The Return Read online

  “Tessa, you mustn’t set your heart on Hans. He’s not . . .”

  She stopped and spun around. “He’s not what?”

  Felix looked at her, hesitating, then smiled. “You’re so young. You’ve got much still to experience in life before you give your heart away.” He’d told her such things before, but there was a warning tone in her uncle’s voice.

  Hans burst into the house, glancing briefly at Tessa but focusing his attention on Felix. He looked utterly stricken. Heartsick was the only word that suited his appearance. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, his face looked pinched and sickly, his shoulders were tensed in worry. “The sheriff has no plans to go after the raiders. He says since it didn’t happen in Lancaster County, it’s out of his jurisdiction.”

  Felix sighed. “Hans, it’s out of our territory too.”

  Hans stood in the center of the small room, hands on his hips. He scraped a hand over his whiskered chin, dark with stubble. Tessa couldn’t help but notice it was such a splendid chin—strong, square, clefted. “John Elder is creating a militia. He’s made himself captain.”

  “Vigilantes,” Felix said. “Not a militia. And we have no business getting involved with such things.”

  “No business with right and wrong? We’re to stay out of exacting justice?”

  “We’re to stay away from vengeance. Bloodlust. Fear mongering.”

  A hard silence filled the room.

  “I’ll just be on my way, then,” Tessa said quietly.

  Hans jerked his head in her direction. He looked as if he’d just realized she was there. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “I want to talk to Bairn.”

  “Not today,” Felix said sharply. “He’ll be exhausted. Willie Zook will just be getting settled. They don’t need you rushing in with your fury.”

  “My grief, Felix.” Hans pounded his chest with his fist. “Imagine if this had happened to your Rachel.”

  That stung.

  More softly, Felix added, “Tomorrow, Hans. You can see Bairn tomorrow.”

  Hans’s chin jutted forward. “Are you speaking as a brother or a deacon?”

  “Both. And you’re not to go seeking after John Elder, either. He’s nothing but a political firebrand. An agitator.” The two men glared at each other.

  She’d never seen her uncle Felix speak in that tone, not to his sons, not to Tessa, not to Hans. Nor had she ever seen such defiance in someone’s face—Hans’s eyes had a coldness in them that sent a shiver up her back.

  Near the door, Tessa slipped outside and broke into a run through the woods to reach Beacon Hollow. About halfway along the trail, she slowed to a walk, feeling all churned up inside. The attacks might have occurred seventy miles away, but something essential had shifted in Stoney Ridge. Tessa did not casually dismiss feelings. A dweller, her father called her. She would have stood and puzzled for some time on the significance of the cross words exchanged between Felix and Hans, had it not been for the sound of a snapping twig behind her.

  She jerked around to see Hans striding toward her. Her heart tripped over itself, and her skin flushed with excitement.

  “Tessa, you forgot the clothes for Willie.” He held out a bundle for her. He looked full of grief and sadness, and her heart went out to him.

  “Hans, I’m so sorry.”

  “I cannot comprehend God’s purpose in taking Betsy.”

  “But surely you know that God is watching over her.”

  He winced, closing his eyes. She studied him, struck again by his beauty. In an act of compassion, she laid her hand on his shoulder so lightly she was not even sure he felt it. Yet when she started to draw it away, he covered it with his own hand and held it there. She didn’t know how long they remained in that position, but after some time his hand slid away.

  “How selfish I am, Tessa. You and Betsy were such good friends. You loved her too.”

  Loved Betsy Zook? Tessa felt pinpricked with guilt. She had not loved Betsy, nor were they friends. She had envied her, resented her, wished her ill. And each time Tessa allowed herself to harbor a dark thought about Betsy, it revealed everything awful in her own soul. She was a terrible person. Truly terrible. But surely she didn’t need to confess all that to Hans. Why add to his distress? “You must let me know how I can help you.”

  He nodded, his chin on his chest. And then quite suddenly he emerged from his sorrow, straightened his back, and looked at her. “Tell your father I must speak to Willie Zook as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll tell him.” To her own surprise, Tessa said, “Betsy’s under the protection of God. You must believe that.” Then she added, “All will be well.” She wasn’t sure what possessed her to add that since she had no reason to think so.

