The Sister Wife (15 page)

Gabe backed away from the captain. “That is not true. How could the infant move into the right position in the birth canal if not for a miracle? It had to be of God.”

“A different god, Mr. MacKay.”

“There's only one.”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you. And he is eternal, as we find in Isaiah. He calls himself by the name I AM, not I WAS or I WILL BE.”

“The great eternal God I thought I knew,” Gabe said, “didn't save the ship that capsized with my parents and sister on board.”

“You knew that ship was ready for the boneyard before it pulled anchor. You warned them. You can't blame God for everything that goes wrong in the world. He gave man the gift of free will, and sometimes man abuses it.”

Gabe winced. Hosea might as well have hit him in the stomach. “You feel I betrayed you because of my new faith that doesn't match yours, not because of Enid. You think I betrayed our friendship because I have now turned to those who believe as I
do. Perhaps, my captain, this has as much to do with these things as it does with your wife.”

“You obviously have it figured out and don't need me to help you. Go to Brigham, let him advise you.”

“What about Enid? Can you find it in your heart to forgive her? She loves you, she told me—”

Hosea's laugh was bitter. “You obviously know my wife better than I do.”

Gabe lowered his voice. “Forgive her, I beg of you, Hosea. Forgive her. She was only sixteen when this happened, and she's been burdened with this terrible secret for all these years. She didn't have to tell you now. Or tell me. She could have kept it to herself and never told anyone. She did it at great cost.”

Hosea's eyes blazed. “I am the master and commander of this ship. I can damn well do as I please. Do not tell me, sir, to forgive or not forgive, to extend mercy and justice, or not to extend either. And as master of this ship, I command you, Mr. MacKay, to take your family as far away from me as you can get as soon as we drop anchor. Be on your way to your promised land with your Saints.”

“Hosea…”

But the captain had turned his back once more.

Halifax, Nova Scotia

O
n the afternoon the
Sea Hawk
was scheduled to drop anchor in Halifax, Enid waited at the harbor, her trunks packed and ready for the voyage to England with Hosea. A light rain had been falling since midnight and at first those passengers milling about the harbor supposed it was the inclement weather that had put the
Sea Hawk
behind. But as dusk settled in, Enid's worries increased. The rain now began falling in earnest. In the distance, lightning split open the sky, and the thunder grew closer.

Though her parents' town house was only a short distance away, she remained at the harbor, keeping vigil for her husband's ship, her buggy and Firefox in the livery across from the wharf, where she stood in the doorway, which provided an expansive view of ships entering and leaving the harbor.

When darkness fell and the storm moved onshore, she walked over to the small customs building across the street. It housed the
harbormaster's office, which she had already visited several times that day.

The harbormaster recognized her and nodded as she came in again. “G'evenin', Mrs. Livingstone,” he said. “Still no word. I'm sorry.” He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her. “If you'll write down where you're staying, when the ship drops anchor, I'll get word to you right away. I'd say they've likely laid anchor in some safe harbor on the coast, waiting till the squall passes. We probably won't hear anything till morning, so you might as well go home.”

Her heart heavy, Enid crossed the street to the livery and, minutes later, driving the buggy, returned to her parents' home to wait. She spent a restless night, unable to sleep, worried about the ship, Hosea's safety, and his reaction to the letter.

She finally dozed off just before dawn only to be awakened by pounding at the door. The murmur of voices carried up the stairs to her bedroom and she heard the words “
Sea Hawk
.”

Just as she pulled on her duster her father called for her to come downstairs. His voice was solemn, and her heart quickened. Something was wrong.

As she reached the bottom stair she recognized Hosea's chief mate, Mr. Thorpe. His face was etched with sorrow. Enid's parents moved close to her, one on either side. Her mother took her hand, and her father encircled her shoulders with his arm.

She stiffened, prepared for the worst. Why else would Mr. Thorpe be paying her a visit?

“Mrs. Livingstone, I fear I bear the worst news possible,” he said.

Enid backed away. “No,” she said. “It can't be true.”

“We came upon a sudden squall. The captain had gone aft to check on something he thought was amiss when a rogue wave crashed over the deck. No one noticed at first that he was miss
ing, so we lost valuable time starting the search.” He shook his head. “Once the call was given, we turned back. The seas were so rough it was an impossible task from the beginning, but we spent nearly six hours looking.”

Enid's eyes filled. “No,” she whispered again. “It can't be.”

