“I’ve been in touch with the lead Society,” Wilhelm said. “One of their own younger brethren is right for trustee. They will send him from New York whenever we request him.”
Rose leaned forward over her forgotten vegetable pie. “Wilhelm, I’m sure he is valuable to Mount Lebanon. Why send for someone new when we have several sisters who could—”
“Thy place is here, now. The Society needs an eldress who will focus wholly on her duty and not be lingering at her former position. North Homage needs thee in the Ministry House, not the Trustees’ Office. If trustee is a more comfortable position for thee, then go back to it, and I’ll bring in a new eldress. We must act now. We must stop the flood of Believers leaving the Society.” Wilhelm pointed his fork at Rose. “Why, there are fewer Believers remaining here than cursed apostates gathered in Languor. These are dangerous times for us. We need strong leadership to preserve our faith and our ways. If the task is too great for thee, then step down and let others who are stronger take charge.”
After a session of quiet prayer, Rose ended her long, unsettling day by sinking into the rocking chair in the outer chamber of her retiring room. She spread a soft wool blanket around her knees. Hugo, the Society’s carpenter before he’d begun to go blind, had designed and built the chair to fit Rose’s tall, lean body, and over the years it seemed to have molded itself to her bones. She relaxed against the slats and rocked gently.
This room always calmed her. Its south and east windows afforded her almost a complete view of the village, though she was rarely here during daylight hours. The furnishings were simple and spare, as befit a Believer’s quarters. The room held a simple oak desk lined with her journals, a wooden desk chair, and the small table at her elbow. Small wooden doors hid storage spaces built into the wall. From the pegs circling the room hung an extra ladder-back chair, a flat broom, and her heavy wool Dorothy cloak.
Nothing in the room truly belonged to Rose. Since they contained some community records woven among her own observations, she considered even her journals to be community property. It felt right to her. She knew, too, that it was time for her to leave these rooms behind and move to the Ministry to be eldress in earnest. Wilhelm had tossed her a challenge she could not ignore. No matter how greatly—and how frequently—they disagreed, Wilhelm was strong and far more experienced than she. In calmer moments, she knew that when he fought with her it was out of his fierce love for the Society. She would find a way to work with him.
Rose glanced down at the journal spread open on her lap, one of the stack of thirteen she had removed from Agatha’s sickroom. She had read through two volumes already and found nothing helpful. This one was dated 1910. Firm handwriting filled the page with clear, rounded letters. The gentle, earnest style triggered memories of Agatha as she had been before age and repeated strokes had sapped her strength.
Agatha had been eldress of North Homage for thirty-five years, and she had so many journals that most had been packed away in storage. Where on earth did she get the time and energy to write so much? Rose made a few notations a day in her own journal, but she was happier working than writing.
It was late and Rose could feel her heavy eyes protest that they wanted to close, but she picked up the book. Agatha had seemed insistent that the old volumes contained something related to recent incidents in the community. Unsure what to look for, Rose began to read. She came to a passage that intrigued her.
Obadiah tells me those boys are at it again. C. is a trial—sweet and pliable one moment, angry and excitable the next. Josie said she found him rummaging in her medicines this afternoon. And R. W.—What shall we do with that young man? He is after his mother to leave with him, since it serves his purposes. I fear the World has its claws in his heart. He worships money more than God.
R.W.—Richard Worthington, perhaps? Agatha, knowing her journals would be seen by succeeding generations, had been careful to obscure identities by using initials in her entries when the information was sensitive.
In 1910, Worthington would have been about sixteen and living in North Homage. He despised the Shakers who had fed and clothed and educated him. Why? And why had he looked so—cold, was it, or frightened maybe?—at the sight of Brother Samuel Bickford? They would have known each other, of course. Rose’s interest quickened. Worthington could pose a serious threat to the community if he called in their debts. If he had suffered some injury at the Believers’ hands, she wanted to know about it. Perhaps she could heal the wounds.
