Cold was just the word to describe Hans. Distant, too. Anna would have thought that Betsy’s restoration would have brought Hans back to the fold, to correct that rebellious spirit he had. The Lord God had answered his prayers of protection for Betsy—all of their prayers—in such a miraculous way. How could anyone not feel his faith expand? How could anyone not want to fall on his knees in worship and thanksgiving of the Lord God who brought Betsy back to him?
Instead, the opposite occurred. At times, when the talk turned to Indians as it often did, Anna thought she detected a strange flash in Hans’s eyes. He seemed overly focused on the abuse Betsy had received. How many times had Anna seen him run a finger gently down her scar, as if trying to erase it? He’d even bought her an expensive white powder, pearl dust, from Lancaster Town, to use on the scar. Betsy had rubbed the powder between her fingers and looked up at him.
“But the cut has healed,” she said, not understanding, lifting her hand to her cheek. “It’s no longer infected.”
“Not for infection,” Hans said, tenderly cupping her hand over her cheek. “For covering it.”
The sting in Betsy’s eyes could be felt across the room to where Anna sat at the spinning wheel. Anna had cringed at Hans’s thoughtlessness.
Maybe that was the source of Hans’s internal conflicts, right there. He wanted to expunge her time in captivity, but the scar would not allow him to do so.
Betsy’s return had caused a rift between Hans and Tessa too. Her daughter would not confide in her the specifics, but Anna could guess. In a way, she blamed herself. She was the one who had encouraged Hans to pay some attention to Willie, for Betsy’s sake, and he did just that. She hadn’t expected him to scoop Tessa into that circle. Her daughter was naïve enough, and in love enough, to believe that he cared for her. Since Betsy’s restoration, he had barely acknowledged Tessa, and it hurt Anna to see her daughter cast aside so carelessly.
Tessa certainly needed maturing before she was ready to love and be loved, but she didn’t need to have her spirit broken, as it seemed to be now. Hans didn’t even notice what damage he had inflicted. Tessa seemed quiet, withdrawn, morose—so unlike her—and made use of every opportunity to leave the house as often as she could, as if just being near Betsy brought discomfort to her. Anna knew that Betsy sensed Tessa’s standoffishness, but she had no idea how to bring her daughter out of it.
Frankly, there was a part of Anna that was relieved Hans’s attention had turned away from Tessa. Hans would not be Anna’s choice as a husband for her passionate daughter. He could not appreciate her lively spirit, her wholehearted endeavors. He would have tried to subdue her, the way he did Betsy. The way he had tried, as a boy, to do when he kept the butterfly in the crock. No air, no light.
Anna woke well before dawn one morning and heard sounds in the kitchen. Bairn was still sleeping, so she pulled a shawl around her shoulders and tiptoed to the kitchen to find Betsy at work, pounding bread dough that had been rising throughout the night. The fire had been started for the day, the water kettle was heating.
Betsy peeped up at her in that way she had with her chin tucked low, a gesture that had become a part of her. “Did I wake you?”
Anna smiled. “Well worth it. What a lovely sight on this cold morning. You’ve done half my chores.” Betsy went back to pushing and pulling the dough, but Anna could see that something was troubling her. “Did you not sleep well?”
“Well enough.” She kept her head down as she formed the dough into a ball.
Anna noticed that Betsy’s hands were quivering. “Betsy.” Anna placed her hand on her wrist, so that she had to stop working the dough. “If you have need to talk about anything that may be troubling you, I hope you will feel at ease to talk with me.”
Betsy put the dough in the dough box and covered it with a cloth for its second rise. She wiped her hands on the coarse fabric of her apron, then curled one hand into a fist and wrapped it up in her apron. “Last night, Hans remarked that all Indians are devils. I do not think all Indians are devils.”
“Nor do I.”
“When I objected, he said he feared my mind has become disordered.” She looked at Anna with worried eyes. “Please be truthful with me. Does my mind seem disordered to you? There are times when I wonder myself . . .”
Anna reached out and put a consoling hand on her shoulder. “Not in the least disordered. Just the opposite. I think you have great clarity.” The relief flooding Betsy’s eyes tugged at her heart.
