The Sister Wife (28 page)

The pounding at the door grew more frantic.

“I want you children to stay up here until I tell you it's safe to come down. Coal, will you see that they do?”

The boy nodded solemnly. “Yes, Papa.”

“Mary Rose, I'll need you to hold the lamp.” She nodded.

“I'm coming too,” Bronwyn said. “If it's a woman in trouble, it's probably womenfolk she'll need to talk to.”

Though he worried about the safety of the two women he loved most in the world, he couldn't argue with Bronwyn's reasoning.

Gabe started down the stairs, Mary Rose directly behind him, Bronwyn to one side. He glanced back at the children at the top of the stairs, their faces white with fear.

Then a voice on the other side of the door cried, “Gabe! Are you there? Please, come. Hurry!”

There was no mistaking the distinctive accent, the lilting timbre of the voice he'd known so well from childhood. His heart quickened.

“Enid,” he breathed, and taking the lamp from Mary Rose, made his way to the door.

Nauvoo, Illinois
February 1, 1846

M
ary Rose waded through ankle-deep snow to the picket gate in front of the two-story mansion that once had been the hub of Prophet Joseph Smith's Church activities. Her heavy woolen gloves made the latch difficult to open, and as she worked it, her breath came out in foggy spurts.

The gate opened at last, and she hurried up the snow-covered walkway to rap on the front door. After a moment, she heard footsteps on the other side. When the door opened, Emma Smith stood before her with a composed smile.

“Thank you for coming—especially in this storm. I didn't know if you'd received my note.”

“I had hoped to see you again anyway before we leave—”

Emma waved her fingers as if she didn't have time for the niceties of a social visit and then quickly ushered Mary Rose into the parlor. Dying embers glowed in the fireplace, but Emma made no move to stoke the fire or to add new logs. The furniture was covered as if the family was ready to vacate the house. A stack of small trunks and valises stood by the doorway into the entry hall.

“I'm sorry I can't fix tea—or even invite you to sit for a visit. But Joseph Junior and the other children will be here to fetch me shortly. We're going into hiding until the danger is past.”

“I'm so sorry about what's happened…that you're not going with us.”

“None of that matters now,” Emma said as she crossed the room to a small rolltop desk in the corner, opened a drawer, and drew out an envelope. “I found this while going through my husband's papers,” she said. “I thought it might be of interest to you.”

Mary Rose drew off her gloves, placed them in her cloak pocket, and took the envelope from Emma, flipping it to the back to read the return information, which stated it was from the Office of Land Registry, London, England.

She looked up at Emma with surprise. For years she'd been trying to find out information about the family estate and had been unable to discover any detail about the transfer.

Fingers trembling, Mary Rose opened the envelope and pulled out the letter. She skimmed through the legal descriptions and history of the land, and then her gaze came to a dead halt on a sentence three paragraphs down.

Mary Rose looked up at Emma. “Did anyone tell my grandfather about this?”

“Joseph didn't discuss such matters with me,” Emma said.

Emma gestured toward the desk. “My writing materials are there, should you wish to respond. I can post the missive for you once we've left Nauvoo. I doubt that any mail can get out now that the siege is about to begin.” She stepped closer. “You could take your children, leave now…”

“You're advising me to leave the Church, leave my husband…?”

“The church that Brigham now leads is not Joseph's, not the true Church. By throwing in with a false prophet, Gabriel is putting your family in grave danger. Brigham is leading thousands of Saints out of Nauvoo—but he doesn't know where he's taking them.” She moved her gaze to the window and didn't speak for a moment. Then she said, “And in this weather. I daresay, hundreds will die because of his folly.”

Mary Rose clutched the letter close. “You've given me a gift beyond measure in its importance.”

“From our previous conversations I thought it might be so.”

“I will never forget what you've done for me.”

Emma smiled and pulled her into a quick embrace. “God be with you, dear, no matter your choice.” Then, releasing Mary Rose, she added, “You must go now, before you're seen with the likes of me. I'm known as a troublemaker—a symbol of dissension among Brigham's Saints.” She looked pleased with the distinction.

“'Tis a reputation I enjoy as well,” Mary Rose said with a laugh.
“I don't care who sees me here with you. You've been a good friend to me.”

