A Deadly Shaker Spring (18 page)

Rose went directly to a closet near the middle of the west wall. She swung the door open and began sorting through the dresses inside, sliding the hangers
aside as she searched. She worked quickly. If anyone mounted the stairs now and caught her riffling through these particular clothes, there'd be questions for sure. Rumors, too, she supposed. Everyone would wonder why their eldress had taken a sudden interest in clothing from the world.

Most of the dresses had been neither stylish nor new when they'd been worn by women who became sisters after living some years in the world. Several probably should have been turned into rags. In fact, all the dresses should have been given to charity, but Rose had thought they might be useful to the sewing-room sisters. But then she'd forgotten about them. There was no excuse for such an oversight, of course, but it certainly had turned out lucky in the end. She only hoped her mission would turn out as lucky.

Her evening visit to Languor would be riskier than she'd hoped. Grady wouldn't be there. Just as Rose had returned from visiting Caleb and Gennie, Grady had called her to tell her he and the only other officer in the small Sheriff's Department had been called to deal with a suspected child kidnapping in a far-flung corner of Languor County. He'd begged Rose, ordered her, to stay home. She had listened politely and promised nothing. In fact, she preferred to go alone. She suspected that the appearance of a sheriff's deputy at the meeting would surely put the apostates on their guard, and she would be less likely to learn their plans.

“Ah, here's one that might work,” Rose whispered. She extracted a brown gabardine shift with a straight cut. She remembered Sarah Baker arriving in this dress two years earlier. It looked like a 1920s
style, so it might have belonged originally to Sarah's mother. Well, never mind, Rose thought, it's made for a tall woman, so it might do the trick. Sarah was plumper than Rose, but wearing a belt around the middle would hide the extra fabric and update the style, too. Most important, the dress was dark and plain. Perfect for what Rose had in mind.

The small Episcopal church filled with whispering men and a few women. Rose slipped inside and settled in a corner of a back pew. She bowed her head to pray. This wasn't her church, but she still felt it to be holy space, and she needed strength and guidance. She also needed to calm herself. Her nerves had been ready to spasm at the slightest sound since she'd left North Homage. Rather than lie, she had taken the Society's Plymouth without comment while everyone ate a late evening meal after a long day of planting. If they missed her, they'd assume she was dining with Wilhelm in the Ministry dining room. Wilhelm would assume, from her note, that she was doing trustee's work in town.

She had pulled on the loose brown dress in her room, smashed her hair under a scarf covered by a bonnet, then wrapped herself in her long wool cloak. She chose a quiet moment to slip from her room and around to the west side of the Trustees' Office, where the car was kept. After arriving in town, she had left the telltale Shaker bonnet and cloak in the car.

Getting back would be a different matter. She would have to wait until very late and hope that no one had tried to find her after the evening meal. She counted on general physical exhaustion to send everyone
to bed quickly and with closed windows, since the evening had turned windy. Rain would probably arrive before Rose had to trek the five blocks she had put, just to be sure, between the church and the Society's distinctive black, almost-new car.

The Episcopal population in Languor County was tiny compared to the Baptists. The county supported only one Episcopal church, and this was it. Rose wondered why such a meeting would be held here instead of in one of the many Baptist churches. Then she remembered. Most of the wealthier farmers and businessmen were Episcopalian. Richard Worthington was a deacon in this very church. He might be here tonight. Every nerve alert, she thought about the danger of being recognized and about how she had taken care to be alone. She glanced behind her at the open front door. She could still leave. It would be wise to leave. But there was no other way to discover what the Society was up against.

People filled in the pews clear back to where she sat. Could all these people truly hate the Shakers and want to drive them from the county? The crowds closed around Rose without showing curiosity in her. She was glad she'd thought to wrap her curly red hair in the brown silk scarf. The dimness of the church helped, too.

