“I can’t explain the rodents,” she said finally, “not yet. But I promise you that I will find out what happened. Please give me some time.”
“And what about that girl who was bit, huh?” The thin farmer wasn’t ready to give in so easily. “I heared she was bit real bad, might not make it. What about that, huh?”
Gasps and high-pitched chatter greeted the farmer’s announcement. Rose shouted to be heard above the din.
“Amanda is fine. She has been seen by Doc Irwin and is doing well. She is heading home with her family right now. Please, I know how concerned you must be, and I assure you we will do everything in our power to protect the children.”
“What about rabies? Have you even given a thought to that?” Mrs. Saunders asked. As a young woman, she had volunteered as a hospital aide during the Great War, and she could be counted on to trigger medical anxiety on any occasion.
“We will certainly take care that Amanda does not contract rabies,” Rose said in a voice calmer than she felt. “She will be given the best of care, and we will pay for it. Nothing will happen to her, and no one else has been injured. In the meantime, I will get to the bottom of this, you have my word.” She looked into the eyes of the frightened parents and smiled. There were no answering smiles, but at least they were listening.
“Now I suggest that you all go home. I am closing our school for the time being. I’ll alert the School Board myself.” She certainly intended to capture the School Board president’s ear before any of these furious parents did. She dreaded the Board’s reaction and assumed she would have to deal with an inspector at some point. But she would tell the state officials about the burlap sack; perhaps she could convince them that the rats were brought into the village, not sharing room and board with them.
“I assure you I’ll look into this incident carefully,” Rose said. “I’ll personally oversee the extermination and investigation. I will reopen the school only when I am certain it is safe.”
The parents whispered among themselves for a few minutes. Mrs. Saunders, who assumed the role of spokesperson, gave their response.
“You may be sure we will not allow our precious children to set foot in your school until we are absolutely convinced of its safety,” she said in a tone she might use with a servant on probation. “When the time comes, we will inspect this place from top to bottom ourselves.” She gave a brisk, dismissive nod of her head and nudged the shoulder of a plump boy whose sulky face had brightened at hearing he’d have no school for a while. “Come along, Thomas,” she said, loudly enough so all the children and parents could hear. “Be sure to watch your feet when we get outside. Heaven knows how many of those foul creatures are waiting for us.”
FIVE
ROSE WATCHED FROM HER OFFICE WINDOW AS THE parents herded their youngsters in the direction of their cars and wagons. Sinking down at her desk, she allowed herself a moment of rest. But she couldn’t sit still for long. She put through a call to the president of the School Board, who was out until the next day, and left a message with his secretary for him to call her immediately. She hung up and instantly the phone jangled.
“Eat in the Ministry dining room this evening. We must talk.” Elder Wilhelm’s terse command crackled over the wire. Even though she was now eldress, his female counterpart in the Ministry, Wilhelm still treated her as a subordinate. He could make her feel for a moment like a guilty schoolgirl.
“So you’ve heard about the incident in the schoolhouse?”
“It should be clear to thee by now that little escapes me,” he said. “Though I had to hear it from Brother Samuel, instead of from thee, as I should have.”
“It’s unfortunate I was unable to call you immediately, but too much was happening at once.” Rose sighed, but she tried to do so quietly.
“A child was bitten, I hear,” Wilhelm continued. “How is she? Did anyone think to call Dr. Irwin?”
At least Wilhelm was showing concern for the child, and Rose liked him better for it.
“Yea, of course Josie called him in. Amanda is well for now, but the doctor says she’ll need rabies shots, to be on the safe side, since we can’t possibly know which rat bit her.”
“Rabies?” Wilhelm’s tone was outraged. Rose closed her eyes and imagined Wilhelm’s craggy face hardening with fury. She knew all too well what a rabies scare would mean for the Society’s reputation, but she supposed that Wilhelm would explain it to her anyway and blame either her or the world or both.
But Wilhelm surprised her again. “We’ll talk this evening,” he said.
