by Ann Moore
“Thank you,” Grace said weakly.
“’Tis my understanding they were hard set on putting her away,” Sister Joseph continued. “But the doctor come home from university and convinced them to let him bring her out here. He’d been wanting to come for some time, he told me, but they’d been against it though he was the third son and no reason to stay on the family land. They agreed and he receives an annuity, though to his credit, he keeps Miss Abigail in comfort and spends the rest building hospitals and clinics and the like.”
Grace stared, incredulous.
“People do talk.” Sister Joseph tipped her head discreetly toward a nurse at the end of the ward. “Though Lord knows I stay well clear of it.”
“Aye,” Grace agreed dryly. “I can see I’m to get no information out of you.”
“Ah, go on with you.” Sister Joseph swatted the young woman’s knee playfully. “You probably think I’m daft sending you up into all that, but really it’s all past and there’s nothing for it. Miss Abigail stays to her rooms, Mister Litton stays to the stable, I’ve no doubt you can handle Hopkins and the girl, and Doctor Wakefield is a fine man, deserving of a little creature comfort for all the good he does.” She paused. “And, of course, it doesn’t bear thinking—you living on your own in this town; crowded, ’tis, and full of vice. I know plenty of folk struggling hard despite it being the City of Gold, and I’ll sleep better at night knowing you and the wee ones are well out of it.”
Grace leaned forward and embraced her new friend, holding the woman tightly and kissing her soft wrinkled cheek before letting her go.
“I’ll not forget your kindness to us.”
“Well, and aren’t we both County Cork girls? No sense coming all this way only to scrape and suffer all over again. I’m not so long out of the place I don’t know what it was you left behind. I survived it, as well,” Sister Joseph added soberly. “There aren’t many of us as did.”
A lump rose in Grace’s throat and she could only nod, not trusting herself to speak. The nun understood and took the young woman’s hand, patting it reassuringly.
“You get yourself settled in up there, agra, and welcome to it, grim folk and all. But bring me a wee dish of that colcannon you promised the doctor, will you, now? Oh, I can almost taste it.” Sister Joseph cast her eyes toward Heaven with the thought of such pleasure.
“And how would you know about that?” Grace laughed. “I’ve only just told him!”
“For overseeing the place, I’m second only to God, though I’ll deny I ever said such a blasphemous thing.” Her eyes twinkled. “Off to bed with you, now, and remember your prayers, for ’tis no city kind to widows and babies, and you’ve landed on your feet, you have.”
Grace looked down at Mary Kate and brushed the hair off the girl’s forehead. “Aye,” she whispered. “Well I know it.”
After drawing the blankets more securely around her children, Grace settled herself on the floor next to Jack, her back against the trunk that held their belongings. She pulled her cloak up over her legs, then rested her head on a folded shawl and closed her eyes.
She must have slept then because, upon awakening, she still clung to the fragments of a dream: She was down on the beach, the wind in her hair, with Jack riding on one hip and Mary Kate walking out front; a ship appeared and drew closer, closer, until a man dove overboard, cutting cleanly into the water. He swam steadily, this man, with sure strokes, until at last he reached the shallow water, whereupon he stood and waded toward shore, seawater streaming from his hair. “Grace!” he called. “Gracelin!” He waved one arm high in the air, and she could have wept because there he was, striding toward her, larger than life itself, and so real she could hear the echo of his voice. She closed her eyes and willed the dream to continue, moved the two people closer together, placed them in the arms of each other, listened to them ask for forgiveness—the one for having died, the other for … for what? She opened her eyes. For having married the wrong man in the very beginning—but it had given her Mary Kathleen; for having not gone to Morgan in prison—but she had been heavy with his child; for having left that child behind in Ireland—but the boy was with her now, and he’d been saved from blindness. And yet, her heart cried out to be forgiven—for what, for what?
She gazed at the flickering candlelight, at the shadows dancing on the wall, here on the far side of America. “Ah,” she breathed aloud. Because she was going to give her heart to another—one who lived, who was flesh and blood. Because she was about to let go of the dream, the beautiful dream, though she could imagine living alone in a little cabin by the sea, keeping warm with that dream all the rest of her days.
“Forgive me,” Grace whispered to the corners of the ceiling. “I’ve the children to think of—my girl, our boy. Forgive me, love.” She tasted the salt of her tears. “’Tis time we got on with our lives.”
Four
Sean O’Malley was nearing the end of his watch. Knowing he’d be unable to sleep, he’d volunteered to take the first half of the night; when it was time to wake up Danny Young for the second half, Sean would be ready to go. He sat against a small boulder in the middle of the desert, pistol in his lap, rifle by his side, guarding his brothers and the gold they were taking back to Utah. Tired, he tipped his head back and peered into the clear black sky, watching the heavens shift above and wondering if he was about to free his soul or damn himself for all eternity.
