Chapter 28
Evening crowned the city with peace and plenty…midnight saw its habitations enveloped in devouring flames… One woe is past, and behold another woe followeth hard after.
When Tessa returned to her house in town, she told Joseph: “Edward doesn’t want me to be churched.”
Joseph frowned. “Did you tell him that churching isn’t only about your attending Mass again? That you cannot resume your…conjugal relations until the rite is completed?”
She nodded and looked away. “But I think he intends to—” She broke off and drew in a ragged breath.
Whether she shuddered at the thought of violating the Church’s prescription—which he knew the Irish took particularly seriously—or simply at the thought of intercourse with her husband, Joseph wasn’t sure.
“Edward says everyone will see me there, kneeling outside the cathedral with my unlit candle, and they’ll know… ”
“We could do it early in the morning, when the cathedral is empty.”
“I suggested that. Edward said someone is still sure to see.”
Joseph hesitated, then decided: “I can give you the blessing here, in private.”
She looked up at him with such longing. “Truly?”
He nodded. The abbreviated, private rite was intended for women too ill to rise from their beds months after childbirth. But surely he could make an exception for Tessa.
In January, Tessa conceived again. She confided to Joseph: “With Bean, I felt wonder, excitement, thanksgiving… Now, all I feel is fear.”
The Blessing of an Expectant Mother was intended for her confinement. Joseph did not wait. “O God, accept the fervent prayer of Thy handmaid Tessa, as she humbly pleads for the life of her child… Let Thy gentle hand bring her infant safely into the light of day, to be reborn in holy Baptism…”
Every day when he celebrated Mass, Joseph named Tessa in his prayers.
Liam, Hélène, and Joseph’s mother and grandmother joined in a novena.
Reluctantly, Edward agreed to abstain from his marital rights until Tessa was safely delivered and then churched.
The stakes were higher now. Fate had turned their unborn child into a prince.
The Stratfords owned a fishing sloop and trained slaves to handle it.
Early that spring, Edward’s eldest brother Miles was out hunting marlin when a squall caught him in open water.
His body washed up the next morning. Miles had had an understanding with a neighboring planter, but he’d been waiting for his betrothed to come of age; he’d left no children.
Edward found another lawyer to complete Liam’s apprenticeship.
Edward himself had always been more interested in agriculture.
Even knowing he would not inherit it, he’d helped manage his family’s rice plantation, Stratford-on-Ashley.
Now, Edward’s father altered his will: the property would be Edward’s—if he and Tessa could produce an heir.
If they failed, Stratford-on-Ashley would go to Edward’s nephew, his brother Laurence’s second son, who had never even set foot in South Carolina.
To Tessa, this inheritance was closer to a nightmare than a dream come true. Stratford-on-Ashley was nothing without its slaves—nearly one hundred of them. That was not the legacy she wanted to leave the child she carried. Headaches plagued her, and sleep eluded her.
Edward’s father sent his own physician to examine her. There was nothing to worry about, he proclaimed. Tessa was a foreigner still acclimating to the Low Country.
Joseph’s father wasn’t so sure: “There is so much we do not yet understand—especially about women’s bodies.”
Tessa rested as much as she could. To fill the long anxious hours, she learned to paint. She claimed her work was nothing remarkable. Hélène and Liam disagreed, urging Joseph to see for himself.
During Holy Week, he was able to do so. Tessa was capturing the finest blooms in her garden. She was no Renaissance master, it was true; but there was life and beauty on the canvas—Joseph’s pleasure and praise were no lie.
He was so entranced, admiring the anemones taking shape on her easel, he did not realize Tessa had turned away from him. She walked straight through her flower-bed to clutch the balustrade of the piazza.
“Tessa?” When he saw her face, Joseph rushed to her side, not caring what he trampled. She was as white as death.
Tessa closed her eyes tightly. “No, no, no, no…” She wavered and lost her grip on the balustrade.
Joseph caught her before she could fall.
“Hannah!” he shouted into the house. Through the cloud of skirts, he found the bend of Tessa’s knees and gathered her into his arms. She clung to his neck, and he felt her hot tears against his cheek.
Joseph muttered a prayer as he carried Tessa up the steps of the piazza.
Hannah met them in the entry hall.
Joseph stammered: “I—I think…” It’s happening again. He couldn’t say it aloud, as if this alone would make it true.
