The Veil

by Diane Noble

  Sophronia clutched Hannah close to her side as they stood at her front door and watched Lucas disappear into the darkness.

  That night Hannah could not sleep; her mind whirled with thoughts of losing Mattie … and now Lucas. Sophronia was family, and she loved her. But Lucas had convinced her that the Saints belonged together. They were all family, a sacred family. No matter what Aunt Sophie said, Hannah could not shake the feeling that they should be lined up at the river with the others.

  Finally, she pulled back her covers and padded to the window. She drew back the lace curtains and peered out. Sighing, she wondered how long it would take to pack Sophronia’s belongings. Maybe if she woke her aunt now and tried once more to convince her, they could still pack their essentials in a farm wagon and meet the others by sunup.

  Hannah was still arguing with herself about waking Sophronia when she noticed a movement at the side of the barn. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds, so she squinted and stepped closer to the glass, rubbed off the moisture with her flannel sleeve, and looked again.

  There it was. A figure as black as midnight, slipping around the building. Silently. So silently.

  Then Hannah spotted another. And another. But they seemed more shadow than reality. She rubbed her eyes, then rubbed the cold window again.

  There was a sudden burst of a flickering light. Then another. Men were lighting torches! They quickly formed a circle around the house.

  Hannah caught her breath and stepped away from the window.

  “Aunt Sophie!” she screamed, running from the room. “Aunt Sophie, wake up! Oh, please, wake up!”

  She ran down the hallway, half-sobbing, half-screaming in fear. “Aunt Sophie, they’re here! The mob is here! They’ve got torches—”

  Her aunt met her in the hallway. “Calm down, child,” she said evenly. “Hush, now. Do you hear me?”

  Hannah stifled a sob and nodded. “What’re we going to do?” she finally whispered. Then she noticed her aunt was carrying a Hawken just like her pa’s.

  “You know how to shoot this?” Sophronia asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “Yes ma’am, I do,” Hannah said quietly. “Where’s the powder and balls?”

  “It’s loaded, honey. You take this one. I’ve got another.”

  Hannah accepted the rifle, noticing how the feel of heavy metal and wood quieted her hands. By the time Sophronia returned, Hannah was breathing normally. She calmly followed her aunt down the stairs.

  The acrid smell of burning tar and wood filled Hannah’s nostrils as they descended. Her eyes stung and began to water. “The house,” she cried. “They’ve already torched it.”

  “No, only the barn,” Sophronia said. “I saw it from my window. Now, stay behind me, child.”

  “I’m here,” she whispered. She reached for her aunt’s free hand. Sophronia squeezed it and held it fast.

  They reached the door, and Sophronia turned. “No matter what happens, I want you to stay behind me.”

  “I can’t hide behind you when it comes time to shoot,” Hannah said.

  “Before we go out there, I need to tell you something.” Her voice was urgent. “Yes ma’am?”

  “First I’m going to find out which one’s the leader, then I’m going to shoot him.” Hannah nodded.

  “I’m counting on the confusion that will follow to give you time to get away.” Her aunt coughed as the smoke from the barn thickened, drifting toward the house. Outside, the taunting yells grew closer.

  “Me? What about you?” Hannah cried.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “As soon as I fire, I want you to run into the woods. Don’t stop, just keep running.”

  “What about the horses? Shouldn’t I get them for us?” Hannah’s voice was a ragged whisper. She coughed and wiped her stinging eyes with her fists.

  “It’s too late for them, child,” Sophronia said gently.

  “Oh no!” Hannah caught her hand to her mouth. “Maybe they’re in the woods. Aunt Sophie! They’ve got to be. Oh, Berry and Foxfire …”

  Sophronia grabbed her hand in urgency. “Don’t think about them, Hannah. Only think about getting away when I shoot. Do you understand?”

  Hannah tried to calm herself. “Yes ma’am.”

  “All right, then, it’s time,” her aunt said and squared her shoulders as she reached for the door handle. “We’ll go out of our own accord,” she muttered to herself, “not be picked off like rabbits after they torch the house.” Then she stepped outside, and Hannah followed, standing to one side and slightly behind her aunt. Hannah knew Sophronia hid the Hawken in the generous folds of her nightdress on the opposite side.

