A Deadly Shaker Spring

by Deborah Woodworth

  Charlotte glanced back to see the children concentrating on their game, and she seemed to relax. “All right, Rose, if you say so. I’ll just hope that their resilience rubs off on me. We’ll be fine.”

  Rose picked up her skirts and sprinted up the stairs to her retiring room. She grabbed Agatha’s 1910 journal from her small built-in cubbyhole and thumbed the pages impatiently. There it was, just as she’d remembered: Sister Martha reported this morning that two dozen jars of plums are missing from storage . . . Not two hours later the brethren found them, smashed to pulp against the barn. Rose knew just what Wilhelm would say if she showed him this passage—merely a coincidence. But her tingling skin told her it was more.

  Samuel was lugging two cans of white paint to the Meetinghouse when Rose located him.

  “I need to speak with you,” she said.

  “Could it wait an hour or two?” Samuel indicated the pails of paint.

  “Nay, I’m afraid your memory may fade. Go ahead and deliver the paint, but the brethren can do the job without you. Then come to the Herb House. I’ll be waiting in the drying room, and we can talk without prying ears nearby.” She didn’t dare direct him to the Trustees’ Office, for fear the children were still in her office.

  In no hurry now, Rose strolled alone to the Herb House, breathing in the freshness of the spring air. With its sudden explosion of new buds and sweet smells, spring always astonished and delighted her. She regretted any tension that spoiled her pleasure. Spring, she’d always thought, reflected God in an expansive mood, and she was grateful.

  The Herb House—a two-story white clapboard building—stood well back from the path cutting through the center of the village. As Rose climbed to the second-floor drying room, she almost regretted her choice of a meeting place. Memories flooded her mind, memories of Gennie Malone, who had been like a daughter to her and had left the Society to live in the world. They’d spent many happy days in this room, Gennie’s favorite, hanging herbs to dry from rafters and drying racks, spreading the smaller herbs on screens, and stuffing the dried products into small tins for sale to the world.

  Rose shook her head at herself. Regrets were pointless, and one never knew the future. Gennie might come back someday. In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to visit her at the Languor flower shop where she now worked. She might have overheard bits of gossip that could point Rose toward whoever was behind these incessant attacks on the Society. Rose had mixed feelings about Gennie’s friendship with Languor’s deputy sheriff, Grady O’Neal, but perhaps the two of them could be helpful.

  The drying room was nearly bare of herbs now. Over the winter, everything had been packed and sold. To Rose’s surprise, no one had yet tidied up. Bits of twine and broken dried herb sprigs littered the floor. Not enough hands to do the work, Rose thought with sadness. She lifted a flatbroom from one of the pegs lining the walls.

  She had nearly finished sweeping the litter into a pile when she heard slow, heavy steps on the stairs. Samuel peered into the room, reluctance showing on his thin, weathered face.

  “Ah, Samuel, come in and sit down.” Rose beckoned him to the worktable under the east window.

  Samuel hesitated, then seated himself across the long table from her. Leaning forward, he interlaced his strong, knobby knuckles on the table. He stared at them, avoiding Rose’s eyes.

  Rose laughed aloud, and he glanced up, startled.

  “Samuel, please do relax. You look so solemn. I’m not about to pronounce sentence, I promise you.”

  “Sorry, Rose,” he said. But his expression remained grim.

  “I saw you leave the service,” Rose said. “I want to know who has been doing all this to us, and why. Tell me what you saw when you ran outside. Who was in the car?”

  Samuel clenched his fingers. “I couldn’t see them clearly.”

  “Samuel, do you know who is responsible for these incidents?”

  “Nay,” he said, shaking his head, “not for certain.”

  “But you have a suspicion.”

  “Rose, I wouldn’t want to accuse—”

  “No one is asking you to accuse. We’ve known one another for many years. Trust me that this is important. Tell me your suspicions. Please, Samuel. The safety of our village may depend on it.”

  To her surprise, when Samuel raised his eyes again, they glistened with tears. He slouched back in his chair and stared out the window.

