Saints (55 page)

“Nothing. I’m glad.”

He rolled back; she tried to turn away from him; he stopped her, took a tear from her cheek and held up the moist finger as a question.

“I was thinking of Vilate,” she answered. Then she started to laugh. “Joseph, we’re so terrible. The Principle is the worst thing in the world, and I’m begging you to impose it on my friends.”

He kissed her cheek. “The worst thing?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve never been happier in my life than when you’re here. But when you’re not—”

“How can I make it up to you?”

“Let me bear you a child, Joseph.”

He rolled her over and began unhooking the back of her dress. “I’ve been doing my best,” he said.

“So have I,” she answered.

She was still so new to him; yet as he discovered her again, he could not rid himself of the feeling that she, too, was keeping something secret from him. Protecting him from something. He almost asked her what it was, but then decided that if Dinah thought it better not to tell him, he would trust her judgment, and not demand to know.

It was well after dark when a knock came at the door. Joseph, dressed by then except his boots, leaped to the window to escape if he had to. But it was Port.

He was more embarrassed than Dinah had thought the dangerous little man could be. “Don’t mean to disturb you,” he said. “But it’s after dark, and I’ve been doing some prowling around, and I ran into some men who were looking for you.”

“A posse?” asked Dinah.

“No, no, loyal men, Sister H-handy. It’s about Dr. Bennett. Mayor Bennett. He took poison, and he’s dying.”

Joseph was pulling on his boots. “I wanted to do many things to him today, but I didn’t want him dead.”

“He’s a doctor,” Dinah said. “Don’t you think he knows a safe dose from a fatal one?”

She was only saying the obvious. They both knew now that Bennett could play his little play all he liked. And Joseph would publicly believe his tears and forgive him, and take him back, and use his gifts to benefit Nauvoo. But when the Twelve came home, it would be they, and not Bennett, who would learn the Principle and live it; they, not Bennett, who would be the true and secret Church.

“Since I’ve been seen without you,” Porter said, “we shouldn’t go back together. It’s mostly clear south along the shore. Everyone’s at Bennett’s house, or gossiping wherever the houses are thick.”

“The horses?”

“Where we left them.”

Joseph started for the door, then stopped, returned to Dinah, and kissed her long and hard. Joseph watched with wicked pleasure as Dinah tried to find a reaction in Porter Rockwell’s face. Porter never blinked, just stared her down with his emotionless face. Then they doused the lights, Joseph left, and Dinah was alone with the Prophet’s bodyguard.

“You’re an unlikely fancy woman,” Porter said.

Dinah could not tell if he was being ironic, or what he really meant if he was. “You’re an unlikely bodyguard, too.”

“Rest your heart,” Porter said. “Of all his wives, you’re the only one
I
think might be worth dyin’ for.”

Dinah was deeply relieved, but angry, too. “He might have told me that he told you about the Principle.”

“Never told me a damn thing,” Porter said. “But you ain’t a whore and he’s a man of God. That didn’t leave much else to guess from. I don’t know if Emma’s really Leah, but you’re sure as hell his Rachel, unless I’m blind.”

She clung to those words for a long, long time. I am Joseph’s Rachel, his most-beloved. Please God, let me also bear his noblest son.

She thought of that desire many times when she taught Emma’s sons in school. She loved little Joseph, and yet wanted her son to displace him in his father’s heart. She was ashamed of herself, but could not change her wishes because of that. Could not change, either, the fact that two young children were growing up in Manchester believing that their mother did not love them anymore. Is there nothing adults can do that doesn’t hurt the little ones?

John Bennett recovered from the poison, to no one’s surprise. Joseph Smith forgave him publicly, upon his promise never to sin again, while Bennett’s critics once again retreated into the background. Everything seemed back to normal in Nauvoo.

Except that two weeks later, on July 1, Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, and John Taylor returned to Nauvoo from England. Joseph didn’t even let them go to their families before he brought them into an upstairs room and met with them in secret far into the night. He taught them the Principle, and wrecked their lives, and created the secret Church so there might be something strong enough to live when he was dead.