“I'm so sorry,” Mr. Thorpe said. “The entire cadre of officers and crew send their condolences. I'm sure you will also hear from Cunard as well, but it will take some time to get the news of the captain's death to him.” His gaze met hers. “He was a good man, a good captain, Mrs. Livingstone. Admired by all who knew him. We will send one of the seamen with your husband's things later this afternoon.”

“Thank you,” Enid said.

He again expressed his condolences and took his leave.

Enid fell into the nearest chair, while her mother went into the kitchen to make her some tea. She covered her face with her hands and rocked back and forth, her agony so great the tears would not come. She tried to get the picture out of her head of what it must have been like for Hosea in the crashing waves, the frantic search for something to hang on to, watching his ship sail away from him—and her heart twisted so hard and ached so deeply, she thought the blood had surely stopped its flow.

Looking up at her father, she said, “The commander of a vessel never leaves the quarterdeck unless it's for his cabin. The chief mate said that Hosea had gone aft to check on something.”

“Aye, that he did, child.”

“Mr. Thorpe knows that too, and perhaps that's why he was vague about what Hosea was doing. The commander of a ship gives the order to the chief mate, who would then send a seaman to fix whatever it was that needed fixing. The commander of the ship is just that—the commander. He makes decisions, critical decisions, but he does not put himself in unnecessary danger,
because the lives of all on board are in his hands.” She watched her father's face, and saw his agreement. “Yet Hosea broke all the rules and went aft during a raging storm.”

“What are you saying?” Her father leaned forward.

Her mother came into the room, and stood in the doorway, holding the cup of tea. She apparently had heard Enid's last statement and exchanged a worried glance with her father.

“He purposely put himself in danger,” Enid said. “The question is why?”

 

By late afternoon, a seaman by the name of Fitzgibbons delivered Hosea's personal effects: three large trunks and a smaller one that Enid recognized as that which he kept under lock and key on the table in his quarters.

The sun was fading into a red sky when she placed the small trunk on her lap in her parents' parlor. She unlocked the box and opened it. Her letter, sent with Gabe, lay on the top. Underneath it lay another, addressed to her. Her fingers trembling, she unfolded it and began to read:

The letter was unfinished and unsigned. Enid refolded it and returned it to the small chest. She locked the chest, carried it upstairs, placed it under the bed, and then dropped the tiny brass key in her shoe. She refused to cry; she would save her tears for later. If she did start to cry, she would never stop.

She kept her thoughts on her animals, those that were injured and needed her. She wanted to be with them, to hold on to a newborn colt, or look into the eyes of a beloved horse, or watch a child's face after she'd healed a sick puppy or kitten. She let the images of her farm flood into her mind as she tried to crowd out the sorrow.

It didn't help. Almost frantic to return to Charlottetown, she dressed in the same clothes she had arrived in, asked her parents to keep Hosea's trunks if they would, and with her head held high she strode down the street to the livery. Minutes later, she flicked the reins above Foxfire's back and drove her buggy to the wharf to catch the next packet ship home.

As she came over the rise above the Halifax harbor, the sunlight caught the gleaming sails of the
Sea Hawk
, being piloted from the harbor. She was magnificent, her sails billowing, her movement both graceful and powerful.

It was then, watching her disappear into the horizon that Enid finally cried.

I
t took nearly three weeks to make the necessary purchases for the long journey, join up with the immigrants who arrived by packet ship one week after the
Sea Hawk
, and organize the leaders to oversee the company that now numbered nearly three hundred men, women, and children. The group first made their way to Baltimore, then mustered again, preparing for the trek straight west on the Cumberland Road.

Gabe insisted on purchasing a Conestoga with a team of oxen. The big freight wagons were notoriously clumsy and had difficulty on the trails west of the Mississippi, but the roads east of the Mississippi accommodated wagons of all sizes: carriages, farm wagons, and large freight wagons. When the company finally gathered the last week in July, the rigs were split into three divisions with a captain over each, chosen by Brigham.

The morning the first division rolled out, Gabe, Mary Rose, and the children stood on a cliff watching the line of thirty-some carriages and farm wagons. They would leave the following
morning, with Gabe as captain of another twenty-seven wagons, those that were the largest in the group. The third company was readying to leave the morning after that.

Mary Rose looked up at her husband, whose eyes were on the wagon company spread out on the road below them. Brigham rode with the first group, and he could be seen riding horseback out front with some of the other apostles newly returned from England.

