Wild Indigo

by Judith Stanton

  “Sister Holder knows?” Jacob asked, all too aware of how knowledge traveled in a town that did not yet number two hundred citizens, counting children and infants.

  The Elder’s round face softened with unexpected sympathy. “Sister Holder knows, Brother Blum, and I know. No one else, save you.”

  He let out his breath. His family did not need to be objects of further gossip. “Good. That is good, I think. But how did Sister Retha get away with it?”

  “How did she slip out? I have often wondered. We simply could not watch her every night.” Rosina Krause cleared her throat nervously. “If you can keep a secret…”

  Jacob nodded reluctantly. He didn’t need another secret.

  “Myself, I sleep through thunderstorms, and Sister Holder snores.”

  Jacob laughed, and suddenly felt less out of place in this pristine office. Losing control of his life frustrated him, but the Sister’s life was hardly all in order. He sobered himself. “I beg pardon, Sister Krause.”

  “Oh, no. ’Twould be comical if it were not so serious.”

  It was serious. Jacob worked his hand into his neck, thinking. His bride-to-be had to have a reason for being out at night. “Do you know why? Have you any idea?” he pressed.

  Rosina Krause shook her head. “We have none. We don’t know why or how often or even where she was going.”

  “Do you think she was up to…” he trailed off. She had been feeding her wolf only a short time. That was not her reason. She had denied consorting with spies so forthrightly, he couldn’t imagine that either. And as for another man…no, no. He couldn’t think she would. She was innocent to her core, he felt it in her shy response to his touch.

  It was a moment before he realized that Rosina was waiting for him to continue. “She couldn’t have…”

  “No, Brother Blum. Apart from the deception, we cannot say that she has done aught wrong. In fact, when she was very young, we assumed she was sleepwalking. I can only tell you that she has done it from the beginning of her life with us. Oh, and that the night you came upon us, we found her, ah, dancing.”

  Like a sylph, Jacob thought, but said nothing. Rosina Krause need not know he had seen Retha, too.

  “Do you think she’s sleepwalking now?”

  “No,” the Sister said decisively. “She was wide awake the other night.”

  Liebe Gott, Jacob swore to himself. Or prayed. His bride-to-be had wandered the night for years. He would never know why, when, or where she had gone, and not even the Sisters could say how often she had stolen away. He could not know if she would continue, or quit.

  If only he could foresee what Retha’s irregularities would mean for his children. If only he could foresee what they would mean for him. His impulsive decision to ask for her hand was looking reckless and irresponsible for all concerned.

  Sister Krause was so forthcoming, he should not ask for more. Still, he sought reassurance.

  “Surely you have an opinion about what should be done.”

  “Brother Jacob, the lot said yes. ’Tis our faith to abide by the Savior’s will as He reveals it through the lot,” she said with simple faith.

  Sometimes simple faith left him grinding his teeth. “But knowing what you know, you could have forestalled my request.”

  She looked torn. “I could not. ’Twould have put Sister Retha in a bad light—when, as far as we know, she has done no grievous wrong.”

  Without even thinking what he was doing, Jacob began to stalk around the small office. The Sister stopped him with a firm hand on his forearm.

  “Brother Blum, our lot is the Lord’s will. He has proven it so time and again. You may be the bedrock of her happiness. She may be the wellspring of yours.”

  Jacob studied the woman’s round, earnest face. She cared for the girl more than she let on. He would care for Retha, too. Whatever folly his neglected senses had driven him to commit, his rational mind would deal with the consequences.

  Hot afternoon sun streamed in through the tall, paned windows of the Gemein Haus meeting room. The assembled crowd sweltered in the heat. Retha stood beside her bridegroom, dazed. The thick, humid air made it hard to breathe. She tugged at the peplum of her new linen dress, a wedding gift from the older Single Sisters. Already damp with perspiration, its fabric still scratched where it touched tender skin. Sister Rosina, for once aflutter with excitement, had laced her up too tightly.

  Retha swallowed against the narrow ribbon under her chin. It tied her clean, starched Haube around her just-washed flyaway hair. The ribbon was still pink. She was still single.

