Arms of Love (17 page)

Suddenly Major George jumped from the table with a groan, clutching his ear as if he’d been shot or stung. He issued immediate, hushed orders to the men assembled near him and they spread out, pushing through the crowd. Soon two boys, the taller carrying a slingshot, were dragged in front of the officer. Lena caught her breath as she saw the face of the shorter youth.

“John!” The cry escaped her lips, and she wrenched free of Adam’s hand only to be hauled back with ruthless force against his strong form.

“Stop!” he hissed in her ear. “You will do more harm than good. If they realize that John is your
fater’s sohn
, it may be perceived as a direct attack in attempt to secure an escape. That means hanging, Lena, sure and simple. Now wait.”

Her eyes swam with angry tears at his reasoning, but she knew he was right. She took a deep breath and began to pray silently. She felt some of the tension unwind in her mind with strange peace and did not resist when Adam released her to step forward and push his way through the crowd. She watched him, head and shoulders above most, as he approached the edge where the townsfolk gathered.

The officer had ceased to hold his ear and held up his palm to the crowd, red with his own blood. Then he looked at the boys.

Lena saw the straight line of John’s back and the lift of his head, but she knew that he must be terrified. She did not recognize the youth who held the slingshot and saw that he was dressed like a town boy. Then her gaze swung to her father, but thankfully, he did not seem to recognize John—or at least appeared not to.

The major came to stand in front of the boys. Lena’s throat burned as she waited for the man’s response. Gazing at the strange tableau, she realized that here was the way of things in her time. The rule of the land, holding father and son as prisoners, and the strange association of John and his companion, obviously not an Amish boy, standing as a sign of peace’s companionship with war . . . Were the times to disintegrate into something like the Palatinate, that Old World place of Germany where so much of the reality of the
Martyrs Mirror
took place? Where the spilling of Amish blood was thought to be a blessing to Gott and the land? Her eyes skimmed over Adam as she thought of the officer’s blood, and she knew that there was a struggle within Adam to break that hold of power, to challenge it. Perhaps she should have tried harder to understand when he spoke of joining the cause for freedom.

“A town pup and his country cousin, a pacifist mouse!” The officer’s voice rang with an edged humor that curled Lena’s toes in her sensible shoes.

“Amish!”

The major turned, and Lena nearly groaned aloud at the thin sound of John’s voice.

“What?” The officer swiped at his bloody ear with a handkerchief and peered down at her
bruder
.

“I am Amish!”

“And proud of it, no doubt!”

The crowd rumbled with laughter.

“Nee, not proud. Simply what I am.”

The officer moved like a snake’s strike and grasped John by his collar, lifting him clear of the ground and shaking him hard.

“And what you are is a coward, boy! Companion to a sneaky sharpshooter here whom I might have use for. But you, you are worthless!”

He dropped John so that the boy fell to the ground, and the crowd laughed again as the officer held a foot down on the hem of his vest, forcing him to remain in the dirt.

“Whose whelp is this?”

The major’s keen eyes searched the crowd beyond the ring of soldiers. Adam stepped forward in a simultaneous stance with her father.

“Mine!” The two men’s voices rang out in unison.

“Aha! Two fathers, have ye, Amish mouse? How many mothers were involved, then?”

The crowd roared at the ribald joke, and Lena clutched her hands together as Adam stepped with ease through the soldiers to meet with her father, who had stumbled from his place in line.

Adam did not think twice when he claimed John as his own, but he hadn’t expected the frail voice of Samuel Yoder to contradict him.

Now, with his back to a merry crowd and facing the angry eyes of the Pennsylvania officer, he was unsure of what to do next. He turned to Samuel and resisted the urge to offer a hand to the older man, who appeared shaky but nonetheless came forward.

“The boy is my
sohn
,” Samuel pronounced with a definitive edge that begged anyone to differ.

Adam caught the eye of the officer and smiled. “Fair enough. I relinquish my claim to parentage. But it seems that you have gotten three for the price of one here today. Two Amish . . . and myself, of course. A prisoner, a foolish boy”—his impassive gaze took in John where he still squirmed on the ground—“and a simple horse farmer.”

The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Horses, you say?” His voice was low now, as level as Adam’s, and the crowd quieted, the better to listen.

“Aye, horses.”

Adam waited, deliberation in his casual stance. It was a gamble, this lure of horses, and he wondered if he would see the tail end of poor Tim yet again.

The officer dabbed at his ear in thought, then stepped away to round the table and pick up his abandoned quill. John scrambled to his feet and looked ready for another outburst. Adam’s hand came down on his left shoulder while Samuel Yoder’s landed on his right, and the two men’s eyes met over the boy’s head. Adam ignored the fire that burned from the blue eyes, bleary as they were. He thought of Lena, waiting somewhere behind him, and gave a brief nod of deference to the older man. He withdrew his hand from John’s shoulder with a warning squeeze and took a step backward.

