The Visionist: A Novel (20 page)

Simon Pryor

THOUGH IT IS
not far from Hatch to Albion, the winding roads were more difficult to manage than I had anticipated. Icy and slick at top, frozen and rutted at bottom, the hills forced my horse to take each step slowly and with care, and hours spent lurching in my saddle had me feeling stiff and irritable well beyond my years.

Pleased as I had been not two days earlier to be contacted by someone who might lead me to May Kimball and her children, I now felt nervous at the prospect. My study of them and the suddenness with which their fortunes turned put me in square view of what I’d long kept hidden. What had become of my own beloved kin? Eight years is a long time in the life of a man such as myself, let alone that of his aging parents. And though my weekly visits confirmed that they still lived, I also knew that, between living and dying, circumstance can both gutter and flare. With regard to my mother and father—their health, their happiness—I could tell you nothing. I had learned to keep such curiosity at bay, relegating it—like Bluebeard’s wives—to a solitary room in my mind. The key has been hidden for so long that it is as good as lost, for were I to open the door to that haunted chamber, I might never leave and put a foot forward again. This much I know about running away: There is but a single direction in which to go.

By now, I shall have made clear the extent to which James Hurlbut rules my small world. Indeed, contemplation of my servitude occasions many a white night—
white
because I cannot slip into dark and blissful sleep. Instead, I lie abed, endlessly re-describing to myself the moment when, as boys, our paths first crossed. How different my life might have been had I never laid eyes on my betrayer.

The scenery around me changed, from rock- and barberry-grizzled fields to a rolling white expanse of snow-swept pastureland that sloped gently into Albion. I found the town to be little different from most others I have ridden through in my travels about the county, but the sight—a mere hundred yards out—of the Shaker settlement caused me to pull up and gaze a moment from the opposite rise. Neat walls led into fences that ticked along either side of the road, level and regular enough that they looked to have been erected by a master joiner. A net of pathways led from house to house, but with none of the arbitrary crossings of the cow, pig, and sheep trails that determine the erratic jumble of a normal town. Here, everything was at right angles, aligned precisely and cluttered with not a single lazy woodpile or other such example of human haphazardness. The brilliant fields seemed to spread like a perfect quilt around the settlement, laid out with such attention to neatness and order that I found myself smoothing my fraying cape and readjusting my hat before urging my mount down the road and into the center of the village. Despite the dimming light of late afternoon, a clean white-painted house bustled with the comings and goings of oddly dressed men and colorless women, each passing through their own separate doors with never a glance exchanged between them.

I was curious to see the people I’d heard so much about, for I knew townsfolk who, in fair weather, had made Sunday outings to the Shakers’ place of worship in order to watch them “make fools of themselves.” Indeed, I had already heard of several who looked forward to visiting come springtime, when the roads would be more easily passable, so that they might witness the strange utterances of a young girl known to her kind as a “Visionist.” That her reputation had carried to neighboring towns is testimony to the paradoxical spell cast by these outsiders. Their backwards ways, their songs, and their dances were sources of amusement, ridicule, and, in some cases, suspicion. But their goods—clothing, medicine, household implements, and seeds—were prized. Doctors as far away as France ordered medicinal herbs and tinctures from the Shakers, such was their renown for purity and effectiveness.

I dismounted, tied up my horse, and hoped that I would not be shunned for my obvious otherness. I found little encouragement in the sign adorning what I supposed to be their house of prayer:
ENTER NOT WITHIN THESE GATES, FOR THIS IS MY HOLY SANCTUARY, SAYETH THE LORD. BUT PASS BY, AND DISTURB NOT THE PEACE OF THE QUIET, UPON MY HOLY SABBATH.
Happily, it was not a Sunday.

For all my discomfort, I need not have fretted. The man who greeted me—his hair cut straight across his forehead as though a bowl had been upturned and its rim used as a guide—spoke cordially, if with strange formality. His language was almost biblical—both in the words he used and the twists to which he subjected them; his dress was the color of wet tree bark; his attitude, patient yet somehow superior.

“I have come at the request of Elder Sister Agnes,” I said in my best and most respectful manner. “Might I find her here?”

A long pause ensued. Time moved more slowly in this place, though I had the feeling that not a second of the long day was wasted. The man took careful stock before answering.

“My elder sister will be called to her sitting room so that you might have a word. Attend the moment here and I shall inquire as to her readiness to receive.” So calm and self-negating was his manner that his departure to search for the woman he called his sister made barely a ripple in the air. I imagined him as more roadside marker than man, rarely permitted to move himself, yet somehow influential in the movements of others.

I looked about, spooked by the sparseness of my surroundings. The tranquility conveyed by such emptiness is oddly affecting. My own house filled me with the fear that I might someday be buried alive, never to be discovered beneath the detritus of my daily existence. Here, with life described in the most reductive of lines, I was alone with myself—not the best of company under any circumstance.

As luck would have it, before I could commence counting my numerous sins, the marker returned and motioned me towards an inner door situated precisely in the middle of the ground floor of the house. As he opened it, my eyes fell upon a woman—his counterpart, I supposed—standing stiffly beside a straight-backed chair.

“I am Elder Sister Agnes,” she said in a tone colder than the wind that had blown me here.

“Simon Pryor…Madam,” I answered.

With a simple wave, she bade me sit in a chair identical to her own yet placed at an unusual distance away.
Does she worry that I might bring contagion upon the good folk of her “City of Hope”?
I wondered. I found my usual confidence undermined and—rendered mute in the Shaker woman’s presence—I waited like a naughty schoolboy for punishment to be meted out.

