An Uncommon Woman

by Laura Frantz

  “Bountiful dinner,” Heckewelder said at last with an appreciative nod aimed at Hester and Tessa.

  “Always is, this time of year,” Hester told him, passing him another helping of green beans and potatoes. “Soon we’ll have plenty of roasting ears.”

  “Thankfully, crops are plentiful at Bethlehem. We have common gardens of several acres, a church, and a schoolhouse.”

  Tessa voiced a secret hope. “We’ve need of such here. A preacher and a teacher both.”

  “In time, mayhap,” he replied with a reassuring smile. “Once the western border settles down.”

  “Peace might be had sooner if such things were in place.” Hester rose to replenish pewter tankards. “I’d sure like to witness both before I go to glory.”

  Clay seemed lost in thought, saying little, his steady presence adding to the swelling pleasure Tessa felt to be gathered around this bountiful table. At meal’s end, as she anticipated coffee and pie, he scrambled her composure when he set down his fork and said, “A word with you, Miss Swan.”

  A word? Hester all but crowed when Clay rose from the table and escorted Tessa to the blockhouse. She went in ahead of him, sure every settlement wag in the fort had their eye on the blockhouse door, if not privy to the conversation within.

  Standing by the fireless hearth, he rested an arm along the mantel while she sat in the Windsor chair facing the andirons. The air was still cloudy with smoke, the seats arranged as they’d been for their meeting with Keturah.

  “You need to be made aware of some things.” His voice lowered to that measured tone he used when he didn’t want to be overheard. “And since you’re one of the few women here who has the gift of discretion, I’ll say it plain.”

  She folded her hands atop her aproned lap. “Speak plainly then.”

  “Miss Braam is wed. To a leading Lenape war chief.”

  Her mouth went slack. Keturah wed? To a . . . war chief? If he’d struck her with the fire tongs she’d have been less upended.

  “She had a métis child, a son, who died of what sounds like smallpox.”

  Wonderment engulfed her. For a moment she sat mute, trying to make this stunning piece of Keturah’s past fit into the puzzle of her Indianness.

  “Her safety is in question, given her Lenape tie to a war chief. I have reason to believe he and the Lenape may know or will learn of her whereabouts, which puts your family at risk in the event he tries to retake her.”

  Her thoughts spun back through the time Keturah had been with them, sifting through the days, hours. “She’s often alone in the woods gathering her medicines. Seems like there’s been ample opportunity to reclaim her. Or for her to run if she had a mind to.”

  “She’s made no effort to do so? Given you any reason to believe she wants to be elsewhere?”

  That faraway part of Keturah she sensed so strongly at times—was this because a large part of her was with her husband, who was still living, or with her child, forever gone? “Betimes she seems distant. Like she’s just bodily present. But never has she given us reason to believe she wants to be somewhere else.”

  “Heckewelder has offered her asylum at Bethlehem in eastern Pennsylvania or the mission the Moravians hope to establish in the Tuscarawas Valley further west.”

  “Sounds sensible. If you heard from her Braam kin, you’d send word to her there, aye?”

  “Aye, but the hard truth is, some don’t want redeemed captives back. They’re considered befouled, especially once they learn they had an Indian family. Reunions can be agonizing for both sides.”

  Did he speak from experience? Her gaze held his. “You know it by heart. I can tell you do.”

  “Aye.”

  How would Keturah’s family react once they learned of her return, if they ever did? Did an Indian husband carry more clout than her own white kin? “Would it not be wise to ask Keturah where she wants to be? With her Lenape husband or here?”

  “So, you would recognize a marriage between a savage and a settler.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He looked more pleased than surprised by her vehemence, as if she’d passed some test most failed. Did he think her like Jasper, blinded by mean-spiritedness?

  Lord, nay.

  “Is that any different than marriages made hereabouts without benefit of a preacher?” she asked. “Those settlers who come together and wait to make it legal?”

  “Your logic is flawed, but I admire your spirit.”

  “Indian ways can’t be compared to white ways, true. But surely if Keturah cares for this man, she should be allowed to return to him if she chooses.”

  “An unholy union, by white standards. And almost certain death.”

