Wild Indigo (36 page)

Andreas and the children crossed the stream, Anna Johanna piggyback, and the boys jostling shoulders as they danced from stone to stone, the blood now washed away. All the blood now washed away.

They had come so far, each and every one of them. Anna Johanna, in her deerskin dress, trusted a cousin she scarcely knew to carry her home. Matthias sneaked a piece of sugarcake to eat along the way. Nicholas, subdued after his fight, accepted his father's protecting arm.

Retha's eyes met Jacob's. They had survived, and he had saved her yet again. “I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead,” she muttered, turning to the true shelter of her husband's
embrace. The sob that rose in her throat was a cry of joy, of wonder. That turned into a cry of pain as he pulled her close.

He released her instantly. “You're badly hurt.”

“I'll be all right.”

Jacob turned her face to the sun and examined her scraped cheeks, a swollen eye, a purpling jaw. “You don't look all right.”

“Neither does Sim Scaife. I slashed his face.”

“Ah, that accounts for all the blood.” He drew her back to his chest. Now that he knew what Scaife had tried to do to Retha, he did not know what to say. “Sim Scaife is dead.”

A medley of feelings played across her face: shock, shame, regret. “Jacob, I must tell you what I didn't know before. He was my uncle. He knew me. He knew my parents. All along, he knew.”

“He told me, too,” he said, stroking her, absorbing this unexpected twist.

“I should hate him, I suppose. I suppose I do. But how will I ever forgive him?”

“Not all at once,
Liebling
.”

They would neither one of them forgive him all at once.

Retha nestled against Jacob's chest. “I can hardly believe you had to rescue me again. You rescued me so many times.”

“I cannot think of a single thing that I have done.”

She raised her head in disbelief. “You took me into our community. You rescued me from my life as a Single Sister. You saved my wolf. You defended me from my uncle at the mill the day he
brought me home from Alice Vogler's. You stood up for me before the town.”

“'Twas…'Twas naught.” He sounded puzzled.

“'Twas everything to me.”

“You are my wife, a mother to my children. Of course I defend you.” He lifted her chin and kissed her lips with great tenderness, surprising in a man so large. “No, 'tis much more than that. You are my heart.”

And at last, she could say the words that had been growing in her heart and she had not known how to say. “I love you, Jacob Blum.”

The steadfast love in his indigo gaze told her no other words were needed.

July 4, 1783

“Y
ou look like a woman in need of rescue.” Jacob's breath feathered the curve of Retha's neck, and she felt a familiar thrill of pleasure spiral down it.

“Harmon is a little tired,” she answered, gladly handing over their two-year-old son. The chunky towhead insisted that she hold him while his father finished singing, not understanding the burden that his weight added to the unborn child she carried.

It was the twilight of a perfect, windless summer day. Retha leaned into her husband as they blended into the crowd that filled Salem Square in celebration. Governor Alexander Martin proclaimed the fourth day of July a Day of Thanksgiving for Peace. All the townspeople turned out, and Moravians from the nearby settlements walked and rode and drove farm wagons in. Salemites took great pains to ensure that neighboring settlers also heard the news, and they traveled for miles to join in the feasting and listen to the music.

Jacob was flushed, having just finished perform
ing Brother John Frederick Peter's new cantata, and his deep voice was rich and full from a day of singing. On opposite corners of the Square, brass bands played antiphonally: different songs, started at different times, filled the evening air with a joyous cacophony of sound, more rousing, more abundant than birdsong at dawn.

But night was coming on. Soon Salem Square sparkled with the light of dozens of tapers held aloft as almost two hundred celebrants gathered for a final procession through the streets.

“Where's my candle?” Anna Johanna asked, dragging her escort Matthias behind her.

“Check Mama's pockets, Anna Jo. You know what a treasure trove they are,” Matthias said in his grown-up, literate way, his voice breaking. Next week he would move to the Brothers House to begin the seven-year apprenticeship to a trade that all boys submitted to. Flush with anticipation, he had told Retha of his hopes to apprentice to the new dyer. If afterwards he turned to the ministry, she couldn't be more proud that the trade he had selected had once been hers.

“Have you seen Mrs. Vogler?” he asked Retha now in quite competent Cherokee. “She said I could practice anytime.”

“Over there.” Retha pointed across the Square where she had seen the Voglers last, and he bulleted off.

“At first I didn't think he was serious about learning the language,” Retha said to Jacob. “Nor did I think he would stick with it. But Alice adores him. He is the first Moravian to come to her for aught.”

“Except for you,” Jacob reminded her, laughing softly in the dusk and privately squeezing her thickened waist.

Retha felt a sweet heat rise in her cheeks at the thought of that day with Alice, the memory of what her friend had told her about love, and the certain knowledge of how very much more Jacob had taught her. “She is my friend.”

Andreas Blum lumbered toward Jacob and Retha through the crowd, a great brown bear next to her husband's gold. He beamed at them as if he had been the matchmaker. “You two look pleased with yourselves. Your caterwauling must be in celebration of the imminent event, cousin.”

Jacob grinned at his cousin's teasing while Anna Johanna danced at Andreas's feet.

Andreas bent down on his knee. “You've grown awfully big for this old nag, madame.” He lifted her to his shoulders and trotted her off to see the crowd.

Retha watched him fondly. Cousin Andreas, all strength and might, could probably carry her, great though she was with child.

The baby kicked, and Retha could not suppress a little cry. Jacob's arm immediately encircled her aching back. She smiled, grateful, at his loving concern. “It has been a day of ceaseless motion. He must be tired.”

