Sophie stuck out her lower lip in thought.
“We called them maypops,” David interjected quietly.
His sister gasped and nodded.
“Your Uncle Joseph has a Passion vine in his garden at the cathedral,” Tessa told the children. “If you ask him, I’m sure he’ll bring you a few fruits next summer.”
He promised to do so.
“Now you try it, Uncle Joseph!” Sophie commanded, pointing at the nearest rose.
He closed his eyes and obeyed. The scent of the Jaune Desprez proved even more complex than its color, luscious yet elusive. Beneath the sweetness of fruit came a hint of musk, perhaps jasmine… “It reminds me of pineapple,” he decided. He’d tasted pineapple only once. This must be the ambrosia of the gods, he’d thought, in a moment of pagan fancy.
Sophie didn’t understand. “What kind of apple?”
Joseph smiled. “Pineapples grow in places even warmer than Charleston, and they’re much better than apples.”
“Sometimes ships bring us pineapples,” Tessa told Sophie. “I’ll ask our cook to watch for them at the market, so you and your brother can try one.”
Joseph’s mouth watered at the mere thought.
Tessa looked to David. “Would you like that?”
The boy nodded wordlessly, then mumbled: “May I go back inside now?”
“A-All right.” Joseph could hear the disappointment in Tessa’s voice. David slunk away.
Sophie turned back to the Jaune Desprez and inhaled again. “I wish we could eat these!”
Tessa smiled. “We can, if you’ll help me candy some of the petals.”
Sophie’s eyes widened, and she nodded eagerly.
“Perhaps your uncle will help us pick the blossoms at the top of the wall, so we can still enjoy the lower ones?”
He bowed. “I am at your service, ladies.”
Chapter 36
In the devil’s mirror the loveliest landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the handsomest persons appeared hideous… The mirror fell to the Earth, where it shattered… When a fragment flew into a person’s eye, it stuck there unknown to him, and from that moment, he saw everything the wrong way…
— Hans Christian Andersen, “The Snow Queen” (1844)
While Sophie blossomed under Tessa’s nurturing—“She isn’t like the stepmothers in stories at all!”—David remained somber and withdrawn. Tessa confided to Joseph: “I know he has nightmares. But when I try to comfort him, he denies it.”
Another day, Tessa said: “You know I’m a reader myself—normally I would applaud it. But reading is all David does! He actually asks Father Magrath for more schoolwork. I haven’t seen David playing even once. I tried to choose toys a ten-year-old boy would enjoy. I asked the children if they’d like a pet. David refused. The only reason he’d give was a mumble. Do you know what he said? ‘I’d probably kill it’!”
Tessa did give Sophie a kitten, who looked like he was wearing a tiny black suit over a white shirt. Sophie named him Mignon. When Joseph came to meet the little creature, David was in his room reading again.
While Sophie was absorbed with her furry playmate, Tessa whispered to Joseph: “What worries me most is the way the children behave toward each other. I know they were very young when I last saw them together, but I remember David being so protective and indulgent with Sophie, and her adoring him. Now, they actually leave rooms to avoid each other. I don’t understand it.”
“Perhaps they remind one another of their grief,” Joseph suggested. “Or they’re simply growing into a young woman and a young man.”
The children had been in Charleston less than a month when one of the Stratford slaves came to fetch Joseph from the Bishop’s residence late in the evening. Master David had hurt himself, the messenger explained. Joseph’s father was attending a birth outside the city, so one of his doctor friends had seen to the boy.
Joseph found Tessa pacing the lower hall, clearly distraught. First, she apologized for calling him there. “I know you say the early Mass. But David won’t talk to me! He won’t tell me why he did it! He wouldn’t say a word to the doctor, and Edward is still at his club. I thought maybe David would talk to you: you’re a Priest, and his family…”
“Tessa.” Joseph caught her by the shoulders so she stopped pacing. “It’s all right. I’m glad you called me. David won’t tell you why he did what?”
