The Gifted (9 page)

Jessamine smiled at her with no censure. One of Mother Ann’s most oft repeated sayings was to do their work as if they had a thousand years to live, or as if they might die on the morrow. Sister Abigail must be thinking on the thousand years to live, for the way she was working, it might take her that long to fill her basket. Jessamine thought of telling her that, but instead she only said, “The roses are grown not for their beauty but for their usefulness.”

“How can a rose be grown without some eye seeing its beauty? It appears to me that if the Lord gave the rose such beauty, he surely meant for us to use our eyes and our noses to enjoy it in every way and not for rosewater only.” She clipped another bloom and lifted it to her nose to breathe in its beauty.

“It is not necessary for us to test the fragrance of every bloom. We can trust that the Lord has filled them all with a pleasing and useful scent,” Jessamine said.

The girl gave Jessamine a little smile, then picked another rose to hold to her nose as well.

When she carried the fourth rose to her nose, Sister Annie looked over at her and completely lost her patience. “We are not to be indulging in a rose-sniffing frolic, Sister Abigail,” Sister Annie told her with a frown. “It is our duty to fill our baskets with the petals. Not our noses with fragrance.”

“But the fragrance is there for the free taking, Sister. I have stolen nothing from the petals by breathing of their fragrance.” She took another sniff of the bloom she held before she pulled off the petals and spread them out evenly in the bottom of her basket. “You know what those of the world do with your rosewater, don’t you?”

“We shut away such wondering and keep the sins of the world away from our borders.” Sister Annie sounded cross as she snipped off a lush bloom and stripped the petals with one firm twist. She stepped forward toward another bloom as if eager to leave Sister Abigail and her foolish talk behind.

“I did not say they sinned in any way in the use of the Shaker rosewater.” Sister Abigail’s hazel eyes suddenly looked watery with tears. She had a great desire to be liked. Not simply loved by the sisters around her but liked with smiles and attentive ears to her stories.

Sister Annie stormed on up the row with nary a glance back. Jessamine snipped off the blooms Sister Annie had passed by in her haste to get away from Sister Abigail’s stories of the world and resumed her duty of training the younger sister in the proper Shaker way.

“Sister Annie is right.” Jessamine raised her voice a little in hopes her words might carry across the roses to Sister Annie’s ears. “We can pick much faster without giving each rose a trip to our nose. The fragrance is in the air. Breathe the scent there and strip the petals for your basket.”

Sister Abigail let out a small sigh. “It would be far better to be one of the pampered young ladies at White Oak Springs bathing in the rosewater.” She peeked up at Jessamine to see if her words had awakened her curiosity.

“Bathing in it?” Jessamine let the rose petals drift from her hand down into the basket.

“Yea,” Sister Abigail said.

Jessamine offered Sister Abigail an approving smile for remembering to use the Shaker word for agreement. That was a welcome step along the Shaker path, even if the girl couldn’t keep her mind on harvesting the rose petals. “No wonder we have to pick so many rose petals. Rosewater baths. I can hardly imagine.”

Actually she could only imagine too well and she hungered for more details to add to her imagining. Sister Annie was far up the row and no other sisters were near, so what could it hurt to listen to Sister Abigail tell of how those of the world used the rosewater? Jessamine could pick just as quickly with words in her ears as not.

Sister Abigail smiled. “When I worked there last summer, the ladies would often ask me to pour as much as half a bottle of the fragrant water into their baths and then sprinkle great handfuls of fresh rose petals on top of the water. Believe me, I found much occasion to dip my hands in the baths when I brought them extra hot water so they could soak among the rose petals longer.”

Jessamine ran her fingers through the rose petals in her basket. She wondered how it would feel to lay back in a warm bath with the fragrance of roses rising around her while someone carried water to the tub. Not a proper Shaker thought. Color rose in her cheeks as she looked around to see if any of the sisters had somehow divined her slip into vanity.

She had promised Sister Sophrena she wouldn’t let her thoughts stray down wayward paths and here she was letting them do that very thing.

“That would not be the Shaker way,” Jessamine said. “It would be good to keep our minds on our tasks and put our hands to work. It’s unwise to tempt our thoughts with worldly ways.”