Jacob secretly moved a hand to her stomach, feeling for the baby. “She.” He grinned, ruffling Harmon's blond Blum hair. “We have enough of boys with straw-colored mops. This one will be a girl, and she will have your golden eyes and amber hair.”

Retha flushed at the compliment. “I would just have her healthy. And I would have you here this time.”

“I will be here,
Liebling
. No more wartime heroics, now that the soldiers are gone.”

Not all the soldiers. Colonel Martin Armstrong, sharp in military dress, strolled up with Nicholas and greeted Jacob and Retha with a hearty warmth that bespoke sincere respect.

“This one tells me that he has become a gunsmith.”

Jacob shrugged, not without pride, Retha knew. Nicholas's road had been the hardest of any of the children's. As the war had dragged to its close, he had with difficulty given up his dream of defending his family. But he had never again run away to fight, and had finally found some direction and, oddly, peace in learning the gunsmith's trade.

“We have always made guns, Colonel. For hunting,” Jacob added wryly.

“For protection, too,” Andreas goaded genially, returning with his rider from a quick trot through the crowd.

“Not lately,” Jacob said. “Lately, everything is calm.”

Everything, Retha thought. Even the dreams had stopped. Even her parents' old disputed property was settled. Jacob had pursued the intricacies of its title all the way to the governor's office. It belonged to the Moravians now. But the waterfall would always be a special place for family outings—and a secret escape for her and Jacob when the Ernsts could watch the children.

Then she felt the first clear pang. “Jacob, go find Sister Sarah,” she gasped. “I think your Elisabeth is ready.”

“Oh, no, I will not leave you this time. I am taking you home this minute.” Joy and paternal panic warred on his face as he swept her off her feet.

“I can walk,” she protested, laughing at the way this experienced father fell apart.

“Not now,
Liebling
, not while I have arms to hold you,” he said with a tender concern that lifted her heart and braced her for the ordeal before her.

“The event is hours off.”

“Nicholas can go for Sister Sarah. You can walk another day.”

“There's no need for such heroics, husband. This is not a rescue.” But it was, and she well knew it. For Jacob Blum had always rescued her, from the very first time they met. His steadfast love had seen her through her darkest fears and buried secrets, and he would always be her hero.

On July 4, 1783, in Salem, North Carolina, Moravians responded to Governor Alexander Martin's proclamation of a Day of Thanksgiving for Peace with an entire day and evening of music-making and feasting. It was arguably the first Fourth of July celebration in the new nation, for that first year the other states in the new union celebrated in December, and no one else in North Carolina seems to have bothered.

A wealth of detail about the Moravians survives in meticulous diaries kept by each settlement as well as by literate individuals. Many events in this novel happened: Sister Baumgarten's cow was troublesome, Brother Bonner's beating alarmed the town, the mill was repaired so that grain could be ground for the troops, and a thousand pairs of shoes were ordered and delivered.

Local militia, popularly called Liberty Men in North Carolina, acted fairly independently of the Continental Army. Fighting in the Carolinas had all the trappings of a bitter civil war. Tory neighbor engaged Whig neighbor, and brothers crossed swords. For all that the Liberty Men were patriotic and effective, at least one, William Lenoir, harassed Moravians, unconvinced by their claim of neutrality.
Lenoir inspired Sim Scaife's prejudices against the Moravians, but Scaife is otherwise wholly imaginary. Billeting of troops in Salem homes occurred mainly in February 1781, when both General Cornwallis's Redcoats and General Nathaniel Greene's Continentals came up from South Carolina. The latter stole cattle, coin, and laundry. Salem got off lightly compared to Bethania, one of the outlying Moravian settlements, which was virtually sacked.

Throughout the war, Moravians fostered good relationships with both armies, but particularly the Continentals. Their refusal to fight was tolerated largely, it is thought, because the armies needed their supplies more than they needed more men in arms. Though most Moravians paid the threefold tax required to avoid service, some were pressed into service. Jacob Blum's rescue of his cousin Andreas is based on my own great-great-great-great grandfather Adam Spach's rescue of his eldest son, Adam, who was drafted by local Surrey militia. Unlike the Quakers, Moravians were not true pacifists. By the time of the Civil War, Moravians could be found fighting on either side.

Moravians continued to arrange marriages by the drawing of the lot into the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In the love match of John Vogler, the clockmaker, and his wife Christina, seven lots were cast before their marriage was sanctioned. Their elegant home has been restored to its 1825 condition, and along with many other carefully restored homes and buildings, is open for tours at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

During the Revolutionary War, a chandler named Jacob Blum practiced his craft in Salem. Apart from sharing my hero's name and his penchant for political trips that took him out of town, he bore no resemblance to Retha's Jacob.

With grateful thanks to Virginia Kantra Ritchey and Kit Stewart, who shepherded me through this story from its very beginnings, and to my agent, Pamela Ahearn, who steered it in the right direction. Many have contributed factual material and insights: retired Salem College history professor and guide at Salem, Inc., Dr. A. Hewson Michie; psychologist Dr. Judith Brill; pediatrics nurse Winoka Plummer; architect Josh Gurlitz; biologist Robin Gurlitz; and librarian Kathleen Thompson. The wonderfully trained guides at Old Salem tirelessly answered my questions about buildings, clothing, food, lighting, and the myriad of other authentic details of daily life available at this restored site. Most thanks of all go to my husband, Peter Harkins, for supporting this latest dream and for giving me the best line in the book.

JUDITH STANTON
, formerly a university professor, now writes full time. She lives in North Carolina.

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