Joseph didn’t need Tessa or his family. God was sufficient. Again Joseph prayed with Saint Ignatius: “Lord, grant me only Thy love and Thy grace—with these I am rich enough and desire nothing more.”
I desire nothing more…
I desire nothing…
I desire…
Hot tears mingled with the snot trickling from his nose. Perhaps he needn’t leave immediately. Tessa was recovering from a difficult childbirth. It would be months yet before either of them would be tempted toacton this desire.
But his wicked mind discarded the months in an instant. His fantasy carried him perhaps a year into the future. He saw Clare toddling through Tessa’s garden—bronze ringlets bobbing, her mother in miniature. She was bringing him a camellia blossom. Edward had vanished from the face of the Earth. When Tessa’s daughter fell into Joseph’s arms, giggling, she called him not “Father” but “Papa.” Then Clare was slumbering in her crib, and he and Tessa were…
“Father?”
Joseph’s head snapped up, and he winced. His altar server was kneeling beside him, worry wrinkling his young face. Weak light seeped through the cathedral windows and set the boy’s red hair aglow like a halo.
Joseph must have fallen asleep on the floor. His fists had loosened, but his arms were still splayed as though they were nailed to a cross. Slowly, painfully, Joseph drew them beneath him. Every muscle in his body ached, as if he were a corpse trying to come back to life. “I’m sorry, Thomas.” Even his voice needed thawing. “Is it time for Mass?”
“N-Nearly, Father.”
With considerable difficulty, Joseph pushed and pulled himself to his feet, which felt like blocks of ice. He could barely wiggle his toes. When his knees remembered his fall, they nearly buckled; he had to catch himself on a pew and Thomas’s shoulder. What must the boy think of him? Joseph’s face must bear the impression of the floor, and a trail of snot had crusted beneath his nostrils.
Joseph dug in his overcoat for his handkerchief. His skin was chapped and half his knuckles had cracked open. He might have lost his anointed hands to the cold.
The memory of his dream brought heat to his face. Joseph tried very hard not to dwell one more moment on what he’d imagined doing to Tessa, or what he’d imagined her doing to him. He’d been awake when the fantasy began; he had consented. And as Saint Finnian had written in his Penitential:“It is the same sin though it be in his head and not in his body…”
Joseph couldn’t celebrate Mass with mortal sins blackening his soul—sins he’d committed on the very floor of the cathedral, while lying on top of Bishop England and his sister. Joseph should run to St. Mary’s and find his confessor.
Then he heard murmuring at the back of the sanctuary. Joseph looked to see the Sansonnet sisters arriving for Mass. Bundled as they were against the cold, they noticed him immediately and beganchattering. Joseph grimaced and turned away. The Sansonnets feigned piety; but they cared more about other people’s sins than their own.
Joseph did his best not to limp, though he felt like a cripple. “Is there still ice outside?” he asked Thomas in a whisper.
“Everywhere, Father.”
Joseph knew he couldn’t reach St. Mary’s with any kind of speed. He couldn’t postpone the Mass either. His parishioners had duties of their own. Some of them were slaves who might be punished if they returned later than expected.
He would have to confess to Father Baker. “I need a few minutes,” Joseph told Thomas. “You can light the altar candles and lay out the vestments.”
“We’re still in Epiphany?” the boy asked. It was his first week assisting Joseph.
“Yes. White vestments until the end of the Octave—we won’t change back to green till the fourteenth.” Joseph gave the Sansonnet sisters a wide berth and reached the seminary as fast as he could.
The moment he stepped inside, he heard Father Baker coughing. Joseph’s heart sank. He should have known such cold would be deleterious to a system already weakened by malaria. Perhaps this illness was not as bad as it sounded?
When Joseph called through the door, Mrs. O’Brien bade him enter. The sight—and smell—of the miserable figure retching into a chamber pot gave Joseph his answer. Father Baker wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and smiled apologetically at the housekeeper as he held out the pot. His arms trembled.
Mrs. O’Brien clapped on the lid and told Joseph: “Can’t keep anything down, poor lad.”
Joseph tried to swallow his own distress. Father Baker already had a cross to bear; he didn’t need the weight of Joseph’s sins—let alone Joseph begging to leave Charleston. That would have to wait.
Joseph realized their housekeeper was speaking to him again: “As foryourbreakfast, Father Lazare, I was thinking?—”
“Please, Mrs. O’Brien,” Joseph interrupted. He remembered Saint Finnian’s Penance for a cleric who’d committed adultery in hishead. “If you’d prepare only a slice of dry toast and some hot water instead of coffee, I’d be very grateful—the same for dinner and supper.”
The housekeeper frowned at him.
“I’m— I’ll be fasting for the next forty days.”
“If that is your wish, Father.” Still the housekeeper left grumbling.
