Daughter of the Sword (37 page)

“He's sad,” objected Ansjie.

“I don't mind sad,” assured Deborah. “Just not Whitman.”

Conrad brought back a slender leather-bound book. Slipping out a loose page, he read in a conversational tone, as if speaking to the subject of the poem:

“I have told all the bushes,

And mourned to all the trees,

And every greening plant,

And every brilliant bloom.

And still I mourn afresh,

And always anew I cry it,

And always have you meanwhile

My grief forgotten.

You are forgotten in this place

By flower and plant, bush and tree,

Only not from my heart, child,

My pain and my delight.”

Just so,
thought Deborah.
Just so does one cry out to earth and sky and all in between, but they move on their round. The human heart aches without an echo, except from other mortals, yet they are so often the source of grief.

Conrad read other translations then, including Rückert's paraphrase of a mystic Persian Sufi named Rumi who had written of God in the passionate way of a lover.

The last poem was again spoken to a lost loved one, gone to earth, sun, wind, and water, joining the spirit of each, manifested in flowers, sunlight, breath, and rushing torrents, but living also in the bereaved heart, celebrated by love.

Though Deborah's heart stirred painfully, there was relief in hearing the poet's words, listening to what she felt spoken by Conrad's deeply masculine but gentle voice.

“The poems are beautiful,” she said, in spite of the swelling pulse that blocked her throat.

“Rückert's are. My renderings are clumsy, but I did them after Röslein. I wrote them out quickly, also, in French and Italian, anything to busy the mind.”

He understood. He was telling her, too, that she'd survive. Ansjie made a clucking sound. “That's enough sadness! Play something happy on your violin!”

Deborah nodded eagerly as he glanced her a question. Getting down a case from a shelf on the warmed central wall, he took out an instrument of gleaming, mellow wood, tuned it carefully, then set it under his chin.

He drew from the strings gay, lilting, laughing tunes, trills that made the foot tap, and then, pulling a face at Ansjie, he made weird sounds like an owl hooting, punctuated with the calls of many birds.

“You played that for me when I was little!” Ansjie laughed, clapping her hands.

“Alle Vögel sind shon da,

Alle Vögel, alle!”

“All the birds are back again,

All the birds, all!”

He made the strings squeal like a pig, squeak like a mouse, give a howl like a dog's, tricks with which, judging from his sister's laughter, he'd beguiled her when she was a child. Then he drifted into sweet music, tender and dreaming.

Ansjie sang softly in German, then, as he played the last tune again, changed the words to English.

“Sleep, my child, sleep.

In heaven move the sheep.

Little stars are like little lambs,

The moon's a little shepherd boy.

Sleep, my child, sleep.”

“And it's time we did.” Conrad made a last sweep of the bow, smiling at Deborah. “Have a good night. We're glad to have you here.”

“Indeed, we are,” said Ansjie.

She rose on tiptoes to give her brother a kiss. He returned it, then inclined his silver-blond head to Deborah, who impulsively put out her hand. “You've been so kind! I can't thank you!”

“You do by being here,” he said, calm blue eyes darker by candlelight. As blood mounted to her face, he put away the violin and then made ready to fire up the stove.

That was the first night she slept well and soundly since her parents' death, though she awoke early with the now familiar sense of loss flooding her consciousness before she remembered why, or even who she was. But after the memory, a welling up of sorrow, she remembered where she was.

The comforting warmth and softness of lavender-scented down bedding was so airy light that it felt the way clouds look. She savored this a moment, then swung her legs down, encountering first the padded stool, then the sheepskin rug.

In the dim light, Ansjie appeared to still inhabit the fluffy mound atop her bed. Quietly, Deborah carried her clothes to a bench near the stove bricks and dressed in rare luxury, not having to race to get her clothes on before her fingers went too numb to manage buttons.

There was no sound from the other room, so she took some time combing her hair, working out snarls she'd been too rushed to worry about.

