Chapter 45
O, but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
— William Shakespeare, Richard II (1597)
Tessa’s brother escorted her home—or at least, to Edward’s home. She was eager to reunite with Clare.
Hélène linked her arm through Joseph’s and asked if he might stop at their parents’ house.
“Papa says it’s no use my trying to stay awake tonight, in the hopes that I’ll be able to sleep through the surgery tomorrow.
It will wake me.” She drew in a deep breath.
“On the contrary, if I am not rested, the shock may be more severe. I know I shall rest easier if my favorite Priest blesses my dreams.”
Joseph had never felt less like a Priest than he did tonight; but his sister needed him. Their father told them he wanted to look in on a patient, so Joseph and Hélène walked back to Archdale Street alone.
“Papa and Liam may have helped with the execution,” his sister informed Joseph, her chin elevated proudly, “but trapping you and Tessa together was my idea.”
Joseph chuckled, then sighed.
“We had to do something. And I owe it to Tessa, don’t I? To try and correct my selfishness six years ago.”
“You mean when you encouraged her to marry Edward.”
Hélène nodded.
“Tessa made that decision, not you.”
“She made it to please Liam and me, even more than Edward.”
“She doesn’t blame you, Ellie.”
“I know. She laid down her life for us willingly.”
Joseph opened their parents’ gate. A light shone in the parlor. He wondered if their mother or May had waited up for them. But his sister steered him to their Mary Garden. A gibbous moon showed the way: the paths of crushed oyster-shell and the statue of the Virgin seemed to glow.
“Holy Mother,” Hélène prayed as they knelt, “if I am spared tomorrow, I promise to be different—better. I will be selfless, like your Son and like Tessa. I will think first how I might help others.” She crossed herself and stood.
“I’ve been pondering that a great deal these past weeks.
How I might behave more like Christ. How I might manifest my thankfulness for my recovery. ”
“Yes?”
“Do you realize, Joseph, that it’s been nearly eighteen years since we learned about our grandmother in Haiti?
And I have done nothing about it except write her letters.
In this very city, thousands of people who share our blood suffer every day.
” His sister looked behind them toward the gold glow of the parlor, then toward the dark slave quarters.
“I sit here in my cozy little house, enjoying the labor of three of those people, and simply accept it as my right.” Hélène nodded decisively.
“If I survive tomorrow, I will do it no longer.”
Joseph frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We must act, Joseph! We must strike the blows we can! Perhaps we cannot kill the dragon, but we can rescue dozens, perhaps hundreds, from its jaws!”
“What in the world are you talking about, Ellie?”
“You could hide them at the Bishop’s house, or in the sacristy! No one would think to look there!”
“Look for…”
“Fugitive slaves!”
For the first time, Joseph felt the chill in the air. “That is madness, Ellie.”
His sister pouted. “I was hoping you’d help me. I can hardly ask discreet questions of sea captains; but you could pretend—”
“We could be forced to compensate the slaves’ masters for their value. I don’t have that kind of money, and neither do you. We could be thrown in jail. To say nothing of the scandal!”
“What would our suffering be to the suffering that slaves endure every day, Joseph?”
“The law would probably pass over you entirely and punish Father. Or Liam!”
“I am sure they will understand.” Even by moonlight, he knew Hélène was scowling.
“I only have to learn how to do it right, so we won’t be caught.
But even May and Henry and Agathe say they don’t know very much.
It’s all so secretive. It has to be. ‘Conductors’ and ‘passengers’ communicate in code. They use—”
“This isn’t a children’s game, Ellie.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “‘To him therefore who knoweth to do good, and doth it not, to him it is sin.’ You said that in a homily less than a month ago.”
He’d been quoting the Epistle of Saint James. He’d been speaking about Works of Mercy, but…
The moon passed behind a bank of clouds then, and his sister was lost to him.
In the darkness, Joseph proceeded as best he could.
“Interfering with God’s plan is not ‘doing good,’ Ellie.
Must I explain this again? Suffering is necessary.
It is the only way we become worthy to enter God’s presence.
But suffering is wasted if we rebel against it.
If we really wish to help the slaves, we must teach them to accept—”
“Master Joseph? Miss Ellie?”
Joseph turned toward the light on the piazza. May was lifting a lamp, trying in vain to illuminate the distance between them.
“It’s us,” his sister sighed.
“I told your mama I heard your voices.” As May spoke, the moon emerged again. “Did you enjoy the opera?”
“Yes—but I am quite ready to be out of these clothes.” Hélène stamped toward the house but tossed over her shoulder to Joseph: “Don’t you dare leave yet!”
He still needed to bless her sleep. Joseph shed his hat and coat, then waited in the upper hall while May helped his sister disrobe. Hélène left the door wide open so she could continue spinning her plans to liberate half the slaves of Charleston.
When their mother saw Joseph’s expression, she frowned too. In explanation, he signed a half-truth: Hélène wanted to do more to evangelize the city’s colored population. Their mother looked as skeptical as Joseph about Hélène’s chances for success, but she bid them both good-night.
His sister invited him to enter her dressing room. She wore a white wrapper now. May was still undoing her coiffure. Joseph flung himself in the easy chair.
“I did find out a few signals,” Hélène prattled on.
“A station master might put a light in a certain window to let potential passengers know it’s safe to enter.
