The White Lily

by Susanne Matthews

  “Thank you for telling me that,” Jacob said, touched by her words. She and Seth had been good to him, and it eased his heart to know someone had cared enough to search for him. No doubt his uncle or Pierce provided the false location. Wouldn’t they be surprised when he finally confronted them, because no matter what happened, Jacob would speak to his uncle and tell him exactly what he thought of him.

  Considering the nature of the Prophet’s crimes, Jacob expected it would be a federal matter, and the death penalty was definitely on the table in such cases. A little biblical justice here—an eye for an eye, and all that would certainly be appropriate. “I was badly injured, but I didn’t die. I was rescued.”

  “How do we know this isn’t one of the devil’s tricks?” Reuben asked.

  “Reuben, you were my father’s friend. You did your best for my mother and sisters after my father passed. I ask you to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Words that mean nothing. You can’t prove who you are, because this is a lie designed to confuse us.”

  “I can prove I am who I say I am. Ask me the real reason I was whipped. Ellie knows it.”

  “Why were you punished?” the man asked reluctantly.

  “Because I stopped Eli Mason from raping Ellie’s thirteen-year-old daughter when she was milking the cows. I broke his arm and his nose, and I’d have emasculated the son of a bitch with the pitchfork I held if Seth hadn’t stopped me. I’d expected to be commended for my actions, but I was mistaken. It seems I interfered between a man and his betrothed wife. I called my uncle a sick bastard and said his Creator was perverted if he thought it was acceptable for dirty old men to have sex with children. That’s how I earned my fifty lashes.”

  “You’re lying. The Prophet forbids relations between man and woman until after her sixteenth birthday.” There was an undercurrent of fear in his voice. “Is that true, Ellie? Your daughter wasn’t that young.”

  A tear trickled down Ellie’s cheek. “He speaks the truth. My daughter developed early, and she hadn’t caught the fever. Eli Mason had lost his wife and children in the epidemic, but like my daughter, he hadn’t gotten sick. He wanted a young wife to bear him children and asked for her. The Prophet agreed, and we couldn’t stop it. She died in childbirth just after her fourteenth birthday. There was nothing we could do, and the Prophet looked the other way. When she died, he said it was God’s punishment on her for being willful and disobedient, but the child was big and strong.”

  “Ellie, you said you saw the tree impale me. Where?”

  “On your left side. The branch pierced you.”

  Jacob pulled his shirt out of his jeans and raised it, revealing the ugly, jagged scar on his side, just above his waist where the branch had stabbed him.

  “Like this?” he asked, turning the mark to her.

  He looked into Lilith’s eyes and saw reproach as well as shock and sympathy. He’d been vague about why he’d been beaten. But he’d taken every lash like a man. He’d stood tied to the post with his back exposed for the first thirty and then facing his tormentor for the last twenty. His sole comfort through the ordeal had been thinking his uncle would step in and protect the girl as he’d said he would. Why didn’t it surprise him he’d lied about that, too?

  “I did mention I’d disagreed with him and his Creator and that the tree had caught me,” he said to Lilith. “I just didn’t mention it had done a little damage as well.”

  “A little damage,” she said softly. “You were damn lucky it didn’t pierce your lung or get infected ...”

  He shrugged. “It might have. I lost a few weeks at the time.”

  “Why didn’t you come back when you were well?” Reuben asked, and Jacob saw the man wasn’t sure what to believe. Good—he’d planted the first seed of doubt. When Jacob left the commune, Reuben had three daughters, all under ten. He’d be appalled at the idea of a forty-year-old man having sex with one of them barely in her teens.

  “After a beating like that, would you have gone back? The next time Pierce wielded the whip, I’d have died for sure. Husband or not, I’d never have let Eli touch her until she was of age. But I’m back now.”

  “Why did you come back after all this time?”

  “I came back to find Eloise.”

  “I’m not sure where she is,” Ellie said. “Neither she nor Isaac nor Mabel had come back before we were arrested. I’d mentioned it to Mother Kate because I was worried about them, but she told me they’d gone ahead with the others and I’d see them again when we reached the Promised Land.”

