Saints

by Orson Scott Card

"I'm not an officer," William snapped back. "It takes the mayor to order them out. Besides, Quincy's out of our jurisdiction."

  "Why not make sure Joseph's alive first, and then quarrel about jurisdiction after?"

  "Why don't the women keep to their own province, and leave the decisions up to those the Lord has called to make them?"

  Dinah rose to her feet and walked to the middle of the room. With all the contempt she could muster -- which was a fair amount of contempt right now -- she looked at each of the men in turn. "If God should choose to judge you solely on the basis of your performance at this moment, brethren, you can all start right now packing your bags for hell." Then she headed for the front door.

  "Where are you going?" Don Carlos asked.

  "Since even the Prophet's brothers can't save his life, I'm going to the one man who can."

  Vilate rushed across the room to her. "I'll go with you."

  Don Carlos also got to his feet. "Let me come with you."

  "Are you sure your brother William won't need you to help him make a list of things that Bennett must decide when Bennett comes?"

  William glared at her and tapped his pen on the table. "I've been sending word to Bennett all morning, since the news came. He's probably on his way right now. You're wasting a trip."

  "While you, sir, are wasting a morning." Dinah walked out of the house with Vilate, Harriette, and Don Carlos, leaving at least one enemy behind her.

  It was not that far to Bennett's house, but Dinah felt every step of it. It was not just the exertion of hurrying so quickly; it was the fear of what might happen to Joseph, when the man didn't even know she was carrying his child; it was anger at how little these men who said they loved him actually cared for him. She winced with cramps, but kept walking; breathed deep, swallowed frequently to keep from vomiting, and walked on, faster and faster, not because she expected Bennett to do any better than the others, but because it was better to do something than to sit and wait as Emma and the others were doing. If Joseph dies, it will not be because I sat and wondered what to do.

  They did not meet Bennett on the way to his house, and when they got to the door, his clerk refused to call him. "Dr. Bennett is unavailable at the moment," he said. "Some other time, perhaps? Or if your ailment is urgent, you can leave me your name and address and when he makes his rounds tomorrow, he'll stop by."

  "We're not patients," Dinah said, pushing the door open and walking in.

  The clerk followed her up the stairs. "He may be undressed, madame! This is not your house! You can be arrested for this!"

  Bennett was lying on his bed, sipping tea and reading a book. He looked up calmly when Dinah walked in, panting from the walk, from running up the stairs. He smiled at her and said, "I was just lying here wishing for company."

  "Why didn't you come when you heard the news?" Dinah demanded.

  "Why should I go talk to men who have neither ideas nor the power to act on ideas? I notified Brother Joseph's attorney as soon as word came, and I rode with him before eight o'clock. I talked with Stephen Douglas -- I knew him when he was secretary of state. It happens that now he's a judge, and he had a writ of habeas corpus out for Brother Joseph before ten. The extradition trial is set for the ninth of June, and Mr. Browning is quite sure we can win. Even if our case did not have superior merit, Judge Douglas is a Democrat, and the Democrats are our friends. I got back half an hour ago. I'm a little tired, and so I'm resting."

  He had done it all, and now lay on his bed, smugly sipping at his cup, looking at Dinah with laughing eyes. Dinah could not understand why she was so angry with him. He had every right to be proud of himself -- while all the other men, including the Prophet's brothers, had talked and fretted and done nothing, Bennett had acted -- and saved Joseph's life before noon. She should be grateful. Instead she felt her stomach twist with anger, and she was afraid she might be sick. "You're mayor of Nauvoo. I would have thought you would take some care to calm the city."

  Bennett swung his feet to the floor and sat up. "Good idea. If I hadn't been so tired I would have thought of it myself." He stood and headed for the door. "Do you think it would be immodest of me to tell the Saints who it was who saved the Prophet -- and who did not?"

  "He isn't saved till he gets back here," Vilate said.

  "He's saved because he's alive right now, and because my friends in the state of Illinois are going to get him back, and not with any of the blood and thunder theatrics you talk about, not with the Legion, that useless collection of Sunday soldiers armed with sticks -- he'll be back with a legal judgment against extradition, so that the charge can never be laid to him again. I did it with the law, not against it, so that we profit from it, instead of paying later."

  "When did the news come to you?" Dinah asked.

  "This morning. When I first got up."

  Dinah turned to Harriette. "But didn't you tell me Howard Coray got here after ten?"

  Harriette nodded.

  Bennett smiled at her. "Do you think I have to rely on Howard Coray for my news?" Bennett started down the stairs.

  Hadn't Harriette told her that Coray left the moment the Prophet first realized he was going to be taken? Hadn't Coray near killed his horse to get here when he did?

  "You knew!" Dinah shouted. "You knew before it happened!" She ran down the stairs after him, but he was already going out the door. "You could have warned him, you could have prevented it all! You wanted him arrested!" She reached for the door, which was swinging shut behind him -- she missed it, stumbled forward, fell to her knees. It was more than her body could cope with, the anger, the shouting, all the running, and now the fury of seeing the door click shut behind a man who had knowingly let Joseph Smith fall into the hands of his enemies. Her stomach lurched, and she vomited on the inlaid wood of Bennett's entry hall. Later she would remember thinking that it was strange that he should have inlaid wood when so many Saints had dirt floors and leaking roofs. She was not doing her best thinking then.

