Byzantium (11 page)

“Mr. Ames,” he said upon opening the door. He led me to the cabin’s crude parlor, where Dorothea sat working on a stocking. A paperboard screen and blankets slung over strings were all that divided the cabin into rooms. On the walls hung a few newspaper illustrations of Mexican scenes, from the recent war. A glass hutch filled with dull china stood across from the door, and the rest of the furniture took the form of trunks, save for the chairs gathered around the hearth. I was offered the one next to Dorothea while Bainbridge sat across from us, beside his wife. Dorothea glanced up, then returned to her stocking, and Bainbridge stared at the two of us while his wife poked at the fire. Every attempt I made at a pleasantry—on the weather, on the last Sabbath’s sermon—was met with a “hmph” by Bainbridge and silence by Dorothea and her mother.

This continued for some time, and I despaired. Was my love to founder so quickly? Then Bainbridge rose to visit the privy, and, at a nod from her mother, Dorothea spoke. “I’m glad you came,” she said, putting down the stocking and grinning up at me. “I was worried you wouldn’t.”

“I had to.” With that I offered her the wooden hand and made my speech. Her cheeks reddened, and she took the hand and gave me hers in return. Dorothea’s mother had focused her eyes on the small fire and was pretending to ignore us. I wondered then if she had argued for me. For a full five minutes I clutched Dorothea’s hand. She pulled it away only when the scrape of the back door announced her father’s return.

Once a week, all through the rest of May and into June, I called on Dorothea. Each of my visits followed the same pattern. We would sit in silence as her father watched us, me with my hands folded, Dorothea working on a stocking. Then, once Bainbridge absented himself, her mother would turn away, pretending to contemplate some particular coal, and I would present my gift—another hand, so that I might hold both, and after that a piece of polished burl I called her cheek, which I gave Dorothea in exchange for a kiss of its original. In those rare free minutes we would talk of our days or play teasing games with one another. Once she read me a poem, and another time she made me keep silent while she searched my face. The moment I left her I ached as if fevered, and with each visit it seemed our souls were being knit together.

At our sixth meeting, though, I found her altered.

As before, she worked on a stocking while her father sat with us, but when he left, rather than wake into the girl I had come to know, she stared into her lap. Her mother, sitting across from us as always, ignored the fire and twisted a handkerchief in her fingers.

“Dory,” I said. But she didn’t look up. “Dory, what is it?”

Then came the scraping of the back door—her father returning sooner than usual. In a moment he was standing over me and telling me it was time to leave.

“I hope you got to say your good-byes,” he said once we were outside. “That’s the last of your calls, Mr. Ames.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “My intentions are honorable.” I wondered if this was what concerned him. “I hope to marry Dorothea.”

“I won’t permit it,” he said.

His flat refusal surprised me. I stood there more flabbergasted than hurt.

“Sir,” I said, “there must be something I can do.”

“Nothing,” he said.

“But, Mr. Bainbridge,” I protested, “surely—”

“You’ll get my permission the day you’re raised to the Order!” he shouted, and his face grew fiery. He meant to say I had no hope. The Order of Maccabaeus was the highest honor ordained by Josiah. It had as yet no members. I could not understand Bainbridge’s stubbornness, and to distract my sick heart—for with each passing moment hurt pumped in—I spent my long walk home cursing him and his arrogance.

IT WAS SOME WEEKS AFTER that last meeting with Dorothea—lost weeks, despairing weeks—that Josiah summoned everyone to the Temple. For four days he had kept himself shut in the Chamber of the Most Holy. While I had been courting Dorothea doubts had been spreading across the island. According to
The Book of Truths,
with the passing of spring we were to have left the Years of Preparation and entered the Years of Manifestation. By now thousands were supposed to be arriving each week. Instead there had been only a trickle of new converts. And where were the promised wonders, the signs of the New Age? Why hadn’t angels appeared on Mount Nebo, or fire broken the sky to devour the homes and stores of those sliding into apostasy? Some were saying our faith had fallen short, that we need only trust more in the Lord. Others whispered that Josiah and the elders were in secret taking new wives, like the Mormons of Utah, and the Lord was displeased. Still others, couching their words in the claim that they were merely repeating what they’d heard, accused Josiah of fooling us all with humbuggery. The doubts could no longer be ignored, and at the most recent Sabbath Josiah had announced he was going into the Chamber of the Most Holy to beseech the Lord to show him where we had erred. Each day I had prayed for him. My faith had never wavered.