  The air was filled with smoke from the barn, its flames shooting into the night sky, crackling like a thousand rifle reports. The smoke was thicker here than it had been inside the house, and Hannah coughed again, swiping at her nose. With her other hand, she clutched the rifle behind her nightdress.

  The men, still in a circle around the house, gathered closer. Their faces were covered with handkerchief triangles, and she could see only their eyes, dark and mean. Then Hannah noticed that a hedge of dried brush and rags that smelled of pinewood turpentine had been built around the front of the house, between the mob and the wide front porch where she and Sophronia stood.

  “Well, now. What have we here?” called one muffled voice.

  “An old lady Saint and a little girl Saint,” taunted another. “My, my, my! Puny little things, ain’t they?”

  “Where’s your protector?” called a deep, hoarse voice from one side. “I hear tell you most always got some kind of angel here watchin’ over you. Avenging Angel I’ve heard he’s called.” He laughed and spat on the ground. “Ain’t that always the way with angels? They’re never around when you need ‘em most.”

  Sophronia drew herself up tall, her wild curls reflecting the flames of the barn fire. “You back off, now,” she called out. “Shoo, now! Shoo!”

  “Shoo,” mimicked one of the men in a falsetto voice. “Shoo, she says. Like we was some kind of flies. Shoo-fly, boys! Shoo-fly!” He broke into gales of rude laughter. Several others joined him.

  “Just what’re you gonna do if we don’t shoo?” called a tall, thin man in the center of the group. “Call on your God to help you fight us off?”

  “Let’s hear you call him! I wanna hear how you Saints pray to your devil-god,” someone yelled as the men moved closer.

  “Father God!” Sophronia suddenly yelled, stunning the men, who stopped short. “Father God, let your retribution begin.”

  The men looked at each other cautiously. “Ol’ woman’s crazy as a loon,” one of them muttered.

  Sophronia raised her fist high, and Hannah watched her aunt with admiration. “I call upon God to strike down the leader of this mob!” she cried out, shaking her fist at heaven. Her long wild curls shook as she spoke, and her alabaster face glowed with a golden sheen from the fire. She moved her eyes to the mob. “Which of you shall it be?” she shouted. “Which of you should my God strike first?” No one moved.

  “I declare,” she said dramatically. “Your leader must be so busy shaking in his boots he cant walk.”

  Finally, the tall, thin man who’d spoken earlier stepped forward. “I ain’t afraid to see your God answer your prayer,” he taunted, lifting both arms as if in supplication.

  “Well, I have to admit,” Sophronia said almost apologetically, “that sometimes my God needs a little help.”

  The men exchanged glances. “I told you she’s crazy,” muttered someone from the back, and a few others turned to laugh with him.

  At the precise moment their attention was diverted, Sophronia quickly lifted the Hawken to her shoulder and fired. The tall, thin man fell, moaning, to the ground, writhing and grabbing at his knee. Just as Sophronia predicted, there was a moment of confusion.

  “Go now, child!” she hissed at H
annah. “But give me your rifle first.”

  Hannah did as she was told, now understanding that her aunt never intended to let her fire. She was simply holding another loaded firearm for her aunt.

  By the time the men had recovered from their surprise, Hannah had raced across the yard and into the woods. And Sophronia was aiming the second rifle at the man who had mimicked her.

  “Now, first man moves, you’ll find yourself on the ground with your friend there,” she said with a smile. “My God helps those who help themselves, as you can plainly see.”

  The men fell silent and backed away slightly. The man curled on the ground held his knee and moaned again.

  At the same time, there was a commotion from the woods. Sophronia’s attention was diverted for an instant, and a man at the front of the mob rushed toward her with a triumphant howl.

  FOUR

  From her hiding place in the woods, Hannah watched Sophronia glare at the men, dark silhouettes against the orange-flame sky. It was a standoff. She bit her lip as Sophronia waved the loaded Hawken. Both pride and fear made her heart pound hard against her ribs. For several minutes no one spoke or moved.

