The Visionist: A Novel (14 page)

Instead, I have given in and devoted myself in earnest to finding and delivering them. I am unfamiliar with diligence that is anything but detached—even uncaring—and for the first time in my career as an oft-time wayward inspector, a case presents me with a deeper and more personal objective. Other than an unusually strong desire to see Hurlbut’s plan fail, I have yet to understand my response. I am certain only that my involvement is not without risk, for in tampering with the Kimball case, I am placing my faith in fire and I cannot be sure it is any more dependable an ally than ice.

Polly

SHE HAD ARRIVED
in The City of Hope with the dawning of a crisp autumn day; now, it was early December and she had yet to have a second Vision in Meeting. This appeared to have little effect on the believers’ faith in her. In their minds, she had come to them and made of herself a vessel for Mother Ann’s word. Even if the miracle never happened again, she had been anointed a Visionist and would never be known as anything other. But why had her angels not come to her of late? Polly wondered. She did not miss the terror that preceded their visitations, but she wished she could feel the comfort of their presence. If only they could take away her doubts and fears. If only they could erase the evils of her past.

She worried, too, that Elder Sister Agnes continued to expect her to prove herself. The eldress’s suspicions weighed on her almost as heavily as the history she sought to hide. It was a battle of wills—the eldress’s scrutiny pitted against Polly’s determination to follow Mama’s warning and say nothing about the fire, to hide her father’s rapaciousness, to air neither the fear that she had killed him nor the terror that he was still alive and would come for her. She was not sure how much longer she could hold out.

The fact that she had begun to meet with a string of ministers from other communities gave her some reprieve. They were such an earnest lot, and though she found their attention strange, stranger still was the effect they seemed to have on the other believers in The City of Hope. The settlement was small and lay well off the beaten path, rarely catching special notice from the Central Ministry at Mount Lebanon. But since Polly’s Vision, everything had changed and pride seemed to have flooded the village, causing its believers to labor harder and worship more fully than ever before.

Even with dreary winter darkening the paths long before the sounding of the dinner bell, the sisters around Polly wove and cooked and mended with their faces aglow.

“By this time of year,” Charity told her, “when the very shortness of the day makes it appear to last forever, we are a dour lot. But you have brought us light worth the power of a thousand suns. That is why we laugh so readily, and step lightly over the slippery ground.”

Charity’s faith in her shone more brightly than did any light she might have delivered unto the believers, and though Polly had the sense that they would have been friends no matter what—for she knew Charity to have been the girl who had walked through the fields of her dreams—she could never have imagined such selfless love between two people. When Polly stroked Charity’s arm, tracing the curl of one of her markings, she cherished her friend all the more deeply for the beauty of her imperfection. She admired her strength of devotion, but it was Charity’s humanity that she treasured. It made her feel that, someday, her own invisible markings—the secrets she carried inside—might find acceptance, that she might someday be able to put the past behind her.

Even so, she was often loath to believe Charity’s unwavering convictions. It was true that the brethren bowed their heads when they passed, half in greeting and half to hide their shy smiles. And that the sisters, save for the few who envied the attention her gift had brought her, treated her with warmth and respect. She had nothing to which she could compare such appreciation. At home, she had been called a lazy whore-child, worth less than the dirt on which she stood. To acknowledge her influence here, to allow herself to accept that her Vision had affected others in such a profound way—oh, how happy she would be if only she could. But, unfamiliar with being at the center of things, she could not comprehend that she was the shaft around which the wheels spun.

“Sister,” Elder Caleb called to her one evening as she left the dairy, having returned to attend to some chores she had been unable to finish earlier in the day. She was late for the small nightly Meeting held in the North Family dwelling house. This was a time for learning new songs and dances, and Polly had come to enjoy the gatherings. Unlike Sabbath Day Meeting, they were light affairs—suffused with seriousness of purpose and respect for the operations to be mastered, yet leavened as well with moments of laughter between sister and brother. She worried she might miss the event if the elder kept her too long, but there was little she could do about it. One did not give short shrift to the most revered believer in The City of Hope.

