A Deadly Shaker Spring Read online

  AN UNGODLY VISIT

  “Great God in Heaven!” Rose said, barely above a whisper.

  She had heard the screams of terrified children and had come running. She arrived at the schoolhouse door at the same time as Brother Samuel. They saw Charlotte clutching sobbing children before a room full of swarming rats.

  Rose wasn’t afraid of rodents, or most small animals in small enough numbers. But rats were not her favorite, and these were far too many. Three scrawny gray rats scurried past and fled outdoors. What looked like at least a dozen more scrambled around the classroom. Their fur was matted and streaked with dirt, their eyes feverish with God knew what diseases. Rose shuddered. She dared not think where they’d come from. A wrinkled and dirty burlap sack lay just inside the inner door, its open end faced toward the classroom . . .

  DEDICATION

  To my father, James R. Woodworth, with love

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For their skill and friendship, I am grateful to my writers’ group: Mary Logue, Marilyn Bos, Becky Bohan, Peter Hautman, and Tom Rucker. I also want to thank my editor, Patricia Lande Grader, and my agent, Barbara Gislason, for their insight and support. Always and forever, I am grateful to and for my family—most especially, Norm.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The North Homage Shaker village, the town and the county of Languor, Kentucky, and all their inhabitants are figments of the author’s imagination. The characters live only in this book and represent no one, living or dead. By 1937, the period in which this story is told, no Shaker villages remained in Kentucky or anywhere else outside the northeastern United States. Today one small Shaker community survives, Sabbathday Lake, near Poland Springs, Maine.

  Deborah Woodworth

  1997

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Also by Deborah Woodworth

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  We buried her this afternoon, my sister, my heart. Mother Ann opened her arms wide to carry her to God, and the angels appeared, crowds of angels, sparkling and chanting. They swooped down to reclaim one of their own. They knew she was pure in her soul, even if the brethren doubted. I watched them today. I saw the smug looks on her sisters’ faces, the vengeful gloating. The vipers break their vows with every thought. The brethren are no better, with their secret faces like judgment carved in cold stone. Mother Ann knows the soul of her child. They do not. Especially him. He tried not to show anything, but I could see. He killed her as surely as if he stopped her breath with his own hand.

  SISTER SARAH BAKER SMOOTHED THE DOG-EARED paper and skimmed the passage again. Bold handwriting slashed across the page. She’d lost count of how many times she had read it. Creases had already cut into the yellowed paper since Caleb had slipped it to her a few days earlier.

  With a tired sigh, Sarah edged her plump body off her bed. She had done what she’d been instructed to do, even though it took the better part of the night to find the right moment, when everyone was deeply asleep so she wouldn’t be missed from her retiring room or caught in the act.

  Sarah glanced in the small mirror hanging from a wall peg and straightened her stiff sugar-scoop bonnet over the cap that hid her hair. She didn’t bother to primp before her reflection. She knew she wasn’t pretty, not the way she remembered her mother looking during those first blissful six years of Sarah’s life. She frowned at herself. It was a wonder Caleb had even noticed her.

  No time for self-pity right now. Dawn would arrive soon. She had kept the journal page with her during the trying night to remind her of why she had agreed to do what she was doing, but now she needed to return it to its hiding place in the sewing room. Her simply furnished retiring room held no private spaces. She was afraid someone might find the paper, even hidden in her own little-used journal.

  Sarah folded the page into quarters, then slid it under the kerchief that crossed over the bodice of her long, loose work dress. She heard it crinkle as she slipped into her long Dorothy cloak. The sound was somehow soothing. Sarah hadn’t even asked Caleb where it came from, just some old Shaker journal, that was enough for her. The passage had the ring of truth. It was written by someone who had been there. Someone who knew who had killed her mother.

  Sarah slipped through the always unlocked door to the Sisters’ Shop. The weak dawn light barely penetrated the curtains covering the large windows. The ground floor was divided into two rooms opening to a central corridor, which led to a staircase. After breakfast, other sisters would arrive to work in these rooms, if their hands were not needed for kitchen or laundry rotation or for planting. At this early hour it should be empty.

  As the nervous knots in Sarah’s stomach loosened, exhaustion dragged at her like sacks of flour tied to her ankles. She pulled herself up the staircase, sliding her hand along the smooth oak bannister to propel herself along in the dark. She cried out as she tripped and her shin hit the sharp edge of a step. With a flash of temper, she grabbed her long skirt and yanked it well above her feet. No need to worry, at this hour, about brethren coming along and catching a forbidden glimpse of her legs, and she was tired enough to fall and break one of them.

  Sarah reached her personal domain, the sewing room, which occupied the entire top story of the Sisters’ Shop. She felt safest in this room, with its piles of soft, finely woven fabric surrounding her like comforting blankets. On the way to her own sewing table, she smoothed her hand over a length of dark blue wool spread out on the cutting table. She sank into her work chair and flipped on her small lamp.

  The sewing tables had deep drawers built into their side, rather than their front, so that sewing sisters could open them without bumping their knees or crawling under the pull-out workboard. Sarah dropped to the floor facing the drawers. She pulled out the second drawer, held it on her lap, and drew the journal page from behind her kerchief. The comfort of habit made her unfold it one more time and begin to read.

