Saints

  Willard tried to tell a story, but after a while John told him to be quiet. "I want to hear any sounds there might be outside." And so they sat in silence, not even looking at each other as the afternoon sunlight dazzled in the room, went gold, went red, and then began to grey out toward night.

  There was a scuffing noise outside, down in the square. Joseph opened his eyes. John Taylor was sitting bolt upright, and Willard Richards was standing by the door. From below they heard a young voice complaining. "But we outnumber them!"

  An older voice faded in and out: ". . . mouth shut, boy . . ."

  Another voice: ". . . blanks, better check . . ."

  Hyrum languidly got to his feet. "Sounds like they didn't let everybody in on the plan."

  Willard rushed to the window. Huge and heavy as he was, Joseph marveled at how quickly he could move, and how quietly. Willard peered out, then came back, his face sick with fear. "They're all around the jail. Faces painted up, looks like."

  "Uniforms?" John Taylor asked.

  "Of course not," Hyrum said. "They're pretending to be Indians." He took the pistol out of his pocket and looked at it. "I hate to use these things. I don't even like to see them used."

  They heard a noise in the room below, then the sound of someone coming up the stairs. Outside someone shouted unconvincingly, "Surrender!" and a few shots were fired. Trying to make it look like the Carthage Greys put up a fight, Joseph thought with amusement. All it does is prove in the eyes of God that they knew that what they were doing was wrong. Hypocrites confess by their own effort to conceal. Joseph found himself mentally composing a sermon on the subject as John Taylor snatched up Markham's rascal beater and Willard Richards took his cane. The door opened a little, and Willard Richards threw himself against it, all three hundred pounds of him. There was a shout of surprise or pain outside the door. Joseph stood up. He ought to be standing up for this.

  The men on the stairs began to shout. Terrible oaths and threats. I ought to be contemplating the glory of God. At least having a vision. That's what prophets are supposed to do when they're about to die. The door pushed back open slowly despite Willard's weight against it. Hyrum took his position opposite the door and aimed his pistol. The barrels of two or three muskets poked into the room and discharged, even as John hammered them down with his rascal beater. Hyrum cocked the pistol. There was more shouting, and suddenly the door swung open wider. Hyrum thought of firing. Joseph could see it in his face. But he never pulled the trigger. Half a dozen shots came from the doorway all at once, and Hyrum's clothing blossomed with wounds. Willard screamed something and jammed the door shut, almost catching John as he stabbed outward with his stick. Joseph saw all that even as he ran to Hyrum.

  "I'm a dead man," Hyrum said. One of the bullets had struck beside his nose, and the blood was smeared all over his face. Joseph eased Hyrum to the ground. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Something had gone wrong. Joseph was supposed to die, not Hyrum. Hyrum was supposed to succeed him at the head of the Church. Wasn't that what Joseph had planned? He took the pistol out of Hyrum's hand. The handle was sweaty. It was still cocked. Hyrum never did them any harm at all, Joseph thought, not even to defend himself. Didn't they know who their enemy was? I am their enemy. And he strode to the door, which was being forced open again, and discharged the pistol six times.

  Joseph ran back from the door. He had seen flesh and clothing burst with the impact of the bullets, and it frightened him. That isn't what I lived for. I never killed anybody before. And in spite of himself he hoped that they weren't hurt too badly. He even wanted to apologize, the way he always did when he hurt somebody wrestling. Hyrum lay dead on the floor. Joseph looked at him for a moment, and wanted to apologize to him, too. But then he couldn't think what it was he should have done differently. Couldn't think of a thing in his life that he should have changed.

  Behind him the shouting was worse. He turned. The men were inside the room now; John Taylor was near the window. When had he gone to the window? The bullets struck him, too, and he fell inside the room, writhing in pain on the floor. Joseph couldn't feel his pain, though. Not even now. Willard Richards was screaming at him from behind the door, where he was pinned when the mob had at last pushed it open. Only safe place in the room, Joseph thought. The biggest man here, and he's the only one who found a hiding place.

  Why was everyone standing there, waiting? Why had everything stopped? Were they leaving it up to him again? Was everything going to stay as it was until he moved and changed it? Even now, did they have to depend on him to take charge of his own death? All right, then. He threw the empty pistol to the ground and ran to the window. You want Joseph Smith? Here I am. Not hiding from you in a room. You don't have to come in and get me. I'll come out to you.

  He had one foot on the sill when a bullet struck him in the other leg, knocking it out from under him. Don't be so impatient, I'm coming. He lay on the sill, straddling it, one arm and leg outside. He felt the bullets pierce him on both sides, as if some were trying to push him out, the others push him in. Out, he decided, and felt himself slide from the sill toward the open space outside. The pain struck him then, and he felt his mouth open as he cried out, "Oh Lord my God!" He wasn't quite sure himself whether he was giving the Masonic cry of distress or a complaint. The ground came as the most powerful blow he had ever been struck, and he felt himself bounce into the air a little. He tried to raise himself up. Stand up. Arise. Then he realized that his cry had been neither distress nor complaint. It was a greeting.

