Wild Indigo

by Judith Stanton

  He had to wonder why Armstrong had insisted that he come.

  The colonel commandeered the nearest table and a seat facing the door. “You must indulge me. I cannot sit with my back to the door. A military man’s superstition.”

  Jacob indulged him. Despite his own sometimes martial inclinations, whole areas of military life were a mystery to him. “I don’t mind, but we like to think you safe among us.”

  They ate and tried to talk. Given the colonel’s professional caution, Jacob could find little common ground with him, beyond the grain and a new and unexpected order for a thousand pairs of shoes. The war interested Jacob mainly as it affected Salem, and one issue interested him more than others at the moment though he did not want to raise it. To his surprise, the colonel brought it up.

  “The town’s abuzz over your rescue of your wife, the spy.”

  The colonel had revealed his true purpose for this shared meal. Jacob smiled guardedly. “Fresh fodder for the gossips.”

  “Enlighten me. I would prefer the story from a man I trust.”

  Jacob told him in terms as neutral as he could, omitting anger, insult, personal bias. He gave the colonel Retha’s explanation: Scaife had long harassed the Voglers and had taken her for a spy simply because he had found her there.

  “The captain is, as you may know, our most effective man with spies.”

  “I suppose a man who pointed at every bush he passed would flush out an authentic turncoat from time to time,” Jacob said caustically.

  “Ah, yes. His enthusiasm for his task. ’Tis well known. He did no harm, I trust, to your wife.”

  “She was not injured.”

  The colonel’s raised brow acknowledged Jacob’s careful choice of words. “Why do I not believe you? No one tracks down more runaway recruits. He broke up the spy ring in Wilkes County. And yet…” The colonel ran a knuckle over his mustache and lowered his voice. “He is dangerous, difficult.”

  “Is he?” Jacob replied, surprised by Armstrong’s confiding tone, by his admission, and by the promise of more.

  “He’s been with me since I was a captain in the War of Regulation, and before. More than fifteen years, during the lawlessness that led to it. I keep thinking I have him under control, and then he pulls a caper like this. There was a day back then…a young couple murdered…” Armstrong shook his head with regret. “I could have court-martialed him that day. His lawlessness went beyond the rest. I thought I had reformed him—”

  The colonel broke off, his eyes widening. That was Jacob’s only warning. With a sob of “Papa!” a froth of blond hair and a raggedy dress catapulted onto Jacob’s lap, ending the officer’s dark reminiscence.

  “Anna Johanna!” Jacob pulled his daughter to him for a welcoming, fatherly kiss, too flabbergasted by her unexpected appearance to worry if her ban on being touched, held, and hugged had been lifted for this public place. “Sweet potato! What in the world are you doing here? Why aren’t you at home? And where’s Mama Retha?”

  Retha appeared at the door frame. “Hier, Jacob,” she said in tense German. “We worried when you did not come home.” She nodded toward his daughter, whose cheeks were stained with tears. Retha didn’t need to point out her own concern. It was stamped on her taut face. Jacob’s heart warmed: His wife had worried about him.

  “We brought your meal,” she said. “Anna Johanna, show him.”

  Opening her bundle, she wrinkled her nose at the pungent scent of warm cheese. “Der Käse, Papa, und das Brot.”

  Armstrong gave Jacob’s daughter an amused, avuncular smile. “Bread?” he guessed. “And cheese? That’s a good girl.” Turning to Jacob, he added, “One of your three, no doubt?”

  Pride warmed Jacob. “The youngest. The only girl.”

  Then he saw the colonel train his penetrating gaze on Retha, saw the danger a fraction of a second after he smoothly spoke.

  “And are you well, Mrs. Blum, after yesterday’s ordeal?”

  “Quite well, sir, I thank you,” she said in perfect, if accented, English.

  And then she blanched.

  Armstrong looked from Retha to Jacob and back. “Ahem. May I congratulate you on your recent and prodigious mastery of English, madam?”

  Jacob admired the colonel’s clever trap as much as he resented it. It wasn’t last night’s Tavern gossip or loose talk around the town that had alerted Armstrong to the charge of Retha’s spying. He must have seen Scaife. Perhaps they had passed yesterday on the road. And then the colonel came straight here to investigate Scaife’s charge.