It was Vilate Kimball who had knocked so timidly on his door. Timidity wasn’t like her. It must be a problem she came with, then. Joseph smiled at her to put her at her ease. It surprised him that it did not hurt to smile.

“Brother Joseph,” she said, her voice too quick, too soft, “if there’s anything I can do—”

“Now Vilate, if you have comfort you ought to give it to Emma, she’s taking it much harder than I am.”

“I know you better than that, Joseph. You named your son for your brother because you loved them both so much, and to lose the two eight days apart, it’s cruel hard—”

He touched her lips with his fingertips. “Vilate, if a man who’s talked with God hasn’t the faith to accept the death of loved ones, who has?”

Vilate fell silent, then looked out the window behind Joseph. “There’s so many dying of this fever that Brother Sidney’s preaching a general sermon every day, for all who are being buried. They give him the list of names right before he speaks.” With sudden anger, she turned to Joseph. “If you ask me, the Lord could better take some folks I might name than Don Carlos Smith, man or child!”

“I don’t know, Vilate,” Joseph said. “Maybe the Lord in his mercy is taking only those who are sure of exaltation.”

“If he takes all the godly ones the Church will surely go to hell,” Vilate said.

“This isn’t what you came for,” Joseph prodded. He didn’t like to talk about his brother’s death. He didn’t like to think about it. It was better just to keep his mind on other things. Other people’s problems. Whenever he thought of Don Carlos he feared his own feelings. It was one thing to lose his child. He and Emma had lost so many that Joseph hardly let himself love them now when they were still little—at least that’s what he told himself, though try as he might he still had much of himself in every child of his that died. But his brother had taken sick in the damp, unhealthy cellar where Joseph had sent him, had practically ordered him to work day and night if he was to amount to anything—not my fault, Joseph reminded himself. Think of other things. Vilate has a problem. I must listen to Vilate.

“I have a friend,” Vilate said. “And don’t go thinking that it’s me, because when I have a problem I won’t come to you on little pussy feet pretending that it isn’t mine. It’s a friend.”

“Yes, I understand that.”

“She’s a good woman. I know a good woman when I see one. I used to think she was the best woman I know. I felt the Spirit of God in her a hundred times this last year—and still, as recently as today, and I
shouldn’t
feel that Spirit from her, and so I’ve come to you because I don’t know if I’ve done right, or if I even understand anything—”

“I can’t help you, Vilate, if you don’t tell me the story.”

“It’s so selfish of me when you’re suffering problems far worse than mine—”

“Tell me about your friend.”

Vilate fussed with her apron. “She isn’t married. Or rather, her husband is—she’s had no husband for a year. But the day you was arrested, she was yelling at—someone—” She glanced up at him, looked back down. “Doesn’t matter who she was yelling at. She got sick and had a—miscarriage, right on the spot, and she had no right to have a baby in her. I don’t know a better proof of adultery than that. And she admitted it.”

“Admitted adultery?”

“Admitted she was pregnant, and there’s not much else to say after
that
.” Vilate interlocked her fingers, then wrung her hands repeatedly back and forth. “But she was such a
good
woman, I didn’t think she deserved—she was my
friend
, and only two of us knew what had happened, and so the two of us, we didn’t tell anybody. We figured she’d come to you and confess it. But I warned her—if she ever tried to speak up in meeting or bear testimony, I’d denounce her before the whole Church, because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s a hypocrite.”

Dinah. Silent in meetings, her ministrations suddenly stopped for no reason he could figure out. She didn’t tell him. Dinah had been carrying his baby, and lost it, and she hadn’t told him, and he hadn’t guessed.

“Did I do wrong?” Vilate asked.

“No, no. You did right, I think.”

“Maybe.” Vilate suddenly trembled, as if she had a chill. “Today Heber told me to read the beginning of the sixteenth chapter of Genesis. Where Sarah tells her Abraham to lie with her maid Hagar—”

“I know the chapter.”

“I read it, but I couldn’t figure why Heber had insisted that I read it. And then my friend happened to call on me right at that time—and she doesn’t call on anyone much anymore, she stays to home, which is proper, I thought—but her being there, I figured the Lord maybe sent her. Isn’t that possible, that the Lord sent her?”

