by Celia Hayes
“We shall get the children back,” he promised once more. Then he was gone, leaving Magda standing there with Lottie in her arms. She felt as battered as a storm-wracked ship, numb from the successive blows that had fallen upon her family, upon her. Not the least of those was a tiny splinter of fear in her heart that Liesel had gone mad from grief.
“I will go upstairs and see to Vati,” she said, and her voice sounded tinny and breathless to her own ears. Anna met her gaze from where she knelt next to her mother, trying to coax her into rising, or at least some semblance of governing her tears. “He would have been waked, I think. And want to know what the fuss was about.”
“We should not tell him what has happened,” Anna replied. Her face grew serious, thoughtful, her mind obviously running ahead of the situation. “Especially about Rosalie. You know how much Opa loves her! Doctor Keidel warned us that any agitation or fretting might kill him. He must not know, so we must keep this awful news from him. Speak to the children when they come from school and I will tell Auntie Elizabeth. Tell him, if he heard, that Mama saw a huge rat in the storeroom and it frightened her into hysterics.”
Magda nodded, too exhausted and battered by emotions to suggest any other stratagem. She climbed the stairs, Lottie still clinging to her. How swiftly this nightmare had descended upon them; by the parlor clock chiming the quarter hour it had been just a bare fifteen minutes.
Vati still slept, mercifully—but it came to her that he appeared even frailer, almost translucent. His breath came so lightly it hardly moved the bedcovers over him. Holding Lottie to her, Magda sat in the chair beside his bed, thinking that even to be in his sleeping presence was a comfort and refuge. Soon, they all would be deprived of it. Vati’s unconditional love for them all had been a slender shelter of reeds, but it had held unexpectedly strong for all of their lives up until now.
He stirred a little, and opened his eyes, grey as rain and vaguely puzzled to see her. His mouth worked, but not even that jumble of sounds that passed for his speech these days came out. Magda took his hand, laying slack on the bedclothes, and forced herself to smile and say, “Did the fuss downstairs disturb you, Vati? Nothing much—just a rat startled Liesel in the storeroom. You know how she will carry on.”
He smiled with his customary affectionate understanding, and she thought he might have tried to reply, but it was too much an effort for him. But he squeezed her hand, with barely the strength of a new-born kitten, and in a very short time had drifted off back into slumber.
When she came downstairs again, the house seemed full of whispers and people; Doctor Keidel with his medical bag and Mrs. Schmidt taking off her shawl and moving capably into the kitchen. Magda opened the door to a knock, and there was a tearful Sophie Hunter and her mother, filled baskets on their arms, and already wearing black. Other women came, bringing food, loaves of bread, and pots of jam. When Doctor Keidel came down from attending Liesel, she had no place to consult with him but in the shop office, for the parlor was full of women callers and Mrs. Schmidt was in the kitchen feeding Sam, Hannah and Elias their dinner.
“She is resting now,” Doctor Keidel said, heavily. “I have prescribed a sedating preparation. You may procure more of it at Muller’s pharmacy, if more is required. It is my hope that Mrs. Liesel may be in a more rational mood upon awaking—and all the better should the little ones be found and swiftly returned. Otherwise . . . ”
“Otherwise . . .” Magda moistened her lips. “Doctor Keidel, please answer me honestly. Could my sister be driven so far out of her mind with grief that she be capable of harming herself or someone else?”
“In my considered judgment,” Doctor Keidel began, but hesitated before finally saying, “someone with the balance of their mind unhinged by such an event as has afflicted your sister,” Anna or even Marie must have told him something of what Liesel had shouted, “may say such things and make threats which sound quite mad, even dangerous. But for Mrs. Liesel to act on such a threat—no, I believe you should set aside any such fears, Mrs. Magda.” But he did not say this with conviction, which led Magda to suspect that secretly Doctor Keidel shared her fear that Liesel might intend harm to Lottie. “You might,” suggested Doctor Keidel gravely, “if you are so concerned, ensure that Mrs. Liesel is attended at all times, even when she is in her chamber.”
The sound of hurried footsteps and men’s voices beyond the shop door interrupted Doctor Keidel. The door opened and Charley Nimitz looked around it. “Oh, good, the doctor is still here. Miss Magda,” He lapsed into what he had called her when he courted her, but his eyes had as grim an expression in them as she had ever seen. A younger man followed him, travel-dusty and sweat-stained. “Young Ernst here, he has been sent as a messenger from those who have followed the Indian’s tracks. They think they have found your sister.”