Rose spent a grueling hour lending a hand in the Laundry before allowing herself her promised visit to Agatha’s sickroom. The former eldress, Rose’s friend and spiritual adviser, had survived her third stroke, just barely. Visiting her, watching her struggle to survive, was painful, but Rose was drawn by hope and by love.
“How is she today, Josie?” Rose poked her head into the Infirmary nurse’s office. Josie sat behind her desk, her several chins in her palms as she peered through reading glasses at an open medical book. Her cherubic face, surrounded by wisps of white hair that had escaped her cap, looked more suited to a nursery than to this room filled with apothecary jars, tins, splints, and bandages. At hearing Rose’s voice, she brightened.
“About the same, dear, about the same,” Josie said with the gentle acceptance of one who has seen many deaths in her eighty years. “Have you come to sit with her awhile?” Rose nodded. “Good, that’ll cheer her. Here, I’ll go along with you.” Rose followed as Josie bounced down a short hallway.
The room glowed with afternoon sunlight softened by thin white curtains. Unlike sickrooms Rose had visited in the world, this one smelled of lavender and roses and lemon balm. It was too early in the season for fresh sprigs of herbs, but Josie had placed bowls of crushed dried herbs on any surface she could find. A small bowl of rosewater sweetened the air next to Agatha.
The former eldress’s frail body lay bundled in an adult-size cradle bed, so that she could be rocked to prevent bed sores and to help her sleep. The right half of her face hung loosely from the thin cheekbones. Agatha stared with cloudy eyes at her visitors before registering recognition and pleasure. She opened her mouth to greet them, but only the left side responded with a garbled syllable.
“I’ll leave you now and go back to my studies,” Josie said.
Rose pulled over a chair and reached into the cradle bed for Agatha’s left hand.
“I’ve got a nerve coming here and pouring my troubles out to you every day, don’t I? Well, all I can say in my own defense is that it was you who insisted I become eldress!” She laughed, which brought a slight, lopsided smile to Agatha’s face. “Did you warn me how hard it would be? Not that I remember, but then I was so insistent I didn’t want to be eldress, you probably thought it best to keep the difficult parts to yourself.
“Agatha, I really don’t want to burden you. I know I should let you heal, but I also know how much you love the Society and would want to know . . . nay, I’m not fooling anyone, not even myself. I just miss talking out problems with you.” Rose felt Agatha’s fingers wind around two of her own and squeeze lightly. Rose squeezed back.
“Okay, you’ve talked me into it,” she said. “I’ll tell all. It started so mildly, you see, with just some stolen raspberry preserves. Then someone sneaked into the village early the other morning, opened the barn and smashed part of the fence, and let all the animals loose. Whoever it was actually sedated poor Freddie.”
With surprising strength, Agatha gripped Rose’s fingers. “Oh, I should have told you right away,” Rose said. “Freddie has come out of it just fine. And so has Sarah. You remember Sister Sarah Baker, don’t you?” Agatha’s face showed confusion and she shook her head slightly. “She was here with us as a child, and then left to live with her mother. I barely remember Sarah; she was five or six years younger, and we had many more children then. She came back to us about two years ago.”
Agatha’
s facial features softened, but her puzzled expression did not clear completely. Rose wondered if she should stop right then and leave out the details of the apparent assault on Sarah. But Agatha squeezed her fingers again and stared intently at her, as if to urge her to continue.
“Sarah had . . . an accident. At least, it could have been an accident.” Agatha’s eyes widened. “Nay, truly, Sarah is fine. She either fell down the Sisters’ Shop stairs or was hit on the back of the head, but, aside from a nasty wound that Josie fixed right up, she didn’t suffer serious damage. It’s just that . . . you see, I checked in the shop, and I found blood near the spinning-room door, almost as if someone hit her as she turned away.”
Rose’s thoughts had drifted to the Sisters’ Shop, imagining the scene as it could have happened. A jerking on her fingers brought her back. Agatha writhed and tried to lift herself from the bed, but only her left side moved. In an anguished voice, she tried to form words. She could produce only short bits of nonsense.
