Sister Berdine reached across the row to touch her hand. “Of course you do. But if he does not return from the war—and don’t you think he would have already if he were coming back to you—then you can open your heart to love another.”
Sheriff Brodie’s face popped into her mind. Carlyn looked down to hide the blush crawling up into her cheeks.
Sister Berdine bent low over the bean row to peer at Carlyn’s face. “It is good to know you have the natural feelings a woman was created by the Lord to have.”
“The Shakers say such feelings are sinful.”
“Words are easy to say. Feelings are not as easy to deny, and I haven’t been convinced the Lord wants us to deny them.” She picked a few beans. “Besides, we both know we aren’t here because we have swallowed the Shaker idea of celibacy. We are here because we were penniless with no good way to change that. But perhaps you are considering a better way open to you and that is what colors your face.” She bent to look directly at Carlyn again with a questioning look.
“Nay, I have no other way. I am married still.”
“Odd to cling to the idea of being married here where such unions are condemned,” Sister Berdine murmured. “Although some of the sisters I’ve talked to seem quite content to have their husbands as brothers instead of bedmates now. They tell me the union of matrimony can get tedious as the years pass. That I would not know, but would not mind finding out.”
“I did not find marriage tedious.”
“Then it is no wonder that you might wish to return to that happiness.”
“That is not a choice open to me.” With only a second’s hesitation, she added, “Which I have not once considered.”
And she had not. While it was true she had thought of the sheriff often since she’d come to the Shaker village, that was simply because of his kindness in taking Asher. It was Asher that made her wonder about the sheriff. Asher she wished to see.
Can you not be truthful? Sister Edna’s question echoed in her head. Perhaps the sister was right. She couldn’t even be truthful in her own thoughts. But that didn’t mean she was going to be unfaithful to Ambrose. Not as long as she did not know whether he lived or died. She shut her eyes to pull up the memory of his face. He seemed more distant from her since she’d come into the Shaker village. But that had nothing to do with Sheriff Brodie. It had only to do with her giving up her former life and embracing a future without the love she’d known with Ambrose.
“Not once?” Sister Berdine didn’t wait for her to answer. “I think your face tells another story. Is it one of the brothers here that has attracted your eye?”
“Nay. I told you I’ve barely noticed the brothers here.”
“I am not so good. I notice everything. And there is this one brother I’ve noted who seems to let his eyes drift my way and linger there whenever we are in the same room.” Sister Berdine touched her bonnet. “I think he likes the way I look in my cap and apron.”
Carlyn couldn’t keep from smiling then, partly with relief that Sister Berdine was not probing for answers Carlyn did not know. “But do you like the way he looks in a Shaker hat?”
“I am not concerned with his hat. As long as he wears trousers I like the way he looks.”
Carlyn laughed. “Don’t you dare run away in the middle of the night with some brother without telling me.”
“Worry not. Should that happen, I’ll be asking you to pinch me to be sure I’m not dreaming.” Sister Berdine began stripping off the bean pods with quicker fingers. “But now we’d best be busy. That certain sister is giving us the eye. She does not look happy.”
“Have you ever seen her happy?” Carlyn bent to her task.
“Nay, but then I have only been here a few months.”
Carlyn hid her smile as she pulled the dried pods from the bean vines. It was good to have Sister Berdine working beside her. Carlyn stood to move up the row. Other sisters were bent to the task of picking the beans. It was not a bad thing to be surrounded by sisters ready with smiles and helping hands. She let her eyes drift out to the road. Whatever Curt Whitlow was talking about with Brother Henry, he couldn’t touch her here. She was safe as long as she stayed among her sisters.
She looked toward the end of the garden expecting to see Sister Edna frowning at Carlyn for taking such a long pause from her labors, but instead she too was peering out toward the road, her hands in her lap while beans waited to be hulled in the basket beside her. Carlyn wondered what questions she might be pondering. It was strange thinking of Sister Edna as someone with her own worries and perhaps sorrows, instead of simply an impossible-to-please taskmaster. Perhaps Carlyn should try to think of her as a sister the same as Sister Berdine and the others around her.