She bled for days. On this slow, inexorable tide came the tiny body in its sac. A little boy this time, but still no sign of life. No hope of Heaven or reunion.
Tessa buried her son beside his sister at Stratford-on-Ashley. Shortly after Easter, she walked with Joseph from the plantation house to the two small graves. Her dress was lavender.
“Edward still won’t let me wear mourning,” Tessa explained. “‘Must everyone know our business?’ he says. I pleaded with him: ‘I could say someone in Ireland had died.’” Tessa stopped for a moment and murmured: “’Tis a sin to lie, Father, I know.”
“I imagine that wasn’t the reason your husband refused?”
She shook her head and resumed their path. “He told me: ‘Black makes you look like a corpse. It’s our first social season.’”
Joseph gritted his teeth. Edward wanted to show off his beautiful wife. He cared only that she present a pleasing exterior, not about the misery beneath her masquerade.
“He isn’t a cruel man; you mustn’t think that,” Tessa added quickly.
“But ’tis as if…he cannot see through anyone’s eyes but his own.
Our children aren’t real to him like they are to me.
He didn’t carry them; he didn’t hold them.
I suppose ’tis easier for him, to believe they don’t have souls.
To Edward, our children are only broken promises, something he would rather forget.
” They reached the two small markers. “I had to beg him for these.” Tessa knelt at the stones.
“But Edward said I could name our children whatever I wanted.”
Joseph knelt beside her and read the inscriptions:
Bridget Stratford
November 12, 1837
Beloved Daughter
Conlaed Stratford
April 14, 1838
Beloved Son
Joseph smiled at Bridget, the name her husband would have rejected for a living child. “Conlaed is also an Irish saint?”
Tessa nodded. “He was the first Bishop of Kildare. And Conlaed was my family name, before the English changed it to Conley.”
She should have been Miss Conlaed. “Do you know what it means?”
“‘Chaste fire.’” She smiled a little too, and then her face clouded again. “When I lost Conlaed, I told myself: ‘At least Bridget isn’t alone anymore; at least they have each other.’ But how can they— You said that children in Limbo don’t know what they’ve lost.”
“If they did know, the spiritual torment would be greater than any fire. So they must be ignorant of Heaven.”
“But they cannot be ignorant only of Heaven, only of their separation from God!” Tessa cried.
“If Bridget and Conlaed knew how much I love them, that I think about them and miss them every day, they would grieve as much as I do; they would be suffering! That means—” She could scarcely breathe through her tears.
“Do they even know they are sister and brother?”
He had meant to comfort her. Joseph clasped her gloved hand, and she stilled, waiting desperately for his response.
“Just as truth is hidden from them, it is hidden from us as well, while we are on Earth. We know only in part; ‘we see through a glass, darkly.’ Our mortal minds cannot fathom the miracles of God. I am certain that in some way we cannot yet understand, Bridget and Conlaed know they belong together, and they know how much you love them, without yearning for more.”
Less than a fortnight after Tessa’s second miscarriage, Hell came to Charleston.
The clanging of fire bells interrupted Joseph’s evening prayers.
Soon the streets of their beautiful city teemed with chaos: the shrieking of families in flight; the bellowing of fire masters through their speaking-trumpets; the creak and crash of collapsing buildings; the boom of explosions as the firemen prostrated structures purposefully to create fire-breaks; the crackle and roar of the ravenous flames.
Joseph was called to the very edge of the disaster, to hear the last Confession of a horribly mangled fireman.
The stench of scorched flesh clung to Joseph’s clothes.
In the unnaturally lit darkness, as more companies of slaves and volunteers tramped past him with their gleaming engines, Joseph imagined Liam amongst them, straining to save his adopted city.
Before dawn, the firemen had not only exhausted their gunpowder but also drained the wells and cisterns dry.
A fierce wind carried great black clouds over their heads and threw down ember after ember, setting new houses and shops ablaze.
The fires raged down King Street, Meeting, Anson, Wentworth, and Market.
They devoured St. Mary’s, the Synagogue, and two Protestant churches.
They laid waste to more than a thousand buildings, almost a third of Charleston.
While Joseph’s father aided the injured, his sister, mother, and grandmother watched in terror as the conflagration swallowed their neighbors’ houses.
Liam, his fellow firemen, and God’s mercy prevented the flames from crossing Archdale Street.
But before the fires burned themselves out, Liam’s own dwelling became a smoking ruin.