  A click, like the opening of a door, jerked her head upright. She held her breath and listened. A soft creaking sound reached her, followed by another click. A door opening, then closing again.

  Feeling underneath the drawer in her lap, Sarah pried two tacks from the wooden bottom. With shaking hands, she tacked the journal page to the drawer bottom, then shoved the drawer back into its slot. She sat unmoving, alert. No steps creaked. If someone had entered the Sisters’ Shop at this early hour, she—or he—must have stayed downstairs. It was probably just a sister arriving early for work. Still, it would be best to check. As sewing-room deaconess, she felt a responsibility for the whole building. She picked her way down the familiar staircase, avoiding the areas that squeaked.

  She squinted into the open doorway to the weaving room. Old Sister Viola sometimes couldn’t sleep, so she would trudge over in the dark to weave or simply to card wool by lamplight. But nay, the looms were still. Silhouetted against the curtains, they looked to Sarah’s overheated imagination like those medieval implements of torture she used to scare he
rself silly by reading about as a kid.

  Quashing old memories, she checked the opposite room, where the sisters spun and dyed their wool. Ever since Wilhelm got his brainstorm about going back to the old ways and being self-sufficient, the decades-old spinning wheels had been dragged out of storage one by one, dusted off, and repaired.

  Skeins of freshly dyed yarns looped over pegs on a strip of wood which encircled the quiet room. In the gloom the skeins all looked to be shades of brown, but Sarah knew there were soft yellows and rusts and even some bright colors to please the Shakers’ customers in the world. There was no one in that room, either. If her heart ever stopped clattering like a sewing machine, maybe she could still return to her retiring room and catch a short nap before breakfast.

  Maybe she could even skip breakfast, if Eldress Rose didn’t . . . A floorboard creaked inside the spinning room.

  “Who is it? Who is here?” Sarah barely had breath to get the words out. She strained to see into the dim room. I’m overtired, imagining things, she thought, steadying herself on the doorjamb. She turned to leave.

  The blow struck the back of Sarah’s head a split second after she registered a footfall behind her. The impact did not fell her. She twisted toward the source of the attack as black confusion spread its fingers through her brain. She felt no pain. If there was no pain, could it be a dream?

  The second blow caught her in the stomach. She called out Caleb’s name, or thought she did. All she heard was a buzzing monotone. Whether it came from the room or from inside her own head, she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t even gasp. Her lungs refused to take in air. In her last moments of awareness, Sarah felt arms fumbling to break her fall to the floor.

  TWO

  SISTER ROSE CALLAHAN, NEWLY APPOINTED ELDRESS of the Kentucky Shaker village of North Homage, dragged open her eyes to darkness. She groaned and sat up in bed, sweeping a mass of unruly red hair off her forehead. Wearily tossing aside the light bedclothes, she slid her long legs over the side of the bed. She shivered and crossed her arms as the cool air of early spring penetrated her long-sleeved cotton nightgown. The cracked-open window of her second-floor retiring room framed only black buildings in black air. No sign of dawn. She fumbled for the light on the plain wooden table next to her bed. Her small clock read three-thirty.

  Rose padded barefoot across the cold pine floor to her east window. The Trustees’ Office, in which Rose stubbornly still lived and worked despite her recent change in status from trustee to eldress, was located at the far west end of North Homage. Her corner retiring rooms, including a sitting room and a bedroom, looked east and south over the entire village.

  At first she saw nothing that could explain why she’d awakened. All windows were dark in the Center Family Dwelling House, directly across from her, and in the Children’s Dwelling House, to her right just across the unpaved road running through the center of the village. Then she heard something, like faint, short cries.

  She eased the window open farther and leaned her head and shoulders out into the crisp night air. She squinted at the buildings that lined the central path all the way to the fields beyond the orchard at the east end of town. Each building was dark and still.

  A movement caught her eye, straight down the path near the new barn. She opened her eyes wide, as if it would help her penetrate the darkness. A bright spot of light hung suspended in the darkness. As the moon emerged from behind a cloud, Rose could distinguish an arm extended from the light. Someone was carrying a lantern. Since the Society’s beagle-spaniel, Freddie, wasn’t barking wildly, it must be one of the brethren out checking on the animals or getting an early—very early—start on the chores.

  Relieved, Rose turned back to her small bed, which looked warm and inviting. But as she slid between the rumpled sheets, she heard the sounds again. This time she recognized them. The alarmed cries of animals. She ran back to the window. Just beyond the barn, white dots that could only be sheep roamed free in the fields. They should have been in a small pasture near the barn, surrounded by sturdy slatted fencing. A few sheep had reached the lawn around the Laundry building and were no doubt making quick work of the newly sprouting Kentucky bluegrass.

  At the high-pitched whinnying of a startled horse, Rose squinted at the barn’s front door. It stood open. She was certain it had been closed just minutes earlier. She could see several shapes now flowing out the barn door and wandering around. Two certainly were horses trotting in confused circles. No brethren would be chasing animals out of the barn at this hour.

