The Covenant (Paperback)

Chapter One

Gobbler's Knob had a way of shimmering in the dappled light of deep summer, along about mid-July when the noonday sun-standing at lofty attention in a bold and blue sky-pierced through the canopy of dense woods, momentarily flinging light onto the forest floor in great golden shafts of luster and dust, causing raccoons, moles, and an occasional woodchuck to pause and squint. The knoll, where wild turkeys roamed freely, was populated with a multitude of trees-maple, white oak, and locust. Thickets of raspberry bramble had sometimes trapped unsuspecting young fowl, stunned by the heat of day or the sting of a twelve-gauge shotgun during hunting season.

"Steer clear of the woods," the village children often whispered among themselves. They warned each other of tales they'd heard of folk getting lost, unable to find their way out. The rumors were repeated most often during the harvest, when nightfall seemed to sneak up and catch you unaware on the heels of a round white moon bigger than at any other season of year. About the time when all over Lancaster County, fathers came in search of plump Thanksgiving Day turkeys. But even before and after hunting season, children admonished their younger siblings. "It's true," they'd say, eyes wide, "the forest can swallow you up alive."

Certain mothers in the small community used the superstitious hearsay as leverage when entreating their youngsters home for supper during the delirious days of vacation from books and lessons.

One particular boy and his school chums paid no attention to the warnings. Off they'd go, scouring the forest regularly, day and night, in the eternal weeks of summer, playing cowboys and Indians near an old lean-to, where hunters found shelter from bone-chilling autumn rains and reloaded their guns and drank hot coffee ... or something stronger. The lads promptly decided the spot where the run-down shelter stood was the deepest, darkest section of woodlands, where they whispered to one another that it was indeed true-sunlight never, ever reached through the mass of branches and leaves. There, among a maze of thorny vines and nearly impenetrable underbrush, everything was its own shadow with gray-blue fringes.

The area surrounding Gobbler's Knob, on all sides, was home to a good many folk, Plain and fancy alike. Soldiers, back from the war, were streaming home to Quarryville just seven miles southwest, to the town of Strasburg about five miles northwest, and to the village of Ninepoints a short carriage ride away.

Abram and Ida Ebersol's farmland was part and parcel of Strasburg Township, according to the map. Smack-dab in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, the gray stone house had been built on seven acres bordering the forest more than eighty years before by Abram's father, the revered Bishop Ebersol, who now slumbered in his grave, awaiting the trumpet's call.

The "Ebersol Cottage," as Leah liked to call her father's limestone house, stood facing the east, "toward the rising of the sun," she would often say, causing Mamma to nod her head and smile. The house was surrounded by a rolling front lawn that became an expanse of velvety grass, where family and friends could sit and lunch on picnic blankets all summer long, the slightest breeze causing deep green ripples across the grass. Behind the two-story house, a modest white clapboard barn stabled two milk cows, two field mules, and two driving horses.

Inside, the front-room windows and those in the kitchen were tall and high with dark green shades pulled up at the sash. In fact, Leah had never remembered seeing the first-floor windows ever covered at all. Mamma was partial to natural light, preferred it to any other kind, said there was no need to block out the light created by the Lord God heavenly Father, whether it be a sunlit day or moon-filled night.

The second-story dormer windows were another matter altogether. Because the family's bedrooms were located on that particular floor, window shades were carefully drawn when the rooms were occupied, especially at dawn and dusk. Abram was adamant about his and Ida's privacy, as well as that of his growing daughters.

From their west-facing windows upstairs, Abram and Ida had a splendid view of the wide backyard, vegetable gardens, the barn and outhouse, the soaring windmill that pumped well water into the house, and beyond that the dazzling forest. What intrigued Ida more than the display of trees and brushwood were the songbirds that fluttered from tree to tree and trilled the sonnets of late spring and early summer, when open windows invited the outdoors in.

Meticulously kept and weekly cleaned, the farmhouse was in remarkable condition for its age. Abram and his family, as well as all who had come before, appreciated, even cherished, the warmth of its hearth and hallways, its congenial rooms. It was a house that when you were gone from it, you were eager to return. Leah often remarked upon arriving home from a visit to one relative or another that the front door and porch seemed to smile a welcome. This, in spite of the fact that she and the entire family always entered and exited the stately dwelling by way of the back door. Still, the pleasing exterior was like a shining beacon in a sea of corn and grazing land, forest and sky.

