Death of a Winter Shaker

by Deborah Woodworth

  “I saw her before,” the little girl said with confidence, but she held tightly to Gennie’s hand.

  Elsa ignored everything but her dance. Gennie tore her eyes away and stooped again beside the child.

  “Tell me where you saw her before,” she said. Nora could not be describing the worship service because Rose had kept the children from attending.

  Nora sucked in her lips and gazed up at Gennie through her lashes. “I wasn’t supposed to be here,” she said. “I was hungry,” she added, as if that explained everything.

  “You came to get an apple?”

  Nora nodded.

  “And you saw Sister Elsa?” Gennie prodded.

  Nora nodded again.

  “Did you see her out there in the fields?”

  “Nay,” Nora said, shaking her head widely side to side. “Here. She was singing and dancing with the trees, and that mean old man was here, too. He was watching.”

  “Nora,” Gennie said, taking both the child’s hands in her own, “who was the mean old man?”

  As a girl-child, Nora had limited contact with the brethren, and Wilhelm, unlike his predecessors, ignored the children. Nora shrugged her shoulders.

  “Was it the man with lots of white hair?” Gennie guessed. “Was it Elder Wilhelm?”

  The girl flashed a front-toothless smile and nodded.

  Elsa twirled to a halt and faced the group. Her dress was wrinkled and streaked with dirt, and straight gray hair escaped from her bonnet to hang in lank clumps across her cheeks. With an ecstatic smile, she stretched her hands toward them.

  “I bring thee greetings,” she said. “From Mother Ann herself!” Her voice had shed its coarseness and rang with a vibrant richness. She even sounded a little English, or what Gennie imagined to be English.

  “I think Rose should know about this,” Charlotte whispered. “I’m sending Hannah to the dining room to fetch her.”

  “Nay, she won’t be there,” Gennie said. “She told me she would try to talk with Wilhelm in the Ministry dining room. Maybe I should look for her.”

  “I need you here,” Charlotte said, and turned to Hannah, a long-legged fourteen-year-old who looked more than willing to leave. “Try the Ministry House first,” she told the girl. Hannah picked up her skirts and ran through the trees back toward the Ministry House, which lay just beyond the orchard.

  Again, Elsa danced, edging closer and closer to the group. She twirled, then hopped up and down as she shouted nonsense syllables. The children huddled behind Charlotte and Gennie but peeked out with wide-eyed fascination.

  Suddenly Elsa stopped and beamed at them. “I bring thee greetings and instructions from all the elders and eldresses who have ever lived,” she said with majestic force. “They want thee to wait no longer. They want thee to see, to know, now, who I truly am!”

  As Rose and Wilhelm neared the picnic area, they heard shouting and began to run. Rose’s first thoughts were for Gennie and the children. She found them all facing the field beyond the orchard, the small figures clustered behind the protective backs of Gennie and Charlotte. Rose rushed to Gennie’s side and followed her eyes to Elsa, planted ankle-deep in mud with her plump arms raised, palms open to the sky.

  “Mother Ann, Mother Lucy, I hear thee! I am ready to reveal who I am. It shall be done according to thy wishes.”

  Wilhelm froze, his body taut, and stared at Elsa with fierce intensity.

  “It must be clear to thee now,” he said to Rose, “why Elsa will be our next eldress, and the task of gathering new souls must fall to thee. Elsa has been chosen. All the Believers who went before us have come to tell us that she is chosen to be the next eldress. Just as it used to be.”

  “It has been too long since Mother Ann spoke directly to one of us,” he continued. “I myself have only read about it. I’ve never been so honored as to hear Mother herself speak to me.”

  Rose bit her lip. The reverence in Wilhelm’s voice troubled her. She shivered, but not with awe. She, too, had read of the dreams and trances and messages from long-dead Believers. But it all happened so long ago. It seemed so strange to her now, in an age of locomotives and automobiles and telephones. She watched Elsa, with her dirty clothes, slouching bonnet, and face aglow with joy. The light in her eyes could be divine revelation. Or it could be madness.

