The Sister Wife

by Diane Noble

  The morning the first division rolled out, Gabe, Mary Rose, and the children stood on a cliff watching the line of thirty-some carriages and farm wagons. They would leave the following morning, with Gabe as captain of another twenty-seven wagons, those that were the largest in the group. The third company was readying to leave the morning after that.

  Mary Rose looked up at her husband, whose eyes were on the wagon company spread out on the road below them. Brigham rode with the first group, and he could be seen riding horseback out front with some of the other apostles newly returned from England.

  She worried as she studied Gabe’s face. He had not seemed the same since the day they were wed, and he hadn’t told her why. She didn’t probe but hoped that as their love grew, he would open up to her. When she questioned him about it, he said only that he and the captain had had a falling-out over what the captain called the “false gods of the Saints.” He would say no more, but the deep hurt in his eyes was acute and didn’t fade with the passing of days.

  Before they left Boston for Baltimore, she encouraged Gabe to go see the captain and patch things up between them; she knew how much the friendship meant to both men. But Gabe refused.

  Now as they stood on the rise, watching the train of wagons and carriages snake out before them, she reached for Gabe’s hand. His expression was tender as he met her gaze.

  “Tomorrow I’ll feel like we’ve actually begun,” he said. “Everything until now has seemed like preparation.”

  She nodded and gave him a small smile. “’Twas likely because we were heading more to the south than straight west. As Grandfather asked a dozen times, ‘If it’s the Wild West that we’re headed for, why take a road south?’”

  He chuckled. “I thought it was because of the supplies and people we kept picking up along the way. It never felt like we were truly headed for our promised land.”

  “And don’t forget uth,” Ruby said. “You picked uth up along the way too.”

  Mary Rose laughed. “There was really never a choice. We’d decided long before we met Cousin Hermione that we wanted you in our family.”

  “I wanted Oscar to come too, though,” Pearl said.

  Ruby agreed. “Othcar wath part of our family too.”

  Coal kicked a rock over the cliff, watching it tumble into the valley below. He sniggered at his sisters’ words. “Oscar needed salt water. He would’ve died before the first wagon rolled out of Boston.”

  “I’m glad Mr. Fitthgibbonth promithed to take good care of Othcar,” Ruby said.

  Mary Rose reached for Ruby’s hand. “And he will, that’s for certain. And don’t forget, he said to listen for the ocean in the big shell he gave you.”

  “I already did, and I heard it,” Pearl said, coming closer. Mary Rose circled her arm around the little girl, thinking what a mistake it would have been to leave them with Hermione. The elderly woman seemed loving and kind, and Mary Rose and Gabe had exchanged a glance or two, each thinking—they discovered later—that they had perhaps misjudged her. Then Hermione had said with a big smile that the children had arrived just in time. She’d been planning to hire new girls to help her in the house and a barn boy to clean the stalls.

  “What about schooling?” Gabe had asked, and the woman had looked surprised. “The children need book learning, and work with figures; they need to read poetry and biographies and fairy tales,” he said.

  Mary Rose added, “They love to sing and dance and recite nursery rhymes. They love to have someone read to them. They love to act out their stories. Their imaginations have no boundaries.”

  As soon as Hermione gave any thought of education a dismissive wave, Gabe and Mary Rose stood and told her that they’d decided to keep the children. Mary Rose said she would write to Richard and Sarah and let them know.

  “But what about my barn boy?” had been Hermione’s parting words.

  Coal was still kicking dirt and rocks over the cliff when Gabe bent down to talk with him. “You want to ride with me tomorrow, or in the wagon?”

  Coal’s eyes grew big. “You mean it?”

  “You know the little pinto you helped me pick out?”

  His eyes grew bigger as he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “I let you pick her out because she’s yours. You can ride along with me, if you’d like.” The boy threw back his shoulders and nodded solemnly. “We’ll let the womenfolk ride in the wagon,” Gabe continued. “And…I have a secret to tell you.”

