Breath and Bones (14 page)

The morning brought good news for him and his new charge. Herr Skatkammer did not own any tinderboxes, not of silver or any other metal. He did not consider them modern, attractive, or practical; he preferred safety matches and the spring-lid boxes made for them in France. However, he was surprised by the new maidservant's defection and noted that, as she had served him less than a year, she could hardly expect any wages. He added in a postscript that he didn't think Erastus Mortensen's father would have approved of a son who ran around converting other people's servants under the masters' very noses. On the outside of the envelope he scribbled a last question: “How many wives do you have, Mr. Goodhouse?” But since this wasn't part of the letter proper, Heber didn't feel called upon to reply.

The note from the Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart was somewhat cooler in tone. She reassured Herr Goodhouse, who was kind enough to inquire about one of the orphans her convent had raised, that Ursula Marie, called Famke, had indeed been discovered in a blanket of unusually fine quality. As to the diaper, she could not recall what it had been made of; likewise, she could not swear there had been a tinderbox inside it. Heber's heart sank a bit at this last, but then it lifted when he read that
as far as the convent was aware
(the words were underlined) Famke's only previous place of employment had been a goose and pig farm in Dragør, where her employer would certainly not have been wealthy enough to possess
a silver tinderbox. Famke was a girl of good intentions, and though it was disappointing to find she was leaving the Catholic Church, Mother Superior was glad to know she was still following the Lord in some fashion. The convent sent greetings and best wishes to Famke on her departure for America, where it was to be hoped the clear air would do her some good.

The letter was signed, “Mother Birgit of the Immaculate Heart.”

So when the 317 newest
Sidste Dages Hellige
(who had learned just enough English by now to call themselves Latter-Day Saints) swarmed aboard that first ship with their meager belongings and high hopes, Famke was among them. This vessel, the
Agnete
, was Danish but did not belong to Herr Skatkammer, a fact for which Famke was deeply grateful.

Nonetheless, she scanned the mob of sailors anxiously. Were there any aboard from the days in Nyhavn? If one of them were to identify her now, she would be lost. The men who had grabbed at her skirts as she passed in the stairway, who had listened to her nighttime tumbles with Albert—who had seen her naked on the day of his departure, even if it was only on canvas—these men could ruin her irrevocably.

“Where are the sleeping quarters?” she asked Heber, and, pretending seasickness, she went immediately belowdeck. Thus she missed the chance to bid her native land good-bye, to watch the spires of Copenhagen dwindle into the sky as the steamship chugged northward.

It took three days for the sleek-prowed
Agnete
to round Denmark's islands and graze the tip of Jutland, that finger cropping up from the European continent, then cross the open sea and snake down the English coast to Liverpool. On the first day, Famke cut off the end of her yellow shawl and made a pocket for her most precious possessions, so she might keep them tied under her skirt every perilous moment of the voyage. The rest of the time, she lay on a hard wooden bunk and listened to the women above and below and around her vomiting into the sand that covered the floor. She wasn't sick herself—at least, not from the sea—and yet she wasn't about to go up on deck into the clean air, among the seagulls and the sailors who might spoil her plans.

During those three days she didn't give a single thought to Heber Goodhouse or his precious Profit City. She thought only of Albert and of
Nimue
. When Birgit's face pushed into her mind—for Goodhouse had shown her the letter, thinking it would make her happy to receive this farewell from the women who had raised her—she pushed it out again just as firmly. She would not think of what she was leaving behind; she was exchanging an old world for a new one. Of course, she might write when she found Albert . . .

There was a night's pause in Liverpool, where the Saints filed off the
Agnete
and onto the
Olivia
. As she started down the jumpy gangway, Famke found Goodhouse at her elbow, asking how she felt now.

There were quite a few sailors on the dock. Famke pulled the un-cornered shawl farther over her head; she'd wrapped her few other possessions in her spare blouse, and she held it in front of her body and staggered dramatically. “The sun . . .” She wrinkled her forehead, aping pain.

“Ah yes, it's a bit much after so many days belowdeck.” Goodhouse took her arm—ignoring the other Sainted women traveling alone, women who had also spent the trip in their bunks and who were weak from vomiting besides—and guided her solicitously through English customs and into women's steerage.

“Thank you,” she said politely, as he lingered on the uncrossable threshold. She pulled the intact end of the shawl across her nose; it would seem that no steerage cabin ever smelled good. “Thank you very much,” she said again, as he seemed disinclined to leave her. “I am sure you have much to do.”

With visible reluctance, he bowed, and he made his exit just as a stout peasant woman tottered in and retched heartily over the floor.