  “Mr. Blum, I must question your wife.”

  “In public, sir? In front of the child?” Jacob asked, over his daughter’s head. He couldn’t gauge the depth or nature of Armstrong’s suspicions. But he didn’t like them. “Is this a formal inquiry?”

  “No, not formal, no. The child is no obstacle. I have questions only.”

  Retha squared her shoulders, feeling not unlike a Single Sister called to account for sneaking out to her beloved wilderness. But facing the elegant, somber colonel demanded a deeper resolution.

  “Your command of English is excellent, madam,” he said.

  “I never denied it, sir.”

  “You misled Captain Scaife.”

  “I was merely silent.”

  “Would you care to explain why?” he asked with cold, implacable courtesy.

  Retha looked at her husband. Yesterday he had honored her ruse. What did he want her to do today?

  “Tell him, wife, as you told me,” Jacob said in English, quietly, a confident, loving look in his indigo eyes.

  That apparent confidence, that unexpected love, lent her the extra bit of courage that she needed. She let out a breath.

  “Captain Scaife believes the Voglers are spies, but he cannot catch them at it. Indeed, he has no proof. He merely supposes that Mrs. Vogler, who is Cherokee, is motivated to spy against the Continental Army because Colonials killed her family. But how could she be a spy? She speaks no English, and Mr. Vogler does not speak it well.”

  “Whereas you do,” Armstrong said expressionlessly.

  “I do. For that reason, Mr. Vogler asked me to conceal my knowledge of English from Captain Scaife. If the captain heard me, he would no doubt think the worst and conclude that I was the missing piece of his puzzle—her liaison.”

  Lounging in his chair, Armstrong paused ominously. “And are you that liaison, madam?”

  “I am no spy, sir,” she said stoutly.

  Jacob caught her eye and nodded his support, huddling a restless Anna Johanna to him.

  From inside his coat, Armstrong retrieved his pipe, methodically tamped tobacco into it, took out his flint box, and tediously produced a flame. Only after he had puffed the pipe to life did he pin Retha with a martial glare. If he meant to make her nervous, he was succeeding.

  “What proof can you offer that you are not?”

  Retha touched the ribbon of her Haube with a steady hand. The pink ribbon of a Single Sister, the visible mark of Scaife’s invasion. “None, sir. Except that I have no motive, no knowledge of military affairs, and”—she looked down at Anna Johanna, fidgeting on her father’s lap—“no time.”

  “Captain Scaife thinks you have the knowledge.”

  “How, sir? I know naught of military matters.”

  “Ah, but you do. Anyone in Salem, even you, can report our movements to the British troops that come through town, can receive messages from them and deliver messages for them. We have always known that.”

  “Surely not a woman, sir,” she offered in her own defense.

  Armstrong drew on his pipe, letting out a cloud of smoke around its stem. “Were you not recently a laundress for the Tavern?”

  Retha felt betraying blood heat her face. He had investigated her. He suspected her.

  He smiled coldly. “This morning I spoke to your replacement. You were a laundress. You came here to fetch their linens, wash their clothes…”

  “Briefly.”

/>   “And before that, a dyer for the town. You are said to know more of the woods and paths beyond Salem than any woman in it.”

  Jacob sat forward, his manner gentle as his strained words were sharp. “You go too far, Colonel. If you have formal accusations, make them.”

  “Nothing formal yet, Mr. Blum, I assure you,” Armstrong said mildly, nursing his pipe.

  Anna coughed from the smoke, and Jacob patted her back, glaring.

  Retha could not read the colonel’s courteous tone. Her throat tightened like a rabbit’s caught in a snare.

  “In other words,” he said, turning back to her, “you have special knowledge and opportunity.”

  “I know of plants and roots and bark and seeds, but naught of war. Except that it has largely robbed me of the opportunity to do my work.”

  Armstrong shrugged off her explanation. “The captain thinks you also have the motive…”

  “I wish for the war to end, sir, but have neither the power nor knowledge to affect its course,” she bit off, frustrated by the calm, implacable way he wove his web of implication around her.

