The Return Read online

  It wouldn’t take much to provoke warring Indians to attack a white man alone on horseback. The frontier had quieted after seven years of war between the French and the British, but as more settlers arrived, absorbing hunting grounds into farms, skirmishes with the Indian had started up again.

  Anna was aware that the Amish of Berks County did all they could to remain on good terms with the Indians, offering friendship and hospitality, sharing bounty from their fields. Whenever Bairn went north, he brought gifts of food with him to give to any Indians he encountered. He encouraged the Berks County settlers to do the same, especially after the Jacob Hochstetler tragedy. Jacob’s wife had refused food to an Indian who had appeared in her kitchen one day. Whether truth or rumor, it was thought to be the reason the Hochstetler family was targeted for an attack when other settlers were left alone. Jacob and two sons were taken captive, his wife and their other children were killed.

  For the longest time after the Hochstetler attack, the women in Anna’s church worried the story over and over. They repeated gruesome details as if the event had just transpired: the mutilated bodies, the charred timbers of the house, the missing sons.

  And then they added the bits and pieces of what they claimed to know about those ruthless Indians: they delighted in torture, they ate white babies, they took pleasure in unhinging the white man’s mind.

  On this afternoon, waiting for the water to heat in the kettle, Anna let the women talk amongst themselves as she spooned tea leaves into cheesecloth and twisted the bundle tight. She took her time letting it steep in the steaming water. She knew the women were tiptoeing around the subject that was on everyone’s mind: Where was Bairn? Had he been hurt in the attack? He should have returned days ago.

  Everyone stilled when a noise was heard outside. Anna rushed to the door and opened it wide to peer down the lane. A farmer in an ox-drawn wagon passed slowly on the road beyond the garden fence. The clatter of his iron-rimmed wheels raised a trail of dust. She closed the door and managed a shaky smile at her friends. She poured each woman a mug of tea and set it before them.

  Maria Müller sipped her tea, then puckered her lips. “Those Iroquois do not govern themselves by reason, let alone good sense.”

  “I’ve heard that they chop off their victims’ hands and feet and flaunt scalps as trophies,” added Barbara Gerber.

  Others quickly chimed in.

  “They’re savage pagans who need to be civilized and converted.”

  “I’ve heard that once they’ve exhausted their cruelties, they kill the men with a blow to their head. And before they kill the women, they defile them.”

  Anna felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, though it was safely pinned beneath her prayer cap. Stunned and sickened, she listened to it all without a word, grateful that Tessa wasn’t in the kitchen to overhear. Her daughter had a vivid enough imagination as it was.

  Earlier this afternoon, after Anna had returned from a visit to welcome a neighbor’s new baby, she had sat by the fire to sew the hem of Tessa’s favorite dress. Her daughter grew like a weed; she had hardly finished hemming a dress when it needed to be let down. She had set the task down when Maria arrived at the door. Now, she reached over to her sewing basket and picked up the dress to finish the hemming, to avoid listening to the women’s recycled terrors. She examined her stitches, trying to settle her mind by finding comfort in a common household chore. An ordinary dress for an ordinary day.

  Or were ordinary days a thing of the past?

  If this were an ordinary day, Bairn would be walking through the door soon after spending hours either at the sawmill beside the creek that wove along their property or in his beloved carpentry shop, hungry as a bear.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Where could Bairn be? Why hadn’t there been some word about him? How could word travel of the attack so quickly down from the top of the Schuylkill, and yet nothing of her husband’s whereabouts?

  Anna rebuked herself for her worrisome thoughts. Those poor families up the Schuylkill would never again have an ordinary day, and here she was fretting about her husband, strong and capable and savvy to the ways of the wilderness. She picked up her sewing and went back to her work.

  Still, she could not keep her mind from returning to the same question: where was Bairn?

  It was nearly twilight by the time the women finally left Beacon Hollow. Tessa walked toward the house with a rock in her heart. Her mother sat by the giant stone fireplace, staring at the smoldering fire, a worried look on her face. She hadn’t even heard Tessa come in.

