Adelsverein

by Celia Hayes

  “Oh, the house shall be so very quiet without them,” Liesel lamented. “Too quiet for my liking! I wish we had not let them go, Magda!”

  “It was too quiet for them, Lise,” Magda comforted her sister, “for we were always shushing them, telling them that they must play quietly, lest they disturb Opa. They may run and play as loudly as they like at Rosalie’s house. And that will be good for them, and good for Rosalie, also.”

  “I suppose,” Liesel sighed, “but still—I shall be glad when they are returned to me. I don’t think I shall have a restful moment until my babes are home safe where they belong.”

  Magda sat in the parlor of her daughter’s house, as midnight chimed. Lottie was eating the soup that Magda brought from the kitchen. “She was right, you know,” Magda said. “All unknowing. I had never thought your aunt to be a prophetess. She did not have a restful moment for a very long time.”

  Skeptically Lottie answered, “But surely she did not know it when she said that, Mama.”

  “No, she busied herself in the parlor, cutting out baby clothes for Rosalie’s little one. She . . . none of us knew anything of the fate that would befall, or the true use to which that fine white lawn would be put.” In the firelight, Magda’s eyes had the shine of tears unshed. “None of us ever considered such a thing, until it fell from the sky like a thunderbolt when there are no clouds in sight.”

  Wednesday dawned clear and mild, although a line of clouds in the western skies might yet promise rain. Hansi and the boys went out to the stable yard in a great lather after breakfast, for there were goods to be inventoried and loaded. Magda took advantage of a quiet moment in the store to slip upstairs and attend on her daughter, then to see if Vati should be need anything. The clock in the parlor chimed half-past as she looked into Lottie’s room. Liesel, armed with a set of pins in her mouth, her measuring tape in one hand and shears in the other was preparing for a zestful campaign against the bolt of lawn which Anna and Magda had brought from Indianola. She had promised to step into the shop to help Anna if necessary, but her eyes and her mind were obviously inclined towards seams, tucks and ruffles. Magda thought ruefully that her sister would forget entirely about the shop within about five minutes.

  Lottie was asleep, curled up in the center of the truckle-bed she shared with Grete, her thumb in her mouth. Jack the dog lay on the rug at the side of her bed. Jack made doleful eyes at Magda and thumped his tail apologetically—honestly, how that dog managed to slip into the house and creep upstairs without anyone noticing. Magda forbore to chase him downstairs again, for she thought that Lottie might be lonely for Grete, her almost-twin. And poor Jack undoubtedly missed Sam and Hannah, who would not be home from school for some hours yet. She tiptoed out of the girls’ room and into Vati’s room. He too was asleep, with his face towards the window. No matter; she would linger for a few minutes. If he woke, then she would read to him from Uncle Simon’s old letters; if not, then she would have a few minutes of respite from her vast assortment of cares.

  She leaned her elbows on the windowsill, and looked out into the garden below and the stable yard beyond the laurel hedge. There was Hansi with a copybook in hand, making marks in it with a pencil, while Fredi busied himself with walking one of the horses up and down. They both appeared to be closely observing the horse’s off-hind leg, and as Magda watched, Fredi got down on one knee to tie a poultice around the bad leg and wrap it with a long bandage. Magda saw her son emerge from the barn, leading another horse and evidently talking over his shoulder to Peter. She marveled again at the likeness between them; so marked at a distance, with the same height and the fair hair. That likeness dissolved at close range, for Peter was as outgoing as Dolph was reserved and that dissimilar temperament stamped their features as markedly as Peter’s mustache and scar.

  She was startled by a stampede of hoof beats in the street outside; three or four horses being ridden quite fast. She could not move swiftly enough to the opposite window to look down and see who it was, or why anyone would be riding through the city at such speed. But it made no matter, for there they were—three men in haste came around the end of their house and rode into the stable yard. The first brought up his horse in a cloud of dust, dismounting in a graceless rush. It was Hansi they meant to speak to; she could see as clear through the glass window as if it were a stage pantomime and read the expressions on their faces, although she could not hear what they said.

