Sins of a Shaker Summer

by Deborah Woodworth

  “That was the deputy’s conclusion. But I was referring more specifically to Lilian’s comment that some Mount Lebanon Believers thought there might be a special relationship between you and Patience.”

  “And did Lilian offer any evidence to support the rumor?”

  “Nay, she did not,” Rose admitted. “She sounded as if she did not believe it herself.”

  “Because it is unfounded. Patience was creative with herbal cures, and I respected her for that, but she and I could not even be called friends. What else are you wondering about me?”

  “I’m wondering how your family died.”

  Pain seared across his face, and Rose instinctively reached out, then pulled her hand back in the same movement. “I’m so sorry, Andrew, that was brutal of me, blurting it out like that. Please forgive me.”

  “You have a right to ask,” Andrew said. “And if it will help you trust me, I will tell you anything you wish to know. As for my wife and sons, there was nothing mysterious about their deaths; only unnecessary. I know the rumors—that I used my pharmaceutical knowledge to poison them, either because I could no longer support them, or I’d gone crazy after losing my job, or, according to my less charitable neighbors, because I wanted to be free of them so I could start over. None of it was true.

  “I was desperate to keep them alive and healthy. But when my job disappeared, I hadn’t been paid for two months. I’d kept working, hoping things would turn around. We used up what little savings we had, and we had no other family to turn to. We were running out of food. Inevitably, Vera and the boys all got colds. I’d saved some herbs and other items from the drugstore, so I made up cough syrups and poultices and anything else I could think of, but it wasn’t enough. By the time I’d begged a doctor to make a charity visit, they all had pneumonia. They died within days of each other.” Andrew began straightening the tins and apothecary jars on the worktable as if neatness helped him make sense of his tragedy.

  “I buried them,” he continued softly, “and then I really did go crazy for a while. I wandered the streets for days, barely knowing who I was, or caring. That’s probably how the rumors started. More than once I blamed myself for not saving my family. To some it looked like I had a guilty conscience. But it was only grief.”

  For the first time since putting her signature on the covenant, Rose deliberately broke one of the Society’s rules; she reached over and lightly touched Andrew’s hand as he stacked one herb tin on top of another. “I’m so very sorry,” she said. Andrew’s hand twitched as if she’d applied an electrical current. He raised his eyes to hers. She withdrew her hand, but not so quickly that she might insult him or take back her expression of sympathy.

  “Thank you, Rose.”

  Rose nodded, but he had already busied himself with tidying the worktable. “You may keep the jelly as long as you need to,” she said. After a few moments of silence, she turned to leave.

  “You know, there is much I love about being a Shaker,” Andrew said. Rose stopped but kept her back to him. “But I do miss the kindness of a woman’s touch.”

  Rose closed her eyes. She sent herself deep into her own breath and watched it flow in and out of her lungs. It kept her still, which was her prayer.

  “I will let you know what I find, if anything, in the herbal jelly,” Andrew said, with a casualness that sounded forced.

  “Thank you,” Rose said, and she left.

  TWENTY-ONE

  IN NEED OF QUIET, ROSE HAD JOINED THE FAMILY IN THE dwelling house dining room for evening meal. She avoided glancing toward the brethren for fear of catching Andrew’s eye. Instead, she ate slowly and prayed silently. She longed for the privacy of her retiring room. She reminded herself that one hundred years earlier, she would have had no privacy, even in her room. Privacy meant decline, so she supposed she was wrong to value it. Still, the yearning grew stronger as she piled her utensils and napkin on her empty plate.

  But privacy would have to wait. Wilhelm caught up to her as she walked back toward the Ministry House.

  “To bed so soon?” he asked. “I haven’t noticed thee laboring in the fields. What is tiring thee so?”

  “Is there something you wished to say to me, Wilhelm?” She did not turn her head to look at him, but she could sense his jaw tightening.

  “The purging ceremony,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “There has been a change of plans.”

  “Oh?” She didn’t dare hope he had decided to cancel or postpone it.

