The Return

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “You prayed for Betsy to leave because of Hans?”

  Her mother’s voice startled her, snapping her back to the present. Tessa nodded. A tear fell on her lap, one, then another. “Is it possible my prayer came true?”

  “God doesn’t answer our prayers because we wish Him to. And He doesn’t dislike the people we dislike either. That would amount to making God in our own image. He answers prayers for our good, and for the good of others.” She sighed. “It was a selfish desire—to want Hans’s attention all to yourself. You can’t control a person’s heart. But I am sure you would not have wished this terrible thing upon Betsy.”

  That was true. Tessa might not be the most charitable person in her church, but she would not have wanted such a horror to be inflicted on anyone, even Betsy Zook. “Mem, do you think Papa has encountered the warriors?”

  “Faxon Gingerich seemed to have specific details of who had been killed or taken captive, did he not?”

  “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  “And your father’s name was not mentioned.”

  “No.”

  “Fear and horror are terrible things, Tessa. They feed on each other. I caution you to guard your thoughts so that fear does not run away with them.” She handed a mug of warm milk to her. “Go now, get some sleep. Tomorrow will come soon enough.” She smiled. “You can take the dog upstairs with you tonight. And add Betsy Zook and her brothers to your prayers tonight.”

  “Of course.” Tessa felt the sting of her words, for it had not occurred to her to pray for Betsy.

  As she trudged up the stairs, she wished for the hundredth time that she were more like her mother. Somehow, Tessa’s mother did not allow herself to let worries settle in. It was her great faith, her father always said. That’s what gave Anna Bauer the ability to face life head-on.

  What if her father had been hurt in an attack? What if no one knew he’d been killed? She could hear his voice in the rafters, imagine what he would say and do if he were with her. He would grab her shoulders and press her firmly into a chair, admonishing her with his thick Scottish brogue because he knew how she loved to hear it. “Yer imagination is far too active, Tessa darlin’. Y’ must seek t’ control its excesses.”

  She set her candle on the nightstand and sat on the sag in the middle of her rope bed—another thing suffering under her father’s absence. Her bed ropes needed tightening and only her father was strong enough to do it just right. Tears filled her eyes and she dropped to her knees to pray for God’s mercy. She resolved to strive more earnestly for a pure heart, an obedient heart, to please God with her thoughts and to disabuse Handsome Hans of any romantic thoughts. Before she rose to her feet, she asked God to watch over Betsy, to protect her. To bring her home.

  But Betsy Zook no longer had a home.

  Tessa unpinned her long hair and brushed out the day’s tangles, then tucked it all back into a nightcap. Though it was late and she was exhausted, she couldn’t sleep. She lay staring at the tree shadows that moved across the windows in the wind. She thought about Indians and their fierce pagan ways, their disquieting stealth. She tried a trick her father had taught her to aid sleep: to imagine she was on a ship, and her churning thoughts were only the sea, rocking her bed as it had rocked her father’s ships.

  Still, her mind refused to settle.

  Old Zeeb lifted his head, ears pricked. Tessa lurched to her feet and moved to the window to peer down at the path that led to the house. She heard the sound of hooves pounding toward the house. Her father? Had he come home?

  She ran down the steps and met her mother at the door, her hand on the latch. “Bairn?” her mother called through the thick wooden door.

  “It’s me, Anna. It’s Felix. I have news about Bairn.”

  Her mother unlatched the door and flung it open.

  3

  Beacon Hollow

  “He’s safe, Bairn is.”

  Felix stepped in and walked to the large hearth fire. As he warmed his hands over the glowing coals, he looked over his shoulder at Anna. He saw Tessa sit down on the bottom step of the stairs and circle her knees with her arms. “He wanted you to know. He’ll return in the morrow.”

  “Thank God,” Anna breathed, sagging with relief. “Where is he? When did you cross paths with him?”

  “He sent word by a messenger to Not Faxon’s Farm. He wanted someone with you when you got the . . . when you heard the news.”

  “Because of the Indian attacks?”

  Felix turned to face Anna. “So, you’ve heard, then.”

