Necessary Sins

by Elizabeth Bell

  Joseph’s father cornered him in the sacristy to recount his journey. In Great-Grandmother Marguerite’s day, Charleston’s free blacks had had to purchase numbered copper badges to wear on their breasts at all times or they’d risk the Work House. Slaves hired out by their masters were still required to wear such badges—much like the city’s dogs. Yet the way Joseph’s father spoke about their African relations, it was as if he wore an invisible badge over his heart—and he was proud of that badge, no matter its cost.

  “I have six brothers and sisters. I lost count of my nieces and nephews. They and my mother and her husband are all very poor.” Joseph’s father stared through the wall of the sacristy all the way to Haiti and raised his shoulders in a shrug. “But they’re content. They’re free. I wish you could have met them, Joseph. My mother has a scar on the side of her head, and she’s missing the top of her right ear—because my grandmother shot her in order to steal me. My mother was sixteen years old when it happened—fourteen when she gave birth to me. We cried for hours and talked for two days straight. Her mother’s people, my people, your people—they’re called the Yoruba. Do you know what my mother named me, before I was baptized René?”

  Joseph could only shake his head.

  “Ekundayo.” His father scratched at the peeling skin of his sunburned wrist, but he was smiling. “It means: ‘sorrow becomes happiness.’”

  Chapter 23

  The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.

  — Dr. William Acton, Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (1857)

  After more than a year in Charleston, the Conleys’ fortunes had not altered. Liam remained a copyist, Miss Conley a catechist and seamstress. At least Joseph’s mother and grandmother seemed to be warming to the Irish brother and sister. Bereft of Cathy and Perry, the Lazare women welcomed the Conleys for another Christmas holiday. Hélène and Miss Conley had become as close as sisters—in truth, closer than Hélène and Cathy had been. They called each other “Ellie” and “Tessa” and cherished their shared secret: someday, they would be sisters-in-law.

  While Hélène and Miss Conley taught each other French and Irish carols at the piano, Liam watched them with a broad smile. He exchanged knowing looks with Joseph and his father. Do you see? the Irishman’s expression said. We’re already a family. Miss Conley was even wearing one of Hélène’s altered gowns. Liam’s coat must be the finest he owned; but its elbows showed clearly his sister’s repairs.

  Shortly after the Feast of Saint Valentine, Joseph sat in the confessional, leaning into the winter light that entered through the barred door so he could read his breviary while he waited for penitents. He’d had few today, all seminarians. Most people confessed and received the Eucharist only at Christmas and Easter.

  A few members of his congregation were more scrupulous, like Miss Conley. Every Sunday, she knelt at the rail to receive the Body of Christ from him. But she had never confessed to him. Sometimes Joseph worried that he’d done something to make her distrust him. Her countenance brightened whenever she saw him; she seemed to enjoy their conversations as much as he did. But some kind of unease remained hidden behind her eyes. Might Miss Conley suspect how he struggled to admire only her soul?

  Then Joseph reminded himself that no one in his family had chosen him for a confessor. He recalled how much easier it had been for him to make a good confession in Paris, where all the Priests had been strangers.

  Finally Joseph heard the rustle of skirts that announced a female penitent. He closed his breviary and sat upright. Even with the grille, he was careful to shield his eyes with a cupped hand.

  “Bless me, Father,” the young woman whispered beside him. “I confess that I am sinfully happy!”

  Joseph sighed, dropped his hand, and abandoned the rules. “Good afternoon, Hélène.”

  For a moment, his sister grinned at him through the grille, but it quickly turned into a pout. “Don’t you want to know why I am sinfully happy?”

  “Only if you’re going to make a proper Confession. You don’t sound at all contrite.”

  “I’m not!” At least she seemed a little sorry about that. “But I knew you’d be here, and I couldn’t wait to tell you!”

  “This is a Sacrament, Ellie.”

  “No one else is waiting!”

  “A real penitent could arrive at any moment.”

  “Then I shall tell you my news outside.” Hélène flung aside her curtain. Then she yanked open the door of the confessional booth, exposing Joseph to the light.