  Mary Rose looked away, ready to giggle. She knew what was coming.

  “I don’t know much about riding horses. They don’t seem to know what I want them to do,” Gabe said.

  Coal grinned. “I’ve got a secret for you too. I don’t know much about ’em either.”

  Gabe ruffled his hair.

  “Grandpa Earl told me he’th goin’ a-courting thith morning,” Ruby said. “A widow lady named Thithter Cordelia Jewel whoth wagon ith juth behind hith.”

  Mary Rose glanced at Gabe, who looked ready to laugh. “The earl doesn’t let any grass grow under his feet.”

  “He dothn’t?” Ruby frowned and studied the barren ground. “Why not?”

  “Sister Beulah has a buckboard and a mule,” Pearl said. “The mule’s name is Gulliver, and he sometime kicks. Sister Cordelia says to not walk up from behind, because it scares him. And Sister Cordelia used to be a riverboat dancer and she’s from a long ways away. New Orleans, she said.”

  “She’th pretty too,” Ruby said. “Her hair ith thiny black. And thee hath an acthent that Grandpa Earl thath ith French.”

  Before Mary Rose could take in the news, Bronwyn and Griffin with the baby walked toward them from their wagon.

  Mary Rose stepped forward to take the baby. She couldn’t get enough of Little Grace.

  The sun’s morning slant hit the river that ran alongside the Cumberland Road, giving it a golden hue. The tail end of the first wagon company disappeared into the horizon.

  “That’th where we’ll be tomorrow,” Ruby announced, “riding our ponieth and driving our teamth.”

  “You won’t be riding ponies or driving teams,” Coal pointed out.

  “Yeth I will,” she said.

  “Me too,” Pearl said. “We’re gonna be wild women of the West. Lady told me so.”

  “Tho did Thithter Cordelia Jewel,” Ruby added.

  Bronwyn met Mary Rose’s eyes and quirked a brow. “I believe all us womenfolk are,” she said in her best imitation of a Southern drawl. She came over to stand beside Mary Rose, circling her arm around Mary Rose and Little Grace.

  “I’m glad we’re all going together,” Mary Rose said, smiling at Bronwyn. “It wouldn’t be the same if we hadn’t met.”

  Grandfather came up to stand beside her. “The Wild West,” he said with a wide grin. “I always knew I’d get here again. And here it is, by cracky. Tomorrow we move out, following my dream.”

  Mary Rose looked at him and laughed. “By cracky?”

  His bushy eyebrows shot up. “Heard it in one of the inns. Time for us all to sound more like Americans, by cracky.”

  Bronwyn leaned around Mary Rose and shot him a wide smile and winked. “We’ll learn the lingo in a flash.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said in an exaggerated drawl.

  He’d cut the waxed curls from the ends of his mustache, let his beard grow full and curly, his hair grow longer. He now wore galluses to hold up his pants and had taken to wearing a white stovepipe hat, a blue swallowtail coat with brass buttons, and fine calfskin boots he’d purchased in Boston. He’d also trimmed down somewhat, and Mary Rose suspected it had something to do with Sister Cordelia.

  She smiled up at him. “I hear you’re courting Sister Cordelia.”

  He nodded slowly. “But we’re not rushing into anything. She’s a fine woman, and I’m considering marriage. But as I once counseled you, sometimes things are best taken at a slow pace.”

  Mary Rose touched his arm. “I wish you all the happiness you deserve.�
�� She laughed, and then she teased, “But perhaps I should check into her background, ask someone to vouch for her.” Too late, she realized Cordelia’s past was exactly what didn’t need looking into. She felt herself blush. “I’m sorry,” she said to her grandfather. “That was uncalled for. I meant it as a joke because of your intention to talk to the captain about Gabe.”

