The Sister Wife (16 page)

An Island off Jonesport, Maine
July 25, 1841

T
he aging fisherman rose early on a morning in late July, and groaned as he folded back the bedclothes, put his feet on the floor, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Giovanni,” his wife said softly, “why are you awake so early?” She turned on the oil lamp beside the bed. “It's too dark to go out.”

“Something stirred my heart just now,” he said. “Perhaps it was just the dream of an old fisherman, but this was so real. I was drowning in violent waters and arguing with God, but he wouldn't let me have my way. I wanted to give up fighting to stay afloat and let myself sink downward into the darkest of the waters. I was still floating suspended between the lighter waters above me and the black waters below when I woke.”

Cara reached for his hand as he continued. “When God nudged me from my slumber…I felt he had something for me to do.
Down by the shore. I can picture it in my mind, and I know I must go there.”

She sat up. “I'll go with you. Two lanterns are better than one.”

“That's why I love you so,” he said.

“Because I have my own lantern?” She gave him a smile that lit up her aging face. Her white hair shone like an aura in the lamplight.

“Because you are so willing to come along with me no matter how harebrained the idea might seem.”

She squeezed his hand. “Very few of your dreams have turned out to be harebrained, my love. More times than not, it is the Spirit speaking to your heart. I've learned to pay attention.”

“Some people think I'm crazy,” he said with a grin.

“People who preach to trout in a stream are generally not thought of as stable.”

His grin widened. “They are God's creatures too.” He stood, yawned and stretched, and then went to the window. “I don't know where to begin looking—or even what it is I'm to find.”

“We'll start by the ocean,” she said. “Since that was in your dream.”

 

Minutes later, they walked north along a rocky spit of land, wearing their knee-high fishing boots and heavy oilskin coats. Though it was summer, the predawn air chilled them and the wind off the ocean brought a fine spray with it. Each held a lantern high and walked slowly, several feet between them.

“There,” Giovanni shouted as the pale dawn sky began to lighten over the ocean. “Cara, I think I see something, an injured animal perhaps…?” He ran toward the object, dodging rocks and boulders.

He set the lantern on a flat rock and knelt beside the pile of clothing and flesh. Cara came up behind him—and gasped.

Giovanni bent over the barely recognizable human and touched his cold, battered face.

“Is he dead?”

“It appears so. He's battered and broken. I don't see how anyone could have survived what he's apparently been through.”

Cara reached for a tattered piece of cloth. It had a captain's insignia on it. “He's a sea captain,” she said. “Have you heard news of any shipwrecks? Perhaps we should look around. There may be more. And they might have made it.”

But Giovanni didn't move. “This is the one I was sent to find.”

“But he's dead.”

Giovanni lifted the man's hand and felt for a pulse. He gazed into the man's face and wondered what kind of ordeal he had been through. He'd noticed there were two breaks in his left leg, another in his right. His face was covered with cuts and abrasions. He was as pale as death, and just as cold. Giovanni gently touched the man's neck, and then let out a sigh as he met his wife's worried eyes.

“His heart still beats. He's alive.”

Her face glowed in the light of the lantern. “He was the man in your dream.”

Cara knelt beside Giovanni and, with her gaze, watched as he examined each limb, his torso, and his neck. “We need to get him into the house,” Giovanni said after a few minutes. “He will die if we don't hurry.”

“He's a big man. I don't see how the two of us can lift him.”

“We have no choice,” Giovanni said. He bent over to pick him up, and then struggled to his feet. Cara took the broken and mangled legs into her arms, and slowly they made their way back to the house.

The sun was rising as if from out of the ocean when they reached their small home. Minutes later they had him on the bed in their second bedroom. Cara went into the kitchen, pumped water into a large iron Dutch oven, and set it on the stove. She stoked the fire beneath, then returned to the bedroom.

Giovanni had removed the man's tattered uniform and replaced it with a nightshirt of his own.