  As though sensing her scrutiny, Elsa dropped her arms and faced Rose. She held out one hand and walked directly toward the trustee. A prick of alarm shot through Rose, and her muscles tightened for flight. But she held herself rigid and waited for Elsa to reach her.

  “Sister Rose,” she said with quiet gentleness. “I have a message for thee, directly from Mother Ann.” She smiled benignly and took Rose’s hand.

  “Mother wants thee, Rose Callahan, to be our next eldress.”

  Wilhelm’s sharp intake of breath was the only sound to break the silence. Rose opened her mouth but no words formed. Her thoughts swirled in confusion. Secretly she had believed all along that Elsa’s shaking and twirling served her own towering ambition, coached and nurtured by Wilhelm’s passionate longing for a renewed Society of Believers.

  Elsa dropped Rose’s hand and paced back three slow, deliberate steps. Her hazel eyes, their yellow highlights flickering like flames, scanned the group, face by face.

  “And now,” she said, closing her eyes, “Mother Ann sends thee one more message. ‘Listen,’ she is saying to me, ‘listen, my beloved children. The time has come, the time for which all Believers have hoped and prayed. Thy weakness is at an end. Thy strength shall bud and flower and shall glorify God and all who have gone before thee. It is many years since a strong and loving Mother has watched over thee and cared for thee. But now there is one among thee who is called. She will lead thee as I led, and Mother Lucy, as well. Follow thy new Mother, who shall serve thee even as she leads thee to health and strength and salvation. Greet her now. She is thy Mother Elsa!’”

  TWENTY

  GENNIE SLEPT FITFULLY, NEVER FAR FROM THE EDGE of wakefulness. The day had left her exhausted but agitated at the same time. Elsa as the new Mother? The very thought brought her out of sleep, counting the days until her eighteenth birthday, when she could leave North Homage. At least Rose would be eldress—if the Lead Society in New Lebanon, New York, approved, that is. Rose said she didn’t know what they would make of Elsa’s claim to be the new Mother. She thought they might wonder why Mother Ann had contacted Elsa herself and not someone else who could vouch for the authenticity of the call.

  That Elsa might indeed be the chosen new Mother, Gennie did not believe for an instant. She had watched too much of Elsa’s kitchen bickering. But something had certainly changed. Something important.

  A chilly breeze from the open west window of Gennie’s corner retiring room drifted across her face and left by the north window. She burrowed farther under her bedclothes and forced the day’s events into a distant corner of her mind. Her breathing deepened.

  A noise startled her awake, a faint crackling sound, like paper being bunched up in a ball. There was something familiar about the sound. She tried to identify it without stirring from her warm bed. In the night air, it seemed to come from right outside her window. She sat up and tossed her blankets aside.

  “Molly? Molly, is that you?”

  She heard only crackling, no voice, not even the call of a bird or a chirping cricket. The sound seemed to come from her left. As she reached her west window, the reason became clear. Inside the Water House, hungry yellow flames leaped from the ground floor to flashing peaks in the upper windows, devouring the old wooden outer structure.

  A dark figure dashed past one ground-floor window. For a moment, the bright fire highlighted the outline of a long Shaker cloak. It’s Molly, Gennie thought. It must be. She’s come back to rescue her things from the fire.

  She tore herself from the window and fumbled for her shoes and cloak. If no one else knew of the fire, she had to warn the village. The Water House itself was unimportant, but t
he clump of trees just beyond it could catch fire. If the wind shifted, the Carpenters’ Shop and the Children’s Dwelling House could be in danger. She raced to the hall telephone and jiggled the receiver. After endless moments, the operator finally came on the line. Gennie gulped the air to steady her trembling voice.

  The Languor fire brigade alerted, Gennie careened down the stairs to the first floor and Sister Charlotte’s room. She banged on the door and barged in.

  “Charlotte, wake up! The Water House is on fire!”

  Charlotte bolted upright and blinked rapidly, blinded by the sudden light from the hallway.

  “I’ve called the fire brigade, and I’m going to ring the bell,” Gennie continued. “Oh, please wake up quickly!”

