Breath and Bones

by Susann Cokal

  Back in Hellerup, Famke had been on the rear stairwell with an armful of Herr Skatkammer’s foreign newspapers, which were needed in the kitchen, when a small paragraph in English caught her eye:

  . . . The passenger list of the S. S. Lucrece will include one lately a student at the Royal Academy, so nonplussed by the Academy’s return of what he had hoped would hang in its annual Exhibition that he has determined to try his fortunes in the farthest reaches of the land to the West. Claiming that the flames of inspiration have suffocated in our cold climes, he has, we are told, exchanged the rejected work for his passage to the desert. It is to be hoped that, on shores less known for artistic achievement, the miners and ranchers of his eventual destination will be more receptive to Albert Castle’s style and subject matter . . .

  The name leapt from the page as if inscribed in red letters; as if it were itself a picture of Albert’s green eyes, his thin hair, his cheeks flushed with excitement.

  Famke sat weakly down on the stairs, newspapers sliding away from her in a great fan. So Albert had gone to America, left England and his father and the hope of joining the Brotherhood. She barely noticed that Nimue (she, Famke) had been sold to some ship’s owner or captain.

  She dropped to her knees and scrabbled through the newspaper’s scattered leaves until she found the Lucrece’s date of embarkation: June 29.

  Today was June 30.

  Famke refused to feel dismay. If she could not sail on the same ship as her love, she would take one soon afterward. This was the sign she had been waiting for, the kind of message that prompted people to do great deeds.

  She ran up to her room to put on the despised stays, which she thought gave her an air of respectability, tied up her few possessions in her yellow shawl, and began the walk into Copenhagen, to the address printed inside the Mormon tracts.

  Heber Goodhouse was palpably surprised to see her. “Ursula! Do you have a message from Herr Skatkammer?” he asked hopefully. He spoke English, and Famke realized she might not hear her native tongue again for a long, long time.

  “No.” She stared into his peculiar beard, which was full of the crumbs from his dinner. At the last moment she was having some qualms. But she reminded herself of Albert’s dear amphibian eyes, drew a deep breath, and announced, “I want to come with you! I am Mormon!”

  Goodhouse ushered Famke into the mission office and seated her at the table that served as his desk. He even brought her a cup of rice tea, clanking against its saucer.

  But what was this trembling in his hands? He folded and clenched them, and the tremors retreated deep into his bones. Of course the housemaid’s conversion was a boon to the mission. Women were still somewhat scarce in the American West, and many young Saints found wives difficult to come by; the un-Saintly men who paid for women often paid very dear—or so Heber had heard. Yes, any female convert was welcome, especially one used to a life of labor. As Brother Jedediah M. Grant had written in one of the tracts now in Heber’s luggage, new arrivals had to expect “to leap into the mire and help to fill up a mudhole, to make adobes with their sleeves rolled up, and be spattered with clay from head to foot.”

  Heber imagined Famke working in this way: dress tight over her bent back, hands slapping adobe into the wooden molds, muddy from crown to toe. Despite the girl’s pallor and slenderness—to him, she looked as breakable as glass—he had seen her hard at work on many occasions, and this imaginary picture was a pretty one. He reflected that in Utah, along with the mud, she might also stain her white hands green, chopping mulberry leaves to feed a hatching of silkworms, or wrap herself in a gossamer web as she carefully, slowly unwound the cocoons that would make the Saints’ fortunes. Yes, as a model of industry, she would be an asset both to the Church and to his hometown, Prophet City, which he had instantly decided would be the best placement for her.

  “It is a fairly recent settlement,” he told her as he stirred the gummy fluid in his own cup, “just ten years old, and much of the land has yet to be worked. There have been troubles with certain crops, but Brother Young’s writings suggest an answer: silk. The climate in our corner of Zion is ideal for the mulberry trees on which the worms feed. I had just started to plow the orchard when I was called to this mission, and while abroad I ordered one hundred seedlings for my sons to plant. The leaves are now profuse enough to feed a hatching of good Chinese silkworms—white mulberry, you see, produces the finest fiber—”

  “Is your farm near a train?” Famke asked when she could stand no more.

