The Miracle at St. Bruno's Read online

  The Child was watching us intently, but strangely enough I found my attention becoming fixed on Keziah and the monk. The Child might become a prophet, I had heard, but at this time he was simply a child, though an unusual one, and I accepted the fact that he had been found in the Christmas crib as I accepted the stories of witches and fairies which Keziah told me; but grown-up people interested me because they often seemed to be hiding something from me and to discover what was a kind of challenge which I could not resist meeting.

  We saw the lay brothers now and then in the lanes, but not the monks who lived the enclosed life; and I had heard that in the last years when the fame of St. Bruno’s had spread the number of lay brothers had increased. Sometimes they went into the city because there were the products of the Abbey to be disposed of and business to discuss; but they always went into the world outside the Abbey in twos. Wealthy parents sent their sons to the Abbey to be educated by the monks; men seeking work often found it in the Abbey farm, mill or bake and brew houses. There was a great deal of activity, for not only was there the monastic community but mendicants, and poor travelers would always be given a meal and a night’s shelter for it was a rule that none who lacked these should be turned away.

  But although I had seen the brothers in pairs walking along the lanes, usually silent, their eyes averted from worldly sights, I had never before seen a monk and a woman together. I did not know then what kind of woman Keziah was, but in spite of my youth I was very curious on this occasion and surprised by the challenging and the jocular disrespect which Keziah seemed to show toward Brother Ambrose. I could not understand why he did not reprove her.

  All he did say was: “You should not look on what you are not meant to see.”

  Then he took the Child firmly by the hand and led him away. I hoped the boy would look around but he did not.

  When they had gone Keziah jumped down and lifted me off the wall.

  I chattered excitedly about our adventure.

  “His name’s Bruno.”

  “Yes, after the Abbey.”

  “How did they know that was his name?”

  “They gave it to him, and right and proper it is.”

  “Is he Saint Bruno?”

  “Not yet—that’s to come.”

  “I don’t think he liked us.”

  Keziah did not answer. She seemed to be thinking of something else.

  As we were about to enter the house she said: “That was our adventure, wasn’t it? Our secret, eh, Dammy? We won’t tell anyone, will we?”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, better not. Promise.”

  I promised.

  Sometimes John and James, two of the lay brothers, came to see my father, who told me that once, long ago, he had lived at St. Bruno’s Abbey.

  “I thought I would be a monk and I lived there for two years. After that I came out into the world.”

  “You would have made a better monk than Brothers John and James.”

  “You should not say that, my love.”

  “But you have said I must say what is true. Brother John is old and he wheezes, which Keziah says means his chest is bad. He needs some herbs from Mother Salter. And Brother James always looks so cross. Why did you not stay a monk?”

  “Because the world called me. I wanted a home and a wife and a little girl.”

  “Like me!” I cried triumphantly. It seemed a good enough reason for leaving the Abbey. “Monks can’t have little girls,” I went on: “But they have the Child.”

  “Ah, but his coming was a miracle.”

  Later I thought how sad it was for my father for I came to believe he craved for the monastic life of solitude, study and contemplation. He had wanted a large family—stalwart sons and beautiful daughters. And all those years he had longed for a child and had been denied his wish—until I came.

  I always liked to be near when Brothers John and James called at our house. In their fusty robes they repelled while they fascinated me. Sometimes the sight of James’s sad face and John’s pale one made a lump come into my throat, and when I heard them call my father Brother, I was strangely moved.

  One day I had been playing with the dogs in the garden and was tired suddenly so I climbed onto my father’s knee and in the quick way that children do I fell asleep.

  When I awoke Brothers John and James were in the garden sitting on the bench beside my father talking to him, so I just lay still with my eyes closed, listening. They were talking about the Abbey.

  “Sometimes I wonder, William,” said Brother John to my father. “The Abbey has changed very much since the miracle. It is comforting to talk and we can talk to you, can we not, James, as to no other outside the Abbey walls?”

  “That is true,” said James.

  “It was a sad day,” went on Brother John, “when you made up your mind to leave us. But mayhap you were wise. You have this life…. Has it brought you the peace you wanted? You have a good wife. You have your child.”

  “I am content if everything can remain as it is at this time.”

  “Nothing remains static, William.”

  “And times are changing,” said my father sadly. “I like not the manner of their change.”

  “The King is fierce in his desires. He will have his pleasure no matter at what price. And the Queen must suffer for the sake of her who comes from Hever to disrupt our peace.”

  “And what of her, John? How long will she keep her hold on his heart and his senses?”

  They were all silent for a while.

  Then Brother John said, “One would have thought we should have become spiritual with the coming of the Child. It is quite different. I remember a day…a June day some six months before he came. The heat was great and I came out into the gardens hoping to catch a cool breeze from the river. I was uneasy, William. We were very poor. The year before our harvest had been ruined. We were forced to buy our corn. There had been sickness among us; we were not paying our way. It seemed that St. Bruno’s for the first time in two hundred years would fall into decline. We would stay here and starve. And in the gardens that day I said to myself, ‘Only a miracle can save us.’ I am not sure whether I prayed for a miracle. I believe I willed a miracle to happen. I did not ask in humility as one does in prayer. I did not say, ‘Holy Mother, if it is thy will that St. Bruno’s be saved, save us.’ I was angry within me, in no mood for prayer. It seems to me now that my spirit was bold and arrogant. I demanded a miracle. And afterward when it came I remembered that day.”

  “But whatever it was your words were heeded. In a few years the Abbey has become rich. You have no fear now that Bruno will fall into decay. Never in the Abbey’s history can it have been so prosperous.”