  “There is so much more I need to tell,” he said, his voice low and husky. “So much that I’ve never told.” With a deep sigh, he sat up straight and faced Rose.

  “I was asked to be elder before Wilhelm was chosen. Did you know that?”

  Rose nodded. Agatha had told her that Samuel had refused the invitation without explanation. More than once, both Agatha and Rose had regretted the second choice made by the Lead Society in Mount Lebanon—Wilhelm Lundel—and had longed for Samuel in his place.

  “Was there something in your past that stopped you from accepting?” Rose asked. Despite her compassion for Samuel’s obvious pain, she felt excited as she anticipated finally hearing the answers to questions that went back many years.

  “Yea, my past,” Samuel admitted. “I never confessed, you see. I could not accept a position of spiritual leadership, hear the confessions of others, knowing my own sins festered inside me.”

  “If there is something you need to confess, now is your chance to redeem yourself, Samuel. To free yourself.”

  Samuel nodded slowly. “Yea, it is time.” With a deep breath, he began. “I believe that what is happening to us now began more than thirty years ago. It was 1904, and I was a young brother. I’d found my way to the Society just a few months earlier, and I thought nothing could shake my faith. Life is so simple at that age. You make up your mind, and you think, That’s that. You believe completely in your own strength of will.”

  For the first time, Samuel smiled, a wistful half-smile. “Innocent hubris,” he said, “yet hubris all the same. You see, that autumn a young woman arrived in North Homage, a widow with a young son. Her name was Faithfull.”

  He seemed to have drifted decades into the past and become lost in his memories.

  “Faithfull,” Rose mused. “Why does that name sound familiar to me?”

  “Her full name was Faithfull Worthington.”

  “Worthington! Richard’s mother?”

  “Yea, though they had little contact. You would only have been a child when Faithfull arrived, and she did little with the children. It pained her, she said, because of giving up her own child.” Samuel ran his hand over the notched surface of the worktable. “She was such a tender soul, you see. But strong in body and will.”

  “Samuel, did you . . . love her?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yea, I loved her. We loved each other. She was gentle, giving, some said weak, but I believe she only gave more than most.” Samuel’s face crumpled in pain. “It was my fault, my weakness. And I compounded my own sin by never confessing. I stayed, lived as one of the brethren all these years, but I’m not worthy. I never had the strength to confess.”

  “Samuel, you are confessing now.”

  He raised his eyes, red and hollow. “There is more,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “We were together. We fell into the flesh. More than once, to my eternal shame.”

  Rose schooled her face to show no reaction. She felt little shock—it was a familiar story to her—but great sympathy. She had known love in the world, and she understood its power.

  The creak of a floorboard startled them. They had been so absorbed that they’d failed to hear footsteps ascending the stairs.

  “What is this? What is going on here?” Elder Wilhelm’s deep voice cut across the room from the landing just outside the drying-room door.

  During the summer and fall, when herb bouquets hung upside down from every available hook and board, Wilhelm could not have seen them across the room. But now, they sat exposed. And exposed was just how Rose felt. She
told herself sternly that she was eldress now and engaging in the work of an eldress.

  “Well?” Wilhelm demanded, as he entered the room. “I’ll ask thee again, what is this secret meeting? What has happened between thee?”

  “Wilhelm!” Rose allowed shock to show this time. “You are imagining things. I assure you, there is nothing going on here that shouldn’t. I have asked Samuel if he has any insights into these recent attacks on the Society.”

  “Attacks, hah! They are nothing but the feeble efforts of a feeble world to sap our strength. If they have an importance, they are a subject for the Ministry only. Nay, there is more here, and I demand to know it!”

  Rose glared at Wilhelm in stony silence, while Samuel watched his whitening knuckles. The elder’s hard eyes glittered with the power of righteous indignation.

  “There is only one other reason for a secret meeting between a brother and an eldress,” he said, turning to Rose. “Samuel has confessed to thee, has he not?”

  Rose squared her shoulders. “You have interrupted his confession. If you will excuse us, he needs to continue.”

  “He should confess to me, his elder.”

