Necessary Sins

by Elizabeth Bell

  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 what?”

  “Fugitive slaves!”

  For the first time, Joseph felt the chill in the air. “Have you gone mad?”

  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—”

  “I won’t hear another word of this, Hélène.”

  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, which were entirely different.

  The moon passed behind a bank of clouds then, and his sister was lost to him. In the darkness, he proceeded as best he could. “Interfering with God’s plan is not ‘doing good,’ Ellie! How many times do I have to explain this to you? 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 you really wish to help the slaves, you 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 cloak, then waited in the upper hall while May helped his sister disrobe. Hélène left the door wide open so she could continue spinning her insane 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 rumors begin, 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 pink 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. “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 ribbon atop it like a snake. 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.

  Chapter 46

  To perform the operation, the surgeon should therefore be steadfast and not allow himself to become disconcerted by the cries of the patient.

  — Lorenz Heister, “Of Cancer of the Breasts” (1718)

  The next morning, Joseph offered Mass for his sister. Then he returned to his family’s home with Father Baker. When they reached the gate, a sign greeted them:

  Surgery today.

  Please do not summon the police.

  Joseph grimaced. He peered up through the balustrade to watch his father and Henry carrying part of their dining table onto the third-floor piazza. Surely Dr. Mortimer did not intend to operate in public?

  Joseph found Tessa on the first-floor piazza, cradling Clare on the joggling board. She did not see them at once, so intent was she on her daughter. On such a day, this beautiful idyll of mother and child was a welcome distraction; but Joseph reminded himself not to smile—Father Baker stood beside him.

  Tessa rose and bowed her head in greeting, as the stomping and scraping continued above them.

  “My father and Dr. Mortimer cannot mean to do this on the piazza?” Joseph inquired.

  “They plan to use a screen,” Tessa explained. “Your father says the piazza has better light than anywhere inside the house.” Then she looked away. “And Dr. Mortimer said it will be easier to clean.”

  Joseph invited Tessa to sit again.

  She told Father Baker: “Mrs. Conley is in her bedchamber.”

  He went up to hear Hélène’s Confession.

  Considering his sister’s behavior last night, Joseph imagined the Confession would be a lengthy one. He could not sit beside Tessa on the joggling board—they might be thrown together—so he pulled over a chair.

  Tessa asked her wide-eyed daughter: “Clare, do you remember Father Joseph?”

  “I hope not,” he chuckled. “She slept through your churching, so the last time she saw me, I put salt in her mouth and poured cold water on her head.”

  If Clare recalled the incident, she proved forgiving. When Joseph offered his forefinger, the little girl grasped it with her tiny, perfect fingers. For someone so small, she was wonderfully strong. Joseph sang her a French verse, and Clare’s eyes widened attentively.

  “David is here too,” Tessa told him. “He insisted on coming.”

  Joseph should start behaving like a Priest. He climbed the stairs to find Hélène’s bedchamber door closed. Dr. Mortimer and Dr. Michaels (the assistant surgeon) were carrying the easy chair from her dressing room onto the piazza.

  The men positioned the chair atop a canvas floor cloth. Reassembled across the piazza’s width, the dining table was set with a terrifying assortment of blades. They might have been plucked from a butcher’s shop. The surgeons even wore bloodstained aprons. Joseph shuddered.

  His mother paced past him, clutching her rosary.

  He caught her attention. ‘Do you really think this is punishment for Hélène’s sins?’

  His mother frowned, confusion in every line of her face. ‘How can a Priest ask that?’ She averted her eyes. ‘I only wonder that God has not struck me instead.’

  Dr. Mortimer had warned them that, if the cancer had spread beyond Hélène’s breast, he would have to cut away her axillary glands and pectoral muscle as well. She might lose the use of her right arm and her ability to sign. That would punish Joseph’s mother after all. There were so few people left with whom she could converse.

  Joseph turned to his nephew, who stood at one end of the dining table caressing a tall wooden case. David called to Joseph’s father, who was adding a Chinese screen to the strange assemblage of furniture. “May I set up the microscope, Grandfather?”