The officer rifled through some papers with a frown on his face, then looked up. “Name, prisoner?”

“Samuel Yoder.”

“Charge?”

A fellow officer stepped forward and pointed to a page; Major George nodded. “Ahh . . . resistance to the orders and privilege of the regimental army to confiscate lands and victuals as needed. What say ye?”

“I paid the triple tax assessed upon my land and willingly surrendered what was wanted. I have children at home and asked to keep one cow so that the family might have milk.”

The officer laughed and met Adam’s eyes. “Fair enough,” he said.

“A cow for a horse, I say. And freedom for these cowardly rebels . . . yourself in company, included.”

Adam nodded graciously. “Myself included. And my horse is stabled yonder . . . so long as he hasn’t already been . . . acquired by your reserves, sir.”

“My second will see to it.” He jerked his chin to the man standing at his right. “Go with him. Make sure he actually has a horse and see to its condition. Bring it round to my quarters if it proves a worthy steed. And you”—his eyes swept Adam’s impassive face— “take your rabble with you. I know where to find you should this be some Amish ruse.”

Adam bowed and linked an arm through Samuel Yoder’s; the man was obviously resistant, but too weak to argue. John scowled as the officer began a conversation with his companion with the slingshot, and Adam herded him and his fater through the throng.

Adam smiled as he moved them toward Lena. He had won her father and brother freedom at a price God had surely arranged, despite Tim’s recent changes in ownership. He glanced sideways at Samuel, expecting perhaps a slight lessening of the man’s anger, but the older man shook his head.

“Pleased with yourself, no doubt, Adam Wyse. But I would as gladly have been sold for thirty pieces of silver as I would for your horse.”

Adam ignored the cutting words and bent to whisper in the man’s ear. “And I would gladly have my horse still, sir, instead of your spite.

But I forgot to bring that much silver with me today. Come, show some spirit other than miserliness for your
dochder and sohn
.”

Samuel Yoder grunted in response as they reached Lena, and she clasped her father in a warm embrace. She did the same for John, who squirmed in embarrassment, then let out a brief yowl when she stood back to box his ears.

Adam laughed out loud and felt that the world was a bit all right for once in a long while.

Chapter 14

I
miss my
mamm
.” Abigail’s voice was a mournful sigh, and Ruth looked up from scrubbing the floor. She gathered her damp skirts and rose from her hands and knees to go to where the child stood, forlorn, next to the four-paned kitchen window.

After a brief moment of consideration, Ruth laid a wrinkled, reddened hand on the little girl’s shoulder and was glad when she was not rebuffed. “I miss my man too. My best friend he was.”

Abigail turned her bright head upward in consideration. “I forgot . . . the husband you have lost. Why does God let people die?”

Ruth floundered unhappily. What could she tell the child? What answer did she have that would be right and true? Something of the verse that Lena had read to her drifted across her mind . . . “
I am for you . . .
”

Abigail spoke with slow reasoning. “I mean, I know the answer Fater would give—that it is His will, but there must be something more. Do you not think so?”

Ruth swallowed. What was said to a child mattered, was remembered. She could recall her own quivering knees at her mother’s tirades against men and drunkards and even God Himself. “God is for us,” she finally managed, tightening her hand on the girl’s thin shoulder.

Abigail’s brows furrowed. “
For us
. . . You mean like with the war? For the Amish?”

Ruth grasped at her fast-passing thoughts and shook her head. “Nay. Not the war. Not this war—some way else. He’s for us and He . . . He lets people . . . die because . . . because He loves us, I guess.”

Abigail shook her head. “But that doesn’t make sense . . . What does
Mamm
dying have to do with love?”

Ruth saw in her mind’s eye Henry’s gentle smile, and she stared out of the thick-paned glass of the window. She closed her eyes on the memory and answered with soft certainty. “Everything. Dying has everything to do with love, dearie. And that’s the way of it. ’Tis all.”

Ruth felt the child’s disquiet with her answer, but then the girl relaxed and leaned against the bulk of her ample hip. Ruth drew a quick sobbing breath and encircled Abby with her strong arms. She drew the child close to the spot in her heart occupied by her husband and knew a certain measure of strange peace.

After the embrace, there was an easy spirit between them, and they finished the floor with laughter and wet skirts while Faith and Mary slept together in the nearby cradle. The afternoon flew by.

Ruth was wondering what had become of the Yoder family when she looked up from sweeping the porch and took in a bedraggled party unloading from the dusty back of an Amish wagon carrying potatoes.