  “The same motive, Mrs. Blum, as Alice Vogler’s. The Cherokee raised you, did they not? And we Colonials, not the British, mounted a campaign against them.”

  “My wife came to us as a lost child—a white child, rescued and raised by the Cherokee, but as much a Colonial as you or I,” Jacob said, controlled anger in his voice.

  “Let me, Jacob,” Retha said hastily, heartened by his quick, unquestioning defense of her. “I will answer him.” She faced her interrogator.

  “I lived with the Cherokee, yes, Colonel. And I loved them. They would give you the shirts off their backs, but they are quick to avenge murder. Local troops, not British, murdered my Cherokee family cruelly before my eyes. Men who went on to fight for you. Were I not Moravian, I would have motive enough to spy against your army.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes, but she lifted her hand to forestall her husband’s intervention—and include him. “But these good people found me and took me in, raised me Moravian, and allowed me to join their community. Which I did when I was but…” She paused, ever aware of the awkwardness of not knowing her own age. “When I was but a girl. I am Moravian now. Revenge is not our way.”

  “You claim Moravian neutrality, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “In your particular case, that plea may not wash.” Armstrong gave her a small, inscrutable smile and turned to her husband, dismissing her avowal. She bridled, but listened. “Mr. Blum, what assurance can you give me of your wife’s innocence?”

  “I stand by her words.”

  Armstrong gave a short bark of doubt and fiddled with his pipe. “What assurance then that she will not spy again?”

  Jacob stood up slowly, not disturbing his daughter in his arms. But Retha felt the anger pouring off him.

  “My wife is not a spy. Sim Scaife wants to harass me through her. But with respect to you, she will not leave town without me.”

  “Very well.” Armstrong smiled tightly. “You sound convinced of her innocence.”

  “You, sir, have not convinced me of her guilt.”

  Retha marched with Jacob up the street from the Tavern to home, past houses, shops, the Single Brothers House, and a few wagons already arrived for tomorrow’s market day. Jacob carried Anna piggyback, and she alone seemed to enjoy the short trek. Mortification streaked through Retha’s body. First Scaife, then Jacob’s fight for her and censure, and now the colonel’s accusation. The entire muddle was her own doing. She should have stayed at home.

  “Jacob—”

  “Wait until we’re alone.” She couldn’t tell whether his anger was for her or the colonel.

  Inside the house, they put Anna down for a nap. Jacob practically dragged Retha back downstairs and shocked her with a hot, possessive embrace.

  “They can’t have you, it’s not your fault,” he ground out. “Scaife is after me.”

  “I shouldn’t have left home,” she muttered into his shoulder. She would not cry, but her body shook against Jacob’s stalwart strength. “When you weren’t here for our midday meal, Anna took a notion you were never coming home, as her mother left and never came back.”

  “I couldn’t refuse the colonel’s invitation, and you couldn’t prevent her distress,” he said into Retha’s ear.

  The heat of his body radiated into hers, sustaining her.

  “Brother and Sister Marshall had long since passed the house, so I knew the meeting was over…And you—so much went wrong yesterday…We went to the mill, and Brother Steiner told me you were with the colonel. I couldn’t imagine why. I was worried—so worried.”

  Jacob pulled back, and a slow grin spread across his face. “You worried about me. You tracked me down. I like that,” he said on a note of wonder, and kissed her deeply.

  Confused by his ardor after her many blunders, Retha simply accepted his kiss, let herself ride the wave of his intensity away from her misery.

  At last he stopped, tucking her head under his jaw. “I have to go. They do need me at the mill.”

  But Retha couldn’t simply let him go, the issue unresolved. “The colonel thinks I’m guilty, doesn’t he?”

  “I’m not so sure. Given Scaife’s slander, he had to question you. Given Armstrong’s position, he must wonder. But I have not lost all my credit with him. However…” He pulled her to a kitchen chair and sat across the table from her. “I have lost credit elsewhere.”

  Retha’s stomach plummeted. “Where?”

