Bonds, Parris Afton (4 page)

The feather of Anne's once smart riding hat drooped
with the weight of the rain. The curls that Delila had skillfully combed before
Anne's ears that morning now clung to her cheeks in plastered strands. Brant's yellow
oil skin slicker, which he had draped over her when the torrential downpour
erupted again that dawn did nothing to relieve her acute misery.

Oh, to feel again the perennial warmth of Barbados'
sandy beach beneath her bare toes! "Mr. Powers," she called above the
drizzling patter of the rain. "Mr. Powers!"

The man's wide brimmed sombrero also sagged with the
weight of the rain, but the granite face was comparatively dry.
"Ma'am?" he asked coolly, reining in until she caught up with him.

"How much longer? Until we catch up with the
wagon train?"

"If you weren't in such a hurry, Mrs. Maren,
you could wait this weather out."

Anne looked around her. On both sides of the San Bernard
River were great stands of post oak and sycamores. Brant was right. If they had
only taken refuge in one of the groves instead of plodding along the
wagon-rutted track that paralleled the wide, shallow river, they would have
been spared the weather.

Why was she in such a hurry to meet with her husband
...a husband so totally alien to her way of life that she could but dread the
future which lay ahead?  Yet, she knew there had been no one to blame but
herself. She had been bored, and starting a new life as her parents had done
represented a challenge. She could have refused, but the marriage on her part
had been a whim to be gratified like everything else had been in her indolent
life.

But now, the gratification of this childish whim had
torn her from everything she had held dear. It would, she knew, cost her
dearly. And every day, every mile, took her farther from him. Every mile had
engraved his name that much deeper in her heart. Colin. Colin.

"How much longer, Mr. Powers?" she
stubbornly repeated.

"At this rate, six or seven more hours, Mrs.
Maren." The cold brown eyes turned away from her, and he goaded his horse
forward.

The rain continued the rest of the day, so that the
river rose above its line, forcing the four travelers to forsake the puddled
wagon trail for the drier land of the forest, which slowed their progress even
more. Several times Anne found herself wishing she had not forwarded her
wardrobe and furnishings with Otto, or she would at least now have a warm
change of clothing available.

By the time she saw the shadows of the wagon
encampment, the drizzling seemed to have ceased for the evening. The party had
already bedded down―some inside the flat beds of their Conestoga wagons;
others, who had packed their wagons full with treasured belongings, had been
forced to seek the shelter beneath their wagons. In one of the wagons a child
could be heard crying. It was a dismal sight, and if ever Anne would have
turned back, it would have been then, had not Ezra committed her with his
announcing shout.

Warning the party, he called out through cupped
hands, and a masculine voice yelled in response, "
Ja
?"

"Declare yourself," another voice called
in English.

"Powers and Reed," Brant returned.
"We've a late arrival for your group. Mrs. Maren." Brant turned to
face Anne. In the faint light his eyes were mocking.  "You're sure this is
what you want, ma'am? You can still run."

Did he know her better than she did herself? Had he
indeed read her mind? "I don't run, Mr. Powers. And I'm not easily
frightened. Not even by scoundrels like yourself."

A thickset man emerged out of the darkness. From
behind thick-glassed spectacles he squinted up at the four riders. Across his
arms, ready to fire, lay a smoothbore musket. "I'm Gustav Jurgens,
der
Wagonmeister
," he told them, his English heavily accented. "Vhere
iz Frau Maren?"

Anne urged her horse forward from the other three.
"Herr Jurgens, I'm the wife of your pastor at Adelsolms." Dear Lord,
Otto had taught her so little German. Did the man understand her? Otto had
assured her these immigrants were from the upper class―well educated
people who spoke not only English but French as well. "
Mein Gemahl
.
.." she tried in German.

"Ahhh. Ja,ja. Ve vondered vhat had happened to
you, Frau Maren."

"My ship was delayed by estorm," she
explained patiently. "Did Otto―Herr Maren―make provisions for
a wagon for me?" What she wouldn't do for abed.   A dry bed. And rest.

The wagonmaster shifted about. "
Es tut mir
leid
," he broke off, seeing Anne's frown of concentration. "I'm
sorry," he said gruffly. "Your husband, he left no instructions for
us, Frau Maren. But the Vidow Schiller has a vagon to herself. She vill share
it vith you."

Anne looked hopelessly from Delila and Ezra to
Brant. The last, Brant, stared back at her implacably, and she did not have to
read his mind to know what he was thinking. He had warned her of the
difficulties she would face. Now there was no chance to turn back. "
Danke
,"
she told the German at last, with a firmness she did not feel.