  A trickle of unease went down her spine, for the man who spoke to Hansi was John Hunter. Once he had come asking for shelter under her husband’s roof, riding a lathered horse and fleeing men who hunted him, hunted him as if he were an animal. She did not recognize one of the two men who remained on their horses, but the other was Charley Nimitz. He looked towards the house and she lifted her hand to wave at him, but he did not appear to see her standing in the window. His face was set in grim, unsmiling lines—most uncharacteristic for Charley. The only time she had seen him so somber was when he told her of Vati’s condition . . .and before then, during the nightmare of her husband’s funeral. Again, he must be bringing bad news; that must be the only explanation. Her children? Fear clutched at her heart with icy claws and then slackened; no, her son was down in the yard, in plain sight—and Lottie in bed asleep in the next room. Hannah and Sam were at school. Surely she would have heard some alarm if there was a danger threatening the children there.

  John Hunter spoke only a few words to Hansi. Magda almost cried out, for it seemed that those brief words struck Hansi and the boys, first to stillness and then to a fury of action. Hansi thrust the copybook into his vest, and Fredi and Peter turned and ran into the stable. John Hunter sprang back onto his horse; he, Charley and the stranger departed in a thunder of dust and little clods of dirt thrown up by the storm of their departure.

  Down below, her son was already running across the garden towards the house. Hansi lifted his head and looked towards the house, at the window where she stood. She nearly cried out again, for his face bore an expression of horror and almost unbearable dread.

  Chapter Eight: Comanche Moon

  Magda ran downstairs, as quietly as she could manage it, and intercepted her son in the kitchen. Dolph was methodically rummaging through the pantry shelves and throwing certain things—smoked meat, dried fruit, bread, and crackers—into a gunnysack. He had a belt looped over one shoulder, a belt heavy with the weight of a pair of massive Navy Colts that he had brought back from his service with Colonel Ford, and in which he took as much pride and care as his father had in his fragile and slender Paterson five-shot revolvers.

  “Rudolph Christian Becker, tell me what has happened!” she demanded, in her sternest motherly tones. “What did John Hunter come to tell you, in such a hurry that he must go around to the back and speak to your Uncle Hansi directly instead of coming to the front door like a civilized man?”

  Dolph hardly looked aside from her face as he swept a little bag of sugar candy into the sack and responded with a question of his own. “Where is Aunt Liesel?”

  “In the parlor, cutting out new clothes, unless she is in the shop with Anna.” A horrible suspicion dawned and broke and Magda stayed her son with a hand on his arm.

  “Good,” he answered calmly, and with that air of sad maturity which sat so oddly on the countenance of so young a man. “You both should stay with her.”

  “What has happened? Tell me!” she demanded again, but he deftly slipped from under her hand.

  He buckled the gun belt around his waist. “They have found Robert Hunter’s horse wandering free with a Comanche lance stuck into it, and his trap wrecked by the side of the road. Him, they found dead nearby with his head bashed in and scalped.” She gasped in horror and grief. Her son added calmly, “They have taken the children and Rosalie—but we have a chance to follow their tracks and rescue them if we leave now.”

  And with that, he was gone from the house. In the time they had spoken those brief words, Fredi and Peter had saddled four horses,
including blanket-rolls and long holsters for rifles and carbines. From the kitchen window, she saw Dolph run across the garden and toss the gunnysack to Fredi, saw him leap into the saddle as a bird leaps from the ground into the air—and then the boys wheeled away with the same thunder of hoof-beats, the same desperate urgency that drove John Hunter and Charley.

  Just like that, a few words, and Robert Hunter dead? That direct and gallant young man who had kept his love for Rosalie alive through four desperate years of fighting in the East and come home to marry her . . . dead? Near to his own house, in time of peace, and with their child on the way . . . of course, he would have protected Rosalie and the children to his last desperate breath. She heard the door to the garden open and shut again and shivered at the sound, for the way it thumped sounded like the thudding of clods of earth on a coffin lid. Hansi stood in the hallway, his face a mask of desolation and dread. As soon as she came out of the kitchen, he turned towards her.

