Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  PPP Auto. Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, ed. Parley P. Pratt, Jr., Classics in Mormon Literature (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1985.)

  Restoration Ivan J. Barrett, Joseph Smith and the Restoration: A History of the Church to 1846 (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1973.)

  Revelations Lyndon W. Cook, The Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith: A Historical and Biographical Commentary of the Doctrine and Covenants (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1985.)

  Women Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Jeni Broberg Holzapfel, Women of Nauvoo (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1992.)

  It was a season of joy to those present, and afforded a glimpse of the future, which time will yet unfold to the satisfaction of the faithful.

  —Joseph Smith, history, entry for 2 August 1831

  Chapter One

  Will Steed was staring at the low marshlands that formed Georgia’s coastline at this point along the Atlantic seaboard. The land—if you could call it that—was about a mile off the port side of the ship. He felt a little rush of excitement, noting that the packet ship had already begun its slow turn, nosing toward the spot where the coastline fell sharply back to mark the mouth of the Savannah River. About twenty miles up that river was the city of Savannah. A few miles beyond that was the Abner Montague cotton plantation. Longtime friends of his mother, Abner and Julia Montague had taken Caroline Steed and her children in after Joshua had been killed and the family had to flee from the vengeance of the Mormon Danites.

  The excitement was suddenly mingled with bitter shame. Almost four months before, Will had sneaked away from the Montague plantation, stealing a hundred dollars from his mother and another fifty from Abner Montague, and set off for St. Louis to find his father’s killers. How naive he had been. How utterly stupid. He had found them, all right, and narrowly escaped being killed himself. His mother had tried to convince him of the folly of a fourteen-year-old’s trying to right things. Well, that folly had landed him here, a virtual slave as a crew member of the packet ship.

  But it was almost over. Twenty miles upriver was Savannah. Twenty miles upriver was freedom. Will had lived in Savannah for a good share of his life. Once they were docked, it would take only moments for him to slip away and escape detection from even the most vigorous search. And then he would make his way back to the Montague plantation for a sweet reunion. He would fall to his knees before his mother and beg for her forgiveness, and then everything would be all right again.

  “You ever been to Savannah, Steed?”

  Will jumped. He hadn’t heard the bosun and the other two men come up behind him. He turned back, forcing an incredulous look. “Don’t you remember? I’m from Missouri.”

  Jiggers nodded. “Oh, yeah. That’s right.”

  “Missouri’s a long way from Georgia.”

  “You’ll like it. It’s a great port. Beautiful city.”

  “That’s what I hear.” Will felt his pulse start to slow a little. The last thing he wanted anyone to know was that Savannah was as familiar to him as the deck of this ship. Everything depended on their not suspecting anything. It was his only chance.

  Jiggers seemed to have lost interest. He motioned to the men with him, pointing toward a large coil of rope stacked in the little hollow formed by the ship’s bow. “That’s the one,” he said. “Take if aft with the other rigging.”

  As they stepped forward, Jiggers turned to Will. “Can you give us a hand, Steed? This is a heavy one.”

  Will nodded. The coil was almost two feet high, and the hemp, wet with salt spray, would be heavy. He was off duty at the moment, but he didn’t mind. “Sure,” he said, shrugging.

  As Will leaned over and started to get his hands under the rope, suddenly the two men stepped around behind him. Surprised, he started to turn, but before he could do so, the nearest man grabbed him from behind, throwing his arms around him in a crushing grip. The other man tore the rope from Will’s grasp and reached for his legs. Will kicked out. He was barefoot—boots made for slippery walking on a wet deck—but he caught the man full in the chest and sent him sprawling.

  “Get his legs! Get his legs!” Jiggers was shouting.

  The man jumped up, swearing viciously, then dove for Will’s legs. In a moment, it was over. They had him off the deck, and now they easily controlled his writhing body. “Let me go!” Will yelled. “What are you doing?”

  Without a word Jiggers turned and headed amidships. The others followed, panting heavily under Will’s weight. Halfway back, there was a small storage locker built into the bulkhead of the ship. It had a rusted padlock, which now hung open. Jiggers removed it quickly, opened the hasp, then pulled the door open. “In there,” he said, jerking his head.