“Excellent news,” Doctor Keidel exclaimed. “That you have need of me means that she lives, I take it?”
“Rosalie—she is alive?” Magda’s heart seemed lighter, but only for a moment. Ernst was only a boy, a little older than Sam, and he looked half-sick with apprehension
“Just barely,” Charley answered, and he nudged the boy. Magda thought he was one of the Fischers, who had a farm on the Pedernales and were neighbors of Robert and Rosalie’s. “Go on, lad, tell her.”
“We . . . we found a woman.” The boy gulped, and he would not meet Magda’s eyes. “M’ father and the others, they thought she could be Mrs. Hunter. They’re bringing her here, but slowly, in a wagon.”
“Could be?” Magda looked from his face to Charley’s. “How could they not be sure, not recognize my sister! She has red-gold hair, the prettiest girl in Gillespie County—anyone would know her in a moment!” The look of sheer horror on young Fischer’s countenance struck her through and through, as she comprehended the meaning of what he had clumsily tried to tell her.
She thought she might faint, or vomit from the nausea which rose into her throat. Doctor Keidel caught her elbow, and she leaned against him for a moment, regaining her composure. “You mean,” she gasped and her voice sounded faint and flat in her own ears, “my sister . . .this woman they are bringing to us was treated in such a brutal manner—that there is a question of her identity?”
“They took her hair,” the Fischer boy said, miserably, “and her clothes, all but her drawers. Them as found her, they thought sure she was dead. She was run through with a spear and pinned to the ground.”
Ah, Rosalie, Magda thought and swayed with another wave of dizziness—what refined cruelty was that! She had once said in jest that she would die if strangers saw her under-drawers! Now Charley was speaking, answering a question Doctor Keidel had asked of him. “… May assume she was treated in the usual vile and degrading manner these savages mete out to white women captives?”
Magda looked between Charley and the Fischer boy, unable to speak for a moment.
“But she . . .she was in a delicate condition!” she gasped, horrified and outraged beyond any measure.
Charley answered, grimly, “I do not think that makes any difference to savages, Mrs. Magda.”
Doctor Keidel cleared his throat. “We have time at least to prepare a chamber for her, Mrs. Magda. Warm blankets before the fire, perhaps . . .and stone-bottles of hot water very definitely. Her injuries may be indeed grievous—but that she survived them long enough to be found, that is some reason for hope, then.”
In a frenzy of activity, she, Anna, and the able Mrs. Schmidt set up another sickroom. It was simplest for her to move her own small things into the girls’ bedroom and give up her own room for Rosalie, since it was the one farthest from Vati’s. Assisted by many willing hands, they filled stone bottles with boiling water and put them between blankets to warm them.
In the middle of it all Pastor Altmueller came to Magda, bearing a tray with a covered dish on it. “Miss Anna says you should sit down and eat this,” he commanded austerely. “I recommend the garden, my dear.”
“I couldn’
t touch a bite,” she protested. Pastor Altmueller gave her a stern look.
“Miss Anna and Frau Schmidt say that the house is full of food and you have not eaten a thing since breakfast. It is now well past two o’clock. To carry on with those tasks which have fallen to us requires fuel. Besides,” he continued slyly, “I will go upstairs and sit with your father . . .but only as soon as I have seen you eat enough of Mrs. Nimitz’s delicious ragout. You should not keep him waiting.” True to his word, he sat with her in the garden, watching with a kindly and fatherly interest as she ate.
“Truly, I did need this,” she admitted at last. “The last bites went down rather easier than the first. Oh, Pastor A.! How could this happen to Rosalie? She loved Robert so deeply, and he endured so much in the war for love of her! They had not even been married above a six-month! And Liesel—I fear she will not be able to bear the loss of Willi and Grete, even if they are returned at once! This is cruel, cruel enough to question God!”
“Our Father’s ways are inscrutable,” Pastor Altmueller sighed. “His purpose is sometimes unknowable . . .and the way to the foot of His throne difficult at the best of times. Sometimes we may not even know why we are given such trials and burdens, but be assured always of His love.”
“What a way of showing it.” Magda set down her fork.
Pastor Altmueller bent his sternest look upon her. “We are never sent anything beyond our capability to bear,” he intoned. “And we are never alone.”
