Saints (59 page)

Dinah gave up teaching school. She was pregnant again, and at five months it was beginning to show.

“Why are you quitting?” Emma asked. “The children love you.”

“I love them, too,” Dinah said.

“Julia cried all night. I think she wants to grow up to be just like you.”

“She’ll come to her senses in a few days.”

Emma touched Dinah’s arm. “
I
want her to grow up like you.”

Dinah was touched—and, as always, felt unworthy of Emma’s love. “Your children are clever, Emma. They’ll learn well with anyone.”

Emma studied her, could find nothing to answer her questions. “How long have you been here, Dinah? And still you’re a stranger. Not only do you refuse to be my counselor in the Relief Society, now you refuse to teach my children. Are you going into hiding again?”

In fact she was. Dinah didn’t believe it was shameful for a pregnant woman to be seen in public, but a pregnant woman with no visible husband had to stay in deep seclusion. Yet, except for pregnancy, what possible excuse could Dinah give? She had lied too often to Emma. She did not want to lie again if she could avoid it.

“Isn’t it enough that I say I have good reason?”

Emma walked to the schoolroom window. “Sister Dinah, are you going to have a baby?”

Dinah slowly sat down. It was the confrontation she had so long dreaded. “My husband Matthew is in England.”

Emma pressed her hands against the window, as if she wanted to get out; yet her voice was still calm. “Perhaps you are aware that a righteous woman can marry a godly man for eternity.”

She is not accusing me, Dinah realized. She is testing me about the Principle. She doesn’t know for sure that I know. “I have heard of the Principle of plural marriage.”

Emma turned around. “Did you think that something like this could be kept from the Prophet’s wife forever? Vilate is my friend. She told me that Brother Heber has had plural wives for some time. You do not have to keep the secret from me anymore.”

Dinah did not want to lie to her, but what if Emma chose to lie to herself? Let her believe my husband is Heber, and I don’t have to hide from her any longer. “Emma, I’m so glad you know about the Principle.”

Emma walked to her, smiling. But the smile still covered a great deal of pain. “I’ve known about the Principle for years,” she said. “But I couldn’t—bring myself to let Joseph take another wife. I was—weak. And Joseph was forced to command men to obey a law that I was keeping him from obeying. But Vilate’s strength, and Hyrum’s Mary—I couldn’t hold back any longer, when these sisters were obeying. They tell me it is—bearable. So today, I’m going to—going to give my husband his wives, so he can begin obeying the Lord.”

Emma was in such obvious pain that Dinah could not show her joy. Emma was accepting the Principle. It would only be a matter of time before Emma was ready to know the whole truth. “Who will you give to your husband?”

“The Lawrence girls, Sarah and Maria. They’re like my daughters, I’ve cared for them since they were orphaned years ago. It’s someone I already—love. And Eliza and Emily Partridge.” Emma managed to smile again. “It would be—easier for me, if you were there. At the ceremony today. So I can look at you and think, This is the sort of woman that my—sister wives can become. You are my friend, and I know I can—lean on you a little, for strength.”

“Of course I will,” Dinah said. She rose from her chair and embraced Emma. “I was no more joyful than you, when I first learned of the doctrine.” As she said it, she knew it was not true, that even now she was lying to Emma again. Soon, though, soon the whole truth could be known. In a year, perhaps, when Dinah’s child had been born, and Emma had already learned to love the baby. Then we can become true sisters, with all things in common as no women outside the Principle can possibly understand.

“Dinah,” Emma whispered, “is it truly from the Lord?”

Surely that was not a question the Prophet’s wife should be asking me, Dinah thought. “Yes,” Dinah said. “As I live, it’s true.”

Much comforted, Emma took her leave. Dinah could hardly concentrate well enough to remove her personal effects from the schoolroom. Emma was going to accept the Principle. Dinah wanted to go into the street and shout it. Instead she hurried to Charlie’s house, to tell Harriette.

Harriette wasn’t there. But Sally was, looking so distraught that Dinah at once set aside her own errand. “What’s wrong, Sally?”

“Dinah, please come in. Please. Dorcas Paine was just here.”

“The girl who’s going to marry the Lipp boy?”