  She nodded. “Faxon Gingerich came by to see the wagon Bairn is building. He told Tessa that he heard Betsy Zook had been taken captive.”

  “I heard as much in Lancaster Town.” Felix dropped his eyes to his hands. “The messenger said that Bairn had been lodging at Jacob Hertzler’s when the attacks occurred.”

  “I was concerned he would be overtaken on a trail.” Anna covered her face with her hands, and dropped her chin to her chest in relief.

  Felix realized Anna had been far more worried about Bairn than she let on. She was like a second mother to him, always had been, and it startled him to see her shaken. She was never shaken. She was a rock.

  “Where is he now?”

  “He went to Lancaster Town to meet with the sheriff. A boy, one of the Zook boys, he hid in a hollow tree, waited out the attack, escaped and made it to the Hertzlers’. Smart boy, and young too. It was decided that Bairn would bring the boy to Lancaster with him, that it wasn’t safe to keep him up north. The sheriff wanted to ask the boy about the attacks. He’s the only living eyewitness.” He waited a moment to let her take in the information. “Bairn wrote to tell you he’ll be coming in tomorrow and bringing the boy with him, unless you’d rather he find another foster home.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” Anna said. “Of course we don’t, do we, Tessa?”

  She turned to Felix’s favorite niece, his only niece, who dipped her head in quick assent. “There’s plenty of room upstairs.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having him at Not Faxon’s Farm. He could play with the boys.” The name of Felix’s land had evolved into Not Faxon’s Farm because Mennonite neighbor Faxon Gingerich applied steady and persistent pressure to sell him the farm after a winter flood shifted the course of a stream bordering their properties. The stream no longer ran though Faxon’s land but through Felix’s, and he wanted that water to build a gristmill.

  Felix considered the shifting stream as a sign of God’s providence, a blessing on his horse farm, and refused to sell. Plus, he did not like Faxon Gingerich for many reasons, particularly so after he heard him refer to the Amish as second-class Mennonites. So Felix wouldn’t budge, nor would he retaliate in verbal barbs. But he did start calling his land Not Faxon’s Farm and the name stuck.

  The fire was dying down and Anna, just noticing, rose to bank it. “Don’t worry, Anna. I can’t stay long.”

  Nonetheless, she added some kindling to warm the room. “How is Hans?”

  Tessa’s ears perked up. Felix noticed that kind of thing. “Well, that’s one reason why it might be best not to have Betsy’s brother at Not Faxon’s Farm. There’s no calming Hans. He’s wild with worry. I wish I could assure him that Betsy will soon be found and restored.” He shrugged. “But I don’t know that. I don’t have any idea what will become of her. There’s no assurance that her captors will be kind.”

  Anna took some oatmeal cookies out of a tin, Bairn’s favorites, and handed a few to him. As he chewed, he realized he was hungrier than he thought. Not so much for food, but for a woman’s way with food.

  “Hans wants to go after Betsy,” Felix said, “but I told him no, to sit tight, to wait until more information is found out. Hans doesn’t want to wait. He’s like a caged animal. He has to keep moving, he can’t be still. I fear that having Betsy’s brother in our home would only stir up his distress.”

  “Mem says that they won’t kill Betsy,” Tessa said. “She thinks they would have
killed her right there if they were going to.”

  Felix looked across the room at his niece. “I suppose so. But it’s hard to know what they might do. The situation is getting desperate. The Indians are fighting for survival.” He rose to his feet. “Sounds like Hans and Betsy had talked about getting married soon. I can’t blame him for feeling so anxious about his sweetheart.”

  Tessa’s shoulders slumped. Felix noticed. He knew how she felt about Hans; she made it no secret. He didn’t intend to say things that wounded Tessa to hear, but he was telling the truth.

  The grandfather clock chimed and Felix realized how late it was. “I need to get back to Not Faxon’s Farm. I left the boys to get themselves to bed and somehow I doubt that’s happened.”

  Anna walked outside with him. Felix unhitched the reins and threw a leg over his horse.