Carefully opening and closing the door, she was startled to be greeted by the aroma of coffee. Conrad was already at work. As he rose from his desk, the candlelight emphasized the angles of his face, turning it gaunt, though his smile softened that impression.

“You're up early.”

“So are you,” she countered. “Or didn't you go to bed?”

“I did. And dreamed.”

Silence hung between them while she tried desperately to think of something light to say. It was he who broke the awkwardness, moving to the stove, getting two cups from the shelf. “Will you have coffee?”

“Please.”

He poured out the steaming brew, creamed and sugared it, then put it in her hands. “Will you come to school today?” he asked. “Or would you like a while to settle?”

“With no more than I had, that didn't take long! I'd like to hear you teach and get an idea of the children before I start a class, though.”

“Do it in whatever way is comfortable.” He followed her gaze to the pen and paper on the desk and gave a diffident laugh. “That's my story of this settlement, full of blots and scribbled additions. I must copy it over before I ask you to look at it.”

Deborah laughed. “If you could see the rough draft of Father's editorials!” Of which no more, now, would be written. But the pang faded into the warmth of remembering.

Conrad said, “That glow will come without pain after a time. Instead of aching loss, you'll have an awareness in your spirit of those you loved. It can be a blessing, not grief.”

“Can it?” The cry was wrung from her. “That might be so if it weren't for the
way
they died! How can I make peace with that?”

He ached with her. From the look in his eyes, Deborah knew that, and it helped. But, just then, he didn't answer her in words. Stepping out on the closed porch, he came back with a knee-length dark green cape with a hood, helped her into it, and put on his own gray cloak.

“I want to show you something.”

Leading her out into the dawning, after they changed into outdoor shoes on the porch, he brought her to stand among the leafless trees on the frost-covered ground, kept his arm around her outside the cape as streaks of red widened in the east, gripped the dull sky and thrust higher, casting rosy brightness on the sparkling frost, flushing the naked winter branches.

Deborah caught her breath, thrilling. In spite of herself, the familiar words sounded in her mind.
“The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.”

“Beautiful!” she whispered.

“Yes. The eternal enduring best answer to pain, to horror. Why is it? What causes it? The sky is there, whatever the sins beneath it, the sun and moon, the mountains and earth, this vast prairie. When spring comes, these bare limbs will burst into flower, then fruit. Why? Who can know it?”

“It's another question, not an answer.”

“A question is an answer that makes you find your own.” Turning, he kept his hand beneath her arm as they walked back to the house, feet crunching on the frozen earth crust. “But there are more human answers, too, my Deborah. Moments of joy—and you will have them again. Love in its many forms. Kindness. Faith and hope. These are as real as sickness, cruelty, hate, and despair.”

“Yes, but—”

“A man named Jacob Boehme, from whom I'll read to you some evening, put it this way: ‘Man is a hinge between light and darkness; to whichever it gives itself up, in that same does it burn.'”

Inside the porch, he helped her off with the cape. “This shepherd's cloak is for you,” he said, unfastening the horn buttons. “It's made from long fleece, is very warm, and turns rain. Ansjie has another she prefers.”

“Oh, I can't—”

“You can.” He chuckled. “You'll find it very easy when you get used to being snug.”

They changed into house shoes and entered the warm kitchen.

“Why don't we surprise Ansjie and fix breakfast?” Deborah asked. “I can cook if you'll show me where things are.”

“Sausage, ham, or bacon?” he asked. “Things like that are stored on the porch. So are eggs and milk, unless it gets cold enough to freeze them.”

They decided on eggs scrambled with sausage. Deborah cooked these while Conrad cooked millet, a white grain she hadn't seen before, flavoring it with dried plums and currants, and he set the table, a task he was obviously used to.

Ansjie emerged, sniffing rapturously. “I thought I was dreaming! Getting up early to make breakfast is one thing I can't like, though Conrad helps much by having coffee ready.”

“Then let me do it,” suggested Deborah. “I'd like to help wherever you most prefer.”

