Wild Indigo (16 page)

But, Retha told herself tonight, taking comfort
where she could, he had gradually begun to do so with less prompting from her. And without the intervention of Brother and Sister Ernst.

She heard a splash and looked up. Its coat streaked silver by the moon, her wolf bounded through the creek, gulped down its trophy and paused, head held high. The night was too dark for Retha to make out the color of its golden eyes. But they peered at her. She hugged herself with relief and awe. It must have watched for her for days!

Then it trotted off, tail wagging in the air. Until the woods' dark recesses swallowed up its shape, she studied its gait. The limp was almost gone.

Wonder of wonders! Strong and well and on its own, it remembered her. Retha let out her breath and gulped in the still, sweet night air. Memories of peaceful woodland nights in Cherokee bark lodges refreshed her as no close room and cornhusk mattress could. Stepping down from the rock, she gathered the damp hem of her gown in her hands and hurried home to her children. Moments later she slipped into the house, lit a tallow lamp, and mounted the stairs to check their rooms, confident they were sound asleep.

 

Home safe. Jacob paused at the foot of the stairs. He had made it back, nerves on edge from coddling his lame, feckless cousin and exhausted from dodging bullets. Whether fired by Whigs or Tories, Redcoats or Continentals, he had not paused long enough to tell. Beneath hot stockings and heavy boots, Jacob's feet burned, raw from a forced march of forty miles with his cousin on the horse.

Weary, Jacob mounted the stairs to his children's rooms, one step at a time as best he could. Before collapsing in his own bed, he needed the reassurance of their peaceful slumber, sweet breath, and warm innocence.

Halfway up, he stumbled and grabbed the handrail. Its polished surface spoke of domestic comforts. Bracing his weight on the railing, he pulled himself up another step. It took all his attention to ignore the pain and keep on climbing.

He barely registered the sharp inrush of breath before a hissing whirl of white slammed into him.

“Not in this house, you don't!”

Sharp nails clawed his face. Teeth sunk into his coat sleeves, scraping skin. He grabbed for arms, and found them, fine boned, small, flailing.

“Retha, it's—”

“Not on my watch, you miserable, benighted wret—” She whispered a barrage of oaths and curses, half in English, half in Cherokee. He could not make out her garble.

“Retha—” He swallowed his words in a consuming effort to master her frantic strength. But the fear behind her fury rang clear as a bell.

He softened his voice. “Retha, it's Jacob. You're safe. I'm home. You're safe.”

She wrenched her arms free, struggling against him as he banded her body with his arms, resisting his words as if some desperate rage propelled her past all reason. Struggling on the step above him, she seemed larger than life, formidable, a fury.

But he was heavier, stronger. Conscious of his advantage, he drew her down against his chest, pin
ning her arms between them, preferring to absorb her battering there than about his face. A smaller man could not have conquered her. Secured against him, she did not stop.

“Retha! Wife!” He addressed her sharply, suddenly afraid—suddenly certain—he had lost her to another fit. To an outraged panic worse than her withdrawal on their wedding night. “'Tis Jacob. I'm home.”

Silent, she writhed against him, recognizing nothing.

This was his homecoming, she was his wife.

He shook her, hard, speaking all the while, frustration lashing his body at this terrible new face of her resistance to him.

Reaching Retha seemed as futile as trying to commune with Anna Johanna in her fits. Yet worse. His daughter, he hoped, would grow out of them. He had seen Retha this way before, years ago, the night he found her in Salem Square, a frantic, savage fighter. What made her so determined then? What inspired her now? Could this oblivious violence be linked to her mute, sightless rocking in the bed?

Force once calmed the lost child, he reminded himself, but she was no stranger now.

He spoke as he would to Anna Johanna, softly, reasonably. Retha did not recognize him. Gradually her frenzy subsided, then her resistance slackened, and he explained again that he was home. She made a noise low in her throat, the small cry of a surrendering animal, and he eased his hold.

She jerked free and stumbled to the top of the
stairs. There was just enough light from some taper she had left that he could see recognition return to her face, then bewilderment, then anger.

