Cheryl Reavis

by The Bartered Bride

  “Caroline, you are overwrought. If you refuse to come with me now, then I’m going to light a fire. This room is freezing. And…we can talk. It has been a very long time since my last meal, so you will forgive me if I also invite myself to sit at your table.”

  “There is nothing here to eat,” she said tearfully.

  “I’m sure I can find something—where does Avery keep his brandy?” he added when she looked at him.

  She had to struggle hard for control before she answered. “In the cellar,” she said. She was so tired suddenly, and she hadn’t eaten, either. She sat down heavily in the nearest chair, and she put her head down on the kitchen table, hiding her face in her arms, trying to regain her self-control. She could hear Johann moving about—getting wood, opening the door to the stove, lighting kindling and then a candle so he could see to get down the cellar stairs.

  After a time, he came back with a jug of plum brandy-plum brandy that Frederich had made—and a handful of withered potatoes. Then he went outside and drew a bucket of water. Every rule of social decorum she had ever learned demanded that she get up and help him, but she simply couldn’t manage it. He scrubbed the potatoes himself and put them into a pot to boil, and only then did he pour both of them a generous helping of the brandy.

  “Drink it,” he said, setting her cup down hard enough to slosh the brandy over the sides. He pulled out another chair and sat down across from her.

  “I’ve never cared much for spirits—”

  “Drink it,” he insisted in a tone very close to his pulpit voice. “All of it. And when you are calm enough, you explain this—this—fiasco to me.”

  She gave a short laugh. “Would that I could, Johann,” she said, taking the cup.

  “Make an attempt,” he said.

  She took a swallow of the brandy—it made her cough— and then another, feeling it burn all the way down. She looked at Johann and tried to force a wavering smile, but the smile died and slid away.

  “I want to know what happened, Caroline.”

  “Beata brought a letter,” she said tonelessly, because that seemed to be the crux of it all. “From Eli Graeber.”

  Johann stared at her across the table. She took another drink from the cup, a long one this time. It burned less going down, but she still wanted to cry.

  “What exactly does this letter say?” he asked.

  She was dangerously close to crying now, and she picked it up and pushed it in his direction. He smoothed it out and began to read, looking up at her sharply at one part of it.

  “You were with Eli in my church?” he asked, his disappointment at even the possibility of such a thing all to obvious.

  “I was in the church at the same time he was on that particular day. But I was not with him,” she said for the second time, fully aware that while she could deny this particular sin, she could not deny that she had been in the schoolroom with Kader.

  “This is all of the letter?”

  “I suppose. I didn’t see any more pages.”

  “Was Eli the father of your child or not?” he asked bluntly.

  “Not, Johann,” she said. “I’ve never said more than ten words to Eli Graeber in my life—and those few he could barely understand. But Frederich thinks—”

  “I know what Frederich thinks.”

  “Then suppose you tell me.”

  “He thinks that you and Eli have made a fool of him. He thinks Eli is the one who made you pregnant. He thinks that Eli, in a fit of conscience, tried to do the right thing and marry you, but he was afraid to go against the marriage pledge. So he ran off and left you here—but now he’s had second thoughts. Now he wants to take care of you just as he promised. And he’s sent you the money to come to him.”

  Yes, she thought. She could see how Frederich’s logical German mind could arrive at that conclusion—anyone would for that matter. The only problem was than none of it was true, and Frederich hadn’t trusted her enough to even listen.

  “He thinks all of that and you want me to go back to his house?” she asked.

  “There are the children. I trust you aren’t going to abandon them to Beata. You did give Frederich your word to—”

  “He isn’t going to let me keep my word, Johann.”

  “Caroline, you don’t know whether he will or—”

  “Is the army still about?” she interrupted.

  “They’ve left the Graeber house, but where they’ve gone I couldn’t say.”

  “And where is Frederich?”

  “Trying to make some sense of this. He is very angry, Caroline.”

  “He is not the only one who is angry! I haven’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t Eli. It was never Eli. Frederich has known for a long time who…” She had to stop to keep from crying. She looked at Johann sadly. “I don’t know what to do.”

  The fire was burning hot now. The iron stove began to pop and strain with the heat. She got up to close the damper.

  “You need to talk to Frederich before he goes—or is taken. If they catch him, I think they’ll send him to the prison in town. It is a terrible place, Caroline. You have to talk to him now. You have to if you are ever going to sort this out.”

  “You don’t know how disinclined he was to listen.”

  “He is not a cruel man, Caroline,” he said when she sat down again. “I remember that you once thought so—after Ann died.”

  “Yes. It has taken me a long time to get past his treatment of her that day. She was so young when he married her.”

  “She was what we call the Backfisch—young—yes, but of age. She wanted the marriage. You know that. Frederich was her first infatuation, her Schwarmerei. And I must tell you that what you saw the day she died, you didn’t understand—”

  “What I saw was his indifference. He wanted a son—she wasn’t well enough to have any more children—but he didn’t care about that. He didn’t care if it killed her.”

  “You are very wrong.”

  “I was there, Johann.”