“And you to me,” Emma said.

With a nod, Mary Rose pulled up her hood and headed into what had now turned into a blizzard.

“Can you find your way home?” Emma called after her when she reached the gate.

Her gloved hand on the latch, Mary Rose turned. “To England?”

Emma laughed. “That too. No, I meant because of the storm—will you find your way back to the farm? Maybe you should stay in town. Liam and Eliza Hale haven't yet left. I know they'd welcome you.”

“Gabe drove me here in the wagon—wanted to try out the heavy canvas cover he designed for the exodus. He's waiting in the livery.”

“Speaking of design,” Emma called after her. “It's a shame he didn't get to complete the temple…”

“Aye,” Mary Rose said with a small wave of her gloved hand, “'Tis.”

 

Mary Rose stared at the frozen river in front of the oxen team. For three days she'd wrestled with her decision. Even now, she could pull the wagon out of the long train and, in the confusion of the mass exodus, disappear without being noticed until it was too late for anyone to follow or bring her back.

Wrapped in heavy buffalo hide blankets, Mary Rose, Bronwyn, and Grandfather's widow, Cordelia, sat on the wagon bench of the big Conestoga, and all the children were in the back of the wagon, tucked beneath their own buffalo hides. A canopy of stars glittered in the clear midnight sky; the temperatures had been steadily dropping since sundown. It was well below freezing, and had been for days. The Mississippi River was frozen solid—at
least that's what the lead scouts claimed. Mary Rose worried that though the ice had held for riders on horseback, it might not support the hundreds of wagons that would make the crossing that night.

One flick of the whip above the beasts' backs, one tug of the reins, and she could climb the embankment and head south on the river road to St. Louis, bypassing the mobs in Nauvoo.

Her heart beat rapidly as she imagined it…imagined taking them all home to England with her.

Mary Rose looked back along the long line of wagons and livestock and caught Gabe's glance as he rode up from checking the one hundred wagons under his leadership. He'd become an expert horseman since Enid's arrival. Even now, she rode proudly beside him, her flaming red hair silvered by the starlight.

“Mama,” Ruby called from inside the back of the wagon. “What's this little trunk got in it? Is it food? I'm hungry.” The sounds of the trunk opening carried toward Mary Rose.

“Uh-oh,” Pearl called out. “I thought you said we couldn't bring any books. This little trunk is full of books.”

Gabe rode up beside the wagon bench. “Books?”

“Yes, Papa,” Ruby said. “Mama's big Bible, and Psalter, some journals and some really big other books. Novels, I think. Maybe some poems. Mama, somebody must have put this trunk in the wagon by mistake.”

“No, dear,” Mary Rose said, her eyes on Gabe's. “They're mine.”

Gabe stared at her for a moment. “Are they more important than a child?” he said. “What if the weight of those books is what pushes the weight of this wagon over its limit?” His horse danced sideways and snorted, its exhaled breath white in the freezing air.

“You know how important my books are to me, Gabe…all of them.”

“Your last vestiges of English life should be left behind, Mary Rose. Your mother's Bible must weigh five pounds, and you've read
the Jane Austen novels enough times to have them memorized. I can understand bringing your journals, but everything else needs to go. Think of it as a sacrifice—one of many that all of us have had to make.” He rode to the back of the wagon and asked Coal to hand him the trunk.

“Wait,” Ruby said. “I'll get out Mama's journals.” Scuffling sounds ensued as the children handed the trunk to Gabe. A moment later, Mary Rose heard the sound of hoofbeats as Gabe rode off to dispose of her treasures.

She tried to hold back her tears, but they came anyway. Bronwyn reached for her gloved hand with her own, giving her a look of understanding. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. Cordelia looked as mad as one of the banty roosters in a cage in the wagon in front of them.

“Papa is right,” Mary Rose said to the children. “We've all had to make sacrifices, and this is one that may save our lives. You children have had to leave things behind you cared for, and have pleased your papa and me with your willingness to pack as we asked.”

Within minutes, Gabe—as captain of the first brigade of wagons to cross—rode to the lead wagon and shouted the order to move out. The first oxen team stepped onto the ice, skittish as their hooves slipped and the big animals tried to find their footing.