“Elder Brother Caleb,” she answered, lowering her gaze. “Good evening to you.”

He hurried towards her, his shoes squeaking on the new-fallen snow, his breath coming in rapid puffs that dissolved in the winter air. “I shan’t keep you, I promise. I have been meaning to speak to you for some time now, but you are either surrounded by sisters and ministers, or hard at work. Indeed, rarely have I known so busy a new believer!”

“I would have asked Elder Sister Agnes to bring me to you myself had I known your wishes,” Polly answered. Was it ruder to avert her gaze or to acknowledge him fully? She had learned that it was highly unusual for a sister to find herself alone with one of the brethren—even an elder—and she worried that a passerby might be shocked by the impropriety.

But Elder Brother Caleb seemed not the least bit concerned. “Visionist that you are, I would not expect you to predict my intentions,” he said, smiling. “I merely wanted to inquire as to how you are faring under the burden of so much attention. Elder Sister Agnes says that it affects you not a whit. Indeed, she notes that you appear to have stepped with surprising ease into your new role.”

He paused a moment as though he had arrived at a fork in the road of the conversation and was considering which turn to take. He chose the smoother path and looked all the more relieved to have done so. “Whatever my esteemed Elder Sister says, I wonder if there might be another side to finding oneself suddenly beholden to such expectation.”

His ruddy, full face was possessed of warmth and joviality—something Polly hardly saw in the somber expressions of the other elders and eldresses. Doubtless they worshipped as steadfastly as did Elder Brother Caleb, but he alone expressed the joy of his faith so openly. It was as though he viewed his place in The City of Hope with gratitude to Mother, not merely by adhering strictly to her rules but by taking genuine delight in following them.
He lives his beliefs,
Polly thought,
as enthusiastically as his lives his life.
Had she ever lived hers with anything but survival in mind?

“You are kind to concern yourself with my well-being,” Polly said, finally daring to meet his regard. “But you needn’t worry. I assure you that the honor I feel is outweighed only by my wish to deserve the gift that has been ascribed to me. I am full to the brim with gratitude, Elder Caleb. There is no room for anything else.”

She could not help shivering at the lie she spoke. For there was certainly room in her heart for the pain she felt whenever she remembered that—in spite of all they had given her—the believers had taken Ben. And there was room in her heart to resent Mama’s leaving. Why had she again tasked Polly with watching over her brother when others were determined to steal him away? At nine years old, she had been too young to realize the full extent of her father’s hatefulness, for he had yet to seek her out in the night. That he was a bully and a drunk who beat her mother? Yes. That he was capable of grabbing Ben when Polly’s back was turned and trying to drown him? No. Here, what else could Polly do except hope for a glimpse of her brother, wondering always what she could do to take him back—and when she could do it.

“You have given us all great strength, Sister,” Elder Caleb said kindly, watching her as her mind churned. “And for that I thank you. I only hope that you have drawn similar blessings from us.”

“To a one, Elder Caleb,” she answered, “the believers have shown great patience and made me feel most welcome.”

He nodded. But had she detected a flicker of skepticism in his regard—just a twitch of the eye, a glance that lasted half a beat too long? Polly thought back to her meeting with Elder Sister Agnes weeks before. Did she still disdain Polly? Elder Caleb took his meals with her in the elders’ dining room every day and the eldress was no actress. What effect might the constancy of her suspicion have had upon him?

They stood silently in the darkness at the center of divergent paths.

“Well,” Elder Caleb said, clasping his hands together, his voice breaking through her somber thoughts. “I have delayed you long enough, Sister. My apologies to Elder Sister Agnes and the others if I have made you late for Meeting.”