“I thought it was just the once, that he had only tried it with me, but he must do it constantly—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Dinah, have you ever heard of the doctrine of spiritual wives?”

Dinah knew there were rumors reaching the gentiles about some such doctrine, but Sally wouldn’t be so disturbed about a rumor. “Where did
you
hear about it?”

“John Bennett.” Sally said the name with loathing. “He came to me the week before my wedding. He said he needed to speak to me alone, about spiritual matters. Mother took the children outside and he began to tell me that God had—God had commanded me to be his spiritual wife.”

Dinah felt herself go cold. She already knew the end of this story, though she had never heard the tale before.

“He explained that I should go ahead and be married to Charlie, but that he and I would be husband and wife spiritually. He said it was a new and great commandment, that the men and women chosen of the Lord should be married in this way, so that the world would not realize that we were building great patriarchal families like Abraham. It frightened me, and I turned away from him—I couldn’t believe that God would want me to be unfaithful to Charlie. And then he came up behind me and held my bosom, he held me there and started kissing my neck and cheek and telling me that he was already married to me by the power of the priesthood and—”

“Sally, you can’t mean that you let him—”

“No!” Sally looked horrified at the thought. “I was wearing my boots, and I stamped on his foot as hard as I could, and he let go of me. He told me that I’d go to hell, but I told him I’d rather.”

“I wish I’d been there.”

“I told Harriette, but she was so sure that I was exaggerating, until Dorcas Paine told me the same story today, everything almost exactly the same, and her wedding’s on Friday. He told her that he’d be her doctor, and they could—when she came for him to examine her, they could obey the Lord’s commandment to multiply and replenish the earth. He said that if they were righteous, the Lord would see to it that all the children she conceived were really his, even though for the sake of the world it would look like they were Billy’s. She told him to—I can’t repeat what she said she told him, but it wasn’t vile enough for him.”

So this was where the gentile rumors were coming from: they were true. Bennett had somehow got wind of the Principle, recognized an opportunity when he saw one, and invented a plausible sounding doctrine to go with it. Sally and Dorcas were smart enough to recognize a fraud when they saw one. Dinah was reasonably sure that at least a few other women weren’t. If Bennett wasn’t having success with it, he wouldn’t still be doing it this many months after his attempt with Sally.

“Please, Dinah, it isn’t really a doctrine, is it?”

If I deny it, then when you learn about the Principle, you’ll hate me for lying to you. “I’ll tell you this much, Sally. If there is such a thing as a man taking more than one wife, it won’t be John Bennett who tells it to you, and it won’t be your body that he wants first, and he won’t ever counsel a wife to deceive her husband.”

Sally was not dull-witted. “Then there is such a doctrine,” she said.

“If there were,” Dinah said, determined not to be too explicit, “you wouldn’t be taught it until such time as the Lord required you to live it, and then you would have the witness of the Spirit. Don’t even think about it now.”

“If there is such a doctrine, how are you sure that Bennett isn’t—”

“What Bennett said and did with you and Dorcas has no more to do with the Kingdom of God than does adultery.” Dinah stood up. “Go to Dorcas, Sally, and tell her to be easy in her heart. You both acted righteously. And as for Mayor Bennett, I’m going to see Brother Joseph this afternoon. If I have my way, Bennett will leave town on a rail, wearing tar and feathers, and missing all the parts that might tempt him to approach anyone else as he approached you.”

“And you’ll tell me no more than that,” Sally said.

“Be content with that.”

“Just tell me—is Charlie—”

“Sally, Charlie knows less about these things than you do. And I suggest you not discuss it with him. Don’t beg for grief.”

“I’m more frightened now than I was before you came.”

Dinah embraced her. “Don’t be frightened, Sally. Anything that comes from God is good.” And when you live the Principle, your sister Harriette will be your husband’s other wife. Will that make it easier, Sally? Or unbearable?

“I’m not letting Charlie out of my sight again.”

“If you think Charlie would deceive you, you’re a fool.” Dinah kissed her and left, feeling once again like a hypocrite. Anybody can deceive anybody, when it comes to this doctrine. The problem with all the secrecy was that it left the city open to a man like John Bennett.