That gave me an idea for you and Tessa. You know Edward doesn’t spend every night at their house on Church Street? Sometimes, he stays at the plantation.”
Joseph’s eyes widened in horror and fixed on May. She continued to comb out Hélène’s hair, as if her mistress frequently discussed adultery in her presence. “May, would you leave us please?”
His sister opened her mouth to object, but Joseph planted both feet on the floor and silenced her with a glare.
After May obeyed him, Hélène burst out: “I can hardly talk about you and Tessa with Mama! To her, you’re a Priest first and her son second.
” His sister snatched up her comb and attacked a remaining tangle.
“I can hardly talk about anything with Mama—not because she is deaf, but because she weighs everything for its propriety in the eyes of God.”
“As should you!”
“Our mother worries that our garden is too beautiful, that she derives too much pleasure from the flowers! She thinks embracing her children is sinful gratification! It’s May who lets me sob on her shoulder.”
“You needn’t have told her my sins! This is how gossip starts, Ellie!”
She tossed aside her comb and stood. “As I was saying: You could spend the whole night with Tessa and never risk discovery, if only you knew when Edward was away—if only you had a signal. So a few—”
“The Stratfords also have slaves,” Joseph pointed out as he gripped the chair arms. “Do you really think they won’t notice?”
Hélène paced to her washstand and poured water into the basin. “They’re already accustomed to you visiting. They won’t—”
“Not at night!”
“Edward’s valet always travels with him,” his sister argued while she splashed water on her face. “The only other slave who sleeps in the house is Hannah, whom Tessa trusts with her life—just like I trust May.”
Hannah might be genuinely fond of Tessa. But the negress knew her future depended on the goodwill of her master, not her mistress. “Someone else sleeps in that house, Ellie: our eleven-year-old nephew.”
“A legitimate excuse for you to be visiting!” For a moment, a towel muffled Hélène’s voice. “And David’s bedchamber is on the other side of the upper floor! He won’t even know you’re there.” She took up the lamp and strode from the room, across the hall toward her bedchamber.
Joseph could either follow—or remain alone in darkness.
“If David does discover the truth, I think he’s old enough to understand. He doesn’t like Ed—”
“David shouldn’t have to ‘understand’!”
“Will you please stop interrupting me? You may have decades left, but I don’t!
I am trying to explain about the signal.
” With a small clatter of metal and glass, she set down the lamp on the table at her bedside.
“A few days ago, I bought Tessa a new lamp.” Hélène motioned to hers, though it was a plain thing that had been in their family for years.
Joseph supposed she was inviting him to imagine the other lamp.
“It’s japanned in gilt and this beautiful Parisian blue—the very color of your eyes.
Mine, too.” His sister smiled. “So you see, even if I don’t survive tomorrow, it’ll be like I’m guiding you.
All you have to do is look for the blue lamp. ”
Joseph sighed in exasperation. He braced his forearm against one of the bedposts, leaned his forehead against it, and closed his eyes.
Hélène reached out to clasp his free hand. “Liam has made me unspeakably happy these past two years—happier than I ever imagined I could be. I want that for Tessa—for you.”
Joseph did not open his eyes. He was, after all, leaning against the bed where Liam had made his sister unspeakably happy. “It’s impossible, Ellie.”
“Everything is possible—while we have breath in our bodies.” At the end of every phrase, she squeezed his hand, as if she were tugging him away from something—or toward something.
“Joseph, have you learned nothing from Cathy and Perry, from Sophie, from me? When we open our eyes each morning, we never know if we shall live to see the sun set.”
Finally Joseph looked down at her, though he did not move his arm from the bedpost. When had his right hand become a fist?
“‘The grave’s a fine and private place—but none, I think, do there embrace.’”
“‘Carpe diem’ is for pagans.”
“It is for mortals.”
“Our souls are immortal, Ellie—we must think of them. Only our bodies are mortal.”
She dropped her eyes to her right breast. “Yes. They are.” She grimaced and released his hand. She kneaded her flesh through her night-clothes, as if the tumors were paining her again.
After he had prayed for her, his sister plucked a small box from the table at her bedside. “I got you a present. Since I might not be here for your birthday.”
Joseph undid the green ribbon and lifted the lid. Nestled in a little bed of rose silk was an iron key, polished till it shone in the lamplight.
“Would you care to guess what that opens?”
He looked up warily. “Tessa’s garden gate?”
Hélène nodded, grinning. “The one on Longitude Lane. It’s perfect! You don’t even have to climb a balcony.”
She knew he’d recognize the allusion. Before his Ordination to the Subdiaconate, his sister had persuaded Joseph to accompany her to the play. “Ellie, you do remember how Romeo and Juliet ends?”
“If Romeo had been wiser, it could have ended happily.”
“Romeo and Juliet were married to each other.” Joseph replaced the lid.
“You know I can’t accept this, Ellie.” He extended the box to her, but his sister crossed her arms and refused to take it back.
So Joseph set the box on the table again and coiled the green ribbon atop it like a serpent.
Then he lit a second lamp to see him down the stairs.
“You should also know that counselling another to sin is itself a sin. Please try to muster some contrition before your Confession tomorrow.”
Hélène pouted, then rubbed above her breast again.
“Good night, Ellie.”
As he passed into the hall, his sister called after him: “Tessa’s breasts are perfect, by the way!”
Joseph nearly dropped the lamp.