A Deadly Shaker Spring Read online

  “Nonsense! All our needs are met. We are a community of Believers.”

  “A community of slaves, you mean. And don’t forget, I was one of them. I know.”

  “I don’t forget,” Rose murmured.

  “Oh, I know full well your reputation in business,” Worthington said. “You Shakers are a shrewd lot. Everyone says how good Shaker products are. But they don’t know you like I do. You don’t give a damn about anyone but yourselves.”

  He composed his face and rose from his chair with elegant ease. His trouser legs fell perfectly into place. “However, I bear no personal grudge against you, Rose,” he said. “Some of you Shakers were kind to me when I was a child, and I have no desire to see you hurt. I’m afraid, though, that this morning’s episode is merely the beginning.” He retrieved his black silk hat from a wall peg and turned back to Rose. “Your neighbors feel you’ve worn out your welcome here. There may come a time when you’ll need to sell some or even all of your land, maybe move on to another state. The Languor Citizens’ Bank will be delighted to work with you when that time comes.” He inclined his head in a faint imitation of a bow. “We’ll talk about this again, I’m sure. In the meantime, just remember—if your situation becomes intolerable, there are ways I can help.”

  As Worthington raised his eyes to the door, his features hardened. Rose turned and saw Brother Samuel Bickford pausing just inside the office doorway. Samuel stepped into the room and toward Worthington.

  “Richard,” he said, his hand outstretched. Worthington slammed his hat on his head and pushed past Samuel.

  “What was that about?” Rose asked.

  Samuel shrugged. “Can’t imagine. Richard and I don’t run into each other much anymore.”

  “You were here when he left the Society, weren’t you? Why did he leave?”

  Samuel’s body seemed to close in on itself. “Those were dark days,” he said. “Many Believers lost their faith and left.”

  “But why? What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Samuel said. “Nothing.”

  “But something must have caused so many to leave at once,” Rose said.

  After several moments of silence, Rose realized there was no point in pushing any harder just then. Samuel was elsewhere; his heart and his mind struggled with a memory that Rose could neither guess nor capture. She would ask again soon, though; she sensed the information would be helpful.

  “I came to speak with you about Sarah,” Samuel said. “I am concerned for her welfare.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “She seemed badly injured when we brought her in, and I left before Josie had finished stitching her up.”

  “That is kind of you, Samuel,” Rose said, in some confusion. “Have you spoken with Josie about Sarah?”

  Samuel shifted position again and stared over Rose’s head. “I wanted to speak with you.”

  “All right. Well, Josie called me an hour or so ago and said Sarah is fully alert and yearning to return to the sewing room. But she remembers nothing of the incident.”

  Samuel nodded slowly. “That is good news.” He grew silent, and Rose wondered if he had slipped back into his reverie.

  “Watch over her, won’t you?” Samuel whispered, his eyes snapping back to the present. “The sins belong to others, not to her.” He turned on his heel and left the Trustees’ Office.

  FOUR

  LAURA HILL PAUSED ON THE BOTTOM BASEMENT step to watch her husband, Kentuck, slouched over the keys attached to his ancient printing press. She was a tall woman, taller than her husband, and straight-backed still, despite reaching her fiftieth year after a lifetime of unhappiness. For much of her marriage, her height had grieved her. It had given her husband yet one more reason to sneer at her. In recent years, though, she had found herself buying high heels and piling her thick, gray-streaked dark hair on top of her head. She found increasing pleasure in staring at the thinning spot in the center of her husband’s own graying hair. She enjoyed watching him finger-comb his remaining curls over the bald spot, then grinned secretly as they slid inevitably downward again. Once she had worshiped those locks of hair; they had awakened her heart. But twenty-four years of marriage and almost as many betrayals had wrapped her heart in winter-weight wool.

  Laura . . . She smiled at the pretty sound of the name. It wasn’t hers, of course, any more than Kentuck was her husband’s real name. They were using assumed names to keep their presence in town a secret—especially from the Shakers—and they’d sworn to use those names even with each other, so they wouldn’t slip in public.