  “What about the brig?” one of the men called.

  Jiggers shook his head. “The brig’s no place for a lad. Get ’im in there.” They cracked Will’s knee, then his elbow, getting him through the narrow door. The locker was small, about six by six, and Will noted in surprise that it had been mostly emptied. Along one end there were two filthy blankets and a burlap bag for a pillow. They lowered him over the makeshift bed, then dropped him the last two feet. He crashed to the deck, momentarily stunned. They backed out quickly. As Will scrambled to his feet, Jiggers started to close the door. “Sorry, Steed!” he snapped. “Cap’n’s orders.”

  The door slammed closed and Will heard the padlock clank as it was put back into the hasp and clicked shut. He leaped to the door and hammered at it with his fists. “Let me out of here!” The only answer he got was the sound of their footsteps moving away. He pounded again, screaming, raging, cursing them.

  Then suddenly he understood. Somehow they knew about Savannah. He fell back, cracking his head on a bucket that hung from one of the overhead beams. The pain didn’t register at all, so bitter and deep was the disappointment sweeping over him. They knew!

  He sank down on the blankets, feeling sick. Twenty miles away! It may as well have been a thousand. And then, like a flash of lightning in the blackness of a thundercloud, another thought stabbed in. Today was the first day of April. Earlier he had thought it was the perfect omen. The first day of the month would be his first day of freedom. Two days ago he had passed his fifteenth birthday. Freedom was to be his present to himself.

  He dropped his head into his hands. The disappointment was like raw bile in his mouth. Once again all of his planning, all of his careful preparations were for nothing. That pattern had started in St. Louis. Everything had gone wrong so swiftly there. Finding the two men he was looking for had been relatively easy for Will. Charlie Patterson, a petty criminal who haunted the waterfront bars, had sought him out and told him he could lead him to the men he was after. The only problem was that Charlie Patterson betrayed him. He was actually in partnership with the very men Will was looking for. At the warehouse, things fell apart. Thankfully, Charlie Patterson drew the line at murder. Charlie’s two partners were drunk, and one of them, provoked when Will struck him, wanted to shoot Will. When Charlie balked at that, a battle ensued. In moments, the two men were dead and Charlie Patterson was dragging Will in a blind panic down to the river. There he sold him off to a riverboat captain, who would take him downriver to New Orleans and sell him as a crew member to one of the sailing ship captains there.

  When the riverboat captain sent a doctor to the coal bin, where Will was confined all the way to New Orleans, to splint Will’s broken wrist, Will thought it was an act of kindness on the captain’s part. One more proof of his considerable naivety, he thought bitterly. When they reached New Orleans, Will learned that the captain’s “mercy” came from other motives. Will was merely moved from the coal bin on the riverboat to a filthy back room in a seedy riverfront hotel. For another week he was kept there while his arm slowly healed. Then, threatening to whip Will within an inch of his life if he favored the arm in any way, the riverboat captain took the splint off and dragged Will down to the dark, musty-smelling tavern where sea captains furt
ively bought kidnapped boys from the unscrupulous river runners.

  Once out to sea, the captain of the Bostonia was livid when he learned he had bought a partial cripple. Will’s arm had to be resplinted. But he was young and healthy, and by the time they had sailed to Mexico, then on to Cuba, the arm was fully healed.

  From the first day the packet ship had set sail from New Orleans, Will had begun planning his escape. He knew he had to be patient. The captain had paid for two years of impressed service, and the man knew that that service was not given willingly; he expected from Will nothing less than an escape try, and when they docked in the various ports, he always assigned two crew members to escort—shepherd was a better term—Will until they were out to sea again. What galled Will the most now, the thing for which he berated himself most bitterly, was the fact that he had been given an opportunity to jump ship in Kingston, Jamaica, where they stopped for a cargo of rum. Once again he had his shore escort, but the two men stopped at a tavern, got themselves blind drunk, then staggered upstairs with two frightening-looking women.

  The half hour Will had waited for them was one of the longest of his life. He nearly bolted three or four times, but the thought of being alone in a foreign country, with no guarantee that he could find passage home, was too daunting. And by then he knew their next stop was to be Savannah. So he had decided to wait, and he began formulating his plan.

