The Veil

by Diane Noble

  “So you were just trying to confuse them … just long enough for us to get away.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s what Aunt Sophie said you were doing.”

  “Have you ever killed anybody, Lucas?” She absently played with Foxfire’s mane, combing the coarse strands with her fingers.

  He looked out across the silver-gray river but didn’t answer. Hannah knew enough not to pursue the question. Besides, maybe she didn’t want to know. In her eyes, Lucas stood taller in stature than even Mattie. Why, hadn’t he just saved their lives? Yet if he killed, even for the right reasons, Hannah didn’t think she would ever think of him in the same way.

  “What if you had to, Lucas?” she asked with sudden insight. “What if God told you to?”

  He looked back into her face, a small grin playing at one side of his mouth. “God?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Aunt Sophie said that Brigham Young is God’s mouthpiece. Words flow right out of God’s heart into his mouth.” She stared at him evenly. “What then? I mean if the Prophet said God told him you needed to kill someone.”

  Lucas stared at her for the longest time without speaking. “What you say is true, Hannah. Brigham Young does speak for God.”

  “And if he tells you to kill?”

  “Then I have to obey.”

  “What if he’s wrong? I mean, what if he wasn’t really listening when God talked to him? That happens to me sometimes. I’ll be thinking hard about why frogs sing only at night or why butterflies look like they’re dancing with sunbeams or why stars look like they’re on fire sometimes, and Aunt Sophie will say something three, sometimes four times before I hear it.” She frowned. “Then I’ll pretend I know what she said, because I’m feeling embarrassed about not listening. What if that happens to the Prophet? What if he isn’t listening properly when God says something?”

  Lucas reached over and affectionately tousled Hannah’s curls. After a moment, he moved back, sobering. “Brother Brigham’s been anointed by God himself, Hannah. I would think if you were God’s only chosen Prophet on earth, you’d listen hard. You’d listen carefully and make sure you didn’t make any mistakes.”

  Hannah nodded. “I hope he never asks you to kill for God, Lucas.”

  Lucas stared at her without answering, and in the thickening mist of the winter dawn, his eyes seemed to take on the sheen of blue-black gunmetal. Hannah shivered when she could see no emotion showing through.

  She reached for her friend’s hand. “Lucas,” she said, holding it tightly between both of hers. “Are you going to stay with us all the way to the Promised Land?”

  He smiled and, pulling his hand free, tousled her hair once more. She was glad to see the warmth had returned to his eyes. “Wouldn’t miss it. I’m going to teach you to be the best oxen driver this side of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “You are?”

  He grinned. “Without fail.”

  “What else?”

  “You’ve got to learn to drive the wagon into a night circle with the others.”

  Hannah liked the sound of Lucas’s plans, and the thought of the adventure ahead made some of the horror of the night begin to fade. She sat on a large, round rock near the water. “What else?” she almost demanded in her enthusiasm.

  “You’ll need to learn doctoring.”

  “Doctoring?”

  “Setting broken arms or treating snakebites—cutting an X in the flesh then sucking out the poison. Think you can do that?”

  “There’re lots of snakes along the way?” He nodded.

  “That’s nothing. Back home in Kentucky, I’ve seen more vipers than you can shake a stick at. I’m not afraid of any old snake or its bite. You just show me how, and I’ll do it.” Hannah felt like saluting. “What else?”

  Lucas laughed, and the sound of it lifted her spirits even more. “I can see you’re going to make quite a pioneer, Hannah,” he said with a wide grin.

  “Hannah, come up here and put on some warmer clothes,” Sophronia called as she started down the rocky incline from the shelter. Amazingly, her aunt had found a homespun-looking skirt and blouse that fit her tall, broad-shouldered frame perfectly. A woolen shawl covered her shoulders, and she had donned a gingham poke bonnet. Even her heavy leather boots looked suitable.

