“Nay, it would not.”
“Well, I was so proud of the inventive new recipes the sisters and me came up with, and I was telling Patience about them, and you know what she said? She said we were using up too many of the herbs, and we had to stop! Well, I said, ‘The herbs are ours, too, you know, and they were ours before they were yours, and where would you be without the kitchen sisters, anyway?’ And she said she could live on plain water and bread, which she could easily make herself. She said herbs are wasted on cooking and that . . . that we were just a bunch of gossipy old hens.” The tears had spilled over, and Gertrude was trying to mop them up with her sleeve without letting go of her cabbage.
Rose put an arm around her shoulders. Dealing with tears was not her strength, but she had learned from Agatha that sometimes a touch is better than any words, so she said none. As Gertrude settled down, Rose considered the hints she was gathering about Patience. An unpredictable woman—blunt, judgmental, harsh, arrogant, perhaps gifted. But was she anything else? Was she unthinking enough to leave a colorful, poisonous compound lying around to tempt children? Could she even have enticed them into drinking or eating something, as part of one of her “precious experiments”? It was time to get to know this woman better.
FOUR
ROSE HAD NOT ENTERED THE TRUSTEES’ OFFICE FOR WEEKS. It had been her home and her workplace for ten years. Leaving it, moving to the Ministry House to live and work as eldress, had been a wrenching change. She had thought it best to throw herself into her new role and to cut her ties as fully as possible with her old one.
She sat in a ladder-back chair in the office that used to be hers, facing Brother Andrew, the new trustee. Everything looked the same, yet strange somehow, like her retiring room seemed after she’d returned from visiting another Shaker village. The strip of pegs encircling the wall held a man’s blue Sabbathday surcoat and a broad-brimmed hat. The aged pine of the double desk had the same orange glow, but was perhaps not quite as tidy as when she— Rose stopped herself before her thoughts went beyond uncharitable to prideful.
Andrew Clark watched her in silence as she drew herself back to her mission. He seemed to know when she had returned.
“Have you brought news of the children?” he asked.
“Nay, there is little news. I was hoping that you could shed some light on this mystery,” Rose said.
“Me?” Andrew’s dark eyebrows arched in surprise.
Rose regarded him for a long moment. “Surely you realize that Josie asked you to examine the girls’ symptoms because she hoped you might recognize them. In fact, it seemed to us that you did. Yet you said nothing.” Rose gazed at him with an expectant tilt to her head. The gesture had often extracted information from hesitant informants, but Andrew only frowned.
“I’m sorry, Rose, but I could not identify what the girls might have eaten, if that’s what they did. Certainly there are several plants or medicines that could cause such symptoms if eaten or taken to excess, but . . . It seemed to me that Josie did the best thing possible for them—she gave them an emetic. That’s all I would have recommended.”
“Andrew, I apologize for being so insistent, but if there’s anything, anything at all that you suspect, we can’t afford not to know.”
“Truly, I would never keep knowledge to myself if it would help those children. You must believe me.”
Andrew leaned toward her in what felt like familiarity, though Rose told herself it was only supplication. She wanted to believe him. Despite his aura of secretiveness, she liked him. He was a refreshing change from Wilhelm. Andrew wore his dark hair fairly long so that brown waves brushed the stand-up collar of his work shirt. His trim beard challenged Wilhelm’s edict that the brethren be clean-shaven. Though his clothing resembled the loose, plain work clothes of the nineteenth-century brethren, his brown shirt and trousers had a cleaner, updated line. These casual displays of defiance pleased Rose as much as they irritated Wilhelm.
Still, she couldn’t shake the sense that he knew more than he was saying. She decided to try a different approach.
“We have been so busy since you arrived here that I’ve had no time to chat with you about your business plans. Perhaps we might do so now? I’d love to see the gardens you’ve developed and find out how you are using them to make medicines.”
“Right now?” Andrew tensed and glanced at the office door as if hoping for an interruption.
