Wild Indigo

by Judith Stanton

  Then why did she yearn so for wilderness?

  A wagon rumbled by, another settler early for market. Standing in front of the window, she leaned out to see if it could be the Voglers. It was not. Through the open frame, the afternoon sun seared the pink, burned skin on her chest. It would be another day or two before she could comfortably wear a neckerchief. In the forest she would not need one. She longed to be in the thickest groves where sunlight filtered in so thinly that she would not burn but could be cool. She wanted to smell the rich humus, feel a faint breeze on her face, rest her back against the mossy bark of a venerable oak.

  She tied off her braids with rawhide thongs.

  She wanted to be free of the memories that dogged her.

  “You can’t go out like that!” Matthias said as he walked in the back door from Brother Schopp’s lessons later that afternoon.

  “Like what?” Retha asked.

  “With your hair…like that,” he said.

  “Like an Indian,” Nicholas scoffed, grabbing an apple from a bowl on the kitchen table and heading upstairs.

  Retha touched a braid. She had forgotten. Her braids felt so natural, so cool and right, that she hadn’t noticed them.

  “I don’t intend to go out like this. For services, I’ll coil them up under my Haube. But I like them. On a day like this, they’re cool. Almost as cool as hair like yours.” She ruffled Matthias’s short hair.

  That she had made such an unthinking gesture surprised her. She wouldn’t have thought that braiding her hair would lift her spirits so. Or that Matthias would accept a motherly hand. His attention riveted on her fascinating braids.

  “Did you wear your hair like that before—with them?” he asked with hushed curiosity.

  “Well, yes, I did. I mean, I must have. Probably from the day they took me in. But you know, I wasn’t much older than Anna Johanna then. I don’t remember everything.”

  “I thought you were as old as Nicholas when you were with them.”

  “By the time I came here, yes, I was about his age. But I was very young when my parents died.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “About my parents?”

  “No, not them.” He shrugged, his show of indifference not convincing. “About aught with…the others.”

  Briefly she closed her eyes. How could she convey to him the sharp memories that assaulted her senses? The thwack of the ball in the ball-play game. The coppery smell of a butchered deer. The softness of her deerskin clothing. Ah, was she nostalgic today. But what to tell him? She was no storyteller. But then, perhaps she could be. Each night, Singing Stones had lulled her to sleep with endless legends of the tribe.

  “Well,” Retha began, “do you know how the possum lost its beautiful tail and ended up with that sad little stick?”

  “Is that an Indian story?”

  “Yes.”

  Matthias brightened. “I never heard of that.”

  As Retha made supper, Matthias listened raptly to that tale and the next. He even helped to set the table without being asked. By the time Jacob came home and everyone sat down for supper, Matthias forgot to insist on saying grace. As they ate, she told the story of how the poky terrapin defeated the speedy rabbit in a race.

  The entire family listened, Jacob included. Nicholas, however, took pains to look as if he didn’t care. Retha was racking her brain for her next tale when she realized that Matthias’s plate was empty—he had wiped it clean! Anna Johanna, the copycat, had cleaned hers, too. Retha caught Jacob’s eye, directed his gaze to the miraculous platter, and then pretended to ignore it.

  Her Cherokee tales had lulled Matthias into eating, not into sleep. Her mind raced over more stories she could tell him, the animal tales, the story of creation. She supposed Jacob would have to approve the latter story, as it did not follow Genesis. But it was a good story, one she still half believed alongside the Bible teachings.

  Services had ended and the children had gone to bed before she could bring it up. Jacob hovered behind her as she sifted through tomorrow morning’s hominy and put it on to soak.

  He considered his answer. “I don’t think the story will harm them. It didn’t harm you.”

  Then he feathered a kiss just where a braid skimmed her shoulder. She shivered.

  “But I never dreamed that I would have the chance to kiss an Indian maiden,” he whispered huskily. And she heard passion in his voice. Heard it, and responded to it, standing there.