  Jacob extended his beautiful strong hands to her, and she gave him hers. He seemed to study them, palms first, then knuckles. After a long pause that she found precious and yet alarming, he spoke resolutely.

  “We will face this together. Do not think it your fault.”

  “What is not my fault?”

  “The Elders have admonished me for my actions at the mill.”

  Admonishment, she knew, was the first step to being disassociated from the whole community, as Gottlieb Vogler once had been. But Jacob had done what he had done at Steiner’s Mill because of her. She wanted to withdraw her hands in shame.

  “No, Jacob, not you. The fault is mine.”

  He brushed off her protest with a quick shake of his head. “I accept their judgment, wife. ’Twas I who lost my temper, injured Brethren, and jeopardized our uneasy relationship with the militia.”

  “Because of me.”

  “Because of Scaife,” he corrected. “And I would do it again. I will always protect you, as I see fit, whatever the other Elders say. Your life, your honor, are my responsibility. If we must break with the community, we would not be the first. I will not have you threatened or afraid.”

  He seemed indomitable to her. She looked at his beautiful hands, strong and broad and yet graceful. She took them to her mouth and kissed them, out of gratitude, out of newborn respect for his courage. “I won’t be afraid.”

  “We will go to services tonight. We will go every night. We will tell the children—the boys, at least. They must not hear of my misdeeds by rumor.”

  She agreed. “As Nicholas heard about me. But will the Elders do aught to mark this censure?”

  “Very little.”

  His hands on hers were firm and sure. She did not believe his all-too-casual dismissal of the gravity of censure. “Are you still an Elder?”

  He grinned wryly as if it didn’t matter. “Quite probably not.”

  “Will you still serve on the other…?” She did not yet know its name or Jacob’s function on it. There had been much of the tightly organized society’s communal workings that she as a Single Sister had never needed to know.

  He shrugged. “The Supervisory Committee will consult me, almost certainly, for advice and plans as they need them.”

  “What about your travels?”

  “As an envoy, I remain indispensable. No one among us knows English better. ’Tis certain I will still deal with the army.”

  Riv
ulets of guilt washed over Retha’s body. For her he had suffered a humbling loss of the status he had earned while shaping and protecting the community. Yet he accepted his disgrace with stalwart calm.

  She hung her head. “This is all my fault. You cannot say otherwise.”

  “But I can, and I do. ’Tis not your fault. You are not to worry.” With a light and reassuring touch, he tipped her chin up. “You are not to hang your head.”

  “Oh, but Jacob, when I think I could have prevented you this embarrassment—this loss—”

  “Do not think of it. Not like that. You went in search of plants and found a demon.”

  Her little lie needled her, and his trust made her uncomfortable. It was too late to confess the real reason she had left town.

  “Someday soon,” he went on, “I will go with you to search for plants and roots and bark to your heart’s content.”

  Retha braided her hair. Jacob had gone to the mill for the remainder of the afternoon, Anna Johanna was sleeping upstairs, and Retha had stripped off the Haube with the old pink ribbons. They only reminded her of her troubles. In the bedroom, she tossed the cap to the back of the clothes cupboard, knowing she would wear it at Singstunde tonight and whenever else she went out. She didn’t want to embarrass Jacob further.

  But she need not wear it here. She sat down by the open bedroom window, parted her thick tresses down the middle, and methodically braided first one side and then the other, Indian style, her fingers speeding up as they remembered the simple, rhythmic task. She wished she had moccasins to wear and a deerskin dress of her own again, and she longed to see her wolf.

  Jacob’s forbearance of her many blunders astonished her. Humbled her. Heartened her. Somehow his feeling for her had survived her rashness as well as her rejection of him and her fear. For his sake, as well as her own, she longed for a moment’s reprieve from the community’s strict ways. No, she argued with herself, even she honored and respected the ways of the community. If an individual here or there were difficult, most were not. Most were kind and trustworthy, hardworking and fair. Most had risen to the challenge of raising her when she had come to them, wild and abandoned. They had schooled her in the Christian virtues that they themselves practiced. They had taught her to read and had instructed her in womanly chores. They had given her a new life.