Wild Indigo (2 page)

But few wore it to such effect.

“I thank you, Brother Blum.” Her arresting, throaty voice contradicted her dancing eyes. “But they meant no harm.”

“They had no right to threaten you, Sister Mary—” Jacob, caught off guard by his wayward thoughts, cast about for the rest of her name.
Magdalena, perhaps. But Mary was all he could remember.

“Margaretha,” Samuel prodded.

Of course, Jacob thought. Mary Margaretha, the foundling. She had no last name. He remembered the fiery night when he had rescued her, a wild white child in a deerskin Indian shift, hoarding dried pumpkin and sweet potatoes in a stolen sack.

Rescued or, some might say, captured. That night she had struggled wordlessly, clawing him and kicking her heels into his shins. He and his wife had calmed her down. Later the community had taken her in, giving her a home and a Christian name. But no surname. To this day, no one knew who she was, apart from the obvious fact that she was white. Not even she could say.

Well. His little thief had grown into a woman.

“…and neither do you, Brother Blum,” he heard her saying sweetly as his attention snapped back to the here and now.

“Neither do I?”

Her bold gaze trapped him, then dropped to her arm where his free hand gripped her sleeve. Her elbow. He let it go as if it were a stick that turned out to be a snake.

“Forgive me, Sister Mary,” he muttered hastily. Single Brothers and Sisters lived separately—were kept separate—for a reason. To say nothing of overwhelmed Widowers. “I meant no—”

“Everyone calls me Retha,” she said lightly, snatching the stained shirt from his hands and spinning on her heel, linens scooped up to her breast.
Samuel Ernst bolted after her, opening the separate door to the part of the
Gemein Haus
where the Single Sisters lived. She disappeared inside, the her-ringboned wooden door banging behind her.

Jacob stood, thunderstruck, in the middle of the Square in the hot June sun. The little wildcat! She had been here all along, through his long wait, through every lot that had been cast. A Single Sister, and available. He should have thought of her himself, but hadn't because she had lived so quietly among them. Because, to him, she was still that lost child. And because Sister Krause had never mentioned her. She had even denied there were any suitable single women.

He could see for himself that was not so.

How old would Sister Mary—Sister Retha—be by now? They had never been sure of her age. As a child, she had neither known nor said. She had spoken little in those days, struggling to learn German. In time, she told of years spent with the Cherokee, the tribe that found her and took her in when she was too young to keep an account of her age. Today she could be seventeen, nineteen, twenty. Of an age to marry, surely.

Still, what did she know of children? Until her recent marriage, Sister Eva Reuter had taught the girls. Perhaps the Sisters had kept Retha away from children on purpose. Rumors of trouble had stalked her from the first. Rumors that she couldn't speak, started fires, had been raised by wolves.

Nonsense to all of that, he thought. Especially to the fires. As the town's planner and builder, he had organized all fire protection after a rash of minor
fires. If a chimney so much as clogged, he knew of it.

And clearly, Sister Retha had learned to speak German—with his older son's spirit and his little daughter's sass. Jacob had the feeling Retha was either's equal on their worst day.

The equal of his children! It was a dangerous, powerful thought. He let it rumble around in his head, like thunder from a distant storm. Dangerous. He could fight fire with fire. Powerful. He could manage unruly children with a woman who had lived more wildly than anything in their wildest dreams.

“Jacob,” Samuel called. “They want you back.”

Lost in thought, Jacob scowled at his friend's amused face.

“Your Board. The Elders.” Samuel pointed to Philip Schopp waving from the door of Unity House. “They want you.”

Resolutely Jacob crossed the plank walk, for once barely noticing how well his crew had built something. In the meeting room inside
Gemein Haus
, the Elders arranged themselves along both sides of the long, narrow table. He hung up his flat-brimmed hat and sat among them.

“Brother Blum, we have consulted the lot,” Marshall began. He turned the wooden bowl reverently in his hands. “We must meet at the earliest time next week. You may ask then about a wife.”

Beside him, Elisabeth Marshall looked glum. “We recommend no one, however. We have come to the end of our tether. The only other widow is too old to take on children.”

