Arms of Love (6 page)

A
dam wanted to return to the Yoder farm and aid in the burial, but he could not bring himself to see Lena and not comfort her, touch her . . .

“Easier company among the Redcoat prisoners,” he muttered aloud to his horse as he rode into Lancaster. In truth, Adam had taken up a cautious acquaintance with a British officer who was kept an idle prisoner of war in Lancaster. The town was held by the Patriots, and it was the unusual custom of Lancaster that a British officer, although the enemy, need only give his word as a gentleman that he would not leave the city limits, and he was free to go about his business. Adam had even heard that the agreement was stretched upon occasion by the city fathers to allow for picnics outside the town, held by the more charming and unconcerned ladies of society. Major Dale Ellis, though, was a family man as far as Adam understood, and a possible friend.

And friendship had been hard to come by at times lately, especially among certain men of the Amish who had taken up arms with the colonists, leaving their faith and families behind. Yet it seemed to Adam that they were forging a new way of life by fighting, a life of freedom—and an idea began to take shape in his mind.

As he entered the bustling town, he noticed many eyeing Timothy’s sleek and healthy form. Horses were prized possessions, even among the British ranks, but the Wyse family’s ability to pay had protected Tim—at least for the present. As a dissident peace-seeker, Amish Joseph Wyse had signed allegiance to Britain as all the others had done upon their arrival to William Penn’s Woods. But oaths to the Old Country meant little since the Declaration of Independence, and many viewed the Amish as cowards for not taking up arms. Adam hated the connotation; there was no cowardice in yielding. He knew yielding and how difficult it was to bend but not break in the process. Then he thought anew of his promise to Mary Yoder, and his throat tightened.

He dismounted and looped Timothy’s reins over the post outside the town granary, which was serving dual purpose as a jail and trading place. The regular jail was bursting at the seams with prisoners of war, but to house the pacifists with the Hessians and the enlisted soldiers of Britain seemed incongruous somehow. And while the local militiaturned-army regiment claimed it had no place in the numerous acts of violence against the peacekeeping peoples, they went along with the so-called fair imprisonment of those who would not enlist . . . Lena Yoder’s father, for one. Despite the fact that the older man had paid the tax fines levied against him, the tribunal had still found fault when he wouldn’t surrender his last cow for the militia. He’d been hauled away along with his stock and imprisoned for three weeks. And now his wife was dead.

“I say, do you have a fascination with prisons, or is it a prisoner himself who draws you here?”

Adam turned round to see Major Dale Ellis in a rumpled, but still elegant, blue frock coat, his usual white wig gone and his blond hair caught back in a queue. Adam’s puzzlement must have shown on his face, because Dale waved a hand at him and smiled.

“There’s nothing that says I need wear uniform while a ‘guest’ of Lancaster. Anyway, the bloody thing was starting to reek, and I found lice in the wig.”

Adam grinned. “And I hear the latest saying hereabout is ‘Any fool with a musket can kill a Redcoat.’ ”

“That is so. Would you care to join me for a cool tankard? I’ve just had word from the infernally slow mails that my wife gave birth to our third son back in Somerset . . . three months ago.”

The slight irony in the man’s tone made Adam think of how fast a babe must seem to grow, especially to a father who yearned to be with the child.

“My congratulations, and my condolences for missing so much of the first of his life. But as the Lord would have it, perhaps he may have greater need of you later on.”

“Spoken like a father.”

Adam shook his dark head and thrust aside the tantalizing image of Lena carrying his child, her soft belly rounded against the press of her skirt, her cheeks flushed with good health and rosy awareness following his purposeful kisses . . .

“Perhaps soon then, by the look on your face,” Dale said with a laugh.

Adam dragged his mind back to the present with embarrassment.

“Well, being a father is something I didn’t know if I could ever truly become,” the British officer went on. “I had a sire who thought the only way to reach a boy was through a beating; it took a long time to realize that I didn’t have to become what he was.”

Adam looked at Dale in sudden confusion and wary alertness. It was almost as if the man could see into his own past. He thrust aside the familiar feelings of anxiety that came whenever he tried to recall the tense moments of his latter childhood, when he was seemingly unable to please the man who’d given him life. And it had been sudden too, this displeasure of his father’s. He could remember other times when he was younger that there had been smiles and encouragement from the man. He swallowed and shook his head a bit to clear it.

“You look thoughtful today, Adam Wyse . . . Considering joining the cause?”

Dale smiled, but his words struck Adam to the core, and he looked away.

“Did I say something to offend you? I know the Amish do not fight.”

Adam snapped his gaze back to the other man’s. “The Amish fight. They struggle to keep their ways, and to keep their sons from running off to enlist. They do fight.”

Dale shook his head. “Again, forgive me. It was only a joke; I didn’t mean to offend. I say, there’s seriousness in the very air of this place. This country is like a woman. She labors over war to give birth to a new way, a new freedom. And I have never enjoyed watching my wife labor.”

Adam drank in the words he heard . . . He thought of Mary’s death during labor, the promise, a new way of life . . . It suddenly seemed as though his world was in turmoil, with a strange possibility of freedom at the eye of the storm.

