The Visionist: A Novel (21 page)

Her cheeks took on a wash of pink and her eyes brightened as she spoke. It was as though the very goodness of her intentions brought her to life. I puzzled over her argument. A glance at the settlement had convinced me that these were as industrious a people as ever I’d known. And there was no arguing as to what would happen should she not succeed in her mission to save the Kimball farm from nature’s wicked ways. But to view a young child—one who’d known little but misery all his short, brutish life—so narrowly through the lens of the property he might bring. It did not sit well with me.

“And why do you say nothing of Polly Kimball?” I asked. “Surely she is as likely a potential heir as her younger brother?”

I appeared to have hit a nerve, for the Elder Sister looked down and became very thoughtful before giving her answer. “Polly Kimball may not be with us for much longer, Inspector. We do not hold back children from going into the World when they are, in some way…troublesome. I cannot tell you more. Indeed, I may have misjudged Sister Polly’s intentions as well as her character. Let us say simply that it is the boy who seems happiest here. And even if he is only heir to half the property, well, that is better than his being heir to none at all.”

My mind was truly spinning now, for I wondered what Polly Kimball could possibly have done to disturb the formidable Elder Sister Agnes. But I had not a moment to sort through a decent plan now. The best thing would be to leave myself time to think things through, then contact the Shaker sister again, this time on
my
terms.

“You mistake me, Elder Sister,” I said, shrugging and doing my best to show that I was not in the least bit sorry to disappoint her, “for someone who has the power to determine the fate of the property you seek to own. I do…”

A faint knocking kept me from elaborating further on my ineffectiveness.

The Elder Sister looked meaningfully at me, then called for the visitor to enter. It was a young girl, no older than fifteen or sixteen, dressed in the same practical clothes and possessed of the same selfless quality I had, upon my arrival, noticed in the men and women moving about the white house. Tall and slight, she almost appeared to float across the floor towards the sister, bowing her head quickly in greeting.

“You called for me to come and see you, Elder Sister?” she asked. Her voice was soft but steady, and when she looked up, I saw that her face was uncommonly fine-boned, pale to the point of luminescence beneath a hint of straw-colored hair tucked neatly into her cap.

“Ah, so I did, Sister. I had forgotten,” the Elder Sister said, affecting a singularly unconvincing air of confusion. “Such coincidence!” she exclaimed. “Mister Pryor, I present to you Sister Polly. Sister Polly Kimball.”

The girl bowed but did not meet my gaze, turning instead to face the Elder Sister once again. “Is there something I can do for you, Eldress?” she asked. “Or shall I come back when you are alone?”

Elder Sister Agnes paused before answering. “No, child, I have forgotten why I asked for you to come. But you must find it interesting to meet the inspector. He knows quite a bit about you, after all.”

As I watched the young sister’s face register the remark, it became clear to me that Elder Sister Agnes had meant to unravel this delicate creature. More apparent still was the fact that she had succeeded.

“W-why…,” Polly Kimball stammered before collecting herself. “Why would anyone concern themselves with me?”

Again the Elder Sister waited and watched the girl’s face. “He has sifted through the dust of what’s left of your home, Sister. He is the fire inspector we discussed.”

Polly Kimball turned with uneasy restraint to look me square in the eye. How to convey without words all that I wanted to say to her? That she needn’t fear me. That I wanted only to help. That I knew her secret and had chosen to make it my own.

“The fire…,” I said, trying to smile encouragingly. “It was—”

“That’s enough, Mister Pryor,” the Elder Sister interrupted sharply. “I did not ask you to come so that you could further your investigation by involving Miss…I mean, our Sister Polly.”

“Yes, I…I know,” I said. “But as she is here now, I thought…”

“What you thought,” Elder Sister Agnes said, “is of no interest to me. Sister Polly is one of us now, and if there are questions to be asked of her, it is I who shall do the asking. Now, sir, you will kindly take your leave.”

Polly Kimball’s gaze fairly burned with terror, blood turning her cheeks crimson and mottling the skin above her high collar. At her waist—elbows snug at her sides, fingers interwoven in a prayer-like knot—her nails pressed into her flesh. I felt it imperative to find some way to speak to her in private. The question was, how?