Jacob felt her unspoken words:
children such as yours
.

“And Sister Reuter, whom the lot denied you, truly was our only candidate,” Rosina Krause added, her round face firm. Jacob all but snorted. He knew better. What was the woman trying to hide? “The marriageable among us are spoken for or already married. We have always had more men.”

Frederick Marshall scanned the Elders' faces and stopped at Jacob's face. “We can ask at the farm settlements.”

“Unless you have a better idea,” Sister Krause added.

He did. Jacob closed his eyes. Amber eyes dared him, amber hair curled. A slim crooked elbow filled his hand.

“There is one other,” he said, smiling with relief.

 

That night, Retha strained to hear the young wolf's cry. In the dark, close heat of her attic dormitory, she held her breath and listened. Nothing yet. Around her, half a dozen girls rustled under light sheets as they settled down to sleep. Someone whispered, someone answered, but she couldn't make out their words. Gossip, no doubt. It used to be about her. Someone shushed them, and the attic door shut softly.

Pale moonlight shafted through a deep-set dormer window, but Retha needed little light. She rolled out of bed and crawled to the door, the hem of her simple gown bunched in one hand. The door opened quietly, and she praised her own foresight. Bear grease on hinges had done the trick.

Two flights of steep stairs led to the kitchen in
the basement. On the first-floor landing, she paused. Only the sound of someone snoring drifted down the stairs. Old Sarah Holder, already asleep. How many times had Sister Sarah failed to stop her from excursions in the night?

This time, Retha thought, she had good reason to go. She listened again for the wolf. No sound, but she felt its call.

Downstairs, the kitchen's clay tiles cooled her feet. She could smell supper's cabbage and burnt ashes from spent fires. Moonlight seeped through high windows, lighting neat rows of tables set for morning. But the great hearth's black maw revealed nothing. The larder's door was black too. She knew its contents well. She opened it and took a little bear grease, a knob of forcemeat, a small marrow bone.

She hadn't taken a thing in years, she thought, justifying herself. And tonight her cause was a good one. Half-healed, her young wolf was far from independent. Its wild golden eyes, trusting and wary all at once, stirred her soul. One day on a woodland search for dyes, she had seen a flash in the corner of her vision. A gray shape had dived into the dark recesses of a nearby cave. She had followed, coaxing it to her with a small piece of salt bacon she had brought for a meal.

Tonight she wrapped its food in a length of muslin, knotted the cloth around her wrist, and left the house. The air was hot, heavy with rain that would not fall. She slipped across the Square, crouching along the fence line, one eye out for watchman Samuel Ernst. Sure enough, he turned
the corner, a great conch shell in one hand. Off and on all spring, soldiers being everywhere, he would sound it to alert the town. But never because he sighted her. Unafraid, she knelt behind a newly planted linden tree.

She watched Brother Ernst peer down a narrow alley between two half-timbered homes before looking straight at the little tree that hid her. Or at her. She stilled herself. For the longest time, he stared, then started toward her. She gripped her package tighter. A raucous burst of voices stopped him in midstride. He hurried toward the Tavern.

Safe again. Her fingers eased their grip, and she scooted across the dusty street, flattening herself against the rough brick-and-timber wall of one of the homes.

Brother Blum's home, she thought, with unaccustomed pleasure. He had been odd today, a great golden bear rushing to her rescue when she needed none. How his square-jawed handsome face had flushed when she pointed to his hand holding her arm fast.

Samuel Ernst disappeared into the Tavern. She slipped past Brother Blum's house and onto the sloping field that led to Tanner's Run, the creek that fed the Red Tannery. She passed the bark sheds, the scouring building, and the vats.

Tonight at
Singstunde
, the evening song service, Brother Blum had made up for his earlier awkwardness. As his rich baritone lofted through the oak-beamed ceilings of the
Saal
, his gaze had riveted her to her bench. Why look at her now? she wondered. Always before, he gazed off into the air when he
sang, rapt, enraptured. For years she had watched him, listening with hushed admiration, wishing she could learn German faster, wishing she could sing like that.

Wishing a man like him would take her from the Single Sisters into a home of her own.