"Jurgens," Brant said, "the Von Stohr
plantation isn't far from here―maybe ten miles due east. Why don't you
wait out the storm there?"

"Northers like this usually don't last more
than a few days," Ezra added.

Jurgens frowned up at the scouts, his white bushy
brows pulled down below the rim of his spectacles. "Ve are heading northvest―this
place you speak of, it vould be out of the vay. Ve vill make it on our own. Ve
are hardy volk."

"Maybe your men are, Jurgens," Ezra said.
"But what about the women―and the children?" Anne could see
Ezra's shoulders hunched up in anger, like a bull preparing to charge.

"Ve are hardy volk, as I told you."
Jurgens turned back to Anne. "
Komm
, Frau Maren."

"But my servant woman―Delila?" she
asked to the departing back.

"She vill have to make do vith you and the
vidow Schiller," he called out and continued his progress back to the
encampment.

Stunned, Anne turned to Brant only to find the
Kentucky percussion pistol held steadily in his hand. His thumb cocked the
pistol's hammer, and its issuing 'click' seemed deafening in the hush of night.

"Show yourself, mister," Brant snapped.

The juniper shrubs to Anne's right rustled, and she
turned to see a youth of about her own age step through the parted bushes.
Slung over his shoulder was a Brown Bess flintlock rifle.

"I've been waiting to talk to you, sir."

"Then why the hiding, son?" Ezra asked.

"Herr Jurgens wouldn't like it." The young
man shoved impatiently at the red locks that fell across his eyes. "You're
scouts, ain't you? For General Sam."

Brant nodded.

"I met him once when he visited our place―in
Velasco. He's a grand man."

"What wouldn't Jurgens like?" Ezra
prompted.

"Me coming to you like this. My name's Peter―Peter
Giles." He jerked his head toward the nine encircled wagons. "They
need help, mister. They don't know what they're about. There's a man there that
says he's a bo―a botanist ...and there's a bookkeeper, a lawyerman, an
artist, a hatter...and one's some sort of a musician. But none of 'em, sir,
knows the least bit about making do out here."

"And what are you doing with this group?"
Brant asked gently.

"My paw's a teamster. We rent out wagons to
those of 'em that ain't got one. I drive out the wagon and bring it back. My
maw's German―from the old country―so I can middling well understand
'em, and I've been trying to help 'em―killing game and the such. But they
need more'n what I can do for 'em. Four of 'em already died from the croup
since we started out. And that Jurgens―stubborn as a jackass eating
cactus―he won't listen to anything I try to tell him. Lot he knows. Heard
tell he was a banker in the old country."

Anne saw Ezra glance at Brant and the slight shake
of Brant's dark head. "Giles," Ezra said, "we'd like to help you
out, but this ain't any of our business, and―"

"You've got to help!" Anne said. "You
heard him―four have already died. These people don't know how to survive
out here."

Brant's expression was unyielding. "You've got
to understand, Miss," Ezra explained. "There are people who need our help
more. The Comanches have massacred the settlers at Parker's Fort, and that's just
the beginning. We've orders to proceed north, and we can't―"

"I understand," Anne said wearily.
"The horse and mules, Mr. Powers. I suppose you will be wanting them back.
As soon as we―"

"They're yours," Brant said shortly. Then to
Peter, "Keep the wagons to the river road and away from the forests."

"Yes, sir."

Brant's glance returned to Anne with some of its old
mockery. "We'll come back by way of Adelsolms―there's a matter of
services rendered."

Anne could hardly believe the oaf intended to force
her to make good her offer of payment. Her voice was as frosty as the evening
air. "Don't bother, Mr. Powers."

"My baby don't know what she's talking 'bout,
Mister Brant," Delila interjected. "Sure as God's good, we gonna need
you to look in on us."

"Goodbye, Ezra," Anne said. "And
thank you." Her gaze switched to Brant. "I won't thank you, Mr.
Powers. Because it would be insincere. We both know we're glad to see the last
of each other. Goodbye."

The pale brown eyes were once more hard. "For
once, we are in agreement, Mrs. Maren."

Without opening her eyes, Anne listened to the
dismal patter of the rain on the wagon's worn canvas cover. She knew by habit
developed over the last three days that if she moved her left knee, scrunched now
to her chest, three inches to the left, the steady drip of the rain through the
hole directly above would soon saturate her laced nightshift.

The Conestoga's canvas cover was like a sieve. Only
Widow Schiller's treasured piano went unsplattered. Covered by a large
butternut-colored oilcloth, the mammoth musical instrument occupied the back
half of the peasant woman's wagon. The sides of her wagon were filled with
pots, china, blankets, and other similar household goods. And in between was
the narrow space in which the three women slept at night, dressed in the
morning, and took turns riding during the day's trek.