  Her hands shook, her knees trembled. It was her wedding day. She thought she might explode.

  Jacob’s children looked explosive too. Brother and Sister Ernst, who were keeping them for a couple of days after the wedding, herded them to Jacob’s side. The thin son shuffled, the large one giggled. Retha scarcely knew as yet which boy was which. Brother Samuel reached out an arm to still the giggler. When Sister Eva shushed the daughter and leaned over to whisper to her, Retha swallowed against a lump of confusing emotion that lodged in her throat.

  In minutes, she would be mother to them all.

  Jacob intervened with a snap of his fingers. The children went quiet. Retha stole a sideways glance at him and shivered in the heat. Her bridegroom. She scarcely knew what marriage meant.

  He seemed larger here, confined to whitewashed walls. Taller, meeting her on the even ground of the wide planked floor. Wider, suited in his dark Sunday coat, its buttons marching down its front almost to his knees. More dignified. Even more commanding than when he had questioned her on market day.

  Five days ago. So long ago. And now they were being married. So soon.

  He caught her glance and gave her a quick, sure smile. As he had done all day, all week since they last met. Last argued. She wasn’t at all clear where they stood with each other, except that he felt bound to marry her and she had bound herself to marry him.

  That agreement reached, they had not been allowed to be alone together since.

  He had communicated with her nonetheless with a smile across the Square, an intent gaze from his nightly station in the choir. Less encouragement from him, and she would not be here, her resolve wilting in the heat. His strength, his will, his distant warmth had held her to their purpose. All week she had thought of flight, digging her fingernails into her palms.

  What had she been thinking to say yes to him, to his children?

  She barely heard Brother Marshall’s formal German liturgy. She did not, in fact, know all of the educated words he used. She longed for her old simpler life with the Cherokee, for wilderness, where wolves trotted free and indigo grew wild, where deer marked trails from high meadows to cool ponds, and she knew them all—plants and paths and creatures of the wild.

  Not this. House, husband, children. They were not for her. She feared—she knew—she was not for them.

  “I will,” she heard Jacob say, his baritone voice mellow and firm. Love her, honor her, care for her.

  Then Brother Marshall called her name, and she put her mind to what he said. Her vow was not the same as Jacob’s. Love him, honor him, be subject unto him.

  How could she promise Jacob that? In the heat, a prickle of anxiety stole down her back where perspiration dampened it. She already had so promised him.

  “I will.” Her voice cracked, and she felt her soul split too. She had been free, compared to this. Hard as she had tried to fit in with the Single Sisters, she didn’t know how to be subject to him or anyone.

  And what of love?

  Her heart shrank. He had yet to say a word of it.

  Jacob took her hand and held it while Brother Marshall brought the service to an end. During those long moments, she was aware of nothing but a warm pulsing between them from his hand to hers.

  Then Jacob turned her to face him, his blue eyes darkening to indigo as he drew her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers with his lips. She thought she heard a stirring in
the crowd, a rustling of assent.

  He moved closer still and bent his tawny head toward hers.

  “Liebling, sweetheart,” he whispered for her alone, and brushed her lips with his, a caress as tender as the first spring fern. Her heart moved in her chest. Toward him. No one had ever said that, done that. No one ever before.

  “Where are they taking Sister Retha?” Anna Johanna’s voice quavered at the ceremony’s end. Her little hands tugged at the ties on Jacob’s black Sunday breeches, jarring him back from a taste of heaven to the here and now of fatherhood.

  Moments before, a full dozen heartbeats before Jacob was remotely willing to release his new bride, Sister Ernst had pulled her into the small anteroom off the large chamber. With an unpleasant shock at losing the sight of Retha so soon, Jacob watched the women disappear.

  “Yes, pumpkin,” he said absently. “She’ll be right back.”

  “Is she our new mother now?” Anna Johanna asked, twisting the tie harder.

  With a jolt, Jacob realized that his daughter had indeed understood his explanation last night. He searched her face for evidence that she was thinking of Christina. It was all innocence. Momentarily he surveyed his own heart, reminding himself of the promise he had made before Christina died: her children would not go motherless. So he had pursued the lot.

