The Newcomer Read online

  “I left the Old World because of a dream. God called me out.”

  “He called you?”

  “Yes. He told me to leave my country, my people, my father’s household.”

  “God told you all that.”

  “Yes. In a dream. It was very vivid. When I woke, I had this white patch.” He pointed to his head.

  She’d often wondered about that unusual shock of white hair. When she first met him, she’d thought it odd. Such a young man to have white hair. Yet the more she knew of Henrik, the more it seemed to suit him.

  “God called me out of a corrupt land, filled with idolatry, and told me to separate from loved ones, to forgo my old habits of sin, of living in darkness.”

  “But I thought you said your grandfather was a disciple of Jacob Ammann.”

  Henrik looked blank, for just a split second, then he gave her a soft smile. “Even so, the tentacles of the world creep in. It was important to take stronger steps of separation.”

  So that was why he had come to the New World alone.

  “When God gives a command, even in a dream, we must not refuse.” He looked at her earnestly. “Don’t you agree?”

  “I think . . . that we will only be blessed if we are obedient to the Word of God.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. But doesn’t God speak to us in many ways?” He looked out toward the setting sun. “Through nature’s glory, for example. As for dreams, He spoke to many Old Testament prophets through dreams. Why should we limit God’s ways?”

  Anna stared at him in wonder. Imagine having such a clear word from God, like an Old Testament prophet. Her shoulders came up and she rocked forward on the balls of her feet. What a wondrous thing! She sucked in a deep breath, feeling almost dizzy.

  “You believe me.” He whispered it like a prayer.

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  Those dazzling blue eyes sparkled as he leaned in toward Anna. “What if you were given a similar word from God? What if someone was given a command by God for you?”

  Looking into those intense eyes of his reminded Anna of how she felt during summer thunderstorms while tending her grandfather’s sheep in the steep hills of Ixheim. It was like that first instant after lightning strikes and the air is dancing, and you wait with prickles on your arms for the explosion of thunder that was soon to come, and then the pouring rain. They were mesmerizing, those blue eyes.

  “Anna, I have no doubt,” his voice was breathy, but insistent, “no doubt at all—that God has a special plan for you—”

  Before he could finish, Peter Mast arrived with an armful of hay for the horses. “Maria is looking for you, Anna. She wants to know where you’ve hidden her skillet.”

  And the intimate moment between Henrik and Anna was broken.

  As she walked up the path toward the cabin, Henrik’s comment kept rolling around in her mind. What plan would God possibly have for her? It was an odd thought. Odd and pleasing, both.

  Anna was halfway up the path when Peter caught up with her, brushing bits of hay off his shirt. “So what are your plans?”

  “My plans?”

  “After the newcomer returns and land gets parceled out, where will you go?”

  She looked up the path toward Jacob’s cabin. “I’ll stay right there. I’ll stay waiting for Dorothea and Jacob to return.” And Felix. And Bairn.

  He shook his head. “There’s no chance that they’re still alive.”

  She stopped, annoyed. “Peter, your babe is with them. Lizzie’s son.”

  He looked away so that she couldn’t see his eyes. “When my Lizzie died on the ship, I stopped thinking of the child as mine. Dorothea saved the baby. He is her son now.” He took a deep breath. “Was. He was her son. I can’t imagine how any of them would still be alive. Haven’t you heard the howl of those wolves in the night?”

  She had heard. Just yesterday, in broad daylight, a fox slipped up close to the cabin and flushed out a laying hen pecking in the grass—not ten feet from Maria, standing at the fire pit.

  He took his hat off and scratched his head. “Well, my offer is still good.”

  “Your offer?”

  “On the ship, I told you I wouldn’t object if we were to be married, you and I.”

  She had to bite her lip not to burst out with a laugh. “Thank you, Peter, for that heartfelt proposal, but I’m much older than you.” Only three years separated them, but with Peter’s acute immaturity, it felt like a dozen.

  “Lizzie was a month older than me.”

  “Peter, you must know how I feel about Bairn. About all the Bauers.”