Cara carefully looked through the pile of torn, waterlogged clothing. “Is there anything that tells us his name?” she asked.

“No,” Giovanni said. “All we know is that he came from the sea so violently it seems to me the water spewed him out of its mouth.”

Nauvoo, Illinois
October 24, 1841

F
rom across the meetinghouse aisle where he sat with Grandfather and Coal, Gabe turned and caught Mary Rose's eye as the Prophet began to speak. Her husband winked, and she grinned at him before turning forward again to continue her assessment of the Prophet.

He was taller than Mary Rose expected. He loomed well over six feet tall, and weighed more than two hundred pounds. In total, he carried himself as though he were the general of some great conquering army. He reminded her of likenesses she'd seen of General George Washington, with his mane of light brown, almost blond, hair and vivid blue-gray eyes. His head was exceptionally large and his face was comely, which she had expected. After all, who could command the attention of even a single follower had he been as ugly as a warthog?

A warthog? Joseph Smith? She almost giggled, wishing she could share her thoughts with Bronwyn, who sat on her left. But Bronwyn was giving their Prophet her undivided attention. Not even the sleeping Little Grace, held fast in her arms, received the kisses and caresses Bronwyn usually bestowed.

They'd arrived in Nauvoo just days before. Today was their first Sunday since, and they were required to go to the meetinghouse as the Saints did each Sunday. It hadn't occurred to Mary Rose until that morning that though the Church as a whole was known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the buildings where they held their meetings were simply that—meeting-houses. And in one such meetinghouse, as Brother Brigham had informed her, she and Gabe would go through another marriage ceremony, one that would join them throughout all eternity. Once the temple was completed, endowment ceremonies, celestial marriage ceremonies, and baptisms for the dead would all be held in that sacred place—first for men only; later, it was rumored, women would be allowed to also participate.

She had complete faith in her husband who, when answering her questions, tried to be as open as possible without betraying Brother Brigham's trust. It was understood by the women in the wagon party that their menfolk were privy to information not given to their wives, and it was delivered in such a way, Gabe told her, that it was as if decreed by God himself. Irked as she was over such an audacious practice, she loved her husband enough to believe he would tell her every detail as soon as he could.

During the long wagon trek, Gabe would meet with Brother Brigham when the company stopped for their midday meal. Sometimes they met alone, other times with the other men, to receive instruction from the Book of Mormon and learn the doctrines of the Church. Then men, in turn, were instructed to teach their wives from the Book of Mormon, even read to them should
they be unable to read it themselves. It was odd, she thought, even now as she watched the Prophet at the podium in front of the meeting, that the men were seated on one side of the room, the women on the other, with a wide aisle separating them.

From the first turn of the wagon wheel on the Cumberland Road, her anticipation never wavered, for reaching Nauvoo, for giving her heart and soul to a new church and her new way of life. She'd never known such contentment, in spite of the discomfort and radical changes she underwent along the way: She shed her jewels, her fancy frocks, her frothy bonnets—the whole of Lady Mary Rose Ashley. With each mile the Conestoga rolled, she dressed more like the others, brought about at Gabe's request after one of his meetings with Brother Brigham. She loved him, so she didn't mind.

By the time the company rolled wagons and livestock onto barges to float down the Ohio, she had become Mary Rose MacKay, and by the time they reached Nauvoo, just three months after leaving the
Sea Hawk
, she let it be known, again at Gabe's request, that from this day forward she was Sister Mary Rose.

Just months before, she would have refused any title but Lady, but being called Sister somehow filled a place in her heart that she hadn't realized was empty. It meant that she belonged. That she was part of a larger family, unique in a way she had never imagined.

“I'm thirthty,” Ruby whispered loudly. “And I have to uth the nethethary.”

“You should have gone earlier when you had the chance,” Mary Rose whispered in her softest voice. “Now you'll have to wait.”

The child squirmed in her seat and then settled back with a huff.

