October skies

Here in the library they had copies of three out of the eight titles he’d listed. Not bad, considering how obscure some of them were. To be fair, it wasn’t as though Amazon was likely to have all of them in stock either.

He started by flicking through a recent edition of the Book of Mormon, quickly becoming irritated with the confusing language and woolly, meaningless terminology. He moved swiftly on to the second book: Mormonism, and Departure from Christian Convention. Without drawing breath, it jumped straight into a detailed theological discourse comparing the tenets of Mormonism with those of conventional Christianity.

He sighed and pushed it to one side.

The third book was called The First Mormon by one J.D. Pascal. The opening prologue of the book dealt with the Mormon church’s founder, Joseph Smith, and the story of how the Book of Mormon came to be written.

An atheist for pretty much most of his life, Julian had never had much time for what he considered the incomprehensible, paradoxical rambling of most writing on religion. A classic example of nonsensical theistic nit-picking being the eternal debate over the daily miracle that was said to occur with every communion; the debate over when the bread actually became Christ’s flesh, whether it occurred in the priest’s hand or on the recipient’s tongue… or, in fact, whether it was now meant to be considered merely a metaphor — downgraded from being taken as a literal miracle — because by today’s standards it was too far-fetched.

For Julian, the discussion, at best, was a waste of everyone’s time, up there with ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’

However, despite his irritation with that kind of nonsense, he found this particular account of the birth of a brand new faith utterly fascinating. Joseph Smith’s was a tale of divine inspiration, and profound discoveries in the wilderness of Utah of religious relics and seer stones, of ancient angels from bones, and sacred golden scrolls delivered from God in a long-lost language.

It was pure theatre.

‘My God, this is priceless,’ he muttered, scribbling down notes in his jotter as he leafed through the prologue.

This stuff is fantastic.

He read on with a growing sense of astonishment at the tale, affirmed regularly by the author as Joseph Smith’s direct testimony, and not enhanced or exaggerated in any way.

When he had finished he looked at his watch to find the afternoon had slipped away from him and that he had to make tracks to his meeting with Sean. He returned the books to the librarian to file away and stepped out onto Basinghall Street, to be greeted by the jostling hubbub and rush of pedestrian traffic, flowing like a human river towards Mansion House tube station.

But his mind was on what he’d just spent the last few hours reading — and one circling thought kept bubbling up over and over, making him shake his head with incredulity.

And… this is the fastest-growing faith in America?

CHAPTER 30

20 October, 1856

The ‘others’ — I call them that instead of referring to them as Mormons now. Sam has made it quite clear to me that they don’t think of themselves as members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, nor have they since they left Iowa with Preston. They view themselves as quite apart from anyone else.

The others, whilst Preston is still convalescing, have been prepared to take instruction from Keats with regard to the setting up of night watches around the clearing. There is a great concern throughout the camp that the Paiute hunting party encountered three days ago might just return and seek revenge for the Indian shot dead by Mr Hearst. I suspect fear of those Indians has driven them all some way towards accepting Keats’s way of doing things. Although Mr Vander and Mr Hearst, being the two most senior members of the quorum, Preston’s trusted lieutenants, are nominally in charge, neither carry the authority of Preston, and on this matter are more swayed by Keats’s greater experience.

Preston continues to recover. A surprisingly strong man for his middle years, this morning he sat up in his cot and managed to eat a bowl of oat stew. When Mr Vander relayed the news of this to the small gathering outside, I heard a hearty cheer. He complained, however, that the wounds were still extremely painful for him with every move. I prescribed another modest dose for the pain. But I’m reluctant for him to take too many more measures of the laudanum.

Preston asked me why Dorothy Dreyton has not been to see him these last few days. I had no answer.