To one who did not go on deck, the steamship journey was an endless parade of stenches: seasickness, overcooked stews, underwashed bodies. Perhaps worst were the unemptied privies, for even with the sparkling ocean all around, they made an inexplicable pocket of dirty water and palpable odor. Nonetheless, Famke spent much of her time there: It was the
one place she could be alone and unobserved. In steerage, if the sleeping women woke, they tended to use the chamberpot rather than dress and stumble out to what was only a board full of holes propped over a tub anyway. Famke slept in most of her clothes and trained herself to wake shortly before dawn, secure her yellow pocket, and sneak away to privacy. There at least she could wait, alone, until a finger of gray light filtered through the filthy porthole and illuminated her lap.

For in her lap lay her own face, the face Albert had sketched that first day in Dragør. It was crumpled now from its travels, and the pencil marks—graphite, not charcoal, she thought gratefully, now that she knew more about an artist's materials—had smeared, but it was still there: the work of his hand, the outline of her face. As the light grew, she pulled it closer to her eyes and imagined she was gazing into a mirror, such as the one she'd given him for Christmas. It was some comfort to think that perhaps that glass was reflecting his face at this very moment.

Every night, she mourned the loss of the tinderbox; but she told herself to be content with this sketch, which was surely more precious to her than antique silver, no matter how many queens and princesses might have touched that little box. She waited, dreaming, until she heard the first footsteps on the deck—usually a matter of minutes—and then quickly folded the sketch and returned it to her pocket.

As to her other possessions, they were safe enough on the bunk she shared with another girl; Mormon ladies did not steal from each other, and in their new-convert virtue they even withheld curiosity about each other's bundles. All bundles were assumed to hold roughly the same contents: a few spare garments, contracts of emigration and repayment, pictures of loved ones never to be seen again in the flesh.

All day, all night, the
Olivia
glided over the blue-green, sparkling sea, steaming toward the new life. The polluted air on board made Famke cough; but then, she was not the only one it affected this way. She soothed herself with thoughts of the great clean new country, and occasionally beguiled some hours in the bunk by telling herself stories:
This is a mountain in Mæka
. . .
This is a miner entering the mountain
. . . Below her, the other women spun more fairy tales, imagining perfumes and silks they would wear in Utah, pearls they might reach down and pry from the oyster beds now, if only they had nets long enough.

A few of the women managed not to succumb to sickness at sea. They spent their time in singing what Heber called “glees and catches” and in stitching new sets of underwear: union suits so cleverly constructed that the person wearing one need never be completely naked, even while washing, and tediously embroidered over nipples and Down There with a set of symbols that Famke could not understand but was told were a sort of map, directions that the body could follow to paradise upon its resurrection. She herself was no needlewoman (the yellow pocket twice needed repairs on the journey), and she certainly felt no call for such a garment, which in any event she would not be allowed to wear until after her baptism as a Saint. She was much more interested in the English lessons that Heber Good-house gave in another emigrant's first-class cabin. She attended those whenever the ship's passageways were free of sailors.

Under Goodhouse's tutelage, Famke learned that English was the language presently spoken by God. The Saints knew this because God—or his angel, which was somehow the same thing to them—had spoken English to their young prophet, Joseph Smith, as the seventeen-year-old-boy dug his father's field a half-century before. Some years later, God had asked Smith to translate the signs on some golden tablets into the Mormons' new book of holy history and had given him special eyeglasses, or scryglasses, with which to do it. She imagined joking to Albert that he'd taught her to speak divine language.

Meanwhile she plied Goodhouse with questions. What did Joseph Smith's tablets say? What did he mean by “The Miracle of the Seagulls”? How long would the train portion of the journey to Utah take? She made Mormon lore her particular study: Perhaps this could be the mythology that Albert was seeking, the set of stories that would unlock his inspiration and let his artistic gifts flourish. The more she knew about it, the better; it would be her gift to him, as the glass ice had been so many months ago.

“Is it true,” she asked Heber Goodhouse, “that you believe your God is married?”

“He is everyone's God,” the Saint said in a tone of gentle instruction. “He created us in His image and bade us marry; our world reflects His. Even the savages practice a form of marriage.”

“So it
is
true, then.”

“Yes.” He sighed, as if giving up a battle. “God is a husband. He descended to earth and married the woman you were raised to call the Virgin Mary, who is a treasured part of the Holy Family. We recognize her with our prayers in temple.”

Famke spent a moment imagining the Virgin's blue veil replaced with the sunbonnet recommended for Saintly immigrants, then dismissed the image as unappealing. “And why,” she asked daringly, “do your people have so many wives?”

Goodhouse's eyes remained steady, though they did not quite meet hers; this was the stickiest of all the doctrines and covenants, and the hardest to explain to young women. “It is ordained by God,” he said, conscious of some bravery on his own part: “‘If any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified.' Joseph Smith translated this from ancient papyri—er, scrolls of text—”