The Seeker (18 page)
“Even if he did, he wouldn’t find me now.” Charlotte wasn’t quite able to keep the tremble of sadness out of her voice.
Mellie scooted her hand over under their skirts to squeeze Charlotte’s hand. “You don’t have to stay here, Miss Lottie. Go on home. It ain’t a far walk even if they don’t let you have your horse back.”
Charlotte stared out at the Shakers moving back and forth in orderly formations. The men stayed in their lines as they passed through the lines of sisters. No one touched shoulders or hands. Then as if on a signal only they could hear, the lines turned and began marching in the opposite direction. The singers were repeating the words of the song, but the tune was getting livelier. The dancers began stepping higher and quicker until their feet on the floor were like the beating of drums.
All at once all the dancers and singers clapped and the sound exploded like the blast of a gun. Both Charlotte and Mellie jumped. The singers changed songs. Some of the dancers continued the orderly marching while others began leaping and jumping as the singers sang.
Hop up and jump up and whirl round.
Gather love, here it is, all round.
All the dancers began to jump and whirl until Charlotte thought they would surely fall from dizziness. Several young girls hopped up and down while holding hands. Some of the women began to reach up into the air as though plucking fruit from a tree. Sister Cora came over to where Charlotte and Mellie watched.
“Have some pomegranates, Sisters. Mother Ann has sent them down to us.” There was a glow on the older sister’s face as she held out her cupped hands toward them. “Eat these and love will flow through you like a river.”
They both just stared at her. She pushed her hands toward them. “Take it. You’ll be glad you did.”
Mellie lifted her eyebrows, but she reached out and pretended to take something from the woman’s empty hands. Charlotte did the same while all around them the other Shakers were whirling and chattering and laughing. It was hard to hear the singers.
“I ain’t never ate a pomegranate. They ain’t poisonous, are they?” Mellie said as she frowned down at her hand as if she actually saw something there.
“Oh no, my sister. Mother Ann only sends down good gifts. The fruit she sends us is sweet as honey and like none you will ever taste anywhere else,” Sister Cora assured them.
Mellie and Charlotte lifted their hands up and pretended to take a bite. Sister Cora smiled and spun away back to pick more fruit.
“These people done crazy as loons.” Mellie shook her hand as if getting rid of the remains of the imaginary fruit. Charlotte couldn’t deny that as the Shakers began to form lines and march in orderly fashion again. “Sister Altha says we should be open to the spirit.” “The’ ain’t nothin’ real wrong with that, but Mammy would say you’d better be sure you isn’t lettin’ in no wrong spirits. We’d best keep our eyes fastened on Jesus till we know more about this Mother Ann and her spirit fruit.” Mellie warily watched the dancers as if worried some other Shaker was going to spin away and offer her fruit she didn’t want to eat. “And you need to just go on back to Grayson before that Miss Selena messes everythin’ up.”
“Have you heard something?” Charlotte turned her head to look at Mellie.
“Best look back out toward them dancers. Sister Cora told me nobody was supposed to do no talkin’ much at meeting. They’s apt to move us apart.”
Charlotte looked forward quickly, and they both sat in silence as they tried to see if anyone had noted their inattention. “Nobody’s watching,” Charlotte said after a moment.
“Sister Cora says they has watchers that you don’t never see. Peephole watchers.” She barely moved her mouth as she went on. “Nate says that woman is gonna sell them all down the river.”
“Father won’t let her do that.”
“Not in his right mind, but that woman has done spun his head around like these here Shakers were spinnin’ a couple minutes back. Besides, Nate says Massah Charles ain’t even there. He’s still in the capital tryin’ to stop the war a comin’.” “You saw Nate? When? And how?”
“Ever’body’s got to go to the necessary room from time to time. Sometimes right in the middle of the night. But it don’t matter all that much when I saw him. Just what he tol’ me.” “But what can I do? She said Father gave her full rein to do whatever she wanted at Grayson.”
“She said. You ain’t knowin’ for sure what he said or what he might know or not know about what’s goin’ on.”
Mellie was right. Her father did need to know. “I’ll write my father in the morning.”
