A Deadly Shaker Spring (28 page)

Frances Worthington perched on the edge of a velvet wingback. “What can I do for you?” she asked, in a voice as small and sharp as her body.

“Mrs. Worthington—”

“Oh, do call me Frances.” A quick, nervous smile flashed across her face. “I feel as if I know you all. I've always appreciated your kindnesses to others.”

“Then I hope that you'll be willing to help me now,” Rose said. “We Shakers are in some danger, and I am quite certain that your husband knows what the danger is. Were you aware that he is threatening to call in our loans, claiming that we have not been making our payments?”

Frances slid into the deep chair. “No,” she said, “I didn't know. I'm sorry, but I really don't see—”

“Mama, Mama, where are you?”

“In here, darling.”

Rose turned toward the sound of the young voice,
and Rickie Worthington bounded into the room. He stopped and stared at Rose, then giggled.

“It's one of the funny ladies! Why does she wear a funny hat like that, Mama?”

“Rickie, don't talk like that, darling, it's rude. Come here and sit on my lap.”

Rickie ignored her and continued to stare at Rose, who longed to get him into a Shaker school and teach him some manners.

“Look what I can do, Mama.” Rickie crumpled into a ball on the rug and rolled over in an awkward somersault, narrowly missing a delicately carved end table holding a glass-beaded lamp and several figurines.

“Sweetheart, stop that. Papa will be very unhappy if you break anything.” Frances's voice verged on a whine. Clearly she was used to being ignored.

“When's Papa coming home?” Rickie asked, as he tried to stand on his head, bracing himself against a love seat.

“Rickie! Papa will be home very soon, and he won't like seeing you do that.”

Rickie fell over and rolled to a sitting position. “Papa said he's gonna take me tonight.”

“Where is your father taking you, Rickie?” Rose asked gently.

Rickie stared at her as if he had forgotten her presence.

“Yes, where, Rickie?” Frances asked.

Rickie shrugged his pudgy shoulders and bounced to his feet. “Someplace fun. He promised this time he'd take me along.” The boy marched from the room, imitating a train whistle at the top of his voice.

Rose turned back to Frances, who lowered her gaze to her fidgeting hands. “What is going to happen, Frances? Please tell me. You've said that you respect us. Our lives could be in danger. Do you want to be a party to that?”

“No, no, of course not.” Frances drew a ragged sigh. “You see, I don't really know what's going to happen, only that something is planned. I can't believe Richard would be involved in anything that would endanger your lives. He'd never take Rickie someplace dangerous.”

“Perhaps he doesn't really intend to take the boy along?”

Frances sighed. “Rickie does tend to get his hopes up.” Her voice deepened with bitterness. “Sometimes I think Richard tells Rickie more than he tells me. He has been getting phone calls from . . . those people. I don't know who they are, but they have squeezed the goodness out of Richard and made him angrier than I've ever seen him. They brought back old memories that I thought he'd gotten over.”

“Memories of what?”

Frances shook her head and sighed again. “I don't know all of that, either. He always kept things to himself. I do know they had to do with his mother and with you all.”

“His mother was named Faithfull, and she was a Shaker sister,” Rose said.

“Yes, I know. And she died, I know that, too. When Richard was seventeen. He blames you all for her death. Once he even said that the Shakers killed her. I asked him what he meant by that—you know,
if he knew that a certain Shaker had killed his mother. He wouldn't answer.”

“Is that why he hates us so much? Because he blames us for his mother's death?”

Frances stared at the rug, a sad droop to her eyes. She shook her head slowly. “No, I know that isn't the real reason. You see, I know why he is involved in whatever is happening. He wants his family's land back—the land his mother signed over to the Shakers when she became a sister. When I said he blamed the Shakers for her death, I didn't tell you everything. What he really said was, ‘The Shakers killed her before I could convince her to demand her land back.' All he really cares about is the land that he thinks should have been his.”

Rose made a hurried stop at the Languor County Sheriff's Office and left a note for Grady O'Neal, telling him what she had learned from Frances Worthington. She asked him to be available later in the day, in case trouble arrived at North Homage. She sped home as fast as the Plymouth would travel along the rutted road between Languor and North Homage, rehearsing in her mind her next steps.

By the time Rose parked next to the Trustees' Office, preparations for the evening meal were under way. She could borrow Elsa from the Center Family kitchen and have that long-delayed talk. However, she made the mistake of stopping in her office to place the recaptured journals in the bottom drawer of a spare desk, and two Believers accosted her as she emerged. Day-to-day problems refused to delay just because Rose needed to handle threats to the Society.
She assigned several unused rooms in the Trustees' Office for storage of all the returned jars of preserved fruits and vegetables. And she promised to find yet another place to move Elsa since the kitchen sisters found her impossible. By then, the evening meal was about to begin.

When Rose slipped through the outside door into the Center Family kitchen, three kitchen sisters were filling serving plates with baked chicken in a creamy tarragon sauce and grimly avoiding each other's eyes. Rose recognized the handiwork of Sister Elsa, who clumped cheerfully through the swinging doors from the dining room.

“Where is Gertrude?” Rose asked, as she grabbed a hot corn muffin from a stack ready to be carried into the dining room. Gertrude was kitchen deaconess and would normally be directing the work.

“Helping out in the Ministry kitchen,” a sister answered glumly. “We offered to go, all of us did, but she thought she should go.”

“Can you blame her?” mumbled another sister.

“Look alive, now, Sisters,” Elsa chirped. “We got a pack of hungry brethren out there, been out in the fields all day.” Elsa assumed power at the slightest opportunity.

“Elsa, I'd like a word with you, please,” Rose said.

