by Diane Noble
Before either Brigham or Gabe could answer, Hyrum hobbled up to stand beside his bride. “I want us to be married right here,” Hyrum said, “right now.”
Sarah was openly sobbing now. “Please, I can’t.” She looked up at Gabe. “Sister Bronwyn said—”
“What Sister Bronwyn told you doesn’t matter,” Brother Hyrum said.
Brigham gestured expansively. “We’ve had celestial marriages in homes, in the outdoors, in wagons. The place doesn’t matter, for this is God’s world.” His arms took in the sweep of prairie, now shining silver beneath the starlit sky. “And this couldn’t be a better time or place.”
He gave Sarah a proud and gentle smile. “Dear girl,” he said, “it is God’s will for you. Do you dare to question what glories he has in store for you through this blessed union? That will last through all time and eternity?” He softened his voice. “Dear one, unimaginable blessings await you the moment you say these holy vows and pledge your troth to this godly, honorable man.
“You may be frightened now, but if you will let go of your fears, forget the lies told you by those who are instruments of the devil himself, you will be elevated to the highest heaven. Your children and grandchildren will call you blessed. You will be honored throughout eternity.”
“I don’t want to question the glories to come. I believe them with all my heart,” she whispered. “But must I really say them now? Tonight? Can they not wait?”
The old apostle took both her hands in his. “Dearest, it is important that you agree. It is God’s plan. And should you disagree, you will not be called into heaven’s highest realm when your time comes.”
She bit her bottom lip. “But surely someone else mi—”
“Let us not tarry,” Brigham said. “The marriage meant to be fulfilled this morning will happen now. We are God’s chosen people, and you, dear Sarah, are chosen for the great honor of being joined in holy matrimony to this good man. Dare I say, one of the best among all Saints.”
Hyrum grew bright as he looked down at his bride. But Sarah didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she kept her eyes on Brigham. “I don’t care about the secret name,” Sarah said to him. “I thought I did, but I don’t. Not really.” She backed away from the group, now looking wildly around as if for Coal . . . or anyone who might help her. Finally, she fixed her gaze on Gabe, her eyes watery and pleading. “Tell them,” she said. “Tell them I don’t want to do this. Tell them that surely God doesn’t require it. Tell them that I should be able to say, yes, I want to or, no, I don’t. Tell them. Maybe they’ll listen to you. Brother Brigham always listens to you. Can’t you help me?” When Gabe didn’t answer, her lips trembling, she said, “Do you not have any compassion in your heart for me? Please, help me.”
“Many brides are nervous at first, my dear.” Brigham said. He gave Hyrum a nod, and the old man stooped to whisper into his young bride’s ear.
“My secret name?” she said, looking at the apostle. “Is that what you just said? I couldn’t quite hear you. Is it—?”
He put a knobby arthritic finger over her lips to shush her from speaking it aloud, whispered into her ear again, and then pulled out a kerchief and dabbed at her tears. “The name that I’ll use to call you into heaven,” he said, smiling. He touched her cheek gently, and then reached for her hand and kissed her fingertips. “You’ll soon see that this life is what God intended all along. You’ll be happy.” He laughed lightly. “As my youngest wife, you’ll be a pet among the others. It will be like living in a family with more loving sisters and even mothers than you can imagine.”
She gave up a shuddering sigh. “But it’s forever,” she said. “That’s what scares me.”
“It is indeed,” Brigham said. “That’s the wonder and the glory that God has in store for you.”
She smoothed her torn, muddy skirt, and still weeping, stared at Gabe expectantly.
Gabe swallowed hard. God’s will? Could this truly be God’s will?
Brigham was God’s representative on earth. Polygamy represented the full restoration of the only true church, complete with the restoration of the Old Testament patriarchs’ marriage to multiple wives. It might be hard to understand, but God’s ways, he was learning, weren’t always easy to understand.
This girl’s marriage was from God. It had to be.
