“Yes, Mother, we are certain. The child should be born sometime in September.”
It was a good way to start the new year—a gift for Nicholas’s mother that brought a frail but tender light back into her eyes. She had been failing; perhaps the bitter winter weather was taking its toll. Now Nicholas knew she would want to hold on until this child was born.
There were other good omens. Judge Pope of the Supreme Court in Springfield dismissed the charges against the Prophet. Free again, Joseph held a feast at his house in honor of his release. The Saints dedicated Tuesday, the seventeenth of January, as a day of fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving to God. Nicholas had much for which to be thankful. He only prayed that the Lord would be merciful and allow the Saints to live peaceably with their non-Mormon neighbors, though deep in his heart he knew that truth has always been beset by opposition, and the agency of man is not tampered with, even by heaven. It was so difficult, though, to want to live as other men—to reap what one planted, to raise one’s children in peace and safety—and be denied.
City of Nauvoo, March 7, 1843
Dearest Millie,
They are here! Two perfect girls, who arrived within days of one another. Mine is called Julia, and Leah’s, Jenny. One would think they were twins—one would think Leah and I were giddy girls, for all the delight we take in them. I am so grateful, Millie! Life has been good to me.
There are nearly a dozen wards in Nauvoo and over 15,000 people, many of them converts who keep pouring in. Why can’t you be one of them and come help me care for my babies? Katherine is more filled with vim and vigor than ever before, now that she can run anyplace at her fancy. Emmeline, thank heaven, is a mild, patient little thing. What should I do if I had two like Katy? Mother is the only one who can control her, and she enjoys the contest, as I think Katy does, too.
Oh, I miss you! Shall we ever see one another? Can it really be years that have separated and changed us? I cannot write more at this time, but know, dearest Millie, that you are still in my thoughts, despite the press of duties that fill and crowd my days. Do not forget that I pray for you always,
Your friend,
Verity
Millie received Verity’s letter near the beginning of April, which was really an ending, a closing, a dying for her.
Sable Island was set among shoal waters that afforded ideal feeding ground for halibut, cod, and haddock, fish greatly desired by Gloucestermen. Nowhere was the fishing better than close in on the two long bars that formed northwesterly and northeasterly, making the island a full, deep crescent. Yes, nowhere was the fishing so good or so dangerous as here. The island had earned well its name of Graveyard of the Atlantic. Two hundred-odd wrecks of one kind or another had settled into her sands, and they say that the bones of hundreds of men lie scattered and bleaching along her shores. Yet of all the men who sailed the sea, Gloucester fishermen were the only ones who did not give the island wide berth in winter; even less so when March had blown itself out and they could feel spring stirring.
It was here that Luther had gone aboard Billy Turner’s schooner the Suzanna as part of a seining fleet. In the early morning hours of the tenth of April a gale struck in force. The curtain of night had not yet lifted, and whirls of snow, as frozen as small chips of ice, beat down upon the ships until sight was impossible. The world closed in upon them and became no more than the white madness that circled their heads.
Inch by inch some of the ships limped out to sea, and by late afternoon the first of the fleet nosed into harbor in Provincetown, Yarmouth, and Marblehead. One vessel did not return. Some reported having seen it driven ashore on the long bars and feared for its fate, but no mortal eye watched the disappearing hull of the Suzanna who lived to tell the tale. She did not return with the others. She and the men who went down with her had become part of history now.
It was Jim Trollop who came to tell Millie. She swayed a little, and he swore to the men later that her pretty young face had turned gray. After he left her she sat alone in the blackness; she could not bear the thought of lighting a lamp. She needed the darkness to cover and hide her. She pulled her knees up to her chin, rocking and keening softly. You are gone, Luther, with no word between us, no last kindness, no understanding before this swift end! Perhaps time would have helped and befriended them, perhaps a child would have come, and the tenderness that could soften Luther’s eyes when he succumbed to Millicent’s physical beauty would have blossomed and grown into what she had longed for. Perhaps—perhaps! But there was no perhaps. She had become a mourner for the second time in her life, and Luther had become part of a legend that belonged to the sea.
The sudden commotion at the back of the room made Nicholas tense his muscles and turn his head sharply. Brother Clayton! Why would he interrupt a meeting in progress? The man walked the length of the hall until he reached Hyrum Smith, and the instinctive fears of nearly every Saint in the room were confirmed. Joseph was in trouble, perhaps hurt, perhaps dead? No, never that! The Lord would protect him; the Lord had always protected him.