I realized then that the Elder Sister had made a clever move. She didn’t need me to tell her what she already knew about the Ashland property. Why, having met the survivors, she had more of a grasp than I did. It was Polly Kimball who held—and was apparently refusing to give up—the answers she sought. I had been summoned for one purpose and one purpose alone: to rattle the girl.

Now, if she broke—confessed to this conniving woman the truth about how the fire had started—she would expose the both of us.

Sister Charity

LITTLE SISTER EUDORA
steps out from behind a corner of the dwelling house to ask the Visionist if she can summon her dead mother. “It’s not been more than a year since she died,” the girl pleads. “Surely, Sister, she is near enough by for you to bring her back?” The child trembles in the cold, for she has waited outside some time for us to pass. Still, the Visionist can only kneel down and tell her that she cannot summon the dead, that she is but a vessel, one who can only receive, and that it is the Word of Holy Mother that passes through her, nothing else. I watch as Sister Eudora’s sweet face hardens like burned sugar.
How quick,
I think,
is the fading of belief.

Another day. In the shadows of late afternoon, the flare of a lamp in a dark passageway as Sisters Vestia, Rose, and Honora block the stairs up from the kitchen. “If you are clever enough to call in your angels when the mood takes you,” whispers Sister Rose, “then why not now, here, where we might all feel their divine presence?” The Visionist remains serene. Challenges born out of jealousy do not pain her as much as the disappointment of a lonely child.

“I wait,” she says carefully, “as do you, for instruction. A Vision is a privilege, not a servant. Perhaps your belief will show itself more readily to you when you stop testing mine.” The three sisters regard her bitterly before extinguishing the flame.

Sister Polly is, of late, under the strain of constant scrutiny. The believers wait for her to raise them up. The believers wait for her to fall. Elder Brother Caleb celebrates her. Elder Sister Agnes treats her more coldly by the day. And she? She is distracted, her face drawn and sallow, her body a riot of insults. Dysentery, nausea, cramps, fatigue. She has begun to lose the health she gained when first she came to us, and now, though cleaner and better dressed, she resembles much the same ghost I first encountered only a few short months ago.

The Visions do not help, but seem only to diminish her, as though Mother Ann is consuming Her vessel even as She speaks through it. To be sure, when she comes to the healing room to sit beside Rebecca, they are both at peace as Sister Polly summons a heavenly host of angels to comfort the dying child, for she is dying and my dear sister knows it. But in Meeting, the Visionist has begun, after a long quiet period of months, to regularly transform into a most distraught state—her teeth chattering, arms wrapped tight about her, wild-eyed glares, a stream of words dark in spirit but near incomprehensible. She makes sounds of dread and fear, and though the urgency of her message casts a spell upon us all, we are less sure in our interpretations. At night, when finally she and I are alone, I have taken to reaching for the red book myself—it is hidden beneath my mattress now. Reading aloud the latest adventure, I have come to realize that I no longer look to the stories to transport me, but rather to bring Sister Polly back. Indeed, I barely hear myself anymore, keeping one eye on the words, the other on my sister. She tries to smile when I laugh aloud—the monkey residing in an African’s headdress, the discovery of a goat’s skull in our hero’s soup, even the salty language of a drunken British sailor amuses me now—but there is little joy or wonder to be found in the Visionist of late and I fear that she is beginning to sicken under the weight of our expectation.

I fear something else as well.

In these last weeks of the year, certain of my sisters have found themselves blessed, it would seem, with the gift of Vision. I say this at risk of stepping out of union with my fellow believers, but I have seen how girls of a certain age will narrow their eyes as they gaze upon the blessings of another. And I have watched, even here, the lengths to which they will go to gain such recognition for themselves.