“The Lord sent her,” Joseph said.

“So I broke my oath, and asked her to explain the scripture to me.”

“And what did she say?”

“She wouldn’t. She just said to ask my husband, and to believe everything he told me, because it was the most glorious—glorious principle of the gospel. And when she said that, sitting there like an angel, I felt a thrill like the first time a new baby sucks, it hurts so strong and feels so good, and I knew it was the Spirit of God in her, and she was speaking to me as a prophetess. And so I said to her, Did you repent? Were you forgiven? And she said to me, Vilate, I will never repent of that baby, or how I got it.” Vilate was crying now, but whether from grief or from memory of the Spirit Joseph couldn’t tell. “Brother Joseph, how can the Lord dwell in such a rebellious woman’s heart?”

“Sister Vilate,” Joseph said, “your friend is as pure as snow. She has committed no sin before God, though she would be judged a sinner by the unbelieving.”

It was almost funny how quickly Vilate was laughing and hugging him. “I knew it! I didn’t know
how
it could be, but I just couldn’t believe that she’d—but Brother Joseph, how could it be? How can a woman do what she—”

“Sister Vilate.”

She fell silent again.

“Go home to your husband and tell him that giving you scriptures to read is not enough. Every moment that he delays is disobedience, and his soul is in danger of damnation.”

Vilate was stunned. “Why! What has he done!”

“It’s what he hasn’t done. But once he obeys, you’ll understand everything you didn’t understand today. Don’t ask me any more—it’s not for me to tell you, it’s for your husband. Then both of you come to me here, tomorrow, and tell me what you choose to do.”

She left, afraid of how serious this secret must be, but still eager to find out. It was a mark of godliness, Joseph knew, to be eager to know even what might hurt you. Those who were frightened of truth never amounted to much in the sight of God. Those who avoided truth weren’t worthy to have it, and so they never did.

Joseph was frightened, too. Dinah couldn’t know it, but it wasn’t just the Principle that Heber was going to tell Vilate about. It was a far more terrible test than that, more terrible than Joseph would ever have thought of on his own, but the words just came to him as he was talking to Heber, teaching him about the Principle. Worse was knowing that no one could lightly pass this test, Heber and Vilate least of all. They had loved each other since they were children. They were the happiest, most utterly devoted couple he knew. Heber had been gone for more than two years, and they had only been together a few weeks since then. It was too much. They would fail. And Joseph didn’t need to lose any of the few Saints he could utterly rely on. If anyone ever had reason to believe he was a false prophet, any reason to hate him and leave the Church, it was them, it was now.

It frightened Joseph, the way he could talk like a prophet without even meaning to. The way he could reach out and tear at people’s lives, he had such power over them. Wasn’t he supposed to heal them the way Christ did? He tried to remember if there was a time when Jesus ever caused anyone such pain. Why couldn’t God let things go smoothly for a while? Let him have a whole month in which no one was tested, no one betrayed him, and no one died.

“Are you all right?”

Joseph almost cried out in shock, for it was Don Carlos’s voice he heard. But it was only Charlie at the door of his office, carrying his ledger. Don Carlos’s best friend. Charlie had sobbed out loud at the funeral. No one minded or thought it was unmanly—someone had to, so the rest could bear to put that young man’s body in the ground. Charlie was needed then.

But now Joseph couldn’t see him without thinking of Don Carlos. Of the way Don Carlos romped with this English boy who had a knack for doing miracles with money. Of the way Don Carlos had pled with Joseph to let
him
be a clerk, Let me be close to you, Joseph, he had said, how can you take my friend and leave
me
, don’t you know I’m dying to be part of your work, don’t you know I’m dying—and Joseph had sent him to the cellar to do a better job of the
Times and Seasons
, to prove that he was dependable. If anything killed Don Carlos, it was my trying to make him into Charlie Kirkham.

“Brother Joseph, what is it?” Charlie was staring at him in awe.

“It’s tears, Brother Charlie.” Joseph wiped his face on his coat hem.

“Is there something I can do, Brother Joseph?”