The whispering quieted as three people entered the chancel from the sacristy door. Rose recognized the man leading the small group as the church's rector, the Reverend Geoffrey Sim, though he wore street clothes rather than his usual cassock and stole. She had spoken with him on several occasions about ideas for providing food and clothing for the Depression
battered poor of Languor, and she had found him a kind and sympathetic man. She would not have expected him to be involved in a meeting like this. He crossed to the center of the chancel, bowed to the altar, and turned to face the audience.

He was followed by a tall woman, then a man, both strangers to Rose. With a brisk step and ramrod-straight back, the woman crossed in front of the altar without glancing at it and sat in a chair facing the pews. She had long gray hair piled on top of her head and surrounded by tight pincurls. Her body was all sharp angles in a severe navy-blue suit. As her cold eyes skimmed over the heads of the audience, her mouth tightened in a thin, down-curved line, as if she were about to discipline a group of unruly schoolchildren.

The man who completed the trio took a chair to the priest's right. His eyes flickered toward the woman and then scanned the crowd, face by face.

Rose ducked her head behind a woman with a large hat. Though she didn't recognize the man, he might know her. Someone could have pointed her out to him at some time, especially if she was considered a leader of the enemy.

When the hat in front of her dipped to one side, Rose studied the man briefly. He was no taller than the woman, but while she seemed designed to use space efficiently, he took more than his share. He had the look of a muscular man gone to fat. A month in a Shaker village would do him no end of good, Rose thought. His arms showed evidence of some remaining strength, but most of his chest muscles had slid into a pool of fat at his belly. Still, there was nothing
jolly or slothful about the man. His eyes narrowed in a way that tightened the knot in Rose's stomach.

The stream of arrivals finally thinned and the heavy double doors clanged shut. The chattering died away as the priest stepped forward and raised a hand in benediction.

“Let us pray . . .”

A sea of heads bobbed forward. Rose bowed her head, too, but she intended to say her own prayer for her own reasons.

“Lord,” began the priest, “bless your followers in the endeavor they are about to undertake. Be with them as they struggle against any forces of evil in our midst. Help them to know Thy will and to do Thy will in all things. Amen.”

Rose found little to object to in this prayer and added only that she hoped God's will included the immediate survival of the North Homage Shakers. She felt sure that God recognized evil when He saw it and that somehow He would convince these people that the evil in their midst came not from the Believers, but from their own hearts. She relaxed slightly, ready to leave the problem in God's hands.

What followed shattered any hope Rose had that the situation would dissolve into peace and goodwill.

The priest turned on his heel and disappeared through the sacristy door, as if to distance himself quickly from what was about to occur. The man in front heaved himself to his feet and planted himself in the space the priest had vacated. He took his time, surveying the crowd, giving quick nods to faces he recognized.

“Evenin', friends,” he said with a smug grin.
“Y'all are a welcome sight, I don't mind telling you.” The crowd murmured their greetings.

“Ned, good to see you. How's the wife and kids? The baby over that croup? Good, good.”

He's enjoying this, Rose thought. He's feeding on it. Despite the folksy language, Rose heard an educated, cultured voice, with a bland northern accent putting on the trappings of a hill-country drawl. He may have grown up in Kentucky, but he'd clearly spent many years elsewhere. And there was something familiar about his choice of words.

Rose glanced behind him to the woman. She sat as if she had a fence post for a spine, but her grim expression had been replaced by a moue of distaste. Whether for the situation or for the man in front of her, Rose couldn't tell.

“Y'all know why you've been invited here, I reckon.”

Nods and murmurs of assent rippled through the crowd.

“The wife and me”—he jerked his head toward the woman behind him—“we grew up here in Languor County, same as most of you. The name's Kentuck, Kentuck Hill. Named after this great state, I was. The wife's name's Laura.”

The names aroused Rose's suspicions. Kentuck Hill was too convenient a combination, and Laura sounded like the wishful thinking of a plain but secretly romantic woman. Rose guessed these two were “Mr. and Mrs. Languor County,” editors of the anti-Shaker
Languor County Watcher
, who also exhibited a penchant for geographical identities. It also explained the familiar ring of Mr. Hill's speech. Could this be Klaus
Holker as well? Rose noticed that, in common with the anonymous editorialist, Mr. Hill referred to everyone as “my friends.” Everyone, presumably, except the Shakers.

