Wild Indigo (32 page)

She did not like the dark close space.

But there had to be another tie. Under here, her tallow lamp shed little light. Her fingers scrabbled into utter darkness.

Into a net of spider webs.

Smothering the scream that rose in her throat, she scrambled crablike out to the dull light, abrading a knee and taking a splinter in the heel of one hand. Spider webs. They made her shudder. In the middle of the room, she clutched her legs to her body, staring beyond the little flame into a final, clear confrontation with her past, and rocked.

Webs under the bed. Sticky, clinging webs with spiny spiders in their depths. She backed out of her hiding place, creeping, afraid to disobey her mother but disobeying nonetheless. The webby film stuck to her fingers and eyelashes. Uncontrollable shudders swept her. Only her mother could make them stop
.

She looked about the cabin. A thin man looked back.

The walls and sheets were splashed with blood.

Her mother and her father sat against a wall, sleeping, their clothes all stained with blood.

“Well, well, well. Been waiting for you,” the thin man rasped, his hair the color of the red clay soil her father plowed up in the fields. “You must be Elisabeth.”

“Yes,” she answered obediently, blinking in the light. She had stayed under the bed till her feet went numb, hands over her ears, unable to shut out brutal grunts, harsh thuds, terrifying cries. And her mother's last broken words, “Hide, Lillibet. Don't let them touch you.”

“Elisabeth,” he purred, pulling her to him with bony fingers. Screaming, terrified, she kicked and clawed
until he let her go. And dove back into the spiders' lair where that man's hands could never touch her.

 

After Jacob tucked the children in, he found her in their bedroom on her knees, rocking in front of her little tallow lamp as if it were an altar. His heart failed him. All his prayers, all his patience, all his careful, joyful seduction of her had been to no avail.

“
Gott im Himmel, Leibling
.” He knelt beside her, pulled her to him. “Retha, they'll be back any moment.”

She turned wide, empty eyes to his face, eyes that only hours ago had brimmed with desire.

“'Tis tied down, Jacob,” she said weakly.

Her observation made no sense. His pulse thudded alarm in his throat.

“What's tied down?”

He watched her swallow, moisten her lips, and consciously arrange her face into something that looked less distracted. He pinned a small hope on that conscious effort.

“The mattress is tied to the rope springs, and I couldn't reach all the ties.”

“Ah,” he said, feeling a momentary relief that she could be specific. But then doubt racked him. Something was terribly wrong with her. This relapse swallowed up every trace of her sweet wildness at the waterfall.

He grounded himself in action. “I can. Here.” He led her to the bed and lifted it. “You prop it up for me.”

She leaned into it heavily while he reached through cobwebs to the last two ties, stood, and
wiped his hands. “There, 'tis free.” Gently he touched her cheek. “The mattress is a good idea. I didn't think of it. We will sleep well, at least.”

But neither of them did.

After Jacob more or less single-handedly dragged the mattress to Anna Johanna's room, undressed, and lay down with his wife, he tried to doze but could not. Not when he expected Scaife and his men at any moment. Not when he was distracted with concern that Retha's mysterious affliction had returned. What could have triggered it? All afternoon since they had come home to Scaife's disrupting presence, her assurances that she was well—even strong—had convinced him that she was.

Clearly, she was not. She had been so joyous in the woods, so abandoned to their lovemaking at the waterfall that her present state was harder for him to bear and more difficult to comprehend.

Twice, but only twice before, she had been this way: on their wedding night and again on the evening after Scaife had brought her back from the Voglers. Both times they had been at home, together, in their bedroom. He had blamed himself for provoking her fear. This third time, however, he hadn't touched her. Hadn't even been there.

From below, he heard Scaife's men stagger in. His home was theirs by military right, he reminded himself, hand on the club he had brought up from downstairs. A chair clattered to the floor, a curse rose up, a drunken, boyish laugh careened up the stairs, and all the rest was muffled. Finally a medley of snores drifted up the stairs.