  She didn’t dare think about all that she had done and abandoned to be with him. Her bitterest regret was her failure to have children. Every day of her youth, she had longed for a pregnancy that never happened. Her own body had betrayed her, that much was clear. Her unfaithful husband had certainly fathered enough children with other women over the past few decades.

  The stair creaked as she stepped off. Her husband’s head jerked up, irritation on his florid features. He clucked in annoyance. His reactions no longer touched her.

  “I can’t be bothered now, Laura. I’m busy.” He bent again over the press.

  “I know. I hate to disturb you when you’re working, but it’s important.” She spoke with a practiced deference that she no longer felt. “It’s just that—”

  “What? What? Hurry it up, can’t you, woman? You’re breaking my concentration.”

  She fixed her eyes on his bald spot and felt herself detach once again from his disdain for her. It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter; she wouldn’t let him.

  “There’s been an accident at North Homage,” she said in an even voice. “That girl fell down the stairs. That’s what I hear, anyway.”

  Her husband stopped his work and tossed a look of disgust at her, which, for a reason she couldn’t articulate, she enjoyed. “Can’t you make sense for once? What girl? Why should I care?”

  “Because it’s that Sarah; she’s the one who fell down the stairs.”

  That silenced him for a moment.

  “Where did you hear this?” he asked finally.

  “In town,” she said. “People talk to me. Richard had heard about it, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Caleb told everybody. You know how he is about that girl, and his tongue runs wild when he’s been drinking. I’ve said it before, you’re wrong to trust those two.”

  “I don’t trust them.” For once, he looked directly at his wife. “But that girl is our important link. It’s her being back with the Shakers that makes this whole plan possible. I’ve waited a long time to punish those murderers.” He turned back to his task.

  His wife shook her head, but not enough so that he could see her from the corner of his eye. She needed to tread carefully. Her husband’s precious plan for revenge could ruin their own lives, but he didn’t seem to know that. She cursed herself for not having left things as they were. If she had, her husband would still be dreaming of revenge, but maybe he would never have put his plan into action.

  “You shouldn’t be talking to anyone in town. We’ve been over and over that. You never understand anything, do you?” he said, not looking at her.

  In the warm one-room Shaker schoolhouse, ten girls and seven boys gazed out the windows with half-closed eyes on pink magnolia blossoms and Kentucky bluegrass. The spring afternoon had turned warm and lazy. A blue jay chattered through a window cracked open for ventilation. The only human-made sound was the soft creak of a nearby door as it opened and closed.

  Their young teacher, Sister Charlotte, had paused in the middle of explaining a story problem to shake her own groggy head. None of the children noticed that she’d stopped talking. Charlotte frowned at her students’ slack, dreamy faces. She’d best liven things up, or they’d all be napping, and that wouldn’t do. The year’s schooling had another four weeks to go. Surely they could pay attention for one more hour.

  She tried to catch the eye of one of her best, most alert students, Timmy, who sat on the boys’ side of
the room. He stared out the nearest window, chin in hand, lank blond hair skimming his nearly closed eyes.

  With so few children these days, the North Homage Ministry had decided the boys and girls should be taught at the same time, instead of girls in the summer and boys in the winter, as was historical custom. A six-foot space filled with bookcases separated the girls from the boys. So awkward, Charlotte thought, and rather silly. She’d grown up in the world, sat right next to boys at school, and she’d still become a Shaker, hadn’t she? A calling is a calling, and that’s that.

  Her best girl student, Nora, slumped in her seat near the front. Her eyes were shut.

  “Nora!” Charlotte snapped more harshly than she meant to.

  “Yea, Sister.” The eight-year-old’s eyes snapped open.

  “We were discussing a story problem involving two trains going different speeds. Could you summarize the problem for the class, please?”

  Nora widened her translucent eyes, sucked her bottom lip, and finally gave Charlotte a tiny, contrite smile.

  “Nay, Sister, I can’t. But I’d like to hear the story again.”

  Snickers erupted from both sides of the classroom. Charlotte just managed not to smile, though Nora had accomplished what she couldn’t. The class was almost attentive again. For the moment, at least.