She worried as she studied Gabe's face. He had not seemed the same since the day they were wed, and he hadn't told her why. She didn't probe but hoped that as their love grew, he would open up to her. When she questioned him about it, he said only that he and the captain had had a falling-out over what the captain called the “false gods of the Saints.” He would say no more, but the deep hurt in his eyes was acute and didn't fade with the passing of days.

Before they left Boston for Baltimore, she encouraged Gabe to go see the captain and patch things up between them; she knew how much the friendship meant to both men. But Gabe refused.

Now as they stood on the rise, watching the train of wagons and carriages snake out before them, she reached for Gabe's hand. His expression was tender as he met her gaze.

“Tomorrow I'll feel like we've actually begun,” he said. “Everything until now has seemed like preparation.”

She nodded and gave him a small smile. “'Twas likely because we were heading more to the south than straight west. As Grandfather asked a dozen times, ‘If it's the Wild West that we're headed for, why take a road south?'”

He chuckled. “I thought it was because of the supplies and people we kept picking up along the way. It never felt like we were truly headed for our promised land.”

“And don't forget uth,” Ruby said. “You picked uth up along the way too.”

Mary Rose laughed. “There was really never a choice. We'd
decided long before we met Cousin Hermione that we wanted you in our family.”

“I wanted Oscar to come too, though,” Pearl said.

Ruby agreed. “Othcar wath part of our family too.”

Coal kicked a rock over the cliff, watching it tumble into the valley below. He sniggered at his sisters' words. “Oscar needed salt water. He would've died before the first wagon rolled out of Boston.”

“I'm glad Mr. Fitthgibbonth promithed to take good care of Othcar,” Ruby said.

Mary Rose reached for Ruby's hand. “And he will, that's for certain. And don't forget, he said to listen for the ocean in the big shell he gave you.”

“I already did, and I heard it,” Pearl said, coming closer. Mary Rose circled her arm around the little girl, thinking what a mistake it would have been to leave them with Hermione. The elderly woman seemed loving and kind, and Mary Rose and Gabe had exchanged a glance or two, each thinking—they discovered later—that they had perhaps misjudged her. Then Hermione had said with a big smile that the children had arrived just in time. She'd been planning to hire new girls to help her in the house and a barn boy to clean the stalls.

“What about schooling?” Gabe had asked, and the woman had looked surprised. “The children need book learning, and work with figures; they need to read poetry and biographies and fairy tales,” he said.

Mary Rose added, “They love to sing and dance and recite nursery rhymes. They love to have someone read to them. They love to act out their stories. Their imaginations have no boundaries.”

As soon as Hermione gave any thought of education a dismissive wave, Gabe and Mary Rose stood and told her that they'd decided to keep the children. Mary Rose said she would write to Richard and Sarah and let them know.

“But what about my barn boy?” had been Hermione's parting words.

Coal was still kicking dirt and rocks over the cliff when Gabe bent down to talk with him. “You want to ride with me tomorrow, or in the wagon?”

Coal's eyes grew big. “You mean it?”

“You know the little pinto you helped me pick out?”

His eyes grew bigger as he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I let you pick her out because she's yours. You can ride along with me, if you'd like.” The boy threw back his shoulders and nodded solemnly. “We'll let the womenfolk ride in the wagon,” Gabe continued. “And…I have a secret to tell you.”

Mary Rose looked away, ready to giggle. She knew what was coming.

“I don't know much about riding horses. They don't seem to know what I want them to do,” Gabe said.

Coal grinned. “I've got a secret for you too. I don't know much about 'em either.”

Gabe ruffled his hair.

“Grandpa Earl told me he'th goin' a-courting thith morning,” Ruby said. “A widow lady named Thithter Cordelia Jewel whoth wagon ith juth behind hith.”

Mary Rose glanced at Gabe, who looked ready to laugh. “The earl doesn't let any grass grow under his feet.”

“He dothn't?” Ruby frowned and studied the barren ground. “Why not?”

“Sister Beulah has a buckboard and a mule,” Pearl said. “The mule's name is Gulliver, and he sometime kicks. Sister Cordelia says to not walk up from behind, because it scares him. And Sister Cordelia used to be a riverboat dancer and she's from a long ways away. New Orleans, she said.”

“She'th pretty too,” Ruby said. “Her hair ith thiny black. And thee hath an acthent that Grandpa Earl thath ith French.”

Before Mary Rose could take in the news, Bronwyn and Griffin with the baby walked toward them from their wagon.

Mary Rose stepped forward to take the baby. She couldn't get enough of Little Grace.