  He squinted and scowled up at her. “Hélène! This is entirely inappropriate!”

  His sister stood with her hands on her hips as if he were being unreasonable. She was going to spend millennia in Purgatory. “I’m hardly causing a scandal! No one is watching—and even if they were, they know I’m your sister! You do want to hear my news?”

  “Yes.” Joseph removed his violet stole and folded it atop his breviary on the seat. He allowed Hélène to pull him from the confessional.

  “Liam has an apprenticeship!” his sister shouted to the entire empty cathedral. “We’ll be married before we’re thirty!”

  Joseph frowned. “He said it would take him years to afford an apprenticeship.”

  “Liam doesn’t have to pay for it anymore—the lawyer who’s training him will soon be his brother-in-law!”

  How could Liam have a future brother-in-law other than Joseph? Unless—

  “Tessa is engaged now too! And you’ll never believe who proposed to her!”

  Joseph gripped the back of a pew. “Who?”

  “Edward Stratford! His father owns a plantation on the Ashley!” Hélène exulted at her usual speed, her hands excited fists under her chin. “Edward is the youngest of three sons—but still: a Stratford! It’s like the prince and Cinderella! Now Mama and Grandmama cannot possibly object to Liam and me! Can you believe we’ll be related to the Stratfords?”

  In truth, Joseph had barely heard of them. “This Edward Stratford will not interfere with Miss Conley’s religion? He’ll allow their children to be Catholic?”

  “Not only that, Joseph—Mr. Stratford agreed to convert! Tessa said he’ll call on you.”

  Hélène soon flitted homewards. Joseph retreated into the confessional and shut the door. He was glad of the bench and the concealment. His legs felt as if he’d just raced up the Spanish Steps; they’d threatened to buckle beneath him. His heart felt… This was envy. He was in the wrong seat.

  Joseph should be rejoicing. Miss Conley had turned a lost soul toward the true Church. If they could win one Stratford, might not others follow? At the very least, there would be Catholic Stratfords in the next generation. Soon Miss Conley would sing lullabies to her own children. She would bear them in comfort, and they would want for nothing.

  Joseph should be falling on his knees in thanksgiving. Most men of Mr. Stratford’s class would not hesitate to ruin a young woman like Miss Conley for their own momentary pleasure. He could have seduced her with a promise of marriage and abandoned her. But to his credit, Mr. Stratford recognized Miss Conley for the jewel she was, and he wanted her on his arm for a lifetime.

  The young man was certainly besotted. When he spoke about his intended, Mr. Stratford’s countenance matched Liam’s when he spoke of Hélène: it was breathless and reverent. Mr. Stratford was earnest, humble, and open-hearted. Not only had he secured Liam an apprenticeship with his eldest brother, he had saved the Conleys from their appalling lodgings. He rented them a suite of rooms, modest but completely respectable, which Liam could purchase from him over time, where Hélène could live one day. Miss Conley had been able to give up her sewing. Now, other women labored over her trousseau.

  Yet for all his qualities, all his wealth, Joseph thought Mr. Stratford utterly unworthy of Miss Conley. He was simply…dull. It was like yoking a unicorn to an ass. An ass could not help being an ass, but it was still an ass. What did they talk abo
ut? Mr. Stratford was eager to discuss crop yields, but his interest did not extend to ornamentals. He had no appreciation for poetry or even music, though he happily took Miss Conley to plays and concerts.

  What man COULD be worthy of such a woman? Joseph chastised himself. He was being unfair. He knew nothing about love, and he rarely saw the couple together. Even then, Miss Conley practiced modesty and hid her affections in public.

  Mostly Joseph met with Mr. Stratford alone in order to prepare him for his Confirmation. The Stratfords were Episcopalian, at least officially. Like the rest of his family, Mr. Stratford viewed religion as something to do on Sundays and ignore the rest of the week.

  When Joseph inquired why he wished to convert, the young man answered: “Because it will please my Tessie.” Mr. Stratford was only two years Joseph’s junior, but sometimes he seemed like a little boy—or perhaps a puppy wagging its tail, begging for attention.