  "Good God, and I suppose I have to clean that up," said Bennett's servant.

  Don Carlos and Harriette helped Dinah get up. "Where are you hurt? Where are you hurt?" Don Carlos kept asking.

  "I'm not hurt," Dinah managed to say. "I'm just sick."

  "But all this blood," Don Carlos said.

  Harriette gasped. "In the name of heaven, Dinah, you might have told somebody."

  The last thing Dinah remembered before she lost consciousness was Vilate's voice saying, "But what do you mean she's pregnant? She left her husband in England more than a year ago.

  Dinah recuperated in Vilate's house for several weeks. She was unconscious for the first five days, which gave Vilate time to sort things through, about how long it had been since Dinah had been with her husband, and what must have happened for her to get pregnant. Vilate was no longer confused by the time Dinah was conscious, and Dinah could see that she had planned and rehearsed her little speech.

  "Are you feeling better?" Vilate asked.

  Dinah nodded. She was vaguely aware that her head didn't move much when she told it to.

  "Need anything?"

  Just the answer to a question. "Brother Joseph?"

  "Oh, he's all right. Word just came this afternoon. Judge Douglas ordered him to be released. Said the charges had no merit and that to release Brother Joseph into the hands of Missouri authorities would be tantamount to causing the murder of an innocent Illinois citizen. Mayor Bennett saw to the whole thing."

  Dinah vaguely remembered being angry at Bennett, but could not think why. He had saved Joseph, hadn't he? That's all that mattered, wasn't it?

  Vilate cleared her throat, sat upright in her chair to give her speech. "I want you to know, Harriette and I have told no one about -- why you're so sick. Not even your father and mother. Far as anyone knows, you were already sick as a dog before you started running around all over. Bennett was willing to allow as how you weren't acting rational when you came to call on him, which he calls a sure sign of
oncoming nervous prostration."

  "So nobody" -- she tried to make her lips form the right words -- "thinks I'm -- harlot -- "

  "Oh, Dinah." Vilate burst into tears. "Oh, of all women, Dinah, of all the women in Nauvoo, I would've thought you'd have brains enough not to get taken in by some man!"

  It was bound to come sooner or later, Dinah had known that all along. Her regret was not that Vilate thought her guilty of adultery. Her regret was that she wouldn't have the baby to show for it.

  "You've been -- kind," Dinah said, "under the circumstances."

  "Circumstances! I'm your friend, aren't I? Haven't we tended the sick together? Do you think because you done something dumb I don't remember what you're worth?"

  Dinah tried to smile, but for some reason her muscles didn't want to respond. It was only then that she realized she couldn't even raise her hands, she was so weak. And as she spoke she heard her own voice as if from a distance, as if she were drunk, it was so sluggish and inarticulate. "Sister Vilate, do you forgive me?"

  At that, Vilate looked away from her. "'Tain't mine to forgive or not forgive. That's between you and Brother Joseph."

  It took Dinah a few moments to remember that she would be expected to confess her "adultery" to the Prophet -- Vilate had not discovered who her supposed paramour was. She tried to nod.

  "I won't bring your name before the bishop for an excommunication trial," Vilate said. "And Harriette says she'll shoot anyone who tries, she's that loyal a friend to you. But I tell you this. I'm still your friend. I'll quilt with you, I'll visit the sick with you, I'll even pray with you if you need me. But don't you dare get up in a meeting and speak, Sister Dinah. Don't you dare pretend to have a word of prophecy or tongues or give even so much as a little explanation of a scripture. The Spirit of God does not dwell in an adulterous heart, and if I hear of you doing even the smallest sort of preachment I'll call for a court myself and shout the accusation for the whole of Hancock County to hear it!"

  Dinah nodded.

  Vilate softened, looked for a moment as if she might weep again. Then she reached out and touched a cold damp cloth to Dinah's brow. "Oh, Sister Dinah, you were the best of all of us, the very best. I thought sometimes you were the only woman I knew worthy to stand beside Brother Joseph the way Hyrum or Brigham or my Heber do."

  "I -- never -- I never tried -- tried to -- "

  "Hush. Don't you talk, you're not strong enough yet. A miscarriage is every bit as hard on a woman as a birthing, sometimes. I only talked to you now because I knew you'd be fretting about what folks were thinking about you, and I had to let you know that you'll not be held up to public shame." Vilate stood up, leaned over and kissed Dinah's brow. She walked to the door, saying, "If you need anything, there's a little bell on the floor by your bed." At the door she stopped. "I'm your friend forever, Dinah, as long as you keep still in gospel things. Because if there's one thing I hate in all this world, it's a hypocrite."