  “Yes, you were there. But you still didn’t know the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “The truth I’m going to tell you now. I had thought that it wasn’t my place to speak about it, that people would be hurt unnecessarily—that you would be hurt, Caroline. But there is too much at stake here. Frederich’s children need the both of you—”

  “Johann, please! Just tell me what it is or go away!”

  “All right. There is a reason why Frederich is compelled to believe that letter.”

  “Reason,” she repeated. “And the ‘reason’ is also the ‘truth’?”

  “It is,” he said, ignoring her resurrected sarcasm. “Eli never wanted to come to this country—any more than Frederich had before him—and his efforts to learn how to live here and to do his part for the family were halfhearted at best. To say that Eli Graeber was unreliable would be an understatement—perhaps you did know about that part of it. Eli made it very clear that he was no farmer and he had no intention of becoming one. It didn’t matter to him that he owned half the land or that Frederich needed his help. It only mattered that his father had forced him to come to a place he didn’t want to go. But whether his resentment of Frederich and his father is what caused him to do what he did, or whether it came out of loneliness or some other genuine emotion, I can’t say. I only know the end result. Your sister died when she miscarried her child—but the baby that killed her was not Frederich’s—”

  “That’s not true! I don’t believe you!” she cried. “Ann would never have—”

  “The baby was Eli’s, Caroline.”

  “I don’t believe you!” she said again. She stood up, but there was no place she could go to get away from Johann’s revelation. Ann and Eli? Never!

  “Yes, well, there is a great deal of disbelief floating around this day,” Johann said. “But for whatever reason—revenge on his part or human weakness on hers—Eli and Ann were lovers, Caroline. The day she died—before you arrived—I heard h
er confession. And without Frederich’s knowledge or permission, I arranged for her to see Eli alone. The promise Eli mentions in this letter I believe was made then. I believe his promise was to her, not to you. I think he promised to take care of the three most important people in the world to her should they ever need it—Mary Louise and Lise—and you.”

  “No,” Caroline said, but one incident after another surfaced in her mind. Ann’s suddenly learning to speak German. Ann’s refusal to worry about her pregnancy—her happiness regardless of the fact that her life was in danger. And it was because she was so in love with her baby’s father, Caroline realized. Eli.

  Oh, Ann—

  “Who else knows?” she asked abruptly. “Avery? William?”

  “No. Only Beata.”

  Yes, Caroline thought. Beata. All those thinly veiled remarks she’d made about the Holt women—Beata had been trying to tell her about Ann and Eli for months, and she would feel free to say whatever she liked to whoever would listen after today.

  Caroline drew a long, shaky breath and began to wander about the room. “Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it, Johann? Or it was.”

  “I only wanted you to understand—”

  “What I understand is how hopeless it is for Frederich and me. And it’s always been hopeless, only I was the only one who didn’t know that. Why did he ever want to marry me in the first place?”

  “I don’t know, Caroline. The children were a big part of it, I think.”

  “If it’s true that Ann betrayed him,” she said, because she still didn’t want to believe that it could be so, “then that has overshadowed everything. I have never had a chance to find a place in Frederich’s life and he must have despised me because of what my sister did. And you knew it all the time. You knew that Eli and Frederich hated each other because of poor—dead—guilty Ann—and you said nothing—”

  “I told you. I did not feel that I was at liberty to—”

  “I was alone. I was as desperate as a woman can be. How could you let me walk into a terrible situation like that so unaware?”

  “It was for the child, Caroline.”

  “And what child is that, Johann?” she said bitterly.

  “I did the best I could for you—”

  “You’ll have to forgive me if that brings me no comfort whatsoever. Dear God, when I think how utterly useless all this has been!”

  “He has changed since he married you, Caroline. He has changed a great deal—”

  “Changed? No, Johann. You said he was not a cruel man.” She picked up the money Frederich had given her. “Ask me about this. Ask me what Frederich paid me for, and I’ll tell you how cruel he can be.”

  “People say things in hurt and anger. Things they’d don’t mean. Things they hardly realize they’ve said.”

  “Some people, perhaps. But not Frederich.”

  “You have a duty here, Caroline.”

  “To whom? To the man who thinks he has good reason to hate Ann and me both? To the man you deceived me into marrying?”

  “To your husband.”

  “I don’t have a husband, don’t you see that? There is no marriage and never has been. And there is nowhere to go from here. Frederich can’t believe me on my word alone. He can’t—or won’t—and nothing I say will change that.”

  “Caroline—” He stopped, the gravity of the situation all too apparent on his face.

  “Have you told him what you suspect about Eli’s promise, Johann? That it was made to Ann?”

  He didn’t answer her.

  “I see,” she said. “You have. If he won’t believe you—a man of God—what chance do I have?”

  “You have none—if you won’t even try to talk to him.”