  He looked slightly hurt but answered nonetheless: “My property is five miles from Prophet itself, and approximately twenty miles beyond that lies Salt Lake City. The railroad passes through there. You will not have to walk, if that is your concern . . .”

  “Så.” Famke looked down at her hands, chapped and callused from cleaning for Herr Skatkammer. Once she knew where Albert was, she’d be just half a day from the means of travel to him. She allowed herself a slender, happy smile, a smile she thought was hers alone.

  “. . . the future of the Saints, then, is in threads!” Clearly thinking the smile was meant for him and his clever phrase, Heber Goodhouse topped up her cup; but as she became aware of him once more, the smile faded: She had been rude to him, and she needed his help. With a pang of guilt just slightly outweighed by cunning, she pretended interest: “How many children have you?”

  He answered with pride. “Three sons. Ephraim, Brigham, and Heber the younger. And there are four daughters. They all earn wages under the United Order . . .”

  He didn’t name the girls, and Famke didn’t ask. She didn’t ask what he meant by the Order, either; she was much more interested in a question she had long wanted to pose him: “How many mothers?”

  “One,” he answered calmly, as if he’d been asked this many times before. “Sariah, my wife of seventeen years. We have been very blessed.”

  Seven children out of one woman, Famke thought, looking down at her own squeezed-in waist. What must the poor thing look like?

  “In any event”—Heber was returning to the matter more immediately at hand—“we will have to arrange for your passage.” He gave a delicate cough, and Famke took advantage of it to vent a rougher one herself. “Ursula, I know you have worked for Mr. Skatkammer only a short time. Do you have the means to pay for your tickets? I am afraid that they can be quite expensive, and though we try to help as many as we can, our funds are—”

  “I have almost four Kroner,” she said bluntly. “How much do I need?”

  Heber sighed. He looked at his own hands, soft and pink as a pair of marzipan pigs. “I am afraid,” he said again, “it is one hundred and twenty crowns just to cross the ocean in steerage—with food and clean water extra—and you will need a hundred and forty-five crowns more for the rails. The train,” he added, in case she hadn’t understood.

  Famke echoed his sigh. “That is a lot.”

  “Yes.”

  There seemed to be nothing more for either of them to say. They retreated to their own thoughts.

  Heber took off his glasses and polished them, mentally running through the mission budget. In their eagerness to return home, he and Erastus Mortensen had already promised aid to half the Danes they’d won over, and the missionary in Sweden (a most unpleasant country) had offered even more. The Scandinavian share of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund was exhausted. And yet—he looked at the girl again, sitting with heavy eyelids downcast and hands on her bundle—slight as their acquaintance was, he felt certain that this particular convert was worth extra trouble. Perhaps there was one already on his list who was less devoted, less worthy?

  The clock on the mantel ticked. It was time to make a decision.

  Famke decided first. She drew herself up, untied her bundle, and took something out. She clutched the object hard in her fist before laying it on the table. “So—I have this.”

  Something small and shiny sat between them, blinding in a ray of light. After a moment of surprise, Heber picked i
t up. It was of good weight, probably real silver, and from the design he guessed it was antique. It bore a hallmark on the bottom—not one he recognized, but a clear sign of quality. He barely glanced at the design on the top, which was not fit to be examined in mixed company. He had the impression of three women, all naked, two of them standing with their rumps to the viewer. The third one, in the middle—no, no, he wouldn’t look now. The women’s arms were twined about each other . . . He set the thing down and off to the side.

  “What is it?” he stalled. “A—an unusual object, to be sure—”

  The girl burst into tears. “It is a tinderbox.”

  Heber passed her his handkerchief. His eyes grew large and round as teacups: A silver tinderbox. In his mind he was already wording a tactful letter to Herr Skatkammer, a plea for leniency—though of course he couldn’t expect the man to take the girl back. What was Heber to do now?

