THE NORTHERN KENTUCKY SUN ROSE SLOWLY, ALMOST RELUCTANTLY, as if it would just as soon sleep till spring. Not that autumn, or even winter, was brutal in this part of the country; though damp, the temperature was rarely cold for more than a short spell.
Sister Rose Callahan pulled her long wool cloak tight around her thin body and sprinted the distance to the Center Family Dwelling House. After the sultry summer, it was a relief to be able to move quickly again. As eldress of the North Homage Shaker village, Rose had decided to flout tradition and take most of her meals away from the Ministry House, where she lived. She told herself her decision kept her more involved with the sisters, her spiritual charges. Still in her late thirties, she was eager to grow as a leader and to help her declining community endure a Depression that seemed endless. But she had tired of meal after meal in the Ministry dining room, sitting across the table from Elder Wilhelm Lundel, who planned unceasingly how to return North Homage to its days of greatest strength in the 1830s, a century earlier. Let him plot alone.
The evening before, Rose had returned from a month away visiting the Hancock Shaker village in Massachusetts, very near the Lead Society of Mount Lebanon, in New York. Communication between the eastern and western Shakers had often been poor, and the Lead Ministry worried that North Homage had drifted astray recently, so Rose had been called to give a full report of doings in her village. The visit had been tense and exhilarating, and the train ride back exhausting. Rose wanted nothing more than to be home with her own Shaker family, enjoying the familiar routine of hard work and worship.
She was late, so she took a few running steps, already planning her morning tasks. Eight men and women from the world, members of a utopian society calling themselves New-Owenites, would be at breakfast—or at least, some of them would. According to Sister Josie Trent—the Society’s Infirmary Nurse, who’d dropped by Rose’s retiring room early, to catch her up on the village news—the visitors kept their own unpredictable schedules. Josie had said they’d been in North Homage for twelve days to “study” the Shakers, whatever that meant. Rose intended to find out. It was just like Wilhelm to take advantage of her absence to accept a group of strangers for an extended stay. Undoubtedly he had his own reasons for doing so.
The sisters would be inside, waiting for her in silent prayer. They would expect Rose, as eldress, to lead them single-file into the dining room for their silent meal. Since Wilhelm rarely dined with the community, their trustee, Brother Andrew Clark, would lead the brethren and the New-Owenite men to their table at the opposite end of the room.
Now just a few steps from the sisters’ entrance to the dwelling house, Rose reached up to untie her heavy palm bonnet. The door flew open and several flustered women burst through. One of them knocked Rose’s elbow, and her bonnet fell back on her shoulders, pulling her thin white indoor cap with it. Without thinking, Rose adjusted the cap to cover her unruly red curls. The sisters hadn’t bothered to grab their cloaks. As the cool air hit them, they crossed their arms tightly against their bodies to pull their white kerchiefs closer.
Without turning her head, Rose knew the brethren’s door had also opened, and several men were running across the grass toward the southeast end of the village. She nearly toppled over as a large, soft body careened into her.
“Rose, dear, so sorry. Must run.” Sister Josie patted the air near Rose’s shoulder and bounced past.
“Wait, Josie; what is happening?”
Josie twirled a half circle and kept moving, a remarkable feat for a plump eighty-year-old. “There’s been an accident. I’m needed,” she called, as she completed her turn and picked up speed.
“Where?”
“In the orchard,” Sister Teresa said as she, too, rushed past. Rose picked up her long skirts and joined the race across the unpaved path through the village center, between the Meetinghouse and the Ministry House, and into the orchard.
At first, Rose saw nothing alarming, only rows of strictly pruned apple trees, now barren of fruit and most of their leaves. The group ran through the apple trees and into the more neglected east side of the orchard, where the remains of touchier fruit trees lived out their years with little human attention. The pounding feet ahead of her stopped, and panting bodies piled behind one another, still trying to keep some semblance of separation between the brethren and the sisters.
The now-silent onlookers stared at an aged plum tree. From a sturdy branch hung the limp figure of a man, his feet dangling above the ground. His eyes were closed and his head slumped forward, almost hiding the rope that gouged into his neck. The man wore loose clothes that were neither Shaker nor of the world, and Rose sensed he was gone even before Josie reached for his wrist and shook her head.
Two brethren moved forward to cut the man down.
“Nay, don’t, not yet,” Rose said, hurrying forward.
Josie’s eyebrows shot up. “Surely you don’t think this is anything but the tragedy of a man choosing to end his own life?” She nodded past the man’s torso to a delicate chair lying on its side in the grass. It was a Shaker design, not meant for such rough treatment. Dirt scuffed the woven red-and-white tape of the seat. Scratches marred the smooth slats that formed its ladder back.
“What’s going on here? Has Mother Ann appeared and declared today a holiday from labor?” The powerful voice snapped startled heads backwards, to where Elder Wilhelm emerged from the trees, stern jaw set for disapproval.
No one answered. Everyone watched Wilhelm’s ruddy face blanch as he came in view of the dead man.
“Dear God,” he whispered. “Is he . . . ?”
“Yea,” said Josie.
“Then cut him down instantly,” Wilhelm said. His voice had regained its authority, but he ran a shaking hand through his thick white hair.
Eyes turned to Rose. “I believe we should leave him for now, Wilhelm,” she said. A flush spread across Wilhelm’s cheeks, and Rose knew she was in for a public tongue lashing, so she explained quickly. “Though all the signs point to suicide, still it is a sudden and brutal death, and I believe we should alert the sheriff. He’ll want things left just as we found them.”
“Sheriff Brock . . .” Wilhelm said with a snort of derision. “He will relish the opportunity to find us culpable.”
“Please, for the sake of pity, cut him down.” A man stepped forward, hat in hand in the presence of death. His thinning blond hair lifted in the wind. His peculiar loose work clothes seemed too generous for his slight body. “I’m Gilbert Owen Griffiths,” he said, nodding to Rose. “And this is my compatriot, Earl Weston,” he added, indicating a broad-shouldered dark-haired young man. “I am privileged to be guiding a little group of folks who are hoping to rekindle the flame of the great social reformer Robert Owen. That poor unfortunate man,” he said, with a glance at the dead man, “was Hugh—Hugh Griffiths—and he was one of us. We don’t mind having the Sheriff come take a look, but we are all like a family, and it is far too painful for us to leave poor Hugh hanging.”
“It’s an outrage, leaving him there like that,” Earl said. “What if Celia should come along?”
“Celia is poor Hugh’s wife,” Gilbert explained. “I’ll have to break the news to her soon. I beg of you, cut him down and cover him before she shows up.”
Wilhelm assented with a curt nod. “I will inform the sheriff,” he said, as several brethren cut the man down and lay him on the ground. The morbid fascination had worn off, and most of the crowd was backing away.
There was nothing to do but wait. Rose gathered up the sisters and New-Owenite women who had not already made their escape. Leaving Andrew to watch over the ghastly scene until the sheriff arrived, she sent the women on ahead to breakfast, for which she herself had no appetite. The men followed behind.
On impulse Rose glanced back to see Andrew’s tall figure hunched against a tree near the body. He watched the crowd’s departure with a forlorn expression. As she raised her arm to send him an encouraging wave, a move distracted her. She squinted through the tangle of unpruned branches behind Andrew to locate the source. Probably just a squirrel, she thought, but her eyes kept searching nonetheless. There it was again—a flash of brown almost indistinguishable from tree bark. Several rows of trees back from where Andrew stood, something was moving among the branches of an old pear tree—something much bigger than a squirrel.