Epilogue
Hans lifted a hand to his brow and wiped the sweat from his eyes.
The sun had been relentless all day, beating down upon his bare shoulders, but there was work to do in the fields that wouldn't wait for a cooler day: grass to cut for the cattle's silage and fences to mend before the next rain, then a chicken coop to make fast against the foxes that had begun prowling in the night.
It seemed that every day brought him more work, and he was grateful to turn his hand to any task that wasn't soldiering.
Sometimes his shoulder still ached where Rall had shot him, particularly before a thunderstorm brewed in the western sky, and the skin around the puckered mark where Anna had dug the ball out had remained a stubborn shade of blue almost two years on, a shade that reminded him a bit of the woolen Hessian coat that hung in the barn.
The coat was missing one sleeve now, and all of its buttons, being gradually cut into rags and transformed into useful items for Anna, Sarah, and Gretchen to use about the farm.
He had considered turning it into a scarecrow, but Anna had forbidden it: the last thing she wanted was to look out her bedroom window and spy a Hessian soldier standing among their corn rows.
He looked across the pasture, shielding his eyes with his palm, to see Anna and Sarah sitting knee to knee, a tin bucket between them as they shucked peas. Sarah's little girl, Hope, only a few months from her first birthday, sat in the grass beside them, transfixed by a grasshopper.
Sarah's little girl, and mine, too, Hans thought with a swell of pride in his chest. Hope had her mother's flaxen hair and sparkling eyes, but his nose and chin.
He could see echoes of his mother in the way Hope sat, and of his sister Maria in her smile.
Sometimes the familiarity nearly brought Hans to tears, and his heart was drawn across the sea to home.
Home. But this is home now. Perhaps someday he could go back to Hesse, or perhaps bring Mother and Maria over to America — surely the King's gold had paid handsomely for a son who never returned from the battlefield, and when this war was finally over, he could secure passage for them to a new land of liberty.
For he was certain that liberty would, indeed, prevail at last. Just yesterday the news came that the British had been routed at Monmouth, after another long winter kept just below the boiling point, and he had not seen a Hessian soldier on the roads for many months.
France had joined the fight now, and Hans thought it likely that Louis' pockets were deeper than George's and the Hessian soldiers may well switch sides before too long.
Whenever Hans raised the thought of joining up with Washington's army himself, though, Anna immediately silenced the notion.
That fight is not your fight any longer, Anna insisted, though he argued that it never had been his fight at all.
He had been a sell-sword for the king, and not a particularly effective one at that; taking up arms for liberty was a noble calling, far nobler than drilling for Rall had been.
Gretchen would chime in then, though, reminding him that men who marched off to war in good humor seldom came home as cheerful, if at all. A different peace prevailed on Anna's farm, a separate peace they had bought with their own blood and toil.
And, true enough, he had duties closer to home now.
There was little Hope, of course, and also the swell of Anna's belly that was only now becoming visible beneath her apron.
While his seed had taken root quickly in Sarah's womb, Anna had proven a less easily planted field.
Try as they might for over a year, Hans had been unable to get Anna with a child.
He certainly didn't mind the work, of course — the drills that Anna put him through were far more agreeable than marching and shooting had been — but each month when her blood returned, Anna seemed on the verge of despair.
They had gone through seemingly endless courses of tansy and rosemary, foul-tasting teas and even fouler-smelling ointments, and Hans began to fear that Anna might turn him out of her bed if he continued to be an unsuccessful sire, despite her protestations of love.
But then, when the spring rains were just beginning to soften the fields, the expected curse did not return.
Anna confessed she feared it was the change of life and not a sign of a growing seed, but soon her skin took on a ruddy glow, her full breasts became tender to even Hans' gentlest touches, and her breakfast refused to sit lightly in her belly.
Now there was no denying that a child had taken hold in her womb, and Hans could barely keep his hands from caressing her curves at every opportunity.
A permanent smile had affixed itself to Hans' lips, and he felt a hundred pounds lighter and six inches taller whenever he spied Anna's growing shape.
"Why the silly grin, Hessian soldier?"
Hans startled and straightened, turning back toward the field. Gretchen stood at the edge of the corn, a basket of eggs on her arm and her golden hair tucked under a white bonnet, wearing a bright yellow dress.
"I ... I was just ..."
"Surveying your handiwork?" Gretchen asked, cocking an eyebrow at him. Hans felt the color rise in his cheeks.
Although Gretchen seemed to have forgiven his past as an agent of the king, he still felt a coldness whenever she was about.
And though he had spent many a night with Anna and Sarah, warming their beds as often as his own, never once had Gretchen invited him behind her door, or so much as kissed his cheek.
"Come on, Hessian soldier," Gretchen said. She set the basket of eggs at her feet, then turned her back to him but looked over her shoulder. "I want to show you something."
Hans hesitated, watching her disappear into the high, green corn. There was a hitch to her stride that had been there ever since that fateful winter morning, when her horse had thrown her; her ankle had shattered under Yara's weight, and never healed right.
Indeed, it was a minor miracle that Gretchen had healed at all.
She was soaked through with rain and snow when Anna and Sarah carried her into the farmhouse, lips gone blue and pulse faint as a fluttering baby bird.