  “Ursula—,” he began.

  “Famke,” she interrupted through her tears. “People call me Famke. Ursula is only for religion—for Catholics.”

  “Famke,” he repeated, finding pleasure in the odd sound of the word. “Famke, you must tell me what you have done. Whatever you say, I shall not condemn you. I will try to help.”

  Famke raised her head, startled. Could he have guessed about Albert and her fall from virtue? Would he really make her say the words—and would Mormons, these people who called themselves Saints, really accept a girl who had done the things she’d done, after she’d done them so gladly? Of course, she reminded herself, she had never done them for money—and with that thought came a sudden revelation.

  “You think I have stolen this,” she accused him.

  He looked at her gently, so gently that the wires of his beard released their crumbs, which fell like snow upon the table. “My dear,” he said, “haven’t you? Come, you must confess so that I can help you. Perhaps we can return it before anyone notices.”

  Famke blew her nose violently. She spoke in Danish. “Herr Skatkammer doesn’t collect tinderboxes. He likes big things—this isn’t his.”

  “Then how did it come to your hand?” he asked, also in her language.

  She knew it would be a mistake to say that a man, any man, had given it to her. She thought quickly and started with the truth. “I am an orphan,” she said. “I was found on the steps of the convent wrapped in a fine wool blanket.” The mere act of speaking gave her confidence, so she elaborated: “They also found this little box inside my diaper, and inside the box a slip of paper with a word, Familjeflicka—‘girl of good family.’ The nuns told me my mother must have been the daughter of some good home who was forced to abandon me but did the best she could to give me a future. Mæka—America—is my future. This is enough to get me there, isn’t it?”

  As she told her story, Famke almost came to believe it herself. And the passion with which she put the amazing events together almost convinced Heber Goodhouse.

  “Even half of this box is worth far more than a single ticket in steerage—,” he began.

  “Then lend me the money,” she said quickly, “and keep this as security, and let me buy it back from you when I have a position again. I will take the cheapest ticket.” She knew of this kind of bargaining from listening at Herr Skatkammer’s door, and she didn’t want Heber to ask her to pay for another Mormon’s passage with the surplus. “Please. It is all I have from my mother.”

  Heber picked up the box again and hefted it in his hand. He asked, “Which orphanage did you come from?”

  Chapter 11

  I go out on the poop-deck for air and surveying the [Mormon] emigrants on the deck below . . . Nobody is in ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping . . .

  CHARLES DICKENS,

  THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

  Famke spent that night in the attic at Mormon headquarters with some other new Saints waiting for passage. She didn’t want to talk to anyone else, so she lay down on a hard pallet and used her bundle for a pillow. But sleep was impossible. The women lay elbow to elbow—girls, most of them, from villages and farms all over Denmark and Sweden—and they were too excited to be still. Their clothes rustled ceaselessly and their whispers blew around the room.

  “It’s a fairy tale,” she heard one of them say.

  “An adventure, more like. A chance. I’ve been stuck away in Gilleleje, where everything smells like fish . . .”

  “Nej, it is a fairy tale. We are not wealthy, but we’re traveling. We will find husbands. We will have houses of our very own!”

  A third voice, older, joined the conversation. “And for this we must thank the Lord, who revealed himself to a Mormon on a farm—just like the kind we are all leaving. Thank the Lord.”

  The girls were silent a moment, then: “Fanden, I’m not going to be stuck on a farm again. I’m going to live in a city . . .”

  The voices whispered far into the night, until at last Famke drifted away—willing herself to dream of savages, mountains, canvas, paint.

  Meanwhile, Heber Goodhouse had written two notes: one to the sisters of the Immaculate Heart, one to Herr Skatkammer. He sent his notes by the last post, asking for a speedy reply.

