The Seeker (40 page)
“What would you have me choose?” Charlotte asked softly without looking up at Sister Martha. She didn’t think she would see disapproval on the woman’s face, but because of her fondness for the old sister, she feared seeing disappointment there.
“Salvation seems the only choice to me, but many have chosen otherwise.”
“Cannot those of the world find salvation without living the Shaker way?” She studied the letter she held in her lap. She did not want to make a choice between salvation and love. She could not believe the Lord required that of her.
“Not true salvation.”
“What of your daughter? You told me once that she chose a different way.” Charlotte peeked up at Sister Martha to be sure her question wasn’t too bold. “Did that condemn her in your eyes?”
“You ask a difficult question. One that I should perhaps not answer, but the two of us, we have naught but truth between us. I know you haven’t told me everything that is in your heart, but I also know that what you have told me has been truthful. I can do no less than the same for you.”
Sister Martha turned her eyes away from Charlotte’s face to stare toward the window. They were alone in the room on the first floor of the Centre Family House that Sister Martha rarely left anymore. Charlotte carried her meals to her every day. The summer had been especially hot and dry, and the heat had continued into September. Sister Martha could no longer summon the strength to go about the village. Instead she kept busy corresponding with other Shaker villages.
Now as Charlotte waited quietly for Sister Martha to start speaking again, she could faintly hear the bang of pans in the kitchen deep in the building where the sisters were cooking for the hungry soldiers who passed through the village like unending clouds of locusts sucking up water and food. Charlotte thought sometimes it was only the Shakers’ prayers that kept the wells from running dry.
Finally Sister Martha looked back at Charlotte. “Often our eyes do not want to behold the truth. Just like with this war. We here at Harmony Hill would like to believe we can keep its conflict from our village, but we cannot. We are in its path and we will suffer some consequences of the worldly struggle. Just as Elder Homer did when the two soldiers held the gun to his head and demanded the horses last week. We would have surrendered a dozen horses to them before we would have chanced harm to Elder Homer, but he refused to give in to their violent demands. In the end his gentle spirit overpowered their evil intents and they went on their way empty-handed.”
When Charlotte frowned a little, Sister Martha smiled and held up a hand to keep Charlotte from speaking as she continued. “I see your confusion. You wonder why I speak of the war and Elder Homer when you asked of my daughter of the world. Perhaps because I have no ready answer. I think I once told you of my despair when she first left the village years ago. She was the same as lost to me then. Dead to our Society here.”
Sister Martha reached up and absently tucked a strand of gray hair back under her cap before she pulled it down tighter on her head. She patted her feet lightly on the floor as if that might help her come up with the best words to explain. “Of course you have to understand I had already given her up as a daughter. That was required as soon as we joined with the Believers. We were sisters just as you and I are sisters. I embraced the ways of the Society and I thought she did as well. There were those among the Ministry who thought Gabrielle would become a leader here. She had amazing gifts of the spirit. Many more than I. But then the stranger came into our midst and held out his hand to her and she went with him.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
“Once. She came with her firstborn. A girl she called Martha. Named after me. I stood in the visitors’ room and told her not to come again. I think I feared losing my own way as I believed she had lost hers.” Sister Martha hesitated a moment as if her next words were too hard to speak. “For the little child—she couldn’t have been over two—pulled at my heartstrings. I wanted to pick her up and feel her sweet breath against my cheek. But I couldn’t deny the way I had chosen any more than my daughter who went to the world could deny her own path. It was how it had to be.”
Sister Martha leaned forward until she was looking directly into Charlotte’s eyes. “And that is how your path must be, my child. If the seeker comes for you, then perhaps the good Lord will put the right answer in your heart and you will see the proper path before you. You must pray so.”
“Yea,” Charlotte said. She didn’t add that her prayers had seemed empty since the loss of her father. She worried that would make Sister Martha feel the need for more words to buoy Charlotte’s spirit when it was obvious her many words had already drained the old sister of strength as she sat back and panted a little to gather her breath.