Hyrum dismissed the meeting and requested the brethren to meet with him at the Masonic Hall, but so large a number rushed to answer his request that the building couldn’t hold them. They adjourned to the Green, where they were told the story of Joseph’s capture by Constable Wilson of Illinois and Sheriff Reynolds of Missouri. Nicholas realized that many about him appeared to remember these men. Murmured threats, like the sound of a wind rising, spread through the crowd.
Volunteers were organized, part to ride overland, part to travel by river to Joseph’s aid. The air was electric with the fears and tensions of over three hundred men. Nicholas was assigned to ride overland toward Peoria in a group of 175 men.
When he went home to pack a few things and tell Helena what had happened, he expected to meet with some opposition. She only tightened her mouth into a thin line and was silent. He pulled her gently close to him. “You are such a good wife,” he said, “What would I do without you?”
She sighed in his arms and nestled closer. He loved her with a tenderness that increased every day he lived with her. “Take care of yourself while I am away,” he made her promise. “It shouldn’t be long.”
“I will pray for your safety,” she said, and her voice trembled a little. As he rode off to meet the others he tried to hold onto the warmth of her, the beauty of her eyes smiling after him, the strength of her love.
They must have been a singular sight: 175 men riding across the prairie, dark shadows against the crimson-streaked sky. The following day they divided so as to make their way in smaller groups through the country. After all, they were Mormons, and Mormons excited not only attention but suspicion when they gathered in any size group at all. In the morning their captain, Brother Grover, met Stephen Markham, who had been sent by the Prophet to instruct the brethren to join him at Monmouth. Joseph had obtained a writ of habeas corpus in Dixon which allowed him to obtain a hearing in Nauvoo, whose municipal courts had a right to try cases under such writs. Over the next several days Joseph’s brethren arrived in small squads. His two captors grew more and more nervous as they found themselves surrounded by the same men they had bullied under protection of the law and driven from their homes. Nicholas thought they were a sorry, sniveling sight, the two of them. But he was not surprised at the directions Joseph had given that no one was to injure a hair of their heads or cause them any discomfort.
By noon of the thirtieth of June the Prophet’s company of 140 men approached Nauvoo. Word had been sent ahead, and the whole town came out to meet them in a long train of carriages, with the brass band playing and the cannon firing in time with the tune. Joseph mounted his horse, Old Charley, and rode straight through the town to the Mansion House, where his little ones crowded about him, welcoming him with the unreserved delight that is the special province of children.
Nicholas, watching the scene, had tears in his eyes. Never had he been prouder to be a Latter-day Saint than at this moment. The dignity and purity of this man, Joseph Smith, impressed him anew, and he rode to his own house feeling nothing but gratitude for the privilege he had of walking and talking with such a man.
Dearest Millie,
I take up my pen with reluctance, for what I must tell will, I know, meet with censure and misunderstanding. So I pray, dear heart, that you keep as open and merciful a mind as you can.
The Lord has made known, through revelation to the Prophet, the practice of plural marriage—the taking of more than one wife. There has been rumor about such things existing or coming in the Church for some time. Not a soul I have talked with—male or female—is anything but troubled by the idea, but as Saints we are taught to follow the Lord’s command, as were the Lord’s people in ancient times. I do not understand it myself! But some have been called to live this principle, and Mother’s Simon is one.
When he first told her of his directive, as gently as he could—how can a man tell a wife gently that he is going to supplant her or diminish her station by taking another!—Mother said nothing but walked straight out of the house and over to Brother Hyrum Smith’s. “He would know how to explain it,” she told me later, “better than anyone could.”
I guess he converted her, or at least placated her, for never a word of complaint has escaped her lips. “This is a hard thing,” I said to her myself, “a hard thing to ask after all else we have been through.”
I think she came close to agreeing with me at that time, but instead she said—gently for her—“The Lord has his purposes. He has always asked the most difficult things of his people.”
“Why?” I persisted, my heart sick within me.
“To fit them for heaven, my dear heart,” she replied. “We are mortals, and we tend to live for mortality and altogether forget that we are here to grow and to prove ourselves for something better. If we only could see!”
I did not think polygamy “better” then, and do not now, but I held my tongue. I did not wish to torment her, brave as she is. I wonder what it has cost her inside. Something terrible. At times I glimpse in her eyes a pain, almost a desperation, that goes straight to my heart. Many whisper that this will be the undoing of us—all the excuse our enemies need to wipe us off the face of the earth. I try to reason calmly and have faith. But that is not easy when just last month, a constable from Hancock County and a sheriff from Missouri came and arrested the Prophet for “treason” while he and Emma were visiting relatives over by Dixon. These men are bold and cruel and will stop at nothing if they believe they can get away with it. They did not this time, but actually ended up being arrested themselves. And what did the Prophet do, after they had bruised and bullied him and even threatened to kill him? He and Emma provided a good supper for them, seated them at the head of their table, and Emma served them herself! Could you or I do that, Millie? I wonder, at least concerning myself.