  “It isn’t as if much will change, right?” he asked Joseph with ignorant cheerfulness. “I mean, Episcopal services, Catholic services—they have more commonalities than they do differences.”

  “Transubstantiation is not a small matter,” Joseph informed him as calmly as he could.

  “Well, yes, but there’s really only that and the Latin—which I think sounds much grander than English; I can understand why you kept it. And of course the celibacy of Catholic Priests, which I also approve. I mean, I wouldn’t want to do it myself! But that’s the point, isn’t it? What I’m saying is: I admire you, Father. That kind of sacrifice sets you apart, doesn’t it? It makes you special.”

  Mr. Stratford insisted on making his first general Confession to Joseph. The young man admitted to self-abuse and impure thoughts, especially about Miss Conley. But Mr. Stratford confessed no visits to prostitutes or harassment of slaves. He understood the wages of sin. Joseph was confident that he would be a faithful husband.

  After Joseph granted Mr. Stratford Absolution, they walked out to the Biblical garden, where they found Miss Conley reading. For a moment, Joseph imagined that her gaze leapt to him first, and that her smile wavered when she looked to Mr. Stratford. Ridiculous. Joseph lowered his eyes and noticed a weed threatening his Passiflora. He knelt to remove it.

  Mr. Stratford did not yet cross the garden to his intended. Instead, he confided to Joseph in a low voice: “Sometimes I envy her. I know Tessie doesn’t struggle the way I do.” He sighed. “I try to read or to concentrate my attention on anything else, and all I can think about is our wedding night. Virtue is so much easier for women. They’re born pure and that’s how they remain—at least if they’re ladies.”

  No one was born pure; they were all sinners, male and female alike. Joseph’s experience as a confessor had taught him that even ladies felt lust. But there in the presence of Miss Conley, Joseph did not correct her intended. The young man would learn soon enough.

  Another day, Mr. Stratford asked: “Have you heard of this book by Maria Monk? Awful Disclosures?”

  “Unfortunately.” It was the latest anti-Catholic invective, the most ludicrous—and most popular—so far. It was a gothic novel masquerading as the autobiography of a pregnant nun who had escaped a convent to save her child’s life.

  Mr. Stratford squinted at him. “Is any of that true, Father?”

  “Are you seriously asking me if I force myself on nuns? If I strangle our newborn children and then throw them into a pit?”

  “Well, I figured that part was fictional. But what about the rest of it? The kneeling on dried peas for Penance and sticking a pin through your—”

  “If you want to know the secrets of the Catholic Church, Mr. Stratford, read the catechism, the Missal, the Ordination rites. Bishop England translated them years ago, not only for the benefit of the faithful but to prove to the rest of the world that we have nothing to hide.”

  The young man looked disappointed.

  “My life isn’t the stuff of novels, Mr. Stratford.”

  Chapter 24

  O fairest of creation, last and best

  Of all God’s works…

  How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,

  Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote?

  — John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674)

  Young Edward would not be the first Stratford to marry a Catholic, Joseph discovered. His middle brother, Laurence, had settled in Louisiana several years before, on land recently taken from Indians. There, Laurence had married a Catholic heiress who had already given him sons. This probably explained why Edward’s father had not objected to Miss Conley—that, and the old widower’s reputation as an eccentric who indulged his own whims. He bred racehorses and hosted the only Mardi Gras ball in South Carolina.

  The Stratfords’ connection to Louisiana also explained the appearance of their plantation house on the Ashley River. Joseph visited it after ministering to nearby Summerville. Mr. Stratford had said Joseph could not miss the house, and he was right: there was nothing else like it, at least not in this state. As fond as South Carolinians were of their piazzas and porticos, they stopped at one or two per dwelling. Mr. Stratford’s father had completely surrounded his home with two-story, twelve-foot-wide verandas supported by twenty-four Tuscan columns.

  “It’s a common design in Louisiana,” the old planter explained. “Keeps the sun off all the windows, and looks damned impressive from every angle!”