  Hannah was reluctant to leave Lucas’s side, but she knew her aunt was right. She started clambering up the hill, but she wasn’t out of earshot before she heard Sophronia’s words to Lucas. She turned to listen.

  “Strikes me as odd, son, that these clothes fit me to perfection. You can’t tell me these supplies were left for the benefit of your Danites.” She touched the bonnet. “Somehow, I don’t think they’d have much need for a poke bonnet. Or the rest of the trunk of clothes, for that matter—all seemingly made to fit my frame.”

  Lucas didn’t answer.

  “You knew about this ahead of time, didn’t you, son? That’s how you got the horses out.”

  Still the young man remained mute.

  “But I want—no, I need to know if you planned it.” She stared hard at the young man. “Did you pretend to be one of the mob and lead them to my house? Did you do that to have your way? To get me to go west with the others, Lucas? Did you burn me out so there’d be no turning back?”

  Hannah caught her breath and stood at the cave’s mouth as if made of stone. Could Lucas have done such a thing? She watched his face for signs of guilt, but she couldn’t see clearly in the still-gray hours of dawn.

  “Sophie,” he finally said. “I thought you knew me. I thought you knew my love for you … for Hannah.”

  Sophronia didn’t wait for Lucas to go on; she reached out and touched Lucas’s arm gently. “Son, oh, my son!” she cried. “I worry that they’ll capture your heart!” Then almost fiercely, she gathered him into her embrace. Hannah couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Lucas weeping.

  “It was planned, Lucas. I know it as well as I know my own name. You can’t tell me it wasn’t.”

  “I didn’t know until they sent me for you, Sophie,” Lucas said quietly. “Please believe that. I didn’t know.”

  By the time Hannah had pulled on her own well-fitting clothes and clambered back down the hillside, Lucas and Sophronia were seated, talking about plans for the future as if their exchange had never happened.

  A short time later, as a thin sun lifted above the eastern riverbank, a ferry appeared from around a distant bend. The trunks were loaded from the cave, and the horses were penned on board with a dozen or more other teams. Then slowly, very slowly, the flatboat pulled away from shore.

  Hannah stood at the railing, staring eastward. She’d been in Illinois for just a short time, and now she was heading hundreds of miles farther away from home. There had been no time to post a letter to her pa, telling him where she was headed.

  Would she ever see Mattie again? She felt tears start to well up in her eyes. Sophronia had said he was planning another visit to Nauvoo. How would he ever find them now? Would he think to follow them to their Promised Land? Would any of the Gentiles tell him where they’d gone?

  She tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat. Suddenly Lucas was beside her. “It’ll be all right, Hannah,” he said gently, as if understanding her thoughts. “Turn around. Look at the other side.”

  Hannah turned. The sunlight slanted across the water, creating a shimmering path of rippled light. She smiled up at Lucas. “It’s pretty,” she said, trying to forget her sadness. He noticed that she’d been weeping and pulled a kerchief from his pocket, the same one he’d worn across his face the night before. Tenderly, he wiped away her tears.

  FIVE

  Utah Territory

  Spring 1857

  The warm sun had risen high when Lucas Knight strode down tree-shaded Main Street toward Sophronia’s small, two-story house on the far side of town. Horse-drawn wagons and carriages passed, and he nodded at the friendly faces. Several people called out words of greeting; others merely
smiled and waved. Joab and Martha Heber rode by in a fancy carriage newly shipped from Boston, their two unmarried daughters sitting in the half-seat behind them. Both girls flushed and giggled when they saw him. Grinning, Lucas blew them a kiss and tipped his hat. He had watched the girls grow into comely young women from the skinny little waifs they’d been, covered with dirt and clothed in tattered rags, when the family had arrived years before with the first handcart immigration.

  Nearly ten years had passed since Lucas arrived in the Great Salt Lake valley, driving his wagon next to Hannah and Sophronia’s. Then this land had been nothing but a salt-covered desert; now rows of brightly painted shops flanked the cobbled street where he walked.

