“Oh, Rose,” she said, with a self-conscious laugh. “The girls are resting, and I thought I’d get a head start on my teaching for the fall. But I must have fallen asleep. I’m so sorry. This heat . . .”
Rose laughed, too—a welcome moment of release. “I believe I speak for Mother Ann and all Believers,” she said, “when I assure you that you are forgiven.”
Charlotte grinned as she ran her fingers through her tousled hair and pushed it back into her cap, which she tied at the nape of her neck.
“What is it? What has happened?” she asked as Rose’s smile dissolved.
“Nora and Betsy sneaked out of their rooms.”
“Those two! This isn’t the first time, you know. I’ll give them a good talking-to, you can count on that.” Charlotte stood and shook out her wrinkled dress.
“I fear it might be some time before you’ll be able to have that talk. They’ve gotten into something and made themselves ill.”
“Oh dear. Very ill?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“It’s my fault,” Charlotte said, dropping back in her chair. “I should have known; I should have watched more carefully. Are they going to be all right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dear God.”
“Indeed. Charlotte, I need to know what those girls might have touched or eaten. You said they’ve sneaked off before. Do you have any idea where they’ve gone?”
“Nay, I’ve never been able to catch them at it, the clever little creatures.” Charlotte’s stern tone held a hint of admiration. “Each time they’ve ‘just been to the bathroom’ or ‘down in the kitchen,’ and I haven’t been able to disprove it. But it’s always the two of them at the same time, so I know they’re up to something.”
The hall telephone jangled, and Rose heard a young voice answer.
“Are the children finished with their naps?” Rose asked Charlotte.
“Yea, it sounds as if they’re up and about.”
“Then let’s ask them if they know anything about Nora and Betsy’s adventures, shall we?”
As Rose turned to the door, a girl of about seven, clutching a corncob doll, peeked inside. “Sister Charlotte? Sister Josie says to tell Eldress to get back over to the Infirmary right away.” She smiled shyly at Rose.
“Thank you, Marjorie. Did she say why?” Charlotte asked.
The girl shook her head. “Nay, I think it was a secret.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because she was whispering.”
Leaving Charlotte to question the children about Nora and Betsy, Rose rushed back to the Infirmary. As she crossed the central path, Elder Wilhelm’s muscular body and shock of white hair disappeared through the Infirmary door. She felt her jaw tighten as she wondered how Wilhelm would turn this tragedy into a criticism of her competence as eldress. He hoped to replace her with someone who thought as he did—someone who would support his efforts to take the Society back to the early nineteenth century, when novitiates signed the covenant and crowded into dwelling houses as fast as the brethren could build them. It was because of Wilhelm that North Homage Believers wore traditional dress, which other Shaker villages had modernized or even abandoned.
Rose assumed that one or both girls had taken a turn for the worse, and she expected flurried activity around their beds, but what she saw when she entered the sickroom sent a flash of fear through her heart. Three sisters had joined Josie on one side of Nora’s bed, while Andrew and Wilhelm stood on the other side, their backs to Rose. She rushed forward, convinced she was viewing a deathbed scene. But when she reached Nora, she saw one sister bent over the bed, both hands covering the child’s face.
Sister Patience McCormick’s deep voice half-sung what sounded like a prayer. At least, to Rose it seemed to have the rhythm of a prayer, though she heard only an occasional word in English. Rose had finished the Shaker school system and left the Children’s Order by the age of fourteen, more than two decades earlier, so she had little experience with other languages, except what she had learned from visiting businessmen during her ten years as trustee. She thought she recognized a few French words, a little German, and some Latin.
Startled by a familiar clumping sound, Rose glanced toward the entrance to the sickroom. Sister Elsa Pike planted her sturdy body just inside the doorway. Her round, flat-featured face exuded suspicion.
“I heard one of them girls got into something she shouldn’t’ve,” Elsa announced, “so I come right over. If it’s anything grows around here, plant or animal, I’ll know what to do.” She brushed past the sisters to the foot of Nora’s bed.