“But wouldn’t it be wonderful to be one of those young ladies who never have anything to do but listen to music and dance in the moonlight?” Sister Abigail lightly stroked her cheek with one of the roses.

“We have music and dancing.” Jessamine tried to block Sister Abigail’s words from her imagination, but dancing in moonlight wormed into her mind.

“Not the way they do. Being held in handsome young men’s arms. Kissing in the shadows.”

“It’s not fitting to allow our minds to dwell on sinful things of the world.” Jessamine pushed an echo of Sister Annie’s firmness in her voice.

It was one thing to be curious about parasols and rosewater baths. It was quite another to let her mind chase after the thought of kissing. Her grandmother had kissed her, dry lips touching her cheek as she pulled the quilt up over Jessamine each night. Right after she’d ended one of her fairy-tale stories. The prince and princess always kissed before they went back to the castle to live happily ever after. In Jessamine’s mind, sparkles of happiness had flashed at the first mention of the kiss. Like the glittering dust from a shooting star drifting down around them.

Sister Abigail did turn back to the roses and wasted no time in stripping off the petals as if she’d been harvesting roses every bit as long as Jessamine. But she wasn’t silenced by Jessamine’s firm words as she lowered her voice to ask, “Have you never thought of how it might feel to be kissed, Sister Jessamine?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead she smiled slightly as she peered over the roses at Jessamine. “It will do no good for you to deny that you have. The stain of truth is on your cheeks.”

“I know nothing about kissing.” Jessamine barely spoke the words above a whisper. It would not do for Sister Annie or any of the other sisters to hear them speaking of kisses. “A Believer doesn’t allow such worldly thoughts to distract her from her duties.”

“Perhaps a Believer like Sister Annie.” Sister Abigail looked up the row at the other sister and lowered her voice even more. “A staid and common Believer. One who has no imagination for romance.”

Jessamine tried to rein in her imagination. She had promised Sister Sophrena. “Mother Ann teaches us that our thoughts are character molds. They shape language and action. So it is best if we think on things of the spirit or our duties. Idle imagining of worldly things such as kissing can do nothing but sink us into trouble.”

Sister Abigail laughed softly. “You certainly speak the truth there. Many a girl has been brought low by kissing when she allowed the wrong man too many kisses. Trust me. I saw much when I was working at the Springs last summer. Some good things. Some not. I even admit to letting myself be pulled back into the shadows a few times myself.”

“Sister Abigail!” Jessamine stared at her.

“You don’t have to sound so shocked. No harm came from it. He was only a year or so older than me. He worked with the horses and would often wait for me beside the pathways to the springs.” Sister Abigail sighed as she lifted one of the rose blossoms to her nose again. “His lips were very soft.”

“Why did you come among the Believers?” Jessamine peered over at the girl. She seemed so resistant to everything Shaker.

“It wasn’t a happy choice,” Sister Abigail said. “My father has ever been the kind to run after this or that idea. My mother and I and my little brother and sister had no choice but to follow him. Although if I could have found Jimmy to see if his kisses meant anything, I might even now be a married woman with roses in a vase on my kitchen table.”

“But here you have row upon row of roses.” Jessamine waved her hand at the roses.

“Roses that it is a sin to enjoy. How can it be a sin to enjoy a gift of the Lord?” Sister Abigail ran her hand over the rose blooms and then touched her lips. “Kissing is a gift too. The Lord put such desires in our hearts.”

“While you are among us, it might be better to not dwell on such gifts. To think more on the gifts of the spirit and the gift of work.” Jessamine turned her eyes back to the roses and tried to concentrate on her work. It was not good to think how one’s lips felt every bit as soft as the petals. It was not good to wonder if a man’s lips might feel the same. To think that she could know exactly how a man’s lips might feel if she’d allowed her hand to stray from the cheek of the man in the woods to his lips. An image of his face popped in front of her eyes.

She shook her head to keep from thinking on how his lips had looked. When she spoke again, it was as much for herself as Sister Abigail. “It is better to spend less energy on talk and more on our duties.”