  “They’ve gone to the Promised Land all right, but not the one on this earth. They’re dead,” Jacob said, realizing these people probably knew less about what was going on than he did. “Eloise, Isaac, and Mabel had their throats cut on my uncle’s orders. They’re in the morgue.”

  “You’re lying,” the woman he couldn’t quite place shouted, surprising them all. He almost expected the guard to come rushing in with his weapon drawn.

  “The Prophet would never condone such a thing,” she continued at a more normal tone. “The Prophet wouldn’t kill his own. He might have them disciplined for failing to obey, but he loves us all. We’re the Creator’s chosen people.”

  Jacob turned to Lilith. They’d anticipated these people wouldn’t believe him, so they’d brought in the pictures of the dead.

  “I thought you might feel that way. Have a look. These are all the people killed on my uncle’s orders.” He opened the file he carried and took out the pictures. No one was engrossed in their shoes now. “This is Lucy Green,” he said, setting down the first photograph. “Her only crime was reporting her daughter, Mary, missing after the kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping? No one was kidnapped,” the woman said. “James wanted his children to be strong, so he found new breeding stock. None of the mares available suited his tastes. He found them on other farms, bred them, and when their time was close, brought them to the stable to ensure the health of the children. They came of their own accord. They learned the rules. I worked in the kitchen of the prime stable. I fed the mares and made sure they were healthy.”

  “Did you feed them the potassium cyanide, too?” he asked dropping the photos of the dead mothers on the table. “Kate Newcomb, Tracy Volt, Estelle Watters, Meredith Howard. What crimes did they commit?”

  “Potassium cyanide?” Ellie asked, moving closer to him. “That’s poison used to kill rats. Those mares died as a result of complicated deliveries. They weren’t strong enough, but the children were healthy. It was so sad. Mother Kate did all she could to save them. I prepared them for their burials, and the Prophet saw them returned to their farms. He and James wept over the tragic losses.”

  “The Prophet lied to you. That pink color they have is an aftereffect of cyanide poisoning. They were left out in the open for the police to find. They weren’t from farms. They were ordinary women with lives, jobs, and families. He murdered them. The only one who had trouble with the delivery was Meredith because she had a bleeding disorder, as did her son, but if she’d been taken to a hospital instead of being poisoned, she’d have lived like her boy did.

  “Do you know why he killed Mabel and Isaac? Because they defied him and tried to save that child. Instead of letting him bleed to death from the circumcision, they took him to a hospital. My uncle used you to abet in his crimes. Look at them,” he ordered sharply, and everyone’s eyes dropped to the four photographs. “Think of the sick women you’ve seen before when I was in the community. A sick person isn’t that color—one poisoned by cyanide is.”

  The woman who’d been so outspoken in defense of his uncle crumbled to the floor, her great racking sobs filling the air.

  Ellie dropped beside her, then Jacob, confused as to what he’d said to cause such agony.

  “What is it?” Ellie asked. “What’s wrong, Rachel?”

  “My son,” she said and repeated the words over and over again. “The only child I was allowed to have was born with devel
opmental problems. He was a sweet, loving child. When he was three, he got sick—just a bad cold—but the Prophet came to the nursery where we lived and asked the Creator to release him. I heard the boy’s labored breathing ease, but then it stopped.”

  Jacob listened to the woman’s halting words, fury rising in him as he realized what she’d said.

  “When he finished praying over my boy, the child was dead. He was that color.”

  The woman’s tears fell in earnest and Jacob realized that in her tragedy, they had a breakthrough. The Prophet had murdered her son, and now she knew it.