  Rose came close to cursing. Someone must be out there now, letting the Shakers’ animals loose and maybe even stealing their horses. The village owned only four horses, which they needed now more than ever, with spring plowing in full swing. Where was Freddie? Why hadn’t he barked to alert the brethren to an intruder?

  Rose yanked her nightgown over her head. Her long navy work dress hung where she’d left it the night before, buttoned on a hanger latched over a wall peg. She pulled the loose-fitting dress off the hanger and forced it over her thick mane of hair without undoing the buttons. No time for stockings or a cap. She slipped her bare feet into her black work shoes and ran.

  As Rose arrived, panting, at the barn, Elder Wilhelm Lundel’s unmistakable figure burst from the front door of the Ministry House, just across the pathway from the barn and Laundry. His white hair stuck out in spikes. A stocky, muscular man, he lumbered toward the sheep, waving his arms above his head.

  Several of the brethren came running from the Center Family Dwelling House, including Brother Samuel Bickford, a tall, gaunt man in his mid-fifties. He slowed to a walk as he neared the alarmed horses and spoke to them soothingly, calling each by name. At the sound of his voice, a pinto named Rainbow stopped prancing and ducked his head toward Samuel’s outstretched hand.

  With the horses under control, Rose took time to look around. All four horses and the village’s few dairy cows had been led, pushed, or frightened out of the barn. They would never have exited so quickly without encouragement and someone to open all their enclosures and the barn door.

  With his usual calm efficiency, Samuel secured the horses in the barn while the other brethren herded the cows back home. Samuel emerged from the barn carrying a spare board, which he nailed to a broken length of white fencing. He opened the gate and began gently shooing in the nearest sheep.

  Wilhelm, on the other hand, ran at the sheep, shouting as if he could shame them into returning. They scattered in terror.

  Rose scooped up a bleating spring lamb and plunked him inside the hastily repaired fence. He bounded away to search for his mother.

  “Well? Does this convince thee that the world is our enemy?” Wilhelm’s white hair hung wildly around his weather-toughened face, and his labored breathing pumped his barrel chest.

  “Wilhelm, this is surely an accident. Fences break.” She doubted her own words, but with Wilhelm it was best to downplay any episode he might turn into an excuse for a crusade against the world.

  “Fences are not thy specialty, are they? Anyone can see this fence had help getting broken,” Wilhelm sneered. “Look, look for thyself.” Wilhelm longed to revitalize the declining Society, and his plan for doing so hinged on returning to the old ways, such as saying “thee” instead of “you,” to set the Shakers apart from the world. He had convinced North Homage Believers to switch back to nineteenth-century dress, but most resisted changing their modern speech into archaic patterns that confused and frustrated them.

  Wilhelm led the way to the break in the fence. The upper wooden slate was smashed inward. The wood showed several round indentations, as if splintered with a hammer blow from outside the pasture. No hammer or other implement lay nearby.

  “Is it thy opinion that the sheep so yearned to roam free that they smashed this wood with their hooves from the outside? Someone from the world did this, of course, someone who hates us.”

  “Wilhelm, these dents could have been here for years. They probably have
nothing to do with the break in the fence. I’m sure this can all be explained rationally.” Rose felt a pang of guilt over her unwillingness to let Wilhelm be right. His suspiciousness triggered her own stubbornness.

  “And what about the other incidents, eh? What about all the food stolen from our storehouse?” Wilhelm’s blue eyes glittered with the victory of a scored point.

  “Just a half dozen jars of raspberry preserves, for goodness’ sakes,” Rose said. “It was probably just a hungry child, maybe even one of our own. We don’t lock our doors, after all. We always grow and cook extra to share with the hungry. Somebody probably thought we wouldn’t mind.”

  Rose became aware of the quiet. A silent group had gathered around Wilhelm and her. The first light of dawn slivered through the sky and illuminated the circle of faces. They were concerned faces, even alarmed, watching their spiritual leaders argue.

  * * *

  Rose frowned as she ran her fingertips over the damaged fence rail. She had hustled everyone off to breakfast and returned alone to examine the damage. She admitted to herself that Wilhelm was right. The splintered marks were fresh. One of them had cracked through the white paint, exposing unweathered wood.

  She squinted at the dented wood. What would have made such a mark? A hammer? Perhaps a shovel?

  The heavy barn door stood open a sliver. Rose slipped into the cool dimness that smelled of hay and manure and fresh-cut wood. The barn was still under construction in some areas.

  Rose quickly found what she was looking for—a hammer that lay close to the door as if tossed hurriedly inside. She picked it up. A bit of white paint stuck to the head.

  A faint noise startled Rose and she dropped the hammer. It thudded softly on the dirt floor. She heard the noise again—a wheezing sound, somewhere between a snore and a whimper. It seemed to come from behind a stack of hay bales.

  Rose’s first impulse was to run out of the barn, back into the spring sunshine. But she stopped herself. Maybe this was a derelict, hungry, tired, perhaps injured. She couldn’t just leave him.