Nonetheless, she was glad of what little comfort the meal and his words afforded when the wagon bearing her sister finally arrived. Two women, neighbors of the Hunters, had traveled with Rosalie to tend to her. One proved to be young Ernst’s mother.
“She has spoken a little, and seemed to know us,” she explained to Magda. Magda stood on the stone walk in front of the house door and watched the men lift down a still form, shrouded in quilts and carried on a makeshift litter. “But she could not tell anything of what happened—not that I think I would wish to recall anything of what had been done, were I in her place.”
“Did she say anything about my brother and sister?” Anna demanded. “Was there any trace of them found?”
“No.” Mrs. Fischer shook her head, regretfully. “Although we asked here, repeatedly. She asked for her husband. We told her he was being tended in another house. She does not know he is dead.”
A house of secrets, thought Magda, preceding the litter and its burden up the stairs to the room where Doctor Keidel waited with his stethoscope and his bag of cures and potions. A house of secrets, sorrow and madness, transformed in the space of minutes; maybe she would think more of returning to her husband’s house. Even half ruined, it was better than this.
“Little Rose, you are come home, you are safe now,” she had whispered, though she could see nothing of Rosalie but her face, ashen and bruised, her eyes half closed and unresponsive, until they laid her on the bed. Mrs. Schmidt shooed away everyone but Magda and Mrs. Fischer. “Go and bring more hot water,” Magda hissed to Anna.
As the door shut behind her, Doctor Keidel commanded, “Let me see what I may of my patient, yes?” He sounded determinedly cheerful, either for his own benefit or for that of Magda and the other two—even Rosalie, if she could hear anything at all in her stupor. Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Schmidt gently folded aside the swaddling of quilts. The final, innermost covering adhered to Rosalie’s flesh in places, for she had bled. Magda swayed, and gagged from a sudden up-rush of Sophie Nimitz’s ragout in the back of her throat.
“Madam Becker, if you are going to faint, I must ask you do so outside this room.” Doctor Keidel observed, hardly looking at her at all. The chill of his rebuke steadied her.
“I am not going to faint,” she answered firmly; although her own feelings were mirrored in Mrs. Schmidt’s face. Ah, Rosalie, my dearest little sister—such cruelties were done on your living flesh! How could you have lived, enduring this?!
But live she did. Her chest rose and fell evenly and her heart beat strong and regularly. With a cloth dipped in warm water, Mrs. Schmidt daubed at those places where blood crusted the innermost quilt, and gently tugged that last covering free. New red blood oozed sluggishly from dozens of gashes and abrasions and matted the fringe of hair left around her bruised face. The entire top of Rosalie’s head was either a spongy red mass or scraped white bone. Mottled blue bruises covered those parts of her body that had not been cruelly slashed with some kind of quirt, or possibly a willow-branch. Her wrists looked to have been bound, bound so tightly with something thin that it had cut the flesh, so Magda began sponging warm water on them.
A thick wad of dressing was held around her middle by a twist of linen bandage, just above the curve of the child in her belly. “I wish to see what is underneath that,” said Doctor Keidel. Mrs. Fischer produced a small pair of scissors and carefully cut away the dressing around the wound. Doctor Keidel made no reaction other than a short hiss of breath when he saw the jagged and seeping wound underneath. “What matter of weapon made this wound?” he asked, face impassive.
Mrs. Fischer answered, “A lance with a long metal blade, thrust all the way through her body and into the ground.”
“Narrow, but long. And removed by the same method?” the doctor queried. Mrs. Fischer nodded. “So, madam, if I may ask you to assist me in turning my patient, so that I may see the accompanying injury? Ah—thank you.” Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Schmidt carefully lifted Rosalie’s shoulder and hip, turning her so that the exit wound could be seen. Doctor Keidel bent to closely examine the wound which had transfixed Rosalie to the ground where the raiders had left her.
Magda took a fresh wad of cotton lint and pressed it against Rosalie’s back before the two women let her lay flat again. She could see it plain in her mind and memory, one of those slender Comanche lances; a long metal blade the length of her forearm, barely wider than the shaft; slender as a leaf and razor-sharp on either edge. When they had first come to Friedrichsburg, Mr. Meusebach had made a peace treaty with certain of the Comanche tribes, and for several years their folk had come to trade and visit. She had often seen their warriors carrying such long lances, adorned with feathers and ribbon streamers. As a small child, Rosalie had clapped her hands and marveled to see them capering.