Tessa stared down at her palms, cradling her handkerchief. “I heard Sophie screaming, so I ran upstairs. I found David attacking the mirror on his dressing table. He’d struck the glass with his hairbrush—it has a strong silver back. I pried that away from him, but he started pounding the larger shards with his palm. He sliced his hand open, and I had to drag him out of the room to make him stop.”
Joseph swallowed. “Did he hurt you?”
“Not intentionally. But he terrified me. He terrified Sophie too.” Tessa began to sob. “I looked after so many nieces and nephews in Ireland. I thought I could do this. I thought…”
Every instinct in Joseph’s body shouted at him to embrace her. He might have justified it in daylight, but Tessa was wearing a dressing gown. He settled on caressing her upper arms through their patterned wool sleeves. “I’m here. It will be all right. This isn’t about you.”
She stepped back as if he’d slapped her. “You’re right: I called you here for David, not me.”
Joseph grasped her shoulders again. “I meant: This is not your fault, Tessa.”
She nodded, but he didn’t think she believed him.
Joseph followed her eyes to the stairs. Light trickled down to them from the third floor. “Was David crying, or angry?”
“Both.”
“Did he give you any explanation?”
“Yes, but it made no sense. All he said was: ‘I didn’t like what I saw!’ I told him he was a handsome little boy! Why would he say such a thing?”
Joseph climbed the stairs slowly. As soon as he reached the third-floor hall, Sophie darted from her room and threw her arms around him.
Mindful of the oil in his lamp, Joseph placed a hand on her head. “I’ll make things better, ma petite—I promise.”
When his niece pulled back, she stared up at him with such a haunted expression, her mouth trembling, as if she longed to say something but feared to.
Joseph frowned. “Sophie? What—”
Before he could finish, she ran back into her chamber, snatching up Mignon.
Joseph moved to follow her. Then he saw the slave standing silently in his nephew’s doorway. The man must be there to ensure David did no further harm to himself. Sophie would have to wait.
In the light of a fire and another lamp, the boy sat on the edge of his bed, hunched over his bandaged hand. He wore a night-shirt with a dark blue dressing gown fastened over it. David did not raise his eyes at Joseph’s approach; he only stared at the floor beneath his dangling feet.
The rug was missing, the floorboards swept clean of shattered glass. Atop David’s marble-topped bureau, the oval frame of his dressing mirror sat strangely empty. Where there should have been a reflection, there was only blue wallpaper.
Joseph set down his lamp and glanced to the slave standing at attention. “Would you leave us, please?”
The negro obeyed.
A desk stood near one of the windows. Joseph pulled over the chair and sat down across from his nephew. Still David did not look up. Joseph waited perhaps two minutes before he spoke, hoping the silence would inspire confession. It didn’t. At last, Joseph settled on how to begin. “Would you hit your sister, David?”
Without raising his head, the boy glared at him, as if this question were so ridiculous it did not deserve an answer.
“Would you hurt your sister?”
“Of course I wouldn’t!” It sounded like David’s teeth were clenched.
“Would you hurt Tessa?”
“No!”
“Then you mustn’t hurt yourself either, David. When you do, you hurt
your sister and Tessa, because they care about you. You hurt me—and most of all, you hurt God.” Joseph leaned forward to take David’s hands gently in his own. “God gave you these hands, David. He gave them to you so you can fasten buttons and turn book pages and a thousand other things you haven’t even tried yet: so you can create music from piano keys and plant rose bushes and…”
“I want to do this.” David raised his bandaged hand a little. “I want to learn how to stitch up wounds and cut out tumors like Grandpa. How to save people.”
“That’s wonderful, David. Your grandfather will be delighted to make you his apprentice.” Joseph stroked David’s wrists with his thumbs. “But you cannot practice medicine unless you take care of the gifts God gave you. Do you understand?”
