Thieving Forest by Martha Conway Page B

bite?”
    “I’ve never had Swamp Fever, either.”
    “You’re lucky,” Ada says, pushing her cracked spectacles up higher.
    That’s what Beatrice always says: you’re the lucky one. She doesn’t get chilblains or sore throats, she never gets Swamp Fever, and even her skin rarely bruises. Susanna rolls down her sleeve feeling a little bad now, as if her good luck has been taken from her sisters’ store of it. But that’s foolish, she tells herself.
    The men decide to cross a few yards downstream where the bank slopes more gently. Jonas goes first. His horse prances a little when she gets to the opposite bank, still excited, and she throws her head up in the air.
    “It’s all right,” Jonas shouts to them, pulling the reins to his chest. “Just move the horses through fast.”
    Tulp and Ada cross next without incident. Then Seth moves his horse next to Susanna’s saying they’ll cross together and does she want him to hold Step’s reins? But she shakes her head, determined to do as well as Ada. The air is slightly cooler here and blueflies skirt over the water. Step maneuvers down into the stream and lifts her head. Susanna sees Jonas on the other side watching her. And then suddenly, she doesn’t know how, she is falling off the horse.
    “Susanna!” Seth shouts.
    She falls on her backside as Step, relieved of her human burden at last, dashes through the water and up the bank, where Jonas grabs her by the reins. Meanwhile Susanna struggles to stand. The water is not very deep but the current moves fast and she has trouble keeping her balance. She falls again and this time the cold water seems to seep right through to her bones. As she struggles for footing she notices two things floating away: Seth’s purse with the two hundred dollars, and her turkey hen bone, each one caught in a different eddy. Susanna stops and feels part of her skirt paste itself wetly against her leg. What with the pace of the current and her heavy clothing she can only reach one, she knows this instinctively. She has to make a choice. She takes a step against the current and then another and once more falls into the water but even falling she is near enough to close her fingers around the purse. The drawstring holds and she can feel the thick wad of bills inside. She stands up and holds it for a moment against her stomach as she watches her turkey hen bone carried farther and farther downstream. It rotates around a gray rock in the water and disappears.
    “Susanna!”
    Seth is wading toward her holding the reins of his horse with one hand. For a moment she stays very still as if waiting for him. There are hundreds of such bones, she tells herself, trying not to cry, although not one more that Sirus would give her.
    “Susanna, are you all right?”
    Her wet clothes stick to her skin in patches and she can feel the wind on her scalp. She looks at Step standing meekly now next to Jonas’s horse, her reins dripping.
    “I’m not getting back on that horse,” Susanna says.

    After this, disheartened and cold, she half-expects to find that a mistake has been made, that there was never a woman ransomed by the Moravians, or that it was not a white woman with red hair, or not one with the last name Quiner. She rides the rest of the way on the back of Seth’s horse, her wet arms around his dry middle. The storm is still gathering behind them but soon enough they come up to one of the brethren walking along where the track opens up to the village. He turns when he hears them and waits, introducing himself as Brother Graves when they get to him. Although it is still early in the evening he is holding a torch made out of a dry linden branch. When he hears their business, he raises it slightly to look closer at Susanna.
    “Your sister Beatrice,” he says, “will be most happy to see you.”
    His eyes are as dark as his hair, and his voice, warm and gentle, sounds like it might just be Saint Peter’s voice at the gate. Susanna feels Seth