  “I no longer wish for your confession to come first,” Wilhelm said. “Andrew will go first.”

  Rose did not trust herself to speak.

  “I’m sure his confession will be of great interest to thee.” Rose could hear the smirk in his voice. “In fact, it may serve as a model for thy own confession.”

  As they approached the Ministry House, they split to enter through the separate doors. Rose hurried up her staircase to her second-floor retiring room without daring to glance back at Wilhelm.

  Rose sat at her open window far into the night. She stared at the summer stars, imagined she saw Mother Ann’s face among them, and prayed to her. Her emotions were in a jumble. She knew she had some serious thinking to do, but there wasn’t time. Either Andrew had confessed already to Wilhelm about their touch, or the elder had guessed enough to order Andrew to confess publicly. Either way, the danger was great for both of them. Their sins were tiny, but much more would be assumed, and they might both lose their positions in the Society.

  She could give up being eldress, she told herself, but she wouldn’t let Andrew be humiliated because of her. She had touched his hand, not the other way around. Wilhelm was willing to use one of the brethren as a pawn to force Rose to step down; that was all this was about.

  Well, she wouldn’t let him. However, she had only one idea for stopping him, and she had no guarantee that it would work. As it was, if she refused to participate, or to let the sisters participate, in the purging, she would never overcome the suspicions. Even dead, Patience now had more respect than Rose. She could see only one way. She had to determine how Patience and Hugo died, even if it meant more danger of embarrassment—or worse—for Andrew. If she could show that Patience did not die a martyr and an offering for North Homage’s sins, the purging need not take place. If Hugo’s death was natural and Patience’s nothing more sinister than a tragic accident, so much the better. They could all go back to their quiet lives.

  Her decision made, Rose began to droop in her rocking chair. She had very little time to accomplish her task, and she would need rest. As if she didn’t have enough to confess already, she flung her work dress over the back of a chair, instead of hanging it on a wall peg, and she fell into bed without bothering with a nightgown.

  The enforced silence at breakfast was grating on Gennie’s nerves. Rose hadn’t shown up, and everyone seemed nervous. She knew about the impending purging, of course, and had never been so glad that she had decided to leave the Society for life in the world. In the world, she could keep her secrets. Not that she had any in the world; for her, secrets began to collect, it seemed, only when she returned to North Homage.

  Gennie wanted something to do, something helpful for Rose. She couldn’t return to the Medicinal Herb Shop, and Irene wouldn’t welcome her back to the Herb House. What was left? She racked her brain until finally the sisters, almost as a body, stood to leave the dining room single file. As she reached the women’s entrance, Gennie glanced over at the brethren and noticed Willy Robinson step through the men’s door. Of course, she thought, she could talk to him all she wanted, since neither of them was a Believer.

  Rose had told her Willy’s story. If he went to work in the medic garden outside the shop, perhaps she could engage him in conversation and fill in a few blanks about his past and his reasons for being in North Homage. Beyond that, she had no plan as she ambled through the kitchen garden, casually following Willy to the Medicinal Herb Shop. As she’d hoped,
he walked past the entrance and into the surrounding herb garden.

  Forcing herself not to look eager, Gennie zigzagged through the kitchen garden, stopping now and then to bend over a squash or peer at a bean. She walked to the northern tip of the garden, which brought her nearly to the herb fields. Then she cut through the grass around the back of the Medicinal Herb Shop, so no one inside could see her.

  By the time she approached the herb garden on the east side of the Medicinal Herb Shop, Willy was on his hands and knees, pulling tiny weeds from around a flourishing sage plant. Gennie paused and watched him for a few moments. He bent close to each weed and pulled carefully, tamping down the dirt afterward. Stringy pale brown hair hung over his face, nearly covering it. She had stood for several seconds before she realized that he had raised his eyes and was staring up at her.

  Gennie flashed a smile to hide her embarrassment and picked her way over neat rows of herbs to join him. He straightened as she approached, his head sunk into his shoulders as if he expected to be disciplined.