  “I’m awake.” Charlotte tossed off her coverlet and flipped her legs over the side of her bed. “The children. I’ve got to move the children.”

  Gennie lunged for the front door. She had to reach the old fire bell, next to the Meetinghouse. She raced in terror, as she remembered that the bell had been used only last Friday, when the barn burned. That was why the crackling sound had seemed so familiar to her. As she ran past the darkened buildings, she thought of shouting. But she had no breath to spare.

  She tugged the rope with all her strength and set the old bell pealing loud and fast. Lights appeared in retiring-room windows. Gennie rang harder. As Believers emerged from front doors, still tucking in shirttails and fastening cloaks, she left the bell and flew down the central pathway, shouting hoarsely. At the Trustees’ Office, Rose emerged from the front door and raced down the steps to meet her.

  “It’s the Water House,” Gennie said between gasps. “I’ve called the fire brigade.”

  Rose nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “I can see it from here. It’s going fast. We’ll have to form our own brigade to keep the fire from spreading.”

  Flames shot out from disintegrating walls and clutched at the old, dry wood of the abandoned building. Wilhelm stood at the head of the line, grimy sweat streaking his face. His powerful arms grabbed each bucket and hurled the water high at the flames. The blaze devoured bucket after bucket.

  “More! Faster!” he shouted. The brethren were tiring. But Wilhelm seemed to gain strength as the fire worsened, as if this fire had ignited a rage inside him.

  “Wilhelm, the fire brigade is on its way, and the wood is nearly all burned,” Rose shouted as the fire began to burn out on its own.

  Wilhelm tossed another bucket of water, which hissed and steamed as it encountered flame. He tossed the bucket to the ground and turned on Rose, his fists clenched into tight balls.

  “The world has done this,” he said in a ringing voice. No one moved.

  “This is the work of the world,” Wilhelm repeated, “first our barn, and now this. And they will be back to try again. They will not rest until they have destroyed us. Is it now finally clear to thee, to all of thee, that we can never compromise with the world?”

  No one slept that early Tuesday morning. The first pink stripes of dawn found everyone cleaning bits of charred wood from the grounds, edging closer to the black hulk that used to be the outer structure of the Water House. The water tank itself was soot-covered but intact. Everything around it had burned away, except the metal staircase and the stone floor.

  Rose poked at a blackened chunk near the building and watched for sparks. She bent to pick it up. It was cold and soggy and left a sooty residue on her hand. Crinkling her nose, she tossed it aside and wiped the muddy ash on her apron.

  Two young boys scrambled over the charred shreds that used to be the wall to explore the floor of the building. Rose recognized them as rebellious friends, aged ten and twelve, always on the lookout for whatever trouble they could get into. She glanced around her and saw everyone else retreating toward the dining room for breakfast.

  The older boy tested the temperature of the water tank with one finger, then laid his palm flat on it and gestured to his friend. Both boys tried the stair railing and found it cool enough to hold. They peered into the crawl space. Rose couldn’t see the expressions on their faces, but their bodies said enough. They wanted to explore.

  “You two,” she called. “Come out of there. It’s time for breakfast.”

  For a moment she thought the boys would defy her, but hunger won. They scrambled out of the ruin and raced each other to the dining room.

  Rose stood alone on the outer edge of the charred walls. She could see the metal stairs spiraling down into the dark hole of the crawl-space opening. As she turned to leave, something about the glow of the morning sun made her remember what Gennie had told her about the lipstick cover inside the Water House. Surely Molly must have used the building, probably the crawl space, as a hiding place for her beauty items. What if she hadn’t been able to rescue them last night? What if they were still there, just down that dark hole?

  Catching her skirts and cloak up in a bunch, Rose stepped over the ragged, blackened remains. The stone floor seemed stable enough. A few more steps brought her to the edge of the crawl space. Perhaps Molly had more down there than just lipstick and perfume. Maybe she could find a clue to the source of these secret gifts of hers.

  She leaned over the edge of the opening and squinted into the dimness. The sunlight formed a gray circle on the dirt floor, surrounded by black, acrid air. Rose saw nothing sparkling in her field of vision, but Molly surely stuffed her treasures into one of the dark corners of the crawl space.

