The Visionist: A Novel (18 page)

“It’s nothing,” I answered, tipping my chin at the sign. “I don’t much like seeing humans for sale is all, and there’s an unfortunate lot up for auction Saturday next.” I had only to utter the words for both Trask and me to arrive at the same thought.

“Not a bad place to look for May and her daughter, is it?” he said. “A woman and a girl with no home, no prospects…”

I looked into his eyes and nodded. “The idea had occurred to me,” I said, recommencing my climb. Something about this Trask figure suddenly struck me as odd.

The notice in the paper had mentioned Silas’s name. It had said nothing of his wife’s.

Polly

POLLY AND CHARITY
had led an interior life since she arrived. Around them swirled first the brown leaves of November, then the dry snows of December. They woke at the tolling of the early bell, crossing over to the brethren’s side by candlelight to clean the men’s chambers and make neat the upper floors of the dwelling house before returning to the sisters’ side and going down the back stairs to the kitchen to lay the cooking fires.

It was dull work, airing or changing soiled sheets, never giving them so much as a glance. Sister Charity had taught Polly with the slightest of smiles that, as the linens had touched the brethren’s bodies and were thus tinged with their scent, the intimacy might excite desire in a less disciplined sister. Morning after morning, they beat the mattresses until the cushioning rose off the rope webbing of the narrow beds. They emptied chamber pots, swishing them clean, dumping the refuse into metal pails, then placing the porcelain vessels, gleaming, back inside their cupboards. The air must always be pure, and the upper floors must shine in the name of Godliness, in the name of Mother Ann, and no sister could treat the work as drudgery. For where dirt resided, so did sin. Even the heavy labor of loading the soapstone ovens with wood and then stoking them until the flames died into even-tempered embers was a form of worship, and she and Sister Charity tried to do so with cheer at the start of each day before the older sisters began preparing the Early Meal.

But Polly was haunted by her kitchen work. She saw Mama by the stove, heard Ben singing, felt the heat of the coals, and thought only of flames. That was not all. One day, a young sister named Rebecca suffered a skirt fire. She had leaned in too close to the open hearth—the only part left of the old kitchen chimney that had yet to be enclosed. It happened in an instant, her apron aflame and her clothes gone up so quickly that Polly and the others could not douse the blaze before it had consumed her. Listening to Rebecca’s wails, Polly could not help wondering: Had
he
survived a curse such as this?

The brethren arrived as quickly as they could, carrying Rebecca upstairs to the healing room in spite of her moans.

“Boil up some water,” Charity ordered them, and Polly was surprised to hear how confident she sounded as she commanded sisters and brethren alike to do her bidding—to fetch more water and ice from the icehouse, tear muslin into strips, boil barberry stems into an infusion, bruise leaves of bee balm, and pound the roots of purple coneflower. She whirled round them as they worked, showing them how to do it quicker, better. And then, after the liquids had cooled, she dressed the burns with linseed oil so that the bandages would not stick, and laid the poultices over the whole of Rebecca’s body. Throughout the bustle of preparation and the wrapping of skin, the girl lay on the bed, gently rocking and crying in her pain because she could not writhe or scream.

“I think she might be soothed to hear your voice, to hear the Visionist speak,” Charity whispered to Polly as she wiped the sweat from her brow and continued her ministrations.

Polly nodded, then pulled a chair close to the bed where the young girl lay. Rebecca was but eleven, an orphan who’d been left with the believers not a year before. Polly tried to speak and found herself mute, unable to do anything but stare at the burns that blazed so angrily on the sister’s skin. She might have felt that she could be of some comfort if only she could touch Rebecca, but there was hardly a place on her body that had not been ravaged by fire. Strange how Charity’s markings drew Polly in while this affliction terrified her. It was not that she had no sympathy for the poor girl. It was her agony, the nearness of it, and the fact that Polly was powerless to assuage it.

Then she heard her whisper. Polly leaned in and put her ear close to the girl’s blistered lips.

“Mother,” she said, barely more than breathing the word. At first, Polly assumed Rebecca wanted her mother, but then she remembered that she had none. “Mother,” she said again. “Call…her.”

Polly was silent. She did not want to pretend to this child that she could do something she feared she could not, for her angels had been deaf to her pleas for some time now. And yet, to deny Rebecca comfort seemed cruel.

“I…I shall try,” she said. How she wished she could hold the girl’s hands and offer her love in some other manner, one that didn’t need to be conjured.

“Is she here?” Rebecca whispered. Polly looked away, feeling weak. What could she do?

Nearby the bed, a window had been cracked open to let the steam out of the room. A cool breeze blew in from outside.

“There,” said Polly. “Do you feel them?”

“Who? Who has come?” Rebecca croaked. “Is it…?”

“Her angels,” Polly said, whispering into her ear. She closed her own eyes. “Do you feel the cool beating of their wings? They are all around you. Can you hear them singing?”

“I…I don’t know,” Rebecca said. Then her body seemed to go rigid. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I can hear them!”

“They are Mother’s angels, sent down to comfort you,” Polly told her. Her eyes were still closed, and though she’d called for them to come, she had not expected the angels to pay her any mind. And yet… “They are singing, can you hear? They sing of Mother’s love. They sing so that you might be healed, might feel no more pain. They are singing for you, can you hear, dear Rebecca?”

The girl’s breath became steadier, and her tortured body seemed to relax. It might have been the tea Charity had made her drink. It might have been the comfort of the poultices that covered her body. Polly wasn’t sure. Then, once more she heard a whisper.

“She came to me,” Rebecca said. “You called and she came.” And with that, she drifted off.