  She squared her shoulders. “Are all military men so grim, Colonel?”

  His sorrow tempered his harshness. “When you’ve seen as much bloodshed as I have, there’s little room for any mawkishness.”

  Something kindled in her, a desire to soften that side of him. To take the terrible things he’d known and turn them into something else entirely, to give him reason to rejoice. Or maybe that was the Lord’s doing entirely, bringing beauty from ashes.

  “I’ll miss her if she goes. I never stopped missing her after she was taken.” Though she’s not the same, nor am I. “Keturah was the sister I never had.”

  “There’s Ruth.” His voice had gentled. He seemed moved enough by her words to try to console her. “You’re oft in her company.”

  “Ruth, aye.” Caught in a rare moment of vulnerability, she weighed sharing her heart. Would such a man understand? “There are friends, and then there are bosom friends. I believe as Scripture says, that there are those rare times your spirit is knit together with another’s and you love them like your own soul. That’s how I’ve always felt about Keturah.”

  He pushed away from the hearth, and before she realized what was happening, he’d dropped to one knee and enfolded one of her hands in both of his. Her heart turned over. His eyes—oh, his beautiful, marbled eyes—seemed soft as candle wax. They told her what words and the touch of his hands did not, that he did indeed understand her, or wanted to. And that he knew she would miss Keturah if she went away again, but in a way altogether different than before.

  “You truly have Keturah’s well-being at heart. I sought your counsel because of it.” His thumb caressed the back of her work-roughened hand. “Will you stay here while I ask her whether she wants to go with Heckewelder or return to the Lenape?”

  “All right,” she answered.

  He let go of her hand and stood, as if pondering just what he would say to Keturah, or maybe giving Tessa time to collect herself. Her gaze roamed this masculine den of his, the log walls bearing maps and furs and weapons, and finally snagged on an odd strip of bark rife with Indian symbols. Flying arrows, a fleeing woman. Despite its simple, maybe hasty rendering, her soul went still.

  Before she could ask about it, Clay strode to the door and called Keturah to come over from Hester’s cabin. Looking more at ease than when she’d first left the blockhouse, Keturah smiled at Tessa and took the chair nearest her. Slowly Clay stated her choices. Join the Moravians at one of their settlements while awaiting word from her kin, or return to the Lenape.

  Keturah showed no surprise. Maybe Heckewelder’s coming had prepared her for such a choice. “This Blackcoat—Heckewelder—will bring light to the True People along the Tuscarawas?”

  “A new mission, aye, deeper into Indian country than any white man has gone before.”

  “The Blackcoat has a warrior’s spirit then.”

  “God goes with him,” Tessa said, silencing the voice that said these Moravians were more foolhardy than brave.

  “Then I would like to go too,” Keturah said without hesitation. “If it is true what the Blackcoat says, and my child is with God, then I want to stay close to Him. To the light. When I die, I want to see my son.”

  Again Tessa bent her mind to the Tuscarawas, when what she wanted for her friend w
as the far safer, established Bethlehem.

  Clay set his pipe aside. “What does Tamanen think about the Blackcoats? Their talk of light and peace?”

  Keturah’s lovely features darkened. “Every praying Indian is one less warrior, my husband says. But if he knew our son lives with the Father, he might listen more to the Blackcoats.”

  Knotting her hands in her aproned lap, Tessa fixed her gaze on Clay’s boots, letting go of Keturah bit by bit. Her prayers would include Tamanen now, not only Keturah. Though she was still unsteady from the shock of learning about a Lenape husband, she sensed Tamanen cared for Keturah and she for him.

  “Very well then.” Pushing away from the mantel, Clay gave Tessa a last look. “Cutright has more goods that might serve Miss Braam well on the trail. I’ll talk with Heckewelder while you help provision her.”

  The simple task seemed an honor. Together she and Keturah left the blockhouse and crossed the common beneath heavy clouds amassing like cannonballs, the air heavy with the scent of coming rain. A squealing piglet ran past, several gleeful children in pursuit. Bestirred by Heckewelder’s talk of peaceful times to come, Tessa tried to picture a schoolhouse, a church. Would the Buckhannon ever know such noble things?

