A Simple Shaker Murder (18 page)

Rose turned over two more rumpled pages. The first was a lovely bird with green eyes and bejeweled wings spreading forward as if to surround whoever held the drawing. The image did not strike Rose as frightening, but she supposed it might have a different effect on a child.

The third drawing looked like Mairin's attempt to impose order on the terrifying chaos of her imagination. A checkerboard, each square outlined with precision in black crayon, covered the page. Perhaps this drawing had been her last, because she hadn't filled in any colors. Or perhaps she hadn't needed colors, just order.

Aware of a sense of urgency, Rose rolled up the drawings and stowed them in a small cupboard built into the wall of her retiring room. If she could, she wanted to keep both Wilhelm and Gilbert from learning about the sketches. They would only encourage the two leaders to keep using Mairin as a pawn in their struggle for power. She'd been tossed about all her life. Perhaps that was the reason she'd drawn a checkerboard, though it seemed a sophisticated image for a child who lived in the trees.

Rose had just shut the drawings in the cupboard when a click told her the retiring room door had opened. She whirled around. Mairin stood in the doorway, fully dressed and holding her doll.

“Mairin! I thought . . . I got very worried when I woke up and saw your bed empty.”

“I'm sorry. I just went to the bathroom.”

“Well, I noticed you'd dressed, so I was afraid you'd left.”

“I'm sorry,” Mairin repeated. But she neither cowered nor ran away. Instead, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
It doesn't matter where she's been
, Rose thought
It only matters that she's come back
.

“I'm glad you're here,” Rose said. “Let's leave your doll on your bed during school time, shall we? That way the other children won't feel left out.”

Mairin nodded and placed her doll on her pillow.

“It'll be breakfast time soon. Are you hungry?”

This time Mairin's nod was more vigorous. “Can we eat with Agatha again?” she asked.

“I'm sure she would love it,” Rose said.

Mairin had slipped easily into her role as Agatha's helper. As soon as Polly brought a tray from the kitchen, Mairin pulled a chair near Agatha's and sat on the edge. She always fed Agatha a bite first before eating anything herself. When she did eat, Mairin copied Agatha's slow chewing, almost down to the second. She was rewarded by a warm smile from Agatha. The former eldress was perfectly capable of feeding
herself with her left hand, but it was like her to choose a child's growth over her own fierce independence.

Rose remembered, from her own childhood, Agatha's easy ways with young people. When Agatha had listened to her endless prattle, she'd felt like the most important person on earth, and certainly the most interesting. Now she felt just a twinge of jealousy as she watched Mairin unfold in Agatha's sunshine. But she was glad for Mairin, too.

“Mairin, may I tell Agatha about your drawings?”

After Mairin's brief nod, Rose described the three new drawings to Agatha. “Could they truly be spirit gifts, do you think?”

Agatha's cloudy eyes traveled to her small desk. “Rose, dear, look in the drawer. You should find a drawing.”

Rose wasn't alone in her curiosity—Mairin hurried to stand next to her as she pulled out a yellowed sheet of paper. The drawing—done in spidery black, blue, and red ink—depicted a garden filled with exquisite and unearthly flowers. Each was drawn with intricacy and precision, and none looked like anything Rose had ever seen. She handed the drawing to Agatha.

“You did drawings, too?” Mairin gazed at Agatha with hope.

Agatha handed the paper to the girl and said, “This is very precious to me. I was about your age when I drew it. I regret it was the only gift drawing I was ever given, but I will always feel blessed for having received it. Tell me, child, when did your own pictures come to you—were you awake, or asleep?”

“Asleep.”

“You dreamed the pictures?”

“I guess so. I don't remember dreams, but something woke me up, and I just knew what to draw.”

Rose marveled at the ease with which Agatha drew a response from Mairin. However, she also noticed another jealous pang. Clearly a thorough confession was called for, but Rose wasn't sure how she'd explain to Agatha, her confessor, how she, a pampered adult, could feel envy because of the friendship budding between Agatha and Mairin. Could it be that
Rose wanted, for herself alone, the privilege of being Agatha's “daughter” and Mairin's “mother”? This was just the sort of thing she had vowed to forsake—these jealous, exclusive ties. Yea, a confession was in order, and the sooner, the better.

By the time Rose stopped castigating herself, Agatha was explaining her own drawing to Mairin.

“You see, what we want, we Believers, is to create a heaven on earth, a home as pure and glorious as the celestial home we will journey to someday. But we don't always understand how to do that. The celestial world is a paradise beyond our imagining. So sometimes angels, heavenly spirits, come in dreams or when we worship to show us the way. Do you understand that, Mairin?”

The copper in Mairin's eyes had taken on a sheen. “Yes,” she said. “I think so. It sounds beautiful.”

“Yea, indeed, it is beautiful. That's what I was trying to draw—in my own poor way—the astonishing beauty of the heavens, like exquisite flowers we have never seen on earth.”

Agatha's thin face relaxed in a smile, and her tightly stretched skin seemed to loosen. “When I drew this, we were getting fewer and fewer gifts. I think everyone was ready to settle down a bit.” Agatha chuckled, and Mairin giggled in response, though she couldn't have known Agatha was remembering a period of Shaker history that went somewhat out of control.

“We weren't dancing so much anymore, which disappointed me, so I was dancing all by myself in some woods. I must admit I sneaked off now and then, but I never stayed away long. This time I twirled and shook and jumped, the way I'd seen the sisters do it, and I felt like I was being taken into another world, an unutterably lovely world. Then suddenly Mother Ann appeared to me, dressed all in white with sparkling jewels sewn into her robe. Hundreds of angels swirled around her.”