“We shall pray this nation will find the right answers as well. That the two sides will find a way to cease their hostilities.” Again she breathed in and out before she said, “You must get back to your duties. Those in the kitchen at the Gathering House will need your hands.”
Charlotte carefully folded Adam’s letter and slid it back in the envelope. She wanted to let her eyes dwell on his words again, on his promise of the garden coming back to life after the winter. Perhaps that was what she was feeling, a winter of the soul that had nothing to do with the date on the calendar.
As she hurried back to the Gathering Family House where there would be a new sack of potatoes or perhaps a basket of apples waiting for her paring knife, she thought the whole country seemed to be deep in a winter of sorrow with so many fields turning to battlegrounds. Sister Martha had been right that no matter how much the Believers desired peace, there was none to be had in Harmony Hill with the Confederate soldiers passing through the village on a daily basis now. Not three nights before, a company had camped in the middle of their village and posted sentries all around. They had been enveloped by the Rebel army. The hungry Rebel army.
Elder Quinton said that the Southern army must have invaded Kentucky simply because there was no food to be had in the South. In truth many of the barefoot Rebel soldiers were ragged and dirty. They were surely out of place at Harmony Hill where, in obedience to Mother Ann’s teachings, dirt was chased from every crack and crevice, but there had been little rain for weeks and no way for the men to present a better appearance.
As the dry, hot days of September passed, all attempts to maintain the regular industry of the village had been suspended. Instead the Shakers hurried to pick their corn and fruit to secrete some of it for the winter and keep it from all being devoured by the soldiers passing through the village. There was no time for making brooms or hats and no market for them if they had been made. The war controlled everything now. Even Harmony Hill—where it began to feel as if every soldier in the Confederate army sought food in their village.
They had little choice but to prepare the meals and feed the men who came to their doors famished for food and drink. It was no less than their Christian duty and what Mother Ann would require them do, Sister Altha told Charlotte and Dulcie as they worked side by side in the Gathering Family kitchen.
“She would have us do good in every way we can.” Sister Altha frowned, yet it was not crossly but more from sadness. “These poor men need some goodness in their lives.”
“Or at least some bread,” Dulcie said.
“Yea, at the very least some bread,” Sister Altha agreed.
Sister Altha had tempered her attitude toward Charlotte since Grayson had burned. Charlotte wasn’t sure if that was because she felt sympathy for Charlotte or because she thought that now the hundred acres promised might become a thousand if Charlotte inherited the land as it seemed she would. A letter had come to Harmony Hill from her father’s lawyer indicating that under the terms of her Grandfather Grayson’s will the land was only given over to her father for use in his lifetime. Upon his death Grayson was to pass directly to Charlotte.
Selena would have no claim upon the land if she returned. The letter stated in clear terms that the deceased’s widow was entitled to a portion of the personal property of the deceased. But the household goods were now ashes, most of the able-bodied slaves of any worth had slipped away to the North after the fire, and the Confederates had made off with the horses. With Grayson in ruins, Selena had little reason to return except to claim her son. It was rumored she had ridden south with one of the Confederate officers, but that was all it was. Rumors and gossip.
Charlotte didn’t care. She’d put Selena from her mind as soon as she returned to Harmony Hill after the funeral. She had too much to worry about in determining her own path to waste time wondering about Selena’s. She did worry about Landon, but there was nothing she could do for him except pray that perhaps father number three would be as kind to him as her own father had obviously been.
Until Charlotte was called from the kitchen to the visitors’ room, she had assumed Selena had come for Landon weeks before. But when Sister Altha ushered her into the room, he jumped up off the hard bench and ran to bury his face against her and hide among her skirts as he had at the fire. The smoke no longer circled about them nor did the flames reach for them as they had that night, but even so in some ways the fire would always bind them together.
“Miss Pennebaker says you have to tell them you’re my sister the way you said you were.” He spoke the first words into her skirt before he peered up at Charlotte with a fierce look that demanded she say the words he wanted to hear, but down under the fierceness in his brown eyes was such a deep well of sadness, it made Charlotte’s heart hurt.