  Retha dreamed of spiders in close spaces. One crawled along her jaw and began a delicate trek along the edge of her ear. It tickled. She had fought a fear of spiders since the night that Jacob found her, a lost child in his woodshed, cowering amongst some sticky webs and spiny legs.

  “Not afraid of you,” she murmured, sleepily brushing it away.

  But the spider became a hand. Her eyes flew open.

  “I never meant for you to be.” Jacob’s words were melodic on the morning air. He lay next to her on his side, his head propped up on one arm.

  “Good morning.” The resonance of his voice vibrated into her flesh.

  “Am I supposed to say good morning, too?” she croaked.

  He grinned. “’Twill do for a start.”

  “Good morning.”

  The warm tip of his finger outlined her mouth, sparking needles of sensation no spider leg could ever rouse. “You’re not afraid. I’m glad. I’m going to kiss you good morning.”

  She was not afraid of spiders. She was afraid of this. Of being touched in her marriage bed.

  She closed her eyes, resolved to accept his kiss. Warm, dry lips touched hers briefly, chastely, and went away. She looked to see where he had gone.

  Nowhere. His face was so close that she could see his morning stubble glinting in a first ray of sun. She smiled at the surprise.

  “I’m always going to kiss you in the mornings, Retha.”

  “Oh.” The very thought of being kissed, here, in the bed, each morning set alarms ringing in her head. What would it mean? How would she bear it? How could she be prepared?

  “Starting now.” He bent his head to feather kisses across her cheek, around her ear, and down her neck. Her skin tingled as it had the night before. Deliciously.

  A small sigh of tension escaped her, and he stopped, arose and dressed, and left the room, leaving her alone in bed.

  Nor had Alice mentioned this! Kisses! In the morning! When they were both still warm with sleep. When he was so large, so near, half-clad. In places the hair-roughened skin of his arms and legs touched hers. Her stomach fluttered and then curled with the sensation that she now had a name for. Desire. It almost hurt. She pressed her hands into the ache. What would she have done if he had not stopped?

  CHAPTER 14

  “The wagons, Papa, they’re here!” Matthias banged the door open, and the boys, who had left for morning classes only moments before, clattered back into the house.

  “Three of them,” Nicholas added, breathless from dashing home. Or, Retha thought, from excitement. She looked up from her work on Anna’s dress. Nicholas lunged into the parlor ahead of his brother, skidded to a halt at Jacob’s drafting table, and grabbed his father’s hand. “Come on! They’re almost to the creek, heading for the mill. Soldiers driving them, and everything!”

  Leaving his morning’s work spread out before him, Jacob stood. “Whoa, son. Where do you think you’re going?”

  Revolutionary fervor sparked in Nicholas’s blue eyes. “To the mill. It’s the Continentals. Come for grain. The troops must be close behind them.”

  Jacob smiled, a little too indulgently, Retha thought. He knew Nicholas worshiped all this. She knew Jacob didn’t approve.

  Down the hill, the first wagon clattered noisily onto the log bridge that crossed Tanner’s Run.

  “The troops are no doubt miles away, waiting for food,” Jacob said. “But troops or no troops, I cannot let you stand up Brother Schopp.”

  Instant mutiny darkened Nicholas’s face. �
��What’s school when the war is coming to town?”

  “The war is not coming to town, son,” Jacob said quietly, and Retha’s concern grew. She had been raised by Sister Rosina, who doled out swift retribution to budding mutineers.

  “Only a few wagons are coming,” he continued mildly. “And we were expecting them today, if not tomorrow. Come on. I will walk you back to school. Then I will see what I can do to help out at the mill.”

  “But Papa—”

  Finally Jacob raised a monitory brow. “No buts, son. The crowds make it dangerous.” He put a guiding hand on Nicholas’s shoulder.

  “All the men will be there.”

  “All the boys will be in school. School is where boys learn to become men. And you will be one soon enough. Then you can spend your days slinging heavy sacks of dusty grain from the hopper to the wagon until you think your arms are dropping off.”