Ansjie sank into her chair, hungrily eyeing the golden eggs and crisp, bits of sausage. “You've found my weakness! I like running my own house, it's much cosier, but I do like to wake up and find breakfast.”

“Gnädige Fräulein,
here's your coffee,” said Conrad, louting low, and they began their meal with merriment.

That first day set a pattern for most that followed. After household tasks were done, the three went to the church and worked with different ages of children after Elder Goerz had drilled them on. Bible and church history. Since Deborah had no German, either Ansjie or Conrad helped with her class, translating words the children wouldn't know and helping to answer their questions.

The twenty-five children ranged from five or six to fourteen or fifteen. Mennonites felt everyone needed enough education to handle business affairs, read the Bible, and appreciate their religious heritage. Beyond that, learning was suspect, a temptation to frivolity and vanity. But when she met the villagers around the well or school, they all, even gruff Elder Goerz and his sour wife, thanked Deborah in halting English for teaching the children about their new country.

“Perhaps it goes better here,” said Lorenz Schroeder, a thin man with hair like wisps of old rope, stooped from working at his last. “No state church supported by taxes. Many churches, none strong enough to use the government. It may be we will at last be left in peace. It is good our children learn the story of this land.”

“I must tell them about slavery. I must tell them how the Indians have been driven farther west.”

Schroeder nodded. His watery green eyes were sad and hopeful at once. “Yes, they must know that. But to us it is a very large thing, that religion and government do not join to rule.” He smiled shyly. “Believe in your country,
Fräulein.
Before we voted to come here, the
Graf
—no, he is Herr Lander now—read to us your Bill of Rights and your Constitution. A country with written law like that must try to fulfill it.”

Touched and shamed by his simplicity, Deborah returned to her teaching with a new perspective, trying to imagine what it would be like to live where the church preached obedience to the government, however corrupt, and the government reinforced the church, where common people had little to say about their laws, judges, or governing bodies.

Viewed like that, the problem in Kansas was one of too much freedom, not enough law and control. At least the Border Ruffians and, on the other side, Lane and Montgomery and John Brown's men, weren't raiding for the government, with its approval. Law would come to the frontier, and surely, someday, so would justice and peace.

Because these children would be growing up while the slavery question was decided, Deborah took special pains to explain to them the Missouri Compromise and the effects of its repeal, the importance of Kansas as a battleground between Free Soil and pro-slave forces. But she couldn't resist slipping in at least one story of which pacifist parents wouldn't have approved: Jim Bowie at the Alamo with Travis and Crockett.

Blue eyes fixed on her breathlessly as she told how the men of Gonzalez marched into the Alamo, coming to certain death; how none of the men left, though Travis would have let them; and how Mexican bugles played the
Degüello,
or “Throat-cutting,” an old call from Spain, which meant no quarter.

“The knife, Miss?” queried the biggest Goerz boy in a voice that was just starting to crack. “Bowie's knife?”

“It was burned with him, Hansi.” At first, apart from size and sex, the children had looked disconcertingly alike, watching her with intent variations of blue, gray, and hazel eyes peering from beneath yellow or flaxen thatches or tightly pulled-back braids. After a few days, though, she'd begun to sort them out, and by the end of the week, she knew the names of all twenty-five. “I hope,” she added, smiling at the gangling boy whose older brother was enamored of Ansjie, “that someday you meet Mr. Chaudoin. He learned blacksmithing from the man who made Jim Bowie's knife.”

Hansi's eyes grew wider. “Truly, Miss?”

“Truly true,” she answered, then went on to explain how Texas remained a republic for almost ten years before joining the United States.

“Kansas is not a—a republic?” asked Cobie Balzer, a wiry, tanned girl whose mother was always calling her in from playing with the boys.

That led to a discussion of the differences between states and territories, which took up the rest of the class. Then, between Conrad and Ansjie, Deborah walked home and helped get dinner ready.

The Landers' laundry was done by the village women as a thank-you for their teaching, so there was no really tiring work. Deborah helped with the baking, cooking, and cleaning, plus gathering the eggs and feeding the chickens.