But then Sister Edna turned her eyes back to the garden. When she saw Carlyn watching her, a frown darkened her face. Carlyn bent back to her task as the woman started up off the bench under the tree, no doubt ready to scold Carlyn’s lack of industry. She was not a sister easy to love.
One of her mother’s Scripture lessons came to Carlyn. Something about there being nothing special about loving those who loved you. The true test of Christian love was to offer love freely to those who were hard to love. She was surely being tested with Sister Edna.
By the time they finished the last row, dark ominous clouds lined the western horizon.
Perhaps Sister Edna was right. Clouds did always come in life, and no matter how one hid, the storms still came. Thunder rumbled nearer while they were eating the evening meal, and when they went to the upper room to practice the worship songs and dances, lightning flashed eerie shadows on the wall.
Sister Edna had not yet allowed Carlyn to join in with the dances. A wrong step by a novitiate messed up everything, as the dances were often intricate patterns of back-and-forth movements with lines of the men and women passing each other but not touching.
Sister Berdine was sometimes allowed to participate, but this evening, she claimed a sore back and stood with the watchers. It was not the back that was her problem, but the storm raging outside. With each crack of thunder, she clutched Carlyn’s arm a bit tighter.
“Do they not hear that?” Sister Berdine’s eyes were wide. “We would be safer hidden under our bedcovers.”
Sister Edna stepped up beside them in time to hear her last words. “Worry not. You have no reason to be frightened. Mother Ann will watch over us as long as we are engaged in our proper duties.”
“Yea.” Sister Berdine waited until Sister Edna moved away to whisper. “But we would be safer in our beds.” She let out a little shriek when a crash of thunder shook the windows.
“She is right.” Carlyn patted her hand. “In here, we are safe from the storm.”
Sister Berdine gave her a wondering look. “Are you not afraid, Sister Carlyn?”
“Not of nature’s storms.” Carlyn watched the lightning flash outside the window and thought of Asher. “But the thunder bothered my dog. He was afraid of little else, but storms made him tremble.” She hoped the sheriff was letting him sleep by his bed on this night and hadn’t fastened him somewhere out in the storm.
The thunder had let up by the time they went down to their retiring room, but Sister Berdine barely let her knees touch the floor for her night prayers before she was burrowing down in her bed. The Shaker beds were narrow with little softness, and Sister Edna insisted the proper Shaker slept on her back with her legs and arms stretched out straight like a corpse. Another of the Shaker rules that made little sense to Carlyn. All that did was make for plentiful snoring in the room, the loudest of which came from Sister Edna. That was not all bad, for as soon as they heard Sister Edna snoring, they were able to turn and curl however they pleased under their covers.
This night Carlyn was slow to go to sleep in spite of the weariness of her muscles. Thoughts flashed through her mind like the lightning outside the window. Curt Whitlow in the village. Sister Edna demanding she confess sin. Sister Berdine’s talk in the garden. The s
torm. Asher, and yes, the man he was with.
“Oh Ambrose, if I only knew where you were.” She whispered the words into the dark air over her bed. “I loved you so much.”
Once again, just as in the garden, she realized she’d spoken of her love for Ambrose as in the past. Her heart could no longer keep him alive in her mind. He had been gone too long. Missing. What a dreadful word. Not alive. Not dead. Missing.
Just as Sister Berdine had done earlier, Carlyn pulled the cover up over her head. While she was not frightened by the thunder and lightning outside, she did want to hide from the storms in her heart. At last, she slept.
In the midnight hours, the Centre House bell began to clang. Again and again. Rousing them with warning in the sound.
16
Sister Alice was first out of bed to push up the window to see why the bell was ringing. “Fire!” she shouted as smoke swept in on the wind.
“What burns?” Sister Edna demanded from her bed on the other side of the room.
“The barn.”
Carlyn and several other sisters squeezed in around Sister Alice to peer out the window with her. Flames leaped up through the roof of the barn behind their house. The barn visible from the garden where they’d been working.
