Saints (52 page)

“Sidney’s a sick old man. He’s no match for Bennett.”

“Am I?” Joseph stared at Hyrum, warning him to be careful of his answer.

Hyrum stared back and made no answer at all.

“Joseph,” William said, “you trust people too much.”

“Maybe. I trust
you
.”

“You trust our loyalty,” Hyrum said. “I wish you’d trust our judgment.”

“Judgment.” Joseph said the word contemptuously. “This isn’t judgment. This is pure jealousy.” Joseph saw both Hyrum and William stiffen in the saddle—he was striking them deep. Well, that’s how he wanted to strike. “Do you think I haven’t seen it before? Whenever the Lord sends me a new man, a man of ability, my old friends hate him. Everyone’s afraid that someone else’s gifts deny their own. They said the same things to me when Sidney first came, ten years ago.”

“Have you ever known me to be envious before?” Hyrum asked.

“Evidence, Hyrum. Not feelings, not resentments. Evidence. If you can prove to me that John Bennett is untrustworthy, then I’ll discuss it with you again.” Joseph waved off the clerks who were waiting behind them in the road—they were getting too close, and he didn’t want them to hear the leaders of the Church arguing.

“I wish you’d trust me more,” Hyrum said.

Joseph looked his brother in the eye. “You have the power to destroy me with a word, Hyrum. There is no more trust in the world than what I have for you. It isn’t my trust you want. It’s my presidency. You want to make my decisions for me.” Deliberately Joseph raised his voice. “Well, Hyrum, that power isn’t mine to give. Don’t speak to me about this again, not without evidence!” He could feel his words hanging in the hot wet air. The clerks had heard enough to make this a public rebuke.

Hyrum knew that he had gone as far as he dared. He smiled cheerfully and swung his horse around to continue the journey. William, however, grew sullen. “A counselor’s supposed to give counsel.”

Joseph was weary of pampering wounded pride, and William Law required more of it than most; but Joseph smiled and pampered him again. “I know, Brother William. You’re doing what the Lord wants you to do. Do you think I don’t know that? But so am I.” Mollified, but not willing to show it, William kicked his horse and moved ahead. Joseph followed behind him and Hyrum, watching them. For all his attitude of surety, Joseph was disturbed that both these men detested John Bennett. William—well, he was a child, he could be dismissed with the charge of envy. But Hyrum wasn’t the jealous sort. It made Joseph wonder.

It was a good thing the Twelve were coming home. They had been in England too long. In just another month or so they’d be here to balance Bennett’s power. Joseph knew that too much of the Church had been put in Bennett’s hands. And yet Bennett could do the work; it made no sense to give the power to men who only botched it. Hadn’t he rammed the Nauvoo Charter through the Illinois legislature in twenty-one days? Hadn’t he arranged a charter for the Nauvoo Legion, and got Joseph Smith the only lieutenant general’s commission in the United States? I outrank everybody, Joseph thought with a smile. They’ll never be able to send a mere colonel of militia to order me to surrender or face treason charges. I can order
them
to surrender, and the treason trial will go the other way, for a change. Bennett gave me
that
. What standard can I use, besides accomplishment? Bennett gets things done.

By the time they got to Quincy, William and Hyrum were cheerful again. The clerks were riding right with them now, and they sang hymns right into town, which attracted more than a little attention among the passersby. Then it was good-bye to Hyrum and William as they continued eastward on their missions. Only one other errand on this journey. Governor Thomas Carlin was at home in Quincy now, and Bennett had advised Joseph that it was always good to pay respects to a politician. “Politicians have a way of forgetting who their friends are, if you don’t remind them often,” Bennett had said. It was one of the reasons Joseph disliked politics. The men he had to deal with all had the scent of rot about them. Only a few of them were decent men, and those were rarely powerful enough to make much difference.