Minutes later the ceremony was over. With his arms wrapped around Sarah, who sat sidesaddle in front of him, Hyrum led the group of men away from the empty wagon.
For a long moment, Gabe watched their lanterns bounce across the prairie. Shouts of congratulations and the laughter of celebration carried on the wind back to where he stood. He shuddered when he thought of what awaited this innocent girl tonight. Gradually the voices faded, and the pinpoints of lights disappeared as if swallowed by the darkness.
Still holding the lantern, he retraced his earlier steps looking for evidence of Coal’s trail. He found none.
Finally, he wrote a note, telling his son what had transpired; and taking a small chest from the back of the wagon, tucked it inside and left it near where Coal had parked the wagon so the boy could find it, should he return. His heart heavy, he hitched the horse to the wagon and started back across the prairie.
He tried not to think about the horse without a rider that he’d spotted just as dusk fell. But the image kept returning to his mind. Could it have been Coal’s? And did the Dakota have anything to do with his disappearance? Something must have happened to keep him from returning for Sarah.
Even as he popped the whip over the back of the horse, his thoughts remained with Coal, the boy who had won his heart from the first time they spoke—atop the mast on the clipper ship before it left the Liverpool harbor.
He blinked rapidly and looked up at starlit sky. Images of Mary Rose and Bronwyn whirled in his mind. How could he return home to them without the son they loved?
Chapter Seven
That night, long after the others were asleep, Bronwyn stared at the ceiling in the women’s tent-cabin, which she shared with Mary Rose, Cordelia, and Enid. She could hear the soft sighs of the children sleeping in the adjoining room. When Gabe and some of the other men put up the temporary structures, made of oiled canvas and rough-hewn planks of wood, the children had been thrilled to have their own quarters. The twins, now nearing ten, to their delight, had been put in charge of the younger ones— Bronwyn’s Little Grace, now five; and Joey, her toddler fathered by Gabe; and Mary Rose and Gabe’s toddler, Spence.
The men’s tent-cabin was usually occupied by Gabe and Coal. But it remained empty this night, with Coal missing and Gabe having ridden off without telling anyone where he was headed. Enid was gone too, and Bronwyn winced as she wondered if they were together.
She fluffed her pillow, and closed her eyes. But the images of the day kept her awake—and the worry over Coal.
She could not bear to think of what any of them would do without him, the boy so quickly growing into manhood with his lopsided grin, the fuzz on his jaw he couldn’t wait to shave, the gangly legs and feet too big for the rest of him.
“You still awake?” Cordelia whispered from the cot next to Bronwyn.
“I’m worried about Coal.”
“God’s got him in His great big hands.”
“I wish I could believe that.” She felt tears trickle from the corners of her eyes and into her hair. “I shouldn’t have involved him.”
“Once he found out about the plan there was no stopping him. Besides, you both were doing it for Mary Rose.”
“Mary Rose gave her permission for Gabe and Enid to marry. I wasn’t doing it for her.”
“Quit talking about me behind my back,” Mary Rose whispered from her cot. “I gave my permission, but that didn’t mean I was happy about it.”
“You told me the night we crossed the Mississippi you’d done it to save me from falling in love with Gabe.”
“Did it?” A rustling came from the direction of Mary Rose’s cot as she shifted beneath her bedclot
hes.
Tears came to Bronwyn’s eyes as she thought about him, about how no matter how hard she tried, he filled her thoughts.
“Gabe will always love Mary Rose,” Cordelia said gently before Bronwyn could answer. “He may not realize it right now, caught up as he is in this celestial marriage business. He’s like a little boy at the candy counter at a mercantile. They all are. The teaching that the more wives a man has, the higher his place in heaven . . . ?” She cackled. “Folderol. Made-up rules supposedly from God almighty to bed as many women as a man could want in a lifetime. That’s all it is. Folderol.”
“The prophet says it’s to take care of our widows and older orphaned girls, the poor who have no one else to bring them into a marriage covenant,” Bronwyn said.