  “Felix,” Anna said, her voice soft but firm. “Please tell Hans that Betsy is a strong girl, a wise girl. She knows that God is with her, even in this terrible tragedy.”

  Felix looked up at the bright stars. “Strange, isn’t it? To think that Betsy is somewhere up north, possibly looking at these same stars. Just a normal April night for me, for you. But for Betsy, for her brothers, life has radically changed. I suppose for Hans too. ” He clucked to his horse and gave her a kick to get her in a canter, eager to get home to his own little boys.

  Up the Schuylkill River

  April 21, 1763

  Only once did Betsy Zook look back.

  A warrior had grabbed her wrist and pulled her across the yard, past the burning barn. Before he could drag her into the thick forest, she yanked her wrist out of his hold and stopped to look back at her farm. She saw the bloody corpses of her mother and father, sprawled face up. Her eyes burned from the smoke, her mind swirled, as the vision seared on her mind.

  When she refused to budge, the Indian yanked her arm, dragging her along a jagged, thin trail to a clearing under a canopy of trees where warriors had gathered together. There were warriors everywhere, and a dozen or more frightened captives, all children younger than she. She saw one warrior leading a cow, another one holding two frantic chickens upside down by their feet. Another pushed a wooden wheelbarrow, filled with farmers’ tools.

  Betsy searched for signs of her brothers, eleven-year-old Johnny and seven-year-old Willie. She caught sight of Johnny and made her way over to him. When she reached him, she pulled him into her arms.

  “Mem and Da?” he asked, his voice clogged with unshed tears. “They are with you?”

  Betsy choked on a wave of despair. All she could do was shake her head. She managed a whisper. “They have perished.”

  “Dead?” He wiggled out of her grasp. She saw him swallow, once, then twice. Tears filled his eyes. “Willie.” His voice choked on the word. “What of our Willie?”

  “I don’t . . . know.” Betsy wanted to provide comfort, to give him something to hope for, but in truth, she had no such assurance. How could Willie have survived? Most likely, he too had perished.

  Johnny’s voice was guttural with emotion. “Betsy, I’m scared.”

  A thorn pierced her heart. “Don’t be afraid, Johnny,” she said, though she was terrified at what fate lay in front of them. She reached for her brother’s hand. He grasped it like a lifeline and squeezed so hard, her knuckles cracked softly.

  As dawn broke, some kind of invisible signal had spurred the warriors to move into action. They pointed and shouted and pushed the children until they were strung out in a long line, then their hands were bound with twine. Then ropes were circled around their waists, to hobble them together. Some Indians were at the front and others at the back, and they started marching them through the wilderness. One warrior walked alongside the children with a whip, frequently lashing their feet to make them keep up. When one little boy begged for water, he made him drink urine or go thirsty. Children cried out for their mothers, but the warriors did not let them stop walking.

  For two days, the Indian raiding party had made the captives march, providing neither food nor drink. Several times children tripped over tree limbs, rocks, or dropped to their knees from sheer exhaustion, and the entire line would stumble. Then the Indian would start whipping at their heels, until they recovered and started marching again. They were forced to march up, up, up into the Blue Mountains, an area that Betsy knew was not under British control. A plunging hopelessness descended over her.

  Beacon Hollow

  Anna barely recognized the small boy who sat shivering behind her husband on the horse, so forlorn in his thin coat, somber eyes as large as horse chestnuts.

  “Willie Zook!” she said. “What a welcome sight you are!” She reached up to help him down, and for one brief moment, as she felt the child’s weight in her arms, her mind traveled to a memory when Tessa had gone on her first horseback ride with her father. But that was a lark, a joyful moment of childhood. This was nothing like that.

  She set Willie on the ground beside her and looked up at Bairn, still on the horse. Even after all these years together, there was something riveting about the sight of her husband that caught her breath. The way he sat atop his horse, his back so straight and tall, the rigid set of his whiskered jaw. Such a rugged, capable face. And those gray eyes . . . a mirror to his soul. In them was such kindness.

  Bairn tried to smile. His attempt failed miserably, and all she could be certain of was the grave solemnity of his eyes.