Governor Carlin was glad—nay, overjoyed—to see the Prophet. “I’ve been hoping you’d come! I’ve wanted to talk to you for months!” But when they did talk for half an hour alone in the governor’s parlor, Carlin didn’t say a thing. Joseph marveled at how the man could speak for so long a time without once adding significantly to the amount of intelligence in the world. “And thank you for coming by! I’m always glad to talk with a man of God, sir, and you’re welcome to come see me anytime.” Joseph shook hands and said the same kind of silliness back to him.

They headed back to Nauvoo the same day, got to a town some thirty miles from Nauvoo by nightfall, and spent the night in a hotel. The next morning they were hardly in the saddle before Joseph began to calculate how he might get rid of the clerks so that he could visit one of his wives tonight. One of his wives, he told himself, but it was Dinah that he knew he’d go to. She was the one he missed most, and how long had it been now? Weeks since he had seen her last. Seen her privately, that is. They met in public all the time. Some of his wives he dreaded meeting that way—they’d blush or stammer, they’d get shy and retreat from him—nothing obvious to anyone but him, but still a sign that there was more between them than law or custom would allow. Dinah, however, never changed around him. Or if she did, only got brighter, more cheerful, moving among the Saints as an angel with a Lancashire accent. They would have listened to her for that alone, her voice was music, sometimes Joseph would like to lie on her bed as she read poems to him, listening to her voice, hearing no words, letting her give him peace like birdsong or rushing water. And yet when he did pay attention to the words, it was not disappointing. She was like Emma that way—when she spoke she made sense. Not like a certain governor. Maybe he ought to get Dinah elected to something. Alderman. Alderwoman. He laughed—the voters would never stand for
that
.

“Joseph.”

He started from his reverie. Howard Coray was beside him, leaning over, tugging at the reins of his horse, turning his mount around. Joseph looked where the clerk was looking, back down the road they had just passed over. A group of armed men were approaching. There was a gentle valley between them, but there was little time.

“Let’s run for it!” Howard said.

“They’re too close. They could shoot us out of the saddle.”

“Maybe they’re not after us,” one of the younger men offered.

Joseph knew better. He had learned over the years that groups of armed men at full gallop were either coming to get Joseph Smith or coming to save him—they never just happened along. “Howard, get to Nauvoo and tell them what’s happened. Tell Mayor Bennett that a certain son-of-a-bitch Governor isn’t worth the price of the perfume he soaks his hair in. You might mention that if once they get me into jail, the Brethren can bet they’ll never see me alive again.”

“I can’t leave you, Brother Joseph!”

“What, you want to watch the hanging?”

Howard looked at him a moment, sick with fear, then wheeled his horse and galloped off toward Nauvoo. “Don’t watch after him,” Joseph told the others. The road took a turn, and with luck Howard would be around it before their enemies got up the road enough to see him.

“Are you Joe Smith?” a man called out.

“If I’m not, you gentlemen have worked your horses into a lather for nothing.”

The leader wore a badge. “I’m Sheriff King and this is a
posse comitatus
. Governor Carlin has sent us to arrest you and turn you over to the authorities of the state of Missouri to stand trial for prison escape and other sundry charges for which you have already been indicted.”

At the mention of the state of Missouri Joseph could feel death at his back. He had escaped once, but they’d never let it happen again. Hating Mormons was practically the established religion on that side of the Mississippi. But it wouldn’t do to let this sheriff see his fear; Joseph smiled warmly. “You got that speech down pretty good,” Joseph said, making it sound like sincere praise. “You must have been working on it all the way here.”

Sheriff King almost smiled with pride. “I do my job.”

“Well, arrest me, then.”

King looked confused. “I just did.”

“No, you just told me that Governor Carlin sent you to do it. Now you actually have to say the words.”

“Joseph Smith, I have been sent to arrest you—”

“No, no, you’re doing it again.” Joseph brought his horse closer and whispered. “Say ‘I arrest you.’”

King whispered back. “That’s all?”

