The Outsider (27 page)

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Brice didn’t see her until she moved toward him. He’d gone past the other buildings straight to the school because that’s where he thought he’d find her. But when the building seemed deserted, he had looked around. That was when he saw the slight figure move away from the others in the plowed field and start toward him.

It was Gabrielle and she was coming to him. The Lord had granted his prayer. She hadn’t forgotten him. He could almost feel her love rushing across the distance between them even though he could not yet see the look on her face. His love bounded back toward her.

When Brice dismounted and started toward Gabrielle, Elder Caleb stepped in front of him. “Dr. Scott. We thought perhaps you were dead. We heard of the massacre.”

Brice wanted to push the older man roughly to the side, but he didn’t. He had waited this long. He could wait a few more minutes. He looked at the elder and said, “Many did die, but by the Lord’s grace, I survived.”

“For that we shall give thanks,” the elder said quietly. “But why are you here? Our request that you not come to our village has not changed. You are not welcome here.”

Brice answered just as quietly. “I have come for Gabrielle.”

Elder Caleb frowned. “Sister Gabrielle? I think not.”

“She’s coming away with me.” He wished he could be as sure as his words sounded that she would let him sit her up on his horse and depart this place forever. Brice looked over the elder’s shoulder to where several sisters were closing in around Gabrielle, shutting her away from him. His heart froze inside him. They were going to try to prevent him from talking to her.

He stepped toward her, but two of the brothers moved up beside him to hold his arms. One of them said, “It is true we don’t believe in violence, Dr. Scott, but we will protect our sister.”

“I only wish to speak to her,” Brice said.

“First we must be assured that our sister wishes to speak to you,” the man said.

Elder Caleb had moved away to join the growing number of Shakers around Gabrielle. Brice wanted to knock aside the two men who stood next to him and push through the men and women surrounding Gabrielle. He wanted to grab her and carry her away with him. He sought her eyes, but the Shakers were blocking her from him.

Brice tensed his muscles and the men’s grip on his arms tightened. He looked at the man on his left and then the one on his right. He didn’t want to fight them. That wasn’t why he’d come. He pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly before he said, “And if she wishes to go with me, will you allow her to leave?”

“We force no one to stay with us, Dr. Scott, but Sister Gabrielle is one of us. She has been in our society for many years. It would grieve us to see her pulled to the world and into eternal damnation. So we must surely war against it.”

“Gabrielle has no worry of eternal damnation,” Brice said.

“Not as long as she stays among us,” the brother said. “As Believers we enjoy the eternal fruits of right living and spiritual love, but those of the world must suffer the consequences of a life of sin.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Many do not. That is why they must die and suffer for their wrong thinking.”

Brice kept his eyes on Gabrielle. He had never planned to force Gabrielle to go with him. He was here. The next step must be hers. She’d have to come to him on her own. But could he expect her to risk eternal damnation for him? In his heart he lifted a prayer to the Lord that he would somehow assure Gabrielle of both his love and Brice’s love.

The Shakers formed a circle around Gabrielle, who stood in the middle with her head bowed. She looked so small and helpless as the Shakers began walking around her, chanting, “Woe. Woe!”

“What are they doing?” Brice tensed, ready to spring to her defense. “They’re not going to hurt her, are they?”

The brother beside him spoke calmly. “We’d never harm one of our sisters. There is only love here, not the anger of the world. But we must try to save her before it’s too late. It is our warring gift, the way we fight the pull of the world.”

“I thought you people didn’t believe in wars.”

“Our war is against the devil.”

It was all Brice could do to keep from rushing to Gabrielle’s aid as she huddled in the middle of the shouting Shakers. They moved in a circle, stamping their feet while the terrible moaning sound of their woes filled the air. Brice picked out Elder Caleb in the circle. There was an unearthly fervor about him as he shouted out something about evil spirits. Dust whirled up around the Shakers as they stamped their feet with renewed vigor.

Brice fastened his eyes back on Gabrielle in the midst of their fury. He wouldn’t move his eyes from her again. When she looked up, his love would be waiting for her.

Inside the circle, a miserable sickness spread through every inch of Gabrielle’s body and settled in her soul. She raised her eyes just enough to search the faces of those marching around her. If only in one of them she could see some kindness, some regret for the misery they were causing her, but they were all caught up in the frenzy of the warring gift.

Sister Mercy stepped a bit nearer Gabrielle and stared straight at her as she shouted and stomped her feet. The sister’s eyes were not the gentle eyes of the Sister Mercy Gabrielle had known and loved. A wall had gone up between them. A wall that no amount of words of confession or forgiveness would ever breach. Sister Mercy went on around the circle, shouting her woes even louder.

Each woe pierced Gabrielle like a spear. She wanted to burrow into the ground and pull the grass over her head to shield herself from the shouts of her brethren and sisters. She’d witnessed the warring gift before, had twice joined the circle to war against the pull of the world when a member threatened to leave the Believers, but only now did she understand why the person in the center of the circle had looked as if the words had been blows beating him down.

Suddenly Gabrielle stiffened against the shouts thrown at her from the ring of Believers. Her heart grew heavy and then turned cold. She raised her head and pulled herself up straight and tall. A sharp pain ripped through her as something within her struggled and died. Then the pain was gone, and she knew she was no longer one with these people. She was no longer a Believer. They had warred for her, and instead of keeping her, they had destroyed her belief in their way of life.

A finger of panic touched her as she wondered if she’d lost her faith completely. She bowed her head and moved her lips in a quiet prayer that could not be heard over the shouts. “Take not thy grace from me, Eternal Father.”

