He didn’t want to take Susanna, but he couldn’t leave her here either. They would be cautious, but she was right, they must see if someone needed help. So they walked quietly toward Gnadenhutten, hand in hand, listening for life or sounds of hostile Indians on the attack.
When they reached the forest’s edge, Christian stumbled backward into a tree.
“God help us,” Susanna whispered.
Instead of the circled village built by the Indians and missionaries, a smoldering pile of logs lay blackened beside the river. The Gemeinhaus was gone, along with Elias’s gristmill. The kitchen was gone. So were the bakery and the blacksmith’s shop and the smaller dwellings that housed their Indian friends.
And the people were gone too.
“Stay here,” Christian told her, and she remained hidden in the trees as he crept forward, searching the ruins for his fellow missionaries and their Indian friends, his mind alert for the enemy. Ashes fluttered like mist in the air, covering his coat and his shoes, and the silence was deafening.
Then he heard the bark of a dog behind one of the burnt buildings that stood above the rubble. He rushed over to the sound. The dog was guarding the burnt remains of a man.
At the sight of the blackened body, Christian balled over. His stomach emptied beside the remains, and then he rushed away from the horror of it.
The dog followed him back toward the ruins, whimpering beside him. Anger surged inside Christian. His brothers and sisters here, they had done nothing wrong. They chose to live peacefully instead of warring like many of their neighbors. How could their desire for peace be more of a threat than muskets and knives?
He stood in the midst of the ruins, shouting Elias’s name. Then he cried out for Benjamin and Catharine and the others. The silence broke when a man, wrapped in a blanket, shuffled out of the trees. Christian braced himself for what may come from this stranger.
As the man neared, Christian realized he wasn’t a stranger at all. It was Benjamin, with his long face covered in soot.
Christian embraced the man and then stepped back. “What happened?”
Benjamin whistled, and dozens of their Indian brothers and sisters crept out of the forest. Christian looked into their desperate faces, searching for Elias and Catharine, but the Schmidts weren’t among them.
Christian clutched his fingers into fists. “Where are Elias and Catharine?”
When the man’s gaze fell to the ground, Christian heard Susanna gasp beside him, and he was glad she had joined him. He needed her.
“Where are the Schmidts?” she demanded.
“The Indians, they burst into the Gemeinhaus, and we couldn’t stop them. A few of our people escaped through the windows, but most of them…”
Christian surveyed the damage again, the terrible scars the savages had left from the attack. Then he pointed toward the burnt building. “I found a body over there.”
“They killed many of our people.”
Christian didn’t want to ask, but he knew he must. “Did they kill Elias and Catharine?”
“Elias was killed in the fire, but Catharine—”
Susanna stepped forward. “What happened to her?”
“She was injured in the fire, and the Indians…the Indians took her away.”
Took her away?
His blood raced. “Where did they go?”
“We don’t know.”
A sob escaped Susanna’s lips, and he reached for her, pulling her to him as her strength seemed to dissolve. As she trembled against him, his neck dampened with her grief.
When she stepped back from him, her gaze bounced between him and Samuel. “We have to find her.”
Benjamin shook his head. “They won’t let us find her.”
“Please!”
“All of these people,” Benjamin said as he swept his hand before them, “all of my people. We need to get them to a safe place before the savages return.”
Ashes fell down on them as the day turned into night. Would the hostile Indians really return, after all the damage they had done? Perhaps if they knew how many Indians remained on the hill above the village, they would come back to destroy all of them.
Christian took off his hat and pulled his hands through his hair, praying out loud for wisdom for all of them. He couldn’t go raging through the woods alone, in search of the Indians who took Catharine. They had to get their brothers and sisters to a safe place, but they also couldn’t leave Catharine in the hands of the Indians.
Susanna looked up at him. “Samuel could find her.”
Benjamin nodded at him, and Christian realized they were right. If anyone could find Catharine, it would be Samuel.
He glanced at each person gathered around him and then said, “We will leave for Nazareth at first light, all of us together.”
The night air clung to Catharine, the cold piercing her skin as she hobbled barefoot through the forest. When she asked for a blanket, the savage slapped her and then tightened the cords that held her wrists together, like she was a prisoner being led to the chopping block.
Perhaps that was exactly what she was.
Blood trickled down her cheek and seeped into the edge of her lips. The Indian in the front of their pack had held a knife to her head, so close that it pierced her skin. She thought for certain that he would scalp her like he had done with the other woman who jumped through the window.
But for some reason, he had let her live.
She never should have jumped. She should have lain down beside Elias and let the fire consume her as well. But she panicked after Elias passed out, her lungs screaming for air. And the window was the only way to get it.
Why hadn’t God taken her with Elias, back in the fire?
A groan escaped her lips and the guard rewarded her with another slap, this time across the cut on her face. Pain pulsed through her body, heat overpowering the cold. But she didn’t cry out again.
