A Deadly Shaker Spring (20 page)

“Rickie, what the—” Worthington quashed the expletive that hovered on his lips, as well as the look of irritation on his face. Rickie might be hurt; that was far more important than his Chippendale table and Partagas Corona. He scooped the boy off the floor and looked him over for signs of injury. His knees, showing below his short pants, were as plump and pink as ever. His pride was hurt, that was all.

“There, you're not hurt anywhere, are you?”

Rickie shook his head, his lower lip still quivering.

“Then there's nothing for a big boy like you to cry about, is there?” The boy had to learn not to look weak, and the sooner the better.

The cigar was still smoldering, so Worthington
gathered it and what ashes he could and threw the whole mess in the fireplace.

“I heard Rickie crying all the way upstairs.” Frances Worthington ran into the room, her arms extended toward her son. “Rickie, darling, are you all right?” Kneeling in front of him, she stroked his cheeks and murmured soothing sounds. At the attention, Rickie began to sniffle again.

“That's enough, Frances. Leave the boy alone. Don't make a baby out of him.” He took Rickie's arm and pulled him out of his mother's embrace. Yanked off balance, Frances stood too quickly and fell backward against Worthington's desk. As she steadied herself, she saw the
Watcher
. She snatched it up and began to read.

“That isn't important, Frances, give it to me.”

Frances jumped away from him and continued to read. “Those people wrote this, didn't they? Didn't they, Richard?”

“Rickie, go play in your room now,” Worthington said. With an uncertain glance that went from his father to his mother, who were staring angrily at each other, Rickie backed out of the room.

“Well, Richard?”

“It's none of your concern.”

“It is very much my concern. You're involved with some frightening people who have plans to destroy the Shakers, and I don't like to think what those plans include. I want to know what your part in this is.”

“There are no plans, Frances, you're imagining things again. That paper is no more than an expression of how everyone around here feels about those Shakers.”
Worthington held his hand out. “Now give it here.”

“Why, Richard? Why do you want to destroy those people? They brought you up, gave you an education. They've always been good neighbors, and they make their loan payments on time, you've always said that. I've never understood why you hate them so.”

“You weren't there. You didn't live with them. If it weren't for them, my youth would have been completely different. If they hadn't enticed my weak mother into joining them when Father died, we could have lived so much better. Instead they took everything we owned. I've had to fight, work day and night, to provide you and Rickie with the kind of life we should have had all along.”

“That's nonsense, Richard. We had plenty of money from my family. We don't even need the bank.”

Richard's face darkened, and his eyes flashed. “How dare you. I would never live off my wife's money. I won't rest until Rickie has every penny he would have had if those Shakers hadn't stolen it.”

He wiped the emotion from his face and busied himself stoking the fire, all the while feeling Frances's eyes on his back. He did not wish to discuss his life in North Homage with Frances. How could he explain any of it to her? Yes, they had fed and clothed and educated him, even shown him affection, and, yes, he should have been grateful. But he wasn't. A part of him—the part that was his gentle mother's son—knew it was selfish to feel as he did. Hadn't they all tried to teach the dominance of worship and charity and striving for perfection over the mere accumulation
of wealth and possessions? But a stronger part of him could not release his intense resentment. They preached those ideas, but what did they do? They convinced his gullible mother to sign over all the land inherited from her well-to-do husband's family—rich farmland that should have come to Richard, and after him, to his son, Rickie. He could not forgive the Shakers for their hypocrisy.

He turned his back to the fire to find that Frances had left the room.
Just as well
, he thought.
She'll never understand what I have to do
.

“W
E'VE LOST THE BETTER PART OF AN AFTERNOON
of planting,” Rose complained. “People from the world trampled through all afternoon. You'd think they'd have better things to do than try to invade Shaker funerals.” She handed Josie the bags of dried chamomile, thyme, basil, spearmint, and peppermint she'd requested from the Herb House. Rose felt tired and cross, a sure sign she needed to skip fewer meals and get more sleep. She sank wearily onto a ladder-back chair, its woven seat frayed by decades of ill Believers, and watched Josie refill her empty tins and put them back in the Infirmary medicine cabinet.

“Yea, my dear,” Josie said, “but it had to be. We could hardly tell the world when the funeral would be held and take the risk of having poor Samuel put to rest with strangers shouting all those terrible lies at him. Gentle as he was, such a ruckus would surely have brought him back to have his say, and we'd have been all night getting him buried.”

Rose managed a light laugh, and Josie eyed her with professional concern. “Rose, I was more amusing than that, surely. Would a tonic be in order, perhaps? Did you get any sleep at all last night?”

“So you've heard, have you?”

“Hasn't everyone?”

Rose groaned. “Of course everyone has. Nay, I slept very little, and this morning Wilhelm took me to task for my adventure last evening.”

“I hope you told him to tend to his own business and leave the adventuring to you!”

“Less colorfully, but yea, I told him I needed to find out everything I could about what's happening here.” She sighed. “Being eldress is far more exhausting than I'd expected. Agatha seemed to handle her burdens so lightly.”

