The Blessed

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “Last week?” Isaac peered over at the elder. “Brother Verne only got angry with me this morning.”

  “Yea, that is true, but Brother Asa had a dream of you that troubled him. He feels responsible for you in many ways since he brought you into our society. And responsible to the society.”

  “That sounds like you think I might do harm to someone here. I promise I have no thought to that.”

  “So you say. And I believe your words come from your heart, Brother Isaac. At the same time we can wound others with careless actions or selfish thinking. Or thoughtless words.” The elder looked straight into Isaac’s face. “Such can be forgiven, but the wounds have still been inflicted.”

  “Yea, you need not remind me of that truth.” Isaac closed his eyes and saw Ella’s face in death. A wound that would never heal, but it did him no good to dwell on it. He pushed thoughts of Ella away and concentrated on the elder’s words.

  “Brother Asa is working in the barns with the animals. You will do well to listen to his instructions. We never fail to treat our dumb animals with kindness.” Elder Homer stopped on the walkway before going up the steps into the Gathering Family House. “I trust I will hear of no more disruptive words from you.”

  “Nay, you will not.”

  Isaac had no worry making that pledge if Brother Asa was going to be his Shaker guide. Perhaps his life as a novitiate was about to get better. The promise of being free of Brother Verne for a few days was enough to make up for missing the morning meal. As the elder turned away from him to climb the steps into the house, yet another smile crossed Isaac’s lips. And with it came the memory of the new sister’s smile that had taken the sting from Brother Verne’s words. Could it be she had the same contrary spirit that dwelt within Isaac?

  18

  Sister Aurelia saw angels. At least so she told Lacey. Actually she did more than see them. She talked to them. And danced with them. She claimed not to be the first bit afraid of these angelic creatures. That was what had Lacey wondering and doing some doubting. She thought back over all the Bible stories she and Miss Mona had read. All the ones she could remember about angels coming down to talk to people face to face, every last one the very first thing the angel told them was “Don’t be afraid. Fear not.”

  And who wouldn’t feel her knees knocking together if a great shining angel, who might have just the minute before been getting his marching orders from the Almighty himself, was now standing right in front of her? Just thinking about it made chills chase up and down Lacey’s spine.

  She’d imagined plenty of unusual happenings. Fairies and such. Plus those angels Miss Mona had told Rachel were scrambling around on the roof to get their attention the morning she was a baby in a basket out on the back porch step. Such made for good storytelling, but Lacey hadn’t believed angels were really out there tapping on the roof. And she hadn’t thought Miss Mona did either. Not the kind of angels a body could actually lay her eyes on and see.

  Miss Mona was of the opinion angels were real, and Lacey wasn’t doubting that either. Anybody who believed the Bible spoke true words would have to believe that. But at the same time, angels didn’t just come down to say howdy. Even in Bible times. When angels started talking to people, they always had some sort of powerful message. Like telling Abraham and Sarah they were going to have a baby. Or Zechariah to name his boy John. Or Mary that she was going to have a baby even without knowing a man.

  When Lacey thought about the Bible angels, it seemed like a heap of their pronouncements had to do with babies, and for sure, that wasn’t going to be the kind of news any of the Shakers were expecting to hear. Not so long as they stayed true to their Shaker vows. Virgin births weren’t all that common. One in an eternity, the way Lacey had it figured, and that one had already happened.

  But Sister Aurelia had a different way of believing about angels. She thought they did come down just to say howdy or to whisper secret messages in her ear. And she wasn’t the only one. She said that angel visits fell on the Shakers like raindrops in the spring and that Lacey would witness the power of that once she got to go to meeting.

  The first Sunday she was in the village, Sister Drayma had decided Lacey wasn’t spiritually ready to attend the meeting, but she had seen them practicing their steps and songs after the supper meal on several weekday nights. The songs they practiced weren’t a thing like the ones she’d sung back at the Ebenezer church, even though some of them were written down in books with the music notes. Only one note per word. Everybody was supposed to sing on that same note. For unity, Sister Drayma claimed. Some of the Shaker songs were a dozen verses. Others a mere chorus of a few lines, begging love from their Mother Ann sung over and over a dozen times.