“A letter?” Mellie seemed to forget her worry about the watchers as she turned and looked directly at Charlotte. “What’s the matter with you, Miss Lottie? I ain’t never seen you act scared. That woman can’t send you down the river. Grayson is your home.”
“Nothing’s working out the way I thought it would,” Charlotte whispered. “The way I planned.”
“Then maybe it’s time to think on a new plan.”
An old sister whose back was bent from years of work appeared in front of them. Her wrinkled face was not condemning, but rather full of kindness. “If we cannot dance or sing, we must meditate and ask the spirit to fill our souls with love and joy. Let me sit with you to help you properly meditate on the gifts of the spirit.”
“Yea, Sister.” Charlotte used the Shaker yes to try to make up for her and Mellie’s lack of proper behavior as she scooted over to let the woman sit between them.
“I’m Sister Martha.” The woman groaned softly as she lowered herself to the bench, and then lightly patted both of their legs. “Forgive me. My spirit is willing. Would that I could still get out there and dance down glory, but the old bones are weak.”
“Is that what they’re doing? Dancing down glory?” Charlotte asked.
“I suppose that sounds strange to you,” Sister Martha answered with a gentle smile. “Never fear, you will learn our ways. But first you must free yourselves from thoughts of the world. Whatever worries you had there are no longer important. You have left that life for a better life here with us where there is only peace and harmony.”
Peace and harmony. Charlotte wondered if such was even possible with the nation split and shots already fired at Fort Sumter. The news received at the Shaker village since then didn’t hold out much hope for peace with the threats of blockades of the Southern ports and the call to arms by both sides. The situation seemed to be totally out of control. The same as Charlotte’s life.
A few days ago it had seemed reasonable to follow Edwin to the Shaker village to convince him he was wrong to want to be a Shaker. A few days ago she had believed she would be able to hang on to Grayson. To go home again and sit in the peace of Aunt Tish’s kitchen. Her kitchen.
But now she was sitting in a church without an altar, watching men and women whirl until they collapsed from the effort, eating imaginary fruit while people watched from peepholes to be sure she was obedient. Reason was lost.
It took Adam the better part of the afternoon to find Jake. Rows of tents were popping up on any bit of open ground in and around Washington, D.C., as regiments and companies from all across the Union answered President Lincoln’s call for troops to enforce the laws of the land. Some of the volunteer companies came in with proper supplies and like uniforms, but others showed up with no hint of military bearing or dress, carrying hunting guns that had probably never been fired at anything bigger than a raccoon.
Just outside the city across the Virginia border, the same mustering in was going on as reports came in that men of the South were navigating to Richmond, the new capital of the Confederate States. When Fort Sumter fell, taking with it the last faint hope of a peaceful compromise between the two sides, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee had seceded to join their sister Southern states. It was also being bandied about that Robert E. Lee had been offered command of the whole Union army, but instead of answering the President’s call, he had resigned his commission and gone south to line up against the Union.
Sam Johnson had already offered Adam a bonus if he could get a sketch of Lee in his Confederate gray leading his troops into battle. When Adam asked how he was supposed to keep the Rebels from shooting him as a Yankee spy while he was doing such a drawing, Sam had waved his hand in airy dismissal. “You’ll find a way. You always do.”
And Sam was right. He would find a way. If it was a face or scene that mattered, Adam wanted his name to be the one scribbled at the bottom of the illustration. While it might not be the best time to be a Northerner in the South, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.
Adam pushed that problem aside to concentrate on the task at hand as he rode his horse slowly through the camps, pausing now and again to ask if any companies from Massachusetts had marched in. Everywhere he turned, patriotic feeling was at a fever pitch. The soldiers nearly to a man carried a spirit of revelry as if the whole idea of war was some kind of frolic the President had organized for their sole enjoyment.
Adam left his pencils in his bag and didn’t pull out his sketchbook even though scenes all around him begged to be captured. On one side a baby-faced soldier who didn’t look a day over fifteen caressed the barrel of the Springfield rifle just handed him by his captain. Down the block a plump lady in a feathered hat climbed down from a carriage to offer a basket of food to a circle of soldiers around a campfire. A mournful-looking black and tan hound rested his head on his master’s leg as the man read a letter from home.