A gentle peace filled her. The Eternal Father had heard her prayer. He wouldn’t turn his face from her even if she left the Believers in body as she already had in her heart.

Brice’s words from so many months before came to her.
“We were meant to be together.”
He said the Lord intended men and women to love and to marry. Slowly she turned her head to look at Brice. His eyes were waiting, and she knew the choice she must make.

Gabrielle stood silently and waited for the warring gift to die away. Though it hadn’t accomplished what the Believers expected it to accomplish, perhaps it had been a gift to her by breaking completely the bond that tied her to the Shakers. She was free now, truly free just as a butterfly was free when at last it worked its last bit of wing out of the cocoon.

When the last woe became no more than a whisper in the dust, Gabrielle stepped out of the circle of Believers without a word. Elder Caleb reached out a hand to stop her. “Ye must not go, child. Thy place is among us, not in the world.”

Gabrielle kept her eyes on Brice as she whispered her answer. “Nay.”

She stopped in front of Brice and asked, “You have come for me?”

“I have come for you,” Brice said.

She put her hand into his. He lifted her up on his horse as though she were a great treasure. Her heart began to beat hard but not from fear. Rather she thought she might explode with joy.

As Brice began leading Gabrielle out of the village, his horse’s hooves hitting the ground were loud in the silence. Then a fresh chorus of woes rose up, but the sound no longer touched Gabrielle. In a few minutes, they left the village behind.

Neither of them spoke as they went through the woods to Brice’s cabin. Gabrielle had to duck and lean side to side to stay under the branches. It wasn’t until he helped her off the horse in front of his cabin that he looked at her and said, “Nathan is dead.”

“I knew it to be so,” Gabrielle whispered. “I feared you had shared his fate.”

“It was not far from the truth,” he said. “But we won’t speak of the past today.”

“Then what shall we speak of?” Gabrielle asked.

“The future. Our future.”

She followed him into the cabin and stood in the middle of the floor while he knelt to build up the fire he’d left banked in the fireplace. She stared at the flames as they leapt up around the wood logs, and suddenly feared she would not be able to step into that future. What did she know of the ways of the world?

As if he sensed her doubts, he turned to her and put his hands on her arms. “It’s strange for you now, but it will seem right in a few days.”

“Yea.” She kept her eyes away from his face as she went on. “I must tell you I know nothing of men and the ways of the world.”

“Gabrielle, look at me.” He waited until her eyes came up to meet his. “Know this one thing. Inscribe it on your heart. I would never do anything to hurt you. Never. You must surely know that.”

“I see the truth of that in your eyes.”

“Tomorrow we will find a preacher and marry in the proper way.”

“I never thought to commit matrimony,” Gabrielle whispered.

“Marriage isn’t a sin. You must believe me, Gabrielle.” His eyes burned into hers. “We’ll be committing no sin by joining our lives together in front of God and man. The Lord intended man and woman to cleave together and love one another.”

“Yea, I do want to cleave unto you and be married,” Gabrielle said. “But you say tomorrow. First we have the night.”

Brice reached up and pulled the Shaker cap off Gabrielle’s head. Her hair tumbled down about her shoulders. His hand trembled as he reached out to touch it, and his voice was low and full of feeling when he spoke. “You needn’t worry about anything improper, my darling. A friend named Tyney will be here soon. She and her young daughter, Maysie, will stay with us tonight. But that won’t stop us from sitting in front of the fire together or walking outside in the moonlight while our hearts bond together as one. Then nothing will ever be able to separate us again. Not even death, for you will always be alive in my heart and I pray I will always live in yours.”

“Yea, it has been so since you left and will ever be so,” Gabrielle said as she stepped into his embrace. She was where she belonged, where she would always belong. Her past dropped away from her. It was sure to return at times just as Brice’s would. Then together they would face the ghosts of their yesteryears, but now she just wanted to feel his love around her. To know the joy of their love.

Later after Tyney came, Brice and Gabrielle sat together on the edge of the porch. Brice draped his jacket around her shoulders to ward off the chill of the night air while inside Tyney sang a song to lull her little girl to sleep. Gabrielle couldn’t keep from thinking of Becca and the songs she’d longed to hear her mother sing to her when she had the fever.

Brice must have sensed her sadness for he reached over and clasped her hands in his. “What worries your mind?”

“Little Becca and her mother. So many sorrows over the last year.” Gabrielle stared out at the moonlit shadows drifting across the yard. “And then Nathan.”

He held her hands tighter. “You knew when Nathan died, didn’t you? He said he felt you praying for him.”

“I knew. I saw the snow turn red with blood.” She looked over at him and could not hold back the shiver that walked through her at the thought of her vision of death. “Is that the way it really happened?”

Brice put his arm around her and pulled her closer to his side. “Yes, but not for Nathan. He was wounded in the fighting. I gave him something for his pain and he did not waken until he was on the other side of glory.”

“I’m glad.” Gabrielle was quiet for a moment as she marveled at how safe she felt there with Brice’s arm around her. Then she said, “Sister Mercy says it is a gift to know things I should not know. The gift of knowing. But no one would seek such a gift.”

“And what gift would you seek instead?” Brice asked softly.

“The gift of joy. The gift of love.”

“I would give you those if it was in my power.”

“You have given me love, but I think joy must come from within. Perhaps a gift from the Eternal Father.”

“I knew a boy who had that kind of joy. Even as he faced death.” Brice looked away from her out toward the trees on the edge of the clearing.

“And how did he get it?”

“If he were here, he would tell you prayer and walking hand in hand with the Lord. He had much faith.” Brice sounded sad as he added, “I wish you could have known him. His name was Seth.”