  “Welcome, ladies,” Cutright greeted them. “What do you buy?”

  “Keturah needs provisioning for a long journey,” Tessa told him, “at Colonel Tygart’s request.”

  “Very well.”

  Keturah began examining the shelves more intently. True to Clay’s word, here were ivory combs and printed fabrics, candied lime peel, and wool blankets not to be had on muster day. Though Tessa had never made a journey of any kind, she had helped Jasper prepare and so gathered those essentials, with a few extra items sure to please a woman. Keturah stayed near the stroud, that coarse woolen cloth known to the Indian trade, till Tessa took it from her hands.

  “’Tis yours.”

  Their task done, they watched as Cutright entered the items into his thick ledger. ’Twould be a long, risky journey, but at least provisions were in place. Tessa took some comfort in that.

  New purchases in arm, they went out, nearly bumping into Maddie as they cleared the doorway.

  “Never a dull day at Fort Tygart,” Maddie said. “Clay said you’d be in directly. Spending the night too?”

  “Likely,” Tessa said. ’Twas her next hope in a long line of them. Another private moonlit talk by the fort’s garden wouldn’t be amiss even in the rain. “You look well, Maddie.”

  “No longer sick to my shoes, aye,” Maddie returned with considerably more sass than when they’d last seen her. “Eating like a farmhand too. Just ask Jude.”

  “How long now?” Tessa asked, finding it impossible to tell with Maddie so slim.

  “About Christmastime to my reckoning. Granny Sykes will be on hand. We’re prayin’ for a mild winter.”

  Tessa refrained from saying their border winters were wicked, the fort’s mud ankle deep before freezing in an onslaught of heavy snows. But surely Maddie knew, trail worn as she was.

  “Keep your baby abed with you,” Keturah was saying. “Drink stinging-nettle tea.”

  The sorrow in Keturah’s words lanced Tessa’s heart. Her advice was born of a mother’s love, no doubt.

  “I’m glad for these high walls after all the forays I’ve spent outside them.” Maddie’s gaze lifted to the pickets. “Jude’s crafting a cradle and Hester’s making a proper feather tick.”

  “I’ve started some garments to give you,” Tessa told her. “So small I can hardly see my stitches.”

  “Obliged,” Maddie said, her gaze trailing after the children still in pursuit of the piglet. “Soon our babe will be underfoot and raising dust with the likes o’ them.” She rested a hand on her slowly rounding middle. “Now look smart, here comes Clay.”

  Her back to him, Tessa made peace with her bittersweet feelings, preparing to bid goodbye to Keturah if that’s what the moment called for.

  Lord, whatever happens, let it be right and good for Keturah.

  Clay came to a stop just outside their circle, his words for Keturah. “You’ll leave out in the morning for the Ohio country, ferrying across at Swan Station, where you’ll collect your belongings.”

  One final eve at the fort, then. Keturah nodded as a warm rain began falling, giving a smile of genuine joy in the gloom of the waning afternoon. Maddie showed no surprise, aware Heckewelder’s arrival spelled some change.

  “You’ll be a welcome addition to their party, understanding the Lenape like you do,” Clay continued. “And if word comes from your kin, I’ll see that it reaches the Tuscarawas.”

  They scattered, each to their respective cabins. Tessa and Keturah headed for Hester’s.

  Suppertime came, and Tessa helped Hester serve the colonel and Heckewelder’s party, now including Keturah, in the blockhouse. As they refilled tankards and dishes, Tessa listened to them discuss the coming journey, Clay giving insight about rivers and ranges to cross and trails to be chary of.

  Mindful of their early rising, Keturah sought her loft bed while Tessa began reading from her book of poetry and Hester turned to her handwork. The rain began an outright drumbeat, the deserted common soon the color and consistency of molasses, dousing Tessa’s hopes along with it. She and Clay wouldn’t take a turn outside on such a night.

  Her voice was hardly heard above the downpour.

  “My days have been so wondrous free,

  The little birds that fly

  With careless ease from tree to tree,

  Were but as bless’d as I.”

  “What foolishness,” Hester barked from her corner. “My ears cannot abide such sentiment.”

  Which is probably why you remain unwed.