“Now would be perfect,” Rose said. “Nora and Betsy could become more ill, of course, but for the moment they seem stable. Perhaps a discussion of herbs will trigger an idea for one of us.” Without waiting for help, she swung her chair upside down and hung it from several wall pegs so the seat would be free of dust for the next visitor. She led the way to the door, and Andrew followed without further objection.
In silence they exited the front door of the Trustees’ Office and descended the long row of front steps. They approached the Medicinal Herb Shop and circled to the right of the building, where Andrew had created a new medicinal herb garden. Here he experimented with varieties of herbs not normally grown in the medic garden behind the Infirmary.
A young man crouched before a row of plants with orange flowers, which Rose recognized as pleurisy root. The man’s earth-stained hands worked quickly, nipping small weeds from between the plants. When he heard them approach, he raised a round face with translucent green eyes.
“This is Willy Robinson,” Andrew said. “We hired him from Languor to help out in the gardens and the shop. He has a special interest in medicinal herbs.”
“Glad to meet you, ma’am,” Willy said. He held out his hand and withdrew it quickly, darting a glance at Andrew. His hands were rough, smeared with brown and green stains, the nails chipped and dirty. A musty smell wafted toward Rose. She would mention to Andrew to allow the boy to bathe here and bring his clothes to be washed.
Rose had not spoken with Willy before, which did not surprise her. Hiring extra help and directing work had been her responsibility as trustee, but for some time now she had distanced herself from the day-to-day operations of the Society’s businesses. She felt a surge of longing as she remembered the pleasure of bargaining for real estate and developing new business ideas. If she had not become eldress, it would have been she who watched over these strange, new plants and— Nay, she knew little of medicinal herbs. Without Andrew, none of this would be here. She promised herself a thorough confession to Agatha very soon; these jealousies would lead her far from the path of Mother Ann.
“As you can see,” Andrew said, “we keep a small patch of pleurisy root going all summer. Josie doesn’t bother with it in her own medic garden, and we needed some for our experiments.”
The young hired man picked one of the orange flowers and held it up to Rose. A shy smile spread across his face, revealing badly stained teeth. Rose hesitated. Believers did not waste flowers on ornamentation, but she did not wish to scold the boy after such a kind gesture. She decided to leave it to Andrew to explain their ways to him. She thanked him and took the flower.
Andrew did not seem to notice the interchange. He knelt before a wilting plant, shaking his head as he examined the large, pleated leaves. “I was hoping this would make it,” he said. “It’s green hellebore. Wonderful plant. We use the rhizomes to make a tincture that works as a sedative and painkiller. But this really needs cooler, damper soil. Willy, are you keeping it wet? The soil seems dry.” He pushed a finger into the ground near the roots.
“Yes, sir, I was just about to water it, just thinkin’ about it as you folks come up.” With a quick movement, he grabbed a nearby watering can, splashing over the side as he hurried to the suffering plant. He began to slosh water on it before Andrew had time to stand and step aside, and globs of dampened dirt splattered against the trustee’s work pants. When he saw what he had done, Willy jumped backward, and his wide, frightened eyes darted toward Andrew’s face, as if searching for signs of violent explosion.
Andrew’s eyebrows
knitted in mild irritation, and then he laughed. “This is why my work clothes are dark brown,” he said. “No harm done, Willy.”
Instead of relaxing, Willy narrowed his eyes in suspicion, and he clutched the watering can in front of him with two hands, like a shield.
“Willy, Andrew tells me you have a special interest in herbs used as medicine,” Rose said, hoping to break through the boy’s fear.
Willy darted a glance at her and nodded once before staring again at Andrew.
“Yea, indeed,” Andrew said. “Willy is quite knowledgeable about all the plants in this garden. He has seen uses that I’ve only read about.”
Willy relaxed. He lowered the watering can but continued to hold it with both hands. He ventured a longer look at Rose.
“Granny taught me,” he said. “I lived with her when I was a kid, after my ma and pa left.”
