Sins of a Shaker Summer (31 page)

Andrew and Rose leaned against trees and gasped in air, watching Thomas struggle vainly against his bindings. They grinned at each other, then laughed out loud. Andrew's white shirt was shredded, and he was covered with streaks of mud and scratches from being dragged. A trickle of blood had dried on his forehead. Rose knew she was an equal sight. The waistband of her skirt was half ripped out, and the fabric dragged behind her. Her hair hung in muddy strings over her face.

Rose stopped laughing and groaned. “Janey and Marjorie! They must be terrified.”

“We're all right,” said a high voice from behind a nearby tree. Janey and Marjorie stepped out and ran to Rose, who held them close. They did not look at their father.

“N
OTHING BROKEN
,” A
NDREW SAID, WITH A GRIN
. “I'
LL BE
back at work within the hour.”

“Nay, you will not!” Rose said. “I speak as your eldress, and I'm sure Wilhelm would agree with me. You must take at least, oh, let's say two hours. After all, you are badly battered. You might frighten the children.”

Rose sat in a visitor's rocking chair, a respectful five feet away from Andrew's Infirmary bed. Josie busied herself at a small dresser, pouring rose water in a bowl to sweeten the air.

“I won't tire you,” Rose said, more gently, “but I thought you would want to know that Thomas has confessed to the murders of both Patience and Hugo.”

“Poor Hugo, too,” Andrew said.

“Yea, Hugo was too experienced, and Patience, too observant. They both learned of Thomas's fraud. Hugo would have told Wilhelm, of course, so Thomas killed him.”

“How on earth did Thomas poison the jelly?”

“He didn't. In fact, when Hugo first became ill, Thomas didn't realize he was even suspicious. Hugo made the mistake of confronting Thomas, to convince him to turn himself in.

“The peppermint jelly is probably fine. Not very appetizing, but not deadly. Benjamin examined every mixture in the Medicinal Herb Shop, and there was nothing that
would have caused more than an upset stomach for Hugo, which is probably what happened. Because of his weak condition, he ended up here, and Thomas simply came to visit and fed him one of Benjamin's more toxic infusions. We'll probably never know how he got Hugo to consume it.

“Benjamin, by the way, has personally ripped out all his poisonous herb plantings. He worked on his concoctions at night—that's who came in when Gennie spent the night in the closet—and he'd been very careful never to leave any evidence of the herbs lying around the shop, but he made the mistake of noting the locations of the plants in his journal. Patience watched everyone and soon found out his secret.”

“Good,” Andrew said. “Of course, the medicinal herb industry will probably fail now.”

“We'll survive,” Rose said. “I would give up more than that to have Hugo—and Patience, too, with all her faults—back with us.”

Rose leaned back and caught the breeze from the open window. Cooler air had arrived, at least for a short visit. It wouldn't stay long, this time of year.

“By the way,” Andrew asked, “whatever happened to Patience's cap?”

“Oh dear,” Rose said, “I was thinking you'd be better off not knowing. But you'd find out anyway, so you might as well hear it from me. Thomas had watched the argument between Patience and Gertrude. After Gertrude left, Patience took off her cap to examine the lump on the back of her head from her fall. Thomas attacked her with a rock soon after. But then he realized that the cap, which had only a drop or two of blood on it, was a clue that Patience had suffered a second blow. So he took it with him. The brethren found it in the leaves you were lying on top of while you were unconscious in the woods.”

Rose lowered her voice. “And now I have a question for you,” she said. “How did you really find that first-year
foxglove near the holy hill? You couldn't have seen it from the area where I discovered Patience.”

“I've been found out,” Andrew said. He gazed at Rose, his eyes sad. “Sometimes I just need solitude, to think and pray and mourn. I had discovered the holy hill on my own just two days earlier, though, of course, I didn't realize its significance. I never saw Patience there, so I thought it was my secret place.”

“I see,” Rose said, satisfied. “I'll let you rest now.” She left the rocking chair where it was, in case another visitor should come soon.

She had nearly reached the door when Andrew called to her. “I have one last question,” he said.

Rose turned back to him.

“Those rituals Patience performed,” he said. “They were very like the ones early Believers conducted on the holy hills, weren't they?”

Rose nodded.

“So if North Homage's Empyrean Mount was a secret even you did not know about, how did Patience know?” He tilted his bandaged head in puzzlement. Josie stopped straightening the room and waited to hear Rose's answer.

