Joseph envied all the Priests who did not have this hot African blood surging through their veins, and thereby committed yet another mortal sin. They seemed indelibly intertwined, envy and lust. Sometimes he added anger toward Edward—that he had had the audacity to be born, that he should treat Tessa like a possession, a brood-mare, a disappointment. Edward was unworthy even to kiss her feet.
But lust was always the strongest. As he struggled to become master of his flesh and his thoughts, Joseph practiced all the tricks they’d taught him in seminary: Imagine her as an old woman. He meditated on the wisdom of Petrus Cantor: “Consider that the most lovely woman has come into being from a foul-smelling drop of semen; then consider her midpoint, how she is a container of filth; and after that consider her end, when she will be food for worms.”
Joseph’s wickedness always found some rebuttal: But while Tessa IS young and soft, beautiful and breathing; while she IS clothed in ephemeral, magnificent flesh…
When he thought such things, he would be forced to take his discipline again. She is not yours, he reminded himself with each blow. She has never been yours. She will never be yours.
Joseph completed the fortieth day of his fast and ended it, since that hunger had done nothing to quell his hunger for Tessa. He had less than two weeks’ reprieve before the Lenten fast. He joined his family for dinner again.
Hélène informed him: “Tessa is ready to be churched.”
Joseph did not raise his eyes from his slice of ham, which he was trying not to devour whole like a ravenous wolf. “Then she should ask Father Baker.”
“She wants you, Joseph.”
Rather too forcefully, he cut another piece of meat. Fortunately, he did not crack the plate.
“If you won’t do it for her, Joseph—do it for me?”
He decided he could manage this one last rite for Tessa. The Blessing of a Mother after Childbirth was simple, and he’d done it hundreds of times. Joseph resolved not to speak a word of English. He would use the Latin as a shield. If Tessa did not understand, Thomas could translate.
Hélène accompanied Tessa to the cathedral grounds. This must be important to his sister: Joseph knew she ventured out as little as possible now. No alteration could keep her corset from pressing painfully against the distended flesh of her diseased breast. The largest tumor was nearly the size of a hen’s egg.
His sister sat on one of the stone benches in the Biblical garden, cradling Clare but watching him. Her stare seemed a warning.
At the edge of the garden, Tessa knelt with a lit candle, her head covered in a white lace mantilla. The veil was distressingly similar to the one she’d worn as a bride.
Aided by Thomas, who held the aspersorium, Joseph sprinkled Tessa with holy water. In the language of the Church, he declared: “This woman shall receive.” Joseph read the opening Psalm, then offered Tessa one end of his white stole. Humbly, she grasped it and rose. He led her into the cathedral. “Enter the temple of God,” Joseph commanded, “adore the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Who hath given thee fruitfulness of offspring.”
Tessa obeyed. She knelt at the altar. Thomas followed, and Hélène sat with Clare in one of the back pews.
Joseph forced himself not to look at Tessa as he prayed through the tightness in his throat: “Lord, have mercy on us.” Joseph murmured the Pater Noster until he reached the end, when he pronounced forcefully: “And lead us not into temptation.”
Even in Latin, he knew Tessa understood. Her head bowed more deeply, as though beneath the weight of shame.
“Save thy handmaid, O Lord… Grant that after this life she together with her offspring may merit the joys of everlasting bliss…” Joseph sprinkled Tessa with holy water a final time and intoned as a farewell: “May the peace of almighty God come upon thee, and remain for all time.”
“Amen,” replied Thomas, oblivious.
Joseph could feel his sister scowling at him from the back pew.
Part VII
Consummation
1843
South Carolina
Each sought to allay, not his own sufferings,
but those of the one he loved.
— Pierre Abélard, The Story of My Misfortunes (1132)
Chapter 44
She recognized all the intoxication and the anguishes of which she herself had nearly died. The voice of the woman singing seemed to be but the echo of her own consciousness…
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856)
The eve of Hélène’s surgery finally arrived, the night they would attend Lucia di Lammermoor. His sister pleaded with Joseph to accompany her, their father, and Liam to the opera—a tale of star-crossed lovers. “You can translate the Italian for us!”
