The Rule
Vanity is a sin. There will be no mirrors, portraits or photographs that encourage idolatry or vanity in the houses of the Children of the Faith.
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, people kept stopping to talk to us. ‘Thank you for upholding the good name of the Children of the Faith. We are grateful to you both.’
While we appreciated their goodwill, we found it difficult to know how to respond. In the end, we decided on: ‘Thank you for your kind words. Praise the Lord.’
‘Father hasn’t apologised for doubting us,’ Rachel said.
‘Did you think he would?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I just hoped he would.’
Mother didn’t say anything directly, but once, as we went about our chores, she said, ‘You are good girls.’ That was all, but it helped ease the pain of Father’s doubting of us.
On Wednesday we went with her to our local Circle of Fellowship meeting at Tirzah’s house. Abigail was there too, along with her mother and younger brothers. As usual, the women each read from the Bible and spoke to us about the meaning of the Lord’s words. When they had finished, Tirzah helped her mother and sisters, Dove and Bethany, set out the afternoon tea. The children were allowed to choose one cake each, then we were free to take them out into the garden to play.
Dove was bursting with news. ‘Have you heard who Ira is to wed?’
I shook my head. ‘No. We’ve been too busy giving thanks we’re not old enough to be considered.’
‘It’s strange that no announcement has been made yet,’ Rachel said.
Tirzah hushed her sister with a gesture. ‘We know why. The Elders chose Talitha, but her mother had hysterics and her father said he couldn’t agree to such a husband for his daughter. He said she’s much too gentle to influence Ira to tread the path to salvation.’
Rachel and I caught each other’s eye. Would our parents have protected us from such a marriage? Father would have prayed, but if it had come to him that the Lord wanted one of us to have Ira for a husband, we would have had to obey.
‘They’ll choose Kezia,’ Abigail said. ‘It’s obvious. She has the same strength of will Ira has. She won’t stand for any nonsense from him.’
‘Well, it’s true Kezia would like to be married,’ Rachel said. ‘She was to have been betrothed to Gideon, but he …’
Dove finished the sentence. ‘He grabbed the beautiful Damaris when your brother refused to marry her and got himself cast out.’
Tirzah said, ‘We’re sorry for the pain you have suffered. It’s a terrible thing to lose a family member in that way.’
We were warmed by her kindness — but did she know about Miriam and Esther as well?
Magdalene came running up, towing Zillah behind her. ‘She wants to climb the tree but her skirt gets in the way.’
‘No!’ Zillah tugged at it.
‘You can’t take it off, Zillah,’ I told her. ‘Mother would be sad. But look — if I tuck it up like this, you won’t trip on it.’ I tied it up around her bottom, making her look a bit like a pumpkin, and off she trotted.
We watched the children in silence for a few minutes. Abraham, bent low, zigzagged across the lawn, firing shots from an imaginary gun. The other boys fell, clutching their hearts and screaming.
Abigail said, ‘The great experiment caused much suffering for your family. You were all in our prayers when we heard what that wicked girl had done to you.’
I felt as if she’d slapped me. ‘What do you mean? What great experiment?’
Rachel, her voice squeezed tight as well, whispered, ‘Are you speaking of Esther? Our cousin Esther? She wasn’t wicked. She saved our mother’s life. Zillah’s too.’
Tirzah waved that away. ‘She interfered with the will of the Lord. And did she, or did she not, cause your brother to go against the teachings of the Rule? She caused him to be expelled. Elder Stephen told us that. He preached about it for two Sundays.’
Rachel gave her head a tiny shake. There was no way either of us could make these girls understand how it had been for our family. Esther, who had come to us from her worldly mother, wasn’t wicked or evil, but she hadn’t been brought up in the Rule and had great difficulty obeying it.
At last, I said, ‘It’s true she helped Daniel on the day he was cast out. But it’s also true that she was loving and kind. We were sad when she left.’ I couldn’t say more of that dreadful time. Esther was gone, and Daniel too. Mother had been terribly ill, with Zillah a newborn baby clinging to life. They had survived only because Esther had disobeyed Father by staying with Mother instead of going to school. She’d called an ambulance when Mother slipped into a coma.
Abigail touched my hand, and then Rachel’s. ‘I’m sorry for reminding you of it. We won’t speak ill of Esther or your brother again.’
AFTER MAGDALENE AND ZILLAH were safely asleep that night, I sat on the end of Rachel’s bed. This was always our time for talking about things that worried or puzzled us — things we couldn’t ask our parents about.
‘Do you think about them often?’ I asked.
She knew who I meant — our lost brother, sister and cousin. ‘Every day. I pray for them every day.’
‘During family prayers after dinner?’
She gave me a half-smile. ‘Yes. You pray for them too?’
I nodded. ‘For months I tried not to, but I still love them. I still grieve for them.’ I dropped my voice even lower. ‘Do you think it so wrong that Daniel wanted to be a doctor?’
She sighed. ‘My thoughts go round and round. It’s a good thing to want to heal people and care for them. But the study he has to do — you can’t get around that, Rebecca — it’ll expose him to much worldly evil.’
‘That’s what I think too,’ I said. ‘And then I think of Miriam. Why did she have to keep painting and drawing? A doctor is a good and useful thing to be, but an artist doesn’t serve any practical purpose.’
‘You’re angry with her,’ my sister said.
‘No. Yes. Yes, I am. A little.’
‘Me too. I don’t want to be, but I am. She could have stayed. She should have.’ Rachel hugged her arms around her knees, blinking to chase tears away.
I hugged my own knees. ‘That great experiment — it must have been about Esther. If she’d stayed — if she’d been able to live by the Rule — then the Elders would’ve tried to bring others into the Children of the Faith.’
We were quiet for a bit, then Rachel said, ‘I think you have to want to live by the Rule. You have to know with your whole heart and soul that it’s the right way to live. I guess you have to want salvation more than you want worldly ideas and things.’
‘If they’d taken the trouble to talk to Esther before they made her come and live with us, they’d have seen she was never going to live like we do.’ I felt a gust of anger. ‘Abigail’s right. If she hadn’t been in our family we’d still have Daniel.’
But then I shut up. Neither of us needed reminding that Mother and Zillah were alive because of Esther, even if Elder Stephen said she’d interfered with the will of the Lord.
Rachel whispered, ‘Father was grateful though. Do you remember? He thanked the Lord. He said the ways of the Lord were mysterious.’
‘D’you think Father knows what Elder Stephen said?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘Probably. But I don’t believe he wishes Mother and Zillah had died.’
Who was right? Elder Stephen, to whom the Lord spoke, or Father, who accepted that the ways of the Lord were hidden from us?
I looked across at the bottom bunk where Zillah slept. ‘I’m glad we’ve got her. I thank the Lord for sparing them both.’
My sister pressed my hand. ‘Me too.’