  “Perhaps so, but he felt comfortable enough to do so with me.”

  “This is unacceptable.” Wilhelm’s voice approached sermon strength.

  “A precedent has already been set,” Rose pointed out, “and you are the one who set it.”

  Wilhelm’s face reddened. Rose had silenced him by reminding him that Sister Elsa made a habit of confessing to him, rather than to her eldress. But Wilhelm was never quelled for long.

  “Samuel, come with me,” he commanded. “The brethren need thy help. We’ll discuss thy confession later.”

  For a moment, Rose thought that Samuel would defy him. She willed him to do so. He lifted his face to her and sat still. But as she watched, his eyes flooded with pain and pleading, and she knew she had lost him. He stood and followed Wilhelm out of the room.

  ELEVEN

  “DADDY, YOU PROMISED YOU’D PLAY WITH ME TONIGHT. You promised.” Rickie Worthington pouted like the spoiled six-year-old he was.

  His father forgave the pout and the tiny lie—Worthington had not promised to play that evening—as he forgave his child everything. Instead, he noted with complacency the boy’s aggressive stance, chubby legs planted apart, fists on hips. The effect was enhanced by the surroundings, Richard Worthington’s study, decorated as a man’s smoking room. Worthington sat in one of two leather chairs, which glowed in the light of a fire stoked up to ward off the damp evening chill. His cigar smoldered in a glass dish on a carved cherry-wood table between the chairs. He inhaled the pungent smoke, the aroma of power.

  “Daddy’s a very busy man, Rickie. I have an important meeting tonight.” Worthington spoke in the gentle tone he used only with his son.

  “Can I come? Please, Daddy?”

  “No, Rickie, but soon. I promise.”

  Rickie distorted his face into an angry frown. “I don’t want to wait. I want to go tonight.”

  “I said ‘soon,’ Rickie.” A stern edge crept into Worthington’s voice, though his son’s childish command pleased him as much as it irritated him.

  The family’s fat, orange tabby sauntered into the room, distracting the boy. He grabbed the cat around the middle and squeezed it to his chest. Used to such treatment, the tabby went limp, biding his time, then squirmed free and fled the room when Rickie momentarily loosened his grip. The boy giggled and raced after it.

  Worthington watched his son’s retreating figure. The boy would do well. He had the drive to conquer, you could see that just by the way he went after that cat. Worthington turned to his mirror to give his tie a final tug.

  “You’re meeting with them again, aren’t you?” Frances Worthington watched her husband from the same stance her son had recently struck, hands on hips. Unlike Rickie, though, she remained in the open doorway, knowing she wasn’t welcome in this male sanctum.

  Worthington eyed his wife critically. The pose that had looked so admirable on Rickie made her look like a nagging fishwife, if an ineffective one with her slight figure and small-featured face.

  “You know how much I hate it when you’ve been with those people. You come home all riled up, and sometimes I think you’re going to kill somebody. It scares me, and it isn’t good for Rickie to see you like that.”

  Worthington shrugged into his custom-tailored coat and gathered up some papers from his desk, ignoring his wife.

  “Well, I don’t want you upsetting Rickie anymore,” Frances said, her voice traveling up the scale to peevish. “Last time he couldn’t get back to sleep for hours after you came home slamming doors. If you must go, I want you to promise to come home quietly—Richard, are you listening to me? Quietly! And I heard you promise to take him along soon. I want you to stop that. I don’t ever want him near those people.”

  Worthington whirled around, his eyes glittering with cold anger.

  “Never tell me where I may take my son, do you understand? Never.”

  “He’s my son, too.” But the life had left her voice and she backed into the hallway.

  Sensing victory, Worthington relaxed. He strode past Frances, barely bending to toss a kiss somewhere near her cheek.

  He felt her eyes on him as he followed the long hallway to the foyer. He squared his shoulders as he passed under a portrait of his grandfather, one of several hanging in prominent spots throughout the twenty-room mansion. Other portraits of ancestors dating back to well before 1860, when the house was built, graced the remaining walls.