Polly turned to find that the room had emptied. Sister Charity, having done all she could for the moment, stood nearby, leaning over a table, elbows down, her chin resting in her hands. She was staring and Polly wondered what she was thinking.

“You made her feel the presence of angels,” Charity said. “You brought Mother Ann to her and she was given comfort that none of us here could have offered.” Her voice was soft, full of awe.

Polly dropped her gaze. She could not say what she had or had not done. She knew only that she had been prepared to fake her gift if it would bring relief. This disturbed her, for if she was willing to lie now, what would she do if she was asked another time? Then again, hadn’t she too felt the gentle brush of wings? Hadn’t she been calmed and strengthened by the presence of her angels? Had they not enabled her to ease Rebecca’s pain?

She looked up. “Will she live?” Polly asked.

“I don’t know,” Charity said with a sigh, turning to gather the bowls and pitchers and pestles and spoons that were strewn here and there on the table. “She will never see again, that much I can say for certain.”

Polly busied herself helping her sister. She had become more sensitive to signs since she had come to The City of Hope, for everything appeared to have meaning here beyond its earthly significance. Now, just as she wondered whether Ben’s hatred of her signaled his deliverance from the miseries of his past life, she wondered if Sister Rebecca’s accident had been some sort of test.

I am thinking like Charity,
she mused. But then, perhaps she had never before felt safe enough to believe in the greater implications of small things. If this had been a test, she had not failed, though she had taken a great risk in forcing something akin to a Vision. Why could she not redeem herself by believing in the power of her gifts to heal?

Polly sat nervously, her back straight in the chair before Elder Sister Agnes. They had met a handful of times now, and the eldress had pressed more and more firmly for her to confess.

“You know that it is one of our most important principles,” she said irritably, “and yet you insist on delay. If the believers here did not put such store by your gifts as a Visionist, I would have asked you to leave long ago.”

Though Polly knew this to be true, it was a shock to hear it spoken so plainly. She looked into her lap.

“Now,” the eldress continued, “I have heard talk of your ministrations to Sister Rebecca. Is it true that you visited her and filled her head with what can only be…misplaced hope?”

Polly looked up. “I do not see it that way,” she said, a flash of anger in her eyes. “It is true—I wondered at first if I could do what she asked. But then, they came. My angels. They came and filled the air around her and gave her great comfort. How can I deny a sister who lies blind and wrapped like a mummy in her bed? Would you have had me turn away?”

Elder Sister Agnes’s face softened. “No, Sister Polly. You are right—I would not.” She paused. “How you vex me, child! I have seen sisters—the first Visionists—taken over by the same powers you are thought to possess. I know that such gifts exist. And yet, I am well acquainted with young girls, their thirst for attention—worse still, their ability to use that attention towards their own selfish ends. How can I be certain that you are not abusing the trust that has been placed in you?”

Polly did not answer her right away. “I cannot do more than to give myself over when the Spirits take me. And, as I have said before, I cannot explain why it is they have chosen me.”

“Then confess your sins to me that I might see to it that your soul is clean.” Her face had never looked so stern. The moment had come.

Polly spied a small leather-bound book lying on the gleaming table in front of Elder Sister Agnes. Her eyes hovered over the words embossed into the cover:
Youth’s Guide in Zion By Holy Mother Wisdom.

Looking to the eldress, she tried to discern whether or not she was meant to open it.

“Read to me, Sister Polly,” the Elder Sister said. “Before you begin, there is a power in the Heavens with whom you should be better acquainted. She is Holy Mother Wisdom, equal to our Holy Father Jesus Christ. Her word is divine and eternal and her power is great. You must know her as do all the children in The City of Hope—by reciting her commandments and humbling yourself before her will. This is how we begin.”

Polly bowed her head and opened the cover. Her hands shook. Elder Sister Agnes held a wooden form covered by an unfinished basket, its thinly shaved splints made from the pounded branches of black ash fanning out, as yet unwoven. They made an odd sight, like stiff hairs springing from an uncombed head.
Make no mistake,
Polly thought,
the eldress will succeed in bending and weaving them into order.

She began to read.

Polly looked up. Elder Sister Agnes forced each shaved splint in and out of the weave. Her hands were strong, for basket-weaving was the chief work of the Elder Brothers and Sisters. The long, slim strips dipped and reared up, dipped and reared up; she was expert at pushing and curling the thin sliver of soft wood, forcing it to join the other strips until it lay, like them, pressed along the oval-shaped basket form in service to industry.

“Do you know anything of craftiness and cunning, Sister?” The eldress did not look up as she spoke. “Were they part of your former life? The World has tempted many of our believers down such paths. I wonder if it tempted you as well.”

Polly stared at the clock hanging from a peg on the wall. The plain case was made up of a square atop a rectangle precisely two times its size. The shapes were, like everything here, in perfect balance. Only its face appeared ripe in its roundness, carefully contained within a square glass frame as if the lush curve might somehow be contagious. A fine machine, it ticked away the minutes and hours with heartless precision. “I can say,” she answered, “that I never behaved knowingly in such a manner, Elder Sister.”

“You were a help then, to your flesh kin? A daughter they thought to be a blessing?”

This last word—
blessing
—unnerved Polly. She had never had cause to consider the term because nothing in her life or in the lives of those around her could be called a “blessing.” It was only here that she had heard it used, and each time it had felt like a hand on her shoulder, an exhalation of cold, fresh air.

“My mother and father did not think in terms of blessings,” she said. “They led a difficult life, and it is not easy to reflect on good fortune when bad knocks so persistently at the door.”