  “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “As am I, darlin’.” Bairn swung his leg over the horse and slid down, one hand holding the reins. “I promised Willie some of your famous johnnycakes.”

  Anna smiled. “The batter is already made and the maple syrup is warming.” It was Bairn’s request for breakfast, whenever he returned from travel. “Let’s go inside, Willie. You can help me make the cakes.”

  “Where is our Tessa?”

  “She was as restless as a colt, waiting here for you to arrive. I finally sent her over to Not Faxon’s Farm to borrow some clothes the boys have outgrown. I thought Willie might need some spare clothing. She should be back soon.”

  “I’ll see to the horse and be in shortly.” He reached up and stroked her cheek with his thumb. In English, he added, “Anna, darlin’, the laddie has not spoken a word since he told the story of the massacre. He told it once, then he just stopped talking.”

  Anna put her free hand on the boy’s small shoulder and realized he was quivering. She didn’t consider herself to be an overly imaginative woman, but even so, she shuddered at the thought of what this boy had been through. “First things first,” she said in their dialect. “And the first thing is food.”

  As to the second thing, she had no idea. If only the heart and mind could be cared for as easily as the stomach.

  Not Faxon’s Farm

  Tessa’s heart never failed to race as she stepped up to the door of Not Faxon’s Farm, where she knew Hans would be. But it was Dorothea who welcomed her inside, not Hans, not Felix, not Benjo or Dannie. Tessa was surprised to find her grandmother up; she had taken ill and spent the past month in bed. Her pallor had yellowed alarmingly since her illness, and her hand on Tessa’s was cold as death. She encouraged her grandmother to sit by the fire.

  “I’ll make you some tea,” she said as she wrapped a blanket around her lap. “Where’s Felix?” And Hans? she wanted to ask but held back the question. She was desperate to see him.

  “Felix and the boys are in the barn. They’ll be back soon.”

  Tessa pushed coals around the fire in the hearth to get it blazing, then hooked the kettle on the trammel. She opened the crock on the hearth that kept tea leaves and found it to be nearly empty.

  “Has your mother mentioned if she’s received a letter from Catrina?”

  “Catrina? Maria’s daughter?” Tessa had to repeat herself a number of times until her grandmother heard her. She was deaf as a stone. “No. Nothing that I know of. But I was at Maria’s and she said Catrina is coming to live
with her.” Tessa filled a piece of used cheesecloth with what was left of the tea leaves and let it steep in the kettle. By the time she had prepared the tea, her grandmother had nodded off in her chair.

  This was a disappointing visit, all the way around. Even the tea was disappointing, stale in flavor. As she reached for her cloak, in swept Felix. He opened his mouth to greet her, but she shushed him and pointed to Dorothea.

  Felix waved away her worry. “She can sleep through anything.” He saw the loaf of bread she’d brought on the tabletop. “Just what I had a hankering for.” He cut three pieces of bread and lathered them with rich, creamy, yellow butter from Anna’s crock. He glanced up at her. “Hans should be back soon. He went to Lancaster Town to find out more information about the attacks.”

  “I didn’t ask about Hans,” Tessa said, irritably.

  “Then why were you peering around every corner?”

  “Just . . . mortified by your housekeeping.” And that was no lie. The small house was not only cluttered and messy, but filthy. Dusty and dirty and dank smelling. Too many males in one place. Her grandmother let out a loud snore. Not enough females.

  Felix laughed. “I will not take issue with you over that blunt assessment.”

  “Mem wondered if you might have clothes to spare for Willie Zook.”

  “Oh. Hmm. I’m sure I can scrounge up something.” He disappeared into the next room and came back with a few shirts and trousers. Dirty ones. “Here you go. The boys have outgrown these. I think.”

  The sound of an approaching horse drew his attention to the small window. “Here comes Hans now.” Then he turned to her and tilted his head, curiously. “You always seem to get a nice rosy hue when Hans comes around.”

  Tessa turned away from him to douse the red blooming on her cheeks. Felix liked to tease and she hated getting embarrassed. “Mem expects me home. Dad should be arriving soon with Willie Zook.” She reached a hand for the door latch.