Wild Indigo

by Judith Stanton

  Jacob crumpled the note in his hand. “Scaife will be difficult to persuade, whether we have records or not.”

  “Then go to his superior. Scaife is but a captain. He would answer, I think, to that regular army man, Colonel Armstrong. He has sided with us before.”

  Upstairs, boys’ boots scuffled across the floor. Jacob lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “’Tis too soon for me to leave them. They cannot be ready.”

  I’m not ready, he thought.

  Marshall must have caught the reluctance in his look. “Ah. You have come from Brother and Sister Ernst, have you not? How do the children take to their new mother?”

  “Very well. We are all doing very well.” Jacob covered his emotion hastily, wondering at the magnitude of that white lie on a scale of venial sin.

  “If another man could go, Brother Blum, I would send him.”

  “I know you would.”

  “However, Brother Bagge has but returned from Pennsylvania, and I—”

  “I’ll go. Andreas is my cousin, and I know what to do.”

  “I will gather his proof and write the colonel a letter.”

  Jacob nodded, already organizing the trip in his mind. “I can leave in an hour. I have to take the boys back to school for the afternoon and then instruct…”

  Instruct my wife, he thought, in her duties, in a thousand and one things she would need to know about each child, each task, each meal.

  Brother Marshall gave him a look of kind sympathy. “Now, at least, your children can stay home. Sister Mary Margaretha will care for them. You can rely on her.”

  Jacob masked his doubt and led Marshall to the door.

  Sister Mary Margaretha, indeed. At the Ernsts’, Retha had had the nerve to upbraid him over breakfast. He had scarcely had the time during this chaotic morning to digest her pointed looks, her deliberate explanation of the word reneged, her disturbing kindness to his daughter.

  He stalked to the kitchen. “I need to talk to your new mama, pumpkin,” he said, starting to tug at Anna Johanna’s fine blond hair and remembering not to. “Would you go upstairs and take these tallow lamps for tonight?”

  Anna Johanna trotted upstairs, proud to have a mission of her own.

  He turned to his bride. Her amber eyes shining in the bright sun of early afternoon, she sat expectantly at the kitchen table. Unwanted, unwelcome warmth pooled in his groin.

  How could she look like that—so innocent after her strange actions with him on their wedding night and with his daughter only this morning? Was it madness—or a bride’s nerves in the one case and a new mother’s awkwardness in the other? How could he know? Where could he turn?

  She smiled sweetly, and he clamped down on desire. How could he—knowing what he knew, having seen what he had seen—look at her and be overcome with craving?

  “An urgent mission has come up,” he said brusquely, glad that thoughts were silent. “I must leave today, and leave you with the children. Of course, I will tell the Ernsts, and they will take charge. But if the children become too much…”

  “What is the mission?” she asked with utter calm.

  “My cousin, Andreas Blum. Do you know him?”

  “Only by word of mouth. He must be a Single Brother.” Her eyes sparkled at her little joke. Single Brothers and Single Sisters lived strictly apart.

  In spite of himself, Jacob smiled back. Of course, she would have been kept quite separate from his rather dashing cousin. “Yes, he is. And just drafted by Captain Scaife, apparently. Andreas and I rarely see eye to eye, except in this. He will resist them—so as not to fight. And his resistance will put him in the gravest danger.”

  “Then you must go.” Retha squeezed his hand as if to offer comfort, but her unexpected touch ran through him like fire. “We will be fine.”

  Doubt flooded him. “’Tis too much to ask. I will call on Brother and Sister Ernst. You know naught of the children.”

  “I know their names and who sleeps where and how to cook and where the Ernsts live if I have questions,” she said.

  Jacob searched her face for a sign of deception.

  “And I know Brother Schopp and Sister Baumgarten and the Marshalls, and will call on them if need be,” she continued.

  He heard only earnestness, saw no attempt to deceive. He wanted to trust her. She was too guileless, too wild for plotting. Now Brother Marshall had added his confidence in Retha to Sister Krause’s strong support. Perhaps he ought to give her this first chance. Trust someone else for a change. After all, her logical litany was mightily reassuring.