  “They’ve taken my children,” he said. His voice almost sounded normal, but his eyes had the same look of bottomless grief in them as they had on that long-ago day on the Apollo when the canvas-shrouded body of his and Liesel’s baby son had been tipped into the cold, deep blue water. He had wept in Magda’s arms then, for they had been childhood playmates, their companionship older than his marriage to her sister. “I have to tell Lise now. Please, Magda—come with me. She will be distraught.”

  “Yes, of course,” she answered. Yet another memory came to her mind, of how he had ridden over the hills to come to Magda’s side during the second year of the war, even when there was a death mark from the Hanging Band against his name. Magda’s husband had considered him a friend. She thought of how Charley Nimitz remained her friend though she had declined his suit of marriage. Yet Charley has also been Carl Becker’s good friend. Men of quality had loved her. She may have married only one of them, but Hansi and Charley were still her dearest and most reliable of friends. What better affidavit to being a woman of strength and character could be asked? “She is in the parlor, Hansi. Let me call Anna and close the shop.”

  He nodded and sank onto the hall bench as if too wearied and heartsick to move, head bowed to his hands.

  She stepped to the shop door and spoke into the room. Anna looked sharp and startled from behind the counter at the back, but obediently closed the shades and locked the street door.

  “Auntie? Papa? What is wrong?” She lowered her voice to a whisper, “Has something happened to Mama?”

  “Robert Hunter was killed by Comanche raiders, sometime last night or this morning,” Magda answered, through lips that felt as cold and stark as death itself. “Rosalie and the children are missing.”

  Anna gasped, a tiny sound in the hallway, but seeming as loud as a scream.

  Above their heads on the stairs Lottie quavered, “Mama, why is Onkel Hansi crying!” She stood on the landing, barefoot in her nightgown, looking uncertainly between the three adults.

  “Oh, Lottie—you should not have gotten out of bed!” Magda cried, nearly struck insensible by the realization that mere random chance had kept Lottie safely by her. If her precious child had not fallen sick, then she would also have been taken. The thought of Lottie carried away by one of the barbarous Comanche warriors or worse yet, dead and mutilated, was nearly more than she could bear. She ran up the few stairs and snatched up her child. Oh, the comfort of that small warm body, the softness of Lottie’s hair against her own cheek, those little arms reaching to clasp her lovingly. No, she could not have born that loss. She hugged Lottie close to her, then followed Hansi and Anna into the parlor, where Liesel and Marie bent their heads over a swath of white cloth and several opened fashion-papers.

  Liesel looked up, smiling as the door opened. In delight she said, “This is lovely materiel, Hansi—a dream to sew! You chose very wisely, my dears—” But then she saw their faces, anguish in her husband’s eyes and tears in Anna’s. She continued uncertainly, “Is . . .is Vati gone, Hansi? He seemed to recover a little . . . .”

  “No, hearts-love. Not Vati.” Hansi’s voice was heavy with grief and dread. “Vati is as he has been for weeks, no better and no worse. It is the children, Lise—Willi and Grete. They have been taken captive. The Indians raided near to Robert’s neighbors sometime in the night. They killed Robert and maimed his horse.” He took her hands in his.

  Marie’s pleasant round features crumpled in horror. Liesel stood as if struck to silence, her eyes huge with shock. She did not cry out immediately so Hansi continued, “Rosalie is also captive, we think. But they cannot have gone far, the boys and I and Charley and his Ranger friends are already following their trail. We have every hope, Lise-love.”

  “No,” Liesel whispered, disbelieving, “no, it cannot be. Not my children!” Anna and Magda exchanged a swift look of relief that Liesel seemed inclined towards stoicism under this dreadful blow.

  But then her face distorted, transformed with appalling swiftness into inhuman fury as she screamed, “No!” She tore her hands from Hansi’s and sprang at him, ripping at his face with her fingernails.

