Chapter 41
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to my church as a human being…
On Friday afternoon, his father appeared in the cathedral sacristy, glaring like some avenging angel. Perhaps a fallen one. “It’s been a week, Joseph. Every day when I visit her, Tessa asks about you. What am I to tell her?”
Joseph returned his attention to the vestments he’d been inspecting for mold and insect damage, even though that was the sacristan’s job.
Joseph had found himself with a few spare minutes before Vespers; and he knew if he did not fill them with work, he would spend the time day-dreaming about Tessa.
“Father Baker has been convalescing. I have been occupied with his duties as well as—”
“Are Tessa and Clare not also your parishioners? According to your Church”—he jammed a finger at Joseph in accusation—“she has buried six children—six—without hope of ever seeing them again because they didn’t have water sprinkled over their heads.
” He fluttered his fingers in a mockery of Baptism.
“Naturally Tessa is eager to secure eternal happiness for her one living child. Yet you—their Priest—are behaving as though Tessa and her daughter no longer exist.”
Joseph felt as if his father had stabbed him, but he could not allow the man to see this. “You said Clare was healthy.”
“I am not a prophet, Joseph. From one day to the next, anything might happen—you know that. If you’d had an ounce of sympathy, you would have baptized Clare the night she was born in her mother’s presence.”
“The short form is only to be used in danger of death; at all other times, the solemn rite must—”
His father slammed his hand on the vestment cabinet. “Shut your Ritual and be a Priest, Joseph! Tessa nearly died! She is still bedridden! You make sick calls every day. Why haven’t you visited her?”
Joseph closed the sacristy door so that no one in the sanctuary could hear them. Before he turned back, he asked: “She’s recovering, isn’t she?”
“Physically. But have you thought about the gaping wound you left in her soul?”
“I think about Tessa’s soul every day—every minute!
It is why I must stay away. I cannot be her Priest any longer.
We are nothing but a temptation to each other!
” Joseph realized he’d been speaking as though his father were privy to his private sins—and to Tessa’s.
Joseph narrowed his eyes. The man was completely unperturbed by what should have been a revelation.
He only stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. “But how could you know…” Joseph’s mouth fell open.
“You were listening outside Tessa’s bedchamber. You heard her Confession!”
“I had to stay close enough to hear you calling for help.”
“You violated a Sacrament!”
“I didn’t hear anything Hélène, Liam, Hannah, and I hadn’t figured out ages ago.” His father gave a short laugh. “We’ve been watching the two of you for years, wondering how long it would take before one of you finally admitted it.”
Liam knew Joseph lusted after his sister?
His father added with a sigh: “For a bright man, Joseph, you can be incredibly dim.”
“Fine,” Joseph spluttered. “We’ve admitted—”
“She admitted it. You did no such thing. You left her believing that she is depraved for the unpardonable sin of loving you.” With every word, Joseph felt he was shrinking, as his father seemed to loom taller and taller.
“You have watched that woman suffer for nearly six years. You chained her till death do they part to a callous fool who cares nothing for the mind or the heart inside that beautiful body. You have seen her lose six children for all eternity, not to mention Sophie. You have heard her blame herself for every one of these tragedies. After all of that, the man she loves and respects most in the world, who should be her refuge and her defender—what does he do? He damns her and he abandons her.”
“I didn’t damn her!”
“You didn’t forgive her.”
“I was interrupted! I was going to say that—”
“Don’t tell me, Joseph—tell her.”
Joseph threw up his hands. “What would that accomplish? It doesn’t matter how I feel! We cannot—”
“It matters a great deal to Tessa.”
“There can be nothing between us! Do I need to list the impediments?”
“You Priests do love your litanies.”
Joseph clenched his teeth. The truth was, he’d been chanting these impediments in his head for days, as if they were a blessing to keep him away from her. “That is the foremost impediment: I am a Priest. Forever. That means I am celibate.”
“Not for the first thousand years of Church history it didn’t,” his father muttered.
Joseph ignored him. “Through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, I have been changed, not unlike the Host in that Tabernacle.” He gestured beyond the sacristy door toward the altar. “To behave as if I were only a man—”
His father descended on him and gripped Joseph’s head between his hands, pressing his fingers so hard into Joseph’s skin that it hurt. His voice was so calm now, it was frightening. “You still feel like flesh and blood to me.”
Joseph broke free of him. “Even if I weren’t a Priest, Tessa is married to another man!”
“Edward has had half a decade to get it right. He’s become more selfish, not less.
You should have been there when I explained that there won’t be any more children.
Instead of grieving with Tessa, Edward accuses her.
He does not say the words: ‘This is all your fault. You have failed me.’ He doesn’t even look at her—but that’s the accusation.
Instead of comforting her, he literally turns away from her.
Don’t you make the same mistake, Joseph.
Don’t turn your back on the best thing that has ever happened to you. ”
“The fact remains: Edward is her husband. Even if we were godless, the laws of South Carolina do not permit divorce any more than the Church does.”
Joseph’s father crossed his arms again. “Are you finished?”
“Hardly!” He was only halfway through his impediments. “Tessa is white, and I am colored.”
“Disgusting,” his father mocked. “Unthinkable.”
“Any contact between us would also be incestuous!”
“What?” At least he’d wiped that smirk off his father’s face.
“My sister is married to her brother. Husband and wife become one flesh. Tessa and I are now related by affinity. The Church forbids—”
“Didn’t the Church allow Jean-Baptiste de Caradeux to marry his own niece?”
Joseph recognized the name of another émigré from Saint-Domingue. “Caradeux obtained a dispensation.”
“Meaning: he paid off the Pope.”
