Chapter 39 #2
Joseph remembered his parting from Father Baker earlier that evening. “Come and fetch me, if Mrs. Stratford requires the Last Sacraments,” he’d told Joseph. And then he’d sneezed. Joseph suspected Father Baker was coming down with another cold.
Tessa would not need her confessor, Joseph assured himself. She would bear a healthy baby, and she would live to see it grow and thrive—
A scream louder and longer than any of the others arrested all his thoughts.
A terrifying silence followed. Sleet was still flinging itself at the windows; surely it was only that they could hear nothing above the clamor of the storm.
Surely in Tessa’s bedchamber, the baby was crying out indignantly and everyone was rejoicing.
The long hand on the mantle clock crept around the face.
Ten minutes. Twenty. Forty. Still no perceivable sounds trickled down to them.
A slave added wood to the fire, then changed out the lamp in the hall.
Edward poured himself more whiskey and offered some to Liam, who accepted.
David hid his face in his hands, and he began rocking.
At a noise in the entrance hall, Joseph leapt to his feet—even as a maid darted past the parlor into the fury of the storm.
Joseph stood gaping through the open door.
The young negress had been carrying a washstand pitcher.
When she hurried back up the piazza steps, the pitcher was full of ice pellets she must have gathered from the ground.
The maid shoved the door closed and did not pause till Joseph blocked her path.
“Please—will you tell us what’s happening? ”
The negress glanced up, hesitated, then replied: “It’s a little girl.”
The parlor’s occupants must have been listening; behind him, Joseph heard Edward groan.
He distracted Joseph just long enough that the maid was able to slip past him.
Joseph’s mind overflowed with questions.
Why did they need the ice? Why had the negress not mentioned Tessa?
Did her silence mean Tessa was in danger? That she was already—
When it came to it, the maid had not even assured them that Tessa’s daughter was healthy. Joseph’s father knew to call on him the instant he feared for the child’s life, didn’t he? Or had this child been born dead like all the others? Was the ice to preserve its body?
Above him, another scream rent the silence. Tessa was still alive. For how long? Birth did not end the peril to mother or child. Cathy and Ian’s deaths had been proof of that.
Joseph did not make it back to the parlor. He fell to his knees right there in the hall. In staying closer to Tessa, nearly beneath her, he felt as if his prayers might be more effective. Spare her, Lord, he pleaded. Spare her daughter…
Was that the protesting voice of the newborn, or only his imagination playing tricks on him?
He repeated the Blessing of an Expectant Mother: “Preserve Thy handmaid as she pleads for the life of her child… Let Thy gentle hand, like that of a skilled physician, aid her delivery…”
Joseph did not know how long he crouched there. It felt as though the storms inside and without had been raging for hours before heavy footsteps finally descended the stairs. He looked up to see his father.
In the flickering light of the lamp he carried, his father looked ghastly.
He had washed his arms—they were still damp—but his rolled sleeves remained blood-stained.
Framed by hair that had never looked more grey, his face was as weary as a corpse.
Edward, Liam, and David heard his footsteps and came into the hall.
Joseph’s father leaned against the stair rail for support.
His eyes skimmed over each of them and alighted on the floor-cloth.
“I am optimistic about the child. She is small, but strong.”
Liam hesitated, then asked for the rest of them: “And Tessa?”
Joseph’s father raised his eyes again, but they settled nowhere.
“She’s still in the third stage of labor,” he said as if it were an apology.
“Her condition is precarious. I cannot tear the placenta away without risking another hemorrhage and syncope; but—” He glanced at his grandson and stopped.
“I have done everything within my power. She has regained consciousness, at least.” He noticed the pyx around Joseph’s neck.
“Do you have what you need to administer the Last Rites?”
Joseph remained kneeling, as if rising were capitulation—an acknowledgement that the end had truly come.
He struggled to swallow his dread. “I brought the Blessed Sacrament and the holy oil; but we need Father Baker…” Joseph looked toward the window behind the staircase.
Sleet was still rattling the shutters. The seminary was seven streets away, and it must be nearly midnight.
“There isn’t time, son.”
David made a muffled sound of distress. His face crumpled, and Joseph knew his nephew was trying not to cry. Liam put his arm around the boy’s shoulders as silent tears descended his own cheeks. Edward disappeared into the parlor, but his sob carried out to them.