Jacob rolled onto his back, hanging an arm off
the edge of the mattress they had dragged upstairs. The soft, even breathing of his wife did not allay his concerns. How could she sleep through this? But going to sleep had never been her problem.

For him, sleep would not come. Too many concerns today. But none so devastating as Retha's unexpected, inexplicable lapse into…he refused to call it madness. But what was the matter with her? Or rather, perhaps the question should be, what provoked her—what should he call them—spells? Terrors? Each time, she had clearly been frightened. But of what?

He reminded himself that he was a rational, educated man, well versed in orderly thought. But tonight he wasn't even sure of the premise he was starting from. What did her episodes of terror have in common?

Not him, he assured himself. Twice, he knew his presence had triggered them. But not tonight. Tonight was different.

Tonight
. Each time it had been night. Night terrors were a common-enough human affliction. One of his own children suffered nightmares. But Retha's aberrant behavior was of a different order. Nevertheless, each time it had been night.

And in the bedroom, he realized. Not merely at home, but in the bed.

No, to be precise, on or about the bed. He twisted and punched his pillow. The solution to this mystery seemed tantalizingly close. And yet so far away. He drifted into a restless, unsatisfying sleep.

 

When Retha woke in a strange room, it was still dark and she was already sitting. And rocking. She stopped herself. She did not need to do that anymore. She remembered everything from the day her parents died. The day Sim Scaife had murdered them.

No wonder Singing Stones had taught her to rock herself into a trance to dispel the haunting, horrid memories. No wonder they tormented her. No wonder Jacob's bed, the very kind and size that her parents' bed had been, had catapulted her back in time.

Back to the bloodstained sheet.

Back to the blood-splattered walls.

Back to the sight of her parents' bodies, dead against the wall. What had the soldiers finally done with them? She would never know, she told herself. Never, never know.

Beside her, Jacob's hot, huge frame was restless. How her strange behavior must confound him, when she wanted only to please. Waking him would be a risk, but she no longer cared. Daylight tomorrow would be too late, she feared. Her nerve might fail. Her courage would slip. She had to tell him now.

She shook him lightly. “Jacob,” she whispered. It touched her that he awoke so quickly. The great bear, roused, in defense of hearth and home and family.

“What's the matter? Is everyone all right?” he muttered, propping on an elbow, rubbing a large hand over his face.

“I remember,” she said solemnly. “More than I told you at the waterfall.”

“Tell me,” he said, sitting up and taking her into his arms as if to shield her from all harm.

He couldn't shield her from her past. Telling him was hard, the more so whispering in the dark in order not to wake the children. Soldiers had come to her parents' cabin. As tempers flared, her mother thrust her under the bed. Then came the pounding and the terrible screams. The men must have killed them.

Minutes, hours later, fear and the cramping in her legs had driven her from her hiding place. One soldier remained behind. She dared not tell that he had been Sim Scaife. Younger, thinner, and with redder hair, but every bit as mean. Jacob must never know.

“
Gott im Himmel
, did he hurt you?” Jacob's voice was thick with protective anger.

She shook her head because she couldn't speak. Now that the moment was upon her, she couldn't tell him who the man had been. Yet Jacob's low growl reminded her that he was the one weapon she had never had. His righteous rage; his steadfast defense.

The palest moonlight trickled in through the small window under the eaves. Jacob slept shirtless in the unremitting August heat. Her lowered eyes fixed on the strength of his chest.

“You can tell me.” With a gentle hand, he tipped her face toward his gaze. “Don't be afraid.”

Hot, humiliating tears seeped out of the corners of her eyes and tracked down her cheeks, splashing onto his hand.

“Did he hurt you?” he repeated, his voice soft with pain. She was deeply moved. “Tell me.”

No. Yes. I cannot tell. I must not tell you who he was, she thought. She moved her head, a nod, a negative, and found a few words. “He meant to—meant to…”

Jacob pulled her closer, murmuring into her ear. “Ah,
Liebling
, I wish I could spare you this memory, this pain.”