“He— I think I have made my point. Tessa and I are impossible. The further apart we are, the better for us both.” He turned from his father with what he hoped was finality and pulled another vestment from its drawer.
“You’re planning to run away permanently,” his father realized. “You’re going to leave Charleston.”
Joseph answered with silence.
“Have you asked Father Baker yet?”
“I am waiting till he is back on his feet.”
“Surely he will want you to finish the seminary term?”
“Probably.”
“Then you can stay until your sister’s surgery.”
Slowly Joseph set down the maniple. “It’s come to that?”
His father nodded gravely. “Two weeks ago, the tumors started paining her. She didn’t even tell me; she wanted to see Tessa through her confinement.
Hélène’s pains are intermittent, but Dr. Mortimer and I agree that the time has come to act.
We will insert a trocar first and examine the tissues.
That will determine our next course—whether we can remove the tumors only, or if we must amputate the breast.”
“How soon?”
“There’s a new opera coming next month that Hélène wants to see. She’s persuaded us to wait until the day after that. She wants to have ‘one last thing’ to look forward to, before… Your sister is terrified, Joseph.”
“I will stay until she has recovered.” Or until…
“In the meantime, son, you owe Tessa an apology and an explanation—at the least. Think what this is like for her—what she endures every day in that house, living with that petty tyrant, under the thumb of that atrocious father-in-law. Sneered at by the ladies of Charleston who think her beneath them. Separated forever from her parents. Trying to be a mother to someone else’s adolescent—your nephew.
Tessa is drowning, and she needs something to cling to. ”
Joseph looked away. “She has Clare now.”
“That is like saying: ‘Tessa has arms! Why should she need legs?’”
This made Joseph start thinking about Tessa’s legs. He’d never seen them, of course, but he’d seen enough to imagine—
“You look terrible, by the way. Doesn’t Mrs. O’Brien feed you anymore?”
Joseph turned back to the drawer of vestments without answering. “I will be happy to baptize Clare as soon as she can be brought to the cathedral.”
His father sighed. “We’ll bring her tomorrow.”
Tessa’s little daughter stared up at him in trepidation. Joseph smiled at Clare and tried to treat her like the thousand other babies he’d baptized, but this was impossible.
Tessa was still confined to her bed, as were most mothers at their child’s Baptism. Hélène gave the responses, and Liam held their goddaughter. Beside them stood Joseph’s father, David, and Edward.
Joseph instructed Clare: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, thy whole soul, and thy whole mind…” A fitting admonishment for himself. Gently, he blew thrice into the little face.
Tessa’s daughter blinked at him but did not turn away. Since the cold spell was lingering and they were outside, she probably appreciated the warmth of his breath.
Joseph exorcised the salt Thomas held for him, then placed a tiny piece of it into the girl’s mouth. “Clare, receive the salt of wisdom…” Tessa’s daughter bunched up her face and whimpered. She did not seem to like the taste of wisdom. Few children did.
Joseph placed his hand on the girl’s head and blessed her. Finally he draped the end of his violet stole over Clare and led everyone into the cathedral. All the while, he read from the Ritual.
When their little procession stopped, Joseph exorcised the girl: “I expel thee, every unclean spirit… Depart from this handwork of God, Clare…” Joseph touched the pad of his thumb to his tongue and transferred his saliva to each of Clare’s ears, then her tiny nostrils.
“Be thou opened unto the odor of sweetness… Clare, dost thou renounce Satan?”
Hélène replied for her goddaughter: “I do renounce him.”
The little girl began struggling against her godfather’s chest. Liam soothed her.
“And all his allurements?”
“I do renounce them.”
Next Joseph dipped his thumb into holy oil and anointed Clare’s breast and back. She kept fussing and looking around as if her mother might be hiding nearby. It was a challenge to wipe away the oil.
Joseph exchanged his violet stole for a white one.
At the baptismal font, he continued Clare’s interrogation.
After Hélène answered each question properly on her goddaughter’s behalf, Joseph poured holy water over the girl’s head three times in the form of a cross.
“Clare, ego te baptízo…” He said all the words; but only God heard the rest of them, because they were drowned out by the girl’s wails.
Joseph had held the silver ladle in his hand for a few moments in an attempt to warm the water, but there was ice around the edges of the font.
Joseph completed the Sacrament as best he could while the indignant voice of Tessa’s daughter bounced off the walls.
At last, he presented Hélène with a lit candle and admonished Clare: “Safeguard thy Baptism by a blameless life…”
Liam replaced his goddaughter’s frilly cap and promised her: “You’ll see your mother again in a few minutes, a pheata.” He handed the girl to her father. Edward held his daughter at arm’s length as though she were something dirty. Clare screamed louder than ever.
Hélène lingered with Joseph while he inscribed Clare’s name, her sponsors’ names, her parents’ names, and his name into the baptismal register. His sister’s eyes remained on the candle. “Tessa said that last autumn, you promised to graft one of her camellias. The one that isn’t blooming?”
Joseph sighed. He’d forgotten. He dipped his pen nib into the inkwell, which he’d stored in his pocket to keep it from freezing. “I suppose I did.”
“Shouldn’t you do that before it gets any warmer?”
Joseph wished she’d let him concentrate. He might spell something wrong.
“Or the two won’t unite properly?”
“Yes,” Joseph answered irritably. He’d left an inkblot in the middle of Edward’s name.
“So you’ll come?”
“Yes!”
Clare’s cries faded to whines, then stopped altogether. Joseph glanced to the back of the sanctuary and saw that his father was cradling her now. He cooed at the little girl with all the affection of a grandfather.