Finally, he took a piece of blessed chalk and wrote above the front door
18 C + M + B 43
so that the three Magi, the Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, would watch over this home in the coming year of 1843—today, most of all.
Joseph had blessed the Stratfords’ home last year as well; but he’d noticed that the chalk above the door disappeared shortly thereafter. Edward had ordered one of the slaves to wipe it away,Tessa told Joseph—her husband had not wanted his Protestant friends to laugh at him. Joseph could not help but wonder if Sophie had paid the penalty for this impiety.
Throughout that long day, Joseph’s thoughts remained with Tessa. Between blessing other homes and visiting other invalids, he prayed for her in every spare moment. Night had settled before he was able to keep his promise to return.
Even with the windows shut tight against the cold, Joseph heard Tessa screaming from Church Street. He knew this was how it must be—that he himself had come into the world through such agony. As God had promised Eve in punishment for her sin: “I will multiply thy sorrows: in pain shalt thou bring forth children.”
Still Tessa’s cries unsettled his soul. Saint Augustine had written of the Blessed Virgin: “She conceived without carnal pleasure and therefore gave birth without pain.” If only that principle applied to all women.
Joseph set down his portmanteau in the entry hall—he saw with relief that his blessing remained above the door—and Pharaoh took his overcoat. Joseph left the pyx hanging around his neck in its pouch, because it contained the Body of Christ. Since he’d come from other sick calls, Joseph had brought everything necessary for the Last Sacraments; but he prayed he would need none of it here.
Liam and David waited in the parlor, trying to play chess. Edward sat pondering a glass of whiskey. Mignon was curled up by the fire, but his ear twitched at another cry from the floor above.
Joseph looked back to David. The memory of his mother’s death must be pressing down on him with every scream. Joseph laid a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “David, let me take you to your grandmother’s.”
The boy shook his head.
“I already offered,” Liam explained.
“I should be here,” David murmured, “if Aunt Tessa…”
Joseph knelt on the prie-Dieu and led them in prayers. At least, he led his brother-in-law and nephew. Edward took upThe Spirit of the Times, a newspaper about horse racing and fox hunting.
Joseph invoked the Blessed Virgin; Saint Teresa; and SaintMargaret, patroness of women in labor. He begged the intercession of Saint Anne, who had thought herself barren only to become the mother of Our Lady herself. Saint Elizabeth too seemed appropriate. Tessa was hardly elderly—she was but twenty-six. Nonetheless, this day had a lifetime of loss and hope behind it. This child was still a miracle.
At a sudden assault on the windows, Joseph started. The jalousies and shutters were closed, but Edward paced out to the piazza and back. “It’s sleet,” he reported.
Joseph remembered his parting from Father Baker earlier that evening.“Come and fetch me, if Mrs. Stratford requires the Last Sacraments,”he’d told Joseph. And then he’d sneezed. Joseph suspected Father Baker was coming down with another cold.
Tessa would not need her confessor, Joseph assured himself. She would bear a healthy baby, and she would live to see it grow and thrive?—
A scream louder and longer than any of the others arrested all his thoughts. A terrifying silence followed. Sleet was still flinging itself at the windows; surely it was only that they could hear nothing above the clamor of the storm. Surely in Tessa’s bedchamber, the baby was crying out indignantly and everyone was rejoicing.
The long hand on the mantle clock crept around the face. Ten minutes. Twenty.Forty. Still no perceivable sounds trickled down to them. A slave added wood to the fire, then changed out the lamp in the hall. Edward poured himself more whiskey and offered some to Liam, who accepted. David hid his face in his hands, and he began rocking.
At a noise in the entrance hall, Joseph leapt to his feet—even as a maid darted past the parlor into the fury of the storm. Joseph stood gaping through the open door. The young negress had been carrying a washstand pitcher. When she hurried back up the piazza steps, the pitcher was full of ice pellets she must have gathered from the ground. The maid shoved the door closed and did not pause till Joseph blocked her path. “Please—will you tell us what’s happening?”
The negress glanced up, hesitated, then replied: “It’s a little girl.”
The parlor’s occupants must have been listening; behind him, Joseph heard Edward groan. He distracted Joseph just long enough that the maid was able to slip past him. Joseph’s mind overflowed with questions. Why did they need the ice? Why had the negress not mentioned Tessa? Did her silence mean Tessa was in danger? That she was already?—
When it came to it, the maid had not even assured them that Tessa’s daughter was healthy. Joseph’s father knew to call on him the instant he feared for the child’s life, didn’t he? Or had this child been born dead like all the others? Was the ice to preserve its body?
Above him, another scream rent the silence. Tessa was still alive. For how long? Birth did not end the peril to mother or child. Cathy and Ian’s deaths had been proof of that.
Joseph did not make it back to the parlor. He fell to his knees right there in the hall. In staying closer to Tessa, nearly beneath her, he felt as if his prayers might be more effective.Spare her, Lord,he pleaded.Spare her daughter…
Was that the protesting voice of the newborn, or only his imagination playing tricks on him?
He repeated the Blessing of an Expectant Mother: “Preserve Thy handmaid as she pleads for the life of her child… Let Thy gentle hand, like that of a skilled physician, aid her delivery…”
Joseph did not know how long he crouched there. It felt as though the storms inside and without had been raging for hours before heavy footsteps finally descended the stairs. He looked up to see his father.
In the flickering light of the lamp he carried, his father looked ghastly. He had washed his arms—they were still damp—but his rolled sleeves remained blood-stained. Framed by hair that had never looked more grey, his face was as weary as a corpse. Edward, Liam, and David heard his footsteps and came into the hall. Joseph’s father leaned against the stair rail for support. His eyes skimmed over each of them and alighted on the floor-cloth. “I am optimistic about the child. She is small, but strong.”