“Yes sir. I’ve been arrested a few times, and that’s the proper way.”

“Joseph Smith, I arrest you.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Sheriff King.”

“Sheriff, I’ve been kidnapped by mobs, I’ve been taken captive by soldiers under a flag of truce, I’ve been arrested now and then, but I must say that I’m proud of the state of Illinois for the way you’ve handled this. No waste of ammunition on silly shooting off of weapons, no unnecessary shouting—why, you’ve handled it so peaceful, right according to law, that it’s almost a pleasure getting arrested by you. So instead of calling on the Nauvoo Legion to bring ten thousand troops to blast you and your little
posse comitatus
all to hell, I’ll proceed orderly, too. Let’s go right back to that little town where I spent such a pleasant night picking fleas, and see if they have a judge in town.”

“I’m supposed to turn you over to the Missouri authorities.”

“This is the state of Illinois, Sheriff King. Nobody from Missouri has even a teeny little speck of authority here.
You’re
the man with all the authority. Now I’m a citizen of Illinois—I must be, I’m a lieutenant general in the Illinois militia. And you know that every arrested man has a right to talk to a judge or a justice of the peace.”

“What for?”

“To get a writ of habeas corpus for your
posse comitatus
.”

“Oh.”

“Well, I figure we’ve accomplished all we can right here in the road. Shall we go?”

“All right, let’s get these men back to—”

“Wait a minute!” Joseph said. “These
men
? Show me in your warrant where it says anything about my clerks.”

“Well, it doesn’t, exactly. But I wasn’t supposed to let anybody—”

“Now Sheriff King, I thought you were going to do this proper. You can’t hold these men without a warrant. And frankly, I need to have them get back to Nauvoo and tell my wife and children—and my lawyer—that I have been properly arrested by the supreme authority of the state of Illinois. But if you take these men under arrest without a warrant, well, that’s false arrest, and you’ll not only lose your job as sheriff, you’ll go right to jail yourself. That’s how these things are done.”

King looked around at his men, flustered and uncertain. Joseph knew to keep still while he made up his mind. He just sat gripping the pommel, pretending to be relaxed. Finally King sighed. “General Smith, they told me you was slippery as manure on cobblestones, but I figure a man’s got a right to send word to his family. Let these other fellows go.”

Joseph asked George Robinson to stay with him and sent the others on their way. It relieved him that King had made his final decision, not out of fear, but out of a sense of fair play. Joseph just might get out of this alive, if there was a decent judge in town—or if about a thousand men from the Nauvoo Legion could get here before he ran out of ways to stall Sheriff King. As for Governor Carlin, Joseph devoutly hoped that he’d be called on to testify against that lying bastard at the judgment bar of God. A half hour with him, and Carlin hadn’t given a hint that the Missouri authorities were trying for extradition, or that Carlin meant to grant it to them. And they say
I’m
slippery. It’s a wonder Carlin can keep his shoes on, he’s so slick.

It was afternoon when Harriette fetched Dinah out of the schoolroom with the news. Dinah was marking the older children’s compositions, and was so disturbed when Harriette told her that she actually returned to her desk to continue, as if the papers couldn’t wait.

“Dinah!” Harriette insisted. “Don’t you know that you’re needed?”

“What for?” Dinah asked. “What can I do?”

“All the men are sitting at Joseph’s house, worrying and wishing that they could do something. Vilate sent me to get you. She wants you to set a fire under them.”

“Vilate doesn’t need my help to do
that
.”

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed it, but Vilate isn’t quite so outspoken around the Brethren as she is with us. You act the same with everyone.”

At last Dinah pulled herself together enough to get up from the table and head for the door. She had worried about this, as everyone in Nauvoo worried for the Prophet, but it was still terrible when it really happened. Only yesterday morning he had asked her to go to Quincy with him. If only she had gone. He would not have been with his men, he wouldn’t have been found, if only she had gone.