Rose clenched her hands around the sides of the cradle bed. Perhaps her reaction was instinctive—whenever Elsa entered a room, Rose prepared for battle. This battle, she feared, would be fought over a helpless eight-year-old child. She was certain that Elsa had somehow heard about a healing in progress and raced over to interrupt. Elsa considered the gifts of the spirit to be her own private domain.
Ignoring the drama unfolding next to her, Elsa grabbed Nora’s foot and shook it, as if she were awakening the child from slumber.
Patience did not flinch, but her tone became louder, more insistent. A drop of perspiration traveled down the side of her flushed face. Her eyes flew open and she began to tremble as if electric shocks pulsed through her body. Wisps of gray-streaked black hair pulled free of her cap.
“Mother Ann is among us,” she said in a raspy voice. “She has come to heal this innocent child. From our Mother’s heart through my hands, may this child be healed!” She stroked Nora’s face over and over. Now not even Elsa stirred. When Rose became light-headed, she realized she had stopped breathing.
Nora twitched violently, then grew still. She seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep.
“She is healed,” Patience whispered, stepping back from the bed. The slow blinking of her eyes betrayed her own exhaustion. Without another word, she left the room.
After a few moments of silence, Josie drew her hand across Nora’s forehead, then felt for her pulse.
“She does seem better,” Josie said.
“Can you be certain she is truly out of danger?” Rose asked. Wilhelm narrowed his eyes at her, but she ignored him.
“Well, her pulse does feel a bit stronger,” Josie said.
“But you can’t be sure?” Rose asked.
Josie shrugged. “I can’t, of course, but . . . Nay, I can’t be sure that she is healed.”
“This ain’t no healing,” Elsa said, snorting in derision. “That girl will be sick as ever come nighttime, just wait and see.”
THREE
“WALK BACK TO THE FIELDS WITH ME,” WILHELM COMMANDED. “We must discuss how to proceed.”
A private chat with Wilhelm usually gave Rose an aching head, but she was curious about his reaction to Patience and her apparent healing of Nora. Certainly healing was one of the gifts of the spirit possessed by their foundress, Mother Ann, and by many early Shakers. Wilhelm longed for the gifts to reappear in North Homage. His longing was so ardent that he had allowed himself to be duped in the past.
They walked in silence down the village’s central path, past the Meetinghouse and the Ministry House. The Shakers frowned upon private conversations between men and women, but as elder and eldress, Rose and Wilhelm were expected to consult often about Society concerns. Even so, Rose took care not to walk too close. In truth, she felt more comfortable at a distance from Wilhelm.
“We must find ways to cultivate this gift that Patience has shown,” Wilhelm said as they passed the barn and stepped into the first fields east of the village. A narrow path ran through the half-grown rows of sweet corn to allow workers and horses quick access to farther-flung acres. Rose walked behind Wilhelm to keep enough space between them.
“If her gift is true, then surely it will simply emerge,” Rose said.
“Nay, we must encourage it, give it opportunities to grow and mature.”
“Are you sugg
esting we poison a few more Believers so Patience can practice her technique?” Rose knew at once that keeping such thoughts to herself would be wiser, and she vowed to curb her tongue next time. Or at least to try.
Wilhelm did not turn to glare at her, but she saw the muscles in his neck bunch. “Thy levity, as usual, is ill timed,” he said. “But then, the future of the Society has never been of great concern to thee, has it?” Wilhelm and Elsa were the only North Homage Believers to use the archaic “thee” instead of “you,” and to Rose it seemed the word was always couched in an insult.
“Even if Patience has the gift of healing, the Society’s future does not depend on her; it depends on us all and on God,” she said in a clipped voice.
“Yea, it depends on us, on our ability to listen and understand when God speaks. God is speaking through Patience. He has given her healing hands, and maybe other gifts as well. It is up to us to hear the message and welcome the messenger.”