  “If you’re careful, David.”

  “I will be.” Reverently the boy undid the latch.

  Joseph asked: “Are you certain you wish to be here, son?”

  David nodded as he withdrew the microscope from its case. “I want to be a surgeon, not a physician. Physicians only advise people. Surgeons fix them.”

  If Joseph’s father was insulted, he did not defend himself. He only asked Joseph to anchor one end of the folding screen so he could pull it open.

  David muttered: “They won’t let me watch.”

  “Three men staring at my daughter’s breast are quite enough,” Joseph’s father reasoned with his usual misplaced levity.

  “But I don’t care that it’s her breast!” the boy persisted. “After Dr. Mortimer removes it, then may I—”

  “David.” His grandfather’s face was grave now. “Try and see this from your aunt’s perspective.”

  Chastened, if still disappointed, the boy dropped his gaze. “Yes, sir.”

  “Whether you become a physician or a surgeon, you must think of your patient, not only her disease.”

  Father Baker called Joseph into Hélène’s bedchamber to assist with Viaticum and Extreme Unction. Liam, Tessa, and Joseph’s mother joined them for the prayers, with Clare offering her own cooing accompaniment. Following the last “Amen,” Father Baker gave Joseph leave to remain with his family as long as they needed him, then departed.

  Hannah appeared from somewhere to ask: “Should I take Clare now, Miss Tessa?” Joseph supposed the surgeons did not want any sudden noises startling them while they had knives in their hands.

  “Let me kiss her first, for luck.” Hélène leaned over her goddaughter’s bassinet and smiled. “After all, little one, you are a living miracle. An answered prayer. The seventh child of a seventh child.”

  Clare sucked her thumb with great importance.

  Joseph crossed back out to the piazza to bless the operating theatre. A sheet was draped over the easy chair now, and two smaller chairs were set beside it. He knew Liam and Tessa would brave the bloody business. Someone must restrain Hélène’s arms.

  Dr. Mortimer was concealing the last of his blades by laying a towel over them—to hide them from his patient, Joseph imagined. The surgeon hesitated. “Should I have left the instruments uncovered for you?”

  Joseph tried to smile. “Thank you, but no. God can see them, even if I can’t.” He motioned toward the easy chair. “Why seated and not reclining?”

  “Supine patients are less likely to faint,” Dr. Mortimer explained, “and that is the best bulwark we have against pain.”

  “Surely you will give her laudanum?”

/>   “Opiates are beneficial only in small doses. In large ones, they induce severe vomiting. A small dose is useless against this kind of pain. But too deep or too protracted a syncope is also dangerous. If your sister does faint, your father will be monitoring her pulse very carefully. We may be forced to revive her before we can continue.”

  “So your choices…”

  “Are between the Devil and the deep sea. I believe that’s why we need you.” Dr. Mortimer left Joseph to the blessing.

  At last Liam led Hélène onto the piazza. She was trembling. She wore pink slippers and a white wrapper. She embraced her husband, her friend, and her father in turn, as if drawing strength from each of them. Her mother too, though she offered only a stiff pat on her daughter’s back. When Hélène embraced May, both women had tears in their eyes.

  Dr. Michaels leaned over the edge of the piazza. “We’re ready for the hot water!” he called.

  Finally, Hélène slid her arms around Joseph. He pulled her close, as if he could press his chrism into her. He blessed her one final time, then kissed her forehead for good measure.

  Hélène sank into the chair. Their father knelt before her as if she were an enthroned queen, only to bind her ankles to the chair legs. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Joseph could not help but recall the last time he’d seen his father restrain an innocent woman. He’d been standing on this very piazza, that terrible night he’d glimpsed his father raping his mother.

  Dr. Mortimer pulled protectors over his shirtsleeves. “Remember, Mrs. Conley: we wound but to heal.”

  Hélène nodded. Liam and Tessa settled uneasily on either side of her. Behind them, the cheery, fragrant blossoms of the yellow jessamine twining up the piazza columns seemed a frame for a romantic interlude, not a surgery.