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  "We're building the city of God on the banks of the Mississippi, Nauvoo the Beautiful," said Heber Kimball.

  We are building the city of God, said Dinah to herself. She stared into the fire and wondered why she was not there, building with them.

  "God speaks to us," said Heber Kimball, and Dinah wondered why she could not remember the sound of God's voice.

  Dinah was vaguely aware of Charlie smiling at her now and then, whenever Heber said a particularly outrageous word, like discombobulated or skewompus, but Dinah did not want to share jests with Charlie at the American's expense. She did not want to return to reality just now. Reality was Matthew, was leaving here with no more hope than she had when she came. Far better was Heber Kimball's storytelling. Whatever the Mormons suffered, they could bear it because it had a purpose. What Dinah suffered had no purpose at all, unless God had something up his sleeve. God didn't play surprises on the Saints. He told the prophet what was going on, said Heber. It was the safest world that Dinah had ever heard about; to know God's purpose would arm her against despair. Joseph Smith taught a sermon the very morning he was tarred and feathered. He could bear the pain because there was a reason to have suffered it.

  Without realizing it, Dinah did what Robert and Charlie had done years before. She discovered the face of God. Where Robert had found God's visage in the hot ovens of the steam engines, in the whirring belts and rocking machinery; where Charlie had learned to pray to the face of Old Hulme, leaning down to open his mind to learning even as he chastised him stingingly with a ruler on the palms; that was the place in her mind where Dinah put the face she imagined for Joseph Smith. It was nothing so simple as supposing that the man Joseph Smith were perfect -- she was not such a fool as to trust any man, especially one she had not met, with such faith. Rather she quite unconsciously found in Joseph's story those things that she most valued in a man, all the things that her husband and her God should have before she could love them, and created a face that stood for all that, and began to believe in that face as an ideal. It did not occur to her that such perfection could not exist. The ontological argument was enough for her: if she could conceive of him, he lived, and all other men were merely flawed attempts to represent him in the flesh.

  It grew late. Honor was asleep and Val grew more and more whiney. But Dinah made no motion to end the evening by going home. Anna finally said something about Charlie having to work in the morning and Heber said, "Good heavens, so late at night, and I haven't even thought about finding a room at an inn!"

  Of course that led to insistence that he stay the night, and he didn't even bother to pretend to be reluctant. It was Dinah who would leave, and the stranger who would have the solace of her family. But Dinah did not mind as she had thought she would. She went through her good-byes as if she were in a trance. Charlie offered to carry Val home for her, but Anna glared at him and said that she wasn't staying alone in the house with a strange man, even if he was an apostle, and so she'd go with Dinah and Charlie could help Mr. Kimball to his bed.

  Anna carried Honor while Dinah carried Val. "I hope you're not too annoyed," said Anna, completely misunderstanding what Dinah felt. That was all right. Dinah wasn't quite sure herself. "Charlie's never brought a stranger home like that before. And such a man. He ate as if he had just learned how, and was proud to show what he could do."

  "And he talked as if God had taught him all the words," said Dinah. She had meant to sound flippant, but she couldn't bring it off. She didn't feel flippant tonight. The mood on her was more akin to reverence, It was a bright moonlit night, and there was no difficulty picking their way through the alleys, along the paths, and over the footbridge between the Kirkham and the Handy houses. The moonlight was at such an angle that at one moment, as Dinah stood at the crest of the footbridge, she could see not the dark faces of the shabby buildings, but only the roofs shining brightly. The city on a hill, she thought, and when they see it men must come to dwell there.

  That was where Dinah wanted to be -- a place where no one could possibly starve because their neighbors would share freely with them, without interference from pride or shame. She wanted, most of all, to be in a place where the men who controlled her life were not selected for her by other men, as her husband had been, but by God himself. That would be her true home, not the six rooms where Matthew ruled, not that empty place. She had long felt homesick for a home where she had never dwelt, a home that she had looked for in poems and almost found sometimes; a home that now she knew existed, that now was being built on the shores of a vast river called the Mississippi, where a prophet had said God wanted his people to come. To come home.

  They paused at the door of Dinah's house. Valiant grumbled sleepily about being forced to stand while his mother fumbled with the key.

  "Dinah," asked Anna quietly, "can it be true that he has the power to wash away my most terrible sins?"

  The words took Dinah by surprise. "Mother, if there's ever been a woman without sin, it's you."

  Anna smiled wanly and looked away.

  "What sin could you have?" asked Dinah.

  Anna gazed down at Valiant. He was young enough and sleepy enough that the truth could be at least hinted at in front of him. "The one that brought all my woes upon me, all our suffering upon us all."

  The idea appalled Dinah. Had her mother, all these years, blamed everything that had gone wrong in their lives on some fancied sin in her past? "Mother, what can you be talking about?"

  Anna turned toward Dinah then, with all her fear and shame upon her face, and said, I loved my husband's body far too much and far too soon, Dinah, and because of my covetousness God took him from me, and with him all my hope."