The sun's morning slant hit the river that ran alongside the Cumberland Road, giving it a golden hue. The tail end of the first wagon company disappeared into the horizon.

“That'th where we'll be tomorrow,” Ruby announced, “riding our ponieth and driving our teamth.”

“You won't be riding ponies or driving teams,” Coal pointed out.

“Yeth I will,” she said.

“Me too,” Pearl said. “We're gonna be wild women of the West. Lady told me so.”

“Tho did Thithter Cordelia Jewel,” Ruby added.

Bronwyn met Mary Rose's eyes and quirked a brow. “I believe all us womenfolk are,” she said in her best imitation of a Southern drawl. She came over to stand beside Mary Rose, circling her arm around Mary Rose and Little Grace.

“I'm glad we're all going together,” Mary Rose said, smiling at Bronwyn. “It wouldn't be the same if we hadn't met.”

Grandfather came up to stand beside her. “The Wild West,” he said with a wide grin. “I always knew I'd get here again. And here it is, by cracky. Tomorrow we move out, following my dream.”

Mary Rose looked at him and laughed. “By cracky?”

His bushy eyebrows shot up. “Heard it in one of the inns. Time for us all to sound more like Americans, by cracky.”

Bronwyn leaned around Mary Rose and shot him a wide smile and winked. “We'll learn the lingo in a flash.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said in an exaggerated drawl.

He'd cut the waxed curls from the ends of his mustache, let his beard grow full and curly, his hair grow longer. He now wore galluses to hold up his pants and had taken to wearing a white
stovepipe hat, a blue swallowtail coat with brass buttons, and fine calfskin boots he'd purchased in Boston. He'd also trimmed down somewhat, and Mary Rose suspected it had something to do with Sister Cordelia.

She smiled up at him. “I hear you're courting Sister Cordelia.”

He nodded slowly. “But we're not rushing into anything. She's a fine woman, and I'm considering marriage. But as I once counseled you, sometimes things are best taken at a slow pace.”

Mary Rose touched his arm. “I wish you all the happiness you deserve.” She laughed, and then she teased, “But perhaps I should check into her background, ask someone to vouch for her.” Too late, she realized Cordelia's past was exactly what
didn't
need looking into. She felt herself blush. “I'm sorry,” she said to her grandfather. “That was uncalled for. I meant it as a joke because of your intention to talk to the captain about Gabe.”

“Cordelia would be the first to say no offense taken. Her past is colorful, to say the least. But it's behind her and she says she's not ever looking back. I believe her.” He gazed to the horizon with a wide smile. “She told me that she long hungered for something that her soul was missing. She said she hungered for God. Once she tried to attend church and slipped into the back pew. People turned around, upset to see a dance hall girl among them. They whispered and pointed, and afterward snubbed her.

“One day in St. Louis, years before, she heard about a young man who was baptizing down by the river. She'd just left the riverboat where she'd worked all night and looked every bit the dance hall girl who'd seen too many dances with too many men. But the preacher, who turned out to be Joseph Smith, gestured for her to come and join the group.

“He spoke of God's love, not his condemnation, and told the story of the golden plates. She couldn't get enough of the warmth and acceptance she felt—from our Prophet and from the people
who'd gathered with him. She came back three times, and finally Joseph said to her, ‘Sister Cordelia, don't you think it's about time you heeded God's call in your life?'

“Well, as far as she knew, no one had told him her name. She said she just about fell over on the spot. It was as if God himself was calling her into his bosom.

“She almost ran to Joseph to be baptized. She stayed on the riverboat a few more years, thinking dancing was all she knew. Then one day she met another missionary who told her about the trek to Nauvoo. It didn't take her long to decide to come along.

“She's a lively one, this Sister Cordelia,” her grandfather said with a wide grin. “She makes me smile just listening to her.”

Mary Rose squeezed his hand. “I'm happy for you, Grandfather. And for her.”

Behind them someone began to play the fiddle. A harmonica joined in, and soon voices were lifted in song and the sound of shuffling feet carried toward them as people began to dance.

Mary Rose hooked her arm through her grandfather's as they turned back to camp. “I never did ask if you talked to the captain about Gabe. I assumed you did and all was well or you would have told me otherwise.”

“I spoke with him before your wedding. He said that he holds our Gabe in the highest regard.” He studied her face. “Everything is going well between the two of you?”

“Oh, yes,” she assured him as she tried to push from her mind the haunting expression that sometimes shadowed his face.