  “All right, then, Timmy, can you—”

  A child’s scream, high and piercing, sliced through the air. Charlotte slewed her eyes back over the bookcases to the girls’ side. A quick movement on the ground stopped her. Nay, it couldn’t be a mouse, could it? The sisters cleaned daily, and no food was stored anywhere in the school building. How could they have a mouse? And here it was spring. The field mice should be back outdoors.

  Charlotte squinted at the bottom edge of the bookcase, which stood a few inches off the floor. The thin end of a rodent’s tail protruded from under the bottom shelf. It swished into a ray of sunshine.

  A familiar chill traveled through Charlotte’s body. The tail was too thick. Not a mouse. A rat.

  Rats terrified Charlotte. Before coming to the Shakers, she’d lived with her mother in an abandoned cottage on the outskirts of Languor. The roof leaked, the wood floor was rotting, and one early morning she had awakened to find a rat sharing her bed.

  Another little girl screamed. Within seconds, all the girls scrambled on top of their desks and shrieked. The boys, too, abandoned all pretense of manliness and jumped on their chairs.

  Charlotte stood rooted to the floor, paralyzed by the pulsing rhythm of the screams. She squeezed her eyes shut against the nightmare memory of seeing those bright rodent eyes staring at her.

  I’m responsible for these children, she reminded herself, and this is just a small, pesky animal. She had to calm the children down, get them out quickly so the brethren could come and eliminate the creature.

  “Children! Children!” she croaked. “Stop screaming. Please stop screaming.” The noise level lowered, but only a fraction. “Breathe deeply, children. One . . . two . . . three, come on.” She sucked in a deep breath, as much for herself as for them. “That’s it. It’s only a—a small animal.”

  She threw more control into her voice than she felt. “Quiet down and leave by whatever door is nearest you. We’ll meet again outside. Do you hear me? Children!”

  Renewed shrieking swallowed the last of her plea. Paralyzed by helplessness and shock, Charlotte watched as more rats appeared, and more and more, spewing out from the back of the room. Amanda, a young girl seated toward the front, tried to jump from her chair to a spot beyond the swarming creatures. She twisted her foot as she landed, stumbled backward, and fell on top of several rats, which squirmed and squealed under her. The girl writhed to her feet, crying in convulsive bursts. She wailed as a panicked rat bit her on the ankle.

  Seeing Amanda bitten, Charlotte clamped down on her own terror. She grabbed for the injured child. As the hiccup-sobbing girl leaped into her arms, Charlotte felt something scuttle across her foot. She held her breath and forced herself to look down.

  Rats swarmed around the desks and bookcases, their sharp faces thrusting into every corner of the room as they sought escape.

  Charlotte resisted nausea, felt her consciousness slip, fought against it. She couldn’t faint, she just couldn’t. She had a child in her arms . . . all these children. . . .

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

  She had heard the screams of terrified children from the Trustees’ Office, across the central path, and had come running. Her light indoor cap had shaken loose and tufts of red hair floated around her flushed face. She had arrived at the schoolhouse door at the same time as Brother Samuel. They saw Charlotte clutching a sobbing child, stock-still before a room of screaming children and swarming rats.

  Rose wasn’t afraid of rodents, or most animals in small enough numbers. But rats were not her favorite, and these were far too many. Three scrawny gray rats scurried past her and fled outdoors, as panicked as the children they had terrified. 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. Some might already have escaped through the open windows. She dared not think where they’d come from, not yet anyway.

  “Rebecca,” Rose shouted to a young sister who was hurrying toward the shouting in the schoolhouse. “Run and get the brethren from the fields. Tell them to bring sticks and sacks. Quickly. We can’t let these creatures roam the village.”

  She turned to the schoolhouse door as Samuel plunged into the room, trampling a squealing rat that wasn’t quick enough to get out of his way. He scooped up two boys around their middles, one under each muscular arm, and hauled them out.

  Rose kicked a rat away from Charlotte’s paralyzed feet and grabbed her elbow.

  “Come on, Charlotte, don’t look down, that’s a girl . . .” Rose dragged the young sister though the classroom door.