  “Mem? Mem? Are you all right?”

  Her mother jerked, startled. “Oh, Tessa. Yes, I’m fine.” She rose, gave her a soft smile, and reached out her hand to her. “Where have you been? Maria was asking for you.”

  Which was exactly the reason Tessa stayed out in the barn, watching the sheep and her new twin lambs until they left. She was no fool. Maria Müller made her feel like a pecked chicken. She fussed over Tessa, talking about her as if she wasn’t even there. “How tall is she now, Anna?” “Goodness, Bairn is going to have to raise the roof.” “When will she stop growing?” “She’s taller than every man in the county, barring her own father.”

  Early Monday morning, Maria had arrived at Beacon Hollow and settled herself by the hearth for what appeared to be a rather long visit. “I’ve come to keep you company, Anna, whilst Bairn is off on circuit,” she announced, as if she were bestowing a great favor.

  Tessa had started for the door, but her mother put a hand on her arm and gripped it tightly. She wasn’t going to let her escape from chores that easily. Her mother turned to Maria with a sweet smile coating her firm words. “You’re always welcome in our home, Maria. But in any case, it is Monday and there’s work to be done to prepare for Sunday church. Don’t mind us as we finish our chores.” Then her countenance softened. “Bairn will be home any day now, and we want him to have a clean home to come to.”

  Tessa thought their home was plenty clean, but nevertheless, she and her mother spent the morning in a frenzy of housecleaning, rousting dust and cobwebs from the corners of all three downstairs rooms. Maria remained cozy by the fire, chattering about anything that flittered through her mind, most of which was utterly trivial, complete nonsense, while Tessa and her mother waited on her hand and foot. Tessa was so eager to flee the kitchen that she even volunteered to load the woodbox—anything to get outside and away from Maria’s endless stream of babble. Her mother said no.

  By the time the house was cleaned and they gathered around the table for noon dinner, Tessa was ravenously hungry. Too hungry to notice that Maria’s beady eyes were fixed on her. Too hungry to keep a check on her quick temper, which Maria had a way of tweaking.

  Maria turned to Anna, seated next to her. “Has Tessa started her monthlies yet? She won’t stop growing until the flows start, you know.” In a gloomy tone, she added, “Oh, I do hope she won’t have the trouble you’ve had bearing children, Anna.”

  Tessa was suddenly and fiercely angry. She rose to her feet. “My monthly flows are none of your concern! None!”

  It was a bold and impulsive statement. As soon as Tessa spoke it, she regretted having done so. She pressed her hand over her mouth and stared at Maria, then at her mother, expecting shock to register on their faces.

  It did. Shock combined with indignation.

  Maria rose to her feet, nose wrinkled, mouth puckered, her bony shoulders pulled back and her chest lifted high, as if she’d just sucked in a deep breath and dared not let it go. Without another word, she scooped up her black bonnet and swept out the door. Tessa’s mother followed Maria outside, soothing her ruffled feathers, trying to make amends. It must not have been successful because she was soon back in the kitchen and, through the window, Tessa could see Maria spanking her pony’s rump with the reins to hurry her down the lane.

  Tessa whispered a feeble apology. “I know you’re angry.”

  “Not angry. But I am terribly disappointed in y
ou for not holding your tongue.”

  That was worse, Tessa knew. At least when anger vented, it was over and done with. Disappointment lingered.

  Anna picked up plates from the table and put them in a bucket to wash. “You’re fifteen years old, Tessa. Nearly a woman. You must not let your frustrations boil to the surface.”

  “But Maria can be so vexing!”

  Her mother’s lips tightened. “She has known you since you were born. You’re like a granddaughter to her. She worries about you.”

  “Why does she have to stay at our home for hours and hours?”

  “Because she’s lonely in that empty house.” Her mother picked up a broom and handed it to Tessa. “She shouldn’t have spoken so frankly about private matters. I know she vexes you. But it wasn’t cruel, what she said. What you said to her—that was downright rude.”

  “It’s how I felt. My monthlies are not her concern.” Tessa was worried enough about her monthlies or, rather, the lack of them.

