown . . .”
Clay was no longer listening, still mired in the truth he’d just learned. Did Tamanen know of Keturah’s whereabouts? If so, why had he not struck Swan Station and taken Keturah back? The heavy presence along the Buckhannon, the Indian sign about Swan Station, seemed to speak to the Lenape being aware of where Tamanen’s wife had been taken. Or mayhap his own fears were drawing false conclusions.
Would Keturah return to her Indian family in time? Countless captives, once redeemed, escaped and returned to their Indian lives at the first opportunity. He’d taken her passivity for being here as willingness. Cooperation. Not once had he asked her how she felt about matters. He had no inkling. He likely never would.
One thing was certain. She would be safer among the Moravian brethren than here. The praying Indians, with their neutral stance and their widespread reputation for peace, would help protect her. She would be among Lenape she knew. A Moravian settlement was the ideal place for her white kin to reclaim her. And it would remove the threat she might be to the Swans and any of the settlers against whom a raid might be aimed.
But would Keturah go with Heckewelder willingly? Or would Clay as fort commander have to order her to go?
Tessa endured Hester’s bossing, helping prepare the noon meal. Her high feeling turned slightly skittish as the morning wore on and the blockhouse door remained shut. Something would come of this meeting with Keturah. ’Twas not a simple matter. Heckewelder had journeyed a long way for a reason.
As much as she wanted to return to the time before Keturah was taken, there was no going back. The Braams were gone. They would likely never resettle along the Buckhannon, so beautiful yet treacherous. They’d moved on. And their eldest daughter had moved on too, becoming a far different woman than the child they’d raised. Keturah’s years as an Indian had forever altered her and everyone around her.
Any rosy notions about a love match between Keturah and one of her brothers had turned to ashes. To think she’d once considered Jasper, whose animosity still festered. It had Tessa examining her own attitudes and prejudices. She continued to wear the beaded tie on her braid, b
ut was that not aggravating his mind-set? Making him more hard-hearted? The feeling betwixt her and Jasper, once easy and affectionate, was now roiling and rebellious, and it grieved her to the heart.
“You’re woolgathering something awful.” Hester stood beside Tessa as she worked the hand mill. “What’s this business between Keturah and the Moravian and the colonel, I’m wondering?”
Tessa ground the corn more vigorously. “If we were meant to know, we’d be in that blockhouse.”
“Well, that doesn’t stop my ears from burning.”
“Patience, Auntie.” Tessa kept her own temper. “How much bread do you reckon we’ll need?”
“Plenty.” Hester eyed the mound of meal. “A peck should do it. I’ll go tend the meat while you finish.”
Now at almost midday, the buffalo roasting outside Hester’s door would be done and falling off the bone. Tessa began making corncakes, praying the meeting with Heckewelder would bear fruit. For all she knew he’d brought news of Keturah’s Lenape family.
As she thought it, the blockhouse door groaned open at last. Keturah emerged into stark sunlight, blinking at the glare before ducking into Hester’s cabin. Tessa greeted her, gesturing toward a pitcher of spring water. As Keturah poured herself a drink, she kept her eyes down, cloaked in silence. She looked distressingly spent, even wan. To fill the stilted silence, Tessa hummed a hymn.
In time they assembled around Hester’s table, Clay at the head, Brother Heckewelder and his party filling the other places. Naturally, Hester contrived to plant Tessa as close to the colonel as she could, directly to his right. Amusement overrode her irritation at Hester’s continued scheming. Did Clay mind?
Forking a few bites of the succulent meat, she watched the butter melt atop her corncake, wishing someone would talk once Heckewelder said grace. No one did. Flies darted through the open door and window, a welcome breeze lifting the edge of the linen cloth with which Hester had dressed up the rough table.