Rose kept silent. His words had meaning for her, though she was unconvinced as yet about the reality of Patience’s gift. Wilhelm seemed unconcerned about the girls’ survival, because he believed in the healing. Rose required more evidence.
“We shall have Patience lead the dancing at Sunday worship,” Wilhelm said.
“Certainly I have no objections to that,” Rose said, ignoring the fact that Wilhelm had not asked her opinion. “But I wonder how Elsa will react.”
“She will be glad for the Society, naturally,” Wilhelm said.
Rose held her tongue this time, though she suspected that Elsa’s prideful nature would balk at letting another sister gather too much attention during dancing worship. As if reading her thoughts, Wilhelm stopped and faced her.
“Now that I think of it,” he said, an unsettling gleam in his eye, “watching Patience develop her gifts might help Elsa refine her own. Furthermore, I believe we should open the worship service to the world again.”
“Wilhelm, I think that is unwise.”
“It is time,” Wilhelm said. “It is time we showed ourselves again to the world.” He left Rose standing amidst the young corn, an all-too-familiar dread rising in her chest.
By midafternoon the steamy air in the Laundry felt heavy enough to sweep aside. Rose decided to make her visit quick. She found Gretchen, the Laundry Deaconess, pulling wet clothes out of a large washing machine. Her loose sleeves were rolled high above her elbows, and perspiration formed dark patches on her cotton dress.
“Where are the others?” Rose asked. “Surely they aren’t upstairs, not in this heat.”
“Nay,” Gretchen said, “I’ve sent them all to deliver clean laundry and then to their retiring rooms for a rest. We’d had one fainting already, and I didn’t want to risk more.”
In the summer, laundry was done as simply as possible, without benefit of the upstairs ironing room, where clothes were hung on steam-pipe drying racks and exposed to pumped-in heat from the downstairs boiler. On sultry days such as this one, temperatures in the ironing room soared to levels neither God nor Wilhelm would expect Believers to endure.
“Let me help you with that,” Rose offered.
“I won’t object,” Gretchen said. “This is the last load for today, and the sooner we get these hung up, the sooner I can splash some cold water on my face.”
Together they carried the heavy basket through the back door to the rows of clotheslines.
“I suppose you want to ask about Nora and Betsy?” Gretchen asked.
Rose nodded as she accepted a handful of clothespins and pulled a damp brown work shirt from the basket.
“I found them right between the Center Family house and the Trustees’ Office. They were both lying in the grass, and Nora was babbling something about angels and monsters and tea.”
“Could you tell where they’d come from?”
“Nay, but I wondered if they’d been in the Center Family house. With no one there, except in the kitchen, they could have sneaked into the root cellar to play. I’m sure it’s lovely and cool down there.” Her clothespin hovered above a blue sleeve, her eyes faraway as if imagining the coolness.
“When we’ve finished here, go straight to your retiring room and rest with a cool cloth on your forehead,” Rose ordered.
“On any other day, I’d argue with you,” Gretchen said, “but today I’ll just say a fervent thank-you.”
“Not too fervent,” Rose said, “or you’ll melt.”
The Society’s root cellar was a large room under the Center Family Dwelling House. Two stairways led down to it—one from the kitchen and another from a storage area at the north end of the building. Since the kitchen garden surrounded the north and east sides, Rose thought it possible that the children might have picked some herbs and taken them down to the root cellar to play. She couldn’t imagine what culinary herb could have made them so ill. Perhaps they had risked sneaking into the nearby medic garden, but surely someone would have seen them.
Rose walked all the way around the large limestone building, looking for telltale bits of discarded plants, but she saw nothing. Of course, anything out of place would be cleared away by passing Believers. She returned to the front of the dwelling house and entered by the sisters’ doorway. Her gaze on the floor, she walked between the separate staircases for sisters and brethren, past the kitchen entrance, all the way to the back of the building. No leaf or clump of dirt marred the neatness of the floor or the stairs down to the root cellar.