“Anna,” Betsy started, then hesitated, as if gathering her thoughts. “Is the scar so terrible? As I was walking past the sheep’s pond the other day, I stopped for a moment to peer at my reflection.” She glanced at the fire. “It did not seem to be as disfiguring as Hans suggests.”
If Hans were in the kitchen right now, Anna would smack him. How dare he make this lovely young woman feel less than . . . lovely. “Hear me, Betsy. The scar is hardly noticeable.”
She snapped her head around. “Truly?”
“Truly. In fact, it has faded in color since you arrived. I think Hans has made the scar more than it is, though I don’t know why.”
“Nor do I.” Betsy closed her eyes and sank to a chair. “I don’t understand the source of such darkness within him. I don’t know if it has always been there and I did not recognize it, or if it is a newly acquired part of him. A response to the attack on my family.”
Anna digested those questions. Perhaps it wasn’t either one but both. Perhaps the darkness had been within Hans all along and the right circumstances brought it to the surface. But then, isn’t that true for each one of us? Don’t we all have a darkness within?
Betsy covered her eyes with her hands, as if her head hurt. “I fear he is straying beyond the bounds of reason.”
“Your captivity caused Hans great distress. He has been influenced by outsiders to exact revenge.”
Betsy dropped her hands and opened her eyes. “But the captivity was not the same thing as the attack. They weren’t the same kind of people as the warriors.” She sank back in the chair. “The sisters who adopted me, they treated me like one of their own. They were good to me, kind and tender. We even had a garden called the Three Sisters.”
“Beans, corn, squash.” Betty Sock had taught Anna that gardening trick soon after she had married Bairn. The beans fed the soil for the corn, and the squash vines provided shade for the roots of the corn. “I don’t think we would have survived that first year without the gift of Three Sisters.”
“Yes! That’s exactly right.”
Anna sat down in the chair beside Betsy. She hoped Bairn would remain asleep awhile longer, as this was the most Betsy had volunteered about her time in the village and she wanted to give her all the time she needed.
Words were tripping out over each other as if they’d been pent up in a bottle. “At first, after I was separated from Johnny, I wanted to die. Little by little, I grew accustomed to the ways of the village. I grew fond of my Indian sisters. I know it sounds hard to believe, but I loved them.”
“But still you escaped. You managed to get here alone.”
“I was not alone.” She glanced at Anna. “I didn’t mean to mislead you about my escape. It seemed best not to say more than I needed to.” She was silent for a moment. “There was a young man in the village, a half-breed. He spoke our dialect. He understood the longing I felt to be reunited with my brothers. He was the one who helped me escape. He risked his life to bring me here.” Her eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away with the corner of her apron. “I am fearful for him. I don’t know what has become of him. If he is found by other Indians, he will be slain for his betrayal. But if he is found by people like those friends of Hans, the ones who seek to subdue the Indians, he will surely be killed. Just for the crime of being an Indian.”
“How in the world would he have learned our dialect?” It was a peasant language that came from Germany, known only by those who lived in Palatine.
“From h
is mother. She was a Mennonite, stolen as a young girl during an Indian raid, and then offered as tribute to another tribe. Just like I had been. She taught him the language. She taught him about the Bible.”
“He is not a heathen, this Indian?”
“No! He is a Christian. His mother baptized him before she died.”
“It was just as we prayed,” Anna whispered. “For God to keep watch over you.”
Betsy’s eyes lit with a soft glow. “His Indian name means ‘he keeps watch.’ His Christian name is Caleb. He was very good to me, Anna. He helped me with chores around the village, he explained Indian customs to me, taught me some of the language. But more than that, he gave me a sense of purpose.”
“Did Caleb give you any details about his mother’s people?”
“No. He was young when she died.”
Vaguely, Anna recalled a story of a frontier Mennonite family that had been attacked, years ago, and a daughter taken captive. No one ever knew what had happened to her. She’d have to ask Bairn for more details, but she wondered if there might be a connection to this young man. “The Conestogas are a peaceful tribe who live nearby. Perhaps your friend sought shelter with them.”