Josie's face bunched up into a grin. “You're doing fine, my dear. Agatha herself would have been just as troubled by recent events, I assure you.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Nay, it's true. When Agatha began as eldress, she was a bit older than you, but just as uncertain.” Josie chuckled to herself as she stuffed crumbly dried chamomile flowers into a tin. “I remember an incident—I shouldn't tell this, but it'll do you good to hear it. Her first year as eldress, Agatha was faced with two pregnant sisters! She was beside herself, had no idea what to do. Elder Obadiah, who was not unlike our Wilhelm, wanted them thrown out, but then he'd never have to face such a dilemma with the brethren, would he? Well, Agatha just couldn't toss those girls onto the streets, certainly not when they were carrying new life within them. But the silly things would not confess nor name the fathers, and no other Believer would tell on them. And do you know what Agatha did? Took over a Union Meeting one evening! There we all were, sisters sitting across
from the brethren, all set to discuss social events and theological concerns, and tiny Agatha stood up on a chair and told everyone they'd better listen up and tell her who was responsible for those babies or the Society would hear about it in every homily she ever gave for the rest of her life. The culprit confessed right there in the meeting. Between you and me, it was one man fathered the two little ones. Very popular with both the sisters and the brethren. No one wanted to lose him, but really!” Josie shook her head and sent her chins jiggling.

Rose felt some of the tension in her shoulders relax. It was a comfort knowing that Agatha had taken drastic measures herself now and then.

“Josie, since we are discussing past times, what do you remember about a sister named Faithfull Worthington?”

Josie's head popped up. “Goodness, what brought her to mind? She was one of my Infirmary sisters. It must be twenty years or more since she died.”

“Twenty-five,” Rose said. “Her name has come up recently. How did she die, do you know?”

“I must confess,” Josie said, “I've wondered a bit about that myself. I wasn't here, you see, I was getting additional nursing training. When I returned, I found that she'd died in her sleep in the Infirmary, and one of the other Infirmary sisters at that time said it was a heart attack. I was shocked. Faithfull was not more than thirty-five and fit as they come. She worked alongside the brethren every spring and fall in the fields, loved to work outdoors. She'd spent the night in the Infirmary being watched for a cough. Then she just slipped away in her sleep.”

“Do you think she could have been murdered?”

“Murdered? Goodness gracious, where did you get such an idea?”

Rose hesitated. Josie was reliable and trustworthy, so she asked, “Do you know of any way someone could make a death look like a heart attack, something that someone here would have been able to do back in 1912?”

Josie frowned. “Back then, I think it wouldn't have been too difficult. Just the Infirmary sisters determined how she died, and one of them was an inexperienced young sister called in to help because Faithfull was ill. I don't think they even called the doctor from Languor after they found her dead. Nay, my guess is it was pneumonia, and they just made a mistake.” She finished putting away her newly filled tins and reached for her cloak from a wall peg.

“It's getting late, my dear. Let's run along to Samuel's burial.”

Rose silently slipped on her own cloak and tied it shut around her neck, since the evening spring air had turned chilly. Samuel. Another unexpected heart attack.

Dusk shrouded the village as somber Believers left their evening chores and made their way to the cemetery for Samuel's burial. Rose and Josie scanned the village as they left the Infirmary to join the others, but they saw only other long, dark Dorothy cloaks and work jackets. No world's people hovering about.

The new cemetery had been in use since 1882, when the village's first cemetery had filled. Except for its location in flat open space on the east side of North
Homage, the new cemetery looked much like the old one. A slatted wood fence enclosed the square of land containing precise rows of graves. A small rounded metal marker, listing only the Believer's name, age at death, and death date identified each grave. Simplicity and humility prevailed in death as in life.

The sweet scent of wild plum and apple blossoms blended with the moist smell of newly turned earth as Rose joined the others around Samuel's gravesite. The plain pine coffin holding Samuel's body lay on the ground. His grave marker, still clean and shiny, glimmered in the final rays of the setting sun.

Rose and Wilhelm moved to opposite sides of the hole dug for Samuel's coffin. They'd agreed that each would deliver a short homily. Rose was pleased. At least for the moment, Wilhelm seemed willing to treat her more as his equal than as an upstart to be quelled. Had standing up to him earned her some respect?

As the Believers gathered, brethren in one group, sisters in another, Rose studied their faces. Eisa Pike, always vying for center stage, stood in front. She swayed dreamily, her eyes closed. Rose's antennae for trouble tingled. Eisa was known for her tendency to fall into trembling trances whenever she had an audience. Rose would not have minded had she believed the trances were truly inspired.

Wilhelm stepped forward and led the group in prayer. As the prayer ended, he raised his arms and his face toward the darkening sky. He held his pose for several minutes, as though waiting to hear the spirits of long-dead Believers that elders and eldresses had often reported hearing at funerals. But for all his zealotry, Wilhelm admitted never hearing the voices
of Mother Ann or falling into trembling trances, which he explained as his own lack of perfection. He admired anyone who had the “gifts,” even if those gifts were suspect. At every opportunity, he opened himself to receive them. As before, after a time, he lowered his arms without any sign of being blessed.

“Brethren and sisters,” he began. Rose noted his inclusion of the sisters for once. “This night we cheer the soul of our brother Samuel to the arms of our Mother and the protection of our Father, where he will flourish forever, safe from the wretched tongues of the world.”

The moon had risen in the night sky, shining its pale light on the faces of the Believers. Elsa still swayed and nodded as she listened to Wilhelm, but she seemed under control. Though she felt sad for the loss of Samuel, Rose's mind wandered from the homily to thoughts about who might have killed him, if his death was neither natural nor a suicide. Surely one of the apostates.

Yet Sarah concerned her, too. She seemed gentle and devoted to the Society—and, true, she had been attacked. But she was the only link to the apostates, as far as Rose could tell. She always seemed to be present when an incident occurred. She disappeared at times, maybe just to meet Caleb, maybe because she played a role in the incidents. Sarah seemed nervous as she listened to Wilhelm's powerful voice. She stood aside from the sisters, as if she didn't feel part of the whole. Her protruding eyes darted from Elsa to Wilhelm and back to Elsa.