Rose read on, but nothing that followed referred to R.W. or his mother until she came across a passage close to the end of the journal. She shivered underneath her warm blanket, though Agatha herself seemed to have believed that the events she described were no more than bothersome.
Someone has been in the storeroom to no good purpose. Sister Martha reported this morning that two dozen jars of plums are missing from storage, just a day after she and the kitchen sisters put them up, she says. Not two hours later the brethren found them, smashed to pulp against the barn. I looked at it myself and prayed for the soul of the poor creature that would do such a wasteful thing with people always going hungry. Well, what’s done is done. We’ll watch the storeroom more carefully. We don’t mind a bite or two of food disappearing now and again, it’s not stealing if it fills an empty belly, that I believe. But this is wanton. Poor angry creature. Meanwhile, we have too much work to do to worry about this. The brethren are repairing the broken window in the Meetinghouse and the damage to the east stone fence that keeps the cattle from wandering amid the wheat. It’s one thing or it’s another, isn’t it?
Rose smiled at this picture of Agatha, so accurately conveyed by her journal entries. Praying for the miscreant who had smashed their plum preserves against the barn would not have been Rose’s first reaction. But her enjoyment faded as she read the end of the passage.
The worst, though, is the arrival of field mice in the schoolhouse, frightening the children and Sister Flora, who couldn’t stop sobbing, poor thing, though she would have done better to think more of the children. As it was, the older children comforted the younger ones—and their teacher, as well!
Stolen jars of plums, a damaged fence, and mice in the schoolhouse. These incidents struck Rose as far too similar to recent events. Whatever had happened twenty-five years ago was happening again, here and now.
SIX
THE NEXT MORNING, ROSE AWAKENED AS USUAL AT five-thirty. She slipped into her work clothes and quickly brushed her hair before covering it with her white indoor cap. Agatha’s journal passages still absorbed her thoughts. She pulled the wool coverlet tight over her bed, splashed her face with a handful of cold water from the chipped bowl on her washstand, and patted it dry with a white cotton towel. Shaking her head, she turned her mind to a morning prayer, asking Mother Ann for guidance during the day.
She lifted the broom from a wall peg and swept away any dirt that might have accumulated in the corners of her retiring room since the previous morning. After dusting the few pieces of furniture, she folded her nightclothes and stored them in dresser drawers built into the wall of her bedroom.
A quick look in the small mirror hanging from another wall peg reassured Rose that no strands of her curly red hair poked out of her cap. It wouldn’t last, of course. By nightfall she would have pushed curls back under the thin cotton dozens of times, and there would still be a red halo surrounding her face. Worry pinched her thin features. The green irises that gazed back at her were surrounded by tiny red lines. If she lived in the world, she would soothe her eyes with cotton balls soaked in witch hazel, then apply rouge, powder, and lipstick. But she had chosen the life of a Shaker sister. On the whole, she was much happier being useful than being beautiful.
Rose tidied her way into the sitting room, opened the curtains, and stowed Agatha’s journals inside a small recessed cupboard. She swept and dusted that room, as well. Every morning she followed the same routine, and every morning she drew contentment from it. H
er life had a rhythm, as if the heartbeat of God paced her movements and gave them meaning beyond her selfish needs and desires. She took a last look around her plain, comfortable room as she closed the door behind her.
Her office was directly below her retiring rooms. She descended the well-swept wooden staircase, treasuring the cheerful sounds of arising Believers and the warm sunlight splashing through the front windows and across the bottom steps.
She headed toward the Trustees’ Office kitchen, used only sporadically nowadays, to make her morning pot of rose hip and lemon balm tea. As she passed the door to her office, she noticed that it stood slightly ajar. She remembered closing it firmly the night before. It was always unlocked. Anyone could enter, but few would without her knowledge. And any Believer would be careful to close it again upon leaving, for the sake of courtesy and order.