“How many proposals of marriage do you suppose I’ve had?” Cordelia laughed again. “Not counting my only true love, the earl. Am I not a needy widow?”
Bronwyn knew she was right. She suspected that Mary Rose did too, though neither said.
After a moment, Mary Rose turned to Bronwyn. “Don’t take all the blame. No matter what we thought about Gabe and Enid’s union, we thought we could save Sarah.”
Cordelia cleared her throat. “By the way, where is Enid?”
“She should be finished out at Nellie Nesbitt’s,” Bronwyn said. “Either things were worse than first thought or she was needed somewhere else.” She kept her suspicions about Gabe and Enid to herself.
“She’s good that way,” Mary Rose said. “Helping others, I mean. No matter what time of night or day, or whatever she’d rather do—she goes beyond what you might think is necessary to help those in need, animals or people.”
“She has a healing touch,” Cordelia agreed. “No doubt about it.”
“But do we want her as a sister wife?” Bronwyn said, mostly to herself. “She wants to be first in the eyes of the community, first in all our lives. She feels entitled.”
The women fell quiet for a moment, and then Mary Rose said, “She saved my life, you know.”
“The cayenne potion,” Cordelia said. “I thought so.”
“No one else was here when she forced me to drink it. I thought it would kill me.” She laughed. “Even Enid said . . .”—she imitated Enid’s Nova Scotian-Scottish brogue—“ ‘This will either kill you or save you so drink up and let’s see what happens.’ ” She laughed again. “For the first time since she arrived in Nauvoo, I could have hugged her.”
Cordelia laughed. “She sneezed all afternoon. That’s how I knew she’d given you her potion.” Her blankets rustled and her cot squeaked as she turned toward Bronwyn. “We’re all in this together. We’ll protect you, just as you would, and probably will have to, protect us.”
“That’s what Gabe said—just after he told me about the prophet’s plans to set me on a straight and narrow path. He said he’d protect me as best he can.” Gabe had met her at the cookfire earlier, and while he ate the meal she’d kept warm for him, he’d told her that when he returned, Coal would have to work as a cow hand and that she would no longer be welcome to teach the children. She related all he’d said to Mary Rose and Cordelia. The room fell quiet as they pondered this news.
“Gabe wasn’t even there that night,” Cordelia said.
“What night?” Bronwyn said.
“The night I found out you could shoot.”
“The night you saved my grandfather’s life, and mine,” Mary Rose added. “The night the ruffians burned the barn and likely would have put us inside to burn with it, if they could have.”
“The point is,” Cordelia said, “I was shooting from inside the house downstairs. Didn’t have a clear shot. We’d have been goners if it hadn’t been for you.”
Bronwyn couldn’t help smiling as she remembered the night. It was the latter part she couldn’t bear. “I was aiming over their heads. Just wanted to scare them off.” Now she knew she should have aimed lower.
“No matter. You’re more than a pretty face,” Cordelia said. “Don’t ever forget it.”
But Bronwyn barely heard her. Her mind couldn’t help but turn to what happened later that night. After the ruffians had gone. When Griffin was killed, heroically protecting Brother Joseph.
That night for the first time Gabe had gathered her into his arms, and they had clung to each other in their mutual grief.
She didn’t know then the heartache that lay ahead.
And now she didn’t know what new grief might come.
Chapter Eight
Bad things happened on nights when the moon spilled its tears on the earth.
That’s what the village crone in Wales told four-year-old Bronwyn the night her mother died. Decades of moons had come and gone since then, but Bronwyn never forgot the old woman’s words. Or the squeeze of her heart when she remembered her loss and wondered at the unfairness of heaven’s tipped bowl of tears.
Such a sliver of moon hung in this night’s sky, causing a tremor to travel up Bronwyn’s spine as she urged her mare up an incline. There she halted the horse and looked out over the sweeping landscape, deep gray in the pale moonlight. A wind from the west kicked up and she felt it lift her hair from the back of her neck. Ordinarily, it would refresh her; now, it merely brought on another chill.