At Sabbath Meeting a week ago, Sister Eliza Henshaw fell into a long spin. A stir of believers surrounded her, watching her gift unfold with childlike glee. For a moment, I was tempted to trust in her. She had always been a cautious believer, one who held her spirit inside and rarely cried out or fell into the physical operations shown by some when they follow their souls into union with the Eternal. Yet on this day, she spun for a great duration—so great that I could see certain of our number wondering if the gift would ever leave her. After some time, she stopped and, as anyone might, swayed and stumbled this way then that. Her unsteadiness led her to take smaller and smaller steps, until finally she fell to the floor in a heap and we began to close the Meeting with our songs of praise and thanks, for in spite of the length of her Spinning Gift, all felt glad for the joy it had brought.

Suddenly, however, it was made clear that her turn as a divine vessel had not come to an end, for she lifted herself to her knees and began to speak in the chanting tones of one possessed. We waited, watching and listening, to discover if the powers of Vision had yet to leave their host. The color of our mood changed, darkening as her words became clearer and rose in pitch until her voice was shrill.

“I cannot hold!” she shrieked as she swayed violently from side to side. “I am a vessel dashed upon the rocks of truth!” She quieted and looked round with eyes ablaze in anguish. “And though my crew have abandoned me and I shall be ruined,” she said, whispering now. “I must speak out. For I have seen two among us coming together in dark corners. I have seen them touch—a brother and sister!”

This revelation brought about great consternation—shouts even—from the believers as they moved in closer to Sister Eliza so as to be sure they had caught her meaning. I stood back and looked at the faces of my brethren and sisters. They were twisted in horror yet strangely locked in their attention to the portrait of carnality she was about to paint. Sister Eliza continued.

“Yes, all were asleep but me, for I felt a chill wind pass through my body as I lay abed and I knew there to be evil close by. I rose and walked silently across my room, opening the door to my quarters hardly a finger’s width and peering into the gloom of the hall. This sister, this brother, trusted believers to us all, had pressed themselves into a corner, shadowy but close to where I stood. Oh, hateful was the sight before me! I watched as they moved their hands…I can hardly speak of their unholy union, their carnal natures entwined, the pain I felt when I watched their lips meet, their bodies merging in lust, the ugly moan—for it was ugly, my brothers and sisters—the
hideous
moan of the Devil as desire overcame the traitors.”

Her story was greeted by an uproar. Many of the elder sisters and brethren demanded to know who were the sinners. They moved about and stared down every person they encountered with looks of hatred and suspicion. I did not recognize them, for most of the believers I know are full of kindness, of peace and the contentment gained from seeking perfection in work. Yet now, some around me repeated the charges like innkeepers’ wives, adding strange and sinful details of their own, details that Sister Eliza had not spoken of in her testimony. It was as if a hive had broken open in the room, the swarm let loose upon us.

“I am directed from a voice on high,” Sister Eliza went on, trying to quiet the throng. “I am told that I must reveal all in my testimony, for to live with the knowledge of such sin is to sin myself and cover in filth the Heaven we have, all of us together, made here in our worship of Mother. I ask you to believe me, my sisters and brethren: I do so with a heavy heart, for I mean not to be unkind.”

She stopped suddenly, dropping her gaze and drawing up her body until she stood, shoulders squared, chest high, a soldier of righteousness. Then she began, very slowly, to raise her head, her eyes rolled upwards so that she appeared most troubled. Her expression had transformed from one of lively animation to a look as cold and set as stone.

“I saw”—there was a brief jag in her voice—“Sister Philomen and Brother Luke, saw them curled about each other like dogs! Yes, rutting dogs!” She looked wildly round the crowd standing dumbfounded before her, then yelled in a commanding voice nothing like her own, “Now make war upon them with your songs, for this is what I know must be done!”

A frenzied search for the offenders began.

“Where the Devil?” several brethren chanted.

“Nowhere here!” That was the answer from a growing chorus of angry voices.

“Where the Devil?” cried the first group once more.

“Cast him out!” replied an even greater number of believers.

A biting wind blew in from one of the doors to the meetinghouse, causing it to bang again and again against the wall, open to the snow-covered field that stretched away from where we had gathered in prayer. We ran to it and saw—small as characters in a children’s storybook—the two lovers running. I could not imagine where they would go or how they would survive, for it was bitter outside and they had fled with neither cloak nor jacket to warm them.