He didn’t give her time to speak before he said, “Remember?” His voice cracked on the word.
Charlotte tightened her arms around him and pulled him close. She could feel him almost melting against her as the tension drained from him. She forgot about Sister Altha frowning beside her and Miss Pennebaker staring down her long, thin nose at them from where she stood in front of the bench against the wall.
Nobody else in the room mattered as she gently pushed Landon back from her to kneel down and stare straight into his face with eyes every bit as fierce as his own. “I am your sister.”
“Thank you,” he whispered. His hands gripped the sleeves of her dress so tightly she thought he might never turn her loose. “I’ve always wanted a sister.”
“Don’t let the child cling to you,” Sister Altha said. “Such unrestrained demonstrations of affection are not seemly.”
Charlotte squeezed Landon’s hands as she pulled free from him to stand up. With her back to Sister Altha, she winked at Landon and smiled even as she kept her voice meek. “Yea, Sister Altha. He has no knowledge of the Shaker way.”
“But it is assumed you do, Sister Charlotte.”
“Yea.” Charlotte smiled at Landon again before she turned toward Sister Altha and bent her head with a show of shame for her improper behavior. “You are right, Sister Altha.”
Sister Altha must have seen the dregs of Charlotte’s smile, for she blew out a burst of air in exasperation. “Sister Charlotte, explain yourself. Did you not tell us you had no brothers in the world?”
“Landon’s mother was married to my father. He is my stepbrother.”
“I see. That does not explain why he is here. What of his mother?”
“If you will allow me,” Miss Pennebaker spoke up and advanced on them from the bench. Landon dropped his eyes to the floor as the thin, angular woman went on in a stilted voice. “His mother left the boy in my care. We have been at the hotel in town awaiting her return, but it appears that she has been detained. The hotel owner is naturally demanding the money due him and the funds Mrs. Vance left with me are long gone. It is only through the charity of some of Mr. Vance’s friends that we have not gone hungry, but charity becomes a burden after a time.”
“Yea, so it seems in the world,” Sister Altha said with a slight nod toward the governess.
“I would not desert the child, you understand. He has been in my care for well over a year now, and though he is somewhat willful and a reluctant learner, he has a good heart.”
She spoke about Landon as if he weren’t in the room. He edged a step closer to Charlotte, who let her hand drift over to touch his arm as she said, “A good heart can cover many faults.”
“Yes, well.” The governess hesitated as if searching for the proper words. “In town it is said that you Shakers practice kindness for the unfortunate.”
“We help those who come to our door,” Sister Altha said.
“That is what I hoped to hear. Especially since I knew the one he keeps speaking of as his sister resides here with you. Which is the subject of much conjecture in the town, I can assure you.” Miss Pennebaker raised her eyebrows at Charlotte before she looked back at Sister Altha.
“Our sister searches for the way to salvation here among us,” Sister Altha said mildly.
“Yes, well, I suppose that is a worthy endeavor.” Miss Pennebaker looked as if she doubted her own words before she cleared her throat and went on. “Be that as it may, what with the Rebel vagabond army in the area, conditions have become entirely too perilous for me to remain any longer. I have been fortunate enough to obtain a new position with a family in Chicago and have a ticket on a train tomorrow. But quite naturally there is no way I can take the boy with me.”
“That is understandable,” Sister Altha said. “What is it you ask of us?”
“To see to the boy until his mother returns. It should be the duty of his sister.” The woman’s eyes settled on Charlotte. “If she really considers herself thus.”
“Yea, not only a duty but a desire,” Charlotte said. She turned to Sister Altha. “I will do whatever is needed to make a place for him here if that is what he wants.” Charlotte leaned over to ask him, “Is that what you want, Landon?”
“I want to stay with you.” His brown eyes searched hers.
“It won’t be exactly with me. We won’t stay in the same houses, but we will be in the same village. We will see one another at times, and you will come to know other boys who can help you learn what is expected of you. They will teach you to work with your hands as do I.”