A Many-Splendoured Thing Read online

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  Contents

  Margaret Pemberton

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Margaret Pemberton

  A Many-Splendoured Thing

  Margaret Pemberton

  Margaret Pemberton is the bestselling author of over thirty novels in many different genres, some of which are contemporary in setting and some historical.

  She has served as Chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and has three times served as a committee member of the Crime Writers’Association. Born in Bradford, she is married to a Londoner, has five children and two dogs and lives in Whitstable, Kent. Apart from writing, her passions are tango, travel, English history and the English countryside.

  Dedication

  For John and Catherine Wilkins,

  true Latter-Day Saints and true friends.

  Introduction

  I have always wanted to write a saga about the Mormon trek to Salt Lake City and have never done so – mainly because I am terrified of not being able to do justice to such a huge, spectacular, heroic and almost insane undertaking.

  What I did do, some years ago, was to write this historical romance. Its background is the trek made in 1846 by the early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as, led by their leader Brigham Young, they left Nauvoo, Illinois, and crossed the American West to the Rocky Mountains by wagon train in search of a place where they could worship in peace. The heroine is not a Latter-Day Saint – and neither is the hero.

  The story is a love story. It is, however, one that would not have been written if it hadn’t been for my admiration for a very particular people. The Mormon pioneers.

  © Margaret Pemberton 2002

  Chapter One

  Polly Kirkham sang as the thick fall of snow crackled beneath her feet. It was winter and though she had only a thick shawl over her plain cambric dress, she was oblivious of the sharp cold. Over her arm was a large basket, full of fresh brown eggs from Sister Fielding of Dallow Farm, some four miles from Nauvoo and Polly’s own home. The eggs had been bartered for a carefully stitched skirt of heavy wool. Sister Fielding had provided Polly with the material, for her eyes were too feeble for stitching and sewing. Polly had obliged cheerfully. A skirt for eggs; a ham for a sack of freshly ground wheat. Money rarely passed hands in Nauvoo. Every neighbour helped the other and it never occurred to Polly that people should live differently.

  She shielded her eyes against the sinking sun as she stepped from the last of the beech trees. Nauvoo lay curled in a bend of the great Mississippi. A small town; a new town; a beautiful town. Joseph Smith, the man who had brought them there and built Nauvoo from the deserted swampland had told his followers that Nauvoo meant ‘Beautiful Place’.

  Polly hurried her steps. It would soon be dark and Lucy Marriot would be waiting for the eggs to make supper.

  Polly was only eighteen, but she could well remember her first sight of Nauvoo. Her parents had been alive then, and though not converted to Joseph Smith’s revealed restoration of the Gospel, had cast in their lot with the Mormons, for they, too, were outcasts and friendless. They had lived all their lives alongside the Smith family and when the Mormons, or ‘Saints’ as they were called locally, had decided to move to avoid persecution, the Kirkhams had moved with them.

  Nauvoo had been a few miles from Quincy: a deserted, swamp-infested place that no one wanted and Polly’s young heart had quaked at the sight of it. She had been twelve then, and with her own hands had helped her parents and Joseph’s followers build a generous city of wide streets and evenly-spaced sturdy homesteads. The river marshes had been drained. Trees and shrubs had been planted at every turn. Nauvoo had truly become the beautiful place that Joseph had prophesied.

  The Mississippi shimmered under its coating of ice and Polly’s usually happy heart felt almost as cold as she paused momentarily in her quick stride. Many had died while Nauvoo was built. The cholera had come and the old and the weak had succumbed. Her mother had died first: a pretty woman with Polly’s corn-coloured hair and startling blue eyes. She had recently given birth to a baby that had been still-born, and, weakened by the hard labour, had fallen an easy victim to the dreaded disease. The next few months had been spent in a haze of misery that Polly had thought nothing could equal. Then, six months later, her father had contracted the disease and joined his beloved wife in the grave.

  Lucy and Tom Marriot had taken her in. Devout Mormons, they had given her shelter and love and had waited patiently for her to embrace their faith. She had never done so.

  The dark came suddenly and she closed her mind against memories of the past and broke into a run. Lucy would be worrying about her and maybe sending her son Jared in search of her. Not, Polly thought, as she placed the basket of eggs carefully on the far side of a fence and vaulted it in an unladylike manner, that she would mind Jared’s company for the rest of the way into Nauvoo, but he had work enough to do and no time to be treating her as if she were an Eastern miss made of bone china.

  ‘Polly! Polly!’ Jared Marriot raced along the track towards her, as her crisp white bonnet shone like a lantern in the dark.

  She was about to break into a run to greet him, but, remembering the eggs, she continued at a more sedate pace until he reached her breathlessly and said:

  ‘I was feared something had happened to you.’

  Polly laughed, allowing him to take the heavy basket from her arm.

  ‘At Sister Fielding’s? The worse that could happen there is that the goats eat the hem of my gown, as they did last time I visited.’