Polly bent into a stiff curtsy as he bowed good night and they turned from each other, walking in opposite directions. What was happening to her? She had been fairly warned of the burden that would accompany the believers’ unwavering faith—Elder Sister Agnes had seen to that. Why hadn’t she had the courage to confess everything when she’d had the chance? Instead, ever fearful that she would be thrown back into a world full of danger and uncertainty, she had chosen to live with the burden of having lied.
I am building a house of cards,
she thought.
What will it bring down with it when it falls?

Morning brought her face-to-face with yet another visiting minister, another sober man who asked the same sober questions as had every sober minister before him.
Could you hear Her speaking to you? Did She direct your movements? How, precisely, did She enter your soul?
Like all the others, he was dressed in the backward style of a Shaker brother, his hair cut straight across his brow such that it sat like a lid atop his head. As she did throughout each inquisition, Polly sat bolt upright in her chair, which faced his but had been placed a respectable distance away. Elder Sister Agnes watched and listened from her seat in the corner of the room. It was like being a field mouse who knows he’s been marked by a circling hawk.

She could hardly keep her mind on her answers, so deeply was she lost to guessing at her eldress’s thoughts. Surely Elder Sister Agnes saw the same changes in the settlement as did Charity. Had they not pleased her? Polly shifted in her seat and gazed at her inquisitor. As she spoke of angels and the messages they brought and what it felt like to be transported away from all fear, she could not help wondering why they did not gather round her now.

Describing her past visions—without ever mentioning the horrors that had occasioned them—she could sometimes believe that she had reached another world. Indeed, Polly’s status as a Visionist had even allowed her to put off the sacred rite of confession, but that could not go on forever. Elder Sister Agnes would demand it eventually, especially now that it was so widely known that The City of Hope had finally found its vessel. That she was a poor farm girl and a novitiate had caused stir enough. That she had yet to submit to mortification? Not even Elder Sister Agnes would be able to keep secret such an irregularity for much longer.

When she could push her fears away, Polly found moments of happiness. She and Charity were often together during the day. And by night, alone in their room with the door shut against the rest of the world, they fell under the spell of the red book. Though at first she had barely been able to look at it, Charity had slowly let her timidity fall away. How her voice had trembled the first time she asked Polly to read. “Just a sentence or two,” she’d said, eyes cast down. And now, though she steadfastly refused to touch it, she did not allow a single night to pass without demanding more of the story.

“Where will Mister Wolcott take us this time?” Charity would inquire, nestling under her covers, eager as any child caught up in the spell of a good yarn.

And to be sure, they traveled far and wide with the writer. He told of ships beset by pirates; of tropical ports full of women who wore little but a cloth wound about their waists; of songs sung by drunkards in foul-smelling taverns; of beautiful court ladies dressed in sumptuous silk gowns and glittering jewels, their hair piled high above cheeks and lips reddened with berry juice. The world he described was riotous and exotic, full of forbidden lands so different from The City of Hope that it was as if a brightly colored parrot had landed amidst an affliction of starlings.

“It is as though he is describing a dream,” Charity mused. “Can there possibly be such places, such people who do exactly as they please?” She looked at Polly, her expression suddenly one of concern. “Surely, he will write of their punishment soon. Will he not?”

Polly liked reading. Indeed, the changes it had brought about in her friend’s attitude surprised and delighted her. The stories seemed to embolden Charity, make her forget her markings, fill her with the sense of freedom that comes from allowing one’s mind to wander. The rules, the constant threat of judgment, the work meant to purify their souls—all of it melted away under the hot sun of the Orient. In distant kingdoms, each could find escape. These were among the loveliest times they shared, for the sisters were truly alone in their togetherness.

And yet. While slipping the little red book back under her mattress, Polly thought of how she used to read to Ben, how his eyes grew wide with wonder at the smallest detail in a picture book. The memory of his face made her want to weep, and in such moments, it was as if the little red book were beckoning.
Come with me,
it seemed to say.
Find your Ben and come with me.
Listening to its imagined whispers, Polly recognized the familiar allure of running away.