  Dinah lay there after Vilate left, wishing she could either sleep or get the strength to stand, to walk around, to do something, anything but lie here contemplating her future. Vilate had been kinder than Dinah had any right to expect. Not only to keep her miscarriage a secret, but to still be her friend, to care for her this way -- when Vilate gave her friendship, she did not stint. But silence! To be forbidden to speak when the Spirit filled her, to keep her seat in the meeting when a few words could clarify a doctrinal point, not even to pray when the sisters gathered together -- who was she in Nauvoo, if all that she did in public was to be taken away from her? And not even the child. That would have been her consolation, to have his child. Now all she could think of was Val and Honor. For Matthew I could bear children. Now John Bennett took my child away. No, that wasn't right. Bennett didn't do that, Bennett saved Joseph, didn't he? It was all that running that caused the -- no, no, there was something else. Something about Bennett, but she couldn't remember. All she could do was sleep.

  When she awoke again, Harriette was sitting by her.

  "Awake?" Harriette asked.

  "Mm."

  "His child, Dinah. And you didn't even tell me."

  Dinah shook her head. "I didn't tell him either," she whispered.

  Harriette's eyes went wide.

  "So many of his children have died," Dinah whispered. Talking was a little easier now than it had been when Vilate was here.

  Harriette shook her head in consternation. "Well, what do you want me to tell him? When he gets back?"

  "Nothing."

  "I think he'd want to know. Why you're sick, at least."

  "He'll know when I bear him a living child."

  Harriette sat there, shaking her head. Don't tell me I'm wrong, Harriette, Dinah wanted to say. Tell me I'm right. Tell me I'm a good wife, tell me I'm a good woman, tell me that God still loves me and that Vilate is wrong when she says I'm unworthy even to speak, tell me --

  "Harriette," she whispered.

  "Yes, Dinah?"

  Against her best intentions, Dinah started to cry. "I'm not an adulteress, Harriette."

  At once Harriette's expression changed from judgment to compassion. "Oh, Dinah, no." Harriette fell to her knees beside the bed and took Dinah in her arms and held her, rocked her gently as she wept. "No, Dinah, you're the best woman in the world, you're the best woman I know."

  She must have cried herself to sleep. She didn't remember, only wondered when she woke again is she had made the right decision. It would be so good to have him hold her, comfort her for the loss of their child. But why add one more coffin to those that already lay in the graveyard of his memory? She was willing to bear it for him -- and she did not even have to bear it alone. God, in his mercy, had given her Harriette, who knew all, and Vilate, who knew at least some of her pain. She would not be forsaken.

  Then, too tired to weep, she prayed that she could conceive again, and soon. If she was truly to be Joseph's wife, she must bear him children. That was what it meant to be his wife, wasn't it? If she could do it for Matthew, then a just God must surely let her do it for the husband that she loved.

  34

  Wives Nauvoo, 1841

  Before he was halfway down the stairs into the cellar, Charlie could hear Don Carlos coughing. The sound worried him. It wasn't the cough of a man who had just breathed wrong, or caught some dust in his throat. It was a deep cough, liquid with phlegm. Then the press began its rhythmic thump, clack, thump, clack, as Don Carlos pulled and lifted the handle, changed paper, pulled and lifted again. As so often before, Charlie said nothing when he came in, just read the front page. Usually Don Carlos spoke first, but instead he pumped at the press handle, changed the paper, and might as well not have noticed Charlie was there at all.

  "What I can't tell," Charlie finally said, "is whether this paper is Democrat or Whig."

  "Neither," said Don Carlos. He took a moment's pause before continuing -- without the customary joke, Charlie wondered for a moment if Don Carlos could be angry. "This paper hates everybody."

  Charlie laughed more than the joke deserved, perhaps because from the look on Don Carlos's face, he wasn't joking.

  "You ought to do something about that cold," Charlie said.

  "I am," Don Carlos answered. "I'm coughing my guts out. What can I do for you?"

  Charlie was flustered. Don Carlos had never acted so unfriendly, not even when they were strangers. "I don't want you to do anything for me. I just wanted to talk."

  "Talk then." Thump, clack.

  "I just came to tell you -- Brother Joseph asked me to clerk for him. Bookkeeping, some, and letters."

  "I know." The printed paper clattered as Don Carlos set it aside. His arm brushed Charlie's waist, but if Don Carlos noticed it, he gave no sign.

  For the first time it occurred to Charlie that Don Carlos might not be happy for him. That Don Carlos was angry because Joseph had asked him to be his clerk. "No great honor, really," Charlie said. "He only asked me because he couldn't afford to pay as many men a
s he needs, and he doesn't have to pay me a wage."

  Clack. Don Carlos leaned on the upright handle, turned and faced Charlie. "Did you come to gloat?" he asked.

  "Gloat!"

  "You're the one with the independent income. You're the one who can spell and add and subtract. You're the one whose wife doesn't have to wonder whether the baby she's expecting is going to have enough to eat." Thump.

  "You already printed that sheet."

  Don Carlos lifted the handle. The paper was a blur of ink, completely unreadable. "Look what you made me do."

  "I thought you'd be happy for me.

  "It's not you, I'm mad at Joseph. I'm his brother, aren't I?"

  "You're not a bookkeeper, that's all."