  “Aww, Papa,” Nicholas groaned, surly but relenting.

  Jacob gave Retha a quick, firm kiss, promised to be home at noon with the boys, and marched Nicholas toward the door. “What’s your first class, Matthias?” Jacob asked his more tractable son, who followed them out of the room.

  “Latin,” was all that Retha heard as they closed the door behind them.

  From her parlor window, she watched them walk up the street, the towering man, his large son still in hand, his smaller son strolling along compliantly. A week had passed since the Elders admonished Jacob, and he had not said another word about it. Released from most of his duties, he spent more time at home. Family time, healing time. Matthias kept on cleaning his plate although he almost wore Retha out with questions about the Cherokee. She ran through her stock of animal fables, and recreated the universe. Soon she would have to start on the stories of the plants and herbs. Anna Johanna, still aloof from Retha, at last deigned to notice progress on her deer dress. Nicholas sulked, plotting, Retha thought, the overthrow of paternal power.

  But most disconcerting to Retha were Jacob’s attentions to her. They had became both lighter and more demanding. When the children were not looking, he feathered kisses on any bare spot on her body that was within his reach: hand, palm, throat, the nape of her neck, the curve of her ear. At any time of the day or night. Once he took the tip of one of her braids and used it like a finger to outline her lips, her chin, her throat. She shuddered.

  He must have made it a rule that his attentions please her, for if she so much as flinched, he stopped cold. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling, but he kept her in a thin shiver of anticipation. And it was heaven.

  The invasion was hell. That first morning, as she watched the street from the parlor window, two hunched soldiers in ragged uniforms drove a large farm wagon toward her house. Over the broad blond rumps of their draft horses, one man looked up, caught her eye, swept off his hat, and grinned an unmistakable invitation. Heart pounding, she snapped the fine batiste curtain closed, wishing it were the thickest flaxen cloth dyed the darkest indigo—or heavy sacking, anything to hide the sight.

  The man was another redhead. Not Scaife, but to her the reminder was just as bad. Jacob’s attentions, welcome as they were, heightened her awareness of the ways of men. And of the risk that soldiers might present.

  Slipping back into the room’s shadows, Retha braided her hair and kept to home. She took small comfort in her family’s prompt return for the midday meal, in Anna’s occasional mild interest in her nearly finished dress. For she couldn’t close out the creaking of the wagon wheels, neither this one nor the next. Throughout the day whips cracked, men shouted, oxen bellowed, ill-matched teams of conscripted horses neighed, and mules brayed in stubborn disapproval of it all.

  By day’s end the stench from a multitude of passing animals seeped into the house. Salem’s main street became impassable for people on foot. Singstunde, rarely canceled but for weather, was not held that evening or the next. The inconvenience was too great. To say nothing of the danger. The teamsters, rowdy soldiers, camped their mismatched rigs behind the Tavern, in the meadow, in amongst the peach trees in the orchard. The evening hours they spent drinking in the Tavern. Their carousing spilled into the streets, and their caterwauling poured through the open, curtained windows of Retha’s home.

  She could shut out nothing. Her only comfort was that they had not actually entered her home. She bent her head to her work. What if they did come here? A wave of nausea swept her.

  By the second day, everything tightened around her. Her world of safety—the world Jacob had created for her—shrank and crumbled. She did not want to hear more soldiers. The incessant creaks and whip cracks and bellowing of men and animals made her edgy, cross. The stench, made worse by summer heat, permeated every corner of her house.

  That night she slept fitfully, waking in the moonless night from horrid dreams of blood.

  During the two days of wagons clattering and three nights of soldiers reveling, Jacob watched his wife. Last week his few quiet days at home had seemed to restore her calm. And, he thought with a rush of virile pride, his attentions had piqued her maidenly curiosity. More than piqued it.