“You’ve read Scott’s novel,” Joseph pointed out. “That’s in English.”
“The opera changes things!”
“And how would you know that?”
“I’ve read the English libretto,” Hélène admitted. “But we might lose our place!”
In truth, Joseph was eager to experience another opera. In the seven years of his Priesthood, Joseph’s superiors had permitted him a handful of concerts, so he’d heard a few precious arias. These merely whetted his appetite for feasts he would never enjoy.
Following her own theatrical adventures, Hélène would often purchase the score, and she and Liam would attempt to recreate the duets at their father’s piano. Bellini, Rossini, and Mozart were not mangled; but Joseph knew these renditions were poor echoes of the original. His sister thought the more delight she took in an opera, the more likely he would be to join her the next time. Joseph knew better: the more he longed for this entertainment, the more of a sin it was.
The temptation was always there. The New Theatre was impossible to miss: it was on Meeting Street and twice the size of the cathedral. Joseph passed it often during parish calls. He would pause to read the playbills and sigh with envy. The theatre resembled a pagan temple: wide marble steps rose to an arcade, which supported a portico, four fluted Ionic columns, and a pediment.
Only ticket-holders could access the portico. Once, Hélène had been taking the air with Liam when she spotted Joseph lingering below. (He’d been trying to catch a few strains of music through the open windows.) His sister had hollered and waved at him, making Joseph go crimson. The uncertainty of her future had lowered Hélène’s inhibitions more than ever. His sister could never have endured marriage to a man like Edward; but Joseph had heard Liam laughing.
Surely, after so many years of denial, when this might be Joseph’s last chance to share an opera with his sister, he could make an exception. Donizetti had composed Joseph’s first opera; it seemed fitting that he should be the creator of Joseph’s final one. When Joseph asked Father Baker about Lucia di Lammermoor, his pastor looked disappointed—he never allowed himself such pleasures—but he gave Joseph permission to go.
At the last minute, Liam sent a note that he was finishing a legal brief and would join them as soon as he could. The news did not dampen Hélène’s spirits for long. She’d been conserving her strength, and God was merciful: her pains were mild today. The mere thought of the opera was enough to rally her. May had helped Hélène fashion a new undergarment that was only a distant relation to a corset, and she would conceal her altered bodice with her cloak. His sister refused all talk of a carriage—the theatre was only three streets away.
Joseph tried not to gape as he, his sister, and their father passed up the marble stairs, through the arcade, and into the vestibule of the grand building. They had no need to pause at the ticket office, since their father had bartered a box from a wealthy patient.
Hélène was leaning heavily on their father now. Joseph stopped ogling the light fixtures and realized the walk had exhausted her. They’d nearly reached the end of the corridor (their box was on the far right) when his sister told them she had to rest. She braced a gloved hand against the wall and panted.
“You go ahead, Joseph,” their fathe
r instructed, nodding toward the door of the last box.
“I’ll wait.”
“It’s only a spell. She’s had them before. You’ve been on your feet all day. I insist.”
Reluctantly, Joseph obeyed. He was as eager to sit down as he was to see the interior of the theatre. When he opened the door and stepped through it, however, he realized the box was already occupied. Hoping the woman had not sensed him, Joseph retreated quickly—and someone slammed the door in his face. He frowned and grabbed the handle. It turned, but something seemed to be blocking the door. “Father? Ellie?”
In reply, Joseph heard what sounded like a titter, followed by two distinct male chuckles. One of the men was his father. He could have sworn the other was Liam.
Joseph glanced over his shoulder to the other occupant of the box. “I’m terribly sorry; there seems to—”
As the woman turned around, he caught her gardenia perfume. Tessa. She gasped.