“Can it wait until after the evening meal? Somebody's gotta get the food on those tables.”

“The kitchen sisters are very experienced,” Rose said. “They will see that everyone is fed. Come along with me now.”

The kitchen sisters shot Rose glances of pure love as she took Elsa by the elbow and led her through the
outside door. The early evening air was warm and pleasant, so Rose brought Elsa into the kitchen garden.

“Walk with me awhile,” she said. “I have some questions to ask you, and I want you to consider your answers carefully.”

Elsa pursed her lips and crossed her arms over the loose bodice of her work dress, which had grown tighter over the winter. “Nothin' comes out my mouth that ain't considered careful. Elder'll agree, just ask him.”

Rose let the challenge hang in the air. Elsa was a favorite of Wilhelm's, and nothing, not even her most outrageous behavior, seemed to change that. “At Samuel's funeral, you revealed some information about Samuel's past that very few people knew about,” Rose said. “I want to know how you got that information.”

“Well, I can't rightly say how it happens. Just a gift I guess I got,” Elsa said, with a failed attempt at humility. “Leastways, Elder says I got it. I guess it's just sort of a mystery.”

“I'm not asking how Believers receive messages from predecessors who have passed on. I want to know how you got the information you revealed—that Samuel had a child. I do not for a moment believe that the message came from Mother Ann. She would not be so gossipy nor so unforgiving. Tell me the truth. My patience is growing thin.”

Rose let Elsa walk in silence for a few moments, hoping that she would tell the truth as soon as she realized she could deny it all later, to Wilhelm. Instead of pressuring her further, Rose enjoyed a moment
of calm in the garden. The perennial herbs—thyme, oregano, and sage—were already lush and green. Stalks of lavender were turning from brown to gray-green and would soon have fragrant purple buds. Rose longed for quiet hours tending herbs, rather than fending off threats to their peaceful way of life.

Elsa sniffed, and Rose snapped her attention back to the present. “I might've heard something in town,” Elsa said.

“From whom?”

“Can't say as I remember, not for sure.”

“Try.”

Another silence followed, and Elsa again sniffed. “Guess it might've been while I was in the Languor dry-goods store, picking up fabric for the sewing room.” Allowing Elsa a few trips into town—usually in the company of other sisters—was one of Rose's attempts to find work for her to do that wouldn't drive the other Believers to question their vows of pacifism. A few times, Elsa had been allowed to go alone to pick up fabric that Sarah had called ahead and ordered.

“I do have a memory of talkin' a spell with a couple folks from the world, which I wouldn't've done normally, naturally, but these folks were friendly about us Shakers and said they spent some time living here a long time ago. Seemed nice, and they was real curious about some of the Believers they remembered from the old days.”

“Were they a man and a woman?”

“Yea.”

“Did they give their names? What did they look like?”

“Just said they were married folks. They looked to be like they was gettin' on, older than me,” Elsa said smugly and not very accurately.

“Who did they ask about?”

“Well, Samuel, of course. The man said he'd been friends with Samuel. Then the woman said wasn't it sad about Samuel breaking his vows and having a child and all and feeling so guilty that he killed himself. Well, I never heard that before, so naturally I asked more about it, but all she said was the mother was a Shaker sister and how Samuel come to hate her and all. She wouldn't say no more. And then we just chatted a bit about the old days. I mean, I wasn't here in those days, and I was curious. They said they'd heard about Agatha being close to the end, and how sad that was, but I made sure they heard the good news. They were such friendly folks.”

“You told them Agatha was better?” Rose's heart jumped in her chest. Clearly the man and woman were Klaus and Evangeline Holker. Why would they make a point of asking about Agatha's condition? “What exactly did you tell them?”

“Like I just said, the good news. That Agatha came around and can talk again. They seemed real interested to hear it.”

“What do you know about the attacks on North Homage?” Rose asked.

“Not one thing.” Elsa plunked her fists on her hips and glowered. “Listen, ain't no call to—”

“Did you steal Samuel's journals?”

Spots of pink gave depth to Elsa's flat features. “Why would I do that?”

“You don't deny it?”

“Nay! I mean . . . It was probably Sarah done that. Why don't you ask her? She was out roaming around the night Samuel died.”

“How did you know his journals were stolen that night?” Rose asked, her voice a gentle skewer.

Elsa glared at her in sullen silence for a moment, then said, “I never stole nothin' in my whole life. I just borrowed them. I'm gonna bring them back.”

“When?”

“When those folks are finished with them.”

“The man and woman you met? You gave them Samuel's journals! What could have possessed you to do such a thing?”

“It wasn't like it sounds.” Elsa began to whine. “They were fond of Samuel, just wanted to see what he'd been up to all those years, that's all.”

“Elsa, that's ridiculous. I don't believe a word of it.”

Elsa savagely kicked at a clump of rosemary that hadn't made it through the winter. “Well, that's what they said. When I promised to help them out, they told me all about Samuel and Faithfull and their baby.”

“I see. So you paid for gossip with stolen journals.”

Elsa's hazel eyes darkened. “You breathe a word of this to Wilhelm, and I'll tell him you're lying. He'll never believe you. He knows you want to kick me out.” She spun around and left, trampling an emerging oregano plant as she stomped off.

“N
ED,
F
LOYD, YOU LEAD EVERYBODY OFF THE ROAD,
gather them together in that field over to the west.” Klaus Holker leaned out the window of his muddy brown Ford and shouted to the men on horseback. “I'll want to have a talk with them before we move ahead.”

“That there's Shaker land, Kentuck,” Ned said. “Just plowed, by the look of it.”