“Was your grandmother a healer?” Rose asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Willy said. “We didn’t have no doctor, so she was the one folks come to when they was hurt or sick. She used to take me all through the hills hunting wild herbs for her tonics, and she talked to me the whole time about how you could take slippery elm bark and make it into a poultice that was good for healing burns and suchlike. She knew more’n anybody in those parts. I reckon I could’ve took over when she died, if I’d a mind to.”
“Once you’ve learned what Andrew can teach you, perhaps you can go back and help your people,” Rose said.
Willy reddened and shrugged one thin shoulder.
“It sounds as if they could use your knowledge,” Rose said.
Willy shot a wary glance at Andrew. “Don’t reckon they’ll be much interested in taking me back,” he said. He turned his back on Rose and began to pull fine blades of grass that had sprung up where they shouldn’t.
“Shall we continue?” Andrew asked from behind her shoulder.
Rose waited until they were out of Willy’s hearing before asking, “Has Willy something in his past that I should know about?”
Andrew clucked in annoyance. “I told him not to talk about that,” he said. “People will misunderstand. As you probably noticed, Willy is good with the herbs but lacking in . . . Well, he isn’t stupid, certainly, but he doesn’t seem to know how to present himself.”
“Surely awkwardness is no sin. With help, he will learn the niceties in time, but I am more interested in his past,” Rose said with a firmness that was meant to yank Andrew back to her original question. She glanced sideways at him and saw his jaw tighten. However, he answered in a calm voice.
“Apparently when his grandmother was growing sickly, she let him take over much of the healing. She had taught him well, but there was a mix-up of some kind, and a young man died.”
“You mean he poisoned someone?”
“Nay, I’m sure he did no such thing. It was an unusual case, some sort of breathing problem, I believe. He said that his grandmother had to teach him a new formula, one she hadn’t used for years. It’s likely that, given her weakened state, she remembered it wrong. Or the young man may not have been able to tolerate the tonic for one reason or another. Anyway, the family blamed Willy and came after his grandmother for revenge. Willy took responsibility for the error.”
“Noble of him,” Rose said, “but however did he escape punishment? Surely the grieving family arrived fully armed and ready to take vengeance.” She glanced at Andrew and saw him chew his lower lip.
“Yea, that was a bit unclear to me, too,” he said. “Hugo might know more of his story. They talked together quite a bit before Hugo became so ill. At any rate, Willy’s knowledge of herbal remedies is phenomenal.”
Rose said nothing. She feared Andrew’s devotion to the medicinal herb industry might have blinded him to potential problems with his people. She decided to keep an eye on Willy Robinson.
FIVE
“THIS IS THE AREA WE HAVE CONVERTED INTO THE MEDICINAL Herb Shop,” Andrew explained as he and Rose entered the old Broom Shop.
Since only brethren had been broom makers, the building had a single entrance. Andrew stood well back as he held the door open so Rose would not accidentally brush against him. She stepped into one large room that she remembered from her early childhood, when bits of broom straw had littered the floor. During those days, half a dozen brethren would fasten batches of straw onto handles and stitch them into the flat design invented by a long-ago Shaker brother in New York. Now the room looked more like a laboratory. Several tables and rows of shelves held dozens of apothecary bottles containing herbal infusions, tins and bags of dried herbs, and bunches of drying stems hanging from wall pegs.
On one side of the room, Rose recognized Andrew’s assistant, an intense young brother named Benjamin Fulton. Benjamin was slim and darkly handsome, with masses of curly hair and long black eyelashes. Rose found herself thinking what a pretty girl he would have been. His full lips puckered in concentration as he examined what looked like glass infusion equipment. He called Andrew over for a consultation. A third brother bent over a journal, making painstaking notations. Sister Patience worked by herself on the other side of the room, measuring dried herbs and grinding them in a mortar and pestle. Before adding another ingredient, she consulted a large book that lay open on the table, as if she were following a recipe. Curious, Rose approached. Patience glanced up and made a quick protective gesture, as if to hide the page. The gesture seemed odd for a woman who had so recently displayed spiritual gifts. Patience must have sensed Rose’s surprise, because she kept her arm moving in a smooth arc until it was no longer near the book.
