She opened the door and let him in. "You are the prince of fools," she said. "It's four in the afternoon."
"I asked all the Saints to look the other way."
With the door closed and barred, she put her arms around him, and he bent and kissed her.
"That's what I came for," Joseph said.
"No it isn't."
"Don't argue with me today."
Joseph sat down on the chair by Dinah's writing table. Dinah stood where he had left her. Joseph pulled off his boots. Caked-on mud dropped onto the dirt floor. Still Dinah did not speak. "Emma's angry with me already." Still she did not answer.
I played too many scenes today. I walked too far, at far too great a risk. Bennett was a liar and I loved him. I came for refuge, and you are angry too."
Joseph wearily began to pull on his boots again.
"Going already?"
Dinah's voice was small and emotional. It only made Joseph wearier. I didn't come to you for this. And yet he could not leave, because she would be hurt if he left her, and he did not want to hurt anyone else today. How much before it is enough?
"No," he said.
"I can't," she said.
"Can't what?"
"I can't be the opposite of Emma."
Joseph bent over and wrapped his arms around his thighs, pressed his face against his knees.
"How can I know what she said before you left? If she was angry, then I have to be happy? If she was cold, then I have to be passionate?"
"No."
"If John Bennett is found to be a liar, then she can say I told you so and I have to pretend I never heard of the man?"
Joseph looked up at her, surprised.
"Do you think I live in a box? Charlie and Harriette have both been here with the story. It's been hours, how slowly do you think news spreads? Do you think the world stops when you aren't watching? Do you think I'm not alive when you're not here?" And then she stopped, and fingered her sleeve. "I'm not," she said. "But I'm not dead, either. I still listen. I still talk. I still think. Waiting for you."
Joseph got up from the chair, crossed the room in a single step, and lay down on the bed, his hands behind his head. "Don't wait for me."
"Oh, should I come visit you at home?"
"Why have you stopped teaching and talking in the Church? You used to have things to do besides wait for me. You used to be so busy ministering to the women of Nauvoo that I never found you at home unless we planned it."
He had never seen her so angry as when she answered. "And why don't you have revelations about how to solve the poverty here? Why isn't there a miracle to cure all the sick? Why didn't you know John Bennett was a liar from the start?"
He closed his eyes. "I don't hate Bennett even now," he said.
"Everyone thinks you should."
He laughed bitterly. "Isn't it funny how neither of us can do what everybody knows we should."
She laughed, too, and things were as they should be again. Of course he hadn't come to make Dinah perform for him. It was Dinah herself he came for, because he could say things to her that he had never said before, he could say thoughts that he had used to pretend he didn't think: the Prophet should say this; Emma's husband should do that. He wore so many faces and only now after all these years did he discover, not himself, but the face that he liked the best. The face that he wore with Dinah, for it never hurt to wear it, though removing all the others, that could be painful sometimes.
She knelt beside the bed, gently touching his arm, his face, and thinking carefully about what he said. She always thought about what he said before she spoke, which meant that she never answered from habit, which meant that her answers just might be true.
"How can I hate him?" Joseph asked. "He betrayed his wife with whores and did not keep it secret from her. I betray Emma with wives and lie to her every day. He had only one wife, and he abandoned her. I have many wives, and I abandon them all."
Dinah played with a fold of her skirt. "Sometimes, Joseph, I love you so much that I feel like an adulteress."
"Anything that pleases us this much must be a sin, is that it?"
She nodded.
"But when I hear myself thinking of you as my paramour, when I feel that I have been unfaithful to my Emma, I remember this: God gave you to me. And if my Father ever commanded me to leave you, I'd be gone without another word."
"I know you would." But she didn't like it.
"So would you, Dinah."
"No."
"If God commanded you, if you knew it was his will -- "
"No."
"You think you wouldn't, but you would obey."
She put her palms over her eyes and then tipped her face upward, as though she were speaking to God but dared not see his face. "I'd obey Him, but I'd hate Him forever."
Joseph laughed. "It's a good thing He isn't vindictive. That remark would have tempted Him beyond endurance."
Dinah laughed, too. "So you and I are secretly no better than Bennett."
"I'm ten times the man he is."
Dinah began stroking his arm again. "And I'm not like him, either. For instance, I'd never let a friend go into a place where I knew he was in peril of his life, just so I could rescue him spectacularly, for the effect."
Joseph felt her fingers suddenly grow warm. Or was it his own skin growing cold? "Do you have a story about him, too?"
"Howard Coray brought the news of your arrest at ten. Bennett left Nauvoo at eight to save you. He thought the arrest would happen earlier in the morning, I suppose."