With a prick of discomfort, Rose pushed the door fully open. The room looked normal in the dim light. She threw open the shuttered windows to brighten the room with natural sunlight. As she did, warm rays spread across the golden orange of her pine double desk. She’d left the desk clear of papers or ledgers, as she always did. Now, though, what looked like a newspaper lay in a patch of sun.
She picked it up. It was folded in half like a newspaper but was only one sheet of high-quality newsprint. One long article, arranged in columns and without a byline, covered both sides of the sheet. There were no classified advertisements, no wedding announcements or reports of grown children back in town to visit their parents. Inch-high, ornately typeset letters across the top of the page announced: LANGUOR COUNTY WATCHER. Smaller, bold-face letters called it a free journal intended to warn the people of Languor County about dangers in their midst.
Rose shivered. She suspected what the topic would be, didn’t want to read on, but knew she had to. It was her job. Her hand shook as she tilted the paper toward the light from the window.
The article began as an apparent news report about events in Europe. “Hitler is a shining beacon,” the anonymous correspondent wrote in overblown prose, “lighting the way toward a purer mankind.”
Like other Believers, Rose maintained her spiritual distance from the world, yet she believed deeply in pacifism and equality. God willing, there would be no more wars, but if one erupted, the Believers would refuse to fight, as they had refused to fight in the Great War. Hitler disturbed Rose. He inspired anger and hatred, which bred violence.
She skimmed the article, feeling sick at heart about the world and glad to be in her own. Toward the middle of the piece, her eyes slid over and then snapped back to a passage that did more than sadden her. The message terrified her.
. . . We have dangerous foreigners in our very midst, a SCOURGE that calls themselves Americans. They are Americans second, if at all. These so-called Shakers are shrewd and canny, driving our local businesses into bankruptcy without sparing a thought to the lives they are ruining, the women and children they are driving to the streets. These frightening enemies living among us are known by their strange dress, stolen from our Puritan ancestors, which they dishonor by wearing. They pretend to purity of thought and deed. They claim to be far more holy than mere Christian mortals like you and I, my friends. You will never see them in Toby’s buying a beer for a friend who is down on his luck. And you’ll never find them sharing a harmless smoke out on a neighbor’s porch. Oh, no, they are too good for such evil pursuits as you and I may enjoy and call it harmless pleasure.
These Shakers SCORN THE FAMILY as the EVIL OF ALL EVILS!!! That’s right, according to these folks, if you marry your sweetheart and start a family, you’ll burn in the fires of Hell. Yet these so-called sisters and brothers share food together and even join one another in the evenings! They live together, men and women both, in one building, sometimes five or six to a room, doing God only knows what behind those cold limestone walls!!!
This tumor must be sliced from our side. The surgery must be swift and precise. As Kentuckians, Citizens of Languor County, you can help. Watch this column to find out how! There will be more to come, very soon.
Rose crushed the thin sheet between her hands and threw it at the wall. The ball hit with a light tap and bounced back toward her. She clenched her fists and frowned down at it, breathing in short, fierce bursts until her temper drained away. Fear remained.
Believers had been objects of both respect and resentment, often at the same time, but nothing like this. At least not in Rose’s memory, which went back more than thirty years to when she arrived in North Homage as an orphaned toddler. Who could write such things? And just as confusing, who had delivered it here and why? To warn them or to scare them?
Rose reached down and scooped up the wrinkled paper, grimacing in distaste. She slid into her desk chair and smoothed the page out under her lamp. Trying to ignore the blaring headline, she examined the top edge for any clues about the diatribe’s origin. It was dated that morning. So someone had made sure she received it as it came off the press.
The paper announced itself to be Volume I, Number 1, attacking under the pretense of being a bonafide newspaper. A cowardly attack, too, since the editors hid behind false names: Mr. and Mrs. Languor County. Mr. and Mrs.—could this mean the authors were a man and a woman, or was someone just calling attention to the Believers’ celibate way of life?
