The Amish Nanny (43 page)

“She's storing her weavings out there?” she cried. “Between the temperature fluctuations and the humidity, they'll be ruined!” Morgan put down her dishtowel and marched toward the hall. A moment later, she and Giselle hurried out the front door. Christy and I kept working on the dishes.

Morgan returned after a while carrying two of the boxes. “She's consolidating them. Getting as many as possible in one box. We're going to cram them into her studio for now.”

Back and forth Morgan went until she returned with Giselle, both loaded down with more. Altogether, they had brought in nine boxes. It would be a wonder if Giselle was able to move around in her studio at all now. I didn't say anything but turned back to scouring the sink. After I'd finished, I suggested to Christy that we walk up to Amielbach and see if her
daed
had arrived so she could tell him goodnight.

As we headed up the pathway, I felt overwhelmed with the complexity of everyone I was around. Each person seemed to have issues. Giselle and her past. Morgan and her future. Christy and death. Will and his family. Me—with more than I could count.

I sighed. Except Daniel. He was the least complicated of us all. Somehow I had the feeling that all he really needed to be happy was a library full of books and an interesting topic to research. The question was where a wife and children—correction, child—would find room to fit into that scenario.

C
hristy and I found Herr Lauten, Daniel, and Will sitting around the table in the dining room, finishing up a hearty stew.

“We're bemoaning our plan,” Herr Lauten said. “At least Daniel and I are.”

Will shrugged. “I just said if it's God's will, the waterfall and caves will be saved.”

“But you heard the judge,” Daniel said. “If we can't find that agreement…” His voice trailed off.

Herr Lauten looked just as forlorn. “It's ridiculous,” he said. “The hydro plant is as good as done. Instead of the melody of the waterfall, I'll have the constant hum of turbines.”

“At least if we had those letters, we might stand a chance,” Daniel said. “But where could Giselle have put them?”

“The landfill. The secondhand store. The burn pile. Who knows?” Herr Lauten threw up his hands. “I had no idea she didn't care about such things when she arrived.”

Glancing at Christy, I saw that she looked extremely tired, and I suggested that we get on to bed. Instead, she asked if she could move back up here so she could stay with her
daed
instead of at the cottage with me.

“Sure,” I told her, adding that I would go down to the cottage and retrieve her things. Daniel said he would go with me. We hurried on our way, me fretting over Christy, wondering if perhaps the tour of Zurich was too much with all the talk of martyrdom and death.

Daniel was still obsessing about the letters. “Have you looked all through the cottage?” he asked. “High in the cupboards in the kitchen? That sort of thing.”

I hadn't. I'd relied on what Giselle had told me. “I think she'd know if the box was anywhere in her house. Every room except her studio is extremely sparse and organized.”

“Can you ask, though, if you can look?”

“I'll try,” I said, though I knew Morgan would have better luck asking than I would.

When we arrived at the cottage, neither Morgan nor Giselle was in sight. I assumed they were both in the studio. Quickly, I packed Christy's bag. I knew it was perfectly natural for her to want to be with Will, but I would miss not having her with me after spending so many days with her. I pulled her bag out into the hall and into the entryway, and then I turned the handle around for Daniel. Our fingers brushed as he started to take it, but instead of pulling away, he clasped my hand. “It would be so perfect if it all comes together.”

“
Ya
,” I answered. “If only we can find the agreement.”

His blue eyes focused on mine. “I meant more than that.” He squeezed my hand. “I meant if you could stay here. If we could get to know each other. If we could—”

“Ada?” It was Morgan's voice, coming from down the hall. “Is that you?”

I pulled my hand away from Daniel. “
Ya
. And Daniel, but he is just leaving.”

She practically skipped down the hall. “Oh, look at you two,” she gushed.

My face grew warm, but he smiled.

“Hey,” he said, as an afterthought. “Morgan, have you looked through all the cupboards and closets in this place?”

It was her turn to blush. She lowered her voice. “As a matter of fact, I did, tonight when I was fixing dinner. I'm so taken with all of this. The boxes. The letters. The journals. The mystery. I decided to look just in case…”

“And?”

“Nothing. Nada. Nil.”

Daniel's face fell. “Where could they be?”

Morgan shook her head. “Who knows? I tried to get Giselle to talk about them this evening, but she gave me the cold shoulder. That's why I came out here.”

Daniel told us goodnight, and I stepped out of the cottage with him. He gave me a quick hug and then started up the path.

The next morning I didn't see Giselle at all. By the time Morgan and I left the cottage, she still hadn't emerged from her closed bedroom door,
which I assumed meant either she was still asleep or she was working in her studio.

When we arrived at Amielbach, we went straight to the dining room. Daniel was already there, and we joined him at the table. He talked about other locations we could look for the important documents. “Abraham lived in Bern before moving to Amielbach and sometimes went there on business. Maybe he left the agreement there, in a bank or a government building.”

It sounded like a long shot to me.

“Or maybe Thun. There was a lot of legal activity there involving the Mennonites. Imprisonments. Trials. That sort of thing.”

I wrinkled my nose, but he didn't notice. “Or maybe it's in his hometown of Frutigen.”

Oskar came in at that moment, bearing mugs and a pot of tea. We thanked him for the kindness as he served us.

