The half hour Will had waited for them was one of the longest of his life. He nearly bolted three or four times, but the thought of being alone in a foreign country, with no guarantee that he could find passage home, was too daunting. And by then he knew their next stop was to be Savannah. So he had decided to wait, and he began formulating his plan.
From that moment on, he worked diligently to assuage any suspicions the captain and crew might have about his intentions. He said nothing about having been raised in Savannah. He worked cheerfully and without complaint—no small task when one remembered that the newest and youngest member of the crew was assigned the most unpleasant and unsavory of tasks. To his surprise, he found himself liking the sea and sailing. So it was not too hard to convince everyone that he had accepted his lot and was content to stay with them until his two years were up.
He blew out his breath in disgust. So much for his great deception. Now his only hope lay in the letter. The letter was his backup plan. Should he not be able to get free, he had written a letter to his mother. Using every last bit of the small cash allowance he was given—and the promise of more to come—he had convinced his closest friend in the crew to take the letter off the ship once they got to Savannah and find someone who would take it to the Montague plantation. The critical question was, would it reach the plantation before the ship sailed again? He wasn’t sure. It might take his friend a day or two to get clear of the ship and see that the letter got into someone’s hand who could deliver it. It could easily be four or five days by the time it actually reached the plantation, and by then they would be gone again.
No, he thought. It wouldn’t take that long. The plantation was only five or six miles upriver from Savannah. Everyone in Savannah knew Abner Montague. Someone would take it to him. Abner Montague was a powerful man in these parts. If he knew Caroline’s son was being held captive aboard a ship in Savannah, the very devil himself wouldn’t be able to keep him away.
Suddenly, Will had a thought. Today was April first. April Fools’ Day! He shook his head slowly. How appropriate. Here sat one of the greatest fools of all.
Some two thousand miles away, in the kitchen of their home in St. Louis, Missouri, Caroline Steed sat at her kitchen table. A letter lay before her, but she couldn’t read it any longer. Tears had filled her eyes, and the lines penned by Julia Montague swam before her in a meaningless blur. The Montagues had heard nothing from Will Steed. That was the essence of the brief note. There had been no letters, no messages, not even a shred of rumor about the whereabouts of Caroline’s son. After four months without a word, Caroline’s main hopes now centered on Savannah and the Montagues. Will had fled from there. He had no way of knowing she was gone, returned to St. Louis with Joshua. If he wrote at all, it would be to Savannah. If he returned from wherever the pain had driven him, it would be to Savannah. So when Olivia had come running home with a letter from the Montagues, her hopes had momentarily soared.
Will Steed and his adoptive father were as close as any father and son could be, so Will had been almost as devastated as Caroline when word had come that Joshua had been shot and killed by the Mormons. Most of that was untrue, as it turned out. Joshua
had
been shot, but not by the Mormons, and he was alive. He and Nathan had come to Savannah and found her and given her life again. But by then Will was gone. He would still be carrying the burden of his loss. That thought caused her as much hurt as his absence—knowing that she could not share with him the joyous news that their tragedy had turned to triumph.
Brushing at her cheeks with the back of her hand, she reached down and took the letter. Slowly, methodically, she tore it into small pieces. “Oh, Will!” she whispered. “Will! Will! Will!”
In Quincy, Illinois, about a hundred and thirty miles up the great Mississippi, and directly across the river from the state of Missouri, the sun was gone and it had been full dark now for more than an hour.
In the small house that Benjamin Steed had been able to lease from one of the residents, the Steeds were in bed. They had, as they did every night, stacked the furniture in one corner to make room, then filled the floor with beds. It was a medium-size cabin, but it had only one large room and not even an attic above. And it was now home to seventeen people.
The cabin was divided by a canvas taken from one of Joshua’s wagons. It hung from a rope and divided the room into two sleeping areas. The adults—with the exception of Matthew and Peter—slept on the floor in one long row in the larger section. Peter and Matthew slept outside—rain or shine—under a makeshift stick shelter attached to the back of the cabin. Inside, Benjamin and Mary Ann were nearest the east wall and lay on straw mattresses. Lydia and Nathan also slept on a straw mattress next to them. Rebecca, now heavily pregnant with her first child, and Derek had the only mattress filled with feathers. Jessica Griffith, widowed since the horror of Haun’s Mill, took a smaller straw mattress beside the opposite wall. On the other side of the canvas, blankets—no mattresses—filled the floor as well. Here the six older children shared one large bed. The two babies—Lydia’s and Jessica’s—slept in cribs against the far wall.