"John Bennett didn't plan the whole thing out." That was too much for Joseph to believe. "He didn't bring the men from Missouri. I chose the judge that I appealed to. I kept myself alive until he could pull the political strings to set me free. How could he know that I'd be able to do all that."
"And if you hadn't, I wonder who he thought would have succeeded you?"
She had named his fear for him. He trembled. "It's not enough for my friends to turn on me. They all start thirsting for my blood."
"But you still don't want to lose him."
"John Bennett does not want me dead."
"John Bennett scares me, Joseph."
"Who else is there? I can't govern this city without him. Liar or not, he's the most brilliant man among us."
"Then keep him to govern the city. But don't let him govern the Church."
"They're inseparable."
"Separate them."
Joseph shook his head again, with such force that he half-rolled back and forth, then rolled over against the wall, his knees drawn up toward his chest, and he shook with the cold. "I finally have the Church together, all in one place, secure from the world for a while, fenced around with laws, and now I have to break us down again, cut us into pieces again."
"Like the wise virgins and the foolish ones. Let Bennett be mayor of the outward Church, the city, the Nauvoo that everyone sees. And then within the city the True Church. Those who know."
"Who know what?"
"That I am your wife."
"I can't tell that to anyone."
"There are those who know, Joseph. No one had to tell Harriette -- she knows. And your other wives -- I've found four of them already. We who live this secret life, we know each other's faces, we know how a woman has to live, finding plausible excuses to be home all the time she can, in hopes her husband will come tonight. Or late one afternoon."
"Everyone who knows is one more who can betray me."
"Is the Principle the law of God or not? The more of us who live it, the more of us who can tell the truth to each other, the easier it will be to bear this life. You can have a public life, a public wife, children. Everyone in the Church is your brother or sister. Give me sisters, Joseph."
She was only asking for what he knew would have to come. The Principle could not be a commandment that only he and his wives obeyed. But he was afraid.
"When the Twelve come home," he said, "I'll teach the Principle to them. As
soon as they come home." He felt her climb on the bed behind him; she embraced him, and in the stillness he could hear from her breath that she was crying. Or almost crying. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing. I'm glad."
He rolled back; she tried to turn away from him; he stopped her, took a tear from her cheek and held up the moist finger as a question.
"I was thinking of Vilate," she answered. Then she started to laugh. "Joseph, we're so terrible. The Principle is the worst thing in the world, and I'm begging you to impose it on my friends."
He kissed her cheek. "The worst thing?"
"Yes," she said. "I've never been happier in my life than when you're here. But when you're not -- "
"How can I make it up to you?"
"Let me bear you a child, Joseph."
He rolled her over and began unhooking the back of her dress. "I've been doing my best," he said.
"So have I," she answered.
She was still so new to him; yet as he discovered her again, he could not rid himself of the feeling that she, too, was keeping something secret from him. Protecting him from something. He almost asked her what it was, but then decided that if Dinah thought it better not to tell him, he would trust her judgment, and not demand to know.
It was well after dark when a knock came at the door. Joseph, dressed by then except his boots, leaped to the window to escape if he had to. But it was Port.
He was more embarrassed than Dinah had thought the dangerous little man could be. "Don't mean to disturb you," he said. "But it's after dark, and I've been doing some prowling around, and I ran into some men who were looking for you."
"A posse?" asked Dinah.
"No, no, loyal men, Sister H-handy. It's about Dr. Bennett. Mayor Bennett. He took poison, and he's dying."
Joseph was pulling on his boots. "I wanted to do many things to him today, but I didn't want him dead."
"He's a doctor," Dinah said. "Don't you think he knows a safe dose from a fatal one?"
She was only saying the obvious. They both knew now that Bennett could play his little play all he liked. And Joseph would publicly believe his tears and forgive him, and take him back, and use his gifts to benefit Nauvoo. But when the Twelve came home, it would be they, and not Bennett, who would learn the Principle and live it; they, not Bennett, who would be the true and secret Church.
"Since I've been seen without you," Porter said, "we shouldn't go back together. It's mostly clear south along the shore. Everyone's at Bennett's house, or gossiping wherever the houses are thick."
"The horses?"
"Where we left them."
Joseph started for the door, then stopped, returned to Dinah, and kissed her long and hard. Joseph watched with wicked pleasure as Dinah tried to find a reaction in Porter Rockwell's face. Porter never blinked, just stared her down with his emotionless face. Then they doused the lights, Joseph left, and Dinah was alone with the Prophet's bodyguard.
"You're an unlikely fancy woman," Porter said.
Dinah could not tell if he was being ironic, or what he really meant if he was. "You're an unlikely bodyguard, too."
