Chapter 29
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!
By the second week of May, Edward had secured Liam new lodgings. By the end of July, Tessa knew she was carrying another child—though Joseph’s father had advised Edward to give his wife more time to regain her strength. It was her third pregnancy in the space of twelve months.
Since her first loss, Joseph’s father had consulted his doctor friends.
After her second, he consulted midwives.
He read every book, pamphlet, and article he could find that addressed “spontaneous abortion,” as doctors called it.
He ordered a treatise from Italy, and Joseph promised to translate it.
His father compiled lists of foods Tessa should eat and foods she should avoid.
Edward’s father was not satisfied. He sent a phalanx of new doctors to poke and prod Tessa.
Most prescribed copious amounts of laudanum, calomel, or venesection.
All these interrogations, examinations, and experiments were only making her worse, Tessa pleaded.
She trusted Joseph’s father. Finally, the Stratford men agreed to return her to his care.
They had no choice. That summer and autumn, every doctor in the Low Country was worked to exhaustion.
For the first time since the Conleys’ arrival, stranger’s fever awoke from its dormancy.
Its terrible chills, pains, and vomiting prostrated thousands of Charlestonians.
Before the first frost, stranger’s fever carried off nearly four hundred souls.
By the grace of God, Tessa escaped even a mild case.
She was only frustrated that she could not help Hélène and the Sisters of Mercy tend to the dying.
And then, in spite of all their precautions, she began bleeding again.
Joseph’s father confided: “One miscarriage is normal. Even after two, there is hope. But three…” In his father’s eyes, Joseph saw the truth. “Start praying for a miracle.”
None was granted.
When the butler showed Joseph in, Edward was donning his hat. “You’re not leaving?” Joseph asked.
“Plantations do not work themselves! At least I can be of use there. What can I possibly say to her?”
“Tell her this doesn’t change how you feel about her,” Joseph suggested, trying very hard to restrain himself. “Tell her this wasn’t her fault!”
“How can you still believe that?” Edward pointed an accusing finger at Joseph. “Your father is only placating her.” He pitched his voice into mockery. “Isn’t it a sin to lie, Father?”
Said the man who hadn’t been to Confession in a year and a half.
When Joseph entered her chamber, Tessa was curled up on the far side of the bed, turned away from him.
What he saw first was her hair: unbound, coursing across the counterpane and dripping all the way to the floor like a cascade of grief.
He thought of myrrh weeping from its African trees: golden “tears” of sap that turned translucent brown before they were gathered to perfume the incense he burned in the cathedral.
Since the day he’d met Tessa, a selfish, sensuous part of him had yearned to see these tresses displayed in their full glory. But not like this.
Hannah stood up from the chair at the bedside and came to him. “She said Irishwomen leave their hair down till they’ve been churched,” the black woman told him. “Said she should have done it before. She won’t let me touch her. Said it’s bad luck—she’s bad luck.”
When Joseph crossed around the bed, Tessa kept staring sightlessly out the window; she didn’t acknowledge him. “Tessa? It’s Joseph—Father Lazare.”
She did not move. One hand was fisted against her chest. The other lay limp on the pillow beside her.
Slowly, instinctively, Joseph slipped his fingers between hers. Tessa closed her eyes and grasped his hand. He no longer knew what to say, so he said nothing; he only sat with her till Hélène came to take his place.
Autumn became winter. Stranger’s fever released its grip on the Low Country, and Charleston rose from the ashes. Father O’Neill celebrated the first Mass at Saint Patrick’s, the new church in Radcliffeborough on the Charleston Neck.
Every day, Tessa drank a tea prepared by the midwife at Stratford-on-Ashley.
Around Christmas, she conceived again. She followed every Irish superstition.
If she experienced the slightest knock, Tessa would touch her hip so the damage would not transfer to her child.
She ceased wearing corsets altogether. She left her chamber only to attend Mass, when she wore a great cloak.
None of it made a difference. In March, the terrible, familiar pains seized her womb again.
“The troubles of my heart are multiplied,” Joseph read over the grave of the little boy she called Patrick. “Deliver me from my distress.”
Tessa did not rise from her knees. She clung to Hélène, shivering with grief as spring bloomed all about them.
Here in the cemetery, Tessa had planted dogwoods for her children after all.
They were beautiful. But she did not see them.