  From that moment on, he worked diligently to assuage any suspicions the captain and crew might have about his intentions. He said nothing about having been raised in Savannah. He worked cheerfully and without complaint—no small task when one remembered that the newest and youngest member of the crew was assigned the most unpleasant and unsavory of tasks. To his surprise, he found himself liking the sea and sailing. So it was not too hard to convince everyone that he had accepted his lot and was content to stay with them until his two years were up.

  He blew out his breath in disgust. So much for his great deception. Now his only hope lay in the letter. The letter was his backup plan. Should he not be able to get free, he had written a letter to his mother. Using every last bit of the small cash allowance he was given—and the promise of more to come—he had convinced his closest friend in the crew to take the letter off the ship once they got to Savannah and find someone who would take it to the Montague plantation. The critical question was, would it reach the plantation before the ship sailed again? He wasn’t sure. It might take his friend a day or two to get clear of the ship and see that the letter got into someone’s hand who could deliver it. It could easily be four or five days by the time it actually reached the plantation, and by then they would be gone again.

  No, he thought. It wouldn’t take that long. The plantation was only five or six miles upriver from Savannah. Everyone in Savannah knew Abner Montague. Someone would take it to him. Abner Montague was a powerful man in these parts. If he knew Caroline’s son was being held captive aboard a ship in Savannah, the very devil himself wouldn’t be able to keep him away.

  Suddenly, Will had a thought. Today was April first. April Fools’ Day! He shook his head slowly. How appropriate. Here sat one of the greatest fools of all.

  Some two thousand miles away, in the kitchen of their home in St. Louis, Missouri, Caroline Steed sat at her kitchen table. A letter lay before her, but she couldn’t read it any longer. Tears had filled her eyes, and the lines penned by Julia Montague swam before her in a meaningless blur. The Montagues had heard nothing from Will Steed. That was the essence of the brief note. There had been no letters, no messages, not even a shred of rumor about the whereabouts of Caroline’s son. After four months without a word, Caroline’s main hopes now centered on Savannah and the Montagues. Will had fled from there. He had no way of knowing she was gone, returned to St. Louis with Joshua. If he wrote at all, it would be to Savannah. If he returned from wherever the pain had driven him, it would be to Savannah. So when Olivia had come running home with a letter from the Montagues, her hopes had momentarily soared.

  Will Steed and his adoptive father were as close as any father and son could be, so Will had been almost as devastated as Caroline when word had come that Joshua had been shot and killed by the Mormons. Most of that was untrue, as it turned out. Joshua had been shot, but not by the Mormons, and he was alive. He and Nathan had come to Savannah and found her and given her life again. But by then Will was gone. He would still be carrying the burden of his loss. That thought caused her as much hurt as his absence—knowing that she could not share with him the joyous news that their tragedy had turned to triumph.

  Brushing at her cheeks with the back of her hand, she reached down and took the letter. Slowly, methodically, she tore it into small pieces. “Oh, Will!” she whispered. “Will! Will! Will!”

  In Quincy, Illinois, about a hundred and thirty miles up the great Mississippi, and directly across the river from the state of Missouri, the sun was gone and it had been full dark now for more than an hour.

  In the small house that Benjamin Steed had been able to lease from one of the residents, the Steeds were in bed. They had, as they did every night, stacked the furniture in one corner to make room, then filled the floor with beds. It was a medium-size cabin, but it had only one large room and not even an attic above. And it was now home to seventeen people.

  The cabin was divided by a canvas taken from one of Joshua’s wagons. It hung from a rope and divided the room into two sleeping areas. The adults—with the exception of Matthew and Peter—slept on the floor in one long row in the larger section. Peter and Matthew slept outside—rain or shine—under a makeshift stick shelter attached to the back of the cabin. Inside, Benjamin and Mary Ann were nearest the east wall and lay on straw mattresses. Lydia and Nathan also slept on a straw mattress next to them. Rebecca, now heavily pregnant with her first child, and Derek had the only mattress filled with feathers. Jessica Griffith, widowed since the horror of Haun’s Mill, took a smaller straw mattress beside the opposite wall. On the other side of the canvas, blankets—no mattresses—filled the floor as well. Here the six older children shared one large bed. The two babies—Lydia’s and Jessica’s—slept in cribs against the far wall.