  His usually smiling mouth was grim. ‘There’s been trouble again. Our Illinois neighbours descended on the Spencers and forced them from their home with musket shot.’

  ‘Was anyone hurt?’ Polly’s heart seemed almost to cease beating. She was accustomed to the hatred that the Saints seemed to arouse wherever they went, and attacks on out-lying farms and homesteads were nothing new. If it wasn’t Indians, it was the respectable citizens of Illinois, demanding that the ‘damned Mormons’be moved from their doorsteps.

  ‘No, though it’s only thanks to the Lord that they weren’t. Brother Spencer was all for going straight back, but father persuaded him to allow his family to spend the night with us. Sister Spencer was badly frightened and the little girls half terrified out of their lives.’

  ‘Why do they do it, Jared?’ she asked, as they entered the broad street that led to the Marriot’s sturdy, stone-built house. A house built with their own hands, with care and love, just as the Spencer home had been.

  ‘They don’t understand,’ Jared said bitterly. ‘They can’t accept us because they can’t understand us.’

  His frank open countenance, normally one
that laughed and smiled so easily, was set in sombre lines.

  ‘You’d think, after what they did to Brother Joseph, that they would leave us in peace,’ Polly said tentatively. She knew how a mention of Joseph Smith’s death caused Jared such pain that at first it had frightened her. It was not to cause him more pain that she mentioned it now. Only to try and understand. Although she was not a Mormon, she had always been treated with love and kindness by them. Every Mormon she knew was quite prepared to live cordially alongside his non-believing neighbours. But the non-believers would have none of it. They wanted them away.

  Only two weeks ago Brigham Young had led over 2,000 of Nauvoo’s inhabitants over the frozen Mississippi and West to the far distant Rocky Mountains. Their houses had been evacuated, their belongings packed tightly in the covered wagons that would be their homes for many months. Only the old and sick had remained, believing in the governor’s promise that they would be protected. The promise had proved impossible to keep and now Tom and Jared, who had stayed behind in consideration for Lucy’s health, were already regretting their decision. But it was unthinkable that Lucy should give up her home, and though she had not told Tom or Jared, Polly knew that the older woman suffered pains in her side that sometimes left her prostrate.

  ‘They thought Joseph’s death would be an end to our faith,’ Jared said as they approached the welcoming lamplight of their home. ‘They were mistaken. His murder achieved nothing. We have Brother Brigham to lead us now and we still have our faith. Nothing can take that from us.’

  They paused at the gate and his hand touched hers, his eyes pleading.

  ‘If only you would make it your faith too, Polly. Accept the Gospel …’

  His touch on her hand was warm and comforting. Accept the restored Gospel and become a Mormon—and Jared Marriot’s wife.

  She felt suddenly too old for her eighteen years. For as long as she could remember, she and her family had lived among Latter-day Saints, for Mormons was only a nickname, but her parents had never accepted Joseph Smith’s faith and Polly could not either. Not even to become Jared’s wife—and Jared would never marry a woman who did not share his faith. He was too totally committed to Joseph Smith’s teachings. He wanted marriage not just for this life, but for the next. Latter-day Saints believed that marriage was for eternity. Polly hoped sincerely that it was: not just for them but for everyone who truly loved.

  She said, ‘I’m tired, Jared. There’ll be many beds to make up if the Spencers are with us, and extra cooking.’

  ‘I love you, Polly,’ he said as she moved away from him. ‘I want you to be my wife.’

  She stood still, gazing at the sturdy homestead with its welcoming lamplight in the windows. If she married Jared she would have a home of her own, children. She said tentatively:

  ‘Then marry me as I am, Jared.’ Even in the darkness she could see the sadness in his eyes.

  ‘I cannot, Polly. I cannot marry you until you share my faith.’

  She had wanted him to say that he could not live without her: that he loved her so much the difference in their faiths could be overcome. Her heart felt heavy in her breast, for at that moment she was faced with the painful truth. Her love for Jared was not great enough. If it had been, she too, would have overcome the obstacles that lay between them. Memories of her mother flooded back. ‘Rebel’was the word the Latter-day sisters had used to describe her. It was a word that Polly knew they often used about herself. As a little girl she had laughed at such a description of her sweet-faced mother. Now she understood. Like Mary Ellen Kirkham she did not fit into the tight-knit community in which she lived.

  Her mother had come from a good-class Philadelphia family. Her parents had arranged a most suitable match and their headstrong daughter had refused it adamantly and had eloped with Harry Kirkham, a man with no skills but those of a farm boy. It had, to say the least, been disastrous as far as the Jamesons were concerned. No doubt they still talked about it. Polly did not know: she had never met any of her Jameson relations and had no desire to do so.

  Lucy Marriot flung open the door. ‘Thank goodness you’re safe, child,’ she exclaimed gratefully. ‘The Spencers have been driven from house and home and Susannah Spencer is half-demented with the shock.’

