Less than a fortnight after Tessa’s second miscarriage, Hell came to Charleston. The clanging of fire bells interrupted Joseph’s evening prayers. Soon the streets of their beautiful city teemed with chaos: the shrieking of families in flight; the bellowing of fire masters through their speaking-trumpets; the creak and crash of collapsing buildings; the boom of explosions as the firemen prostrated structures purposefully to create fire-breaks; the crackle and roar of the ravenous flames.
Joseph was called to the very edge of the disaster, to hear the last Confession of a horribly mangled fireman. The stench of scorched flesh clung to Joseph’s clothes. In the unnaturally lit darkness, as more companies of slaves and volunteers tramped past him with their gleaming engines, Joseph imagined Liam amongst them, straining to save his adopted city.
Before dawn, the firemen had not only exhausted their gunpowder but also drained the wells and cisterns dry. A fierce wind carried great black clouds over their heads and threw down ember after ember, setting new houses and shops ablaze. The fires raged down King Street, Meeting, Anson, Wentworth, and Market. They devoured St. Mary’s, the Synagogue, and two Protestant churches. They laid waste to more than a thousand buildings, almost a third of Charleston.
While Joseph’s father aided the injured, his sister, mother, and grandmother watched in terror as the conflagration swallowed their neighbors’ houses. Liam, his fellow firemen, and God’s mercy prevented the flames from crossing Archdale Street. But before the fires burned themselves out, Liam’s own dwelling became a smoking ruin.
Joseph witnessed the Irishman’s reunion with Hélène, who wept with relief and kissed her intended repeatedly in spite of the soot on his face. “Oh Liam, I was so worried! We can tell Mama and Grandmama about us now, don’t you think? You saved our house!”
Liam smiled. “After last night, I can face anything—even your mother and grandmother.”
While they were not enthusiastic, Joseph detected relief that Hélène finally had a sweetheart.
‘You’ll have grandchildren who aren’t a thousand miles away, Mama!’ his sister pointed out.
The older women were impressed by how many signs Liam had learned, and they were placated by the knowledge that the marriage would be deferred at least until he completed his law apprenticeship.
Most of Charleston had nothing to celebrate. Throughout those long days following the fire, Joseph offered blessings and prayers for the thousands rendered homeless. The seminary became a temporary shelter and hospital. In the room where most of the desks were stacked, he found Tessa scraping lint for wound dressings.
Before she looked up, she asked: “Were you able to see him?”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, good evening, Father,” Tessa smiled. “I thought you were Hannah.” She explained: “Whenever I go out, Edward insists I take Hannah with me, so I let her see her son—if his master allows it.”
Joseph had thought he’d sensed a loyalty in the negress that went beyond mere duty. Though Hannah was a staunch Baptist, she seemed to have no other faults.
“Were you looking for Hélène?”
“I’ve just come from her. She said there was a basket of cloths that could be torn into bandages?”
Tessa nodded and motioned under one of the desks.
Joseph retrieved the basket and sat down across from her, glad to be off his feet. “How is Liam settling in?”
“’Tis good to have him under the same roof again. I have missed his company. But—” Tessa broke off.
“But…?” Joseph prompted.
“I know Edward resents the arrangement. The fact that I didn’t ask his permission first. The time I spend with my brother when both of them are home.” Her voice was a murmur, a reluctant admission. “Whenever Liam and I converse, Edward will sit nearby and pretend to read, but I know he’s listening.”
Joseph frowned. For a minute, he only tore bandages without speaking. Then he rose to turn up the lamp wick. At last, he voiced a suspicion that had haunted him for months: “Tessa, has Edward ever…struck you?”
“Of course not.” But even as Joseph resumed his seat, she kept her gaze averted and added in a whisper: “He has other ways.” Before Joseph could ask for more, she continued: “Have you heard they’re planning a benefit concert for victims of the fire? They need people for the program, and Liam and Ellie thought I should sing.”
Joseph smiled. “You will be the favorite of the evening.”
“Edward has forbidden it,” Tessa muttered. “He says only fallen women sing in public or for profit. But I wouldn’t be profiting!” She gestured to the half-open door.
Beyond this little room, family after family huddled with nothing but the clothes on their backs, exhausted by the ordeal that had only just begun.
Tessa bent her head again, pulling away more lint. Her words came slowly at first, then more forcefully, like a flood finally breaking through a dam. “He’s never said those words to me before: ‘I forbid it.’ But I always know when he’s displeased; he never conceals it. Edward will scowl and say things like: ‘I’d rather you didn’t, Tessie.’ If I do the thing anyway, he’ll sulk for days, until I beg his forgiveness. I know very well what I’ll face tonight. When he returns home, he expects me to greet him. But I cannot sit around painting flowers while my fellow creatures are suffering! He’d keep me from Mass if he could. He thinks I overtax myself merely by leaving the house, that ’tis my carelessness which…” Her eyes dropped to her flat bodice, and her hands stilled.
“Tessa, you know what my father said: that there was nothing you could have done to save them.”
“I am so cautious now. I have been since I lost Bridget. I’ve stopped visiting the orphanage and my old neighbors, because I might contract some fever… If I thought for one moment that being here or reading to old Mrs. Callaghan would harm my babies…” Tessa looked up at him with such pleading in her eyes, as if he were a judge. “Edward is the one who insisted I attend Race Week. I told him I was tired!”
There was so much Joseph wanted to say, so many ways he wanted to comfort, encourage, and defend her. But a husband’s authority was absolute; there were times when a doctor or even a Priest could not challenge it.
“Edward’s father is even worse. He thinks I read too much. He says reading is unhealthy for women, that I’m diverting all my blood toward my brain and away from my ‘generative organs’!”
Joseph scowled. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Edward also thinks I should be lacing tighter. But I won’t! I can’t! And not only for the babies’ sakes. What I wore growing up in Ireland was nothing like the corsets that fashionable women are wearing now—I’m simply not shaped correctly!”
She was perfectly shaped. How could anyone think otherwise?
Tessa resumed her work and bent her head even more deeply, as if in shame. “I’m so sorry, Father. I’m doing it again: I’m telling you things I shouldn’t.”
“If you didn’t feel you could confide in me, I would be doing a poor job as a Priest.”
She smiled weakly. “Somehow, I don’t think Father Baker would listen so patiently while I complain about my undergarments.”
“He might be more receptive than you think. I suspect the two of you could commiserate.”
Tessa frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Corsets aren’t only for women, you know.”
Tessa’s mouth fell open. Her eyes darted toward the doorway, as if someone else might be listening to this slander. For a long minute, she considered the possibility. “Father Baker does have remarkable posture… No; it cannot be true! Who would lace it for him?”
“Our housekeeper, Mrs. O’Brien,” Joseph suggested.
“She is sixty years old if she’s a day!”
“But strong as an ox. I’ve seen her forearms. They’re the size of oak trees.”
Pursed lips quivering, Tessa resisted the mental image only a moment longer. At last, she threw back her head and laughed so hard te
ars sprang from her eyes. Eventually, she recovered enough to say: “Thank you, Father.”
“For what?”
“You made me laugh. No matter how dark the day has been.”
Chapter 29
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!
— Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven” (1845)
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, Fa
ther? 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?!”
Necessary Sins Page 27