Sleeping was not the only challenge in such an arrangement. Each night a small blanket was hung across one corner to provide a bit of privacy. There they took turns changing into their nightclothes. There would be a dash out to the privy behind the cabin in the cold night air, then a grateful tunneling under the shared covers to get warm again.
“Grandma?”
Mary Ann lifted her head. The call had come from behind the canvas. She sighed and looked at Benjamin. “Which one?” she whispered.
“Sounds like Emily to me.”
In the bed next to them, Lydia, having reached the same conclusion, came up on one elbow. “Emily,” she said in a loud whisper, “be quiet or you’ll wake the others.”
“Grandma!” It was more urgent.
Lydia started to get up, but Mary Ann beat her to it. “I’ll see,” she said.
Beside Lydia, Nathan just shook his head. This was becoming a habit with his daughter.
Mary Ann stepped through the opening in the canvas. They kept one candle burning on the table. That was a luxury, but since Missouri, the children became frightened or had terrible nightmares if the house was totally dark. Emily, Nathan and Lydia’s second child and first daughter, was six. She was sitting cross-legged, her dark eyes wide and troubled in the flickering light. Mary Ann smiled. Even with her hair ruffled, she had Lydia’s natural beauty. “Yes, Emily?”
“Will we ever get a bed of our own again, Grandma?” Her eyes were so filled with pleading, and her voice so plaintive, that Mary Ann had to suppress a chuckle in spite of herself. Before Mary Ann could answer, Lydia came through the canvas. She had a finger to her lips. “Emily! You have to be quiet. Please go to sleep.”
“But Mama,” Emily wailed, “Luke keeps poking me with his elbow.”
Luke Griffith, the same age as Emily, lifted his head. “I do not,” he said indignantly. “You keep poking me.”
Lydia spoke softly but sternly. “Emily, I mean it.”
Emily looked around in surprise. “Nobody’s asleep, Mama. Except for the babies and Nathan.” She looked at her younger brother in disgust. Nathan was three and a half, and did this every night. He lay down, closed his eyes, and was gone in a matter of moments, and nothing seemed to bother him after that. Several other heads came up now, as though to prove the accuracy of Emily’s statement. Young Joshua pushed himself up in a sitting position. He would be eight in May and, as the oldest of the grandchildren here in Quincy, felt some responsibility to keep things in order. “Emily, you’ve just got to hold still. That’s all.”
She swung on him. “I can’t hold still,” she whispered fiercely, “not when everybody keeps bumping me.”
Rachel sat up now. Like her mother, Jessica, Rachel’s temperament was that of a peacemaker. But she felt that she needed to stand up for her stepbrother. “Luke didn’t mean to bump you, Emily.” She was only six months older than her cousin but seemed considerably more mature than Emily.
“The floor is so hard,” Luke retorted, “I can’t help it if I just have to wiggle sometimes.”
That brought Mark Griffith up to his knees beside his brother. His four-year-old face was twisted with boyish resentment. “Yeah,” he said to Emily. “This floor is real hard. We can’t sleep good.”
The canvas moved and now the rest of the adults joined Mary Ann and Lydia. Jessica stepped across the blankets. “Children, children,” she soothed, “it’s all right. Don’t wake up the babies. Mark, Luke, you lie down now.”
“Emily,” Lydia said, “lie down, and stop being difficult.”
That was the ultimate betrayal in Emily’s mind. Her eyes went wide and instantly filled with tears. “Mama, it’s not me.” She started to cry.
It had been a difficult two weeks since the family had come as refugees across the Mississippi to Quincy, and nights were the most challenging. But Mary Ann was not of a mind to complain. Most of the Saints had been driven from Missouri with little or nothing. Their family was no different in that respect. Where they differed was in the help they got from Joshua, their son, and Carl Rogers, their son-in-law. Joshua paid the rent on the house, and both he and Carl had brought food and other supplies. Many in Quincy still slept in wagons and tents, and dozens of families had nothing but blankets and bedrolls and empty sky overhead.