There was no time to consider the frightening cracks and pops of breaking ice as the wagon wheels continued to roll, or the even more precarious start of the second wagon as visible rifts in the ice showed near shore.

Mary Rose's turn came next. Gabe had stationed himself beside the river on the eastern shore. He met her eyes as she drove the oxen team to the river's edge. She could still turn the team rapidly to the left, head south…

Half standing, she kept her eyes on Gabe's as she lifted the
whip, readying it to pop over the team's backs. Her heart seemed to hang in eternity as she searched his face. Then he gave her that crooked half-smile she adored, and his eyes shone with a pure and precious love, just as they had on another starlit night long ago, that night aboard the
Sea Hawk
.

She cracked the whip above the team of oxen and headed straight down the embankment and onto the frozen river. Bronwyn and Cordelia gasped as the hooves slipped and the beasts snorted their nervous displeasure. Mary Rose tried to ignore the cracking sounds beneath the heavy wagon and flicked the whip again, to keep the team moving.

Behind them, Gabe shouted to the next wagon in line, and then the next, and the next. Within minutes, Mary Rose drove the team up the embankment on the far side of the river.

“Whoa-howdy.” Coal whistled from behind Mary Rose. “That's some fancy drivin'!” The children had lifted the canvas curtain between the driver's seat and the covered bed, and when Mary Rose looked back, she grinned at the six curious and proud little faces staring back at her. Coal, now twelve, had grown tall and lean and had a bright and curious mind; he said he wanted to be sea captain on a clipper ship someday, just like Captain Hosea Livingstone. The twins were now nine, and loved taking care of their little brothers and sister—Little Grace, now five, and the two latest, Bronwyn's Joseph Gabriel, born exactly a month to the day before Mary Rose's Langdon Spencer Ashley MacKay, a little cherub with a round face and reddish hair.

The scout near the lead wagon gave the signal for the wagons to keep moving. Just before she flicked the reins, Mary Rose looked back, watching the long train winding its way across the frozen river, across the pale ice and starlit snow. Behind the train, Nauvoo was in flames—from the inner city to the outlying farms. The MacKay farm was likely among those either aflame or already a pile of ashes.

I will give you the oil of joy for ashes.
The words came back to her…perhaps learned long ago at her mother's knee or, perhaps, simply hidden someplace in the depths of her heart.

“Mama, forgive me for I have sinned,” came a contrite little voice from behind Mary Rose. The voice belonged to Ruby.

“Me too,” said Pearl.

Coal let out a deep sigh. “Me too.”

Frowning, Mary Rose handed the reins to Bronwyn and turned in her seat. Instead of looking ready to cry—as she expected—they looked ready to explode with laughter.

“What is it?”

Ruby pulled
Pride and Prejudice
from beneath her blankets and handed it to Mary Rose. Then Pearl did the same with Mary Rose's treasured collection of Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetry, and with a wide grin, Coal handed her two more Jane Austen novels.

Then Ruby reached under her blankets and drew out the Psalter, Pearl did the same with the journals, and Coal, his eyes sparkling, reached under his covers once more and, with great dramatic fanfare, pulled out the treasured Bible.

“Oh, children!” she cried, and then gave each sweet face a kiss. She touched each book with reverence, her eyes filling, especially over the worn journal where she had carefully kept the yellowed newspaper clippings of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry. Then she reached for her mother's Bible and held it close before reluctantly tucking it beneath the buffalo robe. The weight of it on her lap brought her comfort, reminding her of the long-ago and faraway places in her heart.

She gazed up at the starlit sky, thinking about the manor house and the estate grounds. She couldn't remember the exact words, but some Gabe said to her soon after they met came to her:

“Someone with your spirit and gumption and intelligence and heaven-knows-what-else that's inside that beautiful head of yours
doesn't need an ancestral home. It has little, make that nothing, to do with who you are or how you'll make your way in life.”
Then he'd laughed and added,
“When I saw you climbing over the driver's bench on the landau to save that little ruffian, I knew that nothing, absolutely nothing, would ever stand in your way to get at what you want.”

She chuckled, stood again, and flicked the whip over the backs of the oxen she'd secretly named Brigham and Joseph.

Gabe didn't know how right he'd been.

Prince Edward Island
March 18, 1846