Her prolonged pause had Clay on tenterhooks, pipe forgotten in his hand.
“Alive, yes.” She nodded. “He is Tamanen of the Wolf Clan.”
Her revelation flew by quickly, but Clay nearly choked on his pipe smoke as her words came clear.
Tamanen.
Another echo from another world. Tamanen. Warrior. His Lenape brother, born to his Lenape mother. Raised alongside him. And now a chief.
Clay turned toward Keturah so suddenly her eyes met his. The fragrant smoke circled in lazy rings between them but did not cloud his sharp surprise or the telling awareness in her gaze.
“He was against my going to Pitt. Nothing would move him to part with me until the redcoats said they would kill him lest he give me up. Even then he vowed to reclaim me.” Her voice held a tenderness Clay hadn’t yet heard. “He was a good husband. A good provider. I was never in want. He is far more than the warrior the redcoats say he is.”
Clay said nothing, letting Heckewelder talk on while he grappled with the dire ramifications of this new truth. Keturah had been taken from one of the leading men among the Lenape, a chief well known among Indians and whites for his intense resistance to white encroachment. It did not bode well for them.
“May I ask if you had children while in captivity?” Heckewelder said next.
Another pause. “A son.” Again Keturah was visibly moved. “Taken by the white man’s disease. The running sores sickness.”
Smallpox. Another strike against them. A wife lost. And a son. Clay drew on his pipe, the stem clamped between his back teeth, remembering Tamanen’s strength of will and depth of feeling. If he had wept when Clay was returned to the whites by force years before, what would be the toll of a missing wife and lost son?
“I wish I could restore him to you,” Heckewelder told her. “I fully believe your child is now healed and in heaven.”
Keturah’s chest rose and fell with a suppressed sigh. The anguish of her loss seemed to gather round them like a coming storm.
Clay was relieved when Heckewelder changed course. “It is said you are a healer of some renown . . .”
Clay was no longer listening, still mired in the truth he’d just learned. Did Tamanen know of Keturah’s whereabouts? If so, why had he not struck Swan Station and taken Keturah back? The heavy presence along the Buckhannon, the Indian sign about Swan Station, seemed to speak to the Lenape being aware of where Tamanen’s wife had been taken. Or mayhap his own fears were drawing false conclusions.
Would Keturah return to her Indian family in time? Countless captives, once redeemed, escaped and returned to their Indian lives at the first opportunity. He’d taken her passivity for being here as willingness. Cooperation. Not once had he asked her how she felt about matters. He had no inkling. He likely never would.
One thing was certain. She would be safer among the Moravian brethren than here. The praying Indians, with their neutral stance and their widespread reputation for peace, would help protect her. She would be among Lenape she knew. A Moravian settlement was the ideal place for her white kin to reclaim her. And it would remove the threat she might be to the Swans and any of the settlers against whom a raid might be aimed.
But would Keturah go with Heckewelder willingly? Or would Clay as fort commander have to order her to go?
Tessa endured Hester’s bossing, helping prepare the noon meal. Her high feeling turned slightly skittish as the morning wore on and the blockhouse door remained shut. Something would come of this meeting with Keturah. ’Twas not a simple matter. Heckewelder had journeyed a long way for a reason.
As much as she wanted to return to the time before Keturah was taken, there was no going back. The Braams were gone. They would likely never resettle along the Buckhannon, so beautiful yet treacherous. They’d moved on. And their eldest daughter had moved on too, becoming a far different woman than the child they’d raised. Keturah’s years as an Indian had forever altered her and everyone around her.
Any rosy notions about a love match between Keturah and one of her brothers had turned to ashes. To think she’d once considered Jasper, whose animosity still festered. It had Tessa examining her own attitudes and prejudices. She continued to wear the beaded tie on her braid, but was that not aggravating his mind-set? Making him more hard-hearted? The feeling betwixt her and Jasper, once easy and affectionate, was now roiling and rebellious, and it grieved her to the heart.
“You’re woolgathering something awful.” Hester stood beside Tessa as she worked the hand mill. “What’s this business between Keturah and the Moravian and the colonel, I’m wondering?”
Tessa ground the corn more vigorously. “If we were meant to know, we’d be in that blockhouse.”
“Well, that doesn’t stop my ears from burning.”
“Patience, Auntie.” Tessa kept her own temper. “How much bread do you reckon we’ll need?”
“Plenty.” Hester eyed the mound of meal. “A peck should do it. I’ll go tend the meat while you finish.”
Now at almost midday, the buffalo roasting outside Hester’s door would be done and falling off the bone. Tessa began making corncakes, praying the meeting with Heckewelder would bear fruit. For all she knew he’d brought news of Keturah’s Lenape family.
As she thought it, the blockhouse door groaned open at last. Keturah emerged into stark sunlight, blinking at the glare before ducking into Hester’s cabin. Tessa greeted her, gesturing toward a pitcher of spring water. As Keturah poured herself a drink, she kept her eyes down, cloaked in silence. She looked distressingly spent, even wan. To fill the stilted silence, Tessa hummed a hymn.
In time they assembled around Hester’s table, Clay at the head, Brother Heckewelder and his party filling the other places. Naturally, Hester contrived to plant Tessa as close to the colonel as she could, directly to his right. Amusement overrode her irritation at Hester’s continued scheming. Did Clay mind?
Forking a few bites of the succulent meat, she watched the butter melt atop her corncake, wishing someone would talk once Heckewelder said grace. No one did. Flies darted through the open door and window, a welcome breeze lifting the edge of the linen cloth with which Hester had dressed up the rough table.