“Yea, I can’t seem to keep my tongue still as I’ve been told is the better way. Sister Annie says I am the serpent in the garden.” Sister Abigail smiled with no outward sign of being the least bit upset by Sister Annie’s accusation. “Perhaps she is right. For I look at you and I see someone who would like to taste of the fruit of the tree of the world. To know of things that the sisters here want to keep from you.”

“I am often too curious about wrong things,” Jessamine admitted.

“Like the man you and Sister Annie found in the woods. I have heard he is very handsome. Did you find him so?” Sister Abigail looked at Jessamine. “Or would you think it a sin to admit you admired his looks?”

Jessamine looked up the row to where Sister Annie was clipping roses with such fervor it was easy to see irritation building in her to the point of sinful anger. At the other end of the garden, Sister Edna stood with her hands on her hips staring at Jessamine and Sister Abigail. Jessamine did not need to be near to know the look of displeasure that would be on her face. Displeasure that would surely grow darker if she knew their overabundance of chatter was about kissing. Sister Edna believed in following the rules. All the rules without exception. Without the possibility of excuses. Excuses had no place on a faithful Shaker’s tongue.

At times, Jessamine thought the only pleasure the woman had was in catching one of her sisters in wrong. Jessamine smiled grimly as she pulled off two more roses. If that was true, she had without doubt given the woman much pleasure. She suspected Sister Edna often owned the eyes that peered out from the hiding places to be sure none of the brothers and sisters engaged in improper behavior. Clandestine meetings in the shadows along the pathways of Harmony Hill were strictly forbidden. Certainly there could be no kissing. If a wayward sister or brother tried any such thing, watchful eyes would see and report such sinfulness to the Ministry.

“It matters not how one looks on the outside.” Jessamine heard the echo of her words to the man in the woods.

“Perhaps not here in this place where these people have turned the normal ways of life upside down,” Sister Abigail said. “But how one looks can matter a great deal at a place like White Oak Springs. The beautiful girls always have a dancing partner, and if a girl lacks in beauty, she’d best hope her father has money in order to make a favorable match.”

“You make it sound so, so . . .” Jessamine couldn’t come up with the right word.

“Common?” Sister Abigail looked over at Jessamine with her eyebrows lifted. “It is common. Men and women marry. Some for love as you want to imagine in your storybook romances. Some for convenience. Some for family standing. Some for a lark.”

“Not here in Harmony Hill. Here we walk a purer path. A path without sin.”

Sister Abigail laughed. “All paths have pebbles of sin that rise up to trip a person. Especially when the pebble is more like a stone dropped into your lap, Sister Jessamine.” Again she lifted her eyebrows at Jessamine, but this time with a grin that Jessamine had come to recognize meant she was going to say something she knew to be outside the Shaker way. “I hear you sat in the unknown man’s lap on your way back to the village from the woods. And how did that make you feel with him being so handsome and all?”

“I confessed my sinful feelings to Sister Sophrena,” Jessamine said.

“It is not a sin to think a man is good-looking in the world.”

“We are not in the world.”

“But don’t you desire to see him again?” Sister Abigail didn’t wait for Jessamine to answer. “I saw him in the doctor’s garden early this morning as I hastened to the privy before the morning meal. He looked very pale, but it is true that he is quite handsome.”

“Outside so early in the morn?” Jessamine didn’t know whether to be glad the man was well enough to be in the garden or worried that he might be so well he’d be leaving before she caught sight of him again.

“He was. Perhaps at doctor’s orders. I’ve heard some believe the sun can be a powerful healer. The same as some believe the water from the springs rising out of the ground at White Oak Springs has healing powers.” Sister Abigail turned back to her roses.

And just in time. Sister Edna was stalking up the row toward them.

“Dear sisters,” she said in a tone that negated every bit of the meaning of the word dear. “It is a dereliction of our duty to do naught but flap our lips. We are here to pick the rose petals.” She frowned over at the bare layer of petals in the bottom of Sister Abigail’s basket. “This is not a difficult task, Sister Abigail, if one keeps her mind on what she is to do, but it appears you are allowing Sister Jessamine to pick all the roses while you are content to stand and talk.”

“She is only just learning the Shaker ways.” Jessamine spoke up as she kept her eyes on the red petals filling her own basket. She should have dropped some of her petals into the younger sister’s basket.