  He took pleasure in the hard-earned prosperity of the Saints. There could be no harder working, more God-fearing people on earth. How true the Scripture that Brother Brigham was forever quoting from the prophet Isaiah: Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you…. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

  Lucas turned off Main Street and headed down a small, winding lane that led to Sophronia’s cottage just outside of town. For as far as he could see in any direction, in what was once a bleak and empty landscape, elms and sycamores now cast forth their leafy branches, providing welcome shade beneath the deserts vivid sun. Carpets of grass and white picket fences surrounded the small, English-style brick houses with their gaily trimmed shutters.

  Flower beds filled with early spring roses, irises, and daisies framed each front yard, and vegetable gardens already showing signs of their coming bounty graced the rear of each cottage. Behind most of the homes, Lucas could see apple orchards, now in full bloom, spreading their slender, blossom-covered branches toward the sun like arms of worship held heavenward.

  Yes, it was a good land filled with a good people, he mused as he walked. Good people, many of whom had nearly sacrificed their lives to make this desert bloom. Brother Brigham had been right in bringing the Saints here.

  Then Lucas paused, frowning, as he looked back at the well-planned city. He could see the good in the land and in its people, and he tried to consider only the virtue of what the Saints had accomplished. As happened too often nowadays, though, Lucas pushed his doubts, his musings, to the back of his mind, away from the darker side of the beauty before him. Yet those doubts remained in place.

  There was no denying the triumph of God’s people over the elements, but at what price? As he walked down the lane, he wondered if other Saints reflected on the sacrifices given to build this kingdom. Grumbling wasn’t allowed in this place, and perhaps that was proper. Neither was dissension permitted nor any word against Brigham Young or his council, the apostles, the elders, or the bishops.

  In keeping with their unspoken promises of optimism and their sworn vows of obedience, most who had suffered when they crossed the Plains wisely kept their own counsel once they arrived in the valley. Those who didn’t soon learned to keep quiet, or they suffered the consequences.

  When he and Sophronia and Hannah crossed, they had known hardship, but they had crossed during spring and summer after waiting out a severe winter. But hundreds who’d crossed in the bitter cold, following the elders’ orders, had perished—from starvation, from exposure, or from the stubborn ignorance of those who led them.

  He took a deep breath, trying to push the indictment of the elders, the apostles, the president’s council—God’s elect—from his mind. But he couldn’t forget how the new converts, mostly the elderly and infirm, and the families with young children had not been told of the journey’s hardships before they were recruited by missionaries in England, Scotland, and the Scandinavian countries. They hadn’t been told that they would take turns pulling carts of unseasoned wood, each heavy handcart filled with the belongings of several families.

  Lucas had seen one of the early handcart groups when he and a few eastward-traveling missionaries encountered them in Iowa. He would never forget their faces as Apostle Franklin Richards and Elders Webb and Felt—riding fine horses alongside their stout teams of oxen pulling supply wagons outfitted for their own journey—rebuked the converts for grumbling.

  The handcart pioneers had wept in repentance, then in joy, as the apostle lifted his hand and gave them a blessing, prophesying in the name of God of Israel:

  The Almighty God is making a way for you, his people, to Zion. Though the snow may fall and the storm rage on your right hand and your left, not a hair of your heads will perish.

  Yet they had perished. Hundreds had frozen to death. Hundreds more had starved. Those who survived were little more than skeletons when they arrived in the valley of the Saints during the following months.

  Lucas pushed the memory of the false prophecy from his mind. He especially tried to forget Brigham Young’s words as the pitiful, straggling few survivors pulled their broken-down handcarts along the main street of Zion. “A successful experiment,” Lucas had overheard him say to John Steele. “A successful experiment indeed.”