“Unless you can bring me my brother or my baby, no.” He waved Charlie away, as if to say it was all right. “Go on, we’ll go over the books tomorrow. I need to make a visit.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No.” I’m busy, I have work to do, and having you with me would be like having a ghost walk beside me, blaming me. So today I’m going to try to think of a way to get you out of here for a while, out of my sight until I stop grieving every time I think of my brother. I can’t just tell you to go away, that would break your heart. Mustn’t break any hearts, must I? Or maybe that’s the business I’m in. Getting power over people and breaking them, breaking all of them who don’t try to break me first.

Long before Joseph could weave his way through the business of the afternoon and get to Dinah’s house late in the summer night, Dinah had another visitor.

“Sister Emma,” Dinah said.

Emma greeted her coolly, and Dinah dreaded some confrontation. But it was comfort Emma wanted today, which made her much more distant, for Emma did not like confessing need.

“I’ve come to see if you’re not well,” Emma said.

“Of course I’m well,” Dinah said. “Your children came to school this morning for the summer reading class, didn’t they? Didn’t little Joseph recite the poem he learned?”

“I know you’re well enough to teach the children, Sister Dinah. I only wondered why you seem to have forsaken the women of Nauvoo.”

Dinah was used to questions like this, for the women she had once visited now came, in ones and twos and threes, to call on her, forcing Joseph to delay his visits later and later in the night, when he could come at all. And every woman who came asked the same question. Why don’t you teach us anymore? Why don’t you speak at meetings? Are you angry? Have I given some offense? Are you unwell? And always the same answer:

“I can only live as the Lord requires.”

Emma’s eyes narrowed. “They told me you’d say that.”

Dinah smiled slightly. “I say it because it’s true.”

“I think it’s cruel and selfish of you, and I’ve come to rebuke you.” As always, Emma had to speak her affection in harsh words.

“Forgive me,” Dinah whispered.

“Don’t you know how much some sisters have needed you? There are sisters in Nauvoo who are in dire need of a friend, and can find none because the only friend who can help them stays hidden in her cabin like a hermit.”

“But if a friend visits me, I greet her with the same love as always.”

“Do you?”

Dinah walked to her, bent to where she sat, and pressed her cheek against Emma’s. “Yes,” she whispered. “The same love as always.”

Dinah pulled away from the embrace, but Emma clung to her hand, so that Dinah had to kneel beside her on the rag rug that covered the earthen floor.

“Sister Dinah, I’m afraid that I’m driving Joseph away from me.”

Don’t speak to me of Joseph, Dinah said silently. On that one subject I am not your friend.

“He’s hardly home anymore. He travels constantly, four or five nights a week, or visits around the city so late that I’m long asleep before he comes home.”

“To avoid his enemies. And to do his work.”

“To avoid
me
.” Emma whispered her dread: “He’s punishing me.”

“Why would he punish you? There’s no wife in the world who’s endured more than you, who’s been more help to her husband than you—”

“I’m a cold and sharp-tongued woman, and when I disagree with him I speak the truth as I see it. It makes him angry, and he stays away.”

“I’ve never known Brother Joseph to flee from the truth.”

Emma touched her cheeks with the tips of her fingers, as if to contain her emotions. “I know. It’s because I won’t let him—because I won’t bow to something that no wife could possibly endure, that no wife should ever be asked to do. He doesn’t love me anymore.”

There have been times, Dinah said silently, when I wished that it were true, when I wished that he didn’t love you at all. But he does. “Sister Emma, if you think he could forget to love you, you don’t know him. Part of him
is
you. All his past is tied up with you. His children are yours. Even the Church itself is so bound up in you that he hardly bothers to distinguish between what he’s done with you, and what he’s done without you. Have you heard him speak?
We
did this, he says,
we
lived above the store,
we
had a hard time of it in Kirtland,
we
were able to hold together after Missouri—and no one knows, least of all himself, whether he means you and him or him and the Church or whether it makes any difference at all. You are so much a part of him now that whatever he does, he feels as though you were with him. You
are
with him.”

“I’m not. I’m home, alone in bed, listening to the children breathing, wishing for my husband’s breath in the night.”