  Tears filled his eyes and he blinked them back, reached out and pulled her to him. The embrace lasted no more than a brief moment, for he quickly drew away, turned, and headed back down the trail toward Not Faxon’s Farm.

  To Tessa, that brief moment felt as if she had fallen outside time and was no longer part of the ordinary world. A jolt of happiness traveled through her. Then, just as quickly as it had bloomed, it withered, and she was flooded with guilt.

  She was a wretched sinner. Imagine benefiting from someone else’s pain.

  Blue Mountain

  Finally, as the sun set on the second day, the Indians stopped the convoy for the night and untied the ropes that bound them. A warrior handed out provisions, bread and deer jerky. She held the torn chunk of bread in her hands and realized it was her mother’s bread. The last loaf of bread that her mother had made, had kneaded, had pounded. The last loaf she would ever, ever make. As famished as Betsy was, her appetite vanished by that realization. Her mother, she knew, would tell her that she must eat, she must keep up her strength, for her sake and for Johnny’s sake. And so she ate. As she chewed, she tried to make each bite last, painfully aware it was the last nourishment she would ever receive from her mother.

  Johnny leaned against her. “Let’s run away,” he whispered. “When the big one falls asleep, let’s run.”

  As Betsy rubbed her chafed, raw wrists, she looked around to see if she could recognize anything about their whereabouts. They had traveled along a ridge, climbing into the mountains, deep in the woods. They were in a wilderness unknown to them, without a path, without a guide. She had no idea of the direction or distance to their farm, or what was left of it. “We can’t, Johnny. Remember what Mem told us. It would only cause more trouble. We must stay strong.”

  Betsy’s father had prepared his children for a possible Indian attack. He had taught them to not resist violence but instead to trust God’s protection. As the Indians circled their home, her mother grabbed her by her forearms and gave her a flood of warnings: “Don’t forget the prayers that you’ve been taught. Say them often, and God will bless you. Don’t forget your name, your English tongue. If you have an opportunity to get away, don’t try to escape. If you do, they will find you and torture you. Stay strong and lean heavily on your faith.”

  Johnny curled up against her, eyes drooping. “I am glad that Willie is dead,” he murmured. “He could not have survived this.”

  She looked at him, startled by the comment, watching Johnny fall asleep. Blessed sleep. How she longed to sleep! But her mind couldn’t stop racing.

  One of the Indians stared at Betsy, speaking a few incomprehensible words. His head was shaved, other than one section in the back from which a queue of greasy black hair hung down. He wore nothing but a breechcloth, leggings of deer hide, and a grimy blanket over one shoulder. His shiny black eyes reminded her of a devil as he studied her, his gleaming eyes resting on her hair.

  Then he reached into a sack and pulled out a scalp with long, tangled blond hair, smeared with clumps of dried blood, and smiled at her in a queer way, pointing and jeering, and rattling off odd garbled words.

  The warrior shook the scalp at her, tipping his head back, laughing as he shook it, enjoying her distress. Finally, he tired of
the game, stretched out, and rolled to one side, his jaw slacked and he fell asleep, snoring loudly. The scalp lay by his side.

  There was a small clip hanging on a lock of hair that hung from the scalp. Betsy began to shake. A chill settled over her, a cold that settled into her very marrow.

  It was the hair clip from the passing peddler. The one she’d given her mother the day Hans had visited. The hair clip was just a secret between the two of them, for her father would not have approved. He was a stickler for rules, her father. But her mother appreciated a bit of fancy and wore it anyway, hidden under her prayer cap. The warrior must have known. He wanted Betsy to see it.

  This was the warrior who had killed her mother.

  This . . . this was her mother’s scalp.

  4

  Beacon Hollow

  April 23, 1763

  Anna dropped black mustard seeds in a bowl and quickly ground them to powder with the pestle. She added the proper amounts of melted lard to make a plaster for the festering wound on Willie’s arm. First she placed a piece of cheesecloth over the wound to protect it, for mustard could burn the skin. Then she spread the poultice over the thinly covered wound, wrapping his arm with a clean bandage. Willie was trying to be brave, though she could see he was nervous.