It was not too late: He could simply go to sleep after his watch, wake up in the morning, and return with the others to Deseret. Marcy would be waiting for him there. But so would Josette. Would he be able to take the girl as his second wife in accordance with the prophet’s dictates? Was Celestial Marriage really what God wanted for his people? When Brigham Young had announced that this was God’s direct command to his people, Sean, like so many others, had wrestled deeply with it. And even though he knew his mind was made up, he still wrestled, for he had yet to act upon his decision.
He tore his heavy eyes away from the night sky and looked around at the splayed bodies of his slumbering brothers—all married men, like himself, all Saints of the finest and most committed standing. These men were not plagued by doubt; some of them had already been sealed to three and even four women. Brigham Young had led the way, boasting of his many wives in an address to the territorial legislature and predicting that soon the wisdom of Celestial Marriage would be proclaimed by intelligent people the world over. Joseph Smith—the man who recorded God’s will in the Doctrine and Covenants—had taken more than thirty wives, though most in secret, believing that the hearts of his followers were not yet ready for such a challenging revelation.
By all accounts given to Sean, Smith had been a strong and charismatic leader who, despite seventeen years of persecution and calamity, had managed to grow his church to over fifteen thousand souls. The city of Nauvoo, Illinois, which Smith had established for his community, was second only to Chicago in size, though it had become a different kind of city by the time Sean arrived under cover of night, wanted for murder in New York and running from the law. Most of the Saints had already begun their trek to the Great Basin, where Brigham Young was building his Kingdom in the Wilderness, and the atmosphere was full of excitement and urgency. Wagonloads of Mormon families daily crossed the Mississippi in order to join the stream of pioneers going west to Utah, to Oregon, to California. The people of the One True Faith would have stayed in Illinois, and gladly, Sean realized, had Smith won his 1844 bid for presidency of the United States; he already had control of the Nauvoo Legion, a well-armed and highly disciplined militia nearly half the size of the entire American army. With his victory, Mormonism might well have become the national religion, though what that would have meant in the end, Sean could only speculate.
Certainly, the Saints were the hardest-working people he’d ever met. Nauvoo, built across a limestone flat and malarial swamp land on the banks of the muddy Mississippi River, was a testament to that. And though the church splintered u
pon the assassination of Smith—jailed for destruction of property and treason—it did not crumble. News of Smith’s death had caused a scramble for control of the church, and those who’d become disillusioned by what were then rumors of plural marriage had their pick of newly emerged leaders. Emma Smith, Joseph’s original wife, and their eleven-year-old son, Joseph Smith, Jr., were among the seven hundred who’d become “Strangites,” followers of James Jesse Strang. Strang claimed many similarities to Joseph Smith: He, too, had been anointed leader of the church by the angel Moroni and had also discovered a series of pages—though brass, not gold—which he claimed were supplemental to the Book of Mormon. Strang’s followers had established a colony on Beaver Island, off the northwest coast of Michigan’s lower pennisula, where they could be guided by their prophet. According to the Saints Sean knew, Strang was nothing more than a power-mad charlatan, and they were well rid of him. Those with any sense at all had stayed the course with a steady hand and followed the Lion, Brigham Young, out to Utah Territory.
Those with any sense. Sean sighed and shifted his weight, massaging the leg that always ached, the shoulder and arm that were never completely without pain. He had never known Joseph Smith, who died at the hands of the Illinois militia and became an instant martyr for his people, but he was familiar with the man’s history, as was every good Saint. Thanks to past friends at the New York City paper, Sean probably knew more than most about Smith’s murky past—his dealings in the occult, the professed divination of buried treasure through crystal-ball gazing and seer stones, his clandestine affairs with young girls, and the arrests for fraud—but this had simply made him more fascinating. Wasn’t the Old Testament awash with greatly flawed men whom God still clearly loved and blessed, and couldn’t Joseph Smith be a modern-day version of such? At the time, Sean had answered with a resounding “yes”; now he simply did not know.
The occasional flicker of campfire light illuminated the countenances of the men whose faith was far greater than his: Danny Young, Jedidiah Watts, Rulon Frink, Tom LaBaron. These men would return to Utah with their hard-won gold, thereby laying up in Heaven a far greater treasure, would return to wives and take other wives as God decreed through the prophet, never doubting, simply doing as they were directed because they believed what they were told—that they were God’s own special people, peculiar unto Him. But Sean was not. Peculiar, perhaps, because of his spiritual blindness, his lack of wisdom and understanding, but certainly not special.
In Nauvoo, Sean had heard the fearsome tales of persecution and massacre that had driven the Saints out of Missouri and into Illinois. Even there, despite their industry, they had been mistrusted and disliked for their clannishness and superior attitude, and—after Joseph’s death—the governor had warned that he could no longer offer them protection against mob violence. Fed up with the government at large, Brigham Young had decided to lead his followers into the wilderness, to the seemingly inhospitable desert land of the Great Basin, where they would no longer be subject to the laws of corrupt men. The end of the Mexican-American War had changed all that, when Utah became a territory under the dictates of the United States government. Though Brigham Young was then unable to establish a strictly Mormon country with himself as president and prophet, he continued to thwart any kind of government regulation. Once gold was discovered in California, however, the days of private community were over; nearly every week saw wagon trains passing through on their way to more earthly riches. Sean had watched with grudging admiration as Brigham Young turned a calamity into prosperity by charging exorbitant rates for food and supplies, quickly refilling Deseret’s coffers. With new Saints arriving in a steady stream from the East—even from England and France, where converts were made daily—money was needed to build houses, establish farmland, and purchase animals, and this was a way to get it. Kingdom building was hard work, but the Saints had set themselves to the task with signature industry and optimism.