  Dinah saw in her mother's face, for just a moment, the young girl who was not taken -- no, she gave herself to young and beautiful John Kirkham upon the banks of the Medlock thirteen days before their wedding. Dinah saw how every crease and line in the aging face that now fronted the same soul was tinged with that guilt. Dinah saw, and she embraced her mother and whispered, "Whatever sin you might have committed, Mother, you've already paid for."

  Anna wept then, for she had never confessed her secret crime to anyone before, and had never thought she would. In a few moments she told the whole story of it, and told how she knew right away that she would be punished all her life, would never be clean. "Why else would four of my seven children die within a year? Why else would I lose the husband I had wanted too much? Why else would my dream of real education for my children be destroyed, my daughter be brutally used by a man, my sons be enemies to each other?"

  In vain Dinah tried to assure her that it would hardly be fair of God to punish her children for some sin of hers. Anna only quoted the scripture that said, "I will punish the children of them that hate me unto the third and fourth generation. Then Anna gripped Dinah fiercely with her free hand so abruptly that Honor awoke and began to squawl, and defiantly said, "I believe this man, Dinah. I believe him when he says he has the power to make me clean and pure before the Lord, white as new snow, as if I had never committed a sin in my life. He isn't a venal vicar like the ones I've known, he isn't after his salary from the government, he's simple and pure and he received his power from a man who was touched by the hands of the ancient apostles. I know you think I'm a fool, but I want so badly, Dinah, I want so badly to be clean."

  Dinah thought of the face of God, the face of the imagined Prophet. Not like Matthew, forever sweeping with the wind; not like Robert, full of plans and machinations without ever knowing how they would end. He had the power to act, and the wisdom to do good, and God would not despise Anna Kirkham.

  "Yes," Dinah said.

  "Yes what?"

  "Yes, I think he has that power," Dinah said. The words were utterly inadequate for what she wanted to say. It was enough for her that her mother also believed, for whatever reason. Enough for her that though they both desired something different from this American preacher, they both believed that he could give it.<
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  Anna looked at her in wonder. "You believed him?"

  "Yes," she said, "I believe him."

  "When you sat, when you looked into the fire, I thought you were angry --

  "I was thinking -- if only I were with them, and could see this prophet, and live my life for the sake of something important."

  She opened the door, bent down and picked up Val. They brought the children in and put them to bed, then talked for only a few minutes more. They decided to wait for several days, to make sure they weren't caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, to make sure that they weren't doing something foolish. Besides, as Anna pointed out, Matthew might resent it if his wife changed religions.

  That was a whole realm of problems that Dinah refused to think about. She hurried her mother on her way and shut the matter of Matthew out of her mind. It was her soul, not his, she said to herself as she closed the door. I won't conceal it from him, but I won't ask his permission, either. Why should I? Does he ask my permission about his ridiculous political meetings, when any one of them could have him arrested if the authorities started suppressing them again? Did he ask me if I wanted a new house? Does he even ask for my consent when he wants to use my body as a dumping ground for his reservoir of passion? Why, then, should I ask him when it's a matter of my relationship with God, a matter of what I choose to believe in my own soul?

  The words of her argument came to her formally, not in a rush of thought but in ordered sentences, logical patterns like a sermon or a speech. And she began to let the words come to her lips as she walked up the stairs to the room she shared with Matthew. She uttered no sound, merely let her lips form the oration, which she presented as carefully as if a thousand ears were listening.

  She was not aware that she was doing it, of course. She only listened to her thoughts and did not realize how close they were to being audible. Certainly she did not realize whom she was speaking to. And yet it was no coincidence that this sermon came to her lips for the first time in her life the very night that Heber Kimball had shown her a vision of the face of God, the perfect Man. It was to this person that she spoke, he was the one who heard her. She was not teaching him, she was justifying herself to him, and she knew that with him, if her arguments were clear and ordered, if she spoke pure truth without dissembling, he would nod and say, Yes, Dinah, that's correct, that's true, I accept you, your choice is right.

  Her lips moved with the silent monologue as she took off her shoes and unlaced her bodice. It occurred to her that she ought to pray, but she rejected the thought, in part because her sermon was a prayer, in part because she had so often in her childhood knelt in futile pleading, talking to bedpost or a wall of brick.

  Instead, she walked to the window and drew open the curtains. From this room she could see the moonlight streaming into the court, the well-kept garden below with small trees reaching up to the bedroom story of the cottages. The garden was painfully empty. There was nothing living it it; if ever a bird or squirrel were tempted to set up house there, the children who played daily in the garden would have killed it within a week. And now, grey in moonlight, even the trees looked unalive, as if they were only the empty image of life, waiting for dawn to make them pregnant with light and upward-thrusting power. Dinah stood on the brink of creation; below her God was first putting form to the world, and she was watching. She was part of it. She herself could reach down and touch the tree and it would spring green under her hand, and from her fingers would come sunlight, It was a giddy feeling, that in all this darkness the sun still shone within her, held in place only by her flesh. Her body was a curtain that concealed her glory, and if she could once open it completely, all the world could look to her for warmth and vision and be satisfied.