  “Cordelia would be the first to say no offense taken. Her past is colorful, to say the least. But it’s behind her and she says she’s not ever looking back. I believe her.” He gazed to the horizon with a wide smile. “She told me that she long hungered for something that her soul was missing. She said she hungered for God. Once she tried to attend church and slipped into the back pew. People turned around, upset to see a dance hall girl among them. They whispered and pointed, and afterward snubbed her.

  “One day in St. Louis, years before, she heard about a young man who was baptizing down by the river. She’d just left the riverboat where she’d worked all night and looked every bit the dance hall girl who’d seen too many dances with too many men. But the preacher, who turned out to be Joseph Smith, gestured for her to come and join the group.

  “He spoke of God’s love, not his condemnation, and told the story of the golden plates. She couldn’t get enough of the warmth and acceptance she felt—from our Prophet and from the people who’d gathered with him. She came back three times, and finally Joseph said to her, ‘Sister Cordelia, don’t you think it’s about time you heeded God’s call in your life?’

  “Well, as far as she knew, no one had told him her name. She said she just about fell over on the spot. It was as if God himself was calling her into his bosom.

  “She almost ran to Joseph to be baptized. She stayed on the riverboat a few more years, thinking dancing was all she knew. Then one day she met another missionary who told her about the trek to Nauvoo. It didn’t take her long to decide to come along.

  “She’s a lively one, this Sister Cordelia,” her grandfather said with a wide grin. “She makes me smile just listening to her.”

  Mary Rose squeezed his hand. “I’m happy for you, Grandfather. And for her.”

  Behind them someone began to play the fiddle. A harmonica joined in, and soon voices were lifted in song and the sound of shuffling feet carried toward them as people began to dance.

  Mary Rose hooked her arm through her grandfather’s as they turned back to camp. “I never did ask if you talked to the captain about Gabe. I assumed you did and all was well or you would have told me otherwise.”

  “I spoke with him before your wedding. He said that he holds our Gabe in the highest regard.” He studied her face. “Everything is going well between the two of you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she assured him as she tried to push from her mind the haunting expression that sometimes shadowed his face.

  NINETEEN

  An Island off Jonesport, Maine

  July 25, 1841

  The aging fisherman rose early on a morning in late July, and groaned as he folded back the bedclothes, put his feet on the floor, and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Giovanni,” his wife said softly, “why are you awake so early?” She turned on the oil lamp beside the bed. “It’s too dark to go out.”

  “Something stirred my heart just now,” he said. “Perhaps it was just the dream of an old fisherman, but this was so real. I was drowning in violent waters and arguing with God, but he wouldn’t let me have my way. I wanted to give up fighting to stay afloat and let myself sink downward into the darkest of the waters. I was still floating suspended between the lighter waters above me and the black waters below when I woke.”

  Cara reached for his hand as he continued. “When God nudged me from my slumber…I felt he had something for me to do. Down by the shore. I can picture it in my mind, and I know I must go there.”

  She sat up. “I’ll go with you. Two lanterns are better than one.”

  “That’s why I love you so,” he said.

  “Because I have my own lantern?” She gave him a smile that lit up her aging face. Her white hair shone like an aura in the lamplight.

  “Because you are so willing to come along with me no matter how harebrained the idea might seem.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Very few of your dreams have turned out to be harebrained, my love. More times than not, it is the Spirit speaking to your heart. I’ve learned to pay attention.”

  “Some people think I’m crazy,” he said with a grin.

  “People who preach to trout in a stream are generally not thought of as stable.”

  His grin widened. “They are God’s creatures too.” He stood, yawned and stretched, and then went to the window. “I don’t know where to begin looking—or even what it is I’m to find.”

  “We’ll start by the ocean,” she said. “Since that was in your dream.”

  Minutes later, they walked north along a rocky spit of land, wearing their knee-high fishing boots and heavy oilskin coats. Though it was summer, the predawn air chilled them and the wind off the ocean brought a fine spray with it. Each held a lantern high and walked slowly, several feet between them.

