The Veil

by Diane Noble

  “Do you want a hood?” he asked.

  “No.”

  John Steele now stood directly in front of Brother Hambelton. Placing his palm on the young man’s forehead, he raised his other hand upward and began to call out in a booming voice, “May the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost accept this sacrifice and forgive Brother Hambelton’s trespasses. Today, may this man be accepted into your kingdom.”

  Then he moved quickly behind the young man, with one hand yanking his head backward by the hair, exposing the white flesh of his neck. In one swift motion, he slid the razor-sharp blade from ear to ear. Blood, black in the midnight darkness, poured onto the ground.

  Without a word, Lucas and John Steele lifted the body into the grave. Porter Roe sat with his back against the trunk of a sycamore, watching the men shovel dirt and tamp it down until there was little more than a slight mound.

  It was well known that Porter Roe, or as some called him, Son of Thunder, had personally carried out over one hundred acts of blood atonement. Not even John Steele was his equal in sheer numbers. But as the man sat silently watching in the darkness, Lucas had a chilling thought. Porter Roe was about to pass on his mantle as Son of Thunder to a younger man. And as Roe’s piercing eyes met his, he wondered if he’d been chosen.

  Lucas rode home alone in the moonlight, and the usual suffocation and stomach sickness that came to him after such a scene hit him full force. He stopped several times to vomit and to attempt to rid his mind of Brother Hambelton’s young face.

  Atonement. Blood atonement. Oh, God, he breathed as he rode, when will the atonement you require be enough? When will the killing be enough to appease you?

  What kind of a God is this, he wondered, who requires a young man’s blood in place of his contrite heart?

  Is there not such a thing as forgiveness? The Prophet has said there are those sins that cannot be forgiven by Jesus Christ’s atonement on the cross.

  He halted his horse and looked up at the moon. A cooling breeze blew off the mountains, rustling the leaves of a nearby grove of quaking aspen.

  What if the Prophet is wrong about which sins require such measures? Or, for that matter, what if he’s wrong about blood atonement in all cases? If God be God, then wouldn’t he be powerful enough to include all sin in Christ’s atonement? Why would he choose for some sins—for instance, Brother Hambelton’s adultery—to be unforgiven except by the letting of the man’s own blood?

  Then, instead of ushering the young man into paradise cleansed of his sin, Lucas, alongside John Steele and Porter Roe, had merely committed murder, and poor Brother Hambelton had lost his life due to their folly. And blood atonement, instead of saving his soul, was ending his life.

  It was also destroying Lucas’s.

  “God help me!” he cried into the midnight sky. “God help me!”

  EIGHT

  Two days later, in the ashen light of dawn, Lucas saddled Spitfire and headed northeast toward his first destination, Fort Bridger. From there he planned to follow the Mormon Trail east to Independence then make his way to New York Harbor, where he would book passage to England.

  As he rode, his thoughts were with Hannah. He tried to think of his mission, the Church, anything but the pain of missing her. But her memory was too overpowering. He would never forget how they had held each other, both knowing it would be months, perhaps a year or longer, before they met again. And he remembered how Hannah had looked when they parted, both strong and vulnerable at the same time.

  She was as much a part of him as life itself. He’d watched her grow into womanhood under the purple Utah skies. He remembered how her nose freckled in the blazing sun and how her sunlit curls brushed against her cheek in the breeze, how her laugh rang across the fields when they were riding, and how she looked at him with those wide, clear eyes that spoke of her spirit and her adoration. He would miss her desperately.

  Lucas sighed deeply and reined his horse toward a creek that flowed down from Big Mountain about eight miles from Deseret. From there he would head for the Mormon ferry at the Red Fork of the Weber River. The terrain was treacherous, and Lucas was glad for the surefooted young stallion.

  By now they had climbed several hundred feet through the pass, and the land was showing patches of snow. When he found the creek, Lucas broke away a thin layer of ice so the horse could drink. He filled his canteen, remounted, and rode on. They soon reached the top of a steep rise, and Lucas turned to look back at the valley of the Saints.