  Years later when they spoke of this, in the time of the great epidemic, Magda mused to her daughter, “I was watching her face, and I have always thought that she went mad in that instant. It was horrifying to see—for she had always been kind, merry and sweet. A little troubled with gloomy moods, as any woman normally is. But she went into madness then. I feared for a long time to leave you anywhere alone with her. I believed that in her rage of grief she might harm you.”

  “So I thought also,” Lottie nodded in assent, and shivered a little. “She looked at us . . .as of there was some evil demon looking out of her eyes and hating us all with a most desperate passion. It relieved me enormously when Uncle Hansi took her away.”

  Burdened with her child clinging to her, stunned by Liesel’s senseless fury, Magda could only stand there while Marie wept and Hansi vainly attempted to capture Liesel’s hands. “Lise! Stop that!” he shouted, pleading to be heard above Liesel’s hysterical shrieks. “I beg of you, Liesel—control yourself!”

  Ugly words, poisonous words and accusations, spilled from her mouth, her face distorted like a harpy-mask. “It’s your fault!” Liesel raged, shrieking. “It is your fault—they should have remained safe, safe here with us! But no, you sent them away!” Then Liesel turned to Magda with an expression of wild and hateful malice and cried, “You were swift enough, sister—to keep yours close by and yet urge me to send mine from me! God should tear her from you, as he has torn mine from me, and as you took Anna from me!” Magda stood riveted in place, hardly daring to believe she had rightly interpreted her sister’s words.

  In one wild, desperate lunge, Liesel pulled away from Hansi’s grip and took up the sewing shears. Magda held Lottie close and stepped back, a single involuntary step, while Anna caught her mother’s wildly flailing arm and twisted the shears away. Baffled of her intent for just a moment, Liesel looked around the parlor like a wild animal cornered and seeking escape. She seized one of the precious pink porcelain teacups and smashed it on the hearth, together with its saucer.

  “Oh, no, Mama!” Anna cried. “That was Papa’s gift!”

  “You will take his part, won’t you?! Liesel screamed and reached for more of the cups. “It is his fault, it is his fault my children are stolen!”

  Hansi gripped her shoulders, lifted her off the floor and shook her as a child shakes a doll; shook her until her head snapped back and forth on her shoulders. “For the love of God, Liesel!” he shouted. “How can you say such things, even dare to think that of your sister or ask such an evil of God! Be still! They’ve not gone far, Charley said that Robert’s flesh was hardly cold! We have a chance to follow after, chase them down and take back our children and your sister! Listen to me, Lise!”

  His urgent words had no effect. She fought against his hold on her shoulders and continued screaming accusations until Anna stepped close in to their maddened struggle. With quit
e astonishing calm she commanded, “Let me, Papa.” And without any further ado she drew back her hand and slapped her mother, twice. The forceful blows rocked her head back and left a bright-red mark on each cheek. This also had the effect of silencing Liesel. She gaped at her daughter with open astonishment for a split second, and collapsed onto the floor, wailing inconsolably. She was racked with sobbing that left her unable to speak—which Magda thought with grim humor was an improvement on the vileness that had spewed forth during her tirade. At least this was more like Liesel.

  Hansi knelt clumsily and took her in his arms, rocking her like a small child and pleading, “Liesel-love . . . we’ll get them back! I promise on my own heart’s blood, I shall find them, ransom their return!”

  “Marie, don’t stand there like a tailor’s dummy.” Anna, crisp as a general in the midst of a disaster, commanded her sister, “Run, fetch Doctor Keidel—leave a message at his house if he is out—and bring Auntie Elizabeth, too.” Marie fled, with one last look over her shoulder. Anna clicked her tongue against her teeth, as if some small thing had drawn her disapproval. Taking the broom and ash-pan from the hearth, Anna swept up the shards of broken porcelain. Dry-eyed and perfectly composed, almost to herself she said, “One of the children might cut themselves.”

  Hansi straightened, dropping his arms from Liesel’s shoulders. “I must go with the boys,” he said. “I must go now, if we have a chance. Anna-pet, Magda . . .look after her.” His eyes were desolate pools of grief.

  “Of course, Papa,” Anna nodded calmly. “Take care of yourself and the boys. Auntie and I shall manage.”