“Jacob, good God! I heard someone enter. It scared the life out of me!”

Her words came out in English, broken and strained. But the thought arrested him with perfect clarity: her response was honest. In her frenzy, she had not known him.

Beyond the fatigue that weighted him, he grappled to comprehend all he had just felt and seen: she-wolf rage, feral strength, blind devotion to his children's safety.

And again, that inexplicable madness.

Chilled, he sat her down at the top of the stairs and pulled her to his chest. She was soggy with emotion, rigid with the aftermath of fighting whatever demons stalked her night. Rigid, but no longer resisting.

“I thought…you were…them…” she whispered, her breath hot at his neck in the folds of his stock.

He pressed his face to the crown of her head, his lips to her hair. The faint sour smell of fear lingered there. It was fear of him. He clenched his jaw against regret that that had come to be. “I am so sorry. 'Twas no one but me.”

“I see that now.” But she didn't sound as if she quite believed it.

He hastened to reassure her. “You're safe. There's no one, no one in five miles.”

That is, he amended, no one had shot at him in the final five miles of his trek. He gave no hint of that
to her. The truth would plunge her back into that state.

“They were here today. I saw them leave. They're gone. I know they're gone. But I thought they had come back.”

“I saw Samuel. He said it's been clear.”

She slumped against Jacob. “I couldn't know when you would be back.”

He accepted her weight. “I couldn't find my cousin. I went to all the wrong places. Armstrong had him outside Salisbury.”

She became heavy against him, her body firm and strong except in its womanly soft places. Lucky for him the stairs were dark. He couldn't hide a grin of relief. It slid into place. He could help her change. She needed only reassurance. He was more than willing to give that.

He ventured to move a hand against her back. “I never dreamt it would take four days.”

“You're home now.” Subdued, she folded her hands in her lap.

“All of a quarter hour. I did not expect such a welcome.” He gave her hands a quick squeeze, hoping she would hear the lightness he attempted in his voice.

With a shuddering sigh, she relaxed into him. “You were gone so long.”

“Too long,” he forced himself to say agreeably, as the weight of her trust brought him to throbbing hardness. “Too long.” But perhaps not, he thought, if absence brought me this.

“And then I heard some soldiers fumbling with the latch.”

“That was me,” he said. She didn't need to know that exhaustion had made him clumsier than a drunk. He had broken the latch in sheer frustration.

“And then one of them came in, and I heard him walking across the kitchen, and then I heard his steps on the stairs. He was coming so slow.”

“That was me, Retha,” he reminded her again.

A frisson of worry skittered down his spine. What would he do if she persisted in confusing him in the flesh with the
them
of her fears? What if this were merely the still before another storm?

Gingerly he patted her shoulder. If he could only keep her talking. Perhaps she simply needed to repeat her story. He prompted her to continue. “So you heard noises, and you came upstairs to protect the children.”

Against his chest, she shook her head. “No, I was already here. I was coming down to find the club.”

“The club?”

“You forgot to show me where you keep it.”

He dragged his hand across the back of his neck, annoyed. He had not forgotten. Samuel Ernst was supposed to defend her. Jacob had not imagined her strong enough to wield it. Now he could. If she would zealously fend off an attacker with nothing but nails, fists, and teeth, she wouldn't hesitate to wield such an awkward weapon.

“It's below, under the bottom stairstep.”

“I couldn't believe Brother Ernst had let anyone past him. Not after the way he hounded us while you were away.”

“He
promised
to keep an eye on you.”

“He did more than that.” Edginess seeped into her tone.

“He acted in my stead, Retha. I couldn't leave you all alone.” He put an arm around her shoulder, helped her up, and started down the stairs. “Let's take you to bed. And me to bed.”

“No, the children.” Quickly wary again, she slipped from his grip and tiptoed into the small front room where Anna Johanna slept.

