Joseph clung to Politi’s theory: “Yes. At the Resurrection of the Dead, even unbaptized children will be given perfect bodies. She will be a young woman.”
“Can I see her, then? Can I?—”
“No.”
Tessa’s grief leaked unceasingly, from her eyes and her nose. “I tried! Itried, Bean!”
The Stratfords offered Joseph breakfast.He ate without tasting anything. He searched for a gentle way to tell Tessa that Bean could not be laid to rest in consecrated ground. But she already knew. They decided to bury the little girl there on the plantation, at the edge of the Stratford family plot. Hélène helped Tessa fashion a casket from a jewelry box. Inside, they also placed a single kidney bean from the kitchen.
Liam carried his sister to the cemetery as if he were rescuing her from a collapsing house. One of the negroes brought a chair for her. Another slave bore a shovel, but Joseph’s father took it from him anddug the little grave himself. Hélène carried the tiny casket. The elder Mr. Stratford did not join them, and Edward looked as if he would rather be anywhere else.
Joseph was forbidden to perform funeral rites, but he offered a prayer: “Lord, as we commit the body of this child to the earth, we commit her soul to Your judgment. Though You have not revealed to us the full fate of these little ones, we trust in Your infinite mercy.”
He read from the Psalms: “Show me Thy truth… Have mercy upon me, for I am desolate…”
Joseph closed his breviary. Tessa sat motionless, staring down at the fresh grave. Liam and Hélène stood on either side of her. Tessa gripped their hands so tightly that her knuckles were white, as though she might fall into the earth if she let go.
After several minutes of silence, Liam inquired gently: “Tessa, are you ready?—”
Instead of answering, she murmured: “Will it be like she never left my womb?” Tessa glanced to her brother. “Do you remember the Irish name for Limbo?”
He nodded. “Dorchadas gan Phian. Darkness without Pain.”
“Is that right, Father?” Tessa asked.
Joseph hesitated. Most of the theologians who argued against the pain of fire argued for the pain of loss. Other writers, like Saint Thomas Aquinas, concluded that unbaptized children must remain ignorant of their exile from Heaven. “Bean isn’t suffering,” Joseph answered. “She doesn’t know what she’s lost.”
But Tessa knew.
CHAPTER 28
Evening crowned the city with peace and plenty…midnight saw its habitations enveloped in devouring flames… One woe is past, and behold another woe followeth hard after.
— Reverend Thomas Smyth,Two discourses on the occasion of the great fire in Charleston(1838)
When Tessa returned to her house in town, she told Joseph: “Edward doesn’t want me to be churched.”
Joseph frowned. “Did you tell him that churching isn’t only about your attending Mass again? That you cannot resume your…conjugal relations until the rite is completed?”
She nodded and looked away. “But I think he intends to—” She broke off and drew in a ragged breath. Whether she shuddered at the thought of violating the Church’s prescription—which he knew the Irish took particularly seriously—or simply at the thought of intercourse with her husband, Joseph wasn’t sure. “Edward says everyone will see me there, kneeling outside the cathedral with my unlit candle, and they’ll know…”
“We could do it early in the morning, when the cathedral is empty.”
“I suggested that. Edward saidsomeoneis still sure to see.”
Joseph hesitated, then decided: “I can give you the blessing here, in private.”
She looked up at him with such longing. “Truly?”
He nodded. The abbreviated, private rite was intended for women too ill to rise from their beds months after childbirth. But surely he could make an exception for Tessa.
In January, Tessa conceived again. She confided to Joseph: “With Bean, I felt wonder, excitement, thanksgiving… Now, all I feel is fear.”
The Blessing of an Expectant Mother was intended for her confinement. Joseph did not wait. “O God, accept the fervent prayer of Thy handmaid Tessa, as she humbly pleads for the life of her child… Let Thy gentle hand bring her infant safely into the light of day, to be reborn in holy Baptism…”
Every day when he celebrated Mass, Joseph named Tessa in his prayers. Liam, Hélène, and Joseph’s mother and grandmother joined in a novena. Reluctantly, Edward agreed to abstain from his marital rights until Tessa was safely delivered and then churched. The stakes were higher now. Fate had turned their unborn child into a prince.
The Stratfords owned a fishing sloop and trained slaves to handle it. Early that spring, Edward’s eldest brother Miles was out hunting marlin when a squall caught him in open water. His body washed up the next morning. Miles had had an understanding with a neighboring planter, but he’d been waiting for his betrothed to come of age; he’d left no children.