  No fiddles or Jew’s harps or pianos were on hand at the practices or in the meetinghouse when Lacey lined up with the rest of the Shakers to worship on her second Sunday in the village. Sister Drayma told her the music all came from the people. Even the marching and dancing music. The steps back and forth looked to be easy enough in the practice. The leaders put marks on the floor to help the dancers remember where to turn and start off another direction, and they managed not to bang into one another. Lacey figured that would be severely frowned on, seeing as how a man and a woman couldn’t even be on the same stairways or go in and out the same doors for fear of an errant touch. But could be the dancing was different.

  A lot was different about the Shakers’ Sunday morning meeting, although the bell ringing to get the people out of their rooms and started toward the meetinghouse was some the same.

  They walked in lines. Men and women separate the same as any day. Singing as they walked to the meetinghouse. That was different from the church, but Lacey liked the joyful sound of the Shakers’ voices. A “glad to be going to church” sound. Better than the solemn silence that fell over folks back at Ebenezer when they approached the church. Preacher Palmer had always set the somber mood with his grave greetings to the church members at the door. The Shaker Believers did fall silent as they came into their meetinghouse, but the ones outside kept on singing until the last one of them stepped through the doors.

  Once inside, the women perched on benches on one end of the meetinghouse and the men on the other. Lacey searched through the Shaker men until her eyes landed on the preacher, dressed in like clothes to the rest of the men and looking odd without his black preaching suit and his Bible tucked in the crook of his arm. He shifted a little on the bench and looked as nervous as a fresh-shorn sheep pushed back out into the field with no wool. Shorn to look like all the other sheep with nothing about the field familiar.

  The place didn’t even look like a church, with no pulpit or offering plate table or anything else that spoke church the way Lacey and the preacher knew it. No picture of Jesus. Not even a Bible. Just the big bare room with lines of benches on the wooden floor and those Shaker peg strips all around the walls with hats hanging on them. Things got even stranger when a woman stood right up in the middle of the floor and spoke about how strong the spirit had been the last few meetings and how they all needed to be ready for more of Mother’s work.

  Lacey sneaked another look over toward the preacher. Brother Elwood. Sister Drayma had told her that was what she needed to call him now. It sat odd on Lacey’s tongue, but she didn’t have much need to speak his name here in this place. He was sitting straight with his hands on his knees just like the two men on each side of him. Fitting in. She supposed she ought to try to do the same, but she felt like a sharp-edged rock in a pile of round pebbles.

  And the truth of the matter was, the preacher was looking like some of his sharp corners were showing too as he stared at the woman speaking right out in church. That wasn’t something that would likely be happening back at the Ebenezer church when they gathered to worship without their preacher on this Lord’s Day. The churchwomen would be doing plenty of talking out in the churchyard or in their sitting rooms or on their front porches, but in the church building it would be the
men who spoke up.

  The preacher didn’t look her way. Never looked over at the sisters’ side of the room at all. Kept his eyes right where he was supposed to—on the preaching sister. While Lacey watched, he slid one hand up off his knee and yanked on his collar like it was cutting off his air. Lacey almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Until she let her eyes wander to the side where the Shaker children were sitting. Rachel wasn’t among them. No children as young as her were there.

  Lacey shifted uneasily on the bench. Her legs were itching to stand up and walk out of this building and search through the other houses until she found Rachel. And then maybe just grab her hand and walk on out of this village with all its against-nature rules and women preachers and angel visions.

  They wouldn’t let her, of course. Somebody would step in front of her and try to push her back into the fold. She could fight them and probably outrun those nearest her, but what good would that do her? They’d just pitch her out of the village. Without Rachel. And then the little girl would be lost to her forever. Lacey wasn’t willing to risk that. She’d have to figure out a better way. One that wouldn’t get Sister Drayma’s or Eldress Frieda’s neckerchiefs all in a twist.