  The lake was a jeweled ribbon of blue fading into the horizon, the city an even patchwork of wide roads and green fields. He marveled at the contrast with the arid land around it. The irrigation canals, sparkling in the sun, crisscrossed the land, bringing fresh mountain water to the thirsty valley.

  Lucas considered this valley, his home for the past ten years. It wasn’t the thought of being thousands of miles away from this place that created a void deep inside him. It was the thought of being away from Hannah and Sophronia that made grief slice like a knife through his heart.

  Lucas urged Spitfire onward. The sun was nearly straight up now, and here and there he crossed through shadows of clouds as he rode. The more distance he put between the valley and himself, the easier it was to think of what lay ahead instead of what lay behind. He began thinking about the assignment John Steele had given him.

  Lucas’s mandate was to convert then identify and evaluate possible recruits from the various groups in the British Isles. He would mingle with them, listen to the conversations of the more energetic and dynamic young men, all the while analyzing their devotion to the Church.

  He thought of John Steele’s words during one of their recent meetings. “The Church easily appeals to the old, but it’s the strength of young men we need. Find them—find those who are strong in body and spirit, single-minded, forthright, bold, and loyal.” Then he had added, “And I don’t want to see you back in Deseret until you can bring dozens of recruits with you.”

  Steele was a complicated man, intelligent and cunning. His interests ranged from Church politics to theology, from world history to Indian affairs. He had boundless energy, riding from one end of the territory to the other as the Church’s agent to the Utes, Brigham Young’s voice to all the Saints in outlying settlements.

  It was common knowledge that Steele had a special relationship with Brigham, that in a sacred ceremony the Prophet had sealed John to himself as his adopted son just as John had sealed Lucas to himself. They were sealed as brothers, as father and son, throughout all eternity. In many ways it was a more sacred relationship than that of husband and wife.

  Yet Steele could be ruthless, especially when acting against apostates. Lucas had been little more than a boy when he first rode with John against an apostate, a new convert who’d been caught speaking against the Church’s teachings. The man, who had been in the territory for less than six months, had publicly denounced the leadership of Brigham Young before deciding to leave the Saints. He had headed for California and was following the Virgin River in the south of the Utah Territory when the Danites struck.

  The man had bedded down on a cliff overlooking a deep pool of churning, icy water. His fire had died to glowing embers when they entered his camp, and he had looked up in surprise as John Steele grabbed him.

  “Time to feed the fish,” the older man had said as he slit open the man’s stomach.

  Then young Lucas watched mutely as John rolled the apostate over the cliff into the water, the shiny ropelike innards trailing, splashing into the dark water around him.

  “We have to stop the spreading of lies,” John Steele had said righteously to the boy as they remounted and rode on.

  That was the first time Lucas vomited while on a mission for the Angels.

  Now, as Lucas rode through a stand of live oaks mixed with pines, he thought about how the Church handled outspoken women, women who might turn apostate. It was true that most women did not speak out against the Church. They were given strict guidance f
or their behavior from their fathers while still at an impressionable age and from their husbands after marriage. Joseph Smith had begun a group in Nauvoo, the Mothers of Israel, made up of motherly women who took troublesome younger women in hand, counseled them, and directed them in the ways of the Church.

  Lucas suddenly grinned at a memory from long ago. He had been with Sophronia when she was asked to join the Mothers of Israel, sometimes called the Mothers of Zion. She had been agreeable—even flattered to be considered—until she found out the advice-giving would include Church precepts that she passionately disagreed with. “You want me to do what?” she had sputtered. “You want me to counsel young girls to be a willing second, third, or seventeenth wife?” Then she had added, “Balderdash!” as she hurried the ladies out her front door.

  Now he had the feeling that if Sophronia continued on her path of blasphemy, she might be placed in a dangerous position. His dream about Sophie and Hannah being accused of apostasy came back full force, and as he nudged the tall, black stallion up a rocky crevasse, he tried to push the haunting image—and his fear—from his mind.