Dinah needed to walk slowly. Though the baby she was carrying was only two months along, and Dinah had never got particularly sick with her pregnancies, this one had kept her frail for weeks. It worried her, for so many of Joseph’s children had been sick or weak; so many had died young, or miscarried. And now, though Dinah had borne two healthy children before, her first pregnancy with a child of Joseph’s was also plagued with nausea, with weakness. Why should the seed of the strongest man she knew be weak? It seemed a cruel trick for the Lord to play on him; but at least he didn’t have to bear an unnecessary disappointment again. She had decided that until she was so far along in the pregnancy that she had to go into hiding, she would tell no one, especially not Joseph. If there was a miscarriage then he would never know. He loved his children so much that to know of another that died, even unborn, would grieve him deeply.

“Hurry,” Harriette said.

“I’m sorry,” Dinah said.

They rushed enough that Dinah was feeling more than a little nauseated when she reached Joseph’s house. No one seemed to know who was in charge. Sidney Rigdon wasn’t there—he was not well, and his wife refused to let him go out of doors. In his absence, William Smith, Dinah’s least favorite of the Prophet’s brothers, was the ranking authority. Dinah saw in a moment that he was not competent to do it. He kept announcing that a decision had to be made, a decision
must
be made immediately. With uncustomary modesty, he did not think himself the proper man to make it.

“When Bennett gets here, we can act,” William said.

Dinah looked for the women. Emma sat in a corner with Vilate Kimball and Mary Fielding Smith. Dinah walked across the room. William Smith made a great show of standing and bowing to her, trying to make pleasant conversation about, of all things, the weather. Don Carlos took mercy on her and silenced his older brother. “Sit down, William, no one gives a damn about manners right now.” Glowering at his brother, William sat and loudly made plans for what plans they would need to make once Bennett got there to make them.

“Why don’t you do something?” Dinah asked Emma. “He was arrested hours ago. Who knows how long he has before it’s too late?”

“I can’t,” Emma said. “If I told them to do anything, they’d do the opposite. We had that one out while Joseph was in Liberty Jail. The Church will not take orders from the Prophet’s wife.”

Dinah could see that Emma was right. Could see, too, that if Emma could make no decisions, neither could she. But at least she could speak—that was free for any Saint.

“Brother William,” she said. “Aren’t there a thousand soldiers in the Nauvoo Legion?”

“I’m not an officer,” William snapped back. “It takes the mayor to order them out. Besides, Quincy’s out of our jurisdiction.”

“Why not make sure Joseph’s alive first, and then quarrel about jurisdiction after?”

“Why don’t the women keep to their own province, and leave the decisions up to those the Lord has called to make them?”

Dinah rose to her feet and walked to the middle of the room. With all the contempt she could muster—which was a fair amount of contempt right now—she looked at each of the men in turn. “If God should choose to judge you solely on the basis of your performance at this moment, brethren, you can all start right now packing your bags for hell.” Then she headed for the front door.

“Where are you going?” Don Carlos asked.

“Since even the Prophet’s brothers can’t save his life, I’m going to the one man who can.”

Vilate rushed across the room to her. “I’ll go with you.”

Don Carlos also got to his feet. “Let me come with you.”

“Are you sure your brother William won’t need you to help him make a list of things that Bennett must decide when Bennett comes?”

William glared at her and tapped his pen on the table. “I’ve been sending word to Bennett all morning, since the news came. He’s probably on his way right now. You’re wasting a trip.”

“While you, sir, are wasting a morning.” Dinah walked out of the house with Vilate, Harriette, and Don Carlos, leaving at least one enemy behind her.

It was not that far to Bennett’s house, but Dinah felt every step of it. It was not just the exertion of hurrying so quickly; it was the fear of what might happen to Joseph, when the man didn’t even know she was carrying his child; it was anger at how little these men who said they loved him actually cared for him. She winced with cramps, but kept walking; breathed deep, swallowed frequently to keep from vomiting, and walked on, faster and faster, not because she expected Bennett to do any better than the others, but because it was better to do something than to sit and wait as Emma and the others were doing. If Joseph dies, it will not be because I sat and wondered what to do.