  “Hello, Willy, I’m Gennie.” She extended her hand, and he stared at it, then at her dress, his head sinking another inch. “I’m not a Shaker sister,” she assured him. “I’m a hired hand, like you. Don’t you remember seeing me in the shop, helping Patience?”

  “You ain’t a sister?”

  “Nope,” she said, purposely using worldly language. She was beginning to feel awkward with her hand stuck out, when Willy suddenly grinned and grasped it. His grip was powerful, and Gennie winced. Willy let go immediately.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Don’t usually shake hands with a girl.”

  “No harm done. Are you weeding?” Using her long skirt as a cushion, Gennie knelt beside the sage plant Willy had been tending. It was so much easier not to worry about keeping a proper distance.

  “Do you enjoy this work?”

  Willy nodded and bent again over the ground.

  “You have a special feeling for herbs, don’t you? I mean, I can tell by how careful you are not to disturb the roots. I love herbs, too, so it’s nice to see them so well cared for.”

  She knew she was chattering, but she hoped to slide into her real questions more easily once she’d lulled him into a sense of comfortable conversation. She needn’t have worried. He glanced up at her and smiled shyly. Encouraged, she slid a few inches closer and reached for a small blade of grass that had invaded the territory around the sage plant. Imitating the movements she’d seen Willy perform, she smoothed the soil after removing the interloper. Willy’s smile widened.

  “You’re pretty,” he said.

  Oops, she thought. I tried a little too hard. She slid back on her heels and left the weeding to Willy. “I heard that you know a lot about medicinal herbs,” she said. “Why aren’t you working in the shop? They could sure use you now that Patience is gone.”

  “Who told you I know about herbs?”

  “Well, I . . . I guess I heard it from someone in the shop. Isn’t it true?”

  “Yeah, it’s true, all right. Reckon it’d be better if I didn’t know so much. Never did me much good in the end.”

  “I guess I heard something about that, too.”

  “Somebody talked a lot.”

  “Oh, you know how things get around in a small village like this.” Gennie settled herself cross-legged on the grass. She felt a little guilty getting dirt and grass stains all over her skirt, remembering what it was like to scrub laundry, especially in the summer months. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. I’m sure it wasn’t really your fault.”

  Willy’s gentle weeding turned rougher, and bits of loam sprayed Gennie’s skirt. “I never killed that man, and neither did my granny. Not on purpose, anyways.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you have any idea what really happened?”

  “Maybe we made a mistake in fixing up the cure, maybe not. Granny was gettin’ on, but she still knew her healin’, and she’d made that tonic a hundred times. I never could figure what went wrong. Now Sister Patience is gone, I’ll probably never know.”

  “You talked with Patience about what went wrong with your grandmother’s recipe?”

  “Yeah. She knew lots. She was experimenting to find out what the problem was. I remembered the recipe by heart, and I helped her get the ingredients. She said it was a good cure.”

  “You mean she didn’t have the right ingredients in the shop?”

  Willy shook his head. “I had to hunt them down. It wasn’t hard, though. I’m real good at recognizing herbs in the wild, and I found everything right here in the village.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  “Oh, you know, like deadly nightshade.”

  “You found that here? Right in North Homage?” Gennie squirmed to her feet in excitement. “Can you show me where?”

  “Well, I dunno, I’ve got to get this whole garden weeded, and—”

  “I’ll help you later.”

  Willy shook his head, with obvious regret. “Andrew’d have my hide, and I really need this job.”

  “Okay, then, tomorrow morning, early. Meet me right here a half hour before breakfast.”

  Willy grinned his agreement.

  With an effort, Rose put aside her unsettled feelings about her conversation with Andrew, and she headed for the woods behind the burned-out site of the old water house. A quick phone call had told her that Charlotte had taken the children to the secluded area for a cool outing. She was eager for the shade herself; today the air seemed to liquify as it touched her skin and clothing.