  He gave her a pitying look. “I can guarantee the ship’s carpenter is never going to return.”

  Anna felt as if she’d been slapped. “What makes you say such a thing?”

  “Every day in Philadelphia, Bairn walked the docks. I saw him with my own eyes. He isn’t one of us. He belongs on a ship. He’s not coming back.” His gaze shifted to the newcomer, down by the horses. “Anna, the way I figure things, you’ve got three chances to marry before you’re an old maid. Me, but you think I’m too young for you. My father, who’s definitely too old for you. Or the newcomer. And personally, I think you’d be crazy to miss your chance with Henrik Newman. He’s worth two of that ship’s carpenter.”

  He waited for a moment to see how she would take it.

  She straightened, looked directly at Peter, and declared with defiance, “I’ll thank you to keep your opinions about my future to yourself.”

  He shrugged and started on the path.

  But as she watched Peter lope up toward the cabin, her eyes grew teary.

  The firelight wavered over Henrik’s features. “Are they asleep, Anna?”

  “Shhh.” She pointed to the small sleeping figures next to her. She had promised a bedtime story to the Gerber twins tonight, and they had fallen asleep in her arms before she finished.

  “We didn’t get to finish our conversation down by the horse pen this afternoon. I wanted to say that I believe God has a vision for the church of Ixheim.”

  “Our church?”

  “Yes. God has called the church to a new, radical faith.” He looked at her intently. “A holy experiment.”

  “Our church?” she repeated dumbly. She looked behind him to see Maria scolding Barbara for laying clothes too close to the fire. Christian was propped up against a wooden chest, nodding off. Catrina was teaching Peter Mast to play checkers and slapped his hands whenever he made a mistake. Isaac was arguing with Josef and Simon about which tree wood to use for his cabin. “You think God wants to make our church a holy experiment.” A holy experiment of what?

  “I do. But it’s lacking leadership.”

  “Jacob Bauer provides strong—”

  “He’s gone, Anna,” he said sharply, decisively.

  He met her gaze, and in his eyes she saw something that looked like nervousness. Here and then gone.

  “This church needs to face that fact. Jacob is gone. Someone needs to stand in the void.”

  Anna looked again at Christian, yawning and scratching his round belly that hung over the waistband of his black breeches.

  “Anna, God has revealed what my purpose here is.” The words came from his lips in a ragged whisper, and traces of wonder glimmered in his vibrant blue eyes. He was staring at her hard, his face fierce and intent. In a subdued voice brimming with wonder and awe, “He wants me to be a minister, to lead the church of Ixheim.”

  “But you would need to be marri—” Oh wait. She saw where this was going.

  “Yes, yes, I would.” A silence gathered between them; his breath was ragged.

  She stared at him, momentarily tongue-tied. Light from the fire glimmered over his strong face and his eyes glittered with determination.

  “God has given us work to do. Together.” Reaching across the space between them, he put his hand over hers. “Did you hear me? God has given us work to do.”

  With an effort, and without waking the twins, she pulled he
r hand out of his grasp.

  “I know you love another,” he said, startling her with his intuition, “but this ship’s carpenter—he is never going to return. He’s enraptured by the sea. That’s where he belongs. His first love will always be the sea. Always.” He crouched down beside her. “He had his chance, did he not? If he truly loved you, why would he have left you?”

  Anna lowered her eyes. He spoke the words that were already on her heart.

  “How could a man ever leave a woman as lovely as you?” He lifted his hand to her cheek. “Anna,” he whispered. “I am here. He is not. Trust me. Have I ever given you reason not to believe me?”

  Anna lifted her eyes, but before she could answer him, she realized Maria had been watching them, an appraising expression on her face.

  20

  Lady Luck, Boston Harbor

  November 17, 1737

  First thing in the morning, as soon as he saw the cook return to the galley with the captain’s breakfast tray, Bairn met the captain in the round house. Captain Berwick welcomed him in, delighted to see him. “Ah, Bairn. Yer early. Good. I want to discuss charting the ship’s plot.”