When sleep did not come to her, she slipped from her bed and headed silently to the corral. She didn’t bother to saddle her horse, but as was her preference years ago in Wales, she mounted bareback and rode away from Winter Quarters.
Her heart was troubled, and she wondered if she would ever again find peace. After what happened to Sarah, the growing urge to flee with her family away from this community beat as strong in her mind as her heart did within her chest.
Had Mary Rose not fallen ill, they might have escaped. But it seemed with each day that passed, they grew more entangled with the hierarchy of the Saints, the beliefs that she was unsure of, and the actions of the leaders, the prophets.
The horse whinnied and danced sideways. Bronwyn stared up at the night sky.
If there was ever a time to leave, it was now. Her heart beat faster as she considered the thought. They would need to leave soon, before winter set in. If they could make it to the Oregon Trail and fall in with other wagon companies, no matter which direction they were headed, the family would have the protection of others. Their food supplies weren’t adequate for a journey across the continent, but she could outshoot any man and if need be, she could pull down a buffalo.
Despite her dire thoughts, she almost chuckled. A buffalo? Her? What would she do with it after she shot it?
It was just a dream anyway. Mary Rose remained on the precipice of danger, and the journey from Nauvoo had weakened Cordelia’s constitution. She put on a blustery front, but heading west with a wagon full of women and children would be the last thing that her aging body could handle.
And what about Coal? What if he returned to find his family gone?
She looked up at the sky again, thinking about England, Wales, and home. Before she fell ill, Mary Rose had shown her the deed to her estate in Salisbury and told of her desire to return.
Then cholera struck, and for days she lingered close to death. She had been one of the fortunate ones; most who fell ill with the dreaded disease died within days.
Besides Mary Rose’s illness and Cordelia’s failing health, another problem of greater magnitude faced them. They were in the middle of a harsh continent, surrounded by those who would block their every effort to escape, even if they had the means. Not only that, if caught, she and Mary Rose would be tried for apostasy and their children taken away from them . . . and then they would be expelled from the community.
Shunned in this life . . . and throughout all eternity.
Without bidding, words and phrases from her childhood came back to her, words her father taught her to say when nightmares filled her head. Or when her longing for her mother’s love became too much to bear:
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who . . . weep
this night . . . give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering . . . shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.
She remembered how he spoke of God’s love and held her close as she wept for her mother.
He said that the old crone had been wrong. The bowl of the moon was not to hold heaven’s sorrows; it was to hold its joys—but you had to believe in the One who would fill your heart with those joys, and to believe in His loving kindness no matter what happened in your life on earth. Believe in the God who loves you, child, he’d said, as if you are the only one in the world to love.
Bronwyn stared up at the moon again and drew in a deep breath. Her father’s words . . . the One who loves you as if you were the only one in the world to love . . . enveloped her as if on the wind that waved the tender grasses of the prairie.
Oh, God! her heart cried out. Are You there? If You are, show Yourself. Come to me. Please, I beg of You. Make Yourself known to me—if You are there.
Only the sounds of the prairie night met her ears, the late summer frog song from the creek, the singing of the tall grass as the breeze passed over its tips, and in the distance the low gurgling of the swift-moving water. God remained silent.
Her world seemed to be unraveling, day by day, leaving only the coarse threads of resentment toward Enid’s lofty attitudes as she chattered on and on about her marriage to Gabe—at least, she had done so until this morning. Beside these were the threads of sorrow and regret over betraying Mary Rose. She hadn’t stayed true to their agreement that she would not share her bed with Gabe. The knowledge that the feelings of attraction to him were as strong now as they’d ever been filled her heart with shame. The memory of their night together taunted her always.
The sound of hooves pounding the dirt road signaled that a rider headed toward the MacKay camp. Moments later, Gabe’s horse climbed the rocky cliff, small stones skittering behind him. The horse, high-spirited and gleaming even against the night sky, nickered and danced sideways.