  Sister Drayma sat on Lacey’s left and Sister Aurelia on her right. Sister Aurelia had been practically attached to Lacey’s side since that day in the garden when she’d stopped Lacey from chasing after Rachel. She was on every work detail with Lacey and had taken over Sister Drayma’s duty of showing Lacey how to properly perform the Shaker tasks. Lacey didn’t mind. Aurelia didn’t preach so much as Sister Drayma. She mostly talked about the angels who whispered in her ears and danced with her.

  So far Lacey hadn’t heard the first echo of angel feet dancing, but the angel talk was easier on her ears than Sister Drayma’s constant harping on rules about what she couldn’t do and rules about how to do what was allowed. There had to be hundreds of rules. More than once Lacey had wanted to ask if the Shakers hadn’t ever read the part in the Bible where Jesus had reduced all the rules to two. “Love the Lord with all thy heart and love thy neighbor as thyself.” But there were times it was smarter to keep her mouth shut.

  This appeared to be one of those times, as Lacey peeked over at Aurelia and then folded her hands in her lap to match. Conform, she told herself. Make them think she was following the rules and they might quit watching so closely. Then she could slip away and find Rachel to tell her those Maddie stories she’d promised her. In spite of the watchers Sister Drayma had made sure Lacey knew about early on. Shakers who stood at the upper windows or even on the roofs to watch the village pathways and shadows to make sure no wrongdoings were going on.

  In fact even sitting there in the middle of their meetinghouse while the little Shaker preacher woman kept going on and on about the mighty works their Mother Ann had been sending down to them from heaven, Lacey felt somebody watching her. When she was a little girl, she used to imagine her mother peering down on her from heaven, and these last few months, she often felt some the same about Miss Mona. That she might be watching her with loving eyes. Wishing her the best. Reminding her to pray. And to love the Lord.

  But here in the middle of a pile of Shaker sisters, she didn’t have that benevolent feeling. It was more like all the churchwomen back at Ebenezer watching her to be sure she acted like a proper preacher’s wife. It had been a good thing they couldn’t see behind closed doors. Or inside her heart. She hadn’t been any kind of proper preacher’s wife.

  She let her eyes slide back over to the brothers’ side of the room, thinking maybe it was Preacher Palmer’s disapproving eye on her, but he was sitting straight as a fencepost with his eyes still fixed on the Shaker sister doing the talking. Other than fretting that her contrary spirit might cast a shadow on his quest for perfection, Lacey doubted he’d given her the first thought. Or Rachel either. He’d been more than ready to disavow them both, once those Shaker men had shown up peddling their seeds and their peculiar way to salvation.

  She shifted her eyes a little to the side and right into the eyes of that Shaker brother who had told her not to come to the Shaker village. Brother Isaac. The one who had loved his wife so much that the thought of it made Lacey’s heart go soft. The one who strange Brother Verne had been browbeating on the steps the other morning.

  She’d chanced Sister Drayma seeing her hold her ears and shoot a smile down at Isaac that morning and been rewarded with a lift of his shoulders and the beginnings of an answering smile. Now as if he had read her mind across the room, he moved his head slightly to the side and up as he motioned with his eyes. She followed the direction of his look. A small peephole opening toward the top of the wall above a closed doorway. Eyes peered out the hole straight at her.

  Lacey looked down at her folded hands. She wanted to look back over at Isaac and smile, but didn’t dare with eyes watching her. And him. How could he have guessed what she was thinking? Or maybe he had just thought to warn her when he noted her wandering attention. She wished they could talk again. Be in one of those union meetings Sister Drayma said the Shakers sometimes allowed, where the sisters sat in a line across from the brothers and they talked of planting the crops and weaving baskets or whatever tasks their hands were engaged in that week. But they wouldn’t be able to talk about the odd Shaker rules about books. She wouldn’t be able to ask him about the wife he’d lost and how he’d ended up in this place. That was the kind of talking she wanted to do. She couldn’t care less how many cows were eating the grass in the back pasture or whether the strawberries were turning red.