“Do you think he traveled there very often?” I asked Daniel.

He shrugged. “Maybe he mailed them back. For safekeeping.”

“That seems like a bit of a stretch,” Morgan said. “But we wouldn't have anything to lose. It's better than sitting around doing nothing.”

Oskar paused at the doorway before going back into the kitchen. “Do you folks not yet realize that this whole thing is a pipe dream?” he said. “You were caught up in an old man's delusions. That's all.” Shaking his head, he continued on without waiting for a reply.

“Pipe dream or not, I for one am having the time of my life,” Morgan said to Daniel and me.

I agreed, but the situation wasn't without its stresses, especially with Alice being ill and the uncertainty over the missing agreement. I also didn't have the financial stake in the situation that the Gundys and the Lautens did—or that, ultimately, Daniel and George did either.

The endless sunny weather had finally come to an end. The morning was overcast, and as we traveled to Bern we drove in and out of fog.

“Abraham Sommers was a local councilman for a few years before Elsbeth left,” Daniel explained along the way.

I still found it odd that Daniel knew far more about my own ancestors than I did.

“He resigned after that. He might have still come to Bern on official business from time to time, though. I think it's worth looking at the council chambers.”

Christy had decided to spend the day with Will, and although it seemed odd not to have her with me, I looked forward to a day with just Morgan and Daniel, being with my new friends, totally focused on our search. Morgan drove and I sat up front beside her, with Daniel in the back, poring over yet another one of his books.

Once we reached the city, Morgan parked the car, and we headed to the council chambers immediately, only to find that the archives' office would be closed for two hours. Back on the sidewalk, Daniel pulled some papers from his pack and said that while we were waiting we could walk through the tour he'd been designing.

“We'll need to backtrack through the old city to the first stop,” he told us, eyes glowing with excitement. “Come on! Let's do this in order.”

He turned and started walking. Morgan and I glanced at each other, both of us bemused at his excitement, knowing we had no choice but to follow along.

Daniel said we'd begin our tour where the main gate to the city used to be back in 1350. Located near the site was the Church of the Holy Ghost, a Swiss Reformed church that was built long after the Anabaptist movement had started. We didn't take time to go inside. Instead, we stood on the street looking up at it for a few minutes and admiring the structure. Then we started on down the Spitalgasse, the street that led into the heart of the city.

We passed two corners, one that Daniel said used to be the site of a prison where male Anabaptist followers had been held, and the next where women followers had been held. Realizing that this was to be a very martyr-heavy day, I was thankful Christy wasn't with us. We walked from site to site, taking in an open market, the domed parliament building, a street of banks, a section of the original city wall, and the
Zeitglckenturn
, a tower with a clock built in the 1520s with performing animated figures. Christy would have liked seeing this very much.

I stared at the long hand as it ticked away, realizing that the clock was as old as the Anabaptist movement itself. Daniel explained that clocks across Switzerland had been built with money the government collected from confiscating Anabaptist land. “Not this one, but many others.”

“Oh,” Morgan said, “that's so sad.”

Our next stop was the Münster Cathedral of Bern. With a 300-foot steeple, it was a landmark in the city. Inside, the colorful stained-glass windows cast jewel-tone reflections on the floor and across the pews. All the while I kept my eye out for a bench or a box or panel that Abraham might have carved. Surely, if his work had made it to Zurich, it could be in Bern too. We followed a narrow staircase to a rooftop viewpoint. From up there, we could see the cathedral gardens below, rows of houses, and then the River Aare.

“More than forty Anabaptists were martyred in Bern,” Daniel said. “Some drowned. Others beheaded.” He went on to describe all manner of torture until Morgan put her hands over her ear.

“Stop,” she cried, looking and sounding not unlike Christy.

“What?”

We both glanced her way, surprised to see that there were tears in her eyes. “I don't want to hear it. Enough!” After that, she turned and hurried down the stairs.

Startled, Daniel and I just looked at each other.

“Is she okay?” I whispered. “Maybe I should go to her.”

He hesitated and then shook his head, saying he would do it instead, explaining that if he was going to be giving tours, he needed to get used to handling things like this himself. I agreed, and soon he was clomping down the stairs after her.

I followed along much more slowly, giving them a moment to talk. I had a feeling I knew what was going on, that it was a matter of us having been raised Plain and Morgan having not.

As a Mennonite and an Amish, Daniel and I had grown up with stories of martyrs. It was what made us appreciate the separation of church and state. It kept us loyal to our faith. It taught us to willingly make our own small sacrifices. It emphasized tradition. But maybe it also numbed us a tad. Maybe to Morgan the martyrs were more like real people and not just old, familiar figures from the stories.

When I arrived at the bottom of the stairs, Morgan and Daniel were across the hall, under a grouping of stained-glass windows, deep in conversation. Her hands bounced around as she talked. I thought of her love of art and beauty, of her concern for the environment. I liked it that she felt for our martyred ancestors, even though they had died five hundred years before. She was a person of passion, that was certain.

Daniel snagged one of her waving hands in his, and she leaned toward him for a moment, as if surrendering to something he'd said. Even from a distance, I could see his face soften in a way I hadn't seen before. I gasped. Maybe Morgan's passion was what Daniel needed to get past his arsenal of historical facts.