All three of them sat at Gretchen's bed well into the New Year, keeping her wrapped in quilts and fed hot broth.
Those had been tense weeks indeed: Gretchen deathly ill, the Hessians limping back into Trenton after they were scattered by the rebels, and a quiet but persistent campaign of reprisals and counter-reprisals across the region.
Hans dared not leave the farmhouse, even to bring in the firewood he had chopped, for fear that a Hessian officer would see him and press him back into his regiment, or that an American rebel would spy him and think him a worthy target for capture or death.
"Hessian soldier!" Gretchen called from within the green canopy. He could barely make out her shape among the leaves and her yellow dress against the green. "You'd best hurry if you don't want to miss this."
Hans threw a glance toward Anna, Sarah, and Hope: the child had caught the grasshopper now, her little face bright with joy, and the two women were still bent to their work. He hesitated a moment, pulse quickening, and followed Gretchen into the corn.
The corn was still wet with dew, making the air thick and humid.
The stiff leaves brushed at him as he pushed his way through the stalks, and he felt like a conquistador in a mysterious jungle.
Only a few months ago, this acre had been covered in the gray stubble left over from the autumn harvest and beaten down by winter; now it was a lush wall of green that grew denser the farther he pushed into it.
"I'm here, Hessian soldier!" Gretchen's voice called, just ahead of Hans. He nearly tripped as he picked up his pace.
The wall of maize suddenly gave way to a circular clearing, not much bigger than the woodshed by the barn, its floor covered with the stalks that had been cut down to create the space.
Gretchen stood in the center of the clearing, her bonnet in her hand and her flaxen hair hanging loose and damp with perspiration.
Her yellow dress, too, was damp with the effort of leading him through the corn, and the thin fabric clung to her hips and breasts.
Hans felt a thrill of arousal, and a tinge of something like fear, when he stepped into the clearing and stopped an arm's length from Gretchen.
Gretchen faced him with a bold expression, her arms by her sides.
Her fingers grasped the fabric of her dress and slowly bunched it into her hands, lifting the hem inch by tantalizing inch.
Hans' eyes ran from her lips to her ankles and back, then were drawn back to the slowly revealed calves.
He felt almost dizzy in Gretchen's presence, the stalks of maize seeming to crowd in around them as she moved closer to him.
"Well, Hessian soldier?" Gretchen said, her voice low and soft. Hans could feel her warmth, hotter somehow than the heavy air, pulling all the wind from his lungs. "Have you made your peace with liberty yet?"
"I ... I was never at war with liberty," Hans said. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, his blood sluggish. "I served my regiment, and my commander, but not the English King ..."
Gretchen was close enough now that they almost touched.
Hans wanted to reach out for her, but he dared not — there was a steely glint in her gaze, a turn to her lips that frightened him.
Anna and Sarah always gazed on him with warmth and kindness, their smiles ranging from playfully coy to tenderly inviting; from Gretchen, he was used to scowls and frowns.
Every grudging smile she gave him felt like a hard-won victory that faded as quickly as it appeared.
This smile was not like that at all.
"And who do you serve now?" Gretchen asked. She held his gaze, though her fingers continued to lift her dress, the hem rising now above her thighs.
"I ... I serve Anna, I suppose ... and Sarah, and Hope, and ..."
"And me, Hans?" Gretchen asked. The space between them felt as if it would burst into flame at any moment. "Do you serve me as well?"
"I ... of course," Hans gasped. "I am always at your command, Gretchen, duty-bound from the day you took me in."
"The serve me, Hessian soldier," Gretchen said, pressing her body against his. "Prove your fealty."
Hans could think of no words to answer Gretchen's demand, but his body knew precisely how to show his devotion.
The halting, timid boy who had come to the farm that winter that felt so long ago had grown, under the loving tutelage of Anna and Sarah, into a man who knew the ways of love as surely as he knew how to mend a fence, plow a field, or trap a brace of rabbits for dinner.
And with his hands grasping Gretchen's body and lowering her to the mat of cornstalks, with his mouth seeking her lips with hunger and need, Hans more than proved his mettle.
He found the buttons at her dress's bodice while his mouth sought the sweetness of her lips, and his hands quickly slid the fabric away to reveal the naked flesh trembling beneath.
She raised her breasts to his mouth and lifted her hips to the swell in his breeches.
There was a time when Hans had to distract himself — with memories of a soldier's drills, with worries about a farmer's chores — to control his ardor, but no more.
Now he could savor the softness of Gretchen's curves and the low, sweet sounds that rose from her lips when his hands and tongue drew delight from her willing, sensitive body.
And when he had stripped off his clothes and entered her warm, wet core, he could linger in her embrace and wring every ounce of pleasure from Gretchen before releasing his seed into her womb.
He lay beside her for what felt like ages, arm stretched across his eyes, the warm sun bathing his bare chest. Gretchen panted at his side, her leg thrown across his hip and her hand resting on his sweat-slick belly, savoring her own swoon.
"Come to my room tonight, Hessian soldier," she whispered in his ear, her breath warm and soft. "I've let my fields lie fallow for far too long, and we have seasons lost to time that we must redress."
Hans smiled to himself, luxuriating in the warm sun above him and the warm woman beside him. No fortune in gold or glory in battle could balance the scales with the treasure he had secured on these few acres of liberty.