“We have a proverb in Ireland,” she told Joseph and his sister.
“‘Three who will never see the light of Heaven: the Angel of Pride, an unbaptized child, and a Priest’s concubine.’”
Hélène frowned. “The Angel of Pride is Satan?”
“Yes! Satan, a whore, and a baby—on the same list!”
Doctrinally, the list was perfect. Yet Joseph knew he must give Tessa what comfort he could.
He’d asked his old seminary professors to send him every theory they could find about Limbo.
“The New Earth that Saint Peter talks about, after the Resurrection of the Dead—there are scholars who think that unbaptized children will inhabit that Earth in their new bodies, forever.”
“They will be happy there?” Tessa pleaded. “It will be beautiful?”
“Like your garden in springtime,” Joseph promised.
“Without any mosquitoes,” his sister added.
Tessa smiled through her tears. “Or like County Clare, without any Englishmen?”
Before the end of summer, Tessa miscarried for the fifth time.
Once again, Edward abandoned his wife. Once again, he and Joseph passed in the hall. This time, the man actually scowled at him before departing.
Joseph felt a twist of guilt in his gut. Was he visiting Tessa too often, too long? Did Edward suspect how Joseph felt about his wife?
Of course not, he assured himself. She is my parishioner. This is a sick call. I have done nothing to be ashamed of.
But he had thought a great deal to be ashamed of.
The butler directed Joseph to the upper piazza.
Tessa reclined on a green méridienne, staring at her honeysuckle vine, a little book open on her lap.
Again her stunning hair was unbound, so long it pooled on the floor of the piazza.
It reminded Joseph of Mary Magdalene. But what sins did this young woman have to repent?
Her thoughts seemed to follow his. Without looking at him, she said, “God is punishing me, isn’t He?”
“Of course not.”
She thrust the little book at him: Bishop England’s catechism, Joseph realized. He read the section she’d underlined fiercely:
Q. What is the reason so many marriages prove unhappy?
A. Because many enter into that holy state from unworthy motives, and with guilty consciences; therefore the marriages are not blessed by God.
Cautiously Joseph raised his eyes to her.
“I never, never should have married Edward. I knew that!”
Joseph sat heavily in a chair at her side.
“But there were so many reasons to say ‘Yes,’ and only one to say ‘No.’ I thought, in time, gratitude would become love. I thought: Edward will give me children, and I will love him for that if nothing else!” Her body convulsed in a bitter laugh.
“He was so persistent! And I was flattered. He took me to balls and concerts and plays.”
What had Hélène said? “It’s like the prince and Cinderella!” Who could say no to a prince?
“Have you ever been hungry, Father? I don’t mean fasting—has there ever been a time when every fiber of your body begged for nourishment, and you had nothing to give it but seaweed?”
Joseph shook his head.
“It happens nearly every year in Ireland, between the potato crops—and sometimes they fail. Do you know what it’s like to watch your nieces and nephews starving?
” Fresh tears marred her cheeks. “I didn’t want my children to suffer like that.
Do you know what it’s like not to choose poverty as a vow, but to have it ground into you, day after day after day?
You think: There is a reason for this. God is displeased with me.
I deserve this.” Tessa lowered her eyes from his face.
“And still you long for what you cannot have, because ’tis right there in front of you.
Finally you tell yourself: Even if I never find happiness myself, I can give it to my brother and my dearest friend with a single word! ”
“Edward promised Liam the apprenticeship if you married him,” Joseph realized.
“He— He never said that.”
“But you knew if you refused Edward, he would have no reason to help your brother.”
She nodded miserably.
Tessa had sold herself. No—that was too vulgar. She had sacrificed herself for the people she loved, just as her family had feared she might in Ireland. She had fled one oppression only to find another.
“God is not punishing you, Tessa—He is testing you.”
“Then I have failed.” She stared at him so intently now that it terrified him. “You don’t know, Father. You don’t know the things I’ve done—the things I’ve thought.”
“Have you confessed these sins?”
“It doesn’t matter! I keep committing them!” Her voice descended so far into sobs he could hardly understand her. “I’m committing them right now!”
“I can hear your Confession, if—”
She shook her head violently, her long hair trembling all about her. “Please, go away.”
“Do you want me to send Father Baker?”
“Leave me alone!” Tessa screamed. “Why won’t you leave me alone?!”
Joseph obeyed.