Hope filled Betsy’s face. “Is there any way to find out?”
“Bairn might be able to find out.”
Then the brightness illuminating Betsy’s face disappeared, like a candle that was snuffed out. “But Hans must not know of Caleb. I cannot speak of this to him.”
“No,” Anna said softly. “You cannot.”
“I don’t know what he would do, were he to find him.” Her voice faded and tears filled her eyes.
All Anna could do was to take Betsy in her arms as if she were a small child. “Go ahead, have a good cry. You deserve it.”
Later that day, Anna sought out a private moment with Bairn when she saw him stride across the yard from the sawmill and head into the carpentry shop. As their household had grown, she was finding it difficult to have important conversations with him. She had thought Tessa was the worst eavesdropper until Willie moved in. More than once, she had found him hiding under the kitchen table while they talked. He claimed he was trying to learn English, but she was not fooled. He was as nosy as Tessa.
Bairn looked up and smiled when she came in. “Did you see those geese fly overhead? They were in a hurry to get south. A sign that cold weather is coming, I fear.”
Anna leaned against a cabinet to tell Bairn all that Betsy had shared with her. “Do you think you could plan a trip to Indiantown soon and see if this Caleb might be with them?”
With a broad axe, Bairn was hewing a round tree trunk into a square beam, bit by bit. He had stopped working as she spoke and listened with a thoughtful expression on his face. “It’ll have to wait until after Sunday, but I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”
“Bairn, do you recall any details about a frontier Mennonite family that had been attacked by Indians, years and years ago? About the time we were new to Stoney Ridge.”
His hand fell and the heavy iron axe made a clunking sound on the floor. “I do. They were newly off the ship and were sold land by an agent in the hottest part of the frontier. The attack happened within days of their arrival.” He set the broad axe down on the floor. “If my memory serves me correctly, I believe it was Faxon Gingerich’s sister who was stolen.”
Anna snapped her head up.
“Aye, lass,” he said, switching to English as his eyebrows lifted. “I ken what is runnin’ through yer mind. There’s a chance that this bloke Caleb might be Faxon’s nephew.”
Beacon Hollow
December 11, 1763
Saturday’s snowfall dumped a thick layer of snow over Stoney Ridge. Cold and icy, just the conditions for excellent sledding. Tessa would be loath to tell rumpled Martin, but she had a wonderful time sledding down Dead Man’s Hill a few weeks back. So did Willie. They flew down the hill, tumbling off the sled at the bottom of the hill after each turn, laughing so hard their eyes stung with tears. Then they jumped to their feet and climbed the hill again, again and again, until they finally ran out of energy. Martin followed them home like a stray dog. Her mother had taken pity on him and invited him to stay for supper at Beacon Hollow with the family, as if he were one of them. Which he wasn’t.
Tessa hoped rumpled Martin wouldn’t be at church this morning. To her mind, he should just stay home on his off Sundays and keep everybody happy, especially Faxon the Saxon, who must be bothered to think of his son spending time with the Amish. She asked him once why he came to their church and he said, smiling with that big goofy grin of his, that the preaching was better. How could she disown that remark? The preacher was her father.
And right now, her father and Willie were bringing the horse and wagon to the front of the house. She reached for her black bonnet and turned to Betsy. “Let’s go.”
Betsy looked at her curiously. “Your cap, Tessa. It’s missing a string.”
Tessa felt for the strings but only touched one. She looked around the room for the missing capstring. “I knew it was loose. I should have stitched it last night.” She shrugged. “Oh well.”
Betsy seemed astonished at the thought. “You can’t go to church with a missing capstring! Someone will notice. Your mother gave me two caps. She set the extra on top of the cupboard upstairs.”
As Tessa climbed the stairs, she wondered about the kind of church Betsy had been part of in Berks County. She didn’t think anyone in her church would have even thought twice about it, other than Maria Müller, who stuck her long nose in Tessa’s business.
She looked on top of the cupboard drawer but couldn’t locate the prayer cap. She opened the cupboard drawer and her eyes landed on a little sheepskin-bound book, its cover smooth and its edges worn.