They’d been goading her since daylight, and part of her wanted to fall down and refuse to move another muscle. They would kill her if she did, she knew they would. It was as if her pain was a kind of sport for them, like they were waiting for her to lie down so they could savor one more death on their rampage. She didn’t want to give them any more reason to kill her yet, not that they needed a reason. They would kill her when they wanted to.
The only reasons she could think of for their keeping her alive terrified her even more. She forced herself to think of something else. Of Elias. But thinking of her husband in the fire, his life stolen away by her captors, was even more painful. So she forced herself to think about nothing at all.
Her kidnappers must be getting tired, having slept so little before they began their journey into the wilderness. Last night they had spent hours terrorizing the Christian Indians with their fire and their blades. They had taken pleasure in killing those who escaped the fire, like they fed on their fear.
Then, when there was nothing left to burn except the barns, they raided the village’s food supplies and gorged on the bounty.
The screams of the people and the animals rattled in her head. No matter how many years she lived, she would never be able to rid herself of the terror or of the smell that had filled her very being with the stench of death.
She was terrified, but as she trailed the men, she didn’t want them to see her fear.
Her mind wandered again to her dream of going to Philadelphia or London. These men had stolen her future from her. They’d taken away her husband and any hope she had for their future.
The man in front, the man they called Iachgan, stopped them and listened. Then he barked out a command to the others. She didn’t know what he said, but they began moving again, even more rapidly this time.
She was so glad Juliana was in a safe place tonight. Her daughter might never remember her parents, but Susanna and the other sisters would take good care of her.
Another moan bubbled in her throat but she swallowed it before they heard.
Why had
n’t God protected her husband and her people from the arrows and knives of these Indians?
She heard the beating of drums ahead, and fear rushed through her once more. She stopped walking, her feet unable to move forward. Her warden shoved her, and when her face hit the ground, dirt mixed with blood and filled her mouth. She spit it out.
Iachgan grabbed her hair, pulling her back to her feet and yelling something to her that she assumed meant to walk. She spit again, to her side, and she realized that one of her teeth was gone. She didn’t feel the pain of it, didn’t feel much of anything anymore except for the sorrow that flooded her soul.
She didn’t see God in the faces of her abductors, didn’t hear Him in the pounding of the drums. She didn’t even feel Him inside her body that had been beaten and torn. But He must be here somewhere.
She longed to feel Him somewhere in this darkness. Longed to know He was here.
Her arm bumped her thigh, and she felt the bag of coins still hidden under the shreds of her skirt. Her small treasure no longer offered a way of escape. She had nothing except her Savior.
Moving forward, she begged Him to forgive her for all the times she had grumbled like the Israelites in Egypt. She should have been thankful for her bed in Nazareth, for the food and the safety. She should have thanked Him every day for her baby and her husband and His many provisions. And she prayed, in the midst of her sorrow, that God would show Himself to her.
In the clearing ahead were several huts circled around a large bonfire. The beating of the drums stopped when the Indians saw them. And they greeted her captors like victors coming home from a war. Iachgan and the others dumped bags of food on the ground, and then, their hands securing her arms, they pushed her toward a man seated in a large cane chair like she was one of many spoils taken after a battle instead of a woman stolen away from men who never fought back.
The ugly man in front of her was old, his cheeks wrinkled on both sides of his bulbed nose, his dark eyes slightly crooked. As his eyes traveled over her body, he licked his lips and opened his mouth in a toothless smile.
She wrestled against the hands that bound her, but this time the men didn’t slap her. The ugly man laughed in the face of her struggle, and the others laughed with him.
She stopped fighting, glaring at the man instead.
He motioned toward a hut and Iachgan pushed her toward it. Inside, he barked orders to the five women before he shut the door, leaving her with them.
The women stared at her, and she could only imagine what they saw. A white woman’s face smeared with blood and dirt. A torn dress exposing her stomach and her legs.
She backed against the door and then collapsed to the floor. Putting her head into her tied hands, she sobbed.
One of the young women stepped forward with a knife in her hands. Catharine looked up at her in expectation, wanting nothing more than to be with her Savior. She hoped the woman would kill her quickly.
Instead of wounding her, though, the woman lifted the knife and sliced through the cords that bound her.
Stunned, Catharine blew on the raw skin where the cords had rubbed it.
“Come.” The woman spoke in English.
Catharine’s legs wobbled as she stood, and she followed the woman into the hut, into a separate room. The woman pointed toward a mat, and Catharine lay down. Then the woman covered her with an animal skin.
The warmth engulfed her, embracing her, but in the warmth, her numbness began to dissolve. And the pain from her many wounds blazed. Her feet hurt. Her head hurt. Her mouth hurt from the loss of her tooth.
The woman whispered to her. “My mother used to call me Mary, from the Scriptures.”
“You know the Scriptures?”
“Only a little.” She paused. “Are you one of the messengers?”
“My husband is—” She choked on the word. “He was one.”
“They killed him?”
She nodded.
“He is with the Savior now,” the Indian woman said softly. “The Savior will heal all his wounds.”
The woman took a rag from a bucket and began to gently wipe Catharine’s face and her hands. “One of your messengers came here last year and told our people about the Christ Child. He told us this child was our Savior, but my people refused to listen.”