“Why won’t those of the world stop tormenting us?” Sister Edna said.
“You think someone set the fire on purpose?” Carlyn turned to Sister Edna.
“Yea.” Sister Edna was on her feet now.
“Why? Couldn’t it have been the storm?”
“It is not time for questions, Sister Carlyn. It is time for action, but be assured this is not the first barn torched by those of the world who envy the peace we have here.” Sister Edna reached for her dress. “Now stop gawking out the window and get dressed. We will be needed to fight the fire.”
“That fire is past fighting.” Sister Alice leaned back out the window as though pulled by the sight of the flames. She had been a Shaker longer than any of the others in the room besides Sister Edna. “The seeds we’ve been harvesting weren’t stored in that barn, were they?”
The sisters who’d worked alongside Carlyn and Sister Berdine in the garden groaned at the thought.
“Think not about seeds, Sisters.” Sister Edna said. “Think more of stopping the fire before it spreads.”
“Our house won’t burn, will it?” Sister Marie, the youngest sister in their sleeping room, sounded ready to cry.
“Nay, the brothers will put out the fire.” Sister Alice put a comforting hand on the girl’s cheek. “With our help.”
The bell ceased tolling, but there was no silence. The night was filled with the crackle of flames and shouts as Shakers spilled out of the houses. Carlyn pulled her dress over her head. The panicked whinnies of a horse sent a chill through her.
“Are horses stabled in that barn?” she asked no one in particular.
“Yea,” Sister Alice answered. “In my time here, I have often seen Brother Henry taking them in and out of the barn.”
“Brother Henry?” Carlyn paused in tying her apron around her waist. That name. The Shaker brother who’d been arguing with Curt Whitlow on the pathways earlier that day. When she looked up, Sister Edna was staring across the room at her.
Sister Alice spoke first. “Brother Henry is very devoted to his horses. He will be sorrowful if all of them do not escape the fire.”
“There is much to be sorrowful about,” Sister Edna spoke up. “The devil is loose amongst us tonight.” Her eyes bored into Carlyn before she turned to lead them outside.
The devil. The words echoed in Carlyn’s thoughts along with Curt’s laugh. But Sister Edna hadn’t heard Brother Henry accuse Curt of being the devil. And when she remembered what Brother Henry said, he was repeating someone else’s words and not his own. None of this could have anything to do with her. It couldn’t. Not the fire. Not Curt’s harsh words to Brother Henry. It was nothing more than happenstance that she had overheard them.
A hot wind full of ash and smoke met them on the pathway. Sister Marie began whimpering again and even a stern word from Sister Edna couldn’t stop her. Sister Berdine put her arm around the young sister and whispered something that helped Sister Marie swallow her tears and keep following after Sister Edna. She wasn’t the only one bothered by the fire. Many of the faces looked fearful as they formed a bucket brigade.
Sister Alice was right. There was no saving the barn. A few brethren led some horses away from the fire. One of them reared up and pawed the air when an unearthly scream came from within the barn. More horses must be inside.
Carlyn’s stomach turned over. A young Shaker brother ran toward the barn, but older, wiser men held him back. It would be suicide to go into those flames. Finally the animal’s screams stopped and Carlyn was glad even though she knew what that meant.
They passed bucket after bucket of water forward to douse the flames. It was no longer raining, but it was impossible to know if the clouds were gone. Smoke billowed up into the sky and dropped down around the workers. Carlyn stood in line with the other sisters and tried to think of nothing except taking hold of each bucket of water and passing it to the next person in line, over and over. The back of her dress was wet with sweat and her skirt soaked from water splashing from the buckets. But she couldn’t keep her eyes away from the flames dancing greedily as they ate the barn.
Then as the fire began to die back, they stopped passing the buckets of water and Sister Edna gathered her charges around her like a mother hen seeing to her chicks. “There are men from the world among us.”
“You mean those you think set the fire?” Carlyn asked.
“Perhaps.” Sister Edna looked grim. “That is hard to know without a witness to see. But our neighbors have been attracted by the flames and come to gloat.”