  Whatever niggling doubts spiked up between his hope and his desire, this marriage was his first wife’s wish. It was the Savior’s will.

  “Yes, pumpkin, she is your new mother. And she’ll be waiting for you when you come home from your visit.” Now he only hoped that Anna Johanna wouldn’t destroy the double knot he had specially tied at his knees to withstand her tenacious fingers.

  Her grip tightened trustingly, and he was glad he had insisted on his children being at the ceremony, especially Anna Johanna. She was safe with him.

  “Does that make you our new father?” Nicholas asked, smirking, unable to contain his delight over making such a clever joke on a solemn occasion.

  “No, it does not,” Matthias said in his precise, scholarly way. “It makes him our very old father still.” The boy’s rare laughter bubbled up. Jacob looked down at his middle child, hands piously folded while he grinned wickedly, and joined in the boys’ laughter at his own expense. Even saints like Matthias needed a share of attention, Jacob supposed.

  “You lads show your father more respect,” Brother Ernst chided pleasantly. “They want us over there.” He pointed to the long, narrow table where the Elders usually deliberated, backed up against the wall and doubling this late Sunday afternoon as a groaning board for a community feast that followed the candlelit service.

  The boys scooted after him. Jacob followed, pacing himself so Anna Johanna wouldn’t lose her grip on his knotted breeches.

  Halfway across the room, Traugott Bagge, recently back from Pennsylvania and still without a mate, stopped him with congratulations, joking that Jacob’s bride had been much nearer after all. And pretty. Jacob smiled. He knew that.

  As they neared the table, Philip Schopp in jest begged Jacob not to rush to swell the number of boys that he would have to teach. Yet he sounded envious. As well he should, Jacob thought, savoring tender, heated thoughts of his bride in his arms. If he had any say about it, he and Retha would indeed increase the schoolmaster’s burden. Jacob aimed for them to start tonight.

  The two men merged into a clump of earnest Brothers waiting for the food to be served. Dismissing fragments of conversation he overheard about “No sign of rain” and “Hard on the troops,” Jacob anxiously watched the anteroom. For such a simple task as changing Retha’s ribbons, Sister Ernst was taking her own sweet time. He wanted his bride back now. In the five long days since Retha had accepted him, urgency had consumed him despite all doubts. The wait had reduced him, an experienced man, a Widower, to youthful eagerness.

  A smattering of decorous claps silenced the talk as Sister Ernst pushed his bride into the chamber, a new blue ribbon tied under her chin. His wife now. His beautiful wife. Untrammeled by oaken buckets and willow baskets piled with linens, she moved with newfound grace, shy and regal as a doe in the woods. As she walked toward him, her friends among the younger of the Single Sisters each handed her a wildflower until a bouquet filled her hands. Ducking her head sweetly, she acknowledged each tribute. He thought he saw her blink back tears.

  She came to his side, taller than the other women, taller than some men, yet shorter than the bear he knew himself to be. Ah, how she would fit in the circle of his arms. And he was back where he had been all week, consumed, with Retha urgently on his mind, pulsing through his veins, sighing on his breath.

  He took in her wild, golden eyes. The tan and amber stripes of her new dress darkened them, enriched them.

  “Fetch that man a brandy!” Brother Bagge laughed heartily, beating on his back to remind him of the occasion, the other men laughing along good-humoredly. Caught lusting after his bride in public, Jacob felt his face heat. He was that far gone.

  Samuel Ernst stuck a cut-glass goblet of the town’s best peach brandy in his hand as Eva handed one to Retha, and passed the bottle on. In three large swallows, Jacob drained his glass and set it down.

  Nicholas, who had hovered impatiently near the food, came over and asked for a glass of his own.

  Jacob shook his head, as much to clear it from the brandy as to tell his son no. But Matthias told Nicholas for him. “We’re too young, Nicholas. You know that.”