“About that tankard, then, my good man?” Dale asked.

“Another time,” Adam replied abruptly, realizing the attention that they were drawing among the passersby—a pacifist and a British major, red coat or not. At any other point he wouldn’t have cared, but today . . .

“As you wish.”

Adam heard the disappointment in the other man’s voice and chose to ignore it. Their conversation had unsettled him, and at this point in his plans, he needed all of his wits about him. He composed himself as Dale walked away, then approached the shadowy entrance to the makeshift prison. He passed the coin and the round loaf of bread from beneath his cloak to the guard, as he’d done daily.

“Remember . . . no word as to who brings food for Samuel Yoder,” he instructed, as he hoped for the hundredth time that no word of his doings would ever reach Lena’s father’s ears. For some reason Samuel Yoder did not especially favor Adam, and he wouldn’t appreciate his daily bread coming from someone he did not like. Adam had gone over the situation a thousand times in his mind, wondering why Samuel was against him but still allowed his presence in the Yoder home. Yet Adam was used to strange behavior from the men in his life and decided that he must simply be an annoying person in some way. But how much more would Samuel dislike him when he kept his promise to Mary . . . ?

In truth, he wouldn’t care much for himself at that point. He thrust the thought aside.

The guard grunted, interrupting Adam’s grim thoughts. “Heard yer prisoner’s got a pretty piece of a daughter. Rather it be her than you what comes to feed ’im.”

Adam’s eyes darkened, but then he smiled. “I’d have to agree. But perhaps this will interest you more at the moment.” He reached beneath his cloak again and produced a leather bag, tossing its weight briefly in the air. There was no mistaking the clink of the coins within.

The guard cast him a wary but attentive eye. “ ’Ere now . . . what’s this?”

Adam smiled. “Much. And more if you’d like. Let us say that I have discovered the need for Samuel Yoder to be somewhere else.”

The guard blinked and leaned closer. “Hades, ye mean?”

“No, my treacherous friend. Not dead—gone. Escaped, if you prefer.”

The guard snorted and stepped back. “And me court-martialed in the exchange, no doubt. Get on with ye. I don’t care how much money ye’ve got, you bloody coward.”

Adam sighed. He should have known better than to expect that the dolt of a guard would fall in line with his plans.

“Fine. But there is one thing that I’m guessing you do not have and might well value, even on the off chance that you were found responsible for the escape.”

The guard scratched his pockmarked cheek with the tip of his musket, then spat on the ground. “What might that be?”

Adam leaned forward and whispered, “My horse.”

He saw the light in the other man’s eyes and knew he’d won, even at the cost of Tim’s company and the berating he’d probably get from his father.

The guard cast a quick look around. “How’d you arrange it, then?”

Adam considered as he spoke, his hesitation only heightening the tension. “I‘ll have a brief conversation now with Samuel Yoder.”

“I thought ye wanted to keep things all secret like?”

“Not to tell him about the food. Just about our little plan . . . and to unlock his cell. Then I’ll create a diversion in the street that you—a loyal, upstanding citizen—must see to for a moment, as it’s happening right in front of your post.”

“Huh?”

“Just give me the key and five minutes with the man. Take the horse.

His name’s Tim. Go easy on the bit, though, or he’ll take you flying.”

The guard squinted in thought. “I’ll go in with ye and slip open the door; ye ain’t keepin’ the key.”

“Good man.” Adam nodded. He should have thought of that himself.

“I will never have a child.” The vow escaped from Lena’s lips before she could think to stop.

Ellen Wyse glanced across the deathbed. “It’s normal to feel that way, I should imagine.”

Lena stared at her for a moment as they bundled together the last of the bloody sheets. Normal? What could possibly be normal about this moment? The shrouding of her mother’s body, veiling one world from the next . . . the stark stillness and the reality of death striking against her consciousness like shards of stone. No . . . nothing could ever be normal again. And death pervaded, seemed to prevail even, in the times in which they lived.

Lena bit her lip at this last irreverent thought, as she considered the
Martyrs Mirror
and all of those who had perished by horrible means. At least her mother had been home, in her own bed, and had lived to name her new daughter.

Lena looked up as she realized that Ellen had spoken. “
Sei se gut
, I am sorry. What did you say?”

Ellen fingered the simple hem of a pillowcase, looking slightly abashed. “It’s nothing really, my dear . . . just a hope I’ve cherished for a long time that you and Adam might . . . Well, being a
grossmuder
would be a great blessing.”

Lena felt herself flush to the roots of her bundled hair. Despite the strangeness of the setting and the covered face of her mother, Lena knew that life must go on. That it
would
go on, with or without her contribution to the generations. And yet, despite her vow of moments before, she could not help but think what a child of Adam’s making would look like. Her blush deepened when she envisioned the gold of his eyes lapping with the blue of her own . . .

But there was the ever-present shadow of the war, and she wondered if some Penn Dutch surnames would soon pass into obscurity because of the surprising number of Amish boys willing to join the Patriots in their fight against the British. Ellen spoke as if there was still hope beyond the war and death. Lena knew that her own faith had a long way to grow before she felt the same.