  “He’s as proud of those verandas as if he had sawn every board and laid every brick with his own hands,” Miss Conley observed.

  She knew who had truly remodelled the house, who harvested the Stratfords’ rice fields, and it troubled her. As the youngest son, Edward would not inherit his father’s columned masterpiece or his plantation. But the old man had given Edward and his intended a house in Charleston that they would occupy upon their marriage—and four domestics to care for it. The house needed repairs and decorations; the garden needed pruning and restocking; already Miss Conley must act the mistress.

  “Our own Emancipator, O’Connell, called slaves ‘the saddest people the sun sees.’ In Parliament, he was instrumental in passing the act that abolished slavery in the British West Indies,” Miss Conley explained to Joseph in a low voice as they watched a negro repainting the piazza. “I never, ever thought I would own another human being. ’Tis a sin, isn’t it?”

  This was not the first time Joseph had been faced with the question. “The sin is in how you treat your slaves,” he answered, echoing Bishop England and the other Priests he’d consulted. “If you are a good, Christian mistress, you can improve their earthly lives and even save their souls.”

  For the first time he could remember, Miss Conley peered at him doubtfully, before she looked away and nodded.

  Joseph was honored that Miss Conley and Mr. Stratford had asked him to celebrate their wedding Mass. Still, he wished they’d not chosen late morning. Usually the Eucharistic fast seemed a small discomfort. Today, he’d suffered keenly each empty hour since midnight, for sleep had eluded him. The cicadas outside his window had irritated him inexplicably. Never before had they sounded like an alarm.

  He resented each layer of vestments, when the summer air already hung thick and heavy around him. In such heat, without the aid even of water, he feared he was approaching delirium. These past eighteen months of his Priesthood, he’d performed this sacrifice hundreds of times, yet he felt suddenly unsteady, as if he were trying to stand upright in an earthquake.

  Joseph looked to the bride, to remind himself how important it was that he not falter: this was a day she would always remember. But he found no encouraging smile; Miss Conley’s veil obscured her face.

  Joseph forced himself to concentrate on Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: “Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord…”

  Miss Conley knelt before him with her bridegroom. Joseph instructed them to join their right hands. The vows were not part of his Missal; Joseph must recall them from the notes he had scribbled in the margins, note
s that had smeared. “Now, repeat after me, please: ‘I, Joseph Lazare, take thee, Teresa Conley—’”

  Only when a tide of sniggers rippled through the witnesses did Joseph realize what he’d said. He sucked in a mortified breath and dropped his eyes to the floor, where the pooled satin of Miss Conley’s gown nearly reached his feet. No couple would ever ask him to say their wedding Mass again.

  When Joseph managed to speak, his dry throat half-strangled the words: “You say your own name, of course, Mr. Stratford.”

  “I, Edward Stratford,” the bridegroom obliged with a grin.

  “Take thee, Teresa Conley, for my lawful wife…” Joseph prompted.

  “Take thee, Teresa Conley, for my lawful wife…”

  After the exchange of vows, Joseph made the Sign of the Cross over the wedding ring and sprinkled it with holy water. He returned to Latin: “O Lord, bless this ring…that she who is to wear it may render to her husband unbroken fidelity…”

  Mr. Stratford slipped the ring onto his bride’s left hand.

  Joseph prayed: “O God, Thou hast consecrated the Marriage union, making it a Sacrament so sublime that the nuptial bond has become an image of the mystical union of Christ with the Church.” Joseph turned to the bride and smiled, hoping she could see him through her veil. “O God, mayest Thou regard Thy handmaid with bounteous kindness. … May she be fruitful in offspring… Plighted to one husband, may she fly from forbidden intimacies, fortifying by stern discipline the weakness of her sex…”

  “Amen,” the bride and the others responded.

  In spite of his exhaustion, Joseph did not sleep that night either.

  Chapter 25

  “Oh! come, then, best beloved of my heart; come, Lamb of God, adorable flesh…nourish, cleanse, and purify my soul…all unworthy as I am to receive thee…” Ardent love swelled her throbbing bosom…for her amiable spouse…