The Covenant Read online

  The

  Covenant

  BEVERLY

  LEWIS

  The

  Covenant

  The Covenant

  Copyright © 2002

  Beverly Lewis

  Cover design by Dan Thornberg/Eric Walljasper

  Cover photo © Blair Seitz

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

  system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic,

  mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without

  the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7642-0421-0

  ISBN-10: 0-7642-0421-1

  The Library of Congress Control Number

  for the original editions: 2002008665

  Dedication

  For

  three devoted sisters:

  Aleta Hirschberg, Iris Jones, and Judy Verhage.

  My aunties, ever dear.

  By Beverly Lewis

  ABRAM’S DAUGHTERS

  The Covenant

  The Betrayal

  The Sacrifice

  The Prodigal

  The Revelation

  THE HERITAGE OF LANCASTER COUNTY

  The Shunning • The Confession • The Reckoning

  ANNIE’S PEOPLE

  The Preacher’s Daughter

  The Englisher • The Brethren

  The Postcard •The Crossroad

  The Redemption of Sarah Cain

  October Song • Sanctuary* • The Sunroom

  The Beverly Lewis Amish Heritage Cookbook

  www.beverlylewis.com

  *with David Lewis

  Contents

  Part One

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  BEVERLY LEWIS, born in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, fondly recalls her growing-up years. A keen interest in her mother’s Plain family heritage has led Beverly to set many of her popular stories in Lancaster County.

  A former schoolteacher and accomplished pianist, Beverly is a member of the National League of American Pen Women (the Pikes Peak branch). She is the 2003 recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award at Evangel University, Springfield, Missouri. Her blockbuster novels The Shunning, The Confession, The Reckoning, and The Covenant have each received the Gold Book Award. Her bestselling novel October Song won the Silver Seal in the Benjamin Franklin Awards, and The Postcard and Sanctuary (a collaboration with her husband, David) received Silver Angel Awards, as did her picture book for all ages, Annika’s Secret Wish. Beverly and her husband make their home in the Colorado foothills.

  Part One

  Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

  A flowery band to bind us to the earth.

  —John Keats

  Prologue

  LEAH

  Growing up, I drank a bitter cup. I fought hard the notion that had I been the firstborn instead of my sister Sadie, my early years might’ve turned out far different. Fewer thorns over the pathway of years, perhaps. But then, who is ever given control over their destiny?

  When I came along my parents already had their daughter—perty, blue-eyed, and fair Sadie. Dat needed someone to help him outdoors, so taking one look at me, he decided I was of sturdier stock than my soft and willowy sister. Hence I became my father’s shadow early on, working alongside him in the fields, driving a team of mules by the time I was eight—plowing, planting, doing yard work and barn work, too, some of it as soon as I could walk and run. Mamma needed Sadie inside, doing “women’s work,” after all. And my, oh my, Sadie could clean and cook like a house a-fire. Nobody around these parts, or in all of Lancaster County for that matter, could redd up a place faster or make a tastier beef stew. But those were just two of Sadie’s many talents.

  Truth be known, my sister was at war with the world and its pleasures . . . and the Amish church. At eighteen, she was taking classes with Preacher Yoder, along with other young people preparing to follow the Lord in holy baptism, to make the lifetime vow to almighty God and the church. Yet all the while offering up her heart and soul on the altar of forbidden love.

  Still, I kept Sadie’s dreadful secret to myself. Ach, part of me longed to see her get caught and promptly rebuked. Sometimes I hated her for the unnecessary risks she seemed too willing to take, not just foolish but ever so dangerous. I was truly worried, too, especially since I was nigh unto courting age and eager to attend Sunday night singings myself when all this treachery began. What would the boys in our church district think of me if word got out about shameless Sadie?

  “Promise me, Leah,” she whispered at night when we dressed for bed. “You daresn’t ever say a word ’bout Derry. Not to anyone.”

  Even though I wished Dat and Mamma did know of Sadie’s worldly beau, I was sorely embarrassed to reveal such a revolting tale. I struggled to keep the peace between Sadie and myself, but against my better judgment. Soon, I found myself wondering just how long I could keep mum about my sister’s sinful ways. Truth be told, I wished I knew nothing at all about the dark-haired English boy my sister loved beyond all reason.