They did not meet Bennett on the way to his house, and when they got to the door, his clerk refused to call him. “Dr. Bennett is unavailable at the moment,” he said. “Some other time, perhaps? Or if your ailment is urgent, you can leave me your name and address and when he makes his rounds tomorrow, he’ll stop by.”

“We’re not patients,” Dinah said, pushing the door open and walking in.

The clerk followed her up the stairs. “He may be undressed, madame! This is not your house! You can be arrested for this!”

Bennett was lying on his bed, sipping tea and reading a book. He looked up calmly when Dinah walked in, panting from the walk, from running up the stairs. He smiled at her and said, “I was just lying here wishing for company.”

“Why didn’t you come when you heard the news?” Dinah demanded.

“Why should I go talk to men who have neither ideas nor the power to act on ideas? I notified Brother Joseph’s attorney as soon as word came, and I rode with him before eight o’clock. I talked with Stephen Douglas—I knew him when he was secretary of state. It happens that now he’s a judge, and he had a writ of habeas corpus out for Brother Joseph before ten. The extradition trial is set for the ninth of June, and Mr. Browning is quite sure we can win. Even if our case did not have superior merit, Judge Douglas is a Democrat, and the Democrats are our friends. I got back half an hour ago. I’m a little tired, and so I’m resting.”

He had done it all, and now lay on his bed, smugly sipping at his cup, looking at Dinah with laughing eyes. Dinah could not understand why she was so angry with him. He had every right to be proud of himself—while all the other men, including the Prophet’s brothers, had talked and fretted and done nothing, Bennett had acted—and saved Joseph’s life before noon. She should be grateful. Instead she felt her stomach twist with anger, and she was afraid she might be sick. “You’re mayor of Nauvoo. I would have thought you would take some care to calm the city.”

Bennett swung his feet to the floor and sat up. “Good idea. If I hadn’t been so tired I would have thought of it myself.” He stood and headed for the door. “Do you think it would be immodest of me to tell the Saints who it was who saved the Prophet—and who did not?”

“He isn’t saved till he gets back here,” Vilate said.

“He’s saved because he’s alive right now, and because
my
friends in the state of Illinois are going to get him back, and not with any of the blood and thunder theatrics you talk about, not with the
Legion
, that useless collection of Sunday soldiers armed with sticks—he’ll be back with a legal judgment against extradition, so that the charge can never be laid to him again. I did it
with
the law, not against it, so that we profit from it, instead of paying later.”

“When did the news come to you?” Dinah asked.

“This morning. When I first got up.”

Dinah turned to Harriette. “But didn’t you tell me Howard Coray got here after ten?”

Harriette nodded.

Bennett smiled at her. “Do you think I have to rely on Howard Coray for my news?” Bennett started down the stairs.

Hadn’t Harriette told her that Coray left the moment the Prophet first realized he was going to be taken? Hadn’t Coray near killed his horse to get here when he did?

“You knew!” Dinah shouted. “You knew before it happened!” She ran down the stairs after him, but he was already going out the door. “You could have warned him, you could have prevented it all! You wanted him arrested!” She reached for the door, which was swinging shut behind him—she missed it, stumbled forward, fell to her knees. It was more than her body could cope with, the anger, the shouting, all the running, and now the fury of seeing the door click shut behind a man who had knowingly let Joseph Smith fall into the hands of his enemies. Her stomach lurched, and she vomited on the inlaid wood of Bennett’s entry hall. Later she would remember thinking that it was strange that he should have inlaid wood when so many Saints had dirt floors and leaking roofs. She was not doing her best thinking then.

“Good God, and I suppose I have to clean that up,” said Bennett’s servant.

Don Carlos and Harriette helped Dinah get up. “Where are you hurt? Where are you hurt?” Don Carlos kept asking.