You may be thinking that Joseph is a monster himself to suggest such a practice as polygamy, but that is not so. A more modest and Christlike man you could never know. ’Tis not his idea, but comes from God, and Joseph has resisted for years. But now there is no way to escape it.
Oh, Millie, pray for us. If our enemies rise up against us again, what shall we do? Where shall we go? They have already pushed us to the edge of the civilized world. And to leave Nauvoo! All who are here have poured our life’s blood into it, and we love it well. To walk away—again—leaving all behind us . . .
Millie could feel Verity’s pain reach out and wrap itself around her own heart. She could not even imagine life as her friend described it. How could they endure this life she described?
She pondered that question on and off all day long. When she tucked Adria into her bed, warm and cozy as a little nest, an answer came to her unbidden. To love something good and noble, to give your life to it—that alone brings joy, that alone brings peace.
She scorned the thought, wondering what had put it inside her head. Restless, she walked the night beach, alone with the sound of the breakers gently rolling to shore, alone with the sky, so endless and mysterious over her head. Did Luther really exist somewhere up there still? Did her father and mother? What could heaven possible be like if it was merely a hodgepodge of people in various conditions of sinfulness and goodness, much as it was here? Did Luther miss her, if thought and feeling were granted him? Were there things he regretted and wished he could come back and change? If he were to appear—to walk across the gray beach toward her this minute—would she be willing to change herself, too?
She hated the questions, the eternal questions that had no answers. She missed Luther, more than she had ever dreamed she could, knowing he would never return. His death had closed her up in another vacuum, much as when she first returned to Gloucester. In part that was Almira’s doing, who, in her perversion, would blame even his death on Millie. People listened to her. And she was not only good at telling the worst things but at altering and rearranging the facts to fit her purposes.
Millie couldn’t fight back. She didn’t know how, nor did she have the heart for it. She looked after her own business, tended the house and garden and Adria, helped out at the school. Beyond the confines of her own little world, there was no life for her.
Adria was a quiet child, but she was eternally curious. Sometimes when there was little for her at school Millie would let her go down to the wharves and visit the old sailors who sat around telling stories and mending nets. She had asked Blind Billie to keep a watch on her, which to some might have seemed strange. But Billie knew every sound and breath on the waterfront and could identify half a dozen people or more by their footfall along the boards.
The child quickly became a favorite among the seamen. They taught her their ditties and songs and rehearsed for her tender ears the old legends of ships and sirens, maidens and their sailor lovers. She was a good listener, and quick to remember all they told her, at times correcting one of them solemnly when he got any of the facts in a story wrong. They took to teasing her by making mistakes on purpose, and it tickled them to hear her painstakingly retell it the way it should be. “She’s a rare one,” they whispered among themselves. “Long as she’s alive and well the old ways won’t die.”
One afternoon she came skipping home along the sand, singing loudly at the top of her lungs, “My truly, truly fair, truly, truly fair, how I love my truly fair . . .” Millie paused at her work in the garden to listen. “There are songs to sing her, trinkets to bring her, flowers for her golden hair.”
Millie put her hand to her hair and lifted it lightly. What was it the stranger had said? “Like the colors of a young fawn when the sun dapples his coat”—those were the words Nicholas had used. It had been a long time since she had given a thought to him. Yet now it all rushed back to her with the words of the song. She closed her eyes, wanting desperately to remember—wanting desperately to forget.
Adria came up to her, and she put her arm around the child’s waist.
“Do you like the pretty new song I learned, Mother?”
“Yes, dear heart, I do.” She pushed the child’s damp golden hair back from her forehead and then bent to her work, while Adria sang the verses over and over again for her to enjoy.
For the first time Nicholas wasn’t sure he agreed with the Prophet’s decision. Run for president of the United States! Not one man in ten thousand would understand. Nicholas knew the logic behind it. They had learned these past few weeks in the congressional elections that both parties resented, even hated them, yet courted their favor, hoping to secure the Mormon vote en masse. Joseph had written letters to five candidates for the presidency concerning their views regarding the Saints. Three of the candidates replied, but they seemed to have little sympathy for members of the Church. So, how could the Saints as a body, or individually, support any of them? It was a powerful statement Joseph was making by putting himself forward as a candidate. A necessary statement, perhaps. But an anti-Mormon meeting had already convened in Carthage, calling upon all good and righteous men to assist in humbling the pride of that “audacious despot,” Joseph Smith. Nicholas was fearful of the emotional consequences that may result from this move.