Behind her, his father peered around the edge of the next box. “We’re over here. But you two are staying there. Have a wonderful evening.” His father grinned and disappeared.
Joseph gaped. He tried the door again. “They’ve jammed it shut!” Where were the theatre attendants? Had his father bribed them?! The man was fifty-three years old and behaving like a schoolboy pulling pranks.
Tessa was laughing now.
Joseph whirled on her. “Did you know about this?”
“I knew Hélène asked to use Edward’s box. I thought it was strange when Liam escorted me to this one and then disappeared ‘for refreshments.’ I didn’t know you’d be here. And I certainly didn’t know they were planning this entrapment.”
“This is ridiculous!” Joseph cried through the wall of the box.
“If you get peckish, we’ll bring you something during intermission,” Liam called.
Hélène giggled again. That she was not as ill as she’d pretended was a small comfort.
Joseph groaned and leaned against the door.
“You might as well sit down.” Tessa turned back to face the stage.
The only furniture in the box was a single scarlet sofa. Joseph peered nervously past Tessa, across the wide theatre to the two boxes opposite theirs. One was occupied by a sedate elderly couple. The other held a group of young men who had clearly taken an interest in his family’s antics. Joseph didn’t recognize any of them—they must not be Catholics. Still he glared at the theatre’s forty-eight lamp chandelier and longed for darkness to cover him. “Someone will see us,” he hissed.
“’Tis too late now to change that.” Tessa kept her eyes on her libretto, but he could hear her smiling. “We shall simply have to behave ourselves.”
Three hours was a long time to stand. His thighs still throbbed from last night. He contemplated sitting on the floor, but that would look suspicious. The only box beside them was the one occupied by his father, Hélène, and Liam, Joseph assured himself. Perhaps a handful of the audience could see him and Tessa together; but at this distance, amidst the cacophony of conversations, no one could hear them. He must try to act as though this were not an adulterous rendez-vous.
Joseph hung his overcoat and hat next to Tessa’s cloak at the back of the box. Finally he came to perch on the far corner of the sofa. Still, he nearly brushed her wide skirt—a cascade of embroidered gold that shimmered in the lamplight. It reminded him of a gown he’d seen on a statue of the Virgin in Rome.
Tessa did not turn or raise her eyes; and still she made it impossible to breathe. Her perfume surrounded him like an embrace. Only elegant gloves sheathed most of her slender arms. Her throat and shoulders were bare. He’d never seen her shoulders before. They were as white and smooth and round as—
Joseph forced his eyes to the interior of the theatre: the dome and the classical paintings inside; the proscenium with its ornamented frieze and gilded pilasters; the pastoral scene on the drop curtain; the men in the orchestra lighting the candles on the music stands—but of course his thoughts remained on Tessa’s bare flesh. Surely no other woman on Earth had such exquisite hollows above her collarbones. He wondered how they might taste if he kissed them.
She was a nursing mother! Yet even this fact did not deter him. It only made him more curious.
Christ had proclaimed in the Gospel of Saint Matthew: “I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery in his heart.” Perhaps the rest of the audience could not see the sins being committed inside this box, but appearances were deceiving. He and Tessa might as well be naked on the floor.
Joseph swallowed and recalled as a Penance: “This is Edward’s box?”
“Our captors are in Edward’s box,” Tessa corrected with a smile. Then she sobered and lowered her voice. “I feel him between us, just the same. But he was happy to let me come with someone else. When Edward brings me to the theatre, he is usually asleep by the second act—or he goes out to the saloon and doesn’t return till the end.”
“He leaves you here alone?”
“I don’t mind. I can lose myself in the story.” She abided by their unspoken agreement; she pretended to watch the musicians tuning their instruments. “Edward does love me, in his way. It’s only…he doesn’t really see me. He—and his father—thought I was someone else, someone they could mold. Heaven knows I have tried to please Edward, to be what he wants. But when I defy him or disappoint him, even in the smallest way, he is puzzled, like a man who has bought a gosling and waits and waits for it to turn into a swan. It cannot, no matter how hard it tries.”