  “There,” Giovanni shouted as the pale dawn sky began to lighten over the ocean. “Cara, I think I see something, an injured animal perhaps…?” He ran toward the object, dodging rocks and boulders.

  He set the lantern on a flat rock and knelt beside the pile of clothing and flesh. Cara came up behind him—and gasped.

  Giovanni bent over the barely recognizable human and touched his cold, battered face.

  “Is he dead?”

  “It appears so. He’s battered and broken. I don’t see how anyone could have survived what he’s apparently been through.”

  Cara reached for a tattered piece of cloth. It had a captain’s insignia on it. “He’s a sea captain,” she said. “Have you heard news of any shipwrecks? Perhaps we should look around. There may be more. And they might have made it.”

  But Giovanni didn’t move. “This is the one I was sent to find.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  Giovanni lifted the man’s hand and felt for a pulse. He gazed into the man’s face and wondered what kind of ordeal he had been through. He’d noticed there were two breaks in his left leg, another in his right. His face was covered with cuts and abrasions. He was as pale as death, and just as cold. Giovanni gently touched the man’s neck, and then let out a sigh as he met his wife’s worried eyes.

  “His heart still beats. He’s alive.”

  Her face glowed in the light of the lantern. “He was the man in your dream.”

  Cara knelt beside Giovanni and, with her gaze, watched as he examined each limb, his torso, and his neck. “We need to get him into the house,” Giovanni said after a few minutes. “He will die if we don’t hurry.”

  “He’s a big man. I don’t see how the two of us can lift him.”

  “We have no choice,” Giovanni said. He bent over to pick him up, and then struggled to his feet. Cara took the broken and mangled legs into her arms, and slowly they made their way back to the house.

  The sun was rising as if from out of the ocean when they reached their small home. Minutes later they had him on the bed in their second bedroom. Cara went into the kitchen, pumped water into a large iron Dutch oven, and set it on the stove. She stoked the fire beneath, then returned to the bedroom.

  Giovanni had removed the man’s tattered uniform and replaced it with a nightshirt of his own.

  Cara carefully looked through the pile of torn, waterlogged clothing. “Is there anything that tells us his name?” she asked.

  “No,” Giovanni said. “All we know is that he came from the sea so violently it seems to me the water spewed him out of its mouth.”

  PART II

  It was thine oath that first did fail,

  It was thy love proved false and frail…

  —Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  TWENTY

  Nauvoo, Illinois

  October 24, 1841<
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  From across the meetinghouse aisle where he sat with Grandfather and Coal, Gabe turned and caught Mary Rose’s eye as the Prophet began to speak. Her husband winked, and she grinned at him before turning forward again to continue her assessment of the Prophet.

  He was taller than Mary Rose expected. He loomed well over six feet tall, and weighed more than two hundred pounds. In total, he carried himself as though he were the general of some great conquering army. He reminded her of likenesses she’d seen of General George Washington, with his mane of light brown, almost blond, hair and vivid blue-gray eyes. His head was exceptionally large and his face was comely, which she had expected. After all, who could command the attention of even a single follower had he been as ugly as a warthog?

  A warthog? Joseph Smith? She almost giggled, wishing she could share her thoughts with Bronwyn, who sat on her left. But Bronwyn was giving their Prophet her undivided attention. Not even the sleeping Little Grace, held fast in her arms, received the kisses and caresses Bronwyn usually bestowed.

  They’d arrived in Nauvoo just days before. Today was their first Sunday since, and they were required to go to the meetinghouse as the Saints did each Sunday. It hadn’t occurred to Mary Rose until that morning that though the Church as a whole was known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the buildings where they held their meetings were simply that—meeting-houses. And in one such meetinghouse, as Brother Brigham had informed her, she and Gabe would go through another marriage ceremony, one that would join them throughout all eternity. Once the temple was completed, endowment ceremonies, celestial marriage ceremonies, and baptisms for the dead would all be held in that sacred place—first for men only; later, it was rumored, women would be allowed to also participate.