“Agatha, please, don’t upset yourself. I’m afraid for you. I’ll go get Josie,” Rose said, extricating her fingers from Agatha’s grip. “We’ll give you something calming.”
Agatha’s breathing was quick and shallow. Her head spun. She laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. The spinning slowed to a stop, and she opened her eyes. Rose was gone. Something calming. Sleep. Nay, danger, danger. Rashes like old stories in her head, stories she had lived. Remember. Remember.
Agatha grimaced as she tried to bring order to her thoughts. She heard Rose’s voice say, “Josie, I think she’s in pain.” Rose’s face over her again. Sweet face, warm eyes. Remember for Rose. She remembered the beginning of a prayer, or maybe it was a song. It floated through her mind like a summer brook, clear and full. Mother and Father, be with me and help me. Bring me daylight in my heart. Push me, prod me, twist and bend me, till . . . till . . . Stolen food. Broken fence. Tiny little girl. Everyone gone, all gone at once. Faith, faith is dead. Faithless faithful.
A warm hand caressed her cheek. “Agatha, I wish you could tell us what is wrong.” Rose’s voice.
The year that faith died. She tried to say it.
“Just take a sip now, dear.” Josie lifted her head and pressed a glass to her lips, but Agatha wrenched her head to the side. She pushed out her mouth, the part that would listen to her. Liquid spilled down her chin, a sweet-bitter smell.
“She doesn’t want the sedative,” Josie said.
Agatha tried again, sputtering syllables to puzzled faces, rage at her impotence rising in her chest.
“I know Agatha.” Rose’s voice again. “Even with her body so weak, she has a powerful will, and she is using it now to reach us. It sounds as if she is trying to say the same thing over and over, until we understand it. She wants to tell us something.”
Listen, Rose, listen.
“Don’t try to talk just now. I know you can use this hand,” she said, taking Agatha’s left hand in her own. “I’ll ask you questions. If your answer is ‘yea,’ squeeze my hand. Do you understand that?” Agatha squeezed her hand.
“Are you feeling ill in any way?” Agatha focused all her strength on the questions, and left her hand still.
“Are you trying to tell us something important?” Squeeze.
“Are you saying something about what I told you earlier? The incidents in the village?” Squeeze hard.
“About Sarah?”
Agatha squeezed, then wrenched her hand from Rose’s grip and lifted her thin arm. She pointed straight ahead of her, beyond the foot of the cradle bed. Rose and Josie followed her shaking hand and stared at the wall across from her bed. Agatha’s heart pounded dangerously as she willed them to understand.
In an effort to ease Agatha’s confusion, Josie had brought to the sickroom a number of items from Agatha’s retiring room and arranged them so that Agatha would see them each time she awakened. The room was small, the wall close enough that even Agatha’s weak eyes could see the spines of her own journals filling a narrow bookshelf hanging from two wall pegs. These were the old ones; she could tell by the cracked bindings. They held the answer. Exhaustion swept through her body and her will dissolved; her arm dropped. Her eyes drifted shut.
“She pointed to the journals, I’m sure of it,” Rose said.
“She’s far too weak to write,” Josie said. “Look at her, poor sweet dear, she’d never be able to hold a pen. That’s all there is to it.”
“Nay, Josie, I don’t think that’s what she meant. She pointed to the old journals, not the newer ones.” Another, larger shelf hung to the right and held the journals made since 1920, when North Homage started its small book-binding business.
“Ah, but would she know left from right? Rose, dear, you remember her as she was. That Agatha is gone.” Josie laid a comforting hand on Rose’s arm.
Rose studied her friend’s sleeping face. Her translucent skin stretched so tightly across the fine bones that any wrinkles were smoothed away. How clear was the mind behind that fragile skull? Agatha couldn’t speak, but did that mean she couldn’t think or remember?