  Then Hannah heard someone near her in the tangle of winter-dead vines and brush. She caught her breath and listened.

  It must be a night animal, a raccoon or possum, she finally decided. Or maybe it was just her imagination fueled by fear. Then she heard the sound again. This time there was no denying it, and she shrank back into the brush, afraid to breathe.

  A horse whinnied softly and stamped its foot. Hannah squinted into the darkness, but the undergrowth blocked her view.

  Just then the horse neighed and reared, and a heartbeat later it crashed through the brush toward the clearing. Now Hannah could clearly see both horse and rider. For all her fear, she grinned, wanting to run out into the clearing and join in the melee.

  It was Black Star. And though the riders face was covered with a dark kerchief and a hat was pulled low on his head, there was no mistaking the mans identity. It was Lucas Knight! The black reared again, its eyes wild with fear of the fire and smoke.

  At precisely the same moment, Sophronia looked toward the rider. A large, burly man close to the porch moved quickly toward the elderly woman. She swung the rifle in his direction. But it was too late. He had already reached her and easily wrestled the heavy weapon from her grasp.

  But before he could take aim, Lucas spoke. “I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” he said in a dead-calm voice.

  His words were met by silence. Hannah understood why. He held two rifles, one aimed at the mob, the other at the man who had just taken the Hawken from Sophronia.

  Black Star skittered sideways, his nostrils flaring, but Lucas’s gaze never left the man standing on the porch. “I strongly recommend,” he said, his voice quiet but menacing, “that you hand the little lady back her property. Butt first. That’s right. Nice and easy.” He strung out the words with a menacing tone then waited as the man did as he was told, and soon Sophronia was aiming the Hawken right at his face.

  “Now, you go join the rest of your friends,” she said, her chin held high.

  The man moved toward the mob, stepping over the hedge of kindling and kerosene, hands up, glancing at the others as if asking whether they were going to help him charge Lucas. But no one seemed willing to be the first to move. Hannah shifted her position, waiting to see how one man could possibly keep the mob at bay, even with Sophronia’s help.

  As Hannah was trying to figure out what Lucas was planning to do next, Sophronia moved down the wide porch stairs and planted herself by Lucas and the black. The young man murmured something Hannah couldn’t hear, then her aunt started to move backward toward Hannah’s brushy hiding place, the Hawken still trained at the circle of men.

  “Now, the rest of you,” Lucas shouted. “Up on the porch!” The men glanced at each other then slowly started to move forward. Two of the men helped their injured leader, half carrying, half pulling him along. One or two others started to lay down their still-burning torches. “You’ll be needing those,” Lucas commanded. “Take them with you.”

  One by one, the men stepped across the hedge of brush they had built earlier. As they crossed, they held their torches high. The group shuffled and crowded and murmured as they took their places just as Lucas had commanded.

  Hannah caught her hand to her mouth. The sight of the men on the porch, holding their torches so they wouldn’t set each other on fire, made her certain what Lucas had planned.

  “It’ll be all right, child,” Sophronia said, startling Hannah. She gently touched Hannah’s shoulder. She had moved so quietly to the girl’s side that Hannah, intent on Lucas’s business with the men, hadn’t noticed until she spoke.

  “But the house,” Hannah whispered. “It’s—” She couldn’t finish.

  “It’s about to burn, Hannah. I know.”

  Hannah looked up at Sophronia’s face, barely visible in their dark hiding place. “Everything you love is in there.” Hannah thought she might cry, knowing how much the place meant to her aunt.

  “Not everything, Hannah. Not everything.” But her voice was filled with more sadness than Hannah had ever heard in a person.

  Hannah looked back through the clearing. “What about the men? Lucas can’t mean for them to burn too.” She turned back to her aunt, suddenly aware of the power of the Danites. The terrible, swift, unmerciful power that Lucas as one of them held in his hands. “Surely he won’t cause them harm. Will he?”

