Wild Indigo

by Judith Stanton

  “Where did you find the comfrey, Retha?” He made himself ask gently, needing to know but unwilling to break the tender spell of solicitude she had woven around him.

  “Down by the creek, of course.”

  He sat up. “Liebe Gott, Retha. You’re not supposed to go there.”

  “You needed it.”

  “Perhaps so, but not enough for you to risk being seen and captured. Or worse.”

  She dismissed his concern with a smile as naive as morning light. “I didn’t see a soul.”

  “Retha…”

  “Except my wolf!”

  “That beast be—”

  “And no one saw me. You forget, Jacob. I know how to look out for danger. You’re the only man who ever caught me.”

  The only man who ever caught her! She must be thinking of that night years ago when he captured her in Salem Square. Had she escaped others? But when and where and how? And could they have anything to do with her troubled mind? The thought intrigued and then dismayed him.

  He pondered the matter as she washed his face, untied his stock, and diligently sponged road dirt from his neck. He would probably never know. But he railed against the sense of honor that bound him not to ask another soul. He had to protect her from the shame of others knowing her affliction, as Sister Krause had done. More, in some strange way he did not yet understand, he had to protect her from herself.

  “Retha,” he growled, “no one’s safe out there…”

  “Be still.” She dipped a cloth in a basin of water and covered his mouth with it. “I’m not finished yet.”

  For the moment, Jacob closed his eyes and gave in to his wife’s gentle ministrations, torn between his duty to correct her and his desire to let her have her way with him.

  Any way at all.

  Tomorrow he would deal with her rash foray into the night.

  Her husband was beautiful, Retha thought, lingering by his side in the brightening dawn. Roughly beautiful under the sheets, like a great slumbering bear. And perhaps as dangerous, for all she knew, although he didn’t seem so now. His sleep deepened, and she watched with satisfaction. He had come home to her, let her nurse him, and drifted to sleep as if their life together was a matter of long habit. Clearly for him, life with a woman was. Life with Christina had been…She clamped down on that thought. She would not, could not think of his first wife.

  Yet for her, being intimate with a man was all new, alarming, and…interesting. She had all but sat on his rock-hard thighs, felt his power, and managed not to flinch. She had snugged her hip up to his naked calf, felt its heat through her thin gown, and managed not to jerk away in shock. She had laved the bloody wounds on his bare feet and managed to control her queasiness.

  But she could not suppress her fascination with his body. For under the fall of his breeches, she had seen him…thicken. Even now, as she remembered what she had seen, warmth spread through her belly, low, where she usually ached each month. This new ache alarmed her, except that it was sweet, not hard and pinching as her monthly pangs would be. Instead, it made her breath shorten, made each intake of air tickle her nostrils.

  She looked back at him, searching for a cloaking, denying word for his visible response. For that…swelling. She looked away, embarrassed at the idea, at the word, yet scarcely knowing what else to call it.

  She loathed being ignorant. Even more intrigued, she looked again. Had it…gone down? Perhaps. It wasn’t quite so large. Then, and now, she wanted to explore him there. Perhaps even touch him. Her curiosity rose, making her as tremulous and irreverent as any silly, giggling Younger Sister.

  Mostly, she knew of mating through barnyard animals and creatures of the wild. She had seen panthers coupling in the woods, bucks with does, mares with stallions. She had covered her ears to the caterwauling of cats. Once she had cringed to see a pair of mating dogs get stuck. A shudder of disgust ran through her.

  Still, she wondered what her husband’s private parts looked like under his nightshirt, under the concealing sheet.

  Just as much or even more, she wondered what it was that men and women really did. And what Jacob had done to her on their wedding night. He could not have done exactly that, but what? He must have done something different, but how?

  She wished she knew. Perhaps if she had not been such a troublesome charge, Sister Rosina would have told her outright, instead of turning her over to her husband’s capable…hands. Perhaps if she had made friends among the older, unmarried women in Gemein Haus, they could have explained.

