The Blessed

by Ann H. Gabhart

  You are forgiven. Isaac didn’t hear the words spoken aloud, but he heard them in his heart. He wished the Shakers were still dancing so that he could jump for joy. He wished Lacey was beside him so that he could swing her up in the air the way he had in the woods when the calf had raised his head and flapped his ears free of the birth sac.

  He sought her among the Shaker sisters. Even with all their like dresses, he found her almost at once as though his eyes were drawn to her like iron filings to a magnet. She had pulled away from Sister Aurelia and was making her way back to the outer fringes. To those who merely watched. She looked his way but didn’t allow her eyes to do more than touch on his face. She was right to do so. He was forgiven. It would be wrong to willfully jump back into sin.

  A rumble of protest ran through the line of brethren waiting their turn to pretend to wash in the fountain as one of the brothers shoved through them. Some of the Shakers pushed their hands toward the ground and stomped as they began shouting, “Back from us old Ugly. Get away, Satan.”

  But Brother Elwood pushed on toward the fountain stone with no notice of the shouts or the hands that grabbed at him. He seemed to have the strength of five men as he moved forward with singular purpose.

  “Nay, Brother Elwood. You must not defile the fountain.” Elder Joseph’s voice carried the sound of doom, but the man paid him no mind. His eyes were fixed on the stone.

  Isaac looked back at Lacey. She had stopped in her tracks and was staring at her husband from the world. Isaac’s heart squeezed together with sadness, but he made himself repeat the thought in his head. Her husband. She too looked suddenly very sad. Her shoulders drooped as she turned toward the fountain to go after Brother Elwood.

  Lacey knew what she had to do as soon as she saw the preacher running toward the stone. It was time to pick up her cross and do the necessary thing. The poor man needed her. And he needed to be away from these people with their odd beliefs and weird ways of worship. She had danced with Aurelia, but she hadn’t felt the first whisper of angel wings.

  Whether it was all pretend with Aurelia, she had no way of knowing. Perhaps angels did come down and take over Aurelia’s body. Perhaps Aurelia and Sister Lena and others did actually see angels, and it was more than some sort of strange hysteria leaping from one to another. She didn’t know. What she did know was that Aurelia wanted to entertain angels. That it gave her a feeling of power. A way to shape her world here among the Shakers.

  But Lacey had no desire to receive such gifts. All she wanted was Rachel. As soon as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t true. Her eyes flicked back to Isaac, who was still watching her. She didn’t let her gaze linger. He was not her husband. Preacher Palmer was her husband. And he needed her to take his hand and march him away from this place while he might yet retain a shred of sanity.

  The preacher was up on the fence enclosing the fountain rock. He teetered there for a moment before booming out in his preacher’s voice. “The spirits command me.”

  “Nay, it is the devil that leads you, Brother Elwood,” the elder said. The other men, even Brother Forrest, must have believed the elder because they fell back as though afraid to draw too close to such evil.

  “I will be forgiven,” the preacher shouted toward the sky. Then he jumped into the enclosure and moved through the handful of brothers who had been pretending to scrub each other free of sin. He climbed up onto the fountain stone and raised his hands toward the sky.

  A few woes began sounding around the enclosure and then other voices joined in until the sound hung over the place like a black cloud. Lacey ignored them all as she went through the gate into the Shakers’ holy ground. The woes became like the sound of a gaggle of angry geese in the distance. She held her hand up toward the preacher.

  “Come, Elwood. It’s time for us to go home. The Lord called you to preach his Word. You have been neglecting your calling. That’s all the balance you need. His Word in your mind and heart again.”

  He looked down at her, his face creased with lines of despair. In the weeks they had been with the Shakers he had aged ten years. “Lacey. Don’t you understand? I have sinned.”

  “We have all sinned, Elwood. Every last one of us.” She wasn’t sure if the Shakers had softened the sound of their woes or if she was just so intent on the preacher that they no longer sounded as loud in her ears.