  Lucas picked up his pace now that he could see Sophronia’s two-story cottage in the distance. He and some of the other bishops and elders had built the small brick dwelling shortly after their arrival in the valley. Like the others, it was English style with a steep roof that nearly touched the ground. Soon after it was finished, Sophronia and Hannah had planted poplar, mulberry, and maple saplings that some of their neighbors had given them, having had to bring them from the East. Now, of course, the trees had reached full growth and provided a luxurious canopy of shade.

  Sophronia had also planted grapevines after Lucas had built an arbor at the side of the house and an apple orchard in the back. The young plants and seedlings thrived with an abundance of fresh water brought from the nearby mountains by the irrigation system built by the Church.

  Hannah had planted ivy in a bed at the front of the house, and now it twined up the posts that flanked the entrance, creating a lacy cover over the porch. She’d pleaded with Lucas to build a porch swing, and unable to resist her sweet smile, he’d of course built her the finest swing to be found anywhere in the valley. She spent every spare moment of her day there. Every day after her chores were finished, after the horses were exercised and the cows milked, she would settle into the swing and read.

  She read every book she could get hold of, most of them several times. Everyone knew that if they wanted to clear out an attic or trunk of unused books, they had only to go as far as Sophronia’s cottage to be rid of them. Each time he visited, Hannah proudly showed Lucas her latest acquisitions ranging from Hawthorne to Emerson, from Browning to Longfellow.

  By now he’d reached the little picket fence in front of the cottage, and Hannah, from her usual place in the swing, glanced up, smiling when she saw him. She stood to greet him, then almost shyly leaned against the front porch railing, watching him open the gate.

  He grinned at her standing there in the slant of sunlight. The sight of her always lifted his spirits. In the ten years since their wagon train had rumbled into the valley of the Saints, Hannah had grown into a fetching young woman. No longer was she the impetuous, skinny wood sprite he’d first met in Illinois. And he wasn’t the only man to notice: Many an elder’s head was turned at the sight of her.

  Just as the grown-up Hannah hadn’t lost one freckle that graced her small nose, neither had she lost one ounce of spirit. Far from it. In many ways, she was more outspoken than ever. Lucas couldn’t count the times he’d had to warn the girl to bridle her tongue.

  Whereas many of the women wore modest bonnets or hats to cover their heads, Hannah—following Sophronia’s lead—let her unruly curls have their own way, without comb or paper flower clip to adorn or tame them.

  No
w she lifted a brow and considered him solemnly. “You seem especially lost in thought this morning, Lucas.”

  “It seems to be one of those mornings—one made for thinking deep thoughts and considering God’s beauty,” Lucas said, bounding up the porch stairs. “And you, dear Hannah, are one of his finest examples.”

  Hannah reached up to ruffle his hair affectionately. “I think you’ve just got a case of spring fever, dear boy. Makes one see the world through rose-colored glasses.”

  He chuckled softly and caught her hand. A brief shadow seemed to cross her face. Sophronia had been feeling poorly of late, so he attributed the uneasiness on Hannah’s face to that.

  “How is Sophie?” he asked as they moved to the swing.

  Hannah frowned. “Not much better. She’s resting right now.”

  “I’ve been concerned about her.” Lucas held the swing still as Hannah settled into it, then, seating himself, he started rocking it gently as they looked out toward the Wasatch Mountains to the east. “In fact, I went by to see Doc Jones on my way here. He gave me an elixir. Said it might strengthen her blood.”

  Again Hannah looked worried. “It’s more than strengthened blood she needs, Lucas. I’ve been as worried as you are lately, but I’m not sure what’s wrong.”

  “She won’t say?”

  Hannah shook her head. “She says, although it’s in a voice filled with spirit and vigor, that she’s got a right to slow down if she declares she wants to.” She paused. “I think it’s something more serious than a blood ailment, Lucas.”

  “What do you mean?” He looked at Hannah intently, trying to read her expression.

  “There’s more that makes up a person than body and soul.”

  “You’ve got to be more plainspoken than that, Hannah. What are you talking about?”

  “It started when Elder Webb reprimanded her after services at the arbor.”