  “Besides,” Retha added, unblinking under his gaze, “Sister Rosina taught me all I know of discipline.”

  A short laugh escaped him. This was too much sense for madness. “I…very well then. I have to take the boys to their lessons.”

  She put her hand on his forearm to stay him. He looked down, confused.

  “I know the way to Brother Schopp’s house,” she said. “If this is so urgent, should you not go right away?”

  In the end, he conceded. She sounded both prepared and eager to take on her new role. He rushed her through the house, reviewing all she needed to know. Then he climbed the stairs to the children’s rooms and instructed them to remember their regular habits and to obey their new stepmother.

  Predictably, Nicholas looked mutinous, although probably more over not being allowed to go than over staying home with a stranger. Matthias, sitting with hands clapped on his knees, withdrew. Anna Johanna, as so often lately, looked a little lost.

  Downstairs, Retha met Jacob at the door, handing him hat and money purse and powder pouch. He had to admire her quick grasp of such loving, wifely chores.

  “Be very, very careful, Jacob,” she said earnestly.

  Ah, how he relished the sound of his name willingly on her tongue.

  Suddenly she rose on tiptoe and flung her arms around him. “And come home to your family safe and sound.”

  She breathed her words into the hollow of his neck, her hot, sweet body pressing along the length of his.

  Jacob neither questioned her action nor shrank from answering it. He sought her mouth and gave her one quick, searing kiss, all he thought she might allow.

  And almost more than he could bear to leave.

  CHAPTER 6

  Retha swept the yard with a mind to murder dirt. She knew it was a bad idea to sweep in the rising heat. But a deceptively lowering cloud had come up, and she thought she would burst with nervous energy if she spent another minute in the confines of the house.

  It was her first full day as mother to Jacob’s children, and she had kept a tight rein on her anger. By eight o’clock she had bustled the boys off to Brother Schopp’s for lessons, slapped on some pottage and a kettle of beans, and moved outdoors for space to indulge her temper. But only for a moment. Anna Johanna joined her, a child-sized broom in hand, and mimicked her every move.

  The day before, Jacob’s hasty departure had at first astonished her. How could he leave so soon after their wedding? And on such short notice? Disbelief had changed to anger as he bulleted about the house, leading her upstairs to point out the children’s wardrobe and their separate beds, downstairs to review cookery utensils, then down a narrow set of steps to the cellar stocked with early summer food. Through it all, he instructed her relentlessly. Anna Johanna couldn’t drink milk. Nicholas wouldn’t touch lima beans. Matthias might have nightmares.

  Despite Jacob’s evident concern that the children would run wild, they had been on their best behavior. But then, of course, Brother and Sister Ernst had visited them at every meal. A nagging resentment settled in Retha’s chest as her husband’s plan became clear to her. He had asked the Ernsts to check on her.

  Finished with the yard, Retha leaned on her broom and sighed with indignation. Anna Johanna propped against her little broom, too, imitating Retha’s sigh down to its length and intensity. Retha could not stay indignant long while the child so aptly mirrored her bad humor.

 
; “Too hot for snakes,” Retha grumbled, mopping her brow.

  Anna Johanna’s blue eyes narrowed with curiosity. “How come?”

  “Snakes love to lie in the sun, sweet potato, but this stone is too hot for even them. Feel it.” Retha knelt and touched her fingers to one of the sizzling flagstones that paved the small backyard where the children played and laundry hung to bleach and dry. Anna Johanna knelt, too, and touched the stone.

  “Yee-ouch! It’ll scald their slimy bellies,” she shrieked, jerking her hand away and shaking it far harder than her quick touch warranted. Her brothers must have taught her such a relish for gore, Retha thought, briefly amused.

  “Let’s brush off this dust, and go inside for water.”

  Anna Johanna shook herself like a spaniel up from a lake. Retha took both brooms and followed the child to the house. Standing on a rough-cut stone step, she stretched to unlatch the door.