  46

  Requiem Nauvoo, Illinois, 1844

  Dinah sat alone at her writing table. It was well after midnight, but she did not think of sleep. Her journal lay before her. She flipped through a hundred leaves covered with her smooth handwriting and wrote "June 29th" at the top of the first blank page.

  Funeral today. I did not want to see his body. I was not interested in Br. Ph.'s sermon. Only B. and M. were allowed to mourn. I sent word for certain widows to come to Ch.'s house. There we bore testimony to each other that his words were true, his works were good, and that all that God gave him in this life would be his forever and ever. When we meet him again, we will all stand forth in full light of day. For this reason we rejoiced instead of grieving. We resolved to be sisters always. Did they think their bullets could tear apart what God joined?

  They called me the Prophetess tonight, she remembered. Even the other wives, who should have known I was just a woman in the same hidden agony as they. But she was not unhappy that they did not know her. Dinah, as she really was, was no wiser than any other woman -- she could not have comforted these women, for she had no comfort even for herself. Yet the Sister Dinah they called the Prophetess had power to heal broken hearts and make the darkest of futures bright, for they believed in her, which would make her promises come true. So she would be Joseph's helpmate, and speak for him out of the grave.

  She set to work. She knew what was needed. No bloody anthems calling for revenge. Only elegy, lament, and above all vows that the martyr did not die in vain. Before the Saints can lose heart, I will tell them that they will not lose heart; before they begin to abandon Zion, I will tell them that they are too faithful ever to give up. I will tell them they are willing to die as Joseph did, and they will read it and believe it and so it will be true.

  She wrote seventeen poems that night, and recorded them all in her journal when they were finished. All would be published in the Times and Seasons during the next week, under six different names. Some of them were among the worst poems she ever wrote. But three of them were among her best, and two of these, set to music, would become beloved hymns of the Church.

  She finished at first light, but still she did not sleep. Instead, after copying the poems into her journal, she carried them to the Times and Seasons office. The staff was already there, preparing that day's edition. The editor didn't even read them, just took the top six from the stack. "Which of these do you want under your own name?"

 
She chose one.

  He handed the other five to the typesetter. "Make up names for these," he said. Then he carefully printed Dinah's name under the one that she had chosen. Mrs. Handy, he wrote. But he knew better. "God bless you, Sister Smith," he said, and held her hand a moment before letting her go back out into the morning.

  The sun came up as she walked home, the light blinding her so she could hardly see her own house for all the brightness. It was the glory of the resurrection and he stood by her door, clothed in glory. Have you come for me? she asked him silently. He did not answer. When she reached the door, he was gone, and the sun no longer dazzled her eyes. He would not come for her yet. Not for days, not for weeks, not for years. Time without him would be long. The hours with him were so few that she could remember them all; standing there at her door she remembered every moment of him in a single instant, held the sight of him all at once in her eyes, the sound of his voice frightened and loving and angry all at once, and all at once against her body, his hands, his lips. He touched her, not in the past, but in the present and forever.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, that clear sense of him was gone. She could not hide, then, from what she had lost. She stumbled into the house, curled herself upon the bed and wept for the first time, and the last time, until sleep took her.

  BOOK NINE

  In which Providence sets up shop in a new location with different management.

  First Word

  The men who planned Joseph Smith's death no doubt expected that with the Prophet gone the Mormons would all give up and go home. They believed their own image of the Mormons as puppets under his satanic control; with the strings cut, there would be nothing to keep the Mormons together. They didn't realize what Joseph Smith had found out all too often: if the Saints were sheep, they were the most stubborn, self-willed, cantankerous herd a shepherd ever had to deal with. Any Saint who got to Nauvoo had already passed through such a gauntlet of pressure and abuse from unconverted family and friends, had already sacrificed so much money and time and effort, that he or she was not about to give in just because the world had martyred another prophet. Indeed, that was all the more reason to continue God's work: Joseph had sealed his testimony with his blood.

  Besides, precious few of them had any home left to go back to.

  Joseph and Hyrum were dead at the jail. John Taylor hovered near death from his wounds, but gradually recovered. Willard Richards escaped with only a nick in his ear. He was pinned behind the door for just a few seconds, but that was long enough to save him from the fusillade. The citizens of Carthage, fearing vengeance from the Mormons -- after all, they had heard so much about how monstrous the Mormon people were -- fled their city, and frightened people in all the nearby towns huddled, waiting for the Mormon counterstroke. It never came. There were those among the Saints who wanted to give the blow, but John Taylor sent word from the prison that the Saints were to fire not a single weapon in vengeance. Taylor, whose blood had been mingled with that of the martyrs, was obeyed. Western Illinois did not suffer the bloodbath that had been so feared. And the non-Mormons settled back to watch the Church dissolve.