With effort, Joseph rose. He promised his brother-in-law and nephew: “After Tessa makes her Confession, I’ll summon you and Mr. Stratford for the rest of the Rites.” Numbly Joseph gathered his portmanteau and followed his father up the stairs. He paused partway to whisper: “Is she still in pain?”
His father nodded. “More than you or I will ever know. I’ve given her as much laudanum as I dare, but she insisted I keep her awake.”
Hannah was helping Hélène stagger into the spare bedroom. His sister’s eyes were already bloodshot, and her nose was leaking. She gripped Joseph’s hand. “If there are prayers you were saving for me, Joseph—please, say them for her.”
Tessa’s gardenia perfume reached him before he entered her bedchamber.
He suspected Hélène had sprayed it to disguise the room’s less pleasant smells.
The tangs of blood and something even more elemental saturated the warm air.
Other odors met him too: vinegar, the pine logs in the fireplace, and rose water.
The maid he’d seen earlier was gathering sheets from the floor—sheets more red than white.
Bolstered by pillows, Tessa lay on her left side, her back near the edge of the four-poster bed with its gathered green curtains.
Her plait was tidy; someone must have rebraided it.
Tessa’s long legs seemed to be drawn up beneath the fresh sheet, which barely reached her waist. Her left arm was stretched out across the mattress, her head tilted downwards.
She wore only a chemise, and as Joseph rounded the bed, he realized its buttons were undone—Tessa’s newborn daughter lay not in her cradle but curled against her mother’s bare breast.
Joseph looked away, but not quickly enough. They might have warned him. He set down his portmanteau and busied himself with clearing the small table he used for an altar.
His father followed him into the bedchamber. “Can I help you with anything, Joseph?”
He nodded at the table. “We’ll need to bring this into Tessa’s sight line.” Estimating this required Joseph to glance back at her.
Tessa’s right arm cradled her daughter, her fingers caressing the small bald head.
“She fussed and fussed, until they returned her to me,” Tessa explained.
Her voice was hoarse, breathless with wonder, and weighted with grief.
“She wasn’t satisfied while a scrap of linen separated us; but the moment she touched my skin, she calmed. ”
Joseph’s father smiled, but worry pinched the corners of his eyes. “She knows her mother.” He helped Joseph move the table. “Do you need anything else?”
“No; thank you.” Joseph opened the little wall cabinet that contained Tessa’s altar furniture, the pieces he used when he said Mass here.
Tessa tried to say something else, but it became a cough instead. Her daughter whimpered at the disturbance. “I am sorry, a chuisle mo chroí,” Tessa soothed. “I will try very hard not to cough or scream anymore.”
Joseph’s father reached for the water pitcher at the bedside, but Joseph said: “Wait.” Quickly he retrieved the bottle of holy water from his portmanteau and poured some into the gilded spoon-cup from Tessa’s cabinet.
His father squinted at the holy water with suspicion. “How fresh is that?”
“We blessed it last night at the Vigil.” Which his father would know, if he ever came to anything but morning Mass. Joseph leaned over the bed to give Tessa the holy water, holding the gilded cup in one hand and supporting her head with the other.
She drank every drop. “Thank you, Father,” she whispered, before Joseph lowered her head back to the pillow. Her skin was nearly as pale as the linen.
Still frowning, Joseph’s father crossed around the bed, crouched, and peered beneath the sheet with Joseph right there. As if this were not disconcerting enough, he spoke to them while in this position. “You must call me the moment you see or sense any change.”
Joseph turned back to the cabinet and began preparing the altar. He spread a white cloth on the table, set the pyx atop it, and genuflected to the Body of Christ.
When he glanced toward the bed again, his father had replaced the sheet and was bending to kiss Tessa’s temple. “Please, ma belle, try not to move.” When had his father started addressing Tessa with terms of endearment? His tone was exactly the one he used with Hélène.
Tessa disobeyed him almost immediately. Her daughter was stirring and making small unhappy noises. Tessa turned her head toward Joseph’s father to ask: “Is she hungry, do you think?”
“Let’s see.” Without either permission or warning, Joseph’s father leaned over Tessa and grabbed her breast.
At least, this seemed to be what he was doing. Joseph saw it only out of the corner of his eye while he lit the altar candles.