“I’m going to try something, Josie. I’ll take those early journals with me to read in my retiring room. If Agatha notices they are gone, tell her what I’ve done. Watch her reaction. If she seems agitated or upset, I’ll bring them back, but if she seems relieved, well, then we’ll know something. In the meantime, it can’t hurt to take a look at them,” she said, pulling the thirteen volumes, dated 1908 to 1920, off the shelves. “Just in case.”
The small Ministry dining room, despite its simple beauty, felt empty to Rose without Eldress Agatha. She took her seat at the long trestle table, set for two with plain white china and worn utensils. Wilhelm hadn’t arrived yet. Rose could smell fresh bread and hear clanking from the small kitchen separated from the dining room by a swinging door.
The dining room, like the building itself, served the Society’s spiritual leaders, the Ministry. Once North Homage had contained two “families,” each led by two elders and two eldresses. Discussions over meals must have been lively in those days, Rose thought. Especially a century earlier, when so much was happening, when converts—sometimes entire families—were eager to sign the covenant and live the ordered and celibate lives of Believers. Even then, women like Agatha and Rose could serve the Society as spiritual leaders, as had their foundress, Mother Ann. Though, of course, Rose would never equate herself with Mother Ann, who was specially chosen, God’s emissary, the embodiment of Christ’s second appearing. Rose stifled a sigh. Now it was just Wilhelm and Rose, and their discussions usually ended in an angry impasse.
Wilhelm arrived, his broad shoulders filling the doorway as he entered. They nodded to each other, and he took his place at the trestle table. The Ministry’s kitchen sister pushed through the swinging door, placed a platter of bread between them, and left. Wilhelm smoothed his white cotton napkin on his lap, and narrowed his eyes at Rose.
“Wilhelm, before you say anything, I’m sure the school will be all right. I’ll handle the School Board, and—”
“We must discuss Sister Sarah,” Wilhelm interrupted.
Caught off-guard, Rose stared at him. “Sarah?”
“Yea, Sarah. She has eluded thy control.” His contemptuous tone implied that eluding Rose’s control was neither difficult nor unexpected.
“What can you mean?”
“She has been slipping away from her work. For what purpose, I hardly dare contemplate. Not to pursue more work, though, I do assure thee. Ask thyself, why was she in the Sisters’ Shop so early the morning she was injured? And was she alone?” He ripped off a hunk of bread and pointed it at her. “T believe the world was there with her. I suspect she welcomed it, and it turned on her.”
The kitchen sister arrived with a tray holding a tureen of steaming tomato celery soup and a vegetable pie. Rose silently ladled the soup as she thought furiously. The sisters were her responsibility. It wounded her pride that Wilhelm knew more than she
did about one of the sisters, but as a Believer she welcomed reminders of the dangers of pride. Or she tried to.
More to the point, where did he get his information? It had to be from Sister Elsa Pike, who had recently been assigned to work in the sewing room, after the laundry sisters found her impossible to tolerate. Elsa had always been Wilhelm’s supporter. She was the only Believer willing to follow his example and adopt the old-fashioned speech of earlier Shakers, though she often confused “thee” with “y’all.”
“And what in particular did Elsa tell you about Sarah’s activities?” Rose asked as she handed Wilhelm his serving of vegetable pie. Only a flicker in his steely eyes showed that she had guessed right.
“It is thy duty to know what Sarah does,” Wilhelm said. He took a large bite of pie and chewed slowly.
“And I shall see to it that I do know,” Rose said.
Wilhelm nodded. “An eldress—a competent eldress—will strive to know always the spiritual health of those who are entrusted to her care.” He paused for a sip of water. “She cannot perform two roles at once, particularly when she is inexperienced at one of them.” He looked hard at Rose. “We need a new trustee,” he said, “or a new eldress.”
“Wilhelm, we’ve been over this already. It will take some time to find a new trustee. We have no appropriate brethren available except Samuel, and he has always refused a position of leadership. I’m getting to know the talents of the younger sisters. Sometime in the next year or so, I’m sure a likely candidate will emerge.”
A Deadly Shaker Spring Page 4