“I’m not hurt,” Dinah managed to say. “I’m just sick.”

“But all this blood,” Don Carlos said.

Harriette gasped. “In the name of heaven, Dinah, you might have told somebody.”

The last thing Dinah remembered before she lost consciousness was Vilate’s voice saying, “But what do you mean she’s pregnant? She left her husband in England more than a year ago.”

Dinah recuperated in Vilate’s house for several weeks. She was unconscious for the first five days, which gave Vilate time to sort things through, about how long it had been since Dinah had been with her husband, and what must have happened for her to get pregnant. Vilate was no longer confused by the time Dinah was conscious, and Dinah could see that she had planned and rehearsed her little speech.

“Are you feeling better?” Vilate asked.

Dinah nodded. She was vaguely aware that her head didn’t move much when she told it to.

“Need anything?”

Just the answer to a question. “Brother Joseph?”

“Oh, he’s all right. Word just came this afternoon. Judge Douglas ordered him to be released. Said the charges had no merit and that to release Brother Joseph into the hands of Missouri authorities would be tantamount to causing the murder of an innocent Illinois citizen. Mayor Bennett saw to the whole thing.”

Dinah vaguely remembered being angry at Bennett, but could not think why. He had saved Joseph, hadn’t he? That’s all that mattered, wasn’t it?

Vilate cleared her throat, sat upright in her chair to give her speech. “I want you to know, Harriette and I have told no one about—why you’re so sick. Not even your father and mother. Far as anyone knows, you were already sick as a dog before you started running around all over. Bennett was willing to allow as how you weren’t acting rational when you came to call on him, which he calls a sure sign of oncoming nervous prostration.”

“So nobody”—she tried to make her lips form the right words—“thinks I’m—harlot—”

“Oh, Dinah.” Vilate burst into tears. “Oh, of all women, Dinah, of all the women in Nauvoo, I would’ve thought you’d have
brains
enough not to get taken in by some man!”

It was bound to come sooner or later, Dinah had known that all along. Her regret was not that Vilate thought her guilty of adultery. Her regret was that she wouldn’t have the baby to show for it.

“You’ve been—kind,” Dinah said, “under the circumstances.”

“Circumstances! I’m your friend, aren’t I? Haven’t we tended the sick together? Do you think because you done something dumb I don’t remember what you’re worth?”

Dinah tried to smile, but for some reason her muscles didn’t want to respond. It was only then that she realized she couldn’t even raise her hands, she was so weak. And as she spoke she heard her own voice as if from a distance, as if she were drunk, it was so sluggish and inarticulate. “Sister Vilate, do you forgive me?”

At that, Vilate looked away from her. “’Tain’t mine to forgive or not forgive. That’s between you and Brother Joseph.”

It took Dinah a few moments to remember that she would be expected to confess her “adultery” to the Prophet—Vilate had not discovered who her supposed paramour was. She tried to nod.

“I won’t bring your name before the bishop for an excommunication trial,” Vilate said. “And Harriette says she’ll shoot anyone who tries, she’s that loyal a friend to you. But I tell you this. I’m still your friend. I’ll quilt with you, I’ll visit the sick with you, I’ll even pray with you if you need me. But don’t you dare get up in a meeting and speak, Sister Dinah. Don’t you dare pretend to have a word of prophecy or tongues or give even so much as a little explanation of a scripture. The Spirit of God does not dwell in an adulterous heart, and if I hear of you doing even the smallest sort of preachment I’ll call for a court myself and shout the accusation for the whole of Hancock County to hear it!”

Dinah nodded.

Vilate softened, looked for a moment as if she might weep again. Then she reached out and touched a cold damp cloth to Dinah’s brow. “Oh, Sister Dinah, you were the best of all of us, the very best. I thought sometimes you were the only woman I knew worthy to stand beside Brother Joseph the way Hyrum or Brigham or my Heber do.”