“We don't know,” Rose said. “Perhaps we never will.”

“I should not have allowed myself these feelings.” Rose paced around the room. “I should not have let this happen.”

“Let me tell you a story,” Agatha said. “For reasons that will be obvious, I did not tell you this before, but now I believe you need to hear it.” Her weak voice took on some of its old power. Rose stopped pacing and leaned against the windowsill.

“When I was about ten years older than you are now—before you came to five with us—we lost our entire Ministry in one day. You may have heard about the incident from others.”

Rose nodded. “As I recall, the elder and eldress ran away together.”

“The village was devastated,” Agatha continued. “The Lead Ministry concluded that we had strayed too far from their control, and for a time it looked as if we might close our doors, or at best be sent new leaders from the East to discipline us until we had mended our wild ways.”

“But that's when you became eldress, isn't it?” Rose asked.

“Yea, we had a supporter in Mount Lebanon who convinced the Lead Ministry to give us another chance. I'd been raised here from infancy and had shown no leanings toward worldly love, so I was appointed eldress. Brother Obadiah was sent from Pleasant Hill to be elder.”

Rose noticed for the first time a gentleness in Agatha's voice as she said Obadiah's name.

“Obadiah was a fine Shaker and a fine man,” Agatha said. “He could not have worked harder for us had he been raised here himself. We worked together to save the village. And we did save it, with God's grace and Mother Ann's intervention.” Agatha released a sigh that seemed to deflate her tiny body. “In the process,” she said, “we grew to care for one another deeply.”

“I see,” Rose said quietly.

“Nay, you do not. Not yet. Though you may, in the end. Obadiah and I worked side by side for twenty years and never touched until the day he died, when I held his hand as he left us. Josie watched and never said a word. I would not trade a minute of those twenty years, though neither will I lie and say it was easy. At times it was torment. You see, I believe we loved one another all the more because we would not break our vows for earthly love.”

“That I do truly understand,” Rose said. “Thank you for telling me. But I'm afraid I don't have your strength and clarity. I feel as if I have already broken my vows.”

Agatha reached out with one thin hand, and Rose came back to her chair. “This is where Wilhelm and I disagree
fundamentally,” Agatha said. “To him, all actions and feelings and thoughts are equally evil. I believe, certainly, that their potential for evil is powerful, but . . .” She leaned back in her chair and shook her head. “It is always a dilemma,” she said. “If you open the gates of your heart, an unexpected visitor may drop by. But if you close your heart, to keep it pure, you may shut out the angels.”

“Then I have not truly broken my vows?”

“Nay, but you have a choice to make.”

Rose walked to the open window and looked out over her village. The evening meal was approaching, and Believers had begun strolling toward the dwelling house. Two sisters, friends separated during the day by different rotations, fell into step beside one another and chattered, bursting suddenly into laughter. They waved to a group of brethren, returning from the fields. Companionable, from a respectful distance. Loving yet pure. Rose returned to Agatha's side.

“I made my choice a long time ago,” she said. “I make it again now.” She sank to the floor and leaned her head against Agatha's side, like a child, and was comforted.

Photo by Robert LaBree

DEBORAH WOODWORTH
spent her childhood in southern Ohio near the abandoned sites of several Shaker villages. Before turning to writing, she earned a Ph.D. in Sociology of Religion from the University of Minnesota and spent a decade conducting research and teaching. Author of two previous Shaker mysteries, she has also published sociology articles and nonfiction for children. Woodworth and husband live in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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“Woodworth does an admirable job of opening up the world of these peaceful and industrious people to the reader.”

Post
(Denver, Colorado)

“Bits of Shaker lore add a fresh slant to a historical novel that also offers a neat plot. But it is Rose herself—intelligent, compassionate, and very strong—whom readers will especially want to see again.”

Star Tribune
(Minneapolis-St. Paul)

A D
EADLY
S
HAKER
S
PRING

D
EATH OF A
W
INTER
S
HAKER

A S
IMPLE
S
HAKER
M
URDER

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

AVON BOOKS, INC.

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Published by arrangement with the author

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-90922

ISBN: 0-380-79204-4

EPub Edition December 2014 ISBN 9780062385277

www.avonbooks.com/twilight

SINS OF A SHAKER SUMMER
. Copyright © 1999 by Deborah Woodworth. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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