Late in September Helena gave birth to a son. Her labor was long and difficult. Nicholas was amazed at the joy in her face when the midwife at last permitted him to go in to her.
“I’ve given you a son,” she said, smiling weakly.
He loved her so much at that moment that he felt tears choke in his throat. He leaned his head against hers and whispered his love for her until she blushed softly and pushed him away.
They named the boy William Abel—William after her father. But everyone called him Abel, everyone except Helena, who liked to laughingly refer to him as Abe. Nicholas’s mother fussed over both of them; watching her Nicholas wondered where her strength came from. Ever since the onset of the past winter she had become thin and frail, her small frame shrinking upon itself visibly. Helena gave up the child to her no matter how often she requested. When Nicholas attempted to praise her for her kindness, she grew serious.
“I really don’t think she will be with us long, Nicholas. I’ve seen too many signs. Sometimes I believe this new love for Abel is the only thing that sustains her from day to day. As much as she is ready to go on to the husband who awaits her, I know she hates the thought of tearing herself away from him.” There were tears in her eyes. “And when she is gone he will have no grandparents, Nicholas, no one but you and me.”
“Then he shall have all a child requires and more, my dear.” He kissed her pale cheek, so cool to the touch of his lips.
She smiled, knowing he tried to comfort her. But it was a sorrow to both to be bereft of parents and family, to feel they stood alone against the world, especially in times such as these.
As fall hardened toward winter, reports of violence filtered in from the solitary farms and homesteads along the prairie, which were the first and easiest prey. And before the year had sighed itself out, Ellen Todd let go of life herself, with one long, gentle sigh.
She could not be buried beside her husband, but Nicholas found a choice spot in the new cemetery heading east on Parley, just outside of town. A slender linden tree standing on a small rise sheltered it. There would be a good view from here, and the violent storms of winter would be softened by the strong, growing tree.
Through the heavy weight of his sorrow, one comfort gnawed at the edges of Nicholas’s consciousness: she rested in peace. When the persecutions came again, as Nicholas felt they were bound to, she would be beyond their power, and safe.
Summer was an easy time. Millie could be consumed from sunup to sundown by her garden and be all the happier for it. But best of all she liked the early days of autumn, warm still with the last fruitfulness of summer, and ripe with the smells of harvest and the age-old customs of gathering, gleaning, and garnering all the bounties of earth. She and Adria got by. She sold some of the produce from her garden on marketing days, and did an occasional piece of sewing for various people in the town. Luther’s friends were good to her, remembering her with choice fish when their catches were good. And, of course, she had her little bit of income from her work at the school. They seldom felt a real pinch. As Christmas approached she knitted scarves and mittens and sold them to help finance the gifts she planned for Adria.
She noted the November day that marked two years since Adria had come to her. She had considered the idea of using this date as a birthday for the child, but thought better of it; she was superstitious about such things. Instead she selected the second of February, as the long, dark winter was beginning to break up and spring seemed a possibility. This gave them a real cause to celebrate and to forget for one day, at least, the dreary sameness of the harsh, frozen landscape and the short winter days.
She could only guess at the child’s age, thinking for the thousandth time how strange it was that she seemed to come from nowhere, with no past, only this beautiful, clean surface upon which she and Millie together began to etch the experiences and impressions of her new life. The tightness Millie had lived with for months, the trembling of her hands every time she had searched through her mail, seemed but a memory now. By rights of the heavens, Adria was hers.
She decided Adria had been four when she came out of the sea, feeling it safer to err in that direction than the other. The child’s native brightness would compensate for any error. That would make her six on this birthday, a very big girl indeed. Millie gathered her courage and invited some of the little girls from the school near Adria’s age to come out to the house. They played “Blind Man’s Bluff” and “Hide the Thimble” and “I packed my trunk to Saratoga and I put in”—a bonnet, or a parasol, or even a crocodile. It was delightful to see what the children came up with. Adria had the best memory of all and never lost track of the items or left one out when it was her turn. When they had had enough of the games, and Adria had opened the little gifts the children had brought, it was time to enjoy the goodies Millie had set out for them: warm raspberry tea laced with lemon, scones with rose petal jelly, strawberry rhubarb tarts, and lemon lace cookies.
Only the lengthening shadows forced Millie to end the festivities, bundle up the little girls in their wraps, and send them scampering home. She and Adria walked into town with some of the younger ones, stopping to visit Blind Billie, who sat in his rags on an upturned log playing thin, eerie tunes on his Irish pipe.
The lilting melodies stayed with them as they walked home hand in hand through the gray evening, and seemed to enchant the very air which they moved through, seemed to hallow the day. Millie trembled with gratitude and clung to the little fingers that wrapped round her own.