Chapter 5
The stiff, starched collar of the shirt Anna gave him scratched at Hans' neck, and he feared the seams might give way when he reached across the table for one of the biscuits Gretchen brought fresh from the oven.
His own shirt had been spirited away after his bath to be added to the widows' laundry.
"It was my husband's," Anna had explained when she handed Hans the shirt and breeches as he emerged from his bath with a bath sheet wrapped about his middle, looking for the knapsack that held his change of clothing.
He had been able to tell just from a glance that the borrowed clothing wouldn't fit — it seemed that Anna's late husband had been a little shorter and a good deal less broad in the shoulders than Hans — but the smile Anna gave him when she held the shirt against his chest was worth a bit of discomfort at the dinner table.
And they were certainly nicer clothing than the rough homespun Hans was used to: the shirt was a smooth, glossy cotton, with bone buttons up the front, dyed a pale periwinkle, and the breeches were soft black wool.
He couldn't quite fasten the garter buckles below his knees, as the breeches rode high on his shins, and he had to leave the top button unfastened to fit around his waist. But when he emerged from the little room Anna had given him for the night, nervous in the unfamiliar clothing, Anna's face shone like the sun and she clapped her hands together.
"You look as handsome as Martin did on our wedding day," she said, the back of her hand brushing away a tear that glistened on her cheek.
Now he sat beside Anna at the end of the kitchen table, which was heaped with food: a stack of soft white biscuits, a leg of roast pork glistening with piquant gravy, a savory rabbit pie with a golden crust, sweet potatoes festooned with apples and nuts.
His stomach rumbled and his mouth watered at the sight; so many weeks of hardtack and watery gruel had nearly erased the memory of a good meal from Hans' mind.
He could barely contain himself through the brief grace Gretchen offered as they bowed their heads, and Anna stifled a chuckle behind her hand when their chorus of "amen" was followed immediately by Hans' hand reaching out to claim a biscuit.
"Be careful you don't make yourself sick, Hessian soldier," Anna said with a wink. "We don't want to send you to bed with a tummy ache."
Hans laughed around a mouthful of the biscuit — so warm, so soft, so buttery — and felt his cheeks flush.
"I'm sorry for my manners, Anna," he said as he swallowed. "It's just ... I haven't seen such food since I came to America. At home at Christmastime, we would have Sauerbraten and Neujahrszopf, Schupfnudeln and Speckbohnen ..."
"And Apfelmuskuchen for dessert," Anna said. She reached over to squeeze Hans' arm. "Save room for the sweets to come!"
"You must think I'm an unmannered pig," Hans said, giving a swipe at the gravy on his plate with a hunk of biscuit. "I am very grateful for your hospitality, Anna, really I am."
"I think you're a young man who did a day of backbreaking work for three poor widows," Anna said, "and you've earned your hunger."
Hans chewed thoughtfully for a moment, glancing down to the end of the table where Sarah and Gretchen sat across from each other, heads bowed in a whispered but intense conversation.
He could barely hear their words, though even if he could, he doubted he would understand them.
Perhaps it wasn't worth the trouble to learn much more English than he had acquired so far, though; if Colonel Rall was right, and the rebellion faded away before the snows melted, he would likely be back in Kassel by summer.
Or off to France or Spain or even Africa, if the Prince sold his services again.
"Tell me about him," Hans said suddenly, turning back to Anna. "Martin, I mean, your husband. What was he like?"
When he saw an inscrutable look pass over Anna's eyes, Hans regretted his words, and said, "If you wish to say, of course. I have no right to pry."
Anna brushed her cheek again with the back of her hand and quickly smiled, though the smile did not seem to reach her eyes.
"It's not prying," Anna said, reaching to squeeze Hans' arm again.
"Though I don't know that there's much to tell.
It was so long ago, and we were both so young.
My parents came to Pennsylvania from Stralsund, and I was born a short time later.
Martin, too, was a native of the wilderness but a child of the North Sea, and we grew up together in a little village that might have been picked up by a giant's hand from Pomerania and dropped on the banks of the Delaware.