Whenever Abram's daughters happened to take the driving horse and family buggy over to Strasburg to purchase yard goods and whatnot, the sight of the four girls turned many a head. Thirteen-year-old Hannah and Mary Ruth were not quite as tall as Leah, sixteen in a few short weeks, but they were definitely experiencing a growth spurt here lately. Hannah's facial features-the pensive beauty of her brown eyes, thick lashes, and the delicate contour of her nose and chin-resembled blue-eyed Mary Ruth to some degree, but not enough for folk to automatically assume they were twins. Due to the vivid hue of their identical strawberry blond hair, Hannah and Mary Ruth did make a striking pair when tending the orange and yellow marigolds alongside the road together or looking after Mamma's vegetable-and-fruit stand.

But more times than not it was flaxen-haired Sadie-older than Leah by three unmistakable years-who caused young men to take special notice. Leah, the only brunette of the bunch, strove in her effort not to care that Sadie was often singled out. Still, she observed quietly how boys of courting age were drawn to her enticing older sister, especially now that it appeared Sadie was preparing to offer her lifetime covenant to God and the Amish church.

* * *

Seems the closer Sadie gets to her kneeling vow, the more foolish she becomes, thought Leah one hot and humid afternoon while helping Dat bring the mules in from the field. She wasn't one to wag her tongue about any of her sisters' personal concerns. Goodness knows, enough gossip went on in the community, mostly when womenfolk got together to quilt and gab at one farmhouse or another. Family stories-past and present-ideas, recipes, the weather, and ways of looking at things came flying out into the open then to be both heard and inspected. There were some gut forms of chatter, but most of it was a waste of time, she'd decided early on.

Leah herself had never been to a quilting frolic. Not once in her entire life. She'd heard plenty about it, more than she cared to, really, from Sadie and the twins. Such gatherings were fertile ground for tales, factual and otherwise, seemed to her. She preferred to engage in straightforward conversation, like the kind she occasionally got to enjoy with Dat out in the cornfield, plowing or cultivating the rich soil. Leah craved the succinct words of her father, his no-nonsense approach to life. After all, Sadie had Mamma's affection, and the twins garnered adequate consideration from both parents.

Here lately, Leah had had the nerve to think that she just might have an exceptionally level head on her mature shoulders and it was time she carved out a corner of credibility for herself. Especially with Dat, even though she and her father wholeheartedly disagreed on one thing, for sure and for certain. Her father had made up his mind years ago just whom Leah should one day marry, though if asked, he wouldn't have said it was by any means an arrangement-quite uncommon amongst the People.

The young man was Gideon Peachey, the only son of the blacksmith the next farm over. He was known as Smithy Gid, to tell him apart from other boys with the same name in the area. Gideon's father and Dat had long tended the land that bordered each other's property even before Leah was ever born. Truth was, when they were out working the field, Dat liked to say to Leah, pointing toward the smithy's fifteen acres to the east of them, "There now, take a wonderful-gut look at your future ... right over there. Nobody owns a more beautiful piece of God's green earth than the smithy."

It was a knotty problem, to be sure, since Leah wanted to please her beloved Dat in the matter of marriage. And she was well aware of the benefits for the bridegroom, as well as for the lucky girl who would become Gideon's bride, since the smithy's son was to receive the deed to his father's sprawl of grazing land upon marriage. Of course, all this had, no doubt, played a part in the matchmaking, back when Leah and Gideon were youngsters. Not only that, but the smithy Peachey and Dat considered each other the best of friends, and Gideon was the son Dat wished he'd had.

Leah had no romantic feelings whatsoever for nineteen-year-old Gideon. Oh, he was nice looking enough with wavy brown hair that nearly matched her own and fair cheeks that blushed red when he smiled too broad. He was a good boy, right kind, hardworking, sincere and all. As a conscientious objector, he'd received an agricultural deferment, to the relief of his father and the entire community, just as had many other of their boys eighteen and older.