  Once outside in the sunshine, Rose took a look at the sobbing child’s ankle. The rat had pierced the skin and drawn blood.

  “Take Amanda to the Infirmary,” she told Charlotte. “Tell Josie just what happened. She will need to summon Doc Irwin.” Rose did not mention the possibility of rabies. It would only panic the child even more.

  As Charlotte left, Rose went back inside to help Samuel herd out the rest of the children. Exhaustion had quieted the screams, and the children fell gratefully into Rose’s and Samuel’s arms to be carried outside. Rats—dozens of them, it seemed, frightened and starving—were finding their way outdoors, too. The brethren had a job ahead of them.

  As the children were bustled off to the Trustees’ Office in Samuel’s care, Rose closed the front door of the school building and all the windows to trap the few remaining rats indoors. She left by the closed door at the back of the classroom, which led into a storage room and then to an outside door.

  She closed the storage-room entrance behind her. The door to the outside was shut, and only one small window allowed light into the room. Like most Shaker rooms, this one was neat and clean. Extra student desks lined one wall, their attached chairs side by side. Dust-free pine shelves held squared stacks of books, chalk, and other supplies. Wall pegs circling the small room held flat brooms and dustpans and two ladder-back chairs hung upside down.

  A wrinkled and dirty burlap sack, which lay just inside the inner door, stood out like poison ivy in the medic’s garden. The sack’s open end faced toward the classroom. With her thumb and forefinger, Rose lifted one corner of the sack’s opening and peered inside. The rough brown weave had snagged dozens of small gray hairs. So that’s how the rats were transported to the building. She dropped the burlap and backed away as her stomach spasmed in revulsion.

  Whoever had sneaked in here with a squealing, wriggling bag of rodents had taken a terrible chance on being seen or heard. Yet, to someone familiar with Shaker routine, this might have seemed the safest time. Planting
season had just begun. On a good day, they had perhaps twenty able-bodied workers who could be spared for fieldwork, and that’s where they would be at this time of the afternoon. There were fields near the schoolhouse, but they were always last to be planted in the spring. At that time of day, no one should be in the nearest buildings: the Children’s Dwelling House and the currently unused Carpenters’ Shop. Anyone arriving on the road from Languor could easily have veered behind the Carpenters’ Shop to reach the back entrance of the schoolhouse. Though a few kitchen sisters would be across the street, cooking the evening meal in the Center Family Dwelling House, they would have seen nothing unless they left the building for some reason.

  Could a stranger, someone from the world, possibly have sneaked into the village on such a horrible mission? Or was it a Believer? And most alarming to contemplate—why?

  “We thought our children were attending a clean, well-run school, not some open sewer! Who knows what dreadful diseases they’ve been exposed to—and bringing home to the younger ones, too!” Mrs. Franklin Saunders, a plump and wealthy mother of four, stood with her arms crossed on her matronly bosom and glowered at Rose. Behind Mrs. Saunders crowded eight more angry parents, people of the world who had sent their children to the Shaker school because of its excellent reputation. The afternoon sun brightening the Trustees’ Office seemed out of place in the midst of their fury.

  Rose spread her hands, palms outward. “I understand your alarm, truly I do, but I assure you that this incident is a mystery to us as yet. We have never found so much as a field mouse in the schoolhouse. We’ve always kept it—all our buildings—spotless.”

  “Then how do you explain them rats, huh?” A thin farmer in dirty torn overalls poked his finger in the air toward Rose. The man’s wife, her skin pulled tightly over her cheekbones in fear and hunger, held a young boy in front of her. The child’s eyes were dark holes in his bony face.

  Rose thought quickly. She couldn’t leave the impression that the village harbored rats. Yet if she revealed finding the burlap sack and her suspicion that someone had planted the rats, she might start a panic among parents fearful for their children’s safety. The Shaker school might be forced to close forever. Having their own school district meant income from the state. Since Sister Charlotte taught without a salary, all the money was used to buy supplies and up-to-date books. If the School Board closed their district, the Shaker children would have to attend a school in the world, where Believers could not watch over them.