  Three days later Lucas reached the ferry at the Red Fork of the Weber.

  “Ho there, brother!” Lucas was greeted by Josiah Elkins, a wiry man with weathered skin, darker than that of the nearby Utes. He had called himself Elk for so long it was said he had forgotten his real name.

  “Ho, yourself, brother,” Lucas answered, grasping the man’s hand in the Saints’ secret handshake. Elk called himself a Saint, though whenever he claimed it Lucas saw a glint in the old man’s eyes, as if a secret joke lurked somewhere inside.

  “Got any news?” Lucas asked as he blindfolded Spitfire so Elk could lead him onto the raft that served as a ferry.

  Elk smiled, showing more spaces than teeth. Elk was good at a few things: making money for the Saints, telling all he’d heard from other travelers, and fabricating what he hadn’t. Elk lived alone in a small house above the river with no one to talk to but a few chickens and some scrawny goats. His ferry, or more accurately, the Church’s ferry, was the only raft on the deep and treacherous Weber, and this stretch of the river was the safest. So he got his gossip from folks traveling from Deseret and other parts west, and from folks heading to Utah Territory, California, and Oregon from the East.

  “I’ve gotta git the talk they’re carrying before I collect my crossing fee,” Elk had told Lucas years before. “They don’t talk to me after they find out how much they owe me.” Then he had grinned, showing his nearly toothless gums.

  Lucas figured there wouldn’t be much news today. It was only March. Much too early in the season for the emigrants from either side of the continent to have traveled this far.

  “Any travelers by here lately?” Lucas asked after they had started across the river.

  “Not many.”

  “I probably know as much as you do, then,” Lucas baited him.

  “Probably not.” Elk didn’t take the bait. He just nodded, a slow smile splitting his leathery face.

  “Deseret’s going to be adding some to its population again,” Lucas said, thinking to get the man started talking with news of his own.

  The older man shrugged. “Nearly wore out my raft with the ones who came across last year.”

  “These are coming from England, Wales … Scotland.”

  Elk wasn’t impressed and shrugged again, keeping his gaze on the river. “I’ve got better news than that,” he muttered.

  “I thought you might.”

  “I hear tell Deseret’s getting ready for war.”

  “We’re always getting ready for war, old man. That’s not anything new.”

  Elk assessed him with sharp, bright eyes. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Shoot.”

  Elk scratched his beard, then his shoulder, then his arm; he yawned loudly before he answered. “Rumor is that the new President —Buchanan—wants to get rid of Brigham Young. I hear tell they want to take away his governorship. Run him out of the territory. Run off the rest of us too.”

  “That’s no great news, Elk. There’s always rumors that the Gentiles are getting ready to run us off our land.” He waited while Elk poled the ferry across a golden patch of sand just beneath the rippling water.

  “The rumor is, emigrants traveling through Deseret report they haven’t been treated fair. They tell tall tales about how Brigham has set up his own kingdom. Say he’s committing treason agin’ the ol’ U-S-of-A. Emigrants have taken their stories of mean, cheatin’ Saints back to Washington.” He chuckled as if glad to be considered part of such a group.

  “We always fear we’ll be run off again,” Lucas said, putting his arm around Elk’s thin shoulders. “None of us’ll ever forget what’s been done to us. We’ll always be readying for war. That’s nothing new.”

  Elk turned to look at him. “This time it’s different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The older man raised a bushy brow as he moved the pole. “A government agent’s been killed. He’d been sent by Buchanan to take ol’ Brigham’s place.”

  Lucas looked hard at the man to see if he was lying. He hadn’t heard anything about this. “When did this happen?”

  “Oh, going on a couple of weeks now.”

  “In the territory? He was killed inside the territory?”

  “Yessiree.”

  “Had he reached the Prophet? Talked with him?”

  “Haven’t heard that fer sure.” Elk’s leathery face again split into a gum-showing smile.