  “She’s lonely, Tessa. Loneliness can cause people to dwell on things. They have too much time to think.”

  Later that afternoon, Tessa took a loaf of freshly baked bread over to Maria’s with a contrived apology, determined to sound heartfelt. She wrote the script in her mind all the way as she walked down the road.

  To her shock, when she knocked on Maria’s door, she was invited in and warmly welcomed. As Tessa stood in the middle of the little room, she got a sense of how lonely Maria’s life was. One plate, one cup, one fork. Her husband, Christian, had passed, her daughter, Catrina, had moved away years ago. She’d closed off most of the rooms in the house and set her bed in the kitchen, near the fireplace. And it was only a small fire, barely warming the room.

  Tessa felt the tiniest glimmer of compassion for Maria. Yet something seemed odd. Maria was pleasant looking; her face wasn’t all pinched up and puckered the way it normally looked. And goose feathers littered the kitchen floor, spilling out of a sack by the hearth. There were even feathers on top of Maria’s prayer cap. “You seem happy.” It was an unusual sight.

  A big smile filled Maria’s thin face. “I am. I am uncommonly happy.”

  Tessa wondered if she might have partaken in strong drink. “Are you making new pillows?” she asked, gesturing to a neat pile of cotton fabric on the tabletop. Store-bought fabric! Not the coarse linen sheets Tessa slept on. She knew that Maria rarely spent a penny except for necessities.

  “I am. I have cause for celebration.” Maria pulled a letter from her apron pocket and a feather lifted from her shoulder and floated to the ground. “When I returned home today, I found a letter at my doorstep. My daughter, Catrina, is moving home. Within a few weeks’ time, she said.”

  Oh, what a relief! Maria would have someone to fuss over and leave Tessa alone. After delivering her apology to Maria for being rude and receiving a pardon of forgiveness, she had practically skipped all the way home. That happiness had carried Tessa all the way from yesterday until this afternoon, when Faxon Gingerich gave her news about the Indian attack on the Zook family.

  She watched her mother, who kept one eye peeled on the windows as if she expected to see her father riding in any minute. The last of the day’s light slipped through two west-facing windows and made yellow stripes on the planked wooden floors. There were six windows in all, two each facing west, east, and south. Some church members had criticized Tessa’s father for adding luxury and extravagance with those windows, as if flaunting his wealth.

  While it was true that the Bauers were the wealthiest family in the church, it was not the reason he had built the house with so many windows. Having windows was something Tessa’s parents felt was a necessity, not a luxury.

  Tessa’s father had lived on the open sea and did not like to feel confined to dark rooms. And her mother still shuddered whenever she spoke of the lower decks of the Charming Nancy that brought the church of Ixheim to the New World. The darkness had felt oppressive. Tessa set the table with two pewter plates and two spoons. Such a large table, flanked by solid and straight chairs. Her father had built it, planning for children to fill each chair, but it was not what God had in mind for them. Out in the family graveyard were three little graves alongside her father’s father and her mother’s grandparents. Tessa was their only daughter, and the only child to survive the first year of infancy.

  Her mother took a kettle off a lug pole set across the inside of the chimney, hanging low over the fire. Potpie, her father’s favorite. She made a point of fixing it on the day she expected him home. He said it made the journey home swift and sweet, to think of potpie waiting for him on the table.

  Potpie was the first dish Tessa had learned to make, because it was simple to make and didn’t require close attention from the cook. Almost any kind of meat sufficed for potpie, though her father’s favorite was lamb. It was “spoon meat” and leftovers could be stretched with added ingredients and reheated to be just as good, sometimes even better, on the second day.

  At the hearth, Tessa’s mother opened the lid to her bake kettle to check on the corn pone. It was another of her father’s favorites: soft and succulent in its center, a thick crust around it. The bake kettle was a Christmas gift from Tessa’s father, designed by him and forged by Handsome Hans in his smithy shop. The pot had three legs so it could sit in the ashes. The lid was inside, resting on a ledge an inch below the rim. With such a kettle, Tessa’s mother could brown her pone on top by covering the lid with hot coals. She often made it the night before and set it in the hot ashes on the hearth, ready for breakfast.