  • • •

  Lilith crossed the small room and offered her hand to the woman.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching down and helping her stand. Glancing at Jacob’s face, she saw the tears in his eyes. He’d clearly chosen to add this to the weight of the sins he carried. She should’ve anticipated something like this. The Prophet was creating his own master race, and there wouldn’t be room in it for imperfection of any kind. Visions of mass murders committed by the Nazi eugenic extermination of people with genetic disorders came to mind, and she shuddered. While they’d known the Prophet and his followers were white supremacists, she hadn’t realized he’d stooped this low. How many innocents had died at that monster’s hands? How many more would before they could stop him? Even one was too many.

  Had Eloise’s face been marred by a birthmark, she wouldn’t have lived as long as she had. According to Faye’s debriefing, the Williamsons had been ordered to take Baby Howard and expose him to the elements because of his hemophilia, like the Romans, Greeks, and other primitive cultures had done.

  For refusing to obey the Prophet and saving a child’s life, Isaac and Mabel had been punished, and with the Prophet, punishment meant death. The very thought of what he’d done to this woman’s child and how many others made Lilith sick.

  Jacob took a deep breath and pulled his gaze away from her, seeming to shake off the sadness and don the cloak of authority he’d worn ever since coming in. He dropped the other photographs on the table for everyone to see. In some ways, he was kicking them when they were down, but a heavy dose of reality might shake their faith, and that’s what she and Jacob needed to do to get the information and cooperation they needed. They had their foot in the door; they needed to open it wider.

  From her studies and Kelly’s betrayal, Lilith knew cult indoctrination wasn’t something imaginary, nor was it something to be erased easily. Only a traumatic event could raise doubts. Indoctrination involved long-term, repeated, charismatic behaviors by the leader and others in the group that imprinted themselves on the brains of new followers. It was the way abusers convinced their victims that they, and not the abuser, were responsible for their pain. When something happened, like this woman’s realization that her child had been murdered by the man she thought of as a god, that he’d betrayed the very rules he himself had set down, the agony, confusion, and sense of betrayal were deep and immediate, followed in many cases by guilt and blame. Lilith’s heart went out to Rachel and the rest of the brethren here. Their suffering was just beginning.

  “Here are Mabel and Isaac,” Jacob said, dropping the crime scene photos on the table. “After they were murdered, the killer dumped their bodies in the Charles River, expecting the tide would carry them out to sea. He didn’t count on a fierce storm that forced the bodies into the low-lying shrubs along the river where they were snagged and kept for the police to find.” He swallowed, licked his lips, and pointed to the next picture. “You’ll recognize Eloise,” he said, and the man who’d been silent up to now inhaled sharply.

  “She was my sister, his niece, his own flesh and blood,” Jacob continued, his voice heavy with emotion. “He had her killed because she was leaving here and coming to live with me. You know what a hell her life was like. This woman is Tina Jackson.” He dropped the most explicit of the photographs from the crime scene on the table. “She was a reporter. I’m not sure what she did to earn the death she got beyond trusting the wrong man. She was beaten and savagely raped before her throat was cut. This is how much the Prophet loves his followers and others.”

  Lilith watched as Jacob piled up those photographs, keeping the one of Eloise on the top.

  “Here are others who died, if not by his hand, because of it.”

  He placed pictures of each of the other five bodies in the morgue—James, the two strangers, the body they’d uncovered from a shallow grave near Slocum, and Seth Miller.

  Lilith noted the care with which Jacob placed the last photograph. Seth had been his friend. Ellie reached out her fingers to touch the photograph of her husband.

  “Stupid, old fool,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “He wasn’t supposed to be out there. He wasn’t a protector. He was trying to prevent our grandson from earning another lashing. Nathanial was scheduled to be on duty that night, but he hadn’t come home, so Master James insisted Seth take his place.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

  She reached for the picture they’d identified as Nathanial based on Faye’s debriefing. “He was buried. Where did you find him?”

  “Behind one of the houses in Slocum,” Lilith answered. “Do you know him?”

  She swiped at her eyes. “He was my grandson, my daughter’s son. His father and stepmother raised him, but when we were forced to leave our home and come here, he came with us. He wanted to work with the horses. He didn’t like the job his father insisted he have. Why, Jacob, why? Did James know he was already dead when he ordered Seth to the roof?” she asked, tears continuing down her cheeks. “He was a good lad, a little impetuous at times, but he meant no harm. He tried to follow the rules.”