The spear blade had gone through her body two or three fingers’ width below the cage of her ribs. Doctor Keidel bent his face even closer and sniffed at the gash in Rosalie’s side, a gash with puffy and reddened edges, slashed deep into her flesh. She wondered if Doctor Keidel was going to stitch it closed, but he straightened with a sigh. He looked as old as Vati, suddenly, grey with fatigue. Poor man, he hardly got a good night’s sleep any more.
Mrs. Schmidt, her face ashen, began to remove the once-white linen bloomers that were Rosalie’s only garment. The young woman moaned piteously and twisted away from their hands, a feeble motion and an effort soon spent. There were more and even darker bruises concealed underneath the cloth, and an assortment of crusted stains on it—not all of which were blood—which provided unspeakable proof of violence and violation. Rigid with disgust and anger at the picture thus provided to her imagination, Magda gently sponged more warm water onto Rosalie’s legs and thighs. Would that she could wash away more than the blood, the matter and the dirt! Would that it were only possible to wash away the bruises and the pain as well!
“Lives the babe?” she asked Mrs. Schmidt, who probed at Rosalie’s belly with sure fingers.
“She carries it still,” Mrs. Schmidt answered. “In spite of all that was done.” But the midwife-nurse and the doctor still looked sorrowful.
In silence they bathed and anointed Rosalie’s poor lacerated body with sweet-smelling herb balms, and dressed her in one of Anna’s oldest nightgowns, rubbed as soft as down from many washings. They wrapped her head with more bandages, tucked in the warm stoneware bottles and bricks wrapped in towels, and drew clean sheets and blankets over her. Mrs. Schmidt said that she would sit beside her, and comfort h
er if she wakened. Mrs. Fischer rolled up and took away those of her own soiled quilts. She promised that she would burn the stained drawers. Magda did not want to even touch the dreadful rags.
As Magda and the doctor emerged, Anna sprang up from the windowsill on the stair landing, where she had obviously been waiting. “She lives? Has she spoken sensibly?” she asked, anxiously.
“Yes, Annchen,” Magda replied, “and no. But I believe there may be hope.”
“No,” said Doctor Keidel gravely. The two of them looked at him, shocked and disheartened. “Very little hope, Madame Becker . . .Miss Anna. I would speak to you both privately. In the absence or the infirmity of your fathers, I have no other choice than to take you into my confidence.”
There was, as before, no other private place than the shop office. Doctor Keidel gallantly gestured to Magda that she should take the only chair. Anna perched on the edge of Vati’s old workbench and sat with her legs swinging under her skirts, and the Doctor stood with hands clasped behind him and his face schooled with much effort to detachment and formality.
Doctor Keidel was nearly Vati’s age. Besides being a friend to many he had served as the district’s doctor for twenty years. There wasn’t a family for miles around that he did not know, having treated them all. “To begin with, ladies,” he cleared his throat, “I would anything in the world to not have to tell you this.”
“Rather than let us discover it gradually and day by day, as our Rosalie suffers?” Anna snapped. “Pish! I thought you had better respect for my intellect and my Aunt’s strength of character. You may tell us what you foresee; you are the doctor with your little black bag, come for an hour or so to look grave and sober. But we are the ones who will hold her hand, change her dressings and her bedding and remain with her day and night.”
“Very well, Miss Anna. You ask for honesty and you shall have it.” Doctor Keidel cleared his throat once more; a gesture not unlike Vati endlessly cleaning his glasses, a play for time to compose his thoughts. “Of Miss Rosalie’s injuries, that one on her body is of most concern to me, medically. Oh, I have known of patients who have survived passage of a blade or a lance-head through their bodies and it is not uncommon for a man or woman to survive being scalped. That process is, curiously, not often fatal in and of itself. Painful and disfiguring, of course, but one may live without hair, not so?” The Doctor passed a hand over his own head, balding somewhat at the crown. “But of an injury which pierces the body cavity and such viscera contained therein—even if the organs might be repaired with careful surgery—which has been done, I assure you, by no less than Doctor Herff—eventually the site of the injury begins to mortify. Matter which has been spilled within the body cavity or carried hence from outside cannot be prevented from poisoning the blood.” his shoulders slumped hopelessly as he spoke. “The end is inevitable, neither swift nor painless, unless aided with sufficient morphia. There is already a faint odor of such putrefaction rising from the wound.”