  He, too, found sleep elusive that night. If he were another sort of man, he might have sat down with a bottle of wine or brandy and a good cigar; but he was Mormon. Another Saint might have taken up the pen again and written to a wife; but Goodhouse had in mind that he was sailing in a few days, and he’d reach Utah before his letter would. So instead, in his room just under the attic, he paced up and down and listened to the angelic voices overhead. He could not discern Ursula’s—Famke’s—among them, but knowing it was a note amid the chorus renewed his sense of purpose. There would be some solution.

  The morning brought good news for him and his new charge. Herr Skatkammer did not own any tinderboxes, not of silver or any other metal. He did not consider them modern, attractive, or practical; he preferred safety matches and the spring-lid boxes made for them in France. However, he was surprised by the new maidservant’s defection and noted that, as she had served him less than a year, she could hardly expect any wages. He added in a postscript that he didn’t think Erastus Mortensen’s father would have approved of a son who ran around converting other people’s servants under the masters’ very noses. On the outside of the envelope he scribbled a last question: “How many wives do you have, Mr. Goodhouse?” But since this wasn’t part of the letter proper, Heber didn’t feel called upon to reply.

  The note from the Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart was somewhat cooler in tone. She reassured Herr Goodhouse, who was kind enough to inquire about one of the orphans her convent had raised, that Ursula Marie, called Famke, had indeed been discovered in a blanket of unusually fine quality. As to the diaper, she could not recall what it had been made of; likewise, she could not swear there had been a tinderbox inside it. Heber’s heart sank a bit at this last, but then it lifted when he read that as far as the convent was aware (the words were underlined) Famke’s only previous place of employment had been a goose and pig farm in Dragør, where her employer would certainly not have been wealthy enough to possess a silver tinderbox. Famke was a girl of good intentions, and though it was disappointing to find she was leaving the Catholic Church, Mother Superior was glad to know she was still following the Lord in some fashion. The convent sent greetings and best wishes to Famke on her departure for America, where it was to be hoped the clear air would do her some good.

  The letter was signed, “Mother Birgit of the Immaculate Heart.”

  So when the 317 newest Sidste Dages Hellige (who had learned just enough English by now to call themselves Latter-Day Saints) swarmed aboard that first ship with their meager belongings and high hopes, Famke was among them. This vessel, the Agnete, was Danish but did not belong to Herr Skatkammer, a fact for which Famke was deeply grateful.

  Nonetheless, she scann
ed the mob of sailors anxiously. Were there any aboard from the days in Nyhavn? If one of them were to identify her now, she would be lost. The men who had grabbed at her skirts as she passed in the stairway, who had listened to her nighttime tumbles with Albert—who had seen her naked on the day of his departure, even if it was only on canvas—these men could ruin her irrevocably.

  “Where are the sleeping quarters?” she asked Heber, and, pretending seasickness, she went immediately belowdeck. Thus she missed the chance to bid her native land good-bye, to watch the spires of Copenhagen dwindle into the sky as the steamship chugged northward.

  It took three days for the sleek-prowed Agnete to round Denmark’s islands and graze the tip of Jutland, that finger cropping up from the European continent, then cross the open sea and snake down the English coast to Liverpool. On the first day, Famke cut off the end of her yellow shawl and made a pocket for her most precious possessions, so she might keep them tied under her skirt every perilous moment of the voyage. The rest of the time, she lay on a hard wooden bunk and listened to the women above and below and around her vomiting into the sand that covered the floor. She wasn’t sick herself—at least, not from the sea—and yet she wasn’t about to go up on deck into the clean air, among the seagulls and the sailors who might spoil her plans.

  During those three days she didn’t give a single thought to Heber Goodhouse or his precious Profit City. She thought only of Albert and of Nimue. When Birgit’s face pushed into her mind—for Goodhouse had shown her the letter, thinking it would make her happy to receive this farewell from the women who had raised her—she pushed it out again just as firmly. She would not think of what she was leaving behind; she was exchanging an old world for a new one. Of course, she might write when she found Albert . . .

  There was a night’s pause in Liverpool, where the Saints filed off the Agnete and onto the Olivia. As she started down the jumpy gangway, Famke found Goodhouse at her elbow, asking how she felt now.