But she was a swan. Didn’t Edward ever tell her that? She was a phoenix.
Tessa returned her eyes to her libretto. “Have you ever heard of a Teltown Marriage?”
“No.”
“For centuries, they were contracted at the ring-fort on the River Blackwater in Ireland. Some say Teltown Marriages still happen there. After a year and a day, if the new couple were unhappy, they would return to the ring-fort. They would stand with their backs to each other and simply walk away.”
Such was the commitment of pagans. “You have a daughter now,” Joseph reminded her.
“I have a daughter, yes. Edward treats Clare like some kind of changeling.”
Joseph’s breath caught. Did Tessa’s husband suspect she loved someone else? Perhaps the man was not his wife’s intellectual equal, but neither was he an idiot. Did Edward know it was Joseph? Did Edward think Clare was—
Tessa’s voice cut into Joseph’s thoughts: “At least my father-in-law is fond of her. He has deigned to accept a female as Edward’s heir. So my husband has what he wants after all: his family’s plantation.”
Was that why Edward kept silent?
Joseph was spared any further speculation, because the conductor was taking his place. Applause and then a hush rippled through the audience, though someone below them was still cracking nuts. The curtain rose on a woodland glade, and the Prelude began. Joseph closed his eyes and tried to enjoy the music. It began in a soft, ominous larghetto. Muffled timpani and horns underscored the lament of oboes and clarinets. He settled back against the sofa. Mindful of the welts on his thighs, his left hand rested on the arm, his right on the seat beside him.
Then Joseph felt a tickle, a brush. His eyelids flew open. Tessa was slipping her slender fingers between those of his own gloved hand. He dared not look down, or he would only draw more attention. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Shh!” Tessa chastised, though the sound lilted; it was half laughter. Joseph did not need to glance at her to know Tessa was grinning.
His hand twitched. Even through the kid of their gloves, the warmth of her shot straight to his galloping heart. He knew he should pull away, but he couldn’t. Instead, he started—she did too—at a sudden, deafening dissonance of cymbals and strings in the Prelude, like a thunderbolt of doom.
“Look at the people across from us,” Tessa soothed. “I can’t see any lower than their chests.”
/> Joseph’s eyes leapt to the boxes across the stage. She was right. Surely the reverse was true, and no one could see what was happening on the seat of this sofa. Still he wished they were watching a magic lantern show instead of an opera. The chandelier blazing like broad daylight was entirely inappropriate for misty Scotland. Even if it did allow Tessa to read her libretto.
The huntsmen’s chorus was lost on him. The tenors and basses might as well have been singing Chinese. Eight years Joseph had waited to attend another opera, and Donizetti’s genius washed in one ear and straight out the other. Every one of Joseph’s senses was keyed only to Tessa. He felt only her hand in his. He heard only her breaths. He smelled only her perfume—so heady he could almost taste it. He saw not the burly men of the chorus but only the memory of her beauty.
The baritone entered. Joseph willed himself to concentrate. Enrico Ashton, the heroine’s ruthless brother, sang of his rage against Lucia for daring to love the wrong man. The Ashtons were supposed to loathe the Ravenswoods!
Italian was easier to understand spoken than bel canto. Joseph caught most of it, but he allowed himself glimpses of Tessa’s libretto, which had the Italian and English side by side. She moved the pamphlet to the edge of her skirt, turning each page faithfully with the hand that did not anchor his.
Enrico vowed vengeance against the lovers. Only Italians could make annihilation sound beautiful. In English, it was: “with your blood I will quench the impious flame which consumes you!”
Enrico and his men stalked off. The glissade of a harp announced that the heroine was coming. And Tessa withdrew her hand. The muscles of Joseph’s arm tensed to recapture her. He managed, barely, to restrain himself. He should be thankful that she had tired of her wickedness.
Necessary Sins Page 37