  Blinking in the shadowed kitchen, Retha plunged the gourd dipper into a bucket of water and offered Anna Johanna a drink. The girl took long grateful gulps, the gourd’s bowl clasped in grimy hands. Inside her scuffed shoes, Retha thought, the child’s feet must be black. Apologizing, Jacob had explained his and Sister Ernst’s failed effort to bathe his daughter before the wedding. Neither of them had been willing to risk one of her fits so near the event.

  Anna Johanna handed back the gourd, half-moons of dirt under her fingernails. Retha drank deeply, too, wondering how to solve this problem. Jacob’s dirty daughter did not reflect well on him and would be no credit to her. Surely the child’s fear of baths was nothing so simple as a fear of water. Jacob hadn’t given her his opinion. Perhaps he didn’t know himself.

  Retha smiled as a new plan formed.

  “You know what I think we ought to do next?” she asked with an air of mystery, learned in dealing with Younger Sisters.

  “Play dolls,” Anna Johanna chirped.

  “No-o…” Retha waited for another suggestion.

  The child’s shoulders slumped. “Play soldiers?”

  “Oh no, not that!”

  “Then what?”

  “Play pick-lima-beans-from-the-garden and go-wash-them-in-the-creek.”

  Furrowing her brow, Anna Johanna considered this proposition. “We always wash them here…”

  “I’m sure you do. But doesn’t this sound like a good game?”

  Anna Johanna coiled a curl around a finger. “Not the picking beans part.”

  “I suppose that is work,” Retha conceded.

  “The creek part might be all right.”

  Retha thought her stepdaughter sounded reluctant. Perhaps this was a bad idea. Perhaps she was scared of water. “Of course, you might not want to. We’d have to wade in. We’d get wet.”

  “How wet?” Anna Johanna’s voice trembled with worry.

  “I don’t know,” Retha said lightly to reassure her. “Water wet. No more than ankle deep.”

  Anna Johanna shook her head with girlish gravity. “Mama wouldn’t let us play in the creek.”

  “You can play in the creek with me.”

  “No, I can’t. I got all muddy, and Mama got sick, and Papa yelled.”

  “Papa won’t yell this time. I won’t let him.”

  Anna Johanna gave her a doubtful look.

  “And we can wash the mud off,” Retha reassured her. “Come on.”

  “You mean now?”

  “Soon as we pick enough beans.”

  Picking beans was another matter. Anna Johanna was too young, Retha realized by the time the child had stripped a whole plant of pods and leaves alike. Quickly reorganizing their task, Retha picked the beans herself and let her stepdaughter put them in the wicker basket. She gathered two handfuls for Nicholas, one for herself and, judging from what she had seen of their appetites so far, one for Matthias and Anna Johanna. Then she stood and stretched.

  “That’s enough. Let’s go to the creek.”

  Anna Johanna stood, mimicked her stretching, then grabbed a finger and followed her stepmother to the meadow. Retha accepted her tentative touch with silent gratitude.

  The low creek gurgled feebly, a boundary between Retha’s life now and her years with the Cherokee. It reminded her of simpler times. Laundry tubs would have amused them when there were perfectly good streams to use. Bathing using tubs and basins would have made them howl with laughter. They would have been astounded by the Moravians’ elaborate waterworks, a system of underground pipes and pumps and cisterns, planned and built, Retha suddenly recalled, by her husband.

  Nevertheless, for memory and for her present purposes with her stepdaughter, the creek was perfect. Enough water for wading, but not deep enough to frighten her.

  Anna Johanna knelt at its sandy bank, a miniature, feminine version of her father. Her sturdy body bent to its work, her dirty blond curls stringing from under a simple girl’s Haube. One by one, as if the pods were treasured crystal, she washed the lima beans. At this rate, Retha calculated, they would be washing pods all day. But Anna Johanna’s hands would be clean. Still, they had only a short while before the boys would come home for the midday meal.

  “Let’s try several at one time,” Retha suggested, kicking off her shoes and wading into the shallow stream.

  “How?” Anna Johanna asked, taking her own sweet time to wash another pod.

  “Watch.” Holding half a dozen beans in the cage of her hands, Retha immersed them in the creek and shook them, splashing the water.