Curious, Tessa picked it up and opened it. Betsy’s fine penmanship filled the pages and her eyes lingered on a telling line:
How is it possible to love such a man? Yet my soul is bound to him in a way I’ve never known before.
Tessa snapped the book shut, stunned by the strong feelings of the words within, knowing it was not meant for her eyes. She heard light footsteps come up the stairs and quickly put the book back and shut the cupboard drawer.
Betsy appeared at the top of the stairs. “I just remembered I had set it on the bedpost so its shape would stay round.”
Thoughts swirling, Tessa turned from the cupboard to the bedpost and reached out to grab the cap. She pulled the pins out of the cap she was wearing and quickly replaced it with Betsy’s cap. As she pinned the cap in place, she asked, “Is it crooked?”
Betsy hesitated for only an instant, and Tessa sensed she was studying her, looking for some sign written on her face. Was she wondering if Tessa had opened her book? Opened and read it? Tessa felt her face grow warm. She was just about to confess her crime when her mother’s voice called up to them. “Girls, we must be off. Maria wanted us to arrive early.”
Still at the top of the stairs, Betsy turned and started down. “Straight and stiff and starched,” she said, looking back to give her a smile. “No one could find fault.”
Before Tessa went down the stairs, she tiptoed back to the cupboard, took the little book, and slipped it in her pocket.
Not Faxon’s Farm
It was the first time Betsy had attended church in Stoney Ridge. It was held at Not Faxon’s Farm, and she did not want to face Hans’s disapproval if she were to beg off another Sunday. It took only minutes for her to regret that decision. All morning long, she felt eyes around the room glance curiously at her when they should have been attentive to the minister. She told herself she was imagining things, but not a moment after Bairn offered the benediction, a cluster of women surrounded her. Panic rose within her as the circle drew closer. She felt like she was about to be trapped and suffocated, and had to force herself to smile at them. The women spoke to her soothingly, as if she had been on death’s doorstep and made a recent recovery. They kept making sympathetic clu
cking sounds that only increased her discomfort.
She thought she recognized one or two of them from the time she and her father had come to Stoney Ridge, but could not recall any names other than Maria Müller. She remembered Maria as a particularly prying woman, and she confirmed that impression when she pushed her way through the women to ask Betsy if she had been defiled by the Indians. Betsy was astounded by the question; she couldn’t even bring herself to respond. Her silence was so heavy that the thin, gray-haired woman briefly looked away.
“I was not mistreated,” Betsy said in a cold voice.
Anna, bless her, noticed and came to her rescue, pulling her away from the clump of women and into the kitchen. Feigning exhaustion, Betsy asked Anna if she could be excused to go to Beacon Hollow and rest.
“I had a concern that it was too soon,” Anna said. “I’m so sorry, Betsy. What Maria asked of you—that was appalling. I’ll get Tessa to accompany you.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll walk. I’d like a little time to myself. I know the shortcut by now. Just follow the trail through the woods.”
Anna hesitated, then gave a quick nod. “It’s a straight path.”
Betsy waited until she knew Hans was preoccupied with settling Dorothea into her chair by the fire, then she slipped out of the house, around the back, and into the woods, hurrying her steps as she cut through the snow. She didn’t slow until she was halfway to Beacon Hollow. A bright red cardinal sang in a leafless tree above her head and she stopped to listen. Would she have even heard its sweet and lilting song before her time with the Indians? She felt as if her hearing had sharpened during her time with them, as if she had grown more aware of nature’s gifts, sweet moments waiting to be noticed. The world had changed in so many ways since she went to live in the Shawnee village by the Monongahela River. No—the world hadn’t changed. She was the one who had changed.
Something startled the red cardinal and he flew off in a hurry. She saw a tall figure, a man, coming toward her through the trees. She couldn’t make out who he was and felt a momentary stab of fear. The thought flashed through her mind that she should flee, return to the house, seek safety. But before she could put her feet in motion, his voice, calling her name, cut through the trees. Caleb. It was Caleb’s voice!
The Return Page 20