"Rest your heart," Porter said. "Of all his wives, you're the only one I think might be worth dyin' for."
Dinah was deeply relieved, but angry, too. "He might have told me that he told you about the Principle."
"Never told me a damn thing," Porter said. "But you ain't a whore and he's a man of God. That didn't leave much else to guess from. I don't know if Emma's really Leah, but you're sure as hell his Rachel, unless I'm blind."
She clung to those words for a long, long time. I am Joseph's Rachel, his most-beloved. Please God, let me also bear his noblest son.
She thought of that desire many times when she taught Emma's sons in school. She loved little Joseph, and yet wanted her son to displace him in his father's heart. She was ashamed of herself, but could not change her wishes because of that. Could not change, either, the fact that two young children were growing up in Manchester believing that their mother did not love them anymore. Is there nothing adults can do that doesn't hurt the little ones?
John Bennett recovered from the poison, to no one's surprise. Joseph Smith forgave him publicly, upon his promise never to sin again, while Bennett's critics once again retreated into the background. Everything seemed back to normal in Nauvoo.
Except that two weeks later, on July 1, Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, and John Taylor returned to Nauvoo from England. Joseph didn't even let them go to their families before he brought them into an upstairs room and met with them in secret far into the night. He taught them the Principle, and wrecked their lives, and created the secret Church so there might be something strong enough to live when he was dead.
35
Joseph Smith Nauvoo, 1841
It was Vilate Kimball who had knocked so timidly on his door. Timidity wasn't like her. It must be a problem she came with, then. Joseph smiled at her to put her at her ease. It surprised him that it did not hurt to smile.
"Brother Joseph," she said, her voice too quick, too soft, "if there's anything I can do -- "
"Now Vilate, if you have comfort you ought to give it to Emma, she's taking it much harder than I am."
"I know you better than that, Joseph. You named your son for your brother because you loved them both so much, and to lose the two eight days apart, it's cruel hard -- "
He touched her lips with his fingertips. "Vilate, if a man who's talked with God hasn't the faith to accept the death of loved ones, who has?"
Vilate fell silent, then looked out the window behind Joseph. "There's so many dying of this fever that Brother Sidney's preaching a general sermon every day, for all who are being buried. They give him the list of names right before he speaks." With sudden anger, she turned to Joseph. "If you ask me, the Lord could better take some folks I might name than Don Carlos Smith, man or child!"
"I don't know, Vilate," Joseph said. "Maybe the Lord in his mercy is taking only those who are sure of exaltation."
"If he takes all the godly ones the Church will surely go to hell," Vilate said.
"This isn't what you came for," Joseph prodded. He didn't like to talk about his brother's death. He didn't like to think about it. It was better just to keep his mind on other things. Other people's problems. Whenever he thought of Don Carlos he feared his own feelings. It was one thing to lose his child. He and Emma had lost so many that Joseph hardly let himself love them now when they were still little -- at least that's what he told himself, though try as he might he still had much of himself in every child of his that died. But his brother had taken sick in the damp, unhealthy cellar where Joseph had sent him, had practically ordered him to work day and night if he was to amount to anything -- not my fault, Joseph reminded himself. Think of other things. Vilate has a problem. I must listen to Vilate.
"I have a friend," Vilate said. "And don't go thinking that it's me, because when I have a problem I won't come to you on little pussy feet pretending that it isn't mine. It's a friend."
"Yes, I understand that."
"She's a good woman. I know a good woman when I see one. I used to think she was the best woman I know. I felt the Spirit of God in her a hundred times this last year -- and still, as recently as today, and I shouldn't feel that Spirit from her, and so I've come to you because I don't know if I've done right, or if I even understand anything -- "
"I can't help you, Vilate, if you don't tell me the story."
"It's so selfish of me when you're suffering problems far worse than mine -- "
"Tell me about your friend."
Vilate fussed with her apron. "She isn't married. Or rather, her husband is -- she's had no husband for a year. But the day you was arrested, she was yelling at -- someone -- " She glanced up at him, looked back down. "Doesn't matter who she was yelling at. She got sick and had a -- miscarriage, right on the spot, and she had no right to have a baby in her. I don't know a better proof of adultery than that. And she admitted it."
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"Admitted adultery?"
"Admitted she was pregnant, and there's not much else to say after that." Vilate interlocked her fingers, then wrung her hands repeatedly back and forth. "But she was such a good woman, I didn't think she deserved -- she was my friend, and only two of us knew what had happened, and so the two of us, we didn't tell anybody. We figured she'd come to you and confess it. But I warned her -- if she ever tried to speak up in meeting or bear testimony, I'd denounce her before the whole Church, because if there's one thing I hate, it's a hypocrite."