Slowly, the boy nodded.
Joseph released David’s hands and looked back to the empty frame. “You told Tessa you didn’t like what you saw in the mirror. What did you mean by that?”
“Nothing.”
“David.”
The boy closed his eyes. “Everybody keeps calling me a hero!”
“You are a hero, David. You saved your sister’s life.”
“We were only alone for one day.”
“I imagine that was the most difficult day—and night—of your life. You must have been terrified. A grown man would have been. But in spite of your fear, you chose the right path.”
His nephew made a sound halfway between a scoff and a choke.
“You could have stayed at Independence Rock and waited in vain for help to come to you. You could have tried to follow the other wagons and become lost. You could have shot at those Indians the moment you saw them—they would have attacked you in kind. You could have been prideful and tried to cross the Platte on your own. Instead, you made all the right choices, David. I don’t think one boy in a hundred could have done what you did.”
His nephew did not reply, but his breathing was becoming ragged.
Joseph knelt and looked up into the boy’s anguished face. “There was nothing you could have done to save your father or your mother or your brother. Is that what’s troubling you?”
David pulled up his legs and crawled away from Joseph using his one good hand. He thumped down from the bed, ran to the nearest window, and wrested aside one of the blue curtains.
“David?”
“I can’t…breathe…”
Joseph crossed to the window and helped him lift the lower sash. David fisted his good hand and raised it. For a moment, Joseph feared he’d break this glass too. But the boy only leaned his arm and his forehead against the panes, sucking in the night air as if he’d been drowning.
Was David remembering his father’s death? Joseph recalled Tessa’s mention of nightmares. Perhaps Joseph had been wrong to remind the boy. But Joseph knew what guilt looked like. He’d encountered it many times: a child who was certain he’d caused his parent’s death through some misdeed.
“David?” Joseph asked as the January cold seeped into him. “What is it you think you did wrong?”
“Everybody also says how much I remind them of you,” his nephew muttered. “But I’m nothing like you. You’re perfect, and I’m…”
“I am far from perfect, David. I sin every day, in thought if not in word or deed. We all stumble. We all need God’s grace.” He touched David’s shoulder through the quilted dressing-gown. “Do you need to make a Confession?”
Still leaning against the window, heedless of the cold, the boy shook his head. “I made one in Missouri, after we got back.”
“The Priest gave you Absolution, and you did your Penance?”
“I…” Sobs broke up his words. “I hated my brother. For a couple hours, I hated him—I wanted him to die, because I thought: ‘If it weren’t for him, everything would be different. Mama would still be alive…’ And then—” His nephew’s tears splashed on the window-sill. “How can I ever be sorry enough for something like that?”
Joseph shivered at the winter air pouring through the window. “Selfish thoughts are a grave sin, but they cannot end someone’s life, David. You repented, and that is what matters. Through the Sacrament of Penance we are forgiven forever, no matter what sins we have committed. We need never think of those sins again. They have been washed ‘whiter than snow.’” Joseph rubbed his arms to fend off the chill.
His nephew leaned back from the window. He wiped his eyes and his nose on the sleeve of his dressing gown, then struggled to close the window with one hand. Joseph helped him. David did not turn his head; but in their reflection, the boy met his eyes at last.
It was almost like looking back at his own younger self. Eerie, yet somehow comforting. Like all Priests, Joseph would die without issue; and yet… He smiled. “When people say you remind them of me, I think they mean we look alike. Is that so terrible?”
He’d meant it in jest, hoping for a smile in return. Instead, David dropped his gaze again. In the silence, his undamaged hand crept upwards to tug the thick black hair at the nape of his neck, nervously, perhaps unconsciously.
Finally, Joseph understood. No wonder the boy had used a hairbrush to destroy his dressing glass. Joseph remembered how critically he’d examined himself, those first weeks after Ninon’s revelation. Seminary had been a refuge in more ways than one: it had no mirrors.
