Chapter 42
What it slays is the disease of the soul, and by slaying this it restores and invigorates the soul’s true life. …such personal expiations [are] very pleasing to God.
Father Baker was well again, but still Joseph hesitated to ask him about North Carolina.
How could he abandon his pastor now, when they remained without a Bishop?
Joseph taught more classes at the seminary than any of the other Priests.
He also directed the cathedral’s choir. He could do more good here than in exile.
Even his confessor agreed that this was a difficult time for their diocese.
Joseph must avoid his proximate occasion of sin; but if at all possible, he should remain in his current post until they had a new Bishop.
Another worry plagued Joseph: Wouldn’t he have to admit to his pastor the reason he needed to leave Charleston?
He suspected Father Baker would not be as forgiving as his confessor.
His pastor was so austere and assiduous.
Father Baker allowed himself no pleasures—no friends even, except their late Bishop.
He would think Joseph weak. He was weak.
He was not fit to be a Priest. Father Baker might have him excommunicated.
Joseph would be damned in the next life and forbidden to exercise his vocation in this one, and he still wouldn’t have Tessa.
Joseph supposed his father was right in one respect: he owed Tessa an apology and an explanation. But surely these could be transmitted by letter. If he saw her again—she looking at all recuperated, he knowing how she felt about him—he feared he might throw himself upon her.
Joseph quarrelled with himself about how much to include in this letter.
Perhaps he should tell Tessa he dreamt about her every night.
Perhaps he should even tell her his father had been born a slave.
Perhaps he should appall Tessa purposefully, so she would understand that he wasn’t worth a moment of her attention, let alone affection.
But the thought of Tessa recoiling from him…
He continued to fast and abstain, consuming only one meal a day and no meat, fish, eggs, cheese, or butter. This discipline had little effect except to render him irritable and distracted. More than once, his stomach gurgled in the middle of a Sacrament.
Hélène begged him to join them for dinner again. Joseph felt he could not refuse, when these might be his sister’s final weeks on Earth. He went for the conversation. When May brought the first course, he had to admit he was fasting.
Even his mother, so ascetic herself, frowned at him in worry. ‘I thought you looked thin,’ she signed.
Joseph’s father interrogated him about the duration of this “starvation” and exactly what he was eating.
“I fast much of the year: for Advent and Lent…” Joseph argued. “So does every obedient Catholic.”
“Not like this.” His father railed against the practice of mortification in general: good health like Joseph’s was a blessing and how dare he take it for granted by endangering it. “How is a dead Priest of use to anybody?”
“I’m not trying to kill myself!” Joseph shouted back.
“No, because that would be a sin!” his father mocked.
“My confessor knows about my fast. He applauds it.”
“Your confessor is not a doctor!”
Joseph stood up and threw down his napkin. “He is a Physician of the Soul! That is the only kind I need!”
Since the scent of the oyster soup was making him light-headed anyway, Joseph left the house. He took refuge in the stable. Prince did not criticize him.
Hélène and Liam soon found him. “Your Penance…” his sister said gingerly. “It’s because of Tessa, isn’t it?”
Joseph didn’t answer. He kept brushing his horse.
“She’s every bit as miserable without you. If you could find a way to…” In the corner of his vision, Joseph saw Hélène take Liam’s hand. “You have our blessing, Joseph.”
He glanced at them cautiously, his eyes alighting on Tessa’s brother, or at least on his shoulder. He couldn’t meet Liam’s eyes. “Surely you cannot wish me to…”
Tessa’s brother had no trouble staring at Joseph. “If you hurt her, I’ll break every bone in your body—Priestly or not.”
Hélène continued the thought quickly, as though they’d rehearsed this. “But the thing is: you’re hurting Tessa right now.”
Liam cleared his throat. “I trust you, Father—Joseph. I know you’ll find a line and you won’t cross it. But please: don’t leave it like this.”
Hélène also reminded him about Tessa’s camellia: “The roots are strong, but it’s barely blooming. You promised you’d help.”
Joseph realized the longer he waited, the more likely it was Tessa would be well enough to rise from her bed. Already a month had passed since Clare’s birth. If he hurried, he could tend to her camellia without seeing Tessa at all.
Joseph did not waste a minute. He took scions from his mother’s garden and his own tools. The Stratfords’ gardener let him in the front gate, but Joseph insisted that Tessa not be disturbed. Edward was at the plantation, and David was at school.
In this little pocket of garden around the camellia, a hedge of sweet olive shielded him from the house, while a hedge of sweet myrtle shielded him from the work yard. Joseph said a quick prayer of thanksgiving for evergreen leaves.
They would not be alone for long. With the sun streaming down on his back, it felt nearly like spring.
Already the daphne and violets had opened their fragrant blossoms. Before he set to work on the camellia, Joseph doffed his coat and laid it on an iron bench in the Mary Garden.
The bench was painted sea-green, so that its legs seemed to blend into the maidenhair ferns.
Joseph rolled up his sleeves and pulled on his gloves.
He trimmed Tessa’s camellia until only two inches showed above the ground.
He knelt before his patient and created a cleft in the stock.
The rest he found easier to do with bare hands.
One of the scions was going dry, so Joseph placed the end in his mouth to moisten it before insertion.
Then he felt a nudge against his buttocks. He nearly leapt out of his skin, till he realized it was Mignon come out to greet him. Joseph smiled and scratched under the cat’s chin. He was rewarded with a purr.
While Mignon continued to rub against him, Joseph sat back to assess the graft.
The scions nestled comfortably in the cleft of the stock.
He told the cat: “As long as you don’t chew on it, I think that will do well.