  It was such a little arm. Anna had forgotten how small a child could be, and the Zooks were not big people. Betsy looked young, though she was seventeen. Johnny was small at age eleven, as was poor Willie at seven. He was a silent wraith of a boy.

  As Anna tied the bandage on his little stick of an arm, she savored the time of mothering a young child. How she missed it.

  Anna had never given up hope that she would conceive another child, not until this winter. Her flows had stopped, the end of being young and fruitful had come upon her. It broke her heart to realize she was now barren, that her yearning for another child—for many children—was not to be.

  She had always dreamed of being surrounded by a houseful of children. Her elderly grandparents had raised her in Germany in a quiet, orderly home. She had envisioned her life with Bairn to be the opposite of her childhood—a home of happy chaos, lively laughter. She longed to hold an infant against her breast, to snuggle with a toddler near the warmth of the fire. She wanted little ones around her all the time, hanging on to her apron as she went about her chores. She wanted to hear their laughter in the house, listen to their silly questions. She wanted to hold on to chubby hands, wipe tears off round cheeks, smooth silky hair off foreheads.

  She knew not to question God’s mysterious ways, that if He were to deny her dream, He had good reason. But whenever she came across a woman whose belly was swollen with child, she felt again the emptiness of her womb, the longing of her heart.

  Bairn had sensed her sorrow last winter. He asked her of the cause and she told him the truth, that her time for bearing children was over. “I’m sorry,” she had told him. “You must be disappointed.”

  Bairn had taken her hands in his, tilted his head, and smiled at her, a familiar gesture that she cherished. He spoke in English with his Scottish brogue, full of rolling r’s. “There is no other lassie on God’s green earth whom I would want for m’ wife, nor any other child but our Tessa.” He had pulled her into his embrace, and she felt comforted by his words.

  Willie shifted on the bench, snapping Anna back to the present. She finished the last tie of the bandage and rolled down his shirtsleeve. “All done for now, Willie. I’ll change it again this afternoon.” She smiled at him. It had been a few days since he had arrived at Beacon Hollow with Bairn, yet he still hadn’t uttered a single word. He ate, he slept, he obediently did chores, but he did not speak. Nor did he smile.

  Beacon Hollow

  April 24, 1763

  Sunday morning meant church was held, this time at Tessa’s stone house, the largest home in the Conestoga Valley. She sat on the bench next to her mother, near the window so she could watch the birds. She was convinced birds gathered in the trees the moment the little church began to sing its mournful songs. She would close her eyes and pretend to sing, when she was actually listening to the birdsong.

  In the kitchen, the table was full of food, covered with linen cloths to keep the flies off it, waiting for the time of the fellowship meal. Tessa smelled the bean soup simmering on the raised hearth in the other room. Her mother had cooked the soup last evening in her largest kettle. Tessa had helped her boil eggs in a smaller kettle hung by an iron crane over the fireplace. The cheese, butter, and cider came from storage barrels in the root cellar of Beacon Hollow. Other families brought bread, plus their own wooden platters and pewter dishes and spoons. The spring day was so pleasant—warm, with a gentle breeze—that the meal would be eaten outdoors, beneath the trees in the front yard.

  Across the room, Tessa took in the slump of Willie’s thin shoulders, the restless tapping of his feet, awkward, like a young colt. Poor Willie. Tessa tried to befriend him, inviting him along with her when she went into the woods to hunt for the black stallion. He obliged her and came along, but he seemed lost in his own world, distracted and disinterested. She had to keep encouraging him to keep up with her, to look carefully for any telltale signs of the horse. That was no way to go stallion hunting! Her mother said to have patience, to not press him to talk, and to give him time to mend. Tessa feared his mind was disordered. She remembered him as a noisy boy, running and shouting, much like Felix’s twin sons. The only spark of life in Willie was his affection for Tessa’s old dog, Zeeb. The two of them had become inseparable. Even now, Zeeb sat at Willie’s feet.