  Anna Johanna’s eyes brightened with interest. “My turn?”

  “Your turn.”

  The child submerged a chubby hand in the water. Her willingness encouraged Retha. She gave her three pods to wash.

  Anna Johanna shook her hands in the water to rinse the pods, then set them aside, and took another handful. “What if one gets away?”

  “We’d have to wade into the creek and chase it.”

  Anna Johanna considered. With a careful glance at Retha, she opened her fingers one by one as if freeing a butterfly. The beans dropped into the stream and bobbed away. Biting her lip nervously, she started after them.

  Retha stopped her. “Shoes off,” she said cheerfully. “Stockings, too.”

  Much faster than she had undressed for bed last night, Anna Johanna took off her shoes, stripped her stockings, and flung them onto the bank. With a cautious look at Retha, she lifted the skirt of her beloved dirty dress and splashed into the water.

  She wasn’t afraid; she loved it! Retha shucked her shoes and joined her. Already well downstream, Anna Johanna captured her first pod with something like a war whoop, dropping the hem of her filthy skirt into the water and splashing noisily.

  What could have soured her on bathing? Retha wondered at the sight of such unexpected delight. Not any fear of water she could see, and surely not a fear of punishment from her father. Jacob adored her. From the dirt he had left behind, he plainly could not lift a hand to discipline her. But how strange to think that this quick creek bath might have done the trick.

  Anna Johanna squealed again in a sharper, higher tone. Retha looked up to see her sitting in midstream, bean pods in each fist. Her skirt mushroomed around her.

  Retha ran down the creek’s sandy margin. “Are you all right?”

  A small but happy smile stole across Anna Johanna’s face. “I’m all wet.”

  Retha had to laugh. “So you are.”

  Anna Johanna dropped the beans and slapped her hands against the water, drenching herself with spray. A miniature rainbow shimmered across it.

  “What are we going to do with you!”

  “Hang me out to dry!”

  “Now, how do you propose to do that?” Retha asked.

  Anna Johanna didn’t know, nor was Retha sure what to do next. She hesitated to try to remove Anna Johanna’s wet dress for a serious bath. Jacob’s instructions on that score had been explicit: no bathing until he returned. Still, with the matter progressing so favorably, Retha felt she had to put the proposition to her.<
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  “When we get home, you can put on a dry dress.”

  Anna Johanna shook her head vigorously. “I have to wear this dress.”

  Retha stopped short. She had to wear this dress? Had to?

  “How about the pretty blue one?” Retha countered. She had seen it upstairs in the children’s cupboard. “It matches your eyes.”

  Anna Johanna sat in the creek’s thin flow, stubborn and meticulous as she washed a recovered pod. Retha felt helpless in the face of her new stepdaughter’s silent refusal. What did she know of mothering? And what, besides her own dimly remembered girlhood, did she know of a young girl’s wants and needs?

  For no reason Retha could imagine, the child loved her filthy flaxen dress. She clung to it, old and worn, dirty and wet. Nor would she switch to the blue one in the cupboard. Most likely, she had outgrown it, too.

  She needed a new one then, Retha thought, suddenly inspired. And Anna Johanna could help pick out the cloth and help her make it.

  “I think you need a new dress, sweet potato. Something special.”

  Ignoring her, Anna Johanna patted down her puffed skirt, careful to immerse all remaining dry spots in the water. “How special?” she mumbled at last.

  “Umm.” Retha paused, making a show of deciding. “Some different kind of special.”

  Anna Johanna gave her a doubting sideways glance.

  The child’s doubt was warranted, Retha realized, as she cast about for a way to make good on her impulsive offer. She had gotten herself into another fine pickle. To replace whatever hold that flaxen dress had on her, Anna Johanna needed something new enough to fascinate, something uniquely hers.

  Retha racked her brain. What had she loved most as a child?

  Ah. The comforting softness of her first deerskin dress. She had treasured every one of them, even the one she had made shortly before losing her family. Scavenging the countryside as an orphan, she had bemoaned its rapid ruination and then its loss when the Sisters took it away.