Chapter 16
At the Propaganda’s villa, the seminary routines of silence and prayer changed little.
Even if their families had been close enough to visit, such a prolonged return to the world would have offered dangerous temptations.
Joseph found that swimming, clothed and alone, helped to ease the restlessness still humming in his rebellious body.
Though there were no lectures to attend during the summer, he and the other seminarians continued their studies through guided reading.
Not a moment must be lost, or souls would be lost. While Canon Law stated that a Priest could not be ordained before the age of twenty-five, the Holy Office frequently granted dispensations, especially for missionaries.
Bishop England had entered the Priesthood at the age of twenty-two.
The seminarians were permitted letters from their families, although the seals were broken.
Most of Joseph’s correspondence was with his mother, his grandmother, and Hélène—nothing the censor judged harmful to his vocation.
Joseph suspected that many of his father’s letters were destroyed, but it hardly mattered; he only glanced at the ones he did receive.
When Bishop England sent a missive, Joseph cherished every word.
Joseph, I am married. His full name is Peregrine McAllister, though I call him Perry.
He is your age and a Scot. He’s also a good Catholic, but Papa likes him anyway.
Papa has been wonderful. He never said “No”; he only said “Wait.” Mama and Grandmama are the ones who turned up their noses. “He’s beneath you,” they said.
We gave them no choice.
Here some of the letter was cut away, but Joseph surmised that Cathy had allowed her lover to compromise her.
Now that Perry has married me, Mama and Grandmama are usually civil, though they still think I deserve someone finer. But we know better, don’t we, brother?
I told him, Joseph, and Perry says it doesn’t matter.
He doesn’t understand that it would matter to anyone of quality.
But I don’t want to be someone’s mistress.
I want to be a wife—even if that means being a mother too.
Perry says he loves me, and he makes me feel beautiful, at least for a little while. I’m not like you, Joseph. I’m weak.
For now, we’ll share Grandmama’s house. Don’t tell anyone else yet, but in a few years, when he’s saved enough money, Perry and I plan to leave Charleston. He wants to own land even if that means going westward. I want to go where we’ll be safe, where no one knows Papa.
There was a postscript in Hélène’s hand that made Joseph smile.
Don’t worry, dear brother: I shan’t get married until you can marry me!
The next summer, Cathy wrote again to tell Joseph he was an uncle.
We had him baptized David Joseph, since you’ll never have a son, and so you’ll remember him when you offer Mass. Mama and Papa say he looks just like you when you were a baby, only fatter. I am simply grateful he does not resemble Papa’s mother.
Sweating and alone beneath an olive tree, Joseph closed his eyes against the words: “since you’ll never have a son…
” He thought he understood some small shard of what Christ felt in the Garden of Gethsemane.
A part of Joseph envied Cathy and her husband.
A part of him wanted to beg his Heavenly Father to take this bitter chalice from him.
What was his sacrifice next to their Savior’s? Joseph made himself pray as Christ had: “Not my will, but Yours be done.”
The month after Joseph’s twenty-first birthday, Bishop England came on his visit ad limina, to kneel before the tombs of Saint Peter and Saint Paul and report the state of his diocese to the Holy Father.
Joseph had not seen his Bishop for eight years, and at first he hardly recognized him.
But the smile that reached all the way to Bishop England’s eyes was unmistakable.
Once, he had seemed like a giant. Now, Joseph found himself looking down on this great man, at least literally.
His Lordship was no longer as vital as Joseph remembered him, heavier in body, his dark hair gone grey.
He must be forty-seven, but he looked even older, as if he were carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders—or at least, the weight of three American states.
They turned onto the Ponte Sant’Angelo, lined with Bernini’s angelic statues. Each bore an Instrument of Christ’s Passion. “Have you already met with the Holy Father, my lord?” Joseph asked.
Bishop England nodded, keeping his eyes downcast. “Yesterday. I wanted to draw the attention of His Holiness toward the American souls we have been neglecting: the souls of the negroes and Indians. His first step in addressing the problem is one I had not anticipated.” His Lordship stopped beneath the statue of the angel with the scourge.
“The Holy Father has appointed me Apostolic Delegate to Haiti.”
“Haiti?” Joseph felt as though he’d uttered a curse.
“Does His Holiness not understand that you are Bishop to three states full of slaveholders?” The mere word “Haiti” inspired terror and hatred in Southerners.
In their eyes, the island contained only fiends, fallen too far to ever be redeemed. Its name might as well have been Hades.
His Lordship looked ahead to the angel with the great Crown of Thorns.
“My current flock will distrust me because I go to serve former slaves who freed themselves through violence—and those former slaves will distrust me because I have not condemned the slavery in my diocese. If the Haitians were to discover that I myself own a man…” Bishop England met Joseph’s eyes and added in explanation: “His name is Castalio. His former master left him to me in his will. And this is how it happens, you see? The heirs of slaveholders are born into a trap—a burden carried from generation to generation.” His Lordship started forward again.
“Slavery is ‘the greatest moral evil that can desolate the civilized world’—I wrote that for a pamphlet published in Ireland last year. But in the United States, we Catholics walk a razor’s edge of resentment already.