  “Well, I won’t beg for his forgiveness when I’ve done nothing wrong. And I will never live in his house again, Johann. If you are going to play the go-between, you can tell him that. You tell him that I know nothing about Eli’s letter, but if he believes it, then it might as well be so. I don’t know what he wants from me. I have never known—except perhaps to take care of Mary Louise and Lise. I love them dearly, but I’m sure that is of no consequence to him. I’m sure he will make other arrangements for them now. The only thing I ask is that you speak to them for me, Johann. Help them understand that I just can’t be with them right now.”

  “If you’d just come back with me, Caroline—I am pleading with you—before it’s too late. It’s the only way for you—”

  “No! Johann, no.”

  “I don’t know what else to say to you—except that I accept much of the blame for this. I can try to talk to Frederich again—”

  “He isn’t going to listen.”

  “Caroline I—I will remember you and Frederich in my prayers.”

  Yes, why not? she thought. Prayers are all Frederich and I have left.

  But she said nothing and she didn’t go with Johann to the door or try to persuade him to stay and eat their meager fare. The potatoes were beginning to boil. She sat and listened to the steam lift and then rattle the lid, and she waited until she was certain that she was alone. Then and only then did she dare to let her mind return to the earlier question.

  What if I have another baby?

  Frederich forced himself to let Johann make his report in his own good time. He kept to the pressing job at hand, chopping a felled tree in the woods well away from the house, his impatience rising as he tried to hang on to what little of his dignity and his pride remained.

  “She won’t come back here,” Johann said finally.

  “You asked her to do that?” Frederich said, the question out before he could stop it.

  “I did.”

  “I have not said I wanted—”

  “She won’t come,” Johann interrupted, “regardless of what you want.”

  Frederich split the next piece with much more force than was necessary. The air filled with the pungent smell of raw, injured wood.

  “What do you expect?” Johann said, dodging a flying chip. “You and Beata take sides against her—”

  “Is that what she said!”

  “No, that is what I said.”

  “You saw the letter?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And I believe she is innocent.”

  Frederich rested the ax on the ground. “You saw—read— the letter and you believe she is innocent,” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are an even bigger fool than I have been,” he said, picking up the ax again. He split two more pieces and set up a third. “Is she going to him?” he asked as he brought the ax down hard. For a moment he thought that Johann hadn’t heard him.

  “I told you I believe her,” Johann said. “I believe that there is nothing between Eli and Caroline. But I think—" He stopped.

  “What, Johann? What do you think?” Frederich said impatiently.

  “I think you can drive her to take the only recourse she has. Without your protection, Beata will make sure she is ostracized here. I can preach tolerance from the pulpit and forgiveness and not casting the first stone—but, as sorry as I am to say it, I doubt that it will help her situation. If you abandon her now, if you accuse her unjustly—”

  “I don’t accuse, Johann! It is all there in the letter!”

  “If you accuse her unjustly,” Johann said again, “Eli’s offer will be the only beacon in the storm. He has offered her a new life—”

  “Yes, he makes her such pretty promises.”

  “Frederich, I am going to say again what I have said to you and to Caroline. This ‘promise’—I think it was made to Ann, not—”

  Frederich made a noise of disgust and attempted to walk away.

  “Not to Caroline,” Johann continued, following him. “She didn’t know about Ann and Eli, Frederich.”

  “So she says.”

  “No. So I have seen. I have dealt in human misery all my adult life. I am not easily fooled—regardless of what you think. I know she
didn’t know, just as I know that you—”

  He stopped walking. “What?” Frederich said when Johann didn’t go on. “You know what?”

  “I know you love your wife.”

  Frederich stood there, saying nothing. He had known Johann Rial a long time—too long to make a denial, even to save face. Yes. He loved his wife, and if there was anything at all he could be glad about, it was that he hadn’t been foolish enough to tell her.

  “The problem with you and Caroline is that you are too much alike—you are both too stubborn and too proud for your own—”

  “I can’t just forget about that damned letter!”

  “You may have to, Frederich. You may have to because it’s either that or tracking Eli to Pennsylvania to get his explanation. And there’s the small matter of a war and your army enlistment in the way—not to mention your conspicuous absence from the ranks now. I’m telling you, if you—”

  They both looked around at the sound of a wagon—John Steigermann driving his horses hard.

  “They are coming!” Steigermann called before the wagon stopped rolling. “Old Aaron Goodman saw you talking to Jacob yesterday. He has told the officer that you are home-no! No!” he said when Frederich would have made a run toward the house. “You come with me. I will hide you in the wagon. If I can get you to town—if I can get you on a train headed to Virginia, they will have no cause to look for you.”

  Frederich stood for a moment. He didn’t have his rifle or his gear. He had left them with Caroline—deliberately left them, he realized now. Even in his anger, he had had the presence of mind to arrange an excuse for seeing her again.

  “Johann,” he said, clasping his shoulder. “Tell my children I’ve had to go—tell Beata what’s happened.”

  “And what shall I tell your wife, Frederich?” Johann asked gravely.

  “Tell her—” He broke off and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I will tell her myself.” He began walking rapidly away. “John Steigermann! You drive to the ferry road and go toward town. I will cut across from Avery’s and meet you in the hickory woods—”

  “Frederich, it’s too dangerous!” John Steigermann called after him.