“Laura and me,” Mr. Hill continued, “we know what it's like trying to scrabble out a living from the dirt when the weather's too hot and dry and everybody's too poor to buy what you're selling anyways.”

His friendly grin transformed to a scowl. “You got kids to feed, and it hurts to watch 'em go to bed hungry, don't it?”

The responses were louder this time. A man two rows in front of Rose jumped to his feet.

“Damn right it's hard,” he shouted, poking his hat in the air. “I got my ma living with us, too, and I can't feed her neither.”

Kentuck Hill nodded slowly. “Yes, my friends, we can see what you've endured. We know what you've been suffering.” Like a puppeteer of emotions, he raised the crowd's anger, then soothed it by softening the tone of his voice.

“And do you know why you've had all this suffering here in Languor County when the rest of the country doesn't have it as bad?” He spoke now barely above a whisper, but his voice penetrated every corner of the room.

“Because you, my friends, have Shakers for neighbors. The wife and me, we've traveled a lot in the last few years, and we observed something real interesting. There's other Shakers, you know, besides these you got here. And you know what? Every place there's Shakers, we saw poverty much worse than in the places that kept 'em out. Now, why do you suppose
that is?” He beamed at the crowd as if they were all bright children who would puzzle out the right answer soon. Rose cringed as his lies went unchallenged.

“It's them Shakers, that's why!” shouted a man in front, right on cue. “They're undercutting me right and left. I'm about to lose my business 'cause of them.”

When the man stood, Rose recognized the bald head and small frame of Floyd Foster, the town's greengrocer. He overcharged outrageously, often refused credit to the town's poorer folks, and was in no danger of bankruptcy as far as Rose could tell. She seethed. How could she keep quiet and listen to these vile, vicious lies about her people? But why was this “Mr. Hill” making up such falsehoods? What good would it do him and “the wife”? Rose had to listen to find out, no matter how much the lies enraged her. She clutched the edge of her pew to keep herself from leaping up and denouncing the crowd.

Her patience was to be tried even further. At a glance from her husband, Laura Hill left her chair to stand primly beside him, her fingers interlaced at waist level.

“My wife, Laura, has a few things to tell you. These are facts you may not know and . . . well, friends, I don't mean to alarm y'all, but your families' lives could be at stake here. We just wouldn't feel right if we kept this to ourselves.” With a saintly nod, he stepped back a pace to give Laura the floor.

The woman trembled visibly and darted nervous glances into the crowd, then down at her feet.

“I want . . . I want you to understand about the
children,” Laura stammered. “The children are so important. Many of you are parents, and you love your own children deeply. I myself was never blessed with the children I so longed for, but I know in my heart what it is to love a child. You would do anything for your children. You would rather die than let anything happen to them. And, oh, how it hurts when you cannot even give them food enough to fill their little stomachs.”

Laura's high-pitched voice sounded childlike, yet there was an intensity about the woman that Rose recognized from her years as a Believer. Some Shakers were practical about their faith, preferring to demonstrate it mostly through their deeds and thoughts. Rose considered herself one such.

For some, though, their faith burned through their hearts and demanded fervent expression. Such were the early Believers, who endured beatings and the dangers of an uncivilized territory to spread their faith. Laura's eyes held that light. But she was talking about saving children rather than souls.

“These Shakers,” Laura continued, “do we really know what they do with the children we so trustingly let them raise? Some of you have sent your own children to their school, and now you know what can happen to them. Filthy, vicious rats! Attacking your own innocent little children!”

Laura's voice broke as her breath caught in a sob. The tears were genuine. This woman lived for children, yet had none of her own.
What must that do to a woman?
Rose thought. Kentuck jumped up and put his arm around his wife's shoulders. With an air of tenderness, he whispered a few words in her ear. She
sniffed and nodded. He led her to her seat on the stage and turned back to the crowd held spellbound by the drama.