“I shall not prolong our time together with idle conversation,” she said, settling herself neatly in her chair. Her dress was earth-colored with a high collar that peeked out from beneath a large kerchief. She was not unpleasing to look upon, but her habit was that of a particularly dreary maid. She continued. “I would like you to tell me what you have discovered regarding the fire on the Kimball family’s farm. In particular, I would like to hear what you know about the boy—young Benjamin. The family arrived under mysterious circumstances, and so I asked one of our brethren to look into church records to see what I might find out. As you have no doubt discovered yourself, there is nothing to indicate Benjamin’s position in the family—though it appears that he is the only son of May and her husband, one Mister Silas Kimball. I wondered if perhaps
you
might be in possession of a clarifying document?”

Silence blanketed the room. Her letter had already made it plain that she wanted to acquire the land. Indeed, she had written as though she sought to save its very soul by enfolding it into the settlement’s existing property. Why she should focus on the boy was a mystery to me. Had she reason to suspect this
Benjamin
to be the sole heir? Is that why she had dispatched someone to search for proof of his birth? Her forthrightness surprised me.

I must admit to a peculiar prejudice, for I did not imagine that such simple people—people who strive to separate themselves from society—know how to dig for clues. I suppose that I should not have found it strange. All it takes is patience and perseverance, precisely the qualities demanded in worship. But from the way she discussed the boy, I began to get the distinct feeling that perhaps the shelter May and her children had taken here was less temporary than I’d assumed.

“A question or two from me,” I said, “before we discuss your demands. You appear to have taken great interest in this Benjamin. Am I to assume that he, his sister, and their mother have in some official way joined you in—what did you call it?—
The City of Hope
?”

“I do not intend to waste time playing games, Mister Pryor,” she answered. “It is
I
who summoned
you,
as you might recall, and therefore it is to
my
concerns that we shall first address ourselves.”

I was not used to having a client run her own case and I did not like it. Everyone who comes to me has a reason—in this sense, they direct the first step of the inquiry. But once they have laid out the facts, they are generally quite relieved to hand them over to me for sorting. Of course, a notable exception is James Hurlbut, but as I have explained, ours is hardly a normal relationship. Elder Sister Agnes would insist on being in charge and—given that I knew next to nothing of the strange world she inhabited—I would have a difficult time wresting control. I decided to concede. As I had little to share, it cost me nothing, save my pride. And clearly, she knew quite a bit more than I about the family that had so possessed me; indeed, she was caring for them.

“Well, as your…investigator and I have clearly visited many of the same places in search of information, we are equals in discovering how little helpful official documentation there is for anything involving the Kimballs. And you surpass me by far in terms of what you know personally of May, Polly, and Benjamin. That the boy’s birth appears to be undocumented is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I can only surmise that his family wished it so, since I cannot imagine that people who could barely feed themselves would take on an orphan. Proof of birth cannot be manufactured from thin air—especially not when there is an inheritable property at stake. Had you hoped to use the boy in order to secure his former home?”

If I sought to discomfit her, I failed utterly.

“I do not care for your manner, Mister Pryor, but that is to be expected. Benjamin and Polly Kimball became believers on the day their mother signed their contract of indenture. You are mistaken in assuming that I know anything about May Kimball. Though I urged her to take shelter until she felt stronger, she declined. You’ll have to seek her elsewhere. As to the farm, I knew nothing of its existence until I happened to read only a week ago of its having burned.”

“But you feel as though that farm is owed, via the boy’s potential inheritance, to you?” I asked. There were so many more pressing questions on my mind. Why had the children been indentured here? Was it against their will? And where did the elder sister think May Kimball had gone? Was she coming back?

I gave no indication of the tumult in my head. I knew that if I wanted to learn anything from the Shaker sister, I would have to stay with the subject that most mattered to her. “Forgive me,” I said, backtracking. “Perhaps
owed
is too strong a word. Help me to better understand your reasoning.”

For the first time, she smiled. Not broadly, mind you, but enough so that the corners of her mouth twitched in the general direction of good humor. She actually became quite pretty. “All property belonging to our believers is passed over when they sign our covenant,” she explained, her tone softening as she seized the opportunity to educate. “And as Benjamin is happy here, I’ve no doubt as to what he shall do when he turns eighteen and can decide his way for himself. That he has accepted so readily the renunciation of his flesh mother and sister tells me that he will have the fortitude to remain a Shaker brother. But until then, it is only right that his inheritance be held in trust by a responsible party. We could oversee such a trust. After all, would it not be better to begin working the land now, rather than allow it to lie fallow and fall into the grasping hands of nature?”

I knew well the tactic of claiming kinship to young children who find themselves in a position to inherit property. Still, I was taken aback by the manipulations of so holy and devout a woman as the good Elder Sister Agnes. And that the children would have been forced to “renounce” the only parent they had left in the world? This detail resonated with particular bitterness for me. How little I knew of her kind.

“Acquisitiveness,” I asked, “is not considered by you to be a sin, Sister?”

“Not when it serves the collective good, Mister Pryor. I do not need to explain to you what will happen to that land should it be declared abandoned. Every greedy man in the county will bid on it—the higher the offer, the worse the character. Why should we not claim it when it may rightfully be ours through Benjamin? And why should we not work it so that it returns to a productive state, one that would help to provide for not only our kind, but also those in the World who benefit from our industry? The poor who eat our bread, the farmers who buy our seeds, the commoners who wear our cloaks and bonnets, the doctors spread far and wide who seek out the purity of our medicines—they, too, have a stake here.”