He followed. His daughter lay as she often did, tucked in sleep as she had curled within her mother's womb. She had been Christina's heart's delight. Jacob's throat closed on a lump of sorrow at the memory of her, here, bending over her baby. He thought of the tragedy of Christina's too, too early death, of Anna Johanna's loss, his own long year of—

Retha reached out a mother's hand to smooth a lock of hair from the child's innocent forehead. A wave of tenderness washed through him. Despite Retha's inexplicable frenzy, her simple maternal gesture gave him hope.

He turned to his sons' room, a few steps away. Leaning over, he touched the older boy's cool face. Nicholas whimpered as a much younger child would do.
Ach
, Nicholas, who wanted to go for a soldier. Who wanted to grow up too fast. All day, Jacob had seen the soldiers his son inexplicably revered, some scarcely older than he, and a good number not so large. Jacob rubbed the back of his neck. What could he do for this one?

Matthias lay on the far side of the small shared bed, the light coverlet snarled in his arms and legs, even in sleep his small, wiry body mirroring his per
petual struggle with the angel of God. Quiet as a whisper, Retha leaned forward and freed Matthias from his tangle.

“He does this every night,” she whispered, laying a hand on Jacob's arm.

“All his life.” Jacob felt his throat tighten with unexpected gratitude. While he had been away, she had noticed his son's habits. She had taken care. She had cared for him, for all of them. He patted her hand on his arm and surveyed his reconstituted family. Safe and at rest.

Angels in the moonlight, every one.

Downstairs, Retha scrambled into their bed like a frightened rabbit into its hole, vanquishing Jacob's moment of hope. Setting the tallow lamp on the windowsill, he hid discouragement in a Herculean struggle to take off his tight-fitting boots. Pulling up his chair, he sat and crossed his left leg on his knee and worked his heel out of his boot. Pain seared him. By the time he had worked his heel into the boot's narrow ankle, he was sweating. He gave the boot another jerk and it came off, thumping onto the floor as he fought for balance.

He eased off a bloody sock, picking it away from the flesh where blood had clotted and dried. He lifted his right ankle across the other leg and applied himself to his task, cupping the boot's heel in his hand and rocking it. Needles of fire shot through his foot. The other boot was even tighter, the other foot worse.

Through gritted teeth, he sucked in his breath and began again. The smallest movement scoured his open wounds.

The boot was stuck. Under the last thin light of the setting moon, he glanced at Retha's shape, huddled on the bed. He could not tell if she were awake or asleep. He could not expect her help.

Muttering a mild oath, he closed his eyes, exhausted. He would just sleep here, in the chair, as he had done on his wedding night. Tired to the bone, he crossed his arms across his stomach, stretched out his legs, and nodded his head.

He could not do everything, be everyone he was expected to be.

And he could not do it alone.

 

Her face to the bedroom wall and coverlet up to her ears, Retha heard Jacob's grunt of pain. Something thumped onto the floor. A boot, it had to be a boot. He muttered an angry phrase she couldn't understand. And then he was silent. She waited, listening. He had to come to bed. When he did, she would be awake.

She lost track of time. Tree frogs croaked and crickets ticked seconds, minutes. He hadn't moved to join her. In the waning heat, an owl hooted.

What was he waiting for? She unbent cramped limbs, propped up on one elbow, and squinted at his massive body outlined by the light of the lamp. He sat in that same chair where he had sat the morning after their wedding, half-dressed, his chin rested on his chest. Was he asleep? Or had he been badly hurt?

She slipped out of bed to go to his side, tripped over a boot, but righted herself. One boot was on, one off, she noted, looking down with some confu
sion. Worry overtaking caution, she sank to the floor at his feet.

And smelled blood, the thick tinny smell of blood. Quelling ripples of revulsion, she stood and placed a shaky hand on the back of his chair. Think, think. He needed help. She needed better light. She moved a candle stand nearer to him and set the tallow lamp on it. Then she sucked in her courage on a deep breath and knelt at Jacob's feet, forcing herself to inspect the foot he had bared.

His heel, toes, even the ankle bone were raw.

More blood, she thought, quivering in anticipation of the queasy feeling that had overcome her since the day the Cherokee had found her, wandering and lost. The feeling hit her full force, but it was not the same. For this was Jacob's blood. And he was hurt, and needed her.