“They may have come to help.”
“We need no help from the likes of them.” Sister Edna turned her eyes from the fire to Carlyn. “You are too soon from the world. You carry the smell of it on you yet, even as we will carry the smell of smoke back to our houses. It is not a pleasant odor.”
“I have nothing to do with the fire.” Carlyn looked from Sister Edna to where the flames seemed content now to slowly devour the remaining wood in the barn. Black smoke settled around them and Carlyn lifted her apron up over her nose to filter the air.
Sister Edna seemed unbothered. “How long have you been among us, Sister?”
“Two weeks.”
“And in that time, we have had strangers in our midst causing unrest, and now this.” Sister Edna looked back at the barn.
Carlyn was speechless. Sister Edna was determined to find fault with her. No words were going to change that on this night while the fire licked up the remains of the barn. If only Carlyn could go back to their room, fall down on her bed, and pull the cover over her head again. Shut it all away.
But there would be no more rest this night. Dawn was spreading a gray light across the village, revealing the buildings beyond the reach of the fire’s glow. Daylight made it easier to see those watching the fire and to pick out the ones who did not belong in the Shaker village.
“Do you see him here?” Sister Edna swept her arm out toward the men nearer the fire.
“Who?” Carlyn asked, although she knew the person the sister meant.
“The man you saw speaking to Brother Henry yesterday.” Sister Edna’s eyes came back to Carlyn.
Carlyn started to say he wouldn’t be here, but then she hadn’t thought he would be there yesterday either. She looked at the men, but none carried Curt’s girth. “Nay, I do not see him.”
“Nor do I see Brother Henry,” Sister Edna said. “That is odd. As Sister Alice said, our brother does treasure his horses.”
“Perhaps he is with those horses,” Sister Berdine said.
“That is my worry.” Sister Edna’s frown grew darker. “Stay here and pray while I find out.”
They were silent until Sister Edna was several steps away, but th
en several sisters spoke at once. Sister Berdine held up her hand to stop them as she kept her voice low. “We’d best whisper to avoid trouble. Sister Edna’s ears are sharp.”
“Yea,” Sister Alice agreed as she stepped closer to Sister Berdine. “But she can’t think Brother Henry is . . .” She stopped as though unable to finish the thought.
“In there?” Sister Marie’s eyes widened as she looked toward what was left of the barn.
“Nay, she cannot know that,” Sister Berdine said. “It is more likely as I said—that he is with the horses they rescued from the fire.”
“But they didn’t rescue all of them,” one of the other sisters said. “I’ve never heard anything like that sound. That horse.”
Carlyn shuddered as they all fell silent.
“We should pray as Sister Edna said.” Sister Alice reached for the hands of the sisters nearest her.
They joined hands then and bent their heads in silent prayer. Carlyn held Sister Berdine’s and Sister Hallie’s hands and bent her head like them, but she couldn’t still the questions in her mind enough to pray.
Was Sister Edna right? Could Curt Whitlow be the reason for their trouble? And could that be because of her?
After Sister Alice signaled the end of their prayer time with a quiet amen, Carlyn moved away from the others to look around again. She wasn’t sure she would be able to pick out Brother Henry among the Shaker men. The brothers looked so alike with their hats on. He’d been slim and not as tall as Curt, but that was a description that fit many men.
“Who was Sister Edna talking about?” Sister Berdine stepped up beside Carlyn. “A man from the world?”
“The man I owed on my house was in the village yesterday talking to Brother Henry.” She had no reason to keep that secret. “I happened up on them when I was coming back to the garden and heard them arguing.”
“Do you think that has anything to do with this?” Sister Berdine gestured toward the barn.
“Nay. That man would not be sneaking around in the night setting fires.” Carlyn was sure of that. However, he might slip around and try to do other things just as wrong. Carlyn pulled in her breath. She had no reason to worry about him. Not here surrounded by sisters. “Sister Edna must be wrong. It surely was a lightning strike.”
The Innocent Page 13