As I entered the Temple that day, my eyes sought Dorothea and soon found her raven braids peeking from beneath her bonnet. She sat with her father and mother near the front. In the last weeks I had felt as if part of me had sickened and died. There was little more than a cool emptiness left within my chest. Pickle had been solicitous, warning me of destruction and praying I’d return to reason and moderation. Now if I saw Dorothea it was only from a distance, here in the Temple or when she came to town with her mother to Teague’s store or with her father during his visits to Josiah. It was rumored Bainbridge was being considered for eldership. Always she would bow her head rather than meet my eyes. I still had not learned the reason for the breaking of our courtship, and the letter I had left for her at Teague’s went unanswered. I tried to keep from looking at her, to stare at the rafters or out the windows, but it was impossible. With her back to me I could study her without consequence: her shawl-wrapped shoulders, her bare neck, her bonneted head. Was she happy?

Once everyone was settled, Josiah stepped through the door at the front of the sanctuary, bowed his head as he walked through the Arch of the Blood, and mounted the pulpit. He looked out over us, and an even deeper quiet fell upon the pews.

“There has been confusion and uncertainty,” he began, his voice calm. “I’ve shared it myself. We have come to the site of Zion, we have begun building the city, and yet we look around us and wonder, Where are the multitudes? Last night, the fourth night of my vigil, the Lord put me into a deep sleep, then took me up and showed me a vision of our island. I saw Port Hebron, I saw the forest and the farms, I saw the lake around us, wide as a sea.” Now his voice began to rise. His hands gripped the pulpit’s sides. His eyes flashed. “The Lord made me to look at the lake and, lo, fire appeared on the horizon, blazing toward our shores. The Lord said, ‘This unholy fire you must quench.’ Then the fire fell away, and in the middle of the island a pit opened and out of the pit came a cloud of pestilence. The Lord showed me the pestilence spreading among us. It killed everybody it touched. The Lord’s voice said, ‘This unholy plague you must cure.’ I said to the Lord, ‘The fire I understand, the traders who circle our island. But the plague? The plague I do not understand.’”

Josiah gazed at the assembly room’s ceiling and stretched out his arms, as if still in dialogue with the heavens. “‘There is a sickness among you,’ He said. ‘I will not send My Son to reign over the impure.’ ‘But what is this sickness, and how am I to cure it?’ I asked. ‘You will not see it, you will not know it, you will not cure it, but I will send a Judge who will do these things,’ He said. ‘You must make ready for him. You must build him a house, a seat from which he can spy out your pestilence.’ The Lord then showed me how we are to build this house, and I have spent all morning setting down His instructions here.” Josiah waved a paper scribbled with notes. “We begin work tomorrow. Praise be to the Lord.”

Hunched over the pulpit, sweating, exhausted, he awaited our response. The room remained silent. Perhaps the doubters were considering whether the vision quelled their anxieties, the accusers of humbuggery assessing its authenticity. But after only a few seconds we answered in unison, each of us shouting the words Josiah had taught us: “Glory and thanks to the Lord for His guiding hand!”

A FEW NIGHTS LATER I was in my corner of Pickle’s cabin, playing my violin, when Elder Williamson came to the door. It was past ten—darkness had finally fallen—and Pickle was readying himself for sleep. Elder Williamson told me to get my rifle. Some whiskey traders had come from Mackinac and set fire to Elder Hunt’s cabin. They’d not yet been so bold, and even though the cabin was saved Josiah had ordered a sortie to chase them; since the vision he’d demanded more vigilance. After Elder Williamson left I splashed my face with water. My previous weeks on sortie duty had been quiet and I felt unprepared. Bidding Pickle good night, I took my rifle and went to the dock. The others had already begun the prayer. Josiah was there, placing his hand on each one’s forehead. I raced up and he put his hand to mine.

We paired into canoes; I was matched with a man named Spofford. I didn’t know him well. He’d arrived at the island after me and worked in one of the logging camps. Josiah had elected to lead us himself, and at his orders we paddled out of the bay toward the near islands to the east, the likeliest place we’d find the whiskey traders. Above us a thick spangle of stars cast a faint light on the water. As Josiah had instructed, we took care with our paddles, guarding against every needless splash.

