Sins of a Shaker Summer by Deborah Woodworth Page A

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SEVEN
    T HE RINGING OF THE BELL OVER THE C ENTER F AMILY Dwelling House told Rose it was 4:30 A.M . Time to get up. She was already awake, though groggy after a restless sleep. The air had barely cooled through the night. Rose had longed to toss off her cotton nightgown and let her bare skin breathe in what little breeze fluttered through her open windows, but that would have been far too immodest. After all, she never locked her retiring room door. What if an emergency brought another Believer barging into her room while she was unclothed?
    She slid out of bed and to her knees for a few moments of prayer, which she directed to Holy Mother Wisdom, the female aspect of God. Rose asked for insight as she sought to solve the riddle of Nora and Betsy’s illness.
    Her work clothes hung on one of the wall pegs encircling her room. She eyed them with misgiving. They’d be hot, she knew, despite the loose fit and the light weight of the blue cotton. She pulled the long dress over her head and tied the white apron around her waist. Selecting a large white kerchief from a drawer, she arranged it over her shoulders and crossed the ends in a triangular pattern over the bodice of her dress. She pinned the ends under her apron, making sure to keep the kerchief loose over her bosom. The ensemble was designed to hide the female form to keep the brethren from temptation.
    Though she was now eldress, Rose worked at daily chores, as did all able-bodied Believers. To consider herself above physical labor would be the height of hubris, and neither Rose nor Wilhelm would have entertained such a thought.
    Already the room felt oppressive. Rose was grateful to lift her thick red hair off her neck and stuff it into her thin white cap. Folding the sheet at the end of her bed for airing out, she faced her morning chores, which had changed once she’d moved to the Ministry House. In the Trustees’ Office, she had shared a large building with a few other sisters, so mornings were spent in general tidying. Now she shared a small dwelling house with Elder Wilhelm, who lived on the ground floor. By now he would be out helping the rest of the brethren to feed the farm animals.
    Rose slipped downstairs and entered Wilhelm’s empty retiring room. Her responsibilities included doing his cleaning and mending, as other sisters did for the brethren in their building. Being in Wilhelm’s room always felt uncomfortable to Rose because their relationship had been strained for years. Although she did not question her duties, caring for his clothing seemed like a step back to the time before she was eldress, when Wilhelm made sure she never forgot her lesser place. Shaking off her discomfort, she swept and straightened the two rooms and swiftly re-attached a button to a work shirt. As she knotted and snipped the thread, the bell rang for breakfast.
    She quickly turned down the sheet of Wilhelm’s bed. As she did so, Rose noticed a book open and facedown on his bedside table. Submitting to a twinge of curiosity, she picked it up and turned it over, rather than leave it or simply close and reshelve it. Wilhelm had been reading the Testimonies of the Life, Character, Revelations and Doctrines of Mother Ann Lee. This was not unusual reading for a serious Believer, and Rose would have thought nothing of it, but the chapter he’d been studying was entitled “Prophecies, Visions and Revelations.” Again, if Wilhelm hadbeen any other Believer, such reading would have been natural, especially for a spiritual leader. However, this was Wilhelm. In his longing to return to the past, he had become increasingly obsessed with a period one hundred years earlier, known now as Mother Ann’s Work. It had been a time when Mother Ann’s spirit had often been among them, inspiring almost constant trances, hundreds of new songs and dances, and scores of new converts. In her heart Rose wished she could have been part of that era,