As she approached Joseph’s house, Dinah saw John Bennett at the window looking out into the street. Surely he was not part of the ceremony today. Had Joseph taught the Principle to
him?

But Bennett was merely lingering after a meeting of some city officials. Probably he noticed that more than a few important people were arriving for a meeting he had heard nothing about—and none of them had a plausible reason for being there. Bennett was not one to walk out willingly from a mystery, even though it was plain that he was not wanted in the house.

Bennett was his charming self. It alarmed Dinah that she found him likeable, almost by reflex, despite what she knew he really was. In revolt, she baited him.

“Sister Dinah, I hear you’ve been a bit under the weather of late. I hear you had to give up teaching school.”

“Yes, Mayor Bennett.”

“Glad to see you up and about, then. Does this mark a full recovery?”

“Actually, Mayor Bennett, I am quite sick to my stomach at the moment.”

“Then you should be in my waiting room, so I could cure you.” Bennett laughed self-deprecatingly, the way he did whenever he made a direct plea for patients, so that people would know that he didn’t really need the business.

Dinah could hold her tongue no longer. She had mistrusted him since Joseph’s arrest last summer; now she had cause to loathe him. She imagined his hands at Sally’s breasts, and coldly said, “Actually, Mayor Bennett, I could cure my ailment immediately with a change of company.”

Bennett’s smile did not slacken, but his eyes went hard. “You have been rather frequently unhealthy of late, I think. Is this the same illness you had that time you got sick in my entry hall?”

She should not have provoked him. Bennett was intelligent, whatever his flaws. “Nauvoo is not a healthy city. I am only grateful that I haven’t been afflicted as my sister-in-law was, just the week before her wedding day.”

That dented Bennett’s smile.

“And now I hear that Dorcas Paine had the same corrupting influence just yesterday. Odd how the disease seems to attack only the young and beautiful who are on the verge of marriage.”

Bennett did not smile at all now. He knew that the truth was finally in the hands of someone who could tell the Prophet and expect to be believed. Of course Bennett suspected at once that the reason he had not been invited today was because the meeting was about him. “Is that why you’re here to see Brother Joseph?”

“My business with the Prophet is private.”

Bennett glanced across the room to where William Clayton was watching them frankly from his writing table. “Brother Clayton, I’m in something of a hurry. If you could go upstairs and tell the Prophet that both Sister Dinah and myself would like to see him before his meeting, I’d be much obliged, and I don’t believe that he would mind.”

Clayton got up from his chair, looking questioningly at Dinah.

“Please, yes,” Dinah said. “I would like to see him before his meeting, if possible.”

It was not lost on Bennett that Clayton went at
her
instance, not at his. Once the clerk was gone, they were alone in the drawing room, and Bennett wasted no time. “Sister Dinah, I don’t believe you realize that you are hardly in the position to be making accusations. I
am
a gynecologist, and I’m not so poor a one as not to know why there were bloodstains on my inlaid wood that day when you were taken ill. Nor am I so foolish as not to have a good idea about the particular discomfort that prevents you from continuing your school. In short, I think we both could profit by refraining from telling Brother Joseph all that we might know.”

“If I had doubted that my information was correct, you would have damned yourself with those words, Mayor Bennett.”

Bennett regarded her steadily. “You aren’t afraid.” Then he smiled again, but this time it was not a charming smile. “You goddam hypocrite. You’ve been taking in fancy-work and you dare to give me blame for getting some of my own, all because the Prophet gave you leave. Well, I don’t need
him
to tell me when I may or may not plow my field—”

“It’s not
your
field that you’ve been plowing.”

“While
he
can play farmer wherever he damn well pleases, whether someone holds the deed on it or not. I’ll bet
you’re
one of his, too.” Bennett laughed at the idea. And then realized it might actually be true. “No wonder you’re so sure he won’t mind that you have your little burden.”

“You are mistaken, Mayor Bennett.” She had been a fool to try to cross swords with him. He guessed too much, and she could see now that in a battle there was no weapon he would not be willing to use.

“I think I’m not. How did he free up
your
mortgage, Sister Dinah? What would your English husband do if he knew you were renting it out?” Bennett meant to go on, but then he glanced up over her shoulder. Dinah turned. William Clayton was coming down the stairs.