  In those early days I was forever worrying, so afraid I’d be stuck playing second fiddle to Sadie my whole life long. Living not only under the covering of my steadfast and God-fearing father, but daily abiding in the shadow of my errant elder sister. The cross I was born to bear.

  Sometimes at dusk I would slip away to the upstairs bedroom I shared with Sadie. Alone in the dim light, I gazed into a small hand mirror, looking long and hard by lantern’s light, yet not seeing the beauty others saw in me. Only the reflection of a wide-eyed tomboy stared back—a necessary substitute for a father’s son, though I was a young woman, after all. And as innocent as moonlight.

  Abram’s Leah . . .

  Clear up till my early twenties, I was identified by Dat’s first name. To English outsiders, the two names together might’ve sounded right sweet, even endearing. But any church member around here knew the truth. Jah, the People were clearly aware that Leah Ebersol was dragging her feet about marrying the man her father had picked out for her. So because I was stubborn, I was in danger of becoming a maidel—in short, a maiden lady like Aunt Lizzie Brenneman, although she was anything but glum about her state in life. For most young women, not marrying meant denying one’s emotions, but not Lizzie. She was as cheerful and alive as anyone I’d ever known.

  As for Abram’s Leah, well, I possessed determination. “Grit . . . with a lip,” Dat often said of me. And I do remember that I had a good bit of courage
, too. Never could just stand by tight-mouthed, overhearing the womenfolk speculate on “Abram’s rough-’n’-tumble girl”—them looking clear down their noses at me just ’cause I wasn’t indoors baking pies or doing needlework. Goodness, that’s how Sadie spent her time . . . and Hannah and Mary Ruth, and of course, Mamma.

  Puh! ’Twas Dat’s fault I wasn’t indoors making ready for supper and whatnot. I was too busy with farm chores—milking cows twice a day, raising chickens for both egg gathering and, later, dressing them to sell. Whitewashing fences, too. Oh, and sweeping that big old barn out in nothing flat every Saturday. I wasn’t one to mince words back then. I was as hardworking as the next person. Just maybe more practical than most young women, I ’spect. Sometimes I even wore work trousers under my long dress so dust from the haymow or mosquitoes from the cornfield wouldn’t wander up my legs of a summer. Come to think of it, my second cousin, Jonas Mast, was the boy responsible for sneaking the britches to me—promised to keep the deed to himself, too.

  Ach, I was a lot of spunk in those days. A lot of talk, too. But now I try to mind my p’s and q’s, make apricot jam and pear butter for English customers, and get out and weed my patch of Zenith hybrid zinnias—purple, yellow, and green—in my backyard. More often than not, I find myself saying evening prayers without fail.

  ’Course now, nearly all that matters in life is the memories. Dear, dear Mamma and unyielding Dat. Kindhearted Aunt Lizzie. Happy-go-lucky Mary Ruth and her too-serious twin, Hannah—competitive yet connected all the same by invisible cords of the heart. And Sadie . . . well, perty is as perty does. The four of us, Plain sisters, attempting to live out our lives under the watchful eye of the Lord God heavenly Father and the church.

  Ofttimes now before twilight falls, when the sun’s last rays shift slowly down over the golden meadow, if I step outside on my little front porch and let my thoughts stray back, I can hear a thousand echoes from the years. Like a field sprinkled with lightning bugs, they come one by one. Bright as a springtime morning, radiant as a pure white lily. Others come tarnished, nearly swallowed up by blackness, flickering too hastily, overzealous little lights . . . then gone.

  The night air seems to call to me. And though I am a sensible grown woman, I surrender to its urging. A vast landscape in my mind seems to reach on without end as I peer across the shadows into another world. Another universe, seems now. There I see a mirrored image that I treasure above all else—the reflection of a smiling, thoughtful young man, his adoring gaze capturing my heart on the day our eyes locked across a long dinner table, when all of us spent Second Christmas with Mamma’s cousins over near Grasshopper Level. ’Twas a red-letter day, though Dat soon made me want to forget I had ever smiled back.

  A lifetime ago, to be sure. These days, I simply breathe silent questions to the wind: My beloved, what things do you recall? Will you ever know that I am and always will be your Leah? . . . daughter of Abram, sister of Sadie, child of God.

  Chapter One

  SUMMER 1946

  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 happen
ed 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.