Saints

  "No!" Robert said. "I won't have him arrested."

  "But Mr. Kirkham, look at you, all over blood!"

  "I won't have my brother arrested! He's going to America, and that's far enough away to suit us both."

  Captain Lower daubed at the blood on Robert's shirt and jacket with a handkerchief as Matthew tried to stanch the flow from his nose. "I don't think it's broken," Matt said.

  The constable turned to the sailors. "Take him below decks, then," he said.

  Charlie spat his words at Robert. "That's right. Make sure Father and Mother and I are all out of sight while you do it!"

  "Let him stay and watch," Robert said. "It's all one to me."

  The constable shrugged, annoyed at Robert's seeming lack of resolve. "Then let's get on with it." And he unfolded a paper and began to read.

  Dinah watched almost as if she were not a participant. She had been wakened suddenly, knowing at once what was happening, but strangely unafraid. She had given no alarm to the children; Honor was still dozing on her shoulder, and Val had only sleepily said, "Hullo, Daddy," when they reached the main deck. The fear did not come until she realized that Robert was not there to make sure Matthew did not get out of line. Robert was there because it was Robert who was her enemy. It was Robert who had brought the legal papers, Robert who was giving the orders to the constable. Weak Matthew was merely a spectator. And if Robert was against her, there was no sanctuary. It was Robert she had run to after Mr. Uray attacked her, Robert who had saved her from Matt's murderous blows. But this time he was the one with the terrible look of purpose on his face, the one who would break her if he could. And of all the people in the world, if anyone could break her, it was Robert. Now she was afraid. Now she trembled.

  Poor Charlie, she thought as the sailors held him roughly, apart from the group. Always wanting to help, yet never having quite the tool needed.

  "Do you understand?" the constable asked.

  Dinah could not remember hearing a word of what he had just read from the papers. She shook her head.

  The constable looked at her in exasperation.

  "Explain it plainly, Matt," Robert said.

  Matt looked confused. Obviously he had expected to get through this morning without having to take any action personally.

  "Dinah," he said. "We've come to take you home."

  She said nothing, only held the children and tried desperately to penetrate her own fear deep enough to find the words she could say, the act she could perform that would end this, that would return her to her berth in the ship, the children with her, the ship putting out to sea. Surely God could arrange it -- such a little thing. Surely this could turn out to be a dream.

  "Dinah, did you think because I took it calm, I'd let you do this? A man's family is his own, that's the law. The law won't let you steal my family from me, Dinah."

  At the times of trouble in her life, why was it so hard for her to find speech? "Then come with me, if you want your family so much." Yet the words came from her lips as a whisper, not with the force she thought to use. And Matthew didn't even understand her.

  "What did you say?"

  Robert spoke in pain, the handkerchief to his nose. "Matt won't go with you, Dinah. A man stays where his work is, and a wife stays with her husband. I made Matthew wait to do this until the last possible moment, in the hope that you'd come to your senses. I'll put it plain, Dinah. What you're doing is as bad as what Father did to us, and I won't let it happen. Do you understand that? It will never happen again, not to any of mine. No child without a father; without a home, so don't think of persuading us, don't think of resisting, it'll do no good. You'll come home, you'll be a wife and a mother. And don't think you'll sneak away again. I'll pay for servants to stay with you, and you won't be allowed near the children except in the presence of a servant. You won't be able to take them outside without two servants. You won't he allowed to associate with the Mormons who put this insanity in your mind. In short, Dinah, you have proven yourself to be dangerous to the welfare of these children, and they will be protected. In time, in a year or so, if you show yourself to have come to your senses, these restrictions will be relaxed. On the contrary, if you resist or rebel in any way, your access to the children will be limited even further. I hope you understand that this is not harsh but merciful. You could have been gaoled for this. You could have had the children taken from you. We found in the law the kindest way of protecting your family from your madness."

  Dinah heard his words and understood them, but all she could really feel was Honor's breath against her neck, Val's wriggling in her arms.

  Robert studied her face and nodded. "Matt, Mr. Simpson, I suggest you take the children first."

  Dinah knew there was no hope of resistance before Robert said it. She hadn't the strength to hold these children, not if these men were determined to take them. So for the children's sake, to keep them from having memories of being torn from their mother's arms, she stepped forward and yielded them into her husband's arms, avoiding the constable entirely. Val hugged his father and said, "Why didn't you come before?" But Honor cried at being wakened out of her mother's arms.

  Matt held the children gratefully. "Thank you, Dinah," he said. "I hoped you'd see reason. And it won't be so bad. You'll see. In no time things will be as they should be, no more of this bitterness. All forgotten in such a short time, you'll be surprised."

  "Come along then," the constable said. "This ship will need to sail soon, and the Captain has other business."

  Dinah saw their relief, the relaxation of tension. They had won, they were sure, and without a real struggle.

  "I'm not coming," Dinah said.

  The mood of relief was gone in a moment.

  "It's not a matter of choice," Robert said.