  Brigham Young heard the news of Joseph's death in Boston, where he was on a mission to promote Joseph's candidacy for President of the United States. He wept, for no man loved Joseph more than Brigham did. Then he packed up and headed for Nauvoo. The campaign was over, and the Lord would want him with the Saints.

  Sidney Rigdon, Joseph's First Counselor in the presidency of the Church, heard the news in Pittsburgh. He had gone to that unlikely place after a long series of quarrels with Joseph, after which the Prophet had stripped him of almost all his authority; but now that Joseph was dead, Sidney felt the burden of the Church descend upon him.

  Even John C. Bennett had sudden stirrings of long-dormant faith. He wrote to offer his services as President of the Church -- hadn't Joseph once made him second in the kingdom? Wisely, however, Bennett did not actually enter the city of Nauvoo, and thus extended his life by many years.

  Within the weeks following the martyrdom, a battle for the succession quickly developed. Three main parties emerged, each with a strong legalistic claim. Joseph had several times promised that his son, Joseph Smith III, would succeed him, a fact well known to many of the Saints. However, it had long been Church practice that in the absence of the President, the First Counselor presided -- in this case, Sidney Rigdon. The third claim was the most tenuous: in an 1835 revelation, Joseph Smith had declared that the Twelve Apostles, acting as a quorum, were equal in authority to the presidency of the Church, and presided over the Church in their absence. Sidney Rigdon argued that because he was a member of the presidency, the presidency was not absent; Brigham Young, as president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, held that the Presidency of the Church was dissolved when Joseph died and did not exist, and the Twelve now presided. It gets very, very intricate.

  And the truth is that while the three parties were arguing legal points, the Saints would make their decision on completely different grounds. No one could seriously deny that Joseph wanted his son to succeed him -- but the boy was still a child, and the Saints were not interested in being governed by Joseph's obnoxious brother William, or by the boy's mother, Emma. It was not until many years later, when Joseph III was grown, that he was set up as head of an alternative church.

  The choice between Sidney and Brigham was harder. Sidney was a master orator, and he had been one of the leaders of the Church almost from the start. He had had a falling out with Joseph, his health was weak and his leadership uncertain, but the Saints still had great affection for him. Brigham Young, on the other hand, was known to be a strong and effective leader. Of all the highest men in the Church, only Brigham Young and Heber Kimball had never failed in their perfect loyalty to the Prophet. There were more than a few who disliked Brigham Young, but none who thought him incapable or suspected him of not wanting to carry forward Joseph's work.

  In the confusion following the martyrdom, Dinah's decision was quick, and her reasons clear. Sidney Rigdon had rejected the Principle. Emma would certainly get rid of it as quickly as she could, if her son became titular head of the Church. Only Brigham Young was committed to preserving it, and therefore, for those who had accepted the difficult commandment, there could be only one choice. To support anyone else for the leadership of the Church would be to deny the very Principle for which, to a large degree, had cost Joseph his life.

  So Dinah resolved to do all she could to help Brigham Young get control of the Church. There was a dangerous period after Sidney Rigdon arrived and before Brigham got there, during which Sidney did his best to get himself in an unassailable position. Dinah worked among the plural wives, and the plural wives pressured their husbands -- delay, delay until Brigham comes. Most of the Saints still had no idea the Principle was really being lived, but the highest leaders of the Church knew the law and were, by and large, living it. Dinah's influence no doubt helped, for Sidney was held back until Brigham Young arrived, and after that Brigham was at least a match for Sidney, ploy for ploy.

  The climax of the struggle came at a great outdoor meeting of the Saints. It looked like such a meeting would play into Sidney's hands -- he was the orator, and Brigham was not. But Sidney was not well; Brigham stage-managed the event to advantage; and, in the end, God was on Brigham's side.

  Or so the story goes. In the mythology of Mormonism, while Brigham Young was speaking to the Saints, the people saw him change before their eyes. Instead of Brigham, it was Joseph Smith talking to them; then the vision faded, and it was Brigham Young again. The Lord's intent had been made plain. The mantle of the Prophet had fallen upon Brigham Young. He was the chosen leader, and the Saints voted overwhelmingly to follow him. Sidney Rigdon faded into obscurity, as far as the Mormon Church was concerned, and Brigham Young became one of the great figures of American history -- or American legend, at least.

  The problem with this story is that no one seems to have seen this vi
sion at the time. All the accounts of the miracle were written down as remembrances, years later. The contemporary journals say nothing about it. One would think a mass vision of that sort would at least get mentioned; there would at least be some record of people talking about it. And yet the story does not seem to be a fabrication, either. The people who wrote about it in later years were honest men and women, and few of them had any reason to lie.