Pearl gave her sister a superior look and sighed as if she was above such behavior.

Mary Rose turned her attention back to the platform. The
Prophet had finished his welcome speech, and she realized, feeling her cheeks warm, her mind had wandered and she hadn't paid close attention to what he'd said. Now he was introducing his adopted son, obviously a leader in high standing, an apostle named Fenton Webb.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with flint black hair and ice blue eyes, Fenton Webb was an imposing figure, in some ways even more so than either Joseph Smith or Brigham Young.

Mary Rose sat forward, intrigued.

When the apostle began to speak, all other thoughts, of the long journey west, of her husband and the three little ones she now counted as her own, fell away.

He smiled at the crowd in front of him. “Welcome to America,” he said. “And even better than that, welcome to Nauvoo, the beautiful city of God and his Saints.”

He paused, his ice blue eyes seeming to gaze through to the souls of every individual in the room. “Whoever would have thought,” he said, “that a plain and ordinary farmer's son would be chosen by God to be his prophet?

“But Joseph was an ordinary boy, of no higher intelligence than most, but with perhaps more curiosity than most. Even as a boy he had many questions, the most important being which was the right church? Should I become a Baptist, he wondered, and if a Baptist, which Baptist? Or should I become an Episcopalian, or a Shaker, or a Methodist? What about the Catholics?

“He knew enough, even as a young man, that if he asked preachers from any of these churches if they were the only right and true way to God, their answer would have been…” Webb grinned as he looked out over the congregation of Saints. “Of course, each would've said it was his own church that was the only church, the only true way to reach God. Isn't that right, Saints?”

Murmurs of agreement passed among the congregants.

“Our Prophet took these questions to God, fell on his knees in
the woods one day to plead with God to tell him which church was right. To his great astonishment—and this, dear Saints, is where the story gets interesting—a glorious light flooded the woods and poured over him. It was midday, and unable to believe his eyes, Joseph at first thought the light was surely sunlight washing through the leaves of the trees.”

Webb paused, dropped his head as if in prayer, and when he looked up, Mary Rose thought his eyes were filled with tears. “Dear Saints, it was not the sunlight. It was as if the light emanated from a single point so bright Joseph had to shield his eyes. When he finally lifted his gaze, there before him, as if standing in a shell, were two people—as human in appearance as you and me. The Father and the Son, God and Christ, descended from heaven to bring him a message.”

No one spoke until Ruby looked up and said, “I really have to go to the nethethary, Lady.”

A few people close by chuckled, and Mary Rose cringed, expecting Webb to scowl at the interruption. But instead, he gave her a smile and a nod. “The necessary is sometimes…necessary for a little one. Though we try to make children aware of the solemnity of our meetings, you are newcomers, and our practices may take some getting used to. Please”—he gestured to the side door—“take the little one to the ‘necessary.'”

Mary Rose took the twins by the hand, aware that every eye was upon her as she led them to the door.

“Can girlth become propheth?” Ruby said as soon as they stepped outside. “If he wath juth an ordinary boy, couldn't an ordinary girl be one too?”

“That's silly,” Pearl said, and then ran into the outhouse first and closed the door. “Everybody knows there aren't any girl prophets,” she called out.

“I want to thee the light in the woodth,” Ruby said thoughtfully, turning to look at the woodsy shallow hills around them,
afire with the changing color of the leaves. She focused on a glimmering maple, its leaves the color of molten gold. “That lookth like a plathe God could come. Look at the pretty light.”

“I want to see too,” Pearl said, flying back out of the outhouse again.

“Over yonder,” Ruby said, then went into the necessary. “It thinkth in here,” she said. “Maketh me feel thick.”

“Just hurry,” Mary Rose said, now impatient to get back to the story of the Prophet.

A few minutes later, Mary Rose led them back into the meetinghouse. This time the apostle didn't stop his oration or even seem to notice their return. She settled the girls and sat back, eager to hear more.