Leah and her sisters, and Gideon and his sisters, Adah and Dorcas, had grown up swinging on the long rope in the Peachey haymow together, and ice-skating, too, out on Blackbird Pond. She knew firsthand what a good-hearted boy Gideon was. And Adah ... one of her own dearest friends.

Yet Leah's heart belonged to Jonas Mast and there was no getting around it. Of course, no one but Sadie knew, because things of the heart were carried out in secret, the way Leah's own parents had courted and their parents before them. Now Leah eagerly awaited the day she turned sixteen. At last she would ride home from Sunday night singing with Jonas in his open buggy, slip into the house so as not to awaken the family, hear the clip-clopping of the horse as he sped home in the wee hours, all the while dreaming the sweet dreams of romantic love. Jah, October 2 couldn't come anytime too soon.

The hilly treed area known as Gobbler's Knob had never frightened young Derek Schwartz, second son of the town doctor. He was well at home in the vast confines of the shadowy jungle, notwithstanding his own mother's warning. As a lad he had purposely sought out frozen puddles to break through with a single stomp of his boot. He insisted on defying most every periphery set for him growing up, and he proceeded to live as though he planned never, ever to die.

When Derek met up with Sadie Ebersol that mid-August night, he was instantly intrigued. It happened in the village of Strasburg, where two Plain girls, in the midst of their rumschpringe-the "running-around," no-rules teen years allowed by the People prior to their children's baptism into the church-were attempting to pull the wool over several English fellows' eyes. They'd abandoned their traditional garb and prayer caps and changed into cotton skirts and short-sleeved blouses for an evening out on the town. But Derek's friend Melvin Warner, sporting a pompadour parted on the side, said right away he knew the girls were Amish. "Just look at the length of their hair ... all one length, mind you, not a hint of a wave or bangs like our girls."

Derek had taken note of the girls' thick, long hair, all right. He also noticed Sadie's roving blue eyes and the curve of her full lips when she smiled. "Doesn't matter to me if a girl's Plain or not," he told Melvin quickly. "I'm telling you, the blonde belongs to me." Almost before he'd finished his pronouncement, he rose from the table where he and his cronies-newly graduated from high school-sat drinking malted milk shakes, messing around, and waiting for some action. Standing tall, he strolled over to make small talk with the wide-eyed girls. Particularly Sadie.

Sadie never would've believed it if anyone had hinted at what might happen if she kept sneaking off to Strasburg come Friday nights. No, never. She had gone and done the selfsame thing several other times before this, discarding her long cape dress and black apron, even removing her devotional Kapp, unwinding her hair, parting it at the side instead of in the center, letting the weight of its length flow down over one shoulder. Ach, how many times in her most secret dreams had she wished ... no, longed for a handsome young man such as this, and an Englischer at that? The tall boy headed her way, across the noisy café, had the finest dark hair she thought she'd ever seen. And, glory be, he seemed to be making a beeline right for her. Jah, as she waited, Sadie knew he was intent upon her! The look in his dark eyes was spellbinding and deep, and she could not stray from his gaze no matter how hard she might've tried. He seemed vaguely familiar, too. Had she known him during her years at the Georgetown School, when she and her sisters and their young cousins and Plain friends all attended the one-room public schoolhouse not far from their farm? Her mouth felt almost too dry, and pressing her lips together, she hoped he wouldn't notice how awful nervous she was being here in town, this far away from her familiar surroundings.

Quickly she glanced down at herself, still not accustomed to this fancy getup she wore, including what Englishers called bobby socks and saddle shoes. She wondered how she looked to such a young man, really. Did he suspect she was Plain beneath her makeup and whatnot? Would he even care if he knew the truth? By the sparkle in his eyes, she was perty sure her Anabaptist heritage didn't matter just now, not one iota.

Sadie felt her heart thumping hard beneath the sheer cotton blouse, the one she'd slipped on under her customary clothes so Mamma or Leah wouldn't suspect a thing if she ever happened to get caught leaving the house after she and her sister had headed on up to bed for the night. Excitement coursed through her veins.

Continues...