  But what did any Single Sister know? Eva must know now, but Retha’s chance to ask her in the nighttime secrecy of their dormitory room was lost. Her friend was married and living in a house of her own.

  A mother might have told.

  But both of Retha’s mothers were dead. That faintly remembered white woman who smelled of pine and lavender; and her Cherokee protector, Singing Stones, who taught her to walk in the wilderness.

  Exactly what either might have told her, Retha could never be sure. All she knew of people mating were the sounds, last heard when she was ten or twelve and with the Cherokee. Disturbing, unexplained sounds: mysterious moans, grunts, cries. Sounds heard always in the dark. Always from inside bark huts.

  Sometimes she had heard her Indian parents, sometimes others nearby. Their cries had haunted her, the men poundingly angry, the women keening hurt. Yet always the next day, to her great puzzlement, everyone had gone about their work as if nothing were wrong.

  Surely something had been.

  From upstairs, the first footfalls of a child awake jerked her back to the present. Wishing for more time to steady her thoughts, she listened anxiously. Whichever child was wandering about stopped. Almost tripping on the low step up from the bedroom, Retha hurried to the kitchen, hoping practical matters would crowd out her concerns. She lit a low fire and set on a kettle of mush for the children’s breakfast along with a pot of coffee for Jacob if he should wake. Later she would go to the children. She had not finished with her sleeping husband.

  She scurried to his side to check on him. The compresses had slipped, and she painstakingly adjusted them. But his injuries were not what had drawn her back. She wanted another look at his massive body against the flaxen sheets. Another secret, lingering look at his power and awesome male beauty. And she wanted to touch him again, purely to feel his hair-roughened, heated skin in the utter safety of his slumber.

  Stretching out her hand, she brought it barely close enough to feel the fire of his flesh. And slowly, insidiously, again, the warmth spread downward into the private center of her self, but sharper, wider, lower than before. Wrapping her arms around herself, she hunched over, alarmed.

  She had never felt this way, ever. Unnerved, she slipped to the open window and leaned out, gulping in cool morning air. A heavy dew damped the dirt yard, and she breathed in the rich humus of earth, the rich freedom of the world outside, the strength and consolation left her from her wilderness life.

  Gradually a sense of well-being seeped into her soul. She rested her head against the window jamb. At last she noticed the first birdsong of morning, the bobwhite chanting his monotonous dawn lament. Poor bobwhite, it shrilled. Poor bobwhite. It must have been singing since first light, and she had been too occupied to notice. She, who noticed, who longed to be a part of everything that happened in the world outside.

  Oh, how her world was changing—from twig pallets in bark lodges to a cot in the Single Sisters’ dormitory to her husband’s bed. But she would listen now while breakfast warmed, the sky brightened, and the children slept.

  Inside her, the pleasurable, alarming ache ebbed.

  In its place, worry flowed.

  What was happening to her? Again she thought of confiding in Sister Eva. But her friend would not do. She was in such a ridiculous flutter over Samuel, she would probably blush or giggle or tease. Retha didn’t think she could bear that.

  Then who? Sister Rosina’s words from Retha’s wedding day
came back. We leave you in your husband’s capable hands, she had said. He was capable, yes. But capable of what? Leaving her to him had not worked. What was it that she did not remember of her wedding night? Not only had something gone wrong then, but something was wrong with her now. Something dark as sickness, sharp as fever. Something powerful as sin.

  Wringing her hands with frustration, she knew it was up to her to find out what, and soon, before too many days had passed.

  Sleepy footsteps scuffed down the stairs. She hurried from Jacob’s side to meet the boys, relieved to be distracted by practical matters. A drowsy Nicholas had tousled hair. A worried Matthias had slicked his back and tied it.

  She held a finger to her mouth. “Your father’s home—but sleeping!” she hastened to add as both boys neared the narrow landing by the front door. Like a cattle drover, she held out her arms to stop them.

  Nicholas cut her a dark look, and Matthias’s sleep-creased face produced a pout.

  She stood her ground. She didn’t have to understand her sleeping husband, she thought with wifely satisfaction, to defend him.