“The Father and Son said to him, ‘Joseph, do not join any church, for all are abominations before God. Since the time of Christ, those who have claimed to be his rightful interpreters—the apostles, the priests, the popes, the ministers, the reverends, the fathers, everyone, brothers and sisters—have led astray God's people from the true words and deeds of Jesus Christ.'”

Webb stepped from behind the podium, his expression solemn. Mary Rose noticed that he did not preach with bulging eyes or shouted words about damnation and hell. Instead, his message, his delivery, was done with love, much the way she'd heard Joseph preached. She found her own eyes watering as she watched him.

“‘Joseph,' they said to him, ‘you are living in an era of great apostasy. My people have wandered from the Truth.' Then all fell quiet in the woods. Even the birds stopped their singing. Not a leaf fell from a tree. Not a whisper of wind.

“He remained on his knees, his head bent in worship. For how long? To this day, he cannot say. But the next words spoken to him struck his heart: ‘The time has come for the Church's restoration, and you are to be my messenger.'

“I ask you, if this had happened to any one of you, what would
you have done? Would you have run away, thinking God surely was mistaken, that he had chosen the wrong young man?”

Webb chuckled. “That's what Joseph did, dear Saints. He ran away and tried to forget the entire time spent with God the Father and his Son Jesus. He even went so far as to become full of disbelief.” He smiled again and winked at Coal. “I would have done the same at that age, had I been there. Joseph was just a boy; he had some growing up to do.

“When he was seventeen something else extraordinary happened to him. One night as he lay sleeping, an angel by the name of Moroni appeared by his bedside. He told Joseph that buried in a hillside near Palmyra was a set of golden plates, on which was written an ancient language. The angel of the Lord told him to go and find these plates and deliver them to man. Those were his words, ‘deliver them to man.' Brothers and sisters, Joseph was stubborn—just as stubborn as I'm sure I would have been, or perhaps many of us would have been.” He smiled at the congregation. “Moroni appeared to Joseph three times before he would listen.”

“Ith an angel gonna come bethide my bed?” Ruby whispered.

“Shhhh,” Pearl said equally loud.

Coal turned around from his seat across the aisle and made a face, causing the twins to giggle. Gabe put his arm around the boy and gently turned him forward again.

The apostle stopped in the middle of his message and let that engaging smile beam across the congregation.

“Now that, sisters and brothers, is how God handled Joseph when he wouldn't listen. Did you all just see what our Brother Gabriel did? He put his arm around his errant son and turned him gently around.

“That's love, pure and simple. And that's how God turned Joseph around, got him to rethink all he'd revealed to him…”

Mary Rose watched Gabe's reaction. There was an emotion,
an expression she hadn't seen in him before. Adoration for the Prophet and his teachings as told through this charming apostle? A sense of pride in his actions being used as an example of God's actions? She waited for him to turn around again and make eye contact, but he seemed so enthralled with the story about the golden plates, the thought must not have occurred to him.

She tried not to let it bother her, but she couldn't help it. She turned to Bronwyn to see if she noticed. But she seemed as enthralled as Gabe did.

Her heart twisted in a way it hadn't before when she moved her gaze once more to Gabe.

The expression remained.

The apostle stood behind the podium, his voice clear and pleasant, his expression loving. “Our great Prophet finally did as he was told, and he found the plates. He took them home and translated them.” Apostle Webb held up the Book of Mormon. “And this, dear Saints, is named such because it was brought to you and to me by Mormon's son, the angel Moroni.”

He placed the book on the podium and, pulling out his handkerchief, mopped his forehead. “There is much more to the story of our beginnings, and we will spend weeks, yea, years studying these words, learning what God has to say to his restored Church. And we will learn from it how to share the love God has placed in our hearts.”

Mary Rose again waited for her husband to glance back with a smile or a wink…any acknowledgment that she was in the same room with him. But his gaze was firmly fixed on the Prophet's adopted son.