  “But I must seek forgiveness.”

  “And it will be given to you.”

  “Do you forgive me?”

  “I forgive you, Elwood.” She reached her hand up a little higher. “Do you forgive me?”

  “Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.”

  “See. The Word of the Lord is coming to you. Blessed are they who speak his Word.” She didn’t know if that was really in the Bible, but she thought it sounded like Scripture.

  “Nay, you do not understand. ‘In whose spirit there is no guile.’” His voice rose until he was shouting the last words.

  She studied his face then and realized she did not know this man. She knew the man she thought he was. A man with faults and foibles like any other man but a man of God, nevertheless. But she had only carried her idea of who he was. They had never shared any moment of closeness in all the years she had lived in his house, first as a near child and then as a woman. She did not know him or the secret sins he carried in his heart that were spreading anguish across his face. But none of that changed the fact that he was her husband. She said a silent prayer for strength and did not let her resolve falter as she continued to reach toward him.

  “Take my hand, Elwood. Whatever you’ve done that torments you can be forgiven. You can surrender your guile and repent of your wrongs. That is the balance you need.” She made her voice strong and sure.

  He stared at her for a long moment before he reached down and took her hand. Complete silence fell over the men and women around them as he stepped down off the Shaker’s holy fountain to stand beside her. She saw the words engraved in the stone and tried to turn him away from them, but he stopped and ran his free hand over them.

  “Anyone who defiles this stone while in sin be warned.” He spoke the words slowly as though considering their meaning. He repeated the last two. “Be warned.”

  “You didn’t try to bathe in the holy water,” Lacey said softly as she put an arm around him to guide him away from the stone. “Come, Elwood. Away from this place. It is only holy to the Shakers. Not to us.”

  She kept her eyes straight in front of them as she led him through the Shakers. She wanted to turn to them and tell them to go back to their shouting and jumping and dancing and pretend scrubbing away of sins, but she kept as silent as they were. A few scattered woes popped up again around them and then some began singing.

  Be joyful, be joyful, be joyful,

  Be joyful, For Old Ugly is going.

  Good riddance, good riddance, good riddance we say,

  And don’t you never come here again.

  “They’re saying we’re the devil.” The preacher’s voice was flat with no feeling.

  “Pay them no mind,” Lacey said as she squared her shoulders and kept walking.

  She was as glad to be rid of them as they were to be rid of her. She wouldn’t let their words bother her. Didn’t she have enough things to grieve over already with thinking about being a proper wife to the preacher and never laying eyes on Isaac again? God’s love. That’s what she needed to dwell on. But she let her eyes stray over to where Isaac had been standing. He was gone.

  She told herself that was good. It kept her from sinning in her heart, but she couldn’t stop the wave of disappointment that surged through her. Still, she wouldn’t let her eyes search through the brothers looking for him. It was pointless. He had been nothing but a dream of what might have been. Very few dreams came true. If she knew anything, she knew that.

  But then he was standing directly by the path they were walking. Demanding her eyes meet hi
s. He touched her arm. “You don’t have to go with him. Don’t go.”

  Those words echoed in her memory. The very words he’d spoken to her at the house before they’d come to the Shaker village. Don’t go. But she had no way of listening to those words now any more than she had then.

  “But I must. I am his wife.”

  Isaac held on to her arm another second. “I did love my wife very much.”

  “I know you did.” She blinked her eyes to keep back the tears that wanted to spill out and smiled at him with lips that trembled.

  He smiled back before he turned loose of her arm to let them pass. She would carry the treasure of that smile away with her in her heart.

  The preacher didn’t look up at Isaac or her while they talked. He kept his head down and muttered a word now and again that Lacey couldn’t quite make out. She thought he might be quoting Scripture and hoped the words would calm his spirit.