  “I don’t know, Ellie. I’d like to think my brother didn’t, but so many things make no sense. We suspect your grandson was the one who panicked and killed Mrs. Green. I’d like to ask my uncle why he did any of this, but I don’t know where he is. Do you?”

  “He’s gone ahead to make sure the Promised Land is ready for us,” said Reuben, swiping at the tears in his own eyes. “How could we have been so stupid?”

  Lilith frowned. Ellie had said much the same thing about where the Williamsons were, but this was the first time anyone had mentioned the place might not be ready. If the place couldn’t be occupied yet, it would give them a little more time to locate the Prophet. Finding out where the cult members were might take longer than they hoped, especially if they were all still in transit. Jacob needed to establish trust with these people, but more than anything, the brethren needed time to mull over what they’d learned about their so-called leader, mourn the loss of their friends, and reflect on what their roles might’ve been in these tragedies. She reached out and touched Jacob’s arm, hoping he understood what she couldn’t say aloud. He nodded, and she pulled her hand away.

  “Ellie,” Jacob said, “why have you refused to cleanse yourselves?”

  “Mother Kate warned us that one day unbelievers might come and take the mares and the Chosen children away, and if they did, the Prophet would find us and save us. We were told not to speak, keep up our strength, and be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Removing our garments to wash ourselves would have been disobedience.” She sniffled. “We’ve lived like animals, waiting for him to honor that promise, but it was a lie, too. He isn’t coming for us, is he?”

  “No, he’s not,” he said. “There’s a possibility he may send someone to poison you all so you can’t help us, but we won’t allow him to release you that way. You’re safe here.”

  “But we don’t want to stay in here,” the stranger said angrily. “I’d rather be dead than live in a cage the rest of my life.”

  “What’s your name?” Jacob asked.

  “Tom Kirby, and I gather yours is Jacob Colchester.”

  “I go by the name Jacob Andrews, and this is Lilith Munroe. I’m making arrangements to get you out of here.”

  “Why? What’s the point?” Reuben asked, frustration obvious in the way he sco
wled and held himself stiffly. “If, as you say, the Prophet wants us dead, he’ll find us there just as well as here. He’s the Creator’s hands and feet. He knows everything.”

  “He isn’t the Creator’s or anyone else’s anything,” Jacob said forcefully. “There isn’t anything special about him. He doesn’t know everything, either. He doesn’t know I survived. He doesn’t know I moved to Australia where I struck it rich mining. He doesn’t know I have two large, prosperous farms where I’m willing to give you homes, jobs, and the freedom to live under no man’s tyranny ever again.”

  “And what do you want in exchange for this wonderful gift?” Tom asked sarcastically. “Do we follow you instead, exchanging one master for another?”

  “I will be your boss, make no mistake on that, but I’m no man’s master. I have more than 100 men working in my fields, and you’ll join them. My farm manager in the Northern Territory, Toba, will decide where best to use you based on your talents. The women will work in the greenhouses and in the kitchens. Once my staff gets to know you, they’ll reassign you accordingly. I know you can read and write, but your skills are lagging. All of you, men and women, will be brought up to the basic academic standards expected of adults in today’s modern society.”

  “So we’ll be slaves,” he spat the word, “and prisoners, too.”

  “You will not,” Jacob said so loudly that Lilith flinched. "My workers earn fifteen dollars an hour, and because this is my way to atone for the evil done to you, I’ll provide you with free housing and whatever else you need to get established. The Northern Territory can be a dangerous place, so you will be protected by others until you’ve learned to look after yourselves. You’ll work forty hours a week, busier at some times of the year than others, spending some of those hours on re-education. In exchange, I want to know everything you can tell me about my uncle and Garett Pierce. Specifically, I want to know where the Promised Land is and when the Great Burning will start.”