  “Sir, ’tis already plotted. North, then east, following the stream of warm water.”

  “Not northeast. We’ve had a change of plans. I want t’ head here.” He pointed on the map to the western coast of Africa.

  Bairn took a deep breath. This, he had been expecting. “Captain Berwick, sir, I signed up for this ship under the assumption that the Lady Luck was heading to England. To sell goods from the colonies and return with Germans. You said so.”

  “With all yer worryin’ and frettin’, ye’ve convinced me of the hazards of mid-winter sailing. I want you t’ chart Lady Luck t’ go south 30 N latitude.”

  Aye, to reach the trade winds. Bairn had to tread carefully. “Sir, as you ken, winds and currents have a powerful influence. ’Tis easiest to use the westerlies in a northeasterly direction, not to fight them.”

  The captain ignored him. “During the trip, I want you to re-outfit the lower deck.”

  “In what way?”

  “Some hardware has to be added.”

  Bairn braced his forearms on the small table. “Captain Berwick, have ye gone into the man-stealing trade? Is that why you’ve purchased rum? To trade for slaves in Africa?” The Triangle Trade. Rum. Slaves. Molasses.

  The captain blinked. “It’s just business.”

  Bairn’s tone was purposefully polite. “Not to this first mate.” He said it mildly enough, he thought, though the whole notion made him livid. “I dinnae think Captain Stedman would have a cousin who was in the rum-and-slave trade. I have heard him say, on many occasions, that man-stealing was the work o’ the devil.”

  The captain gave him a hard look. “My cousin dinnae have the financial pressures that I have. There are investors to please, debts to pay off. I’ll thank you t’ keep your moral high horse in check and follow me orders.”

  His moral high horse? Not so long ago, Bairn might have turned a blind eye to the rum-and-slave trade, thinking only of the riches that awaited him.

  Not so long ago.

  But Anna had changed his thinking about . . . everything.

  “Not I,” he could hear her say in her soft, gentle voice, as sweet as an evening bird. “It is not I who has changed you. It’s the work of God, stirring your conscience.”

  That, too, troubled his mind. In fact, Bairn hadn’t felt a peaceful moment since he had left the docks at Port Philadelphia.

  It was no wonder the lower deck was not filled. And now Bairn understood Captain Berwick’s enthusiasm to promote a ship’s carpenter to first mate. He would be employed to drill shackles and chains into the walls. He had walked right into this mess.

  “And another thing. That brother of yours has to be put off ship in Boston.”

  “Put off? An eight-year-old laddie, alone in a city?”

  “He’s hardly an innocent laddie. He’s a rascal, a gremlin, a scalawag. I dinnae care what ye do with him. Sell him as an indentured servant. Just get him off me ship.”

  “Then I’ll go with him.”

  “Nonsense. Ye’ll be a rich man by this journey’s end.” He gave him a lopsided grin. “And I’ll be even richer.”

  “Sir, I’ll find you another first mate.”

  The captain’s grin faded. “May I remind ye, Bairn, that ye signed a legal contract. If ye jump ship now, I’ll have you arrested and sell yer little scoundrel of a brother t’ the first redemptioner who has the misfortune to bid on him. And dinnae think I won’t.”

  They locked eyes. Then the captain flicked his wrist toward the door, dismissing Bairn without another word.

  Jacob’s Cabin

  November 18, 1737

  As the sun rose over the tops of the trees around them, Anna was already tending the hearth. She pulled a pat of resting dough from the bread crock, mixed together last night before she went to bed. She was kneading it when Maria’s hand dropped onto her shoulder. “I think your grandparents would approve.”

  “Approve of what?”

  “The newcomer, of course. He is the kind of man your grandfather wanted for you.”

  Anna punched the dough.

  “You have a destiny, Anna. You are meant to serve God with your life.”

  Her hands clawed at the dough. “That destiny belongs to all of us. We are all meant to serve God.”

  “Exactly. And nothing is more pleasing to God than to marry and bear children who will grow up to serve and please Him.”