  She felt herself being watched. She stepped back from the window, but not in alarm. She wanted to be seen, but not by some neighbor going to the privy. She wanted to be seen by the very Man who listened to the words that still came eloquently to her lips. The room was already so full of him that it would burst, and as she spoke silently she reached out her hands to touch him, not knowing who it was she wanted to find under her hand. Her fingers closed on emptiness; the light within her could find no release; she would surely burst if he did not come and see her shine like a star, hear her speak like scripture. She must break the enclosure around her and let him in; unable to pierce her opaque flesh, she opened the only thing she could open: the door to the bedroom.

  Matthew was standing there, his hand outstretched to the latch.

  "Good God," he said. "You startled me."

  Dinah was quite used to the idle use of God's name. But tonight, feeling holy, she resented it as a mockery of the Man she spoke to. Her silent monologue instantly ceased; the room at once became empty; and she knew as Matthew glanced down at her open bodice that there was no hope of avoiding his intimacy tonight.

  So be it. If it must be, let it be quick. He hardly stepped within the door when she began pulling his shirt from his trousers. He laughed softly and unbuttoned his waistcoat and his shirt; she stood behind him unfastening his trousers, clumsily pulling them down. "Let me," he said. "I can do it quicker."

  "Hurry," she said, and undressed as he did, resenting his eyes on her but forcing herself to smile until she was naked and lay on the bed, waiting for him impatiently. He looked at her in awe, not smiling now. She did not care if he thought she was acting the whore; it was not his thought she cared for tonight. Like a whore, she wanted it to happen and be done with so she could get on. He crawled up the bed to her and she wrapped her legs around him to draw him close.

  To her surprise she was as aroused as he was, as if her body were translating spiritual excitement into carnal. She found herself responding to him as she never had before; or, rather, interpreting the strong passion of her body as pleasure instead of shameful loss of control. She cried out softly, panted as he did, and she did not mind after all that tonight of all nights he did not simply turn over and go right to sleep, but instead lay facing her, kissing her, letting his hands play over her. She did not mind that the blankets were not pulled up modestly to hide them, that Matthew was warmly covering a part of her when he finally fell asleep. She felt an affection for him that she had never thought would be possible; her body's release was, for once, satisfying to her, and she felt a marvelous contentment.

  But the ideas began to flow back into her mind as the emptiness of Matthew's love retreated. Her lips began to move again in silent speech; she felt the evening begin to grow chilly, and she slid out from under Matthew, put on her nightgown, and pulled a blanket over them. Matthew murmured and reached for her in his sleep, but his hand, finding only cloth, retreated again. He rolled away from her and the lovemaking was past; she had got through Matthew's return without losing the fervor of this new religion. She had increased it, in fact, and she began to hear music as she silently spoke, a drone of harmony softly in her ears, a hum that retreated when she became aware of it and returned as soon as she no longer tried to hear it.

  Father, she said softly. Father, Father, Father. She was a young farmboy lying on a bed in his father's house in America, longing for something, knowing it would not come, expecting it to arrive any moment.

  The feeling grew and grew until she could not bear it. The light also grew within her, until at last she could see it, a whiteness spreading from her to fill the room. She heard her words become audible, and she finally realized that the angel would not come and stand outside her in the air, that the angel would be within her, and her own lips would speak the message she was meant to hear. "I love you," said her lips, and only her own ears heard. "I love you, I hear you." And then the whiteness grew too bright and she closed her eyes and almost immediately felt herself drift toward sleep, felt the whiteness drowse over her like endless sheets and blankets to warm her, and she heard her own voice fall silent and the other voice at last speak in answer, speak from those perfect lips only one thing: "I am," said the voice so slowly, and Dinah lay in
wonder all night, sleeping but feeling herself awake forever, the sun and moon and stars all within her body, the leaves of the trees so large that she could stand between them and watch them grow to infinity so that she could touch the stars that dwelt within them, too. "I am," said the voice. So slowly. And Dinah answered, silently, "I know."

  18

  New Saints Manchester, 1840

  Somehow Charlie ended up volunteering to sleep on the divan so Heber could have a bed. He tried to see how he had been maneuvered into it, but Heber hadn't done anything obvious enough to catch. Oh well, hospitality was hospitality. The only thing that really annoyed Charlie was how affected Dinah seemed. It was as if the two of them had been listening to different men. Charlie heard only an American with outlandish speech. Dinah apparently heard something else.

  "I don't want to belabor it," said Heber from the doorway, "but would you do me one last favor?"

  Charlie shrugged and smiled. "Gladly, of course."

  "Two favors, really. The first one is, would you mind if I read you just a short, short passage from the Book of Mormon?"

  "Please," Charlie said.

  "I mean, the Book of Mormon is kind of the linchpin, don't you think? If it's true scripture, then everything Brother Joseph said about how he got it must be true too. And if it isn't true scripture, why, it's all as false as a goose egg in a chicken coop."