  Tessa bit her tongue against the hasty retort and paged to another bit of verse. Surely this was more to Hester’s liking.

  “Hence loathed melancholy,

  Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,

  In stygian cave forlorn,

  ’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.”

  “Easier on the ears,” Hester said, jabbing her needle through the cloth. “And fits the sorry weather.”

  Tessa paused. Lantern light cut through the blockhouse’s chinking and gilded the open door. Voices carried, robust, even merry, Clay’s among them. Would he soon step outside that door and make his nightly rounds as he usually did? The fort cat, a tabby no one claimed but all petted, yowled and swished its plumy tail in the doorway as if seeking shelter.

  Hester yawned. Seconds spun forward. Clay emerged from the blockhouse, hat pulled low against the damp, tin lantern in hand to light his way.

  Without so much as a glance toward Hester’s.

  Watching him, Tessa held tightly to the memory of the man on bended knee in the blockhouse. That was the Clay she loved. The Clay who had been buried beneath layers of upheaval and hurt, who seemed at times so distant, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with her. Who raised her hopes one minute, then dashed them to the floor the next.

  Her hungry heart skipped after him.

  21

  By the time they’d reached Big Sand Run a few leagues beyond Fort Tygart, the night’s rain had pushed farther west, and an odd south wind rustled the thick July leaves. Jude rode silently behind Clay as the sun cracked open bright as an egg yolk on the eastern horizon. Already they’d come across plentiful sign since leaving the fort, confirming the latest scouting report. The territory seemed to be swarming yet the Indians stayed hidden, tomahawks sheathed.

  Half a dozen spies had ridden out at daybreak, scattering in different directions. Jude was assigned to the gaps and low places in the mountains for thirty miles or so, to a point where he’d meet with spies from the next fort. But the well-placed plan didn’t give Clay any ease.

  “Don’t get near enough to danger that you can punch it with your ramrod,” Clay told him as they forded yet another stream. “I just need fresh word of any movement or action.”<
br />
  “Aye.” Jude’s bay horse snorted, nearly masking his assent. “Glad I am of the rain. Otherwise we’d sound like buffalo coming through a canebrake with the woods so dry.”

  Clay gave a nod, recalling Maddie’s long look at Jude as they’d left the fort. “I’ve a mind to keep you forted up. Or assign you to the settlement harvest.”

  “Naw, Clay. Lord knows I’m always itching to roam. Soon enough I’ll be tied to home with winter and a baby comin’. And me still feeling like Methuselah. For now, I need to be free of fort walls.”

  “Take heed then. There’s no replacing you.”

  “A babe needs a father, amen. See you at week’s end.” With that, Jude was off, eclipsed by the deep woods.

  Clay pressed on, skirting the Buckhannon as it flowed north, thinking once again how well suited it was for a gristmill, not only a ferry. He’d seen Tessa laboriously grinding a great quantity of corn with a hand mill outside Hester’s, no small feat. With so many brothers to manage the labor of building and so much riverfront acreage, a gristmill seemed a worthy pursuit. Mayhap on his own land along the Monongahela someday . . .

  His thoughts canted backwards, not forward. He’d not bade Tessa good night once Heckewelder and his party returned to their blockhouse quarters. He’d simply made his rounds despite the downpour, passing by Hester’s at the last, half hoping a candle would still be burning. If so, he might have stopped by that unshuttered window. The temptation had been just about more than he could stand, hastening his step as he checked the horses and magazine, the watch and both gates. As he finished, his disappointment at finding that light out was keen enough that he’d fallen asleep far later than he wanted. Tessa Swan even stormed his dreams.

  His double-mindedness gnawed at him. With her continually in reach, he’d lost his edge. He’d come here without any ties or motivations besides manning a garrison in the midst of an ongoing border war. A besotted commander was unfit for the job.

  Back off, Tygart.

  Despite that, he’d wanted to escort Tessa home this morning, a fool’s errand when she already had her brothers and Heckewelder’s party as escort. So he’d left out ahead of daybreak when she was just stirring. In the cabin next to him to boot, hair streaming down behind closed doors, in her smallclothes. That contemplation was enough to drive a man mad.