If I were to condemn slavery from a Charleston pulpit, I would be hanged in effigy if not in fact, and all the gains I have made for our Church these thirteen years would come to nothing. ”
“Can you decline this mission to Haiti?”
Bishop England shook his head. “The question is one of nearly a million souls and of the generations to succeed them.”
“But surely someone else could go.”
As they passed, Bishop England glanced to the other side of the bridge, where an angel held the Cross against the sky. “What if Christ had given such an answer when God the Father asked Him to sacrifice His life for us?”
Ashamed, Joseph fell silent.
“I would be comforted if I could take with me an assistant I trust, an assistant who is fluent in French…and perhaps conversant in Creole?” Bishop England peered hopefully at Joseph.
Now he interrupted their progress; Joseph could only stand gaping. To go willingly toward that scene of slaughter, which Great-Grandmother Marguerite had invoked so many times in his childhood…
“I know—you must complete your studies. But I imagine this mission will continue for a number of years. If you feel called to minister to Haiti, son, I would welcome you at my side.”
They’d nearly reached the end of the bridge. Joseph stared at the angel above them now, the one who held the sponge of vinegar. “I-Is it safe?”
His Lordship leaned against the marble balustrade. “The President has invited us—an homme de couleur named Jean-Pierre Boyer.”
“President, or dictator?”
“President for life.” Bishop England looked up to the statue of the avenging Saint Michael atop the Castel Sant’Angelo. “At least he’s brought unification and peace. But the cost!”
“More bloodshed?”
“No. Did you realize, Joseph, that in order for France to recognize Haiti’s independence, in order to finally secure peace, Boyer had to agree to pay reparations to the slaveholders for their lost property? The indemnity is 150 million francs!”
For a moment, Joseph stared down at the muddy Tiber.
He had heard about this: as the heirs of a Saint-Domingue planter, Joseph’s father, his sisters, and Joseph himself were eligible to receive part of the indemnity.
But his father had refused to apply for it.
Joseph had been relieved—surely such a claim would risk exposing his father’s illegitimacy and their true color.
“By ‘lost property,’ the French don’t mean only the land,” Joseph murmured.
Bishop England shook his head. “France has forced the people of Haiti to purchase themselves.”
Joseph and his Bishop agreed that he would depart from the College of the Propaganda the following year, so that His Lordship could confer on him all three of the major orders. Joseph would spend his months as a Subdeacon and Deacon in Charleston and complete his studies at the seminary there.
Before he left Rome, Joseph visited Santa Maria della Vittoria one last time.
He found with alarm that the church had been invaded by scaffolds, tarps, and workmen.
A fire had ravaged the apse and licked at the crossing.
The high altar had been reduced to ashes, but Saint Teresa and her angel remained untouched, luminous in the gloom.
Joseph knelt before the altar-piece that now seemed more miraculous than ever.
Help me to be like you, Saint Teresa, he prayed.
A saint would have recognized the money his father had sent him as an occasion of sin and put most of it in the offering box.
Instead, Joseph left the Papal States and did something that certainly was a sin for the pleasure he took in it: he attended an opera, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.
As soon as he reached Paris, Joseph sinned again, twice.
A Mozart aria was almost worth eternal damnation.
He’d come to visit the National Institute for Deaf-Mutes.
Joseph learned that its board of directors was discarding the deaf teachers and suppressing the language of signs.
The Abbé de l’épée, who had founded the Institute, would not have approved.
He’d celebrated Masses in the manual language of his pupils.
In response to the school’s hostile new board, the deaf community decided to commemorate the Abbé’s birthday.
That year of 1834, sixty men gathered for their first annual banquet: printers, engravers, painters, cabinetmakers, farmers, teachers—their only commonality was their deafness, but this made them immediate allies.
The deaf men invited Joseph and two other outsiders, but this night was to celebrate sign, so they agreed not to use their voices.
‘Do you ever dream that you can hear and speak?’ Joseph asked one of the deaf men with his hands.
‘No,’ the man answered with a wistful smile. ‘I dream that everyone in the world can sign.’
In this, Joseph’s father had been right: these deaf men amazed him. Their difference gave them a place to belong, yet they did not let it limit them. Every day they fought tirelessly to prove themselves proud and intelligent Frenchmen, who deserved nothing less than the rest of their countrymen.
Joseph returned to Charleston through the port at Nantes, in order to make a pilgrimage to the place of his Great-Granduncle Denis’s martyrdom during the Terror.
Only forty years ago, in the country of Joseph’s own birth, to be a true Priest had meant treason, and treason meant death.
Before his capture and execution, Denis had been forced to live and minister in hiding, sleeping in caves and celebrating Mass in stables.
With one simple oath to the Republic, he could have saved his life by damning his soul.
Joseph could not help but wonder what he would have done in Denis’s place.
Would he have been a martyr, or a coward?
What price was he willing to pay for his faith?
Help me to be like you, Father Denis, Joseph prayed.
Help me to be worthy of carrying your name. Help me to be worthy of the Priesthood.