“Was his name Christian?”
She nodded.
“He told you the truth.”
“None of my people wanted to follow Christ, but after he left, I decided to serve this Savior. It is a secret, though. The others would kill me if they knew.”
Catharine coughed, and the pain rippled through her skin. “He is a God of love…and forgiveness.”
Mary studied her. “My mother, she was an English woman. A captive like you.”
“What happened to her?”
The woman reached for a small wooden tub with some kind of ointment in it and rubbed it on Catharine’s wrists and then her ear. It soothed some of the pain. “It is not good to speak of her.”
When the woman turned, Catharine reached for her arm. “What are they going to do to me?”
“I shouldn’t—”
“I can face it, if only I know.”
Mary pulled her knees to her chest, sitting beside her. “They will take you from here in the morning, but I don’t know where you will go.”
“And what will they do to me there?”
“They will make you run through a gauntlet.”
“A what?”
Mary didn’t explain. “If you survive, they will probably give you to an Indian man, like they did my mother.”
Catharine cringed at the woman’s words, at the terrible thought of these Indians forcing her to be with another man. It would ruin everything she and Elias had shared.
And what would Juliana think of her when she returned home, knowing that her mother had been raped by a savage? She didn’t know how she would escape, but she couldn’t let them do this to her. She wouldn’t let them.
There was a shuffling noise outside the door, and over Mary’s shoulder she saw the smile of the ugly man who had assaulted her with his eyes.
Mary turned around and said something to him in their language. His smile turned into a sneer, and they seemed to argue between them. Catharine felt compassion for the woman also trapped within her circumstances. Maybe she wanted out as much as Catharine did.
After he left, Catharine whispered. “Who is he?”
“Our chief.”
“What does he want?”
Her eyes were sad. “You.”
She began to tremble again. “What did you tell him?”
“That you were sick and needed to rest for a few hours before he took you to his hut.”
She clutched her hands to her chest, looking again at the door. The last time she’d tried to escape, she’d been taken captive…but she couldn’t sit here, waiting for the man to come back for her.
She reached out to Mary again, pleading. “I can’t be with him.”
“I know.”
The two of them sat silently, each of them lost in their wondering until Mary stood up.
“I will make you some tea so you can rest for a while.”
It hurt when she nodded. “Thank you.”
Catharine had already drifted to sleep when Mary returned, but the woman woke her.
The ladle close to her lips, Catharine hesitated at the pungent smell of the tea, but Mary lifted her head higher, prompting her to drink. “It will make you well again.”
Catharine slowly took a sip and then another. As she drank, the agony seemed to drain from her body.
“Forgive me,” Mary said as she lowered the ladle. “There was nothing else I could do.”
Her words seemed muffled, but Catharine still understood. She reached out, taking the young woman’s hands in hers. There was nothing for her to forgive.
“Bless you,” she whispered.
And then the darkness welcomed her again.
Chapter Thirty-One
Two red-coated soldiers stood guard outside the Gemeinhaus in Nazareth. On their left shoulders were braided gold epaulettes, and each of them held a pistol. Christian approached them first to explain why they were bringing the Indians into the settlement, and Susanna cringed at the disdain in the men’s eyes as they glared at the brothers and sisters.
Didn’t they understand that there were kind Indians in the midst of the hostile ones, just as there were malicious British men and women among the upright? But all Susanna could see in their eyes this evening was the same fire that had burned down Gnadenhutten, the same fire that threatened to burn inside her if God’s Spirit didn’t douse it.
The grief mixed with her anger as the devastation at Gnadenhutten played through her mind. And the loss of her best friend. She wouldn’t say it, but she almost wished Catharine were dead like Elias instead of taken captive by the Indians. Benjamin gave no hope of her return, but there was always hope. Christian would find Samuel and then Samuel would find Catharine.
The wounds were so fresh that they seemed to ooze from inside her, but she couldn’t let the bitterness consume her. God had sent her and Christian to share the good news with the Indians, and they could not let the animosity of a dozen savages stop them from loving so many who needed Christ.
The soldiers finally stepped aside, and Susanna helped an elderly woman named Abigail up the steps of the Gemeinhaus and into the meeting room to deliver their terrible news. As they passed by the soldiers, one spat at them, and Susanna stopped and glared at the man for demeaning her friend. But then she realized that the soldier wasn’t looking at Abigail. He was looking at her. The soldier was infuriated at her for befriending the Indians instead of fighting them, for sharing the good news with them.
You must be content to suffer, to die….
The Count’s words came back to her. She had expected to suffer on the journey, to be persecuted, even, at the hands of the Indians, but she’d never believed that other Europeans would persecute them for their work.
Tears rushed to her eyes as the soldier’s glare hardened against her. The tears were not as much for the soldier’s disdain, but for Catharine and Elias and the Keaton family and all the Indians who suffered because men chose to war with each other instead of seek peace, because they loved land or money more than the lives of their fellow man.
Love Finds You in Nazareth, Pennsylvania Page 23