Joseph strode to the bedchamber door and closed it, then returned to his nephew. He clasped his hands in front of him. He must do this carefully. “David, how much do you know about your great-grandmother? My father’s mother?”
“All of it. Mama told me, before she died. I know we’re… That my great-grandmother was a…” The boy finished in a whisper: “Slave.” His eyes pleaded with Joseph to deny it. When Joseph only nodded, David looked away again. “Sophie doesn’t know.”
Seven was too young, Joseph decided. Ten had been too young. “Perhaps we should wait and tell her when she is older?”
David nodded.
“You see yourself differently now? You don’t recognize yourself?”
Another nod.
Joseph sighed. “This is our cross to bear, David. As you grow older, you will have to decide how cautious you wish to be. Whom you wish to entrust with our secret. Whether or in what circumstances you will marry.”
David looked toward the hall. “There are so many negroes here…”
“Your conduct toward them should be that of a gentleman and a Christian—the same way you should treat all men: with the respect due them as children of God. That includes the person you see in the mirror, David. This may not be the form we would have chosen for ourselves, but it is the form God chose to give us. Remember, vanity is a mortal sin.” Joseph glanced again at his own reflection in the window panes. “In a way, God has blessed us. There have been saints who prayed for ugliness, so that they could offer themselves completely to God without being distracted by the desires of the flesh. You cannot yet appreciate the freedom that will give you, David. For now, I urge you to remember the advice Saint Paul gave to the Corinthians: However humble, our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost. Will you promise me, David, not to harm yourself again?”
Timidly, the boy met his gaze. “Yes, Father.”
“I will ask one final thing of you, David. You must apologize to Tessa and your sister.”
His nephew followed him into the hall. Sophie was hovering near her threshold. Joseph led her by the hand down the stairs. They found Tessa in the parlor.
David murmured: “I’m sorry I destroyed the mirror. I’m sorry I frightened you. Can you forgive me?”
“Of course we do!” Tessa knelt down to him and clasped his good hand. “But why—”
Joseph cleared his throat. “It’s best to put it behind us.”
Tessa frowned at him.
Joseph knew she wanted an explanation for the boy’s behavior. He couldn’t give her one.
She looked back to David. “It wasn’t because you’re unhappy here?” Tessa hesitated. “If you want to live with yo
ur grandfather instead… Please understand: I want you to stay, but if you’re lonely or uncomfortable…”
David shook his head. “I’m not— I want them back, but it’s not your fault. I want to stay.”
“I like it here,” Sophie put in, clutching Mignon. Tessa smiled with relief and hugged girl and kitten both.
“Now, what did you want to say to me earlier, ma petite?” Joseph asked his niece.
Sophie glanced at David, then lowered her eyes. “Um… I…” When she found her words, they came in a rush. “God says we should honor our father and mother. Is it a sin if I love Aunt Tessa as much as I loved Mama?”
Joseph laughed. “Love is never a sin,” he assured Sophie. “And Tessa is your foster-mother, so the Commandment applies to her as well. You should love and honor Tessa. And Mr. Stratford.” Edward had not given the children permission to use his Christian name. “Does that answer your question?”
Sophie nodded. Mignon was squirming, so she set him down and ran to find his feather toy.
David asked permission to retire to his chamber. Joseph and Tessa granted it simultaneously.
As they watched him climb the stairs, Tessa murmured: “‘Love is never a sin.’ What a beautiful sentiment.”
“Love is never a sin,” Joseph qualified. “Lust always is.”
“Of course,” she whispered, and turned away.
Part VI
Lamentations
1842-1843
Charleston
But though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.
— Lamentations 3:32
Chapter 37
Fifteen years have I been with him, ten of them were years of happiness. I enjoyed his confidence, to me he unbosomed his cares, we lay down at the same time, we arose at the same… I alone am desolate, tho’ all are afflicted.
Necessary Sins Page 31