The article itself looked expertly typeset. The prose was more menacing than the style favored by the Languor Weekly Advocate, which avoided the social issues of the larger world and advocated nothing stronger than barring horses from the main street.
The page spread out before Rose seemed the work of an experienced newspaperman—or woman. She had no illusions. If men and woman were equal in their potential for work and leadership, as the Shakers believed, they must then be equal in their capacity to make mischief.
“Rose?”
She swiveled in her chair to see Brother Hugo’s round frame in her doorway. His old eyes squinted at her, then registered concern as he moved into the room far enough to make out her expression.
“Wilhelm sent me to find you,” he said. “He’s quite upset about something. And it seems that you are, as well.”
“Why can’t he just call me? We have phones, he needn’t have sent you running all over the place. Oh, I’m sorry to be short with you, Hugo, you only delivered the message. It’s just that I’ve had some . . . bad news.”
Hugo’s eyes followed hers to the wrinkled printed sheet on her desk.
“I think,” he said, “that Wilhelm may have gotten the same bad news.”
“So what do you make of this?”
Hugo glanced toward the offensive tract and shook his head. “I didn’t examine it carefully.”
Hugo had lived in North Homage for more than fifty years. He might remember something, connect it somehow with an element in Languor that resented the Shakers.
“Look through it,” Rose said, pushing the paper closer to him. Hugo took it between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. Without turning to the other side, he tossed it back on the desk.
“It’s just the usual vileness,” he said with a quiet snort. “You’ve seen this sort of abomination before; why worry about it?”
“Nay, Hugo, I don’t believe this is the same nonsense we’ve seen in the past—or at least the recent past. These people know what they are doing. They may be connected somehow with a newspaper. They bring considerable skills to their task, which clearly is to drive us out of Languor County. I take them very, very seriously.”
Without touching him, she gestured to Hugo to sit at the other half of her double desk. She knew he was slowly losing his sight and could not have read more than the headline. “Turn it over and read the entire piece,” she urged. “You’ve been here longer than I have. I need your memory. Read it, just read it first, and tell me what you think.”
Hugo settled his round body into the spare desk chair, which had once belonged to North Homage’s second trustee. He fished a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from
his shirt pocket and settled them on his nose. With one finger, he pulled the paper toward him. Bending so that his eyes were inches from the print, he read both sides.
“There are details . . .” His voice trailed off as his gaze lifted to the neatly stuffed shelves and cubbyholes piled high on the desk.
“Indeed.” Rose pointed to a paragraph on the second side. “The author knows how we live and how we eat and work, our living arrangements, even about our Union Meetings, though he makes it sound like much more than getting together to chat in the evening.”
Hugo slumped against the back of the chair. “Of course, we don’t hide how we live. Anyone who wanted to could find out.”
“Yea, but this writer also knows about how we lived in the past, when we had more Believers. Five or six to a retiring room—we haven’t slept like that for at least fifteen years, have we?”
“More like twenty,” Hugo said.
The outside door clicked open and shut as the last resident of the Trustees’ building left after a quick breakfast of fresh-baked bread and preserves. Probably heading to the fields to help with spring plowing and planting. Hugo frowned at the paper in front of him.
“Apostates,” he said.
“Yea, those who have left the faith,” Rose agreed. “Or someone who knows them well enough to have learned a great deal about us. Angry, spiteful apostates, not just folks who came to us as children for schooling.”
Though she didn’t say so, Rose thought of Richard Worthington. Could he have begun a campaign to destroy them? If he had, though, why tip his hand by visiting with such obvious animosity, then turn coy and print an anonymous diatribe against them? A direct, out-in-the-open grab for power seemed more his style. Still, he could be involved.
“Hugo, can you think of anyone—especially anyone who left the Society fifteen or more years ago—who might do something like this? Anyone with newspaper experience, perhaps? Someone who hated us dreadfully?”
A Deadly Shaker Spring Page 5