"When we came of age, Martin and I married — it was always assumed we would — and he used his share of his family's wealth and my dowry to buy this little plot on the other side of the river from home.
And for a few years, we were very happy, carving out a life from the wilderness.
But then the pox came, six years ago, and ... "
Anna spread her hands and shrugged, as though this were simply the way destiny had planned her life to be upended, and Hans felt a lump form in his throat.
"And ... you had no children?" Hans asked, almost afraid of the answer. The pox had come to Hesse, too, several times when Hans was a boy, and he had lost playmates to the terrible disease. To have lost a husband and children, too, though ...
"No," Anna said, "none. Sometimes I'm glad of it, sometimes not — it would be a blessing to have something of Martin still, but I don't know that I could have cared for a child alone after I lost him."
"And the others?" Hans asked. He glanced down at the end of the table where Gretchen and Sarah were still locked in what appeared to be a heated but whispered argument. "Do Sarah and Gretchen have children?"
Anna shook her head. "Sadly, no. Sarah's husband died of the pox, too.
He was a hired man on our farm, and I asked her to move into the house with me after we were widowed.
And Gretchen came from Boston only last spring — her uncle lives in the town, and we have enough space in this house for a whole brood of children. "
She reached for a biscuit herself, then dragged a knifeful of butter across it. Hans watched the butter melt on the warm bread, transfixed as it made its way toward Anna's fingers before she caught the trickle with her tongue and then took a hearty bite. She smiled at him as she chewed.
"So there you have it," Anna said as she swallowed. "A trio of barren old widows, alone in the howling wilderness."
"You're hardly old," Hans said, noting again the raven curls at Anna's temples without a hint of gray, and her porcelain skin with a faint pink blush on her cheeks.
"And perhaps not barren, either," she said with a wink, "though we're hardly in a position to test that condition. Widowed, though, is most certainly our state, so we are very lucky to have a young man at our Christmas table."
Hans was pondering a response when he heard a shout at the end of the table, and then the table shook hard enough to rattle his plate.
He looked to see Gretchen pushing herself away from the table with enough force to knock her chair over with a clatter, her face crimson with rage.
Across from her, Sarah hid her face behind a white linen napkin, but Hans thought he saw the track of a tear creeping toward her chin.
Anna leapt to her feet and hurried to the end of the table, putting one hand on Sarah's back and then reaching the other to Gretchen's shoulder. Gretchen pushed Anna away with an angry shrug and took a step back from the table.
"I don't care what you say," Gretchen snarled, her eyes moving from Sarah to Anna and back. "You know how I feel, and nothing can change that. It's wrong, Sarah, wrong."
Hans understood very little of what Gretchen said, but when she turned her blazing eyes in his direction, he feared that he was somehow the subject of her anger. He twisted the napkin in his lap between his fingers and looked down meekly at his plate.
Anna said something in a soothing voice, her hand resting gently on Sarah's back.
She glanced up at Hans with a frown, concern dark in her eyes, and he felt his heart race.
I should leave, he thought, give back the widow's clothes and fly back to my regiment before I ruin whatever balance they've found here ...
But before he could stand, Gretchen had spun on her heel and marched toward the door with determined strides, her jaw set in determination.
"Where are you going?" Sarah asked, looking up from her napkin. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her chin quivered.
"Out," Gretchen said, throwing a withering look over her shoulder. "And I won't be back until he is gone." She pointed a finger at Hans, but she might as well have flung a dagger straight to his heart.
Hans began to rise, but Anna was at his side in a flash, both hands on his shoulders.
Gretchen stormed through the door and grabbed the cloak and hat hanging from their hooks.
The chill of the winter wind that howled into the kitchen when Gretchen threw open the door was nothing compared to the icy shiver that ran down Hans' spine at her parting glare.
"Let her go," Anna whispered in his ear, bending low. Her lips brushed his cheek. "She'll return, I'm sure of it, and you've earned your soft bed for the night."