  “Think about what they were about to do to us, Hannah.” Then she seemed to notice the horror on her grandniece’s face. She patted the girl’s shoulder again. “I think he means to confuse them, maybe just long enough for us to get away. He’s got horses waiting for us back a ways. He told me to find you, then the horses. He’ll meet us and show us the way.”

  “The way?”

  “To the river, where the others are waiting to cross. They’ve had to hide because of the rampage going on in Nauvoo tonight.”

  “We’ll be going with the Saints?”

  But before Sophronia could answer, their attention was drawn back to the clearing, where the men stood watching Lucas. They had pulled down their masks at his command, because he said he wanted to know their identities so he could notify their families of their deaths.

  The men, some still looking defiant, others filled with stark fear, stared at him. Hannah shuddered, and Sophronia gently pulled her to standing. “We must go, child. Lucas will expect us to be ready when he joins us.”

  Hannah nodded mutely, and after one last glance at the men with their torches and Lucas on a skittering and dancing Black Star, she followed her aunt as they made their way deeper into the woods.

  They had nearly reached the horses, tethered to a small oak near an old stone well, when a shot rang out. A man’s shout carried through the woods from Sophronia’s house, followed by another. More distant yells filled the air, and the acrid smell of burning brush and kerosene drifted toward them. Then came another shot and more screams.

  Sophronia grabbed Hannah’s hand, and they ran the rest of the way to the horses. She looked at her aunt in wonder. “It’s Foxfire,” she whispered. “How—?”

  Sophronia shook her head, patting Berry. “I don’t know how he got them out of the barn.” She shook her head again as she mounted. “Hurry, honey. We can ponder all this later. Hurry into that saddle!”

  Seconds later, Lucas broke through the woods, the black flying across the ground.

  “Let’s go!” he shouted just as Hannah swung her leg over Foxfire’s saddle.

  She nodded and kicked her heels into her horse’s flanks. Lucas took the lead, and Hannah fell in behind him, Sophronia at the rear. They rode along the bluff, finally heading onto a trace that before now had been unknown to Hannah. Though the night was dark except for an eerie orange glow in the sky over Sophronia’s house, Lucas and the black seemed to know instinctively which way to go.

  Ha
nnah couldn’t make out the winding trail, but Black Star was surefooted, and Foxfire, strangely calm for having been rescued from a burning barn, followed with deliberate grace. They rode for nearly an hour before arriving at the river.

  “We’ll need to wait here,” Lucas said as Black Star snorted and kicked the ground. Hannah and Sophronia moved their horses beside him. “It’s too dangerous now to make our way through town to join the others.” The beach was narrow on this stretch of the river, and now that the earliest gray of dawn had started to light the sky, Hannah could make out a small rocky hollow in the river cliff.

  “We can dismount, rest the horses.” He nodded to the shallow cave. “There’s some bedding and warm clothing inside. If you need anything or just want to rest, make yourself at home. I’ll keep watch out here.”

  “How long until we leave?” Sophronia asked.

  “About two hours.” He frowned as if not sure how much to tell them. “One of the ferries will head south to pick us up instead of going straight across the river with the others.”

  “You arranged this ahead of time, then?” Sophronia asked.

  Lucas nodded.

  “How did you know we’d be here with you?” For a moment he didn’t speak. “I knew, Sophie. That’s all. I just knew.”

  Hannah slid from Foxfire’s back and, after Sophronia dismounted, led both horses to the river. Sophronia moved wearily to the cave, but Hannah stayed with Lucas, who had swung from the saddle and was rubbing Black Star’s neck as the horse drank.

  “What happened to the men, Lucas? Back at Aunt Sophronia’s, I mean.”

  “That’s not for you to worry about, Hannah.”

  “But I want to know.”

  He cocked his head. “They were bad men. They deserved to die.”

  “Is that what you do? Kill bad people?”

  “I haven’t killed anyone.”

  “So they didn’t die.”

  He shook his head slowly, almost as if he was sorry they hadn’t. “No, they didn’t die, Hannah. After they threw their torches at the hedge they’d built, I fired a couple of shots above their heads to scare them into the house. As you know, there’s another way out the back. I’m sure it didn’t take them long to find it.”