  It wasn’t even noon yet. They could go find Rachel and walk away from this place. Back to Ebenezer. Even if the church had already found a new preacher, the people would help her. Help them both. And in time with prayer and the care of a dutiful wife, Preacher Palmer might find that balance he had lost here with these people. Or perhaps he had been drifting along in a sea of misery ever since Miss Mona passed on. They had been wrong to try to form a family without her.

  What was it Sister Drayma had told her the Shakers believed about families? That the stress of worldly family relationships, husband and wife, parent and child, was the reason for much sin. Lacey had argued with Sister Drayma that God had planned for families from the Garden of Eden on.

  “Yea, Sister Lacey,” the woman had told her. “But that was only after Adam and Eve invited sin into the world. We as believers in the true way shut all reason for sin from our lives and seek our heaven on earth. We need no family but the family of God where all are brothers and sisters. And for that we are blessed.”

  Now Lacey wanted to run back down among the sisters and find Sister Drayma to tell her that she too was blessed. Blessed in her imperfection. Forgiven. Loved.

  They were almost to the outer edge of the clearing when there was a sudden stir behind them. No cries of woe followed Aurelia as she ran after them, but there were many cries of concern that Aurelia might be tainted with their sin.

  She stepped directly in front of them. Lacey had thought she might be running after her to share parting words, but she didn’t even look at Lacey. Her eyes were on the preacher. “She may say she forgives you, Elwood Palmer, but only because the angels have not revealed to her the sin that torments you. She is too pure of heart to think on it. The angels have purified my heart too, but know that I have not forgiven you. I will never forgive you.”

  A tremble ran through the preacher’s body. Lacey tightened her arm around his waist and stared at Aurelia. “Stop it, Aurelia. He has done no wrong to you.”

  Aurelia turned to look at Lacey. Her eyes so like Rachel’s were wide and had an unnatural shine. “Are you sure of that, Sister Lacey? Ask him. He knows. Or ask the angels. If you dare. Angel tongues can speak nothing but truth.”

  Then Lacey knew without asking. She didn’t know why she was surprised. She’d always known the preacher was a man like any other. A man who could fall into temptation. And obviously had. With Aurelia. Her arm stiffened around his waist.

  Beside her, he looked up at the heavens and cried out, “Mine iniquities have taken hold of me. My sin cannot be hidden.”

  “Your sin was never hidden. Mona knew. I told her before I came here.” Aurelia threw the words at him like stones.

  “She forgave me. She told me she forgave me.”

  “But I do not.” Aurelia suddenly spun away in a circle, her arms flinging wildly about. “Nor does the angel Esmolenda.” She began singing sounds that had no meaning.

  O saniskan niskana, haw, haw, haw,

  Fannickana niskana, haw, haw, haw.

  Hearing the strange words spilling out of Aurelia was eerie enough, but then the Shakers around them picked up the song and began singing with her like they were singing a well-known hymn.

  While the words sounded like so much nonsense to Lacey, the preacher’s face grew even more horrified as he clapped his hands over his ears. “Strike me down, Lord. End my misery.” He jerked away from Lacey and took off running.

  She might have caught him if she hadn’t hesitated. And then when she did start after him, Aurelia moved deliberately in front of her. Her face was strange, unworldly. “You cannot help him. Only angels can help him now.”

  “Then send your angels to help him, Aurelia.”

  “Aurelia has no power over us. She is only our mouth and feet. Our God has the power.”

  “The Lord is merciful. He will forgive.” Lacey pushed past her, lifted up her skirts and ran after the preacher. She looked back over her shoulder. “Please help me.”

  Isaac ran after her and then Brother Forrest and a couple of other brothers broke from the lines of Shakers to follow Lacey. They were not without compassion. Behind her the Shakers started singing again. Aurelia’s voice rang out loudest of all.

  Come down Shaker life. Come down holy.

  Come let us all unite to chase away Old Ugly.

  Preacher Palmer ran as if Aurelia’s angels were chasing him. Lacey called out to him, but he gave no sign of hearing her and kept running.