  Now, subtly, her calm deteriorated. Her interest ebbed. He couldn’t put his finger on how he knew. Once, as she put the finishing touches on Anna’s dress, she jerked the thread through the deerskin, breaking it. Once, when Matthias asked for another story, she was short with him. Once, at bedtime, a knock came at the door, and Retha muffled a gasp behind tense white knuckles pressed to her mouth.

  Jacob opened the door to Samuel Ernst. Whom had she expected? What did she fear?

  For she was frightened. He was sure of it.

  Brother Samuel delivered his message—they would have half a dozen men out on this third night of occupation—and left.

  But she did not recover. In bed, she drew herself up into a tight, defensive ball, and slightly, ever so slightly, rocked herself to sleep.

  In the morning, the last wagons left, the onslaught ending as suddenly as it had begun. Save for the lingering odor and the disordered streets, the town enjoyed a day of tranquillity. By nightfall, the streets were shoveled and swept. That evening Jacob and his family joined the rest of the community for Singstunde and sang songs of thanks that they had safely weathered this storm.

  But Jacob went to bed anxious. Retha, he noticed, had not sung the songs of thanks. She had not safely weathered this storm.

  He drifted off, seeking the soothing void of sleep. Beside him, the mattress dipped. He roused but did not move. Retha sat up and stealthily crawled to the end of the bed, cornhusks crackling. Jacob feigned sleep. Whisper quiet, she padded out of the room into the kitchen. Through the black dark, he heard a muffled grunt as chair legs scraped the wooden floor. The door latch snicked, a hinge creaked.

  She was running away again.

  He leapt out of bed, striding into his breeches, stuffing in his nightshirt, grabbing a lantern as he tore through the house. Armstrong’s accusations flooded back to him. As did his own promise to watch his wife.

  Outside, the thin arc of a newly waxing moon shed little light. He would not believe she was a spy. He prayed that she was sleepwalking, though that was bad enough, and not mad. This was his chance to prove her innocent, his chance to prove to himself that she was sane.

  Standing in the middle of his dirt yard, he held the lantern up. He had to guess what direction she had taken. The meadow, no doubt. In some fashion he could not understand, that place comforted her. It did not comfort him. He lurched and stumbled across its long downward slope, railing at the near-darkness, which she must have navigated like an owl.

  A ragged weeping drew him to her, seated on a large rock, arms wrapped around her legs, chin on her knees. Crying like a broken-hearted child.

  He whispered her name, softly and then louder, before he touched her. “Retha…Retha…”

  She wasn’t even startled. She accepted his presence beside her, his arm around her, but the crying did not stop.

  “She’s gon
e,” she sobbed.

  His heart tripped. “She?” Retha couldn’t mean Anna Johanna. Could Retha, in some mad way he did not understand, mean herself?

  “Damnable soldiers. They frightened off my wolf.”

  Her wolf? She had turned irrational on him. She hadn’t been out long enough to attract it, but the creature would have forgotten her weeks ago. He could scarcely believe its failure to appear would actually make her cry. But in one respect at least, her tears reassured him. No spy would cry like a child because a stupid beast had failed to show its muzzle.

  Gingerly he sat on the rock beside her, ready to catch her if she bolted. “I’m sorry. You could give it a little more time.”

  “Not with you here. She won’t come.”

  “I had to follow you. You’re not safe out.”

  She turned to him, but he could barely see the contours of her face.

  She sunk her limp body into his. “Make me safe, Jacob. Make me safe.”

  He had never felt so helpless in his life. Safe from what? This sorrow? The pain of loss? He wasn’t safe from that himself. Or was it the soldiers? After her humiliations at Scaife’s hands, perhaps she was afraid of capture. But if that were so, why would she have come this far from home alone?

  Perhaps she was afraid of him. He thought not, given the way she had accepted him just now. With the greatest care, he tightened his arm around her. No, she didn’t feel afraid of him. She felt full of a hot, desperate need. An emotional need, he thought regretfully, not a physical one. Still, he would support her.

  “Safe from what, schöne Frau?” he said, more lightly than he felt.