  But there were no pictures of Worthington’s mother, his grandfather’s only child. Worthington’s jaw tightened as the thought of his mother flitted through his mind. He’d loved her, in his own way, though he couldn’t imagine that she had loved him back—not as fiercely as he loved Rickie. He could never willingly have given up his son to be raised by strangers.

  And Frances was his wife, the mother of his child—even if they weren’t in love the way he’d once thought they were. He wanted her to understand. Pulling his hand back from the front-door handle, he turned to face her.

  “Do you really think I’d do violence to anyone, Fanny? Is that what you think of me?” Frances lowered her eyes. “I only want to right the wrong that was done to me, to my family—for Rickie and you as much as me.” He sighed and swiveled back to the front door. “Fanny, we’ve been over and over this. It’s got to be done. I’ve got to set things right.”

  By the time Richard Worthington knocked on the front door of the run-down brick colonial, he’d run through all the arguments again in his head, and he’d reached the same conclusion as always. He was right to do this. There was some risk. If he got caught, it would mean the end of his banking career, maybe even worse. It wasn’t worth doing for hatred alone, though his hatred fueled his determination. No, it was for Rickie. Securing Rickie’s future was worth any amount of risk.

  The old house had once been a speakeasy and still had a tiny peephole in the door. Worthington heard the hinged cover squeak twice as it was moved aside and then swung back into place. Caleb Cox opened the door enough for Worthington to squeeze past him into the dark hallway. He didn’t greet Caleb. The man was a pathetic drunk, a weak link.

  Worthington made directly for the kitchen, also dark. He knew the house well. He’d foreclosed on it, and it had stood empty until recently. As far as the bank was concerned, it was still uninhabited.

  Worthington entered the dark kitchen and ignored the light switch. The electricity was off, anyway. Instead he followed the dim outline of an old wood cooking stove to a door leading to the basement. All the light and activity in the house were downstairs. Black curtains covered the small, high basement windows, and dozens of candles supplemented the oil lamps. A large printing press dominated one side of the room. Fresh flowers always sweetened the air in Worthington’s own home, and he wrinkled his nose at the harsh odors of cheap candle wax, printer’s ink, and under
ground mustiness.

  Across the room, three men and one woman sat in a circle. He took his place in one of the two empty chairs. Moments later, Caleb Cox slipped into the other one. Worthington knew three of the gathering from his youth, when they had all lived at North Homage. The other two, Floyd Foster and Ned Bergson, were not former Shakers but merely businessmen hoping to eliminate Shaker competition. The Shaker apostate who ran the group didn’t want Floyd and Ned to be able to identify him. He and his wife went by the names of Kentuck and Laura Hill. Worthington thought the subterfuge doomed, but the fool had his reasons. If some of the older Shakers knew the two of them were in town, they’d suspect immediately who was behind the persistent attacks on North Homage. Since it was in Worthington’s best interests, he had agreed to call them only by their assumed names, even to himself.

  The man everyone had been instructed to call “Kentuck” leaned into the circle, his fists planted on his knees. His round belly rolled forward and rested on his thighs. Flickering candlelight reflected off the balding spot on the top of his head. Worthington barely hid his distaste.

  “We’ll have the reports first,” Kentuck said, as if he were running a business meeting. “Caleb?”

  Caleb straightened from his habitual slouch and cleared his throat. Half drunk, Worthington thought.

  “Fine, everything’s just fine,” Caleb said. “Sarah’s been a real trooper, did just what I said, even though it—” Caleb twitched and shot a nervous glance at the group leader.

  The woman called Laura leaned forward and her angular face sharpened. “What? What do you mean, Caleb? Has something gone wrong?” Her high, squeaking voice grated on Worthington’s ears. To him, she looked more like a spinster schoolteacher, and he couldn’t understand why she didn’t make more effort to sound like one. It would help her stand up to that husband of hers.

  “Shut up, Laura,” her husband snapped. “Everything has gone exactly as I—as we—planned. We’ve got those Shakers confused and scared now. When they see what’s in store for them next, they’ll crack.”