  Clearly, her mother had been expecting her father home today.

  Her mother set the bake kettle on a flat stone on the table to cool and looked up at Tessa. “So what else did Faxon Gingerich say about the attack?”

  “He didn’t call it an attack. He called it a massacre. And he said that Betsy Zook had been taken captive. Her brothers too.”

  Her mother stilled, then sank into a chair. In a trembling voice, she asked, “Are they sure it was the Zooks? Our Zooks? Could it be a rumor? Rumors have wings on them.”

  “Faxon Gingerich seemed to be sure.” Tessa sat down at the table facing her mother. “Why would they steal children?”

  “Different reasons,” her mother said in a quiet voice. “Some are taken to be slaves.”

  “Slaves?”

  “Meant for labor.” Tessa must have had a horrified look on her face because her mother was quick to add, “It’s not just the Indians who take captives. It’s an age-old practice around the world. Even Europeans used to capture others to acquire laborers.”

  Tessa rubbed her finger along the smooth edge of the table. “Will they hurt Betsy?”

  “I think . . .” Her mother hesitated, just slightly, but enough that Tessa knew she was carefully weighing her words. “I think that if they wanted to hurt her, they would have done so. Capture is rarely an act of caprice.”

  “Caprice?”

  She lifted her eyes. “Whim. Rarely done on a whim.”

  “What will they do with Betsy? Will she be able to stay with her brothers?”

  “I don’t know. Captives are taken to avenge losses or to replace lost relatives. Sometimes it’s for ransom.” She turned to look into the fire. “Or perhaps for assimilation. As tribute.” She glanced at Tessa. “Adoption.”

  “Betsy might be adopted as an Indian?”

  “Among some tribes, it’s a tradition to replace a dead brother or sister through adoption.”

  “Why? Why would they want someone who doesn’t want to be with them?”

  “They believe the spirit of their loved ones resides in those they adopt, including white captives.”

  “But it’s more likely she would be ransomed, isn’t it? The British soldiers will find where she’s been taken and offer a ransom for her, wouldn’t they?”

  “I wish I could say yes, but I’ve always told you the truth, Tessa. And the truth in this case is that I just don’t know. It’s hard
to predict what the British soldiers would do about ransoming child captives. Sometimes, captives never do return to their homes. They adjust to their new life, grow fond of their new families. I’ve even heard when some are offered liberty, they choose instead to stay with the Indians.”

  As she and her mother sat at supper, Tessa bowed her head for a silent prayer. The Bible taught to be thankful in all things. All things. But her heart wasn’t feeling a bit thankful. Her old dog Zeeb, given to her as a pup by a Conestoga Indian named Will Sock, sensed her turmoil and put his head down on top of her feet.

  She and her mother ate in silence, both lost in their thoughts. Tessa could barely eat, she just pushed her food around on the plate with her fork.

  Her mother put her spoon down and said, “Papa will be home soon, Tessa. Don’t overworry his absence.”

  Tessa nodded and managed to find her voice. “I’m not. I mean, I am, but it’s not just Papa I’m worried about.” She twisted a corner of her apron. “There were so many times I wished Betsy had never moved here. Times I prayed she would just go away.”

  From the moment Tessa had first met her, over a year ago, she had resented Betsy. She recalled standing at the window, watching Betsy light from her wagon when her family came for a church gathering. Betsy was the smallest woman she’d ever seen, as small as a child. Tessa remembered being transfixed by her face, her rosebud mouth, smooth white skin, and those luminous eyes. They were astonishing eyes, pale blue and brimming with a mixture of innocence and wisdom. Her thick, curly blonde hair refused to be constrained by her prayer covering; tendrils of ringlets framed her face, floating on the slightest breeze.

  But the vision that was seared in her mind was how Hans had reacted to Betsy. He watched her with the tenderest of care. Almost worshipfully. Tessa had hated Betsy from that very first moment. Hated her!