  Anna refused to look at her, refused to respond to her. The silence stretched between them. Maria always spoke with such certainty, even concerning things she knew nothing about. She’d hardly had time to form her own impressions of this newcomer, and here Maria was trying to persuade her to bind herself to him for life. So was Peter. So was the newcomer himself!

  After mixing the dough with leavening and shaping it into fist-sized balls, Anna put them in clay vessels around the edges of the fire. They would be ready in time for breakfast. She noticed how much gray ash was piling up under the fire, so she scooped it into a bucket and started toward the door, but Maria grabbed her arm.

  She looked down, watching her own fingers tighten around the bucket handle.

  “Listen to me, Anna. He wants you, that newcomer. He wants you, he does. There’s no little fondness in his gaze as he looks at you. He’s positively besotted. I know the look of passion in a man’s eyes.”

  Anna’s mouth sagged open. “What?” Maria’s words shocked her. Women did not speak aloud of a man’s desire. They never even acknowledged the existence of such a thing.

  Christian came into the cabin. He sat slowly and heavily in his place at the table, moving as if he carried a log on his big shoulders to round them and weigh them down.

  “You would do well for the church,” Maria whispered. “Marrying you would keep Henrik with us. Keep him from leaving to find another church.”

  “What makes you think he wants to leave?”

  “Before he left for Philadelphia, he asked Christian if there were other settlements nearby, any that he knew of. Why else would he ask? He must be thinking of leaving.”

  “What did Christian tell him?”

  “That he would have to go to Germantown to find other like-minded people.” She continued to clasp Anna’s arm. “You must encourage him to stay with us.”

  “Maria, our church rests in God’s hands, not in man’s.”

  “He’s not just any man. We have seen the hand of God working in his life. Think of the wolf that was coming after my Catrina. Think of the flash flood.” Her grip on Anna loosened, but Maria’s eyes were on her weary husband, who sat with his head in his hands. Christian looked utterly spent.

  They needed a leader, that was clear.

  Anna’s mind spun. She wasn’t sure what to think.

  Ephrata Community

  Of all the months of the year, Dorothea had always loved November best. Sun
light was soft and golden, slanting low as the days shortened. It could surprise you, November could. One day, there’d be cold snaps and frost, and you’d think here comes winter! But the next day would dawn mild and sweet.

  Another surprise from the month of November: Sister Marcella, who had at first seemed a woman stingy with her words, started to linger in Dorothea’s room after bringing the day’s fresh supplies. She even had the longsuffering Brother Andrew haul in another wooden chair, so the two women could visit together by the fire in the late afternoon.

  Today, the solemn sister had the baby on her lap, playing peekaboo with him, getting giggles out of him.

  “Does he remind you of your son?” Dorothea asked.

  Sister Marcella’s smile faded and Dorothea regretted that she brought up the sister’s child. It haunted her, though. To think of a mother who willingly left her child. Dorothea’s sons might have left her, but she had never left them. Not willingly.

  She wondered if she should apologize to the sister, but before she could, Jacob stirred and she hurried to his side to see if his eyes were open.

  “You give your husband very tender care,” Sister Marcella said, her gaze on Jacob as she came to the bedside.

  “For all of Jacob’s faults, I know he would do the same for me,” Dorothea said. “A promise is a promise, after all. That’s what marriage is meant to be. A promise to the end.” In the silence that followed, she realized what she had just said, and to whom. “I’m sorry. It’s not for me to pass judgment.”

  Sister Marcella seemed to come back from somewhere far away. “I must go.” Her eyes grew glassy as she handed the baby to Dorothea.

  “Please, don’t be upset with me. I spoke without thinking.” Had she gone and ruined it? Such a fragile thread of friendship—had she snipped it? Brother Andrew would come and haul away the extra chair. The days would grow so long again.

  Sister Marcella gave her a mild smile, sad and sweet. “I’m not upset. Not with you, anyway. Not at all.” But still she left the little room.

  When Dorothea heard the latch click shut behind Sister Marcella, the room seemed especially empty.