Not Brother Blum himself, of course. Until just last year, he had had that plump, happy wife, the first Moravian woman to soothe her fears. The one who died in the smallpox epidemic, leaving him in sole charge of their dreadful children. Everyone was talking about Jacob Blum's problems with them. Carefully, because he was an Elder. Even kindly, because he was well liked. But talking all the same.

Barefoot, she welcomed the creek's lukewarm water as she crossed it. A dwindling flow glinted in the moonlight. Whimpers greeted her as the young wolf propped on its front legs and dragged itself toward her.

Cautious, it slurped bear grease off her palm. When she teased it with the forcemeat, it growled.

“You're getting stronger, girl,” she said, pleased with its show of spirit. One hugely swollen hind leg grazing the ground, it lurched onto three rangy legs, struggling to wag its tail and balance on three huge feet all at once.

So brave, she thought, with a catch in her throat. And like her, a foundling.

Downstream, she had come across its pack, mangled by some farmer scared of wolves, and left for buzzard bait. The cruelty and waste tore at her heart.

Still wary, the young wolf let her stroke its plush fur.

Leaving it to gnaw a marrow bone, she lifted her gown to clear the creek. She was so glad to be outside. Down here the air was almost cool. She had never understood why white men slept in houses. On hot nights the Cherokee would lift bark flaps to the evening breeze. They had been her family, and she missed them, even though she had never truly been one of them.

Life had been simple, and she had been free, before the soldiers had massacred the clan that had adopted her.

Where the meadow leveled out and the grass had been grazed short, she spun in place. She hadn't been old enough to join the ball-play dance of the Indians who had raised her. Perhaps they wouldn't have taught it to her, a white child. But they had let her watch. She remembered its stately rhythm, their hypnotic chants, all day and through the night. And tonight she danced as women danced, advancing toward men who weren't there for her, and whirling and dancing away.

In her mind she heard the tribe's soft, insistent drum and their gourd shakers' happy rattle. Her body moved to memory.

“Sister Mary Margaretha!”

Rosina Krause's harsh whisper stunned Retha to a stop.

“Not only have you no permission to be out—” Rosina continued.

“—but there are soldiers everywhere, dear.” Sarah Holder shakily took her arm. “Redcoats, Tories, deserters.”

“Their persuasion wouldn't matter a jot if they laid their hands on a pretty young thing like you,” Rosina scolded.

Retha's joy from the dance curdled. What if the Sisters had seen her wolf? She stole a glance at the creek. No sign of it now. Breathing in little gasps, she lowered her head.

On her shoulder, she felt Sarah Holder's trembly hand. Old age, Retha thought, hoping she had not frightened that sweet old woman and wishing she had been more discreet.

“I didn't mean to alarm you.” She had not meant to anger them either. But she would leave the house again for her wolf. She willed it to hide, be safe, be well until she could come back with more morsels from the pantry.

Slowly, deferring to Sister Sarah's arthritic tread, she walked up the field toward Brother Blum's house.

“You have gone too far this time, Mary Margaretha,” Rosina Krause said softly. “What were we thinking to let you roam the woods for dyes?” The measured scolding raked Retha's nerves.

“Even that is far too dangerous now,” Sarah added solemnly.

Retha bit back words. It was not dangerous for her. They could never know how safe she was, her feet silent on secret paths as Singing Stones had taught her.

“My thought exactly,” Rosina said, brisk with authority. “You have worried me all spring. You take too many chances, Mary Margaretha. Traugott Bagge's store has no need of so many dyes.”

“And the rest of us, we can do without,” Sarah added.

Sarah's hand on her shoulder, Retha plodded up the slope.

“Out in the backcountry, people have been killed while sitting at their own hearths,” Rosina said ominously. “We are fortunate neither side has occupied our town. It may yet come to that.”

Sarah nodded her nervous agreement. “'Twill be safer for you here, dear, and we will feel so much better.”

Rosina went on, ignoring Sarah's concern. “I will not even ask what you were doing out at this late hour!”

Good, Retha thought. Because she had no intention of telling. But her mind raced. How would she care for her wolf?