  Rose reached for the iron stair railing and tested its stability. It stood firm. She dropped her cloak in a heap on the sooty, stone floor, then gently swung around to the first step and lowered herself into the crawl space.

  Her feet touched ground, but her head still stuck out of the opening. She would have to squat down in the dark to look around. Though she knew every inch of North Homage and had been down in the crawl space as a child, she felt a quick stab of uneasiness. She thought about rats. But they’d be dead from the fumes, if not the fire itself, she told herself.

  Rose closed her eyes and knelt down, lowering her head under the crawl space ceiling. She eased open her eyes. She could see little of the crawl space beyond the area lit by the opening. The air felt clammy. The scorched smell was milder than she’d expected. The fire must have spared the crawl space.

  She chose a direction at random and, using her hands like antennae, edged into the darkness. Her hands encountered chunks of wood, a hammer, debris from years of use and repair. Gradually, her eyes adjusted so that she could begin to see shapes a few feet ahead of her.

  The floor creaked above her. She froze, every muscle taut. Was the flooring above her solid all the way across? Was someone up there? Her imagination, usually so well controlled, raced through several terrifying possibilities, leaving her paralyzed on hands and knees.

  Finally, the silence reassured her. She shook her head at her own susceptibility and pushed forward. She had come within sight of one wall. Her eyes traveled down the wall and into the dim corner where it joined the floor. Something was there, partly in shadow. Her fears forgotten, she crawled forward and grabbed it. She held a dusty mother-of-pearl handle attached to a metal nail file. It had to be Molly’s. No one else in North Homage would own such an object.

  She reached into the shadows and felt for more shapes. She found them. One lipstick, dented but otherwise whole, and a lavender perfume bottle. She stuffed the items inside the triangular kerchief that covered the bodice of her dress and felt around once again. She found nothing more.

  More than ready to leave, she twisted around to locate the gray spot under the crawl-space opening. Her eyes were now thoroughly adjusted to all but the dark edges. As her gaze swept across the area, she could just make out the dozens of items that had been tossed down over the years. Most of them looked broken or worn—a rusty handsaw, three screwdrivers, a paintbrush with bent bristles, just peeking out of the deep corner shadows. Nothing, though, that looked like clues to Molly’s behavior or disappearance.<
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  Rose’s eyes snapped back to the paintbrush with no sign of paint on its dark bristles. Bristles bent like soft hair. She forced herself to edge closer. A shape formed in the shadow. Molly lay facedown in the dirt, her glorious black hair tossed over her head as if she were about to run a comb through it one last time, her arms and legs twisted unnaturally. A boneless rag doll tossed thoughtlessly into a dark closet.

  A small cry escaped her own mouth and Rose started, as if it had come from someone else. She whispered Molly’s name. No answer came from under that riot of black hair.

  The damp, bitter air pressed on the somber group gathered around the ruined Water House. The county fire brigade had returned and ripped away the floor over the crawl space. Sheriff Brock and Grady stood upright in the area where Molly Ferguson lay still. The Languor physician gently lifted the girl’s hair and examined her head and neck. With light, probing fingers, he touched the bruises around her eye.

  “Yea, it is Molly Ferguson,” Rose said, as the doctor raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

  The police and the doctor closed ranks. They talked quietly among themselves, leaning over to see where the doctor pointed. Rose eased forward to hear what she could. She caught only a few phrases, something about bruises around the girl’s neck.

  Rose guessed the rest. Molly must have been strangled, either in the Water House or elsewhere before being dumped in the crawl space. Dumped. As if she were a pile of dead plant stumps. Rose was furious with herself. She had been so ready to believe that Molly had run away and that her soul was in more danger than her body. Hubris.

  Molly had not killed Johann, that much was clear to her. She probably died because she knew who did. And whoever killed Johann had now compounded his sin unimaginably. Perhaps God could forgive him—or her—but Rose could not. Not yet. Sheriff Brock could try to shut her out of this, but it would make no difference. With or without the help of the police, she would find out who had done this, even if it were a Believer. Especially if it were a Believer.