Halfway to Garden Island we spied a rocking lantern. I had heard stories of ghosts on the lake, and I started, but Spofford reached a hand back to quiet me, then, following Josiah, steered us toward the light. As we drew nearer, I saw it was only an Indian in his canoe, night fishing. Josiah gave him a present of smoked beef and a small sack of cornmeal, and the Indian told us that he’d seen the whiskey traders pass three hours earlier, heading toward the notch bay on Garden Island’s western point. We paddled in that direction and soon made out the glimmer of the traders’ fire on the shore, heard their shouts echo across the lake.

“I’d say they’re a few sheets,” Spofford whispered back to me. We went past the notch, to a narrow spit of land just to the east, and pulled our canoes up the beach. Once we were in the wood, Josiah gave his instructions. Elder Williamson would lead four men through the trees to a position behind the whiskey traders’ camp while the others crept along the sands. We were only to give the traders a scare, Josiah warned us, but enough of a scare to show them we were prepared to fight. After Elder Williamson’s party took a five-minute start, the rest of us set out along the shore with Josiah.

The traders had bivouacked at the tree line, their camp not fifty feet from the water, and as we took our positions along the lake’s edge I counted them. There were six circled around the fire, and they passed a jug while one among them, a blond-bearded man wrapped in furs and skins, bellowed a story about killing a bear. They didn’t see us. The fire was too bright in their eyes, their attentions too occupied by the story.

I looked to Josiah, who was holding up his hand. He dropped it and let out an animal screech. At that Spofford raced off to set fire to the traders’ canoes and the rest of us shot our rifles into the air and hooted like crazed owls. From the darkness of the wood Williamson and his men echoed us.

The whiskey traders leapt up at the tumult. They reeled and stumbled drunkenly as they looked about in terror.

“Who’s there?” one of them called, aiming his rifle at one blackness after another.

“Damned God-squawkers!” another shouted as he sat back down and applied himself to the jug.

“We didn’t mean for it to burn,” pleaded a third, and knelt in the sand.

We stood in our places and kept up our hooting. Behind us the lake, black and calm, lapped at the shore. Down the beach the traders’ canoes were in full blaze.

We were about to return to our own canoes when the trader who’d been telling the story bolted toward us with a shout of “Goddamn it!” We were not prepared for such a turn, and nobody moved to stop him. By luck he came right at Josiah and tackled him. “Got one of you now!” the trader shouted. Josiah lay struggling on the sand, pinned beneath the trader’s knees. Something glittered in the starlight. A knife. My stomach lurched. Without thinking I rushed at the trader and swung the butt of my rifle into his temple. I pushed him off and gave my hand to Josiah, who took it, rose, and whistled for the sortie’s end. The remaining whiskey traders fled into the trees with their gear. Only after the last had gone did I return to Josiah’s attacker. I shook the man, but he didn’t stir. I felt him. Already his body was cooling.

As the others circled Josiah, I stayed beside the trader’s body. His face revealed that he was my own age. On his chest lay a necklace of animal teeth, among which was a silver locket. I opened it and a loop of fiery hair fell onto my palm. Bound in its tight circlet, it had the feel of some new metal. I imagined a faraway sitting room, then a darkly lit brothel of the sort I and my companions in Baltimore had always been too timid to enter. What woman had been in possession of the trader’s heart? My own clenched quickly with the thought of Dorothea. I replaced the hair and snapped the locket shut. Blood now seeped from the side of the trader’s head and had begun to soak the sand.

I was overcome. I thought of the trader’s family, of the red-haired woman, and imagined all the better ways I could have stopped him, the ways I could have saved Josiah without killing. I was a sinner, a brute.

Meanwhile, as I watched over the trader’s body, the others talked. As of yet there had been no bloodshed between us and the whiskey traders. If anyone learned of what had happened, Josiah warned, there would be more killing. Elder Williamson asked what should be done, and Josiah related his plan. The other traders had only seen their fellow disappear onto the beach and could be certain of nothing. We would take the body to the canoes and dispose of it in the lake. The true account of the night could never be disclosed: when asked, we would say the trader who had attacked Josiah fled into the wood, after his fellows. Once this was agreed to, Josiah called me over and made me swear a vow of secrecy with the others.