  “How did he die?”

  “Rumor has it that he didn’t see eye-to-eye with the Utes he met up with on the trail.” He chuckled. “Rumor also has it that some of them Utes was white.”

  “People are always blaming white Utes for every atrocity in the territory. Gentiles enjoy spreading colorful lies about us.” Lucas turned away, grimly watching the approaching shoreline. He tried to comprehend what he had just been told. After a few minutes, he turned back to Elk, who was now pulling the raft close to the dock. “Any idea who knows about this? Any of the apostles? Brigham?”

  “I hear tell they all do. I hear tell the word for action came to the Utes from John Steele—he’s the Indian agent for Brigham—”

  Lucas cut him off. “Yes, yes. I know that,” he said. “Steele himself gave the orders?”

  Elk nodded. “That’s what I heard.”

  “You wouldn’t be lying to me, old man, would you? Stretching the truth because you didn’t have anything better to tell?”

  Elk gave Lucas an unblinking stare. “Deseret’s going to war. Whether you believe me or not. The Saints’ll be marching as smart as you please against the ol’ U-S-of-A. My guess is war’ll be here before the year’s out. Now, what do you think of that?”

  Lucas didn’t answer. He was too busy wondering why John Steele hadn’t told him any of this before he left. Minutes later as he rode away from the ferry crossing, Lucas’s thoughts focused on the old man and whether or not he’d spoken the truth. There was only one way to know for sure: find someone else to verify the facts. He would ask around at Fort Bridger and then at Leavenworth, where he’d heard troops were stationed. If Elk was right and he confirmed that the valley of the Saints was in danger, he would have to ride faster than the wind back to Deseret to warn the Saints.

  Lucas kicked the black’s flanks, spurring the stallion into a gallop. But he couldn’t put from his mind John Steele’s deception, or more accurately, his omission of the truth. Why hadn’t he told Lucas about the U.S. agent? Was it to get Lucas out of Deseret? And if so, why?

  If a U.S. government agent had died—no matter what the cause—the Saints would be blamed. The repercussions could be serious when word reached Washington. There would be no time for gathering new recruits from the Old World, sailing them across the Atlantic, then trekking back across the Great Plains to Deseret. Why then was John so all-fired anxious to send Lucas on his way?

  The black continued
onward, and Lucas, lost in thought, searched for answers.

  Three weeks later, just as Hannah stepped through the back door and into Sophronia’s house, a knock sounded at the front door. Hannah had been out for a morning ride on Felicity, or Filly as she was mostly called, the sleek bay mare that Lucas had presented Hannah on her birthday.

  Hannah rounded the corner from the kitchen then headed down the entrance hall. Through the leaded glass at the front door, she could see the shadowy figure of a tall, large-shouldered man.

  The rapid, light knocking carried through the house again.

  Hannah lifted her skirts and hurried to the door, wondering who would be paying her a midweek visit. When Church elders or Mothers of Zion members called, they usually stated their intentions at Sunday services. This past Lord’s Day, no one had said anything about calling.

  She opened the door.

  John Steele removed his hat and gave her a smile. “Good morning, Hannah,” he said.

  “Why, Brother Steele, what a surprise to see you out this way,” Hannah said.

  “I have news of Lucas Knight.”

  “You do?”

  Steele nodded, rolling the rim of his hat in his hands.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Hannah said, embarrassed. “I’ve completely forgotten my manners.” She gestured to the front porch swing. “Would you care to sit a while? Perhaps have a glass of cider?”

  He gave her an answering grin. “That would be very pleasant. Thank you. Yes, yes, I would like some apple cider.” He chuckled amiably. “I’ve been out riding most of the morning, and it would be nice to rest a spell.”

  “Please, then, sit down. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.” Hannah closed the door and headed to the kitchen. She wished Sophronia hadn’t chosen that day for riding into town to visit friends. The thought of entertaining John Steele for even a few minutes was not pleasant. The sole reason she hadn’t sent him on his way was because of his news of Lucas.