“Well, I figuredthatpart 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 wasnothing 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 offallthe 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 honoredthat Miss Conley and Mr. Stratford had asked him to celebrate their wedding Mass. Still, he wished they’d notchosenlatemorning. Usually the Eucharistic fast seemed a small discomfort. Today, he’d suffered keenly each empty hour since midnight, for sleep had eluded him. The insects 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, notes 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 returnedto 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.
