All three women looked at her. Had the Lenape been plied with it in treaties like they’d heard? Liquor for land?
“A shameful business,” Hester said with a wag of her head. “As for us, more than a few men need to stay sharp-witted and stand watch. Though I hate to say it, I sense this strange lull with the Indians bodes a deeper ill.”
“By now, nearly midsummer, we’ve usually had a good run of trouble.” Although Ma didn’t miss a stitch in the gloom of the cabin and the heat of the day was still severe, her words sent a chill through Tessa. “I well recollect how it was before dear Lazarus was killed. That same unearthly calm. And then death.”
“That black day was nearly the death of me.” Hester began pouring the finished flip between pitchers. “There’s been talk of Indians amassing for a strike all along the border here and deep into the heart of Kentucke territory.”
“Where’d you learn such?” Ma said, her usual calm bestirred.
“You hear a heap of blether with spies coming and going night and day, post riders, stray settlers, and such.”
“Meaning you’re doing more than cooking for the colonel.”
“I’d be glad to be relieved of the burden of that!” Hester spat out with vigor. “Now that he’s come to his senses about my great-niece, surely some sort of declaration will follow.”
Tessa turned from the doorway. “That kiss meant no more than a red ear at a cornhusking, Auntie.” She withdrew the fan from her pocket and extended the painted leaves for them to admire, anxious to put an end to any nonsense. “But I am partial to this bit of hard-won frippery.”
They made over the fan, though Hester still had that triumphant gleam in her eye, which set Tessa on edge. With eighty years stiffening her slightly bent spine, Hester was a caution she’d best be chary of. What would her great-aunt think of next?
Clay ate the cornmeal mush Hester served him the next morn, sunk in thought. A weathered copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette rested on the table, the notice about Keturah clearly visible. Beside it was the more recent letter from John Heckewelder, Moravian missionary to the Lenape.
“Tell Miss Braam I need to speak with her,” he said to Hester as she banked the coals at the hearth and readied to return to her cabin.
“Keturah?” Hester looked hard at him, as if he’d misspoken and meant Tessa instead.
“Aye, Keturah,” he answered, though her great-niece was firmly in mind.
Hester nodded and went out, leaving him to the uninterrupted reverie of her great-niece. He’d not spoken to Tessa since the cake cutting, but he’d observed her later outside Maddie’s cabin, fan in hand. It impressed him that she’d chosen something pretty and practical, not the costliest item in the store. A mere trinket, Cutright told him with a touch of scorn. But if he read Tessa right, her telling choice reflected her heart and her desire for better things, to be anywhere but here.
“Kèku hàch?” Keturah stood in the doorway, giving a customary Lenape greeting.
“Kèku mësi,” he replied, gesturing to a chair. Letter in hand, he left the table and moved to his desk. “There’s been no word yet from your kin, though these things often take time.” He proceeded slowly, speaking English. “What I do have is a reply to the letter I sent to the man in charge of the praying Indians.”
“The Blackcoats?” Keturah asked, understanding kindling in her eyes.
“Aye, namely John Heckewelder on Beaver Creek.”
Keturah’s guardedness thawed, but she lapsed into Lenape again as she often did when English taxed her. “Heckewelder is a good man, a faithful friend to the True People.”
“He’s proven to be, aye,” Clay continued in English. “He and his fellow Blackcoats want to start a new community called Fine Spring along the Tuscarawas River in the Ohio country.”
A prolonged pause. “The praying Indians are many. Some of Netawatwees’s—my Indian father’s—people are among them.”
Netawatwees.
The name was an echo from another world. Clay staunched his surprise. Had Keturah been adopted by the great chief? Leader of the Turtle Clan, Newcomer, as the whites called him, was a loyal friend to Moravian missionaries if not yet a convert.
Her eyes bore a hole in him. “Why do you tell me this?”
Though he didn’t want to alarm her, he said, “I have reason to believe you would be safer among the praying Indians and Blackcoats than here.”
Something filled her face he could only name as sadness, not fear.
“Brother Heckewelder is on his way west en route to the Ohio country. He wants to talk to you.”
A flicker of uncertainty sharpened her gaze. “You will be here too when we meet?”
He nodded. “And if you decide not to go with him, I understand. We’ll continue to wait for word from your family, though it would be wise to move you to the fort till then. There’s soon to be an empty cabin by Maddie and Jude.”