Mary Ann moved to a stool and sat down, holding up her hands for quiet. Emily cut off her tears, though she continued to sniff as a sign to her mother that her pride had been severely damaged. Young Joshua put an arm around his sister’s shoulder as Rachel shushed her two stepbrothers into silence.
“Did you children know,” Mary Ann said solemnly, “that when I was a girl your age, I had to sleep on the floor too? Only I had to do it for almost three years.”
“Really?” Emily and Rachel exclaimed together. “How come?”
Mary Ann looked thoughtful, but was only trying to hide the fact that she was pleased that her ruse had worked. All thoughts of who was bumping whom were gone. “Well, when I was about Mark’s age, my father decided he was going to make his living building turnpikes.”
“What’s a turnpike, Grandma?” Luke asked.
“A road,” Mark replied sagely, pleased with himself that he would know.
“That’s right, Mark. We lived in a small village in western Massachusetts. We lived in a cabin smaller than this one. But it had an attic in it, and my older sister and I slept up there. We had only blankets. And besides that, my bed was where the roof and the walls came together. So I always had to sleep on my tummy, because if I slept on my back, my toes would rub against the ceiling.”
Mary Ann felt a hand on her shoulder. Benjamin had moved over to stand beside her. He was smiling down at his grandchildren. “And do you know what?” he asked soberly. “Even to this day your grandmother still sleeps on her tummy.”
“She does?” Rebecca seemed surprised. That was something about her own mother she had not known.
“Yep,” Benjamin said. “Actually, she starts on her back. Then after a while she rolls onto her side. But eventually she always ends up on her stomach.” He squeezed Mary Ann’s shoulder gently, his eyes teasing her. “It’s kind of like an old hound dog. She always has to turn around three or four times before she settles down and goes to sleep.”
“I do not!” Mary Ann said, poking at him.
That got even the adults, and everyone laughed. In one crib, Elizabeth Mary, Lydia’s baby, stirred and whimpered softly. Lydia put a finger to her lips and pointed at the babies. “Shhh!”
Benjamin raised one arm, as if taking an oath. “It’s true,” he whispered. “I swear it.”
“Did you have to sleep on the floor, Grandpa?” Rachel asked.
Benjamin was still weak from his bout with the illness he had contracted while imprisoned in Richmond, Missouri, with Joseph Smith, but he had not lost his sense of humor. He frowned in mock concentration. “Floor?” he harrumphed. “Who had a floor! We had to sleep on the ground outside.”
The children’s mouths circled into large O’s, but Nathan clearly choked and Rebecca started to giggle.
“Grandpa!” Mary Ann scolded. “You stop fooling the children and tell them the truth.”
He looked hurt. “We did sleep outside.”
“Only when the weather was good and because you and your brothers wanted to. You had a bed.”
“Yes,” he mourned, “but I don’t remember sleeping in it much.”
She poked at him again and he stepped back quickly, chuckling. Sensing that he was playing to an audience, he went on in complete seriousness. “Actually, your grandmother and I both started out in life tied to a board, like an Indian papoose.”
Nathan was surprised. “Are you serious, Pa?”
Mary Ann was nodding. “Yes, that is the truth. When we were born, children were always swaddled, as it was called.”
“Swaddled?” young Joshua echoed.
“Yes. The mother would get a flat board, and then she would take long strips of cloth and wrap them around and around the baby, tying them firmly to the board.”
“They didn’t let you crawl around or anything?” Lydia asked, as fully interested as the children now.
“No,” Benjamin answered. “People believed that if they kept the neck and back of the child straight, not only was it more healthy, but they thought it made for strong moral character. It made the child a better person.”
Mary Ann smiled down at the upturned faces. “Then once the children got old enough to learn how to walk, at about a year old, they were taken out of their swaddling clothes and put in dresses. Boys and girls. It didn’t matter—all children of that age wore dresses.”
“Dresses?” Emily cried in amazement. “Even you, Grandpa?”
He laughed. “Even me. For Sundays my mother said I had a beautiful lace dress just like my sister.”
Jessica chuckled softly. “What’s the matter, Emily? Can’t you picture Grandpa wearing a dress?”
“No!” Emily said in a drawn-out sound of astonishment. The others were also shaking their heads, not able to picture their grandfather in those terms.