  The Shaker preaching sister’s voice got louder until her words were ringing off the walls. “Next Saturday is Feast Day when we will go to our holy Chosen Land to worship as the spirit leads. Prepare your hearts this day as you labor the dances so that we can be refreshed and ready for Mother’s sweet gifts on that day.” The little woman reached her hands toward the ceiling. “Let us labor now to bring down Mother’s love.”

  The men and women stood at once and began moving the benches to the side. Clearing the floor. Sister Aurelia took hold of Lacey’s arm and pulled her over to the side benches. “You won’t be able to labor the regular exercises yet, Sister Lacey. You can watch from here and sing the songs in chorus if you know the words. Unless a whirling gift falls on you.”

  “A whirling gift?” Lacey raised her eyebrows at Aurelia. She wasn’t thinking on doing any whirling.

  “Or a shaking one. The spirits have been strong among us lately. They could take over your body the same as mine. The angels don’t only dance with me.”

  “I don’t know much about dancing. With angels or not,” Lacey said.

  “But the angels know enough for all of us.” Aurelia smiled and touched her arm. “You should see your face, my sister. Rest assured you have nothing to fear from these gifts that might fall down on you if you will only open up your spirit to receive them. It is ecstasy to come under operations and be an instrument of such love.”

  Aurelia looked over her shoulder as one of the sisters began singing a tune with no words, only tra las. Others joined in, and after a moment they all began singing words.

  Come Mother’s sons and daughters,

  We want a full supply of the holy waters

  That are never, never, dry.

  The men and women formed lines and moved up and back in a shuffling dance. They moved one direction for a while and then turned as a unit and began going in the opposite direction. The lines of brothers and sisters passed but never joined, even when they began to dance in circles. Lacey could see why they had to spend so much time practicing. The steps were ordered and the formations precise.

  The dance grew even slower and more solemn with a change of song.

  Step on, turn around, back and turn in order.

  Step on se len ven ve in holy order.

  Forward go se len ven vo, back in holy order.

  Lacey listened closely, but she couldn’t make sense of some of the words. Nobody else seemed
the least worried about that as they moved up and back, keeping the lines straight and square. Then just as the dance and singing had slowed, it changed to what sounded to Lacey’s ears like a jig. That changed to a sweeping song. All the dancers started pretending to sweep. Even the men. It was a sight to behold and a laugh climbed up in Lacey’s throat. She clamped her lips together, determined not to give Sister Drayma any reason to find fault. Or the watchers through their peepholes. So far Lacey hadn’t seen any sign the Shakers had a bit of appreciation for the gift of laughter.

  Brother Isaac danced past her, wielding his pretend broom with awkward thrusts that didn’t look much like sweeping. She ran her hand over her mouth to hide her smile, but he must have seen it anyway because the corners of his lips turned up as he lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. The watching eyes might think it was part of his sweeping motion, but Lacey knew better. He was feeling as foolish as she thought she would feel whenever it was deemed she must take part in the exercising of the dances.

  Following close behind him was a short little brother who was sweeping with the spiritual fervor Isaac lacked.

  Sweep, sweep, and cleanse your floor.

  Mother’s standing at the door.

  By the time they started singing about hopping and jumping, Lacey’s head was spinning and her ears ringing. She was thinking she knew why they didn’t call it a church. Nobody would act with such total abandon in a church. But it was a fact that their faces had a kind of holy glow, and the Shakers who danced and whirled past her did look as if they were getting a full dose of spirit. At the same time, she didn’t have the first desire to stand up and add her feet to the others that were hammering down on the floor. Not all of them looked swept away by the spirit. Brother Isaac didn’t as he stood to the side and let the dancers with more fervor have the floor. The little Shaker woman preacher wasn’t stomping and whooping, but she was looking pleased with those who were.