  "Put me in irons, then."

  "If we have to."

  "I'll take you to court. I can fight you with your own weapons."

  Robert shook his head. "You don't understand, Dinah. The way that we avoided divorce, the way that we kept you out of gaol, was by having you declared mentally incompetent. You are legally a lunatic, and all your legal rights are vested in your husband and me jointly. You haven't the power to so much as sign your name without our consent."

  "You've had me judged mad," she said.

  "It was the best of bad alternatives. Don't blame us, Dinah. In a few months of not seeing any of these damned Mormons you'll be back to your senses and thank us for this. You'll be angry at me then for not doing as much for Charlie and Mother as I'm doing for you."

  "You're doing this for me?"

  "I have no other motive than love for you and your children. If you had done this, your children would have hated you all their lives."

  Robert's righteousness, his sincerity in destroying her for her own sake, it was too much for her to bear. A floodgate cracked within her, and her anger began to seep quietly out. "May God damn your soul to hell forever."

  "I'm willing to endure your hatred now for the sake of your love later."

  She thought of the future they planned for her. Living politely in a home where she was a prisoner, asking permission to see her children, forbidden to leave the house alone, totally in submission to her husband's will. And Matthew would be so kind about it. "Of course you may go to the park with the children, my love," he would say, and then call the servants to go with her. "That's my dear wife," he would say when she came home, and then he would climb aboard her and she would smile and pretend to be pleased so that he would do her favors. She saw in her mind the face of God, the face of her imagined Joseph Smith; she remembered with her whole body how it felt to stand in the presence of God, alive from the skin inward, hot at the core. That was her true self. If she bowed before Robert and Matthew, that part of her would die. They were right. if she ever lived as they wanted her to, docile and compliant, she would so loathe herself that within a only a few years she would have become what they wanted: a perfect wife and mother, her mind empty of
will, her heart devoid of hope, for she would have forsaken her God and lost herself.

  "How neatly you have it planned," she said, and the hate tasted strong in her mouth. "But I have a better plan. You'll like it, Robert -- it'll save you money and you can still feel just as righteous. Instead of hiring servants, Matthew can just bring some of his whores to live in the house with him. He'll get from them all he ever wanted from me, with variety to boot, and from time to time you can get a judge to declare them insane and throw them out for new ones. You can live gay as a goose in a gutter. And better to have the children reared by cheap carrion than by a woman who dares to believe in an inconvenient God."

  Captain Lower blushed. "Madame, mind your language."

  "Forgive me. I forgot we were being polite about this. You'll stand there, Captain, and let them do to me what they're doing, but I mustn't use crude language. Well, that's the truth of it. My husband goes to whores while I'm at church, and yet I'm insane to take my children and leave him."

  "Not in front of the children," Robert said.

  "Maybe if I charged you money, Matt, you'd like me better."

  "Dinah, please," Matt said.

  She was trying to hurt them, but they only looked embarrassed. There were no words that would serve her as weapons. In despair she screamed so loudly that it ripped at her throat: "Have I no friends here! Is there no deliverance!"

  Her words reached from bow to stem, and in the highest rigging the sailors fell silent. And in that silence, which no one dared to break, she felt herself fill with light. There was one deliverer that would come when no one else could help her. He burned her, but she knew his touch within her flesh. He was the one who had called her to cross the ocean; he called her still. And because he wanted her, she must go. Must go, but not without a price. Not without a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was a broken heart. The sacrifice was to give up her children for God. If she stayed in England, it would be a decision to reject that inward light; it would leave her and never return. And what then would she have to give her children? What sort of mother could she be? Hating herself, there would be no love left in her. She would be a stranger in her own house, an alien in her own body. She would not stay in England. Rather than do so, she would suffer her life to end.

  "Matthew," she said to him, her voice a painful whisper. "As God is my witness, I would rather lie in a grave than live with you. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, I'll never forgive you for this morning. I'll fill your home with hatred. I'll weep when you're happy, I'll rejoice when you fail, and every hour of every day until you die, I'll see to it you know how much I despise you. It's the only weapon I have, my hate for you, but I'll drive it in you to the hilt, and deeper if I can."

  "Good God, woman," the constable whispered.

  "Let her stay," Matthew said. There were inexplicable tears on his cheeks.

  "It's just the way she feels right now," Robert said. "Bring her home, she'll soon change."

  But for once Matthew had understood Dinah. "I said let her stay. There's no healing this day's blood." He turned and walked away, the children in his arms. Honor cried out for her mother, and Val had understood enough to be afraid. "Come with us, Mama!" he called.

  Dinah watched Matt walk to the brink. She was so filled with light that she could hardly see. Matt turned and faced her, and from that distance shouted back to her. "I'll teach them to hate you!" he cried. "I'll always tell them that you left because you didn't love them!" But her heart was so full of fire that she could not feel pain now, could only watch as mute as a deer being torn by wolves as the stranger carried off her little ones. This was the plan of her life. This was the way it was meant to be. She had surrendered herself to God, and this was the first gift he gave her. "I'll never divorce you!" Matt shouted. "You'll always be my wife!" And at that moment the sun broke above the western sea, and Matthew winced at the blinding light. The constable came to him and carried Val down the ladder. Matthew, his last hope of winning her gone, climbed down after him, holding Honor in his arms, looking weak and beaten and older because of the day's work.