  CHAPTER 8

  Faint harmonies drifted through the window, softly humming Jacob’s body awake. He opened one eye. Dust motes danced in the slant of late afternoon sun. The blend of voices and brass horns in the afternoon meant vespers underway in the Brothers House a few doors down the street. Groggy and drenched in sweat, he propped up on one elbow. He had been in bed all day, alone.

  But not alone for long, he thought. After his wife’s soothing attentions last night, he couldn’t help hoping she would soon willingly share his bed.

  He flung back the sheet and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, scattering bandages and vegetation.

  Vegetation? He raised a battered-looking foot to his knee, picked a crumpled leaf off it, and sniffed. The melony smell of crushed comfrey. Forbidden comfrey, which Retha had collected in the night. He tried to rouse up the indignation he had felt earlier, but the memory of her expert ministrations prevailed instead, swamping his sleep-clogged senses.

  She had been tender, determined, tantalizingly close.

  Smiling, he hobbled to the washstand. He had liked coming home to her touch, her earnest concern, her brisk bossiness. More than liked it. He wet a rag and mopped sweat off his face, neck, and body, coming fully awake as the aroma of ham and cabbage cooking triggered the onslaught of ravenous hunger.

  The music trailed off, marking the end of early service. As predictably as a clock’s chime, children’s whoops punctuated the quiet conversation of adults passing beneath his window. Whoops contributed by his boys, no doubt. He had about two minutes to dress before they hit the house, Jacob realized, hastily pulling on his breeches and tying his stock. He had to be up and dressed. The children must not see him injured, however mundane and humbling his wounds. It was enough that they had lost their mother. He rummaged through the clothes cupboard for his outer coat and a pair of clean stockings.

  The front door slammed, and his chattering children were home. Home. His heart twinged with sadness and relief. Since Christina’s death, they had had to stay elsewhere whenever he was called away. Now, with Retha, they stayed here. It pleased him.

  “Hush, hush.” Retha’s whisper squeezed through the cracks of their bedroom door. “He’s sleeping.”

  “I waited all day,” Matthias complained.

  “Everyone waited all day,” she answered mildly.

  “You said he would be up at noon.”

  “It’s almost time for supper!” Anna Johanna added.

  Jacob scowled at no one. His daughter’s remark was beside the point, as she so often was, and Nicholas was testing Retha. Jacob almost rushed to her defense, coat and stockings in hand.

  “I let you look in on him, Nicholas,” Retha said, perfectly calm. “But he was sleeping.”

  Retha held sway. With relief, Jacob shrugged on his waistcoat, then looked down at his battered feet. He had no plasters to protect the wounds. Very carefully, he eased one stocking on and winced at the sharp pain. At least his everyday shoes were better broken in than his riding boots. On the other side of the door, the children clamored.

  “He must really be hurt.” Identifying worry in his younger son’s words, Jacob felt a twinge of remorse. He was not hurt, not compared to how he was hurting his son by this allegiance to duty that took him from home and placed him in constant danger.

  “No, Matthias, he wasn’t so much injured as exhausted,” Retha assured him. “He said he hardly slept.”

  “Bah!” said Nicholas. “I’ll bet he had a terrible fight.”

  Jacob bit down on the pain as he stuffed his feet into his shoes. What would it take to sway Nicholas from his determined, contrary fascination with war? He had been embattled since his cradle days, taking on his mother, his father, even his brother from the day he was born. Yet somehow after Christina’s death, the boy’s interest had intensified. But why? Jacob understood this son’s passion no better than his other son’s affliction.

  No matter what Jacob said, Nicholas’s enthusiasm for gore never flagged. Indeed, the sight of lads little older than himself trooping through town in British red regalia or Continental blue whetted his appetite for battle. Jacob knew he wouldn’t be admitted to the ranks of his son’s heroes without bashing in the brains of some unfortunate Redcoat.

  “There wasn’t any fighting.” Retha laughed, denying his older son’s fondest hopes. “He blistered his feet from walking all night long to get back home.”