  Next to poor Willie sat the twins—Benjo and Dannie—with Uncle Felix between them to discourage mischief making. Felix’s wife Rachel had passed during childbirth, and his mother had moved to Not Faxon’s Farm to help with the babies, though she was the one who seemed to need help. Tessa leaned back and glanced down the row to Dorothea, her sweet and frail grandmother. She had fallen sound asleep and church hadn’t even started yet! Maria noticed and jabbed her with a bony elbow. Dorothea jerked awake, then looked at Maria, annoyed. Tessa had to bite on her lips to keep from laughing out loud. Maria and Dorothea treated each other more like irritable sisters than longtime friends.

  The first hymn began when the Vorsinger, Simon Miller, the only male in the church who could sing in tune—and Tessa included her father in that assessment—opened his rather large mouth to release the first note. Before it emerged from Simon’s lips, the front door opened and shut. Someone came clunking into the room, bumping into benches, whispering apologies, before plopping down on a crowded men’s bench. The men had to shift down the row to make room for him.

  Rumpled Martin? What was he doing here? He was a Mennonite.

  When rumpled Martin saw that Tessa was watching him with a scowl, he gave her a big smile and waved his hand surreptitiously at her. Her scowl deepened.

  After the first hymn was sung, there was a moment of quiet, of stillness, a time for reflection. Bairn, sitting on the front bench, gave Felix a nod.

  In a loud voice, shockingly loud, Benjo said, “Why does Uncle Bairn disappear whenever church starts?”

  Felix put a hand on his son’s shoulder and whispered, “He goes off to a quiet room and prays for God’s help to preach the sermon.”

  Dannie piped up in his own bellowing voice. “Then why doesn’t God ever help him?”

  Almost to the bedroom door, Tessa’s father stopped, and the entire church froze, waiting for his reaction. His shoulders started to shake, then his whole body. He clapped a hand over his mouth. Tessa worried he was having an apoplectic fit—she’d seen someone in Lancaster Town have a fit once. It was a frightful sight.

  But then a laugh burst out of her father, and he kept laughing, and most everyone joined in the laughter. Not Maria Müller, of course, but almost everyone else. During church!

  Tessa looked across the room at Hans, to see if he might be amused too. She sat at an unfortunate angle and there were three stout women seated in front
of her. She thought of them as the Stout Sisters, though they weren’t actually sisters. She could not see Hans properly without stretching sideways and craning her neck. But when she did, she could see he wasn’t laughing. He was staring at a spot on the floor in front of his shoes. Tessa stilled, and a pang of shame shot right to her gut. She was spending a happy Sunday morning in April thinking about birds and bean soup while Betsy was somewhere far away in the wilderness, held captive by savages.

  And then she noticed that Willie Zook was watching Benjo and Dannie with a curious almost-sort-of-getting-close-practically-there smile on his face.

  Felix tried but couldn’t hold back his amusement with his sons’ remarks, inappropriate as they were. He knew he would get an earful after church from Maria Müller, but he thought his sons were a tonic to an ailing community. Leave it to those two boys to bring some levity after the week’s distressing news. Why, those boys even elicited a near smile out of poor Willie Zook.

  Felix adored those boys of his, loved their joyful spirit and enthusiasm for life. And how they made him laugh!

  Just two weeks ago, Bairn had been preaching on Scripture based on Matthew 5:22. “Anyone who hates his brother will be guilty of murder,” Bairn preached, then paused to let the impact of the words float through the church.

  Apparently guilt ridden, both of Felix’s sons had blurted out a loud “Uh oh.”

  On this spring morning, Felix kept his eyes away from Maria’s disapproving grimace and locked down on the tops of his sons’ carrot-red heads. Children were a blessing.

  Tessa should have been listening to her father’s sermon, but instead she was captivated by how the sun streamed through the window and lit Hans’s thick, wavy hair in such a way that he appeared like an angel. She suddenly sensed a change in the atmosphere, a brittleness. And then she realized her father had been talking about the massacre.

  “The worst thing to do,” her father said as he walked between the space that separated the men’s side of the benches from the women’s, “is to assume all people belong under a defining label. That all Indians are savages. All Scots-Irish are squatters. All French are bent on riling up the Indians to get back at the British. That is not God’s view of man, nor of the massacre. Vengeance belongs to God alone.”