But Adam wasn’t on a work mission. He was on a Phoebe mission. Something he seemed to be doing way too much in the last few weeks. First Selena Vance. Now Jake. But Phoebe was right about this mission. Jake shouldn’t be here straining at the bit to go to war. He was only nineteen and a young nineteen at that. It would destroy their mother if something happened to him. She doted on Jake and William.
“I’m almost twenty,” Jake said with fire in his eyes when Adam at last found the 5th Massachusetts Regiment and confronted him. “Besides, who are you to tell me I’m too young? You left school even younger.”
“But not to play at going to war.”
Red flooded Jake’s face as he balled up his fists. Adam stared him down before he could swing a punch. Adam was still the big brother, the one who had always bested Jake in any confrontation and then cleaned up his bloody nose before their mother could see. Adam wasn’t sure if it came to it that he could best Jake anymore, but luckily for both of them, Jake wasn’t anxious to take the chance there in front of his fellow recruits that Adam might still be able to whip him.
The boy had grown another inch or two taller since Adam had last seen him, and his shoulders were broad under the blue Massachusetts Regiment uniform. There was no mistaking he and Adam were brothers, but where Adam tamped down his emotions and rarely let anybody know what he was thinking, Jake hid nothing. He did everything to the fullest, whether it was fighting or racing horses or loving. He’d already suffered a severely broken heart thanks to Phoebe, who claimed if not for her diligent watch and timely action, Jake would have been trapped in a disastrous marriage that would have brought nothing but embarrassment to the family.
But an unfortunate marriage might be less dangerous than a battlefield. Embarrassment was rarely fatal. A battlefield could be. That’s why Adam had tracked him down. To try to slow Jake’s headlong rush into yet another disaster.
Adam threw his arm around his brother’s stiff shoulders and tried to defuse his anger. “Sorry, Jake. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that Phoebe is worried about you.” He didn’t add that so was he. Better for Jake to feel the two of them were taking sides against Phoebe as they had so often in their younger days. “You know how Phoebe is.”
Jake’s muscles relaxed as he uncurled his fists and shook his head. “I should have known she would sic you on me.”
Adam guided him away from the curious eyes and ears of the other men lolling about. They had been eager for the diversion of a fight to break the monotony of the camp. “She sent word you had signed up.”
Jake hung his head a little. “Yeah, she isn’t very happy with me. Says Mother weeps every time anybody mentions my name. I feel bad about that, but I still had to sign up. What else could I do?” He looked back up at Adam. “A man has to step up for his country at a time like this. You’re joining up too, aren’t you?”
“I’m not planning on it anytime soon.”
Jake stared at him with wide open eyes that were a truer blue than Adam’s. His never faded off to gray. “You’re joshing me, aren’t you?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, little bro, but no, I’m quite serious. I’ll be there but not carrying a government-issued rifle.”
“Drawing.” Jake spat on the ground in disgust. “What good will that do?”
“More good than being cannon fodder.” Adam stared straight at Jake until his brother shifted uneasily on his feet and looked down. “No need in you being cannon fodder either. Go back to school and finish out the year. Then you can be commissioned an officer if you’re still determined to go to war.”
“The fighting could all be over by then.”
“We can hope,” Adam said.
And pray.
He heard Edwin Gilbey’s servant’s words echoing in his head. Redmon. That was the man’s name. If Adam went back to Kentucky and saw him again, he’d tell him to forget about those prayers for him and just pray for Jake. And others like him. Young. Foolish. Too ready to die for their country. Or maybe too sure they couldn’t die.
Adam was only five years older than Jake, but in some ways he’d been older than Jake was now since he was twelve and their father left to seek his fortune. With his father gone, Adam had no choice but to leave boyhood behind. If he wanted something done, then it was Adam who had to do it. Nobody was going to step in and be a buffer between him and the realities of the world. But Jake and Harry had Adam ready to step in the gap for them and protect them as much as he was able.