  Nicholas glowered at his brother. Not here, Jacob thought, putting a warning hand on the older boy’s shoulder. He should not have insisted they be allowed to come. “It’s our father’s wedding,” Nicholas hissed at his brother.

  “We’re still Little Boys,” Matthias spit back, maddening in his pious command of community rules.

  “No brandy or arguments for any boys,” Jacob said firmly.

  Together they glared at him.

  Bodily he separated them, putting one on one side, one on the other. He should have considered their incessant bickering before insisting that they come. As quickly as his sons arrived at camaraderie, so quickly would it vanish into petty rivalries. But he had wanted them here, as much for their own sakes as to welcome Retha.

  “Can I have brandy, too?” A watery voice wafted up from just above his knees. Jacob dug his fingers into his neck. She didn’t even know what brandy was.

  “You’re just a baby,” Nicholas taunted.

  “Everyone’s too young for brandy,” Jacob said, wishing he could dose them all with it and be done with their moods.

  Anna Johanna’s lower lip trembled. He darted Retha a desperate look. His children would mar her day.

  But she broke into a sunny smile and knelt down before Anna Johanna. “You’re not too young for…for…” Retha surveyed the piles of food behind them, a teasing hesitation in her voice. “…dumplings! Strudel! Sugarcake!”

  Anna Johanna’s damp eyes sparkled.

  “Which one do you want?”

  “Sugarcake,” she whispered.

  Retha snatched a small square of sticky sugarcake off the table and presented it to his daughter with a flourish. “We need to feed those boys, too,” she confided in Jacob.

  Samuel Ernst overheard. “I will take care of that, Sister Retha.” Using his watchman’s voice, he called out that it was time to eat.

  “Toasts first!” Brother Schopp cried.

  Retha’s eyes met Jacob’s in a quick glance filled with dread. No toasts, she mouthed.

  Jacob felt a surge of pleasure at the understanding that passed between them. He knew what she was thinking as surely as if she spoke the words aloud. Feed the children, and take me home. In her way she was as shy as his daughter, but she had held up better, bravely, in public, for him.

  “One toast,” he said in a voice of command. Quiet rippled across the noisy, happy crowd as all faces looked toward him. His years of leadership counted for something.

  “To my bride. Her courage in marrying us, and h
er beauty.” He thought of Single Sister Krause’s hope for her most unusual charge. He turned to Retha quietly and said so she alone could hear, “I pledge to make you happy in our home.”

  Her amber eyes widened in surprise, reminding him uncomfortably of her wild wolf. And how much she might be like it.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cries of “best wishes” and “a long and happy life” rang out from the steps of Gemein Haus.

  “You’ll regret it,” Eva Ernst teased. Her plump hand clinging to her stocky husband’s arm belied her friendly taunt.

  “Gratulieren!” Philip Schopp cried out as Retha and Jacob escaped the festivities and crossed the parched square to Jacob’s house. Stately Brother and Sister Marshall led their way, Jacob’s children romping close behind.

  Neither the hour nor the sultry evening heat stifled their high spirits. Anna Johanna, skipping along beside the Ernsts in her trusted old dress, waved a sprig of indigo that she had salvaged from the floor. Nicholas, eating a huge piece of cake, rudely defied all good manners by hiding his free hand in a pocket. Meanwhile, sober Matthias—usually sober Matthias—gawked at two Little Girls of his own age as they wove in and out around the bridal party.

  At the heavy green door of Jacob’s half-timbered home, Retha paused and faced the happy crowd with her husband. The Little Girls hurried up, shrieking as they sprayed the couple with rose petals and a bit of precious rice. Retha and Jacob fended off the light barrage with upheld hands and laughter. When it ended, Retha eyed first the giggling girls and then the rowdy family that she had acquired so abruptly.

  Always before, she had loved being among the Little Girls and younger Single Sisters, full of joy and bent on play. Now, self-consciously fingering the new blue ribbon under her chin, she felt matronly and apart. A Married Sister, with a home of her own.

  Red-faced from the heat, a few members from the brass band struck up a spirited folk song from the homeland they had left behind. Familiar with the tune from other weddings, Retha couldn’t keep her toes from tapping.