The cellar itself would need a more thorough cleaning before the fall, when potatoes and squash would be brought in for storage and winter use. By this time of the year, most of their stores had been used up. Much of what remained had withered or rotted and been tossed out. Despite the earthy air, the coolness tempted Rose to tidy up for a while. But she resisted. She saw no sign that children had used the room as a play area, and Nora’s and Betsy’s lives might depend on identifying, as quickly as possible, what they might have ingested.
On her way to the stairs, Rose peeked into a side room lined with shelves. Two areas held canning jars. One section contained dwindling rows of string beans, beets, and pickles in dusty glass jars. The other area, on the opposite side of the room, was beginning to fill with jellies in pale hues. Rose went closer to read the labels: rose-petal, violet, and peppermint jellies. Just reading the names made her tongue tingle. Was this more experimentation? She had certainly lost contact with work assignments since leaving the trustee position in Andrew’s hands.
Rose emerged from the staircase leading back to the kitchen, startling the kitchen sisters hard at work beginning preparations for the evening meal. The huge cast-iron stove was unlit; given the heat, the meal was to be cold and light—a large salad, iced potato soup, pickles, and bread.
“Sorry, Gertrude, I didn’t mean to pop out at you so suddenly,” Rose said, as the Kitchen Deaconess squeaked and hopped backward at seeing her.
“Goodness,” Gertrude said, fanning her flushed face with a large hand. “Goodness, goodness. What were you doing down in the root cellar? There’s almost nothing down there now but blessedly cool air. Honestly, I’ve been wanting to move the kitchen downstairs before we all melt into puddles on the floor.” Before the last words were out of her mouth, Gertrude had spun back to the large worktable and begun ripping chunks of greens into a bowl. The lettuce had bolted in the heat, so she was using mustard greens and young cabbage. Rose selected a cabbage and began to help.
“I wondered if Nora and Betsy had by any chance been playing downstairs, perhaps with some herbs from the medic garden or something else that might have made them sick.”
“Nay, I don’t think so,” Gertrude said. “At least, we’ve never seen or heard them. Someone would have told me.”
“Will you ask the others for me?”
“Certainly.”
Rose gathered a handful of curly mustard greens and ripped them into bite-sized pieces. “I noticed some interesting new jellies downstairs,” she said.
“Aren’t they lovely?” Gertrude said.
“Andrew’s idea?”
“Certainly not! Andrew has no interest in culinary herbs. He’s even using more of the herb crop for medicines and leaving us less for cooking than we used to have, and I, for one, am quite disappointed. We Believers are known for our cooking, and we’ve always sold wonderfully flavorful herbs to hotels all over, haven’t we? Well, I just thought I’d show him a thing or two about our cooking herbs. Those new jellies came from us, the kitchen sisters. We all put our heads together and came up with some very tasty ideas, if you’ll forgive us our pride.” The last was said with a quick glance at Rose, who smiled to show there was nothing to forgive.
“Has Patience shown any interest in culinary herbs?”
“That one? Not likely. She isn’t interested in anything but her precious experiments. And those so-called gifts of hers, of course.” Again she darted an uncertain glance at Rose, who was in a quandary. She wanted all the information she could get about the Medicinal Herb Shop workers, but she would be condoning gossip. With reluctance and a stinging conscience, she decided that information, just now, was more important than living as the angels.
“You think her gifts are false?” she asked.
Gertrude sniffed. “I shouldn’t judge, I know, but it just doesn’t seem right to me. She isn’t the sort of person Holy Mother Wisdom would endow with gifts, that’s my opinion. She’s . . . she’s mean-spirited.”
“Why do you say that?”
Gertrude’s lips hardened into a straight line, and she ripped away at her cabbage as if it had to be killed before it could be eaten. To Rose’s surprise and dismay, a row of tears gathered along her bottom eyelids. “I’m very proud of this kitchen, and my kitchen sisters, and all the work we do. Why, without our work, this Society wouldn’t even survive, would it?”
Sins of a Shaker Summer Page 2