Agatha leaned her head back on her rocker and closed her eyes. “Mother Ann spoke to me. She said, ‘Child, go home and draw flowers, glorious flowers, and look at them whenever
you need to remember your true home.' Then she blessed me and was gone.”

Agatha opened her eyes. “You never saw a girl run so fast as I did to get home to the Children's Dwelling House. I had red and blue and black ink because I was helping Sister Iris mark the lessons of the younger girls. It took weeks of work, but I never forgot the vision Mother Ann had blessed me with, and I did as she bade me—whenever my faith wavered, I looked at my gift drawing and remembered my true home.”

Both Mairin and Rose sat spellbound as Agatha finished her story. Rose had never seen or heard about Agatha's drawing before, perhaps because Rose herself had always been of a more practical bent; she had never received a direct message from Mother Ann, though she knew such experiences were possible. She simply—and to her disappointment—had never been chosen as an instrument.

Agatha leaned toward Mairin and covered the girl's light brown hand with her own thin blue-veined one. “Think, Mairin. Try to remember your dream. How did you know what to draw?”

Mairin's face puckered in concentration. Rose remembered her own childhood and suspected that Mairin wanted desperately to please Agatha. But the girl took her time and seemed to be focusing on her dream. Finally she opened her eyes and frowned.

“I'm not sure,” she said, “but I don't remember seeing a beautiful lady and lots of angels. It was scarier than that. The things I drew, I just saw them in my dream, and I knew to draw them. Only I don't remember if Mother Ann told me to draw them.” Mairin's pupils widened with fear.

Though her own eyesight was probably too poor to see the anguish in Mairin's eyes, Agatha responded to the tone in her voice. “The visits of Mother Ann are different for everyone,” she said. “You have not lived with us for long, so perhaps she came to you in hidden form. Nevertheless, it is very like her to give you pictures to draw.”

Agatha sank back in her rocker, spent.

“It is past time to get Mairin to the Schoolhouse,” Rose said, planting a light kiss on Agatha's cool forehead. “And time for you to rest.”

Agatha clutched Rose's wrist. “Stay just a moment,” she said. “Mairin, dear, would you take this tray back to the kitchen? Thank you.”

She waited for a moment after the door closed behind Mairin before motioning Rose to sit again.

“I know our experiences were very different,” Agatha said, “but my heart tells me that Mairin was visited by Mother Ann.”

“You surprise me,” Rose said. “I was sure you'd say it was just a bad dream. Why would Mother send such odd messages?”

“Mother does not always send bright and beautiful messages, after all. Remember that she lost all her own children. I truly believe she has come to Mairin's aid because she is a child, and a needy one. Mother Ann has appeared in disguise because the child might not understand—but appear she has. I believe her message is as much for us as it is for Mairin, perhaps even more so. Mairin is in grave danger, I feel it, and those drawings are messages from Mother Ann to warn us. We
must listen
. We are all she has. We must not fail her.”

W
HEN
R
OSE HAD TOO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT, WORKING IN
the Herb House always seemed to help. So, after depositing Mairin at the Schoolhouse, she assigned herself to a morning of packing herbs for sale to the world. The harvest was in, and the Herb House would be bursting with bound bunches of herbs hanging from every possible hook, peg, and rack. Many of them were dry and ready to be crumbled and stuffed into round tins. Maybe she'd allow herself to work on the dried buds collected from the lavender plants during their second flowering in the late summer. It was tedious work, but Rose found the fresh fragrance helped clear her mind.

She swung open the Herb House door to an explosion of heady scents—pungent, sweet, and grassy. But her joy was short-lived. The building was filled not just with herbs, but with people. On the ground floor, a brother repaired a large herb press, while a group of sisters, laughing and chattering, worked at a long table. At one end, two sisters were tying up the last of the harvest for drying, while several other sisters used the remaining space to extract essential oils from several piles of herbs. Rose recognized long stalks of valerian. So some of this work was being done for the medicinal herb industry, which Andrew directed.

Waving a greeting, Rose made for the stairs to the second-floor drying room. The smell of pickles told her that dill seeds were being packed even before she entered the room. Once
again, the lifting of her spirits was only momentary. More sisters and a couple of New-Owenite women bustled about the room, asking and answering questions. The Herb House was not a quiet, tranquil place. She would have to do her thinking elsewhere.

She descended the staircase to find Andrew at the worktable, consulting with the sisters extracting herb oils. He made a notation in a journal, closed it and hitched it under his arm, and looked up to see Rose. Though his lips barely moved, Rose felt his smile. They never made any effort to run into one another—that would feel tantamount to breaking their vows—but their friendship grew, and they allowed themselves to enjoy working together, when the task called for them to do so.

“Rose, I'm glad to find you,” Andrew said. His expression grew serious. A wave of brown hair, an inch longer than Wilhelm preferred, fell across his forehead. He ignored it. “Have you time to come back to the Trustees' Office with me? I want to show you something.”

Rose noticed a sidelong glance or two from the sisters, but assured herself she had no reason for guilt. Nor did Andrew, though his habit of direct speaking sometimes triggered suspicions.

“Is there a problem with the books?”

“It seems so,” Andrew said. “It seems that . . . well, it's better if I show you.”

Rose followed him from the Herb House, her anxiety increasing with each step. Normally Andrew would have consulted with her immediately, unconcerned that others might hear. Something must be very wrong.

“Gilbert says that Wilhelm approved these expenditures,” Andrew said, holding the ledger book out for Rose to examine. She laid it on the desk and bent over it, one hand supporting her chin, the other tracing the columns of numbers. By the time she'd finished, she needed both hands to hold up her head. Her eyes met Andrew's troubled brown ones, and neither
of them cared at that moment that they were too close together, seated at the pine double desk that Rose had once occupied.