  Only Robert had not gone. He stayed to plead for understanding. "I've never meant anything but good for you," he said. She did not answer, and her silence goaded him. "You're truly Father's daughter, Dinah. You and he are just alike. If there were a God, he would have made you barren, for your children's sake." And then, those word said, her silence made him ashamed. "I swear to you, Dinah, if you ever want to come back, write me and I'll come for you, no matter what the cost, as fast as ships and trains and horses and my own two feet can bring me." And then he, too, broke against the coast of her indifference and weakly fled from her to the edge of the deck, down the ladder into the shadow of the ship.

  Dinah did not move, did not watch them out of sight. She only stared inside herself at the face of a terrible God who seared her with a vision of hope. She saw a gentle young woman weeping, handing her an infant child; she felt her own arms reach out and take it, and draw the little one to herself; she felt the tiny, sharp-nailed fingers scratch her face and pierce her cheek. And as the blood flowed from the small wound the dream-child gave her, so the light seeped from her body. She felt it going, and in terror whispered, "You can't leave me alone now." But he could. God could do what he liked. No, no; God must do what he must. He had been there to help her at the moment of her choice, but now came the time of sacrifice. Now she must bleed.

  So she let the light leave her, and let the grief come and brood heavily in a crooked place in her heart. She walked to the gunwale just as the little boat passed out of the shadow of the ship, into bright sunlight. That was the picture she would hold in her memory: the small boat like a stain on the dazzling water, the faces of two children bright with moonlight, both of them crying, both of them reaching toward her. She watched them until they were so far that she could not distinguish child from man. That was when they finally let Charlie go, and he came to her, and embraced her, and wept for her, and she comforted him.

  Behind them the sailors resumed their work, but soberly. Charlie and Dinah were only passengers to them, and so beneath notice as a general rule, but such a scene as they had witnessed transcended the barriers between them, and Dinah had their awe. Respectfully the seamen picked their way around Dinah, as if she were a mast, immovable in her place on the deck. Captain Lower had the tact not to offer condolences. And soon the ship began to move under tow from a harbor steamer, steadily out of the Mersey into the Irish Sea.

  Word spread from the sailors to the company of Saints below decks. Dinah's choice had been a terrible and heroic one, and no one dared to talk to her, though to each other they spoke of nothing else. Anna came on deck and joined Charlie in silent vigil with Dinah; John Kirkham knew that the kindest thing that he could do was stay away.

  At midmorning, the sailors drew up the cable from the steamer, and the harbor craft put alongside the North America for the last time. Captain Lower came to her then.

  "Madame, if for any reason you'd like to forego this voyage, the steamer is the last opportunity. I'll gladly have my sailors carry your boxes for you, and we'll refund your passage money, under these circumstances."

  Dinah managed a courteous thank you, and refused. The captain stood there helplessly. "They had a court order. I was forbidden to give you any warning, or the ship would have been impounded and I would have lost my place. There was nothing I could do."

  "I don't blame you," Dinah said. She touched his arm, comforting him enough that he could go away.

  Brigham Young and the other two apostles who had spent the night below with the Saints were going ashore now with the steamer. They had heard of Dinah's sacrifice already, and for fear that they would try to speak to her, Dinah walked away to the bows of the boat the moment they came on deck. She wanted no foolish speeches from them, no meaningless comfort from cocky Brigham Young or gaunt and distant John Taylor or even the fat little doctor, Willard Richards. Apostles they might be, but they had
families waiting for them in America, and they would someday return. They knew nothing of what she felt, and their sympathy would be no help to her.

  She could have guessed that Brigham would not be put off. He came to her just the same, so damnably sure that he knew best that even her desire for solitude meant nothing to him. She found herself angry at him before he even spoke. Yet the anger was a sort of relief; it was better than the agony of grief that she was barely holding at bay through her rigidity.

  "Sister Dinah," Brigham began. She was sure that he would say something foolish, like, "I know what you're feeling" or "you have our deepest sympathy," something to prove once again that he had all the sensitivity of a jackass.

  But he did not say that. He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "You are not what I thought you were," he said. "I thought you were stubborn and rebellious, but by damn you're the truest Saint I've ever seen among women. It's little help to you now, but I tell you God has a work for you to do, and he's putting you through the refiner's fire to prepare you for it. With all my heart I honor you." He bent and kissed her cheeks, twice each, tenderly, almost worshipfully. Then he turned and left her, and to her surprise she found that he had soothed her last fear. It was not a lie. God had designed this, and truly wanted her sacrifice. The light was in her again, dim now but unquenchable, and all would be justified in the end, whenever the end might be.