My sisters and brethren did not follow, but gathered at the edge of the field and shouted until there was no longer a soul in sight to hear their curses.
Apostates. Reprobates. Backsliders. Flesh hunters.
These are the names we give to those who leave us in shame. Why, I have even heard say that a fallen sister or brother is
naught better than a dog returned to rutting,
or
a swine sweetly bathed but returned to its filth.
All around me, misery ruled. Some wept. Others remained caught up in recounting the backsliders’ sins, their recitations serving only to stoke their outrage. But as the empty field echoed back the fury of the crowd, all voices ceased and we fell into lines and filed inside, quiet once more. We had never lost two believers in such a manner. Instead, whether alone, as a couple, or as a small gaggle of betrayers, the weakest of our kind elope into the World more quietly. Tempted by greed or laziness or lust, they leave by night or run from working in the fields when their elders are not watching. With rare exception—the strong and well-learned brethren and sisters being a prize worth finding and fetching back—we allow many to cross over, for grim fates await those who have shown themselves to be wayward. They die in brothels, we tell ourselves. Choke on sinful appetite, suffer the might of Heavenly wrath the likes of which they could never have envisioned. Why? Their lust for flesh. Their carnality. Their bodily greed.

We finished our Meeting with heads bowed, our feet quietly shuffling in time with not a sound to dance by. Sister Eliza was helped up the path by two younger believers while the rest of us fanned out to our dwelling houses to ready ourselves for Sunday supper. It was a holy day but not a happy one, and I felt shaken by what I had witnessed.

“I, too, was troubled in Meeting,” said a small voice, suddenly by my side. “I watched your face and observed similar discontent. Am I correct, Sister Charity?”

My Sister Polly was speaking, and though she talked of sadness and unease, her tone was a balm on the ringing in my ears. “You read my feelings adeptly,” I said. “I have never heard the warring songs sung in this place, although I learned them long ago. Still, I cannot defend such a blasphemous union between a brother and a sister.”

Sister Polly was silent a moment before speaking. “Were you not surprised,” she said, “by Mother’s choice of vessel? And by the manner in which She chose to have us apprised of such unholy goings-on?”

I stared at the ground, as uncomfortable with my sister’s questioning as I was with my own.

“I did not feel that our sister was shrieking from her soul,” she continued. “But rather, her spleen.”

She stared at me with the infinite blue of her eyes as I straightened my cloak uncomfortably. I too had thought the Vision to be troubling—less for its content than for the doubts I had as to the authenticity of the seer—but I could not find the words to answer her.

“You know, do you not, that Sister Eliza has looked upon Sister Philomen with jealousy and malice over several weeks now.” Sister Polly placed her finger beneath my chin and raised up my face so that I had no choice but to look at her. “Have you not noticed that she is in love with Brother Luke?”

I caught my breath and looked about to be sure no one had heard. The evening bell tolled. “You surprise me, Sister Polly,” I whispered. “I have never known you to be a gossip, repeating the sinful murmurings of others. It is…it is beneath you.”

“No,” she answered, again with an insistence I found most distressing. “I repeat nothing, for I speak only of what I have myself noticed. I can think no ill of the lovers if they truly loved.
A sin,
you shall tell me, but I cannot see it so.”

Again, the bell. I quickened my pace.

“Perhaps,” she said, hurrying along by my side, “they were not meant to be believers. Perhaps they should have been allowed to go into the World in peace. I feel sure that they were about to leave us of their own desiring, had not Sister Eliza beat them out in anger. I believe she knew and so chose to receive her gift in time to openly despise and dishonor them. Such hatred has no place here.”

All this time, Sister Polly spoke as though nothing she had said should have shaken me. But I had never heard anyone in The City of Hope embrace a love other than that which exists sister for sister, or brother for brother. Of course, there is the love we feel as believers in union with one another. And there is the love, through friendship, that I shared with her. Already, I had fallen in the eyes of Elder Sister Agnes—because of the markings, yes, but perhaps because of something else as well. I had been late more than once to morning chores for having spent too long reading from the red book the night before. I laughed more than I used to, and often too loudly. And one day I bumped square into my eldress as I skipped down a pathway. She did not need to reprimand me; the look on her face said enough.