This was the Utah Territory Sean had ridden into after a grueling overland journey by wagon train. Mister Osgoode, his employer in New York and the man for whom Sean had risked life and limb in securing his release from jail, had been given one of the nicer homes in the community; here, Sean and Osgoode’s daughter Marcy were quickly ensconced as man and wife. Because the man Sean was accused of killing had been shot during a mob riot that had threatened the lives of Osgoode and several other Mormons, Sean was greeted with warm enthusiasm and treated as a kind of celebrity. The leaders of the community had lost no time in pulling him into their midst in order to make use of his brilliant mind, and Sean had been plunged immediately into the exciting work of laying out and running a colony. His ability to not only grasp a concept but implement it, to organize the accounting and establish a system of order, made him prized by Brigham Young and the upper echelon—the Quorum of Twelve. They could not praise him enough, and he worked his hardest for them, day in and day out, not realizing how quickly time was slipping by.
In those free moments when his thoughts were his own, Sean had convinced himself that his sister Grace either had remained in New York City with the Ogues or was on her way to Utah. He’d written to tell her of his marriage to Marcy and of his meaningful work and to urge her to bring the children out; these letters he’d handed himself to Porter Rockwell, who’d ridden the mail from Utah to Missouri, where they had a mail contract with the U.S. postmaster. The absence of a reply had not worried him; mail notoriously went awry in these days of Indian attacks, bandit robberies, barge sinkings, and warehouse fires; he simply wrote again and trusted that not only would one of his letters get through to her, but one from her would surely find him.
Nearly an entire year had passed before he’d learned the truth from a group of Saints recently quit of New York. Had he not heard of the terrible fires that burned half the city that last summer? they’d asked him after he inquired of them. The Harp and Hound was one of the first to go. Yes, they’d been sure. An Irish saloon, and everyone had perished. Not everyone, a single man had corrected, for he believed the owner and his wife had escaped the flames, but not a serving girl who lived with them nor anyone else. Some in this group were Irish—Sean had known the words were true the moment he’d heard them spoken.
He could remember even now the terrible sinking feeling that had come upon him, could remember stumbling back to the house and collapsing on the stair, head in hands, willing the world to right itself and now. Marcy had tried to console him, then had let him alone. Mister Osgoode, several bishops, many of his friends, had all attempted to relieve his grief; Brigham Young himself had tried to persuade Sean to have Grace and Mary Kate baptized by proxy so that they could enjoy the fruits of their brother’s labors in the next life. Sean had simply shaken his head, not wanting to explain that Grace and her daughter had been baptized at their births, as had he, and were most certainly already with their beloved Lord and savior. He did not want to enter into a long discussion of Joseph Smith and the rose-colored glasses, the gold plates that were never seen again, the subsequent and ongoing revelations that appeared to direct a man more clearly than he could ever direct himself. He had not wanted to hear any of it, and Brigham Young had quietly excused himself, leaving Sean alone with his grief. As he stood, looking out the window at his prophet’s retreat, Sean had felt a sharp puncture in the bottom of what he thought must surely be his soul, and then the slow, cold trickle of religion slipping away, one tiny grain at a time. Even now, sitting under the dark bountiful heavens, he could trace it to that exact moment.
In the months that had followed, Sean had felt as though he were walking in his sleep. All desire left him, and Marcy—who wanted nothing more than to start their family—was bitterly disappointed when he rolled away from her at night and feigned sleep. It had been during this time that Brigham Young announced God’s intention for all men to practice Celestial Marriage; Marcy’s father had immediately taken two wives and moved them into another house, with rooms for each wife and for those to come, alo
ng with prospective children. Other men quickly followed suit, and Sean felt his dream state fall away, leaving him with brittle clarity. The community he’d loved and worked so hard to build now seemed false and alien to him; to realize he’d left his sister and Mary Kathleen behind for this, had sacrificed them for this, was more than he could bear, and he began to contemplate the end of his own life.
Needing to light a fire again in their faithful servant, Brigham Young had informed Sean that God had chosen a second wife for him; she was Josette Beauchamp, the fourteen-year-old daughter of French immigrants who had come to the faith in their own country and then made the arduous journey, first to America, and then to Utah. God had decreed it and her family was honored, the prophet informed him; he must do his duty, for each man needed at least three wives in order to reach eternity. Sean had balked. Josette was a child, he’d argued, and he already had a wife. But Marcy had sided against him—hadn’t Sean told her the story of Grace’s own arranged marriage at a young age? Girls often married young, and it was a blessing as they were able to help the first wife with chores and could bear babies more easily. Sean had put his hands over his ears, not wanting to hear another word.