Anne sighed, knowing the dawn's light would soon
begin streaking through the canvas holes. A dreary light, more than likely,
heralding another day of rain and mud. And colds and coughs. Sounds she dreaded.
It was the pathetic racking cough of the children she dreaded hearing most―even
more than the chilling wheeze, the final gasp of the man who had died the day
before, ablaze with pneumonic fever.

Anne mentally reminded herself to check on his wife.
The frail woman did not seem much better. If Sophie Von Roemer died also, her
six-year-old daughter would be just one more name to add to the steadily
growing list of orphans. Of course, the other families were taking in an orphan
when they could. Anne recalled with distaste, though, the wagonmaster, Jurgens
and his frumpy wife Zelda who had taken in a five-year-old boy. They treated
him more like a bondservant, forcing Fritz to trudge beside the wagon in the rain
while Zelda sat comfortably inside, warmed by her layers of fat.

Rising, Anne dressed quickly so as not to awaken
Delila, snoring like an asthmatic walrus, and the big, raw-boned Matilda
Schiller who clicked her teeth in sleep much as she had upon meeting Anne.

"
Guter Gott
!" Matilda had
exclaimed, wielding her cane like a sword. "Herr Maren must be out of hiz
mind to have brought
das Schatz
like you into thiz vilderness. Get in
out of thiz rain,
Liebe
."

Despite the gloomy morning, Anne smiled at the
memory of the word
Schatz
, treasure, thinking how ironic it was that the
kindhearted Matilda would bring her treasure, the piano, which she could not
even play.

Dressed in her still damp cloak and kid boots coated
with dried mud, Anne descended the perilously rickety wagon seat to slosh in
the sandy mire of the San Bernard bottomland. A fine mist fell, blotting out
hopes for sight of the sun. At the freshly replenished campfire a few men
gathered, drinking their strong coffee.

One of them, the spidery Professor Frederick Bern,
hailed her to join the group, but Anne merely waved. The old man, who reminded
her of Father Time with his long white beard, had taught Hebrew and Greek at
the University of Gottingen. He and his birdlike wife, the almost deaf Lina,
had taken an interest in the young bride of Adelsolms' pastor, and it was
through the old couple that Anne was improving her German. Normally she would
have stopped and exchanged words, but today she hurried toward the Von Roemer
wagon on the far side of the circled encampment.

She was aware of steps behind her. "Good
morning, Mrs. Maren," Peter said, catching up with her. He politely
removed his floppy hat, and a thatch of carroty hair fell across his forehead.
With a callused hand he shyly pushed it back. "I thought you might like to
know we should reach Adelsolms tomorrow―by noon most likely."

A chill came over Anne. The end of her journey. The
beginning of her life as Otto's wife. Cold thoughts―like the cold day.

"Thank you, Peter," Anne said with a warm
smile in spite of the emptiness she felt. "We can't get there too soon―with
so many people sick. I'm worried about Frau Von Roemer. She's been―"

"Peter," broke in the petulant voice.

Anne watched with mild amusement as the slim youth
whirled to see seventeen-year-old Johanna Meusebach. Her icy blue eyes gave lie
to the smiling red lips. "Can you help me carry water from the
river?"

Caught between the two young women, Peter twisted
his hat in his hands. "The buckets are so heavy," Johanna prompted.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Maren," Peter muttered ,moving
to join the tiny but voluptuously curved young girl. Johanna tossed her head at
Anne, her crown of wheat-colored braids glistening with raindrops like the
tiara of an ice princess.

Somewhat dejectedly Anne proceeded to the Von Roemer
wagon. She knew it was not only Peter's attentiveness that generated Johanna's
dislike for her. There were other factors. Anne had known all along she would
be out of place there in Adelsolms among a foreign nationality―different
customs, different language, and even different religion though her parents,
lapsed Catholics, had not really objected to Otto's Evangelical Protestantism.
And yet, not all the Germans were like Gustav Jurgens or Johanna Meusebach. Not
all disapproved of her. Perhaps with time ...

 Anne turned her thoughts to the Von Roemer woman.
Had Sophie, the Dresden―like doll who had no more business crossing the Texas
wilderness than she herself had, survived the night?

 Elise, a blond child who was all legs, pulled back
the canvas cover at Anne's soft call. One look at the child's large blue eyes,
so much like her mother's, told Anne Sophie would not make it ...that Elise
would be among the countless other orphans whose parents had not survived the
rigors of the trip.

The short, fair lashes quivered. Confusion at the
presence of death paled the usually cherry cheeks. "
Meine Mutter
―she
iz blue―like
Vater
vaz―and she does not catch her breath
gut."