  32

  When Isaac came around the Gathering Family House out onto the road that ran through the village, Brother Elwood was nowhere in sight. Isaac stopped and tried to catch his breath as he looked around. He’d run ahead of Lacey as fast as he could, but the man, old as he was, had been faster.

  “He’s gone,” Isaac said when Lacey caught up with him.

  Her cheeks were flushed from running and she was breathing hard. She didn’t look at him but searched the road in front of them. “He has to be here somewhere.”

  “The Centre Family House,” Brother Forrest said between panting breaths when he paused beside them.

  They took off up the street, but when they got to the big stone house, both the men’s and women’s doors were locked. “Because all are away for Feast Day,” Brother Forrest said. He looked around. “Think of another place of height. The pitiable man has seemed obsessed with high places.”

  “Maybe he stopped at the barn below the Gathering Family House. It has a loft,” Isaac suggested.

  They were turning to go back toward the barns when Lacey spotted the hat below an open window. Brother Forrest went over to pick it up.

  “Yea, it looks to be his.” He looked up at the window a few feet over his head. “The window would not be in easy reach, but today he seems to have the strength of angels.”

  “I’ve heard enough talk of angels this day,” Lacey said. “Lift me up and I’ll go after him.”

  “Nay,” Brother Forrest said. “Not you, Sister Lacey. Come, Brother Isaac. You are stronger and better suited for the task of helping our brother.”

  Brother Forrest and one of the other brothers laced their hands together to give Isaac a boost up to the window. Once inside he ran past the neatly made beds and hurried out into the hall and the stairway. Out of habit he ran to the brothers’ stairs and climbed them two steps at a time all the way up to the attic. The air trapped under the roof was hot, but light spilled down from the cupola onto the rough roof beams. Still the preacher was nowhere in sight. Maybe he hadn’t come this way at all. Maybe the hat had just blown over to land under the window.

  Isaac climbed the steep stairs into the cupola. There was a door. A door that wasn’t completely closed. Isaac stepped out on the roof that was thankfully flat in the middle with a low railing around it before it sloped steeply to the edge. Tall chimneys jutted up from each corner of the roof. A place for watching, Brother Verne had told him. Isaac could see both ends of the village and many of the back pathways. But he had no time to spy out the village. Brother Elwood was up on the railing beside one of the chimneys searchi
ng for handholds on the chimney brick to climb higher.

  “Stay away!” Brother Elwood shouted when he saw him. He turned loose of the chimney with one of his hands and held it out toward Isaac to keep him back.

  Isaac stopped a few feet away from him. “The roof is high, Brother Elwood. It would be best if you hold on as you climb down.”

  Brother Elwood looked down toward the ground below him. “I have no fear of falling. Not from this rooftop. A fall from grace is more to fear. ‘Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.’”

  Isaac took slow steps closer to him. “The elders have said you must come down. They will pray with you.”

  “You’re lying. The elders have nothing but scorn for me. They think I’m of the devil.” Brother Elwood got a strange look on his face. “Perhaps I am.”

  “Nay, Brother. You are a man of God.” Isaac edged a little closer. He was almost close enough to reach out and grab him.

  “I was once a man of God. But no more. I was brought low by lust.” He looked away from Isaac up toward the sky. “That is why I must seek a new balance. A new beginning.”

  “Lacey is waiting down on the ground for you to help you find that new beginning.” Isaac knew at once from the man’s face that he’d said the wrong thing.

  “Lacey.” Brother Elwood glanced down at the ground as his face changed from frantic to determined. “So many sins.”

  “Come down, Brother.” Isaac kept his voice low and calm as he stepped up beside the man and reached for his hand.

  “But the spirits say I must find balance.”

  “Balance can be found in less precarious places.”

  “The spirits led me here. I cannot let them think I am fearful.” He let out a noise that might have been a laugh as he wildly threw up his hands. He wobbled on the railing before he began falling away from Isaac.