“I was not hurt.” Her voice rang brittle, childlike, in her head. His large warm hand stroked the center of her back, consoling her, urging her to go on. She couldn't.

Anger and confusion tightened Jacob's gut. She was holding something back. Everything he knew of secrets held to the heart urged him to help her find her voice. Everything. His daughter's fear of water. His younger son's inexplicable aversion to his food. Retha's own furtive night walks. Always some terrible secret lurked behind.

Once more, he tried to summon wisdom for his young, vulnerable bride, whom he had so often failed. The very rafters pressed down on him. And no doubt on her. “Let's go outside lest we wake the children,” he said, pulling on his clothes. But their slumbers were not his true reason. Outside, where Retha seemed to feel so free, she might talk.

“Leave? With the men downstairs?” she asked anxiously, torn between her reluctance to leave her daughter in the house with Scaife there and her certainty that Jacob must never know.

“They came in late, drunk. They have passed out till morning. But I will bar the parlor doors.”

His arm around her waist, they crept downstairs, locking the parlor doors to secure the snoring sol
diers, then walking out across the small dirt yard onto the strip of lawn that skirted the garden. The heavy dews of an August morning drenched the grass. In the east, the sky had begun to lighten.

Keeping his arm around her, he settled her on the bench where he once watched her shelling beans. “
Danke Gott
, he didn't hurt you. But you must have been scared. Can you tell me what happened?”

When she finally spoke, she whispered in the strained, shamed voice of a child. “I couldn't help my parents. I couldn't stop him.”

Thinking of the horror Retha had endured and the irrational guilt she bore, he struggled to reassure her that she had done no wrong. “You were but a child,
Leibling
. And you were under the bed, where your mother rightly wanted you to be.”

“But she screamed.”

“And then what?” he prodded gently, dreading to know, determined to find out.

“'Twas quiet so long and my legs began to hurt, so I came out. Even though she told me to stay. He was still there.”

Jacob's insides churned as he imagined the worst. “Tell me, Retha, trust me,” he assured her, bracing himself to hear what he did not want to know, hoping mere assurance would conjure speech from the child of her shrouded past. How old could she have been? Young, he thought, her tone reminding him of his once-troubled daughter.

“The sheets were red. The walls. With blood. And then I saw my parents propped up against the wall. I thought they were sleeping.” Shuddering,
she closed her eyes. “I didn't know. I was just a little girl.”

Sympathetic fury flashed through Jacob like a summer storm. “
Jesu
, what did he do with you?”

Her head moved against his shoulder, and she murmured something in words so soft he could not hear. He asked her to say it again. “He said, ‘Let me help you.' But blood was on his hands. Like killing pigs. And then I understood.”

“That he meant to kill you, too…” Jacob prodded, knowing in his heart the man intended more.

To his surprise, Retha raised her head and eked out a small, brave smile. “He did. He grabbed me, but I fought him like—harder than Anna Johanna ever fought a bath. Although perhaps not so hard as I fought you that night in the Square.” She burrowed her face under his chin. “You see, I thought you meant to kill me like that, too.”

“
Ach, Liebling. Mein Gott
.” He lay his cheek on the crown of her head, reproaching himself that he had ever for a minute added to her pain. “I never suspected that. I never would have hurt you. In fact, although I was the victor in our scramble, my shins were black and blue for weeks. I think I fared somewhat the worse.”

“So did he,” she said with relish. “I bit him.”

He tightened his hold on her, celebrating this trace of humor, hoping it foretold her breaking free of the shroud of memory. Whoever that depraved soldier had been, she had escaped his basest intentions. Of that, Jacob was sure. For she had come to their marriage whole in body. What would ever make her whole in mind and heart?

Her hurt was severe, if after so many years it was buried so deep that she only now remembered. He thought of how profoundly Christina's natural death had affected him and his children, and could scarcely imagine Retha's suffering after all that was loved and familiar had been ripped away.

“What can I say,
Liebling?
You were so very brave that day.”

“Hold me, Jacob,” she answered. And in a moment every bit as sweet as her surrender to his passion, he held her to his heart.