  “Blisters?” Nicholas sounded crushed. Jacob’s worry lifted. With dispatch, his clever wife squelched his son’s fantasies of heroism.

  “Yes, blisters. Now you boys wash up for supper.”

  “What about Hanna—” Nicholas started to complain.

  “Anna Johanna is clean,” Retha interrupted briskly.

  Clean? Anna Johanna was never clean. The words propelled Jacob through the door to face his family. Matthias eyed him keenly while Nicholas glared at Retha, but Anna Johanna’s face pinked with pleasure at the sight of her father.

  “Papa!” she squealed, charging him. “You woked up!”

  Suppressing a fierce urge to crush her to his chest, he knelt to greet her. “I surely did, pumpkin, just for you.”

  He winked at his sons to remind them he had come home for them, too. Nicholas snorted, and Matthias shrugged rudely.

  He started to correct them, but Retha cleared her throat. Both boys lowered their heads as if she had scolded them. Jacob observed, confounded, amazed.

  “You were gone way too long, Papa.”

  He turned to his insistent daughter. Her round face scrunched up severely.

  Her clean round face. He let the surprise seep in. In the past, he had managed to make a swipe or two at that face himself. But for Retha to succeed where he had so often failed?

  “I know, pumpkin,” he said, trying for normalcy.

  “You were gone for days and days.”

  “Only four.”

  Her eyebrows contracted into a practiced scowl. “Even Nich’las thought it was too long, and he wanted you to have a ’venture.”

  Jacob’s heart swelled with pride. His daughter had never made such a complicated speech, and he didn’t care a fig if she made it while scolding him.

  “’Twas no adventure,” he said solemnly. “And I am very glad to be home with you.”

  Anna Johanna’s scowl widened into a grin. “Me too,” she said, and grabbed one of his fingers.

  Jacob’s throat caught, and his gaze fell. A plump white hand circled one of his large, sun-bronzed fingers. A clean hand. He felt as dislocated as if he had been gone a year.

  “Come on.” She tugged him toward the dining table in the parlor.

  Rising carefully so as not to dislodge her grip, Jacob shot Retha a questioning look. She stood in the doorway to the kitchen, smiling benignly.

  What happened? he mouthed at her from his high post above his daughter.

  Reth
a shrugged, avoiding his question. “Supper’s ready,” she sang out, and crossed the floor to the table carrying a platter piled with bacon and a host of other food.

  He didn’t have time to identify any of it before the boys crowded him with questions. He put them off, promising to tell all after grace. Anna Johanna clung to his finger until the boys were noisily seated and silenced and they had finished grace. At last she released him, giving in to the temptations of a full meal at suppertime.

  Retha dished food onto his plate, then spoke to him directly. “I thought you would be hungry.”

  Surveying ham, dumplings, lima beans, and the usual evening mush piled on his plate, he smiled. “Ravenous,” he said, unable to overlook a mild lift in his other center of hunger as he gazed into her amber eyes.

  She must have caught his meaning, for she blushed. The sight of her rosy cheeks filled him with unexpected pleasure. And expected anticipation. This too was what he had come home to. But his fantasy was brief.

  “What did it look like, Father?” Nicholas asked eagerly. “Was it a big encampment?”

  For a moment, Jacob shut his eyes. He saw tents stretched out before him, white flags of tranquillity that belied the wretchedness of battle. He saw youthful faces reviling him, one reckless with bravado, another haunted, another drawn with fear.

  Jacob studied Nicholas, a premonition of disaster banding his chest with dread. His son’s summer blue eyes burned with envy for a chance at the heroic deeds that fueled his imagination. Choosing words to squelch his fervor, Jacob said flatly, “An encampment is a miserable place, rain or shine.”

  “Oh, Father. You always say something like that. What was it like?”

  “Choked with dust. Vile with stench. The lanes between the tents were so rutted you could hardly walk.”

  “Tents? How many tents?” Undaunted by the thought of military hardships, Nicholas wolfed a forkful of beans. He didn’t eat beans, Jacob recalled.

  “Didn’t take the time to count, son.”