” It never ceased to amaze him, how two distinct organisms could so quickly become one.
“I know it looks rather improbable at the moment, but you’ll see.
In a few months, this bush will be thriving. Come next winter, it will be blooming.”
“Thanks to you.”
Joseph tensed. He willed himself not to turn around.
He directed his gaze to Tessa’s statue of Mary.
Her eyes looking Heavenward, the Blessed Virgin held her hands open in welcome, while she crushed the Serpent beneath her bare feet.
Even in his death throes, the Serpent clutched the forbidden fruit in his teeth.
“Is it safe, for you to be out here?”
“Your father said ’tis all right for me to walk a little now.”
That wasn’t what Joseph meant.
“Clare is asleep, and Hannah is watching her.” The source of Tessa’s voice lowered; she must have sat on the iron bench behind him, next to his coat.
“Your father has been so kind. He must have scores of patients, but he’s visited me nearly every day this past month.
” There was gratitude in her tone, but no censure for Joseph.
“And Hélène brings me books. The latest one was about the Language of Flowers. Do you know it?”
“I’ve heard of it.” He understood that it was used chiefly by lovers who wished to send each other secret messages in blossoms. Mignon went off to stalk a robin, and Joseph returned to his work. He tied moss around the graft to keep it damp.
“Would you care to guess what camellias mean in the Language of Flowers?”
Joseph placed a glass dome over the union, so that moisture would collect inside. “‘Hope,’ perhaps? Because they bloom in winter?” Tessa had been wearing a camellia in her hair when he’d met her.
“My destiny is in your hands.”
Joseph’s throat closed. “Pardon?”
“Camellias mean: ‘my destiny is in your hands.’ Hélène’s book even lists parts of plants that aren’t flowers—it has myrrh.”
When they could obtain it, Joseph added myrrh to his thurible. He’d never forget the first time he’d watched the heat reach it: myrrh bloomed when it burned.
“Myrrh means ‘gladness.’ I’ll think of that, every time you spread incense.”
He’d think of it every time he looked at her.
He’d decided long ago that Tessa’s hair was the color of myrrh by firelight.
In ancient times, myrrh had been as valuable as gold, used in medicines and perfumes.
Myrrh had anointed Christ’s crucified body, and it featured prominently in the Canticles.
Solomon spoke of his lover’s breasts as—
This was precisely why he could not be near her. He forced himself to concentrate on the camellia. He placed a canvas cover on the dome.
Behind him, Tessa’s voice dropped nearly to a whisper: “It can’t ever be like it was, can it?”
Joseph didn’t answer. He took up handfuls of soil to spread around the edge of the canvas as an anchor.
“I understand, why you cannot bear to look at me, Father.” Her words were breathless with anguish.
“You must have realized why I adopted David and Sophie—not the only reason, but chief amongst them: so I could be nearer to you. You know why God took my own children: because, every time, I wished they were yours. I do not know how long He will let me have Clare…” Tessa wept audibly. “I must disgust you.”
“You could never disgust me, Tessa.” Still on his knees, he allowed himself to turn, so he could see her at the edge of his vision.
She was caressing his coat as if it were something precious.
“I—disgust myself,” Joseph muttered. “Somehow, I led you into this sin; you must have sensed how I feel about you, and you only responded.”
Tessa’s hand stilled on his coat, and she sniffled. “How you feel about me?” she echoed timidly.
“I have sinned against you every day for more than seven years.” Joseph closed his eyes, because she must be wearing a single thin petticoat beneath that lilac skirt—he could see clearly the bend of her legs.
If he pressed down through the fabric, mightn’t he trace the glorious sweep of her thighs?
“Even now, in this very moment, I am sinning against you.”
Her voice became stronger yet more tremulous. “Are you saying…you love me too?”
He shook his head, gripping the soil beneath him to anchor him in his blindness. “This is sin, Tessa; it is lust, and we must—”
“Joseph.” If he’d not already been on his knees, he would have collapsed at the sound—at once declaration, plea, and endearment.
She came to him in the darkness. He felt her kneeling beside him the instant before her fingers caressed his cheek—gentle as petals and shattering as an earthquake. “This is not lust.”
Perhaps not for her. Tessa’s thumb hovered dangerously close to his lips.
Eyes still closed, he lifted his hand and found her wrist. He meant to pull it away, but his arm refused to obey him.
“Then…I was wrong, when I told Sophie that love is never a sin.” Slowly, painfully, Joseph allowed himself to gaze upon the beautiful woman before him.
Tears stained Tessa’s cheeks, but her eyes shone; they resembled nothing more than halos in stained glass.
He swallowed. “Do you understand, Tessa? We can never touch like this, ever again.” Even as he swore it, he brought his other hand from the earth and slid his fingers along her slender neck into her silken hair. “We can never speak like this again.”
New tears overflowed from those luminous eyes, spilling down her cheeks and her neck till they reached his wrist, warm and wet against his skin. Her fingers stroked his face desperately.
When she brushed his lips, he finally gathered the strength to wrench away from her, standing violently and turning his back.
“At seminary, they warned us: ‘Always keep a piece of furniture between yourself and any woman.’ And never be alone with one!” He jammed his fingers into his hair and pulled. “But I didn’t listen!”
Behind him, Tessa was sobbing. He had been a fool to come here.
At the edge of his vision, he watched Tessa stagger to her feet.
He almost stepped back to help her—but then he saw the black streaks he’d left on her wrist and neck.
Filth from his fingers marring her alabaster flesh.
As soon as he saw the marks, Tessa whirled away from him, still unsteady but with enough fortitude left to flee.
All he wanted was for her to come back. All he wanted was to hear his name on her lips again.