Rose moved alongside her. “Is this an experiment of some sort?” she asked. “Anything promising?”
Patience smiled, but her dark eyes remained serious. “Nay,” she said, her mellow voice sounding out of breath. “Nothing of great interest. Just a very old medicine formula that I was hoping to update.”
“Oh? Which are you trying out?” Rose asked, looking at the two open pages containing four recipes.
“This one.” Patience pointed to a formula for a painkiller, at the bottom of the second page. The original recipe contained opium-poppy juice.
“How interesting. I suppose you are hoping to replace the poppy juice with something more benign but equally effective?”
Patience gave a curt nod but no further explanation.
“How did you first become interested in the medicinal properties of herbs?” Rose kept her voice interested, though part of her attention was occupied as she skimmed through both open pages. Just above Patience’s finger was a recipe for reducing fever. One of its ingredients was extract of monkshood root, which Rose knew to be poisonous. Patience’s arm partially obscured the two recipes on the facing page, but what Rose could see looked harmless.
From the corner of her eye, Rose saw Andrew approaching. Patience went back to her work, pulling the book away from Rose’s view.
“As you see,” Andrew said, “we are all experimenting with new and revised patent medicine formulas. Everyone except Thomas, of course. He is our salesman and does a good job of keeping informed about our progress.”
Rose glanced at Thomas Dengler, another of the small band of new North Homage Believers who had arrived with Andrew from the East. All had been willing to uproot and move west so they could continue their work with him. Thomas was a husky man in his early thirties, with a ruddy complexion and pale blue eyes. Rose had been curious about him since his arrival but had left his initiation to Wilhelm. She knew only that he had been a husband and father in the world and that his wife, Irene, and their two children had come together to Mount Lebanon, the Lead Society in New York. They had separated and given their children over to the care of the Children’s Order, as required, completed their novitiate period, and signed the covenant. For reasons she didn’t know, the entire Dengler family had made the move to North Homage. In Rose’s perception, Irene seemed content as a Believer.
“Is the business doing well, Thomas?” Rose asked.<
br />
“Yea.” Thomas nodded once, and his pen continued down a column of numbers.
“Perhaps you could show me the figures sometime soon,” Rose said. She was itching to delve into business affairs again, and she felt uncomfortable knowing so little about the medicinal herb venture.
Thomas paused and looked up, his face screwed up in disapproval. “Why? There’s nothing wrong. I keep very good records.”
“I’m sure you do,” Rose said. “I merely hoped to learn more about the business.” Andrew insisted that Thomas was a superb medicinal herb salesman, but Rose wondered how that could be, given his combativeness.
“It’s complicated.” Thomas’s gaze wandered around the room. “Tough to understand, unless you’re a salesman.”
Rose felt her cheeks flush.
“The eldress will have no difficulty understanding, Thomas. Remember that she was trustee for many years before you and I arrived.” Andrew’s mild voice conveyed a gentle but clear rebuke. Thomas flashed a look of disdain at Andrew, but the trustee had already turned back toward his assistant.
“Benjamin, show the eldress what you’re working on. It’s quite intriguing,” Andrew said, excitement seeping into his voice. “He’s trying to develop a treatment for asthma that doesn’t use the poisonous ingredients we used once, but that will work more effectively than what is currently available. As I’m sure you are aware, ever since Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, we’ve had to adjust our recipes for curatives to avoid poisonous ingredients and exaggerated claims of curative properties.”
Benjamin snorted in derision. “People can be so foolish. Just because they see a poisonous herb listed in the ingredients, they think a medicine will kill them. All they have to do is follow instructions.”
“In this part of the country,” Rose said, “many people cannot read. And they are sadly susceptible to wild claims that a remedy can cure them, whatever their illness.”
Benjamin shrugged one shoulder and turned away.
Sins of a Shaker Summer Page 3