  The children were easy to find. Despite the heat, they were giggling and running through the thick maple trees, pausing now and then to chase a rabbit or squeal at a garter snake. Charlotte sat on the grass, leaning against a tree trunk, watching with half-closed eyes. She had removed her cap, and her dark blond hair lay limp and flat against her head. As she saw Rose approach, she grabbed at her cap, and Rose laughed.

  “Don’t bother on my account,” Rose said. “This heat is enough to try a saint. If my hair were short, I’d take off my cap, too.” She settled down on the grass beside Charlotte. “Besides, I’m not here to check up on you.”

  “Is it the purging?” Charlotte asked. “Oh, please tell me it’s been canceled.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What will Wilhelm think of next? Self-flagellation? I’m sorry, Rose, that was mean, but you know how I feel about all this going back to the old ways. As far as I can see, living like the angels requires us to love one another, devote our lives to worship, and work hard. Must we torture ourselves, too?” Charlotte pushed her hair back into her cap and tied it at the nape of her neck. “As if this clothing weren’t torture enough.”

  “Believe me, I sympathize. But I’m here for a different reason. I have a couple of questions about the children.”

  “Nora and Betsy have behaved themselves since their release from the Infirmary, I promise you. I make them nap in my retiring room so I can keep an eye on them.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. But I was really wondering about the Dengler girls.”

  “Janey and Marjorie? They’ve been getting into things they shouldn’t, too, haven’t they? I knew it.”

  “Have they been a problem for you?”

  “Oh, not seriously. But they are just Nora and Betsy’s ages, and the four girls often play together. When there’s mischief being done, it’s usually Nora and Betsy doing it, but now and then I’ve wondered about the Dengler sisters. Several times I’ve caught them munching on candied angelica root when I hadn’t given any to the children. I thought they might have learned some tricks from Nora and Betsy, like sneaking into the kitchen during naps for snacks. And they do both still have a few problems with bedwetting, I’m afraid. They are fearful children. Look, there they are now.” Charlotte pointed between two trees to a line of four girls, chasing each other. Nora and Betsy were in front, followed by two thin towheads.

  “I’ll just go speak to them, if you don’t mind,” Ros
e said, pushing to her feet. “Would you distract Nora and Betsy while I do? I don’t want them involved.”

  “Certainly,” Charlotte said, curiosity brightening her eyes. “Just send them to me. Sounds serious.”

  “We’ll see.” A distant roll of thunder underscored the sternness in Rose’s voice.

  She sent Nora and Betsy off to Charlotte and smiled down at the Dengler sisters, who stared at her, pale blue eyes opened wide. The girls were almost identical. One was an inch taller with a longer face; that would be Janey, the elder. Little Marjorie clutched a corncob doll to her thin chest. Rose held out a hand for each, and they shyly inserted their own small hands.

  “Let’s walk, shall we?” Rose said. “I just have a few questions to ask you, and then you can come back and play with your friends.” As she led them out of earshot, both pale heads turned to look back.

  Still holding their hands, Rose chose a shady spot and sank to the ground. The girls dropped down next to her. Marjorie began to suck her thumb, and Rose said nothing. The children were scared; that was clear. Perhaps she was more frightening than she realized. Well, that might be for the best. She had no wish to leave them terrified, but if fear made them open up more quickly, so much the better.

  “You know who I am, don’t you?” she asked.

  Both heads nodded.

  “And you know, too, that something bad happened to Nora and Betsy?”

  Janey’s lip began to tremble, and Marjorie stuck her whole thumb in her mouth.

  “I need your help to find out why your friends got sick, so no other children will get sick. Do you understand? Good, then I want each of you to tell me everything you know about what Nora and Betsy were doing the day they got sick. Janey, you start.”

  Janey stared at her, mute. Perhaps she’d been too stern. “Janey, you aren’t in any trouble, I promise you. I truly need your help. You’ll be helping everyone, including Nora and Betsy.”

  Rose heard a sucking noise and a few mumbled words. “Could you take your thumb out of your mouth, Marjorie, dear? That’s a girl. Now, what did you say?”