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Chapter One

We buried her this afternoon, my sister, my heart. Mother Ann opened her arms wide to carry her to God, and the angels appeared, crowds of angels, sparkling and chanting. They swooped down to reclaim one of their own. They knew she was pure in her soul, even if the brethren doubted. I watched them today. I saw the smug looks on her sisters' faces, the vengeful gloating. The vipers break their vows with every thought. The brethren are no better, with their secret faces like judgment carved in cold stone. Mother Ann knows the soul of her child. They do not. Especially him. He tried not to show anything, but I could see. He killed her as surely as if he stopped her breath with his own hand.

Sister Sarah Baker smoothed the dog-eared paper and skimmed the passage again. Bold handwriting slashed across the page. She'd lost count of how many times she had read it. Creases had already cut into the yellowed paper since Caleb had slipped it to her a few days earlier.

With a fired sigh, Sarah edged her plump body off her bed. She had done what she'd been instructed to do, even though it took the better part of the night to find the right moment, when everyone was deeply asleep so she wouldn't be missed from her retiring room or caught in the act.

Sarah glanced in the small mirror hanging from a wall peg and straightened her stiff sugar-scoop bonnet over the cap that hid her hair. She didn't bother to primp before her reflection. She knew she wasn't pretty, not the way she remembered her mother looking during those first blissful six years of Sarah's fife. She frowned at herself. It was a wonderCaleb had even noticed her.

No time for self-pity right now. Dawn would arrive soon. She had kept the journal page with her during the trying night to remind her of why she had agreed to do what she was doing, but now she needed to return it to its hiding place in the sewing room. Her simply furnished refiring room held no private spaces. She was afraid someone might find the paper, even hidden in her own little-used journal.

Sarah folded the page into quarters, then slid it under the kerchief that crossed over the bodice of her long, loose work dress. She heard it crinkle as she slipped into her long Dorothy cloak. The sound was somehow soothing. Sarah hadn't even asked Caleb where it came from, just some old Shaker journal, that was enough for her. The passage had the ring of truth. It was written by someone who had been there. Someone who knew who had killed her mother.

Sarah slipped through the always unlocked door to the Sisters' Shop. The weak dawn light barely penetrated the curtains covering the large windows. The ground floor was divided into two rooms opening to a central corridor, which led to a staircase. After breakfast, other sisters would arrive to work in these rooms, if their hands were not needed for kitchen or laundry rotation or for planting. At this early hour it should be empty.

As the nervous knots in Sarah's stomach loosened, exhaustion dragged at her like sacks of flour tied to her ankles. She pulled herself up the staircase, sliding her hand along the smooth oak bannister to propel herself along in the dark. She cried out as she tripped and her shin hit the sharp edge of a step. With a flash of temper, she grabbed her long skirt and yanked it well above her feet. No need to worry, at this hour, about brethren coming along and catching a forbidden glimpse of her legs, and she was tired enough to fall and break one of them.

Sarah reached her personal domain, the sewing room, which occupied the entire top story of the Sisters' Shop. She felt safest in this room, with its piles of soft, finely woven fabric surrounding her like comforting blankets. On the way to her own sewing table, she smoothed her hand over a length of dark blue wool spread out on the cutting table. She sank into her work chair and flipped on her small lamp.

The sewing tables had deep drawers built into their side, rather than their front, so that sewing sisters could open them without bumping their knees or crawling under the pull-out workboard. Sarah dropped to the floor facing the drawers. She pulled out the second drawer, held it on her lap, and drew the journal page from behind her kerchief The comfort of habit made her unfold it one more am and begin to read. A click, like the opening of a door, jerked her head upright. She held her breath and listened. A soft creaking sound reached her, followed by another click. A door opening, then closing again.

Feeling underneath the drawer in her lap, Sarah pried two tacks from the wooden bottom. With shaking hands, she tacked the journal page to the drawer bottom then shoved the drawer back into its slot She sat unmoving, alert. No steps creaked. If someone had entered the Sisters' Shop at this early hour, she--or he -- must have stayed downstairs. It was probably just a sister arriving early for work. Still, it would be best to check. As sewing-room deaconess, she felt a responsibility for the whole building. She picked her way down the familiar staircase, avoiding the areas that squeaked.

She squinted into the open doorway to the weaving room. Old Sister Viola sometimes couldn't sleep, so she would trudge over in the dark to weave or simply to card wool by lamplight. But nay, the looms were still. Silhouetted against the curtains, they looked to Sarah's overheated imagination like those medieval implements of torture she used to scare herself silly by reading about as a kid...

Deadly Shaker Spring. Copyright © by Deborah Woodworth. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.