  Polly hurried after Lucy, knowing there would be many household tasks to accomplish. Food to prepare, beds to make. Jared crossed to the large, scrubbed kitchen table where his father and Nephi Spencer sat, shoulders hunched. For a brief second, before she hurried into the kitchen, Polly’s eyes lingered on his slim-built figure. He was a good man and an honourable one. His hair was nearly as fair as her own, and his deep grey eyes caused many a young girl to gaze after him wistfully and wait hopefully at dances for his attention. There were not many young men in Nauvoo as handsome as Jared Marriot. Polly knew she was envied by many of the local girls, for Jared had made no secret of the fact that he wished to marry her.

  They had lived under the same roof for over five years. She knew that she loved him, but she also knew that her love was not strong enough—it was not the love a woman should feel for the man she is to marry. Rather it was the love of a sister for a brother.

  Once again she thought of her mother who had defied convention because she loved so deeply. She had exchanged a life of comfort and ease for one of hardship and unremitting happiness. Her daughter did not care about convention either. She, too, wanted to love as her mother had done. But such a love was not one-sided. Harry Kirkham had worshipped his wife. There was nothing he would not have done or given up for her. Polly wanted to be loved like that. She wanted Jared to love her so much that he would not care whether she shared his faith or not.

  She gave herself a mental shake. There was no time to be dreaming of a love that would sweep her off her feet. Lucy Marriot had the whole Spencer family to feed as well as her own.

  She put bacon and beans in a pan and then warmed milk and took it into the parlour where the Spencer children huddled on a rag rug before a roaring log fire, their eyes huge in their white faces. As she hurried off to find fresh linen and make up extra beds, other neighbours arrived to comfort the evicted family.

  Eliza Cowley looked nearly as frightened as Susannah Spencer. City-bred, she was a timid woman and terrified that the disaster that had befallen her friend would befall her. Sister Schulster, a tart-voiced widow rumoured to be well in her eighties, had arrived with her and shortly afterwards Lydia Lyman, a capable and formidable spinster, stamped the snow off her boots and entered the parlour, immediately taking one of the children on her lap. Polly handed out the warm drinks and was rewarded by a grateful smile from Lucy.

  ‘Bless you, child. What I’d do without you I can’t think.’

  Sister Spencer hugged herself, crying ceaselessly, ignoring the proffered milk.

  Sister Schulster clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘Do stop wailing like that, Susannah. It’s a house you’ve lost, not a child.’

  Sister Spencer continued to sob. Three times in her married life she had been forced to flee her home: first in Kirtland, then in Quincy, now in Nauvoo. She had lost everything; their heavy, hand-embroidered bedspread, left to them by her mother; the pretty rosewood mirror Nephi had given to her on their tenth wedding anniversary; the samplers the children had sewn when they were learning to stitch.

  Eliza Cowley put a comforting arm around her and Jared’s eyes lifted, meeting Polly’s briefly before she returned to the kitchen. His face was grim. He had never wanted to remain behind in Nauvoo and Polly guessed that he was doing his best to persuade his father to leave.

  ‘Fetch a pitcher of milk,’ Lucy said breathlessly as she joined her at the stove. ‘There’s enough bread made, thank the Lord, and plenty of blankets. We’ll none of us be cold tonight.’

  Through the open door the men’s voices carried clearly.

  ‘What hope is there for us here when the Governor never even brought Joseph’s murderers to justice?’ Brother Spencer asked, so savagely that Polly s
pilled the hot barley-water she was pouring for Sister Schulster.

  ‘The stronger we grow, the more we are hated.’ Tom Marriot’s voice was weary. ‘It happened in Kirtland and now it’s happening here.’

  ‘We should have gone West with Brother Brigham.’ It was Jared’s voice and there was the sound of his fist slamming on the table. ‘We have the wagons and the provisions!’

  Eliza and Susannah looked at each other. Another uprooting.

  Another town to build in the wilds and the wastelands. Lucy began to cry softly and returned to the parlour and her husband’s side.

  ‘We’ll have no more such talk tonight, Jared,’ Tom Marriot said, putting his arm around his wife. ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough for any decisions that have to be made. Let’s eat now. Sister Spencer and the babes need hot food and the comfort of warm beds.’

  Polly settled the children at the table with plates of beans, a knot of excitement deepening within her. Were they really going to leave? When Brigham Young’s convoy of wagons had rolled through Nauvoo’s streets and over the frozen river, her heart had ached with longing to be among them. They were setting off on a great adventure, and she wanted to be part of it. Her love for Lucy was the only thing that had prevented her from joining the hymn-singing pioneers as they set off on a trek fraught with unimaginable dangers: a trek to land where they could live in peace.

  She headed back into the kitchen for more plates and then dropped them on the stone floor as a volley of shots rang out and there came the sound of galloping hooves and shouts and blasphemies. Through the window horsemen could be seen clearly, masked faces ghastly in the light of burning brands. With a sob of fear Polly dropped the heavy wooden bar into place against the door and raced into the parlour.

  Tom and Jared had already seized their pistols and Nephi Spencer was busily loading his rifle.