  Sleeping was not the only challenge in such an arrangement. Each night a small blanket was hung across one corner to provide a bit of privacy. There they took turns changing into their nightclothes. There would be a dash out to the privy behind the cabin in the cold night air, then a grateful tunneling under the shared covers to get warm again.

  “Grandma?”

  Mary Ann lifted her head. The call had come from behind the canvas. She sighed and looked at Benjamin. “Which one?” she whispered.

  “Sounds like Emily to me.”

  In the bed next to them, Lydia, having reached the same conclusion, came up on one elbow. “Emily,” she said in a loud whisper, “be quiet or you’ll wake the others.”

  “Grandma!” It was more urgent.

  Lydia started to get up, but Mary Ann beat her to it. “I’ll see,” she said.

  Beside Lydia, Nathan just shook his head. This was becoming a habit with his daughter.

  Mary Ann stepped through the opening in the canvas. They kept one candle burning on the table. That was a luxury, but since Missouri, the children became frightened or had terrible nightmares if the house was totally dark. Emily, Nathan and Lydia’s second child and first daughter, was six. She was sitting cross-legged, her dark eyes wide and troubled in the flickering light. Mary Ann smiled. Even with her hair ruffled, she had Lydia’s natural beauty. “Yes, Emily?”

  “Will we ever get a bed of our own again, Grandma?” Her eyes were so filled with pleading, and her voice so plaintive, that Mary Ann had to suppress a chuckle in spite of herself. Before Mary Ann could answer, Lydia came through the canvas. She had a finger to her lips. “Emily! You have to be quiet. Please go to sleep.”

  “But Mama,” Emily wailed, “Luke keeps poking me with his elbow.”

  Luke Griffith, the same age as Emily, lifted
his head. “I do not,” he said indignantly. “You keep poking me.”

  Lydia spoke softly but sternly. “Emily, I mean it.”

  Emily looked around in surprise. “Nobody’s asleep, Mama. Except for the babies and Nathan.” She looked at her younger brother in disgust. Nathan was three and a half, and did this every night. He lay down, closed his eyes, and was gone in a matter of moments, and nothing seemed to bother him after that. Several other heads came up now, as though to prove the accuracy of Emily’s statement. Young Joshua pushed himself up in a sitting position. He would be eight in May and, as the oldest of the grandchildren here in Quincy, felt some responsibility to keep things in order. “Emily, you’ve just got to hold still. That’s all.”

  She swung on him. “I can’t hold still,” she whispered fiercely, “not when everybody keeps bumping me.”

  Rachel sat up now. Like her mother, Jessica, Rachel’s temperament was that of a peacemaker. But she felt that she needed to stand up for her stepbrother. “Luke didn’t mean to bump you, Emily.” She was only six months older than her cousin but seemed considerably more mature than Emily.

  “The floor is so hard,” Luke retorted, “I can’t help it if I just have to wiggle sometimes.”

  That brought Mark Griffith up to his knees beside his brother. His four-year-old face was twisted with boyish resentment. “Yeah,” he said to Emily. “This floor is real hard. We can’t sleep good.”

  The canvas moved and now the rest of the adults joined Mary Ann and Lydia. Jessica stepped across the blankets. “Children, children,” she soothed, “it’s all right. Don’t wake up the babies. Mark, Luke, you lie down now.”

  “Emily,” Lydia said, “lie down, and stop being difficult.”

  That was the ultimate betrayal in Emily’s mind. Her eyes went wide and instantly filled with tears. “Mama, it’s not me.” She started to cry.

  It had been a difficult two weeks since the family had come as refugees across the Mississippi to Quincy, and nights were the most challenging. But Mary Ann was not of a mind to complain. Most of the Saints had been driven from Missouri with little or nothing. Their family was no different in that respect. Where they differed was in the help they got from Joshua, their son, and Carl Rogers, their son-in-law. Joshua paid the rent on the house, and both he and Carl had brought food and other supplies. Many in Quincy still slept in wagons and tents, and dozens of families had nothing but blankets and bedrolls and empty sky overhead.