Quickly Anne pulled herself up onto the wagon seat
and moved past Elise into the dim interior. There, covered by a threadbare
quilt was Sophie's still form. Anne dug beneath the quilt and felt for a pulse
at the cold wrist. But there was none. Still now forever was the laughing young
wife who had looked forward to this journey as if it had been a great
adventure.

Anne laid a hand over Elise's small, braided head.
"Go wake Delila, dear. Tell her to fix you some of her hoecakes."

When Elise had gone, Anne carefully closed Sophie's
delicately veined lids, shivering at the cold, clammy feel of the skin. Then
she pulled the quilt up over Sophie's body until it covered the head of
glorious, flaxen hair.

Near Sophie lay the thin, tattered textbook Sophie's
husband, Kurt, had brought from Prussia. A German-English dictionary that Anne
had more than once overheard Elise painstakingly reciting to her mother. Anne
picked it up, thumbed through the pages, and wondered at this determined family
who had left  Prussia under religious persecution from the Catholic forces
there and who had had such high hopes for Elise.

And now, with both parents dead, what would become
of the girl? Anne knew her own mind must be touched by the fever as she tucked
the dictionary inside her cloak. She must be half-crazy to consider taking on a
child when she still felt herself a child in some ways. And what would Otto say
about bringing an orphan into their home? Well, she'd worry about that later.

"Crazy!
Verrückt
,
meine Liebe
!"
Matilda repeated, clicking her false teeth and looking from Anne to Elise, who
stood timidly at the side of the Scottish girl.

"You know there's no more room in your wagon,
Matilda. Why couldn't I drive the Von Roemer wagon? It'd be senseless to leave
it behind to rot."

"Und have you ever driven one, eh?"

"It's useless, Miz Matilda," Delila said.
"When dis chile gits it in her mind to do some'n, there ain't no stopping
her. Stubborn as those oxen, she is."

"What else can we do?" Anne asked of the
old woman. "The other wagons are already full of sick people and orphans
like Elise. Besides, driving a wagon can't be too much more difficult than
Papa's buggy."

It was worse than she could ever have imagined. It
was one thing to drive the light buggy on the occasional trips to the various
shops in Bridgetown or in making the customary social calls to the other
plantations, but quite another to wield a bullwhip over four oxen. Anne's hands
became raw from handling the reins in spite of the cotton gloves, and her
shoulder blades ached with every move.

Elise, sitting beside her, had tried to help, tried
to show her how her father had flicked the whip over the oxen's back. And
Delila had repeatedly gotten out of the wagon and waded through the mud to pull
at the oxen's yoke, muttering oaths in the ancient Swahili dialect of her
people.

When they finally made camp that evening at a
horseshoe bend of the San Bernard, just a half day's journey from Adelsolms,
Anne crawled into the back of the wagon and fell asleep. It was Delila who
aroused her what seemed only minutes later.

"Baby, I've saved some fried liver and hard bread
for you. Come git it 'fore it gits cold."

Anne pushed herself up to a sitting position and
brushed the loose strands of hair from her face. Outside a gray, eerie mist
concealed the other wagons. "Elise―has she eaten yet?"

"Yes'm. That chile sitting at the campfire with
that book. Says she's gonna learn English good ...and askin' me all sorts of questions.
Glory be, Ah don't know how to read myself, much less answer her."

"Then it's time you both learned, Delila. After
I've eaten, we'll do some studying before the camp beds down."

Delila looked at Anne slyly. "I think that
young man, Peter, is waiting out there for you. A nicelooking fellow, he is.
Of course, nutin like that Mr. Colin you been hankering after."

Anne glanced up sharply at the big woman. "What
makes you say that?"

"Lordy, baby. Ah done raised you all these
years. Don't you think ah ought ta know what's a goin' on in that noggin of
yo's?"

Anne struggled to stand up, giving indignant
attention to the task of straightening her rumpled skirt. "Well, you're
wrong. Colin is just an old friend. I'll probably never even see him
again."

Delila's velvet brown eyes glowed in the darkness of
the wagon. "The obeah say different, Miz Anne."

Lately when the black woman became like that,
mumbling about her obeah, it had begun to unnerve Anne. She was no longer her
mammy but some high priestess with supernatural powers. "And just what
does your obeah say?" Anne asked, forcing a lightness to her words she did
not feel.

Delila's voice took on an eerie pitch. "Yo' Mr.
Colin is in the night. The breath of them buffalo in the winter. What you see
ain't there by the time you put out yo' hand. The one for you, Miz Anne, is as
steadfast as 'dis prairie grass ...as lasting as them old oaks."

Anne brushed past the woman. "You're getting too
old, Delila, to meddle in voodoo!"