  “It’s true and yet I wonder. We have changed, William. We have become worldly, have we not, Brother James?”

  James grunted agreement.

  “You do great good to the community,” my father reminded them. “You are leading useful lives. Perhaps it is more commendable to help one’s fellow men than to shut oneself away in meditation and prayer.”

  “I had thought so. But the change is marked. The Child obsesses everyone.”

  “I can understand that,” said my father, putting his lips on my hair. I nestled closer and then remembered that I did not want them to know that I was listening. I did not understand a great deal of what they said, but I enjoyed the rise and fall of their voices and now and then I got a glimmer of light.

  “They vie with each other to please the boy. Brother Arnold is jealous of Brother Clement because the boy is more often in the bakehouse than in the brewhouse; he accuses him of bribing the Child with cake. The rule of silence is scarcely ever observed. I hear them whispering together and believe it is about the boy. They play games with him. It seems strange behavior for men dedicated to the monastic life.”

  “It is a strange situation—monks with a child to bring up!”

  “Perhaps we should have put him out with some woman to care for him. Mayh
ap your good wife could have taken him and brought him up here.”

  I stopped myself protesting in time. I did not want the boy here. This was my home—I was the center of attraction. If he came people would take more notice of him than of me.

  “But of a surety he was meant to remain at the Abbey,” said my father. “That was where he was sent.”

  “You speak truth. But we can talk to you of our misgivings. There is in the Abbey a restiveness which was not there before. We have gained in worldly goods but we have lost our peace. Clement and Arnold, as I have said, share this rivalry. Brother Ambrose is restive. He speaks of this to James. It seems as though he cannot resist this indulgence. He says that the Devil is constantly at his elbow and his flesh overpowers his spirit….He mortifies the flesh but it is of no avail. He breaks the rule of silence constantly. Sometimes I think he should go out into the world. He finds solace in the Child, who loves Brother Ambrose as he loves no other.”

  “He has come to be a blessing to you all. That much is clear. The Abbey was founded three hundred years ago by a Bruno who became a saint; now there is another Bruno at the Abbey and it prospers as it did in the beginning. This young Bruno has removed your anxieties and you say he comforts Brother Ambrose.”

  “Yet he is a child with a child’s ways. Yesterday Brother Valerian found him eating hot cakes which he had stolen from the kitchen. Brother Valerian was shocked. The Holy Child to steal! Then Clement pretended that he had given the Child the cakes and was caught by Valerian winking in some sort of collusion. You see….”

  “Innocent mischief,” said my father.

  “Innocent to steal…to lie?”

  “Yet the lie showed a kindness in Clement.”

  “He would never have lied before. He is becoming fat. He eats too much. I believe he and the boy eat together in the bakehouse. And in the cellars Arnold and Eugene are constantly testing their brew. I have seen them emerge flushed and merry. I have seen them slap each other on the back—forgetting that one of our rules is never to come into physical contact with another human being. We are changing, changing, William. We have become rich and self-indulgent. It is not what we were intended for.”

  “It is well to be rich in these days. Is it true that certain monasteries have been suppressed in order to found the King’s colleges at Eton and Cambridge?”

  “It is indeed true and it is true that there is talk of linking the smaller monasteries with larger ones,” said Brother James.

  “Then it is well for you that St. Bruno’s has become one of the more powerful abbeys.”

  “Perhaps so. But we live in changing times and the King has some unscrupulous ministers about him.”

  “Hush,” said my father. “It is unwise to talk so.”

  “There spoke the lawyer,” said Brother John. “But I am uneasy—more so than I was on that day when I asked for a miracle. The King is deeply worried by a conscience which appears to have come into being now that he wishes to put away an aging wife and take to his bed one who is called a witch and a siren.”

  “A divorce will not be granted him,” said my father. “He will keep the Queen and the lady will remain what she is now for evermore—the Concubine.”

  “I pray it may be so,” said Brother James.

  “And have you heard,” went on my father, “that the lady is at this time sick of the sweat and that her life is in danger and the King is well nigh mad with anxiety lest she be taken from him?”

  “If she were it would save a good many people a great deal of trouble.”

  “You will not pray for that miracle, Brothers?”

  “I shall never ask for miracles again,” said Brother John.

  They went on to talk of matters which I did not understand and I dozed.

  I was awakened next time by my mother’s voice.

  She had come into the garden and was clearly agitated.

  “There is bad news, William,” she said. “My Cousin Mary and her husband are both dead of the sweat. Oh, it is so tragic.”

  “My dear Dulce,” said my father, “this is indeed terrible news. When did it happen?”

  “Three weeks ago or thereabouts. My cousin died first; her husband followed in a few days.”

  “And the children?”

  “Fortunately my sister sent them away to an old servant who had married and was some miles off. It is this servant who sends the messenger to me now. She wants to know what is to become of little Rupert and Katherine.”

  “By my soul,” said my father, “there is no question. Their home must be with us now.”

  And so Kate and Rupert came to live with us.

  Everything was different. We seemed to be a household of children, and I was the youngest for Kate was two years my senior, Rupert two years hers. At first I was resentful; then I began to realize that life was more exciting if not so comfortable now that my cousins had come.

  Kate was beautiful even in those days when she was inclined to be overplump. Her hair was reddish, her eyes green, and her skin creamy with a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She was vain of her looks even at seven, and used to worry a great deal about the freckles. Her mother had used a freckle lotion because she had had the same kind of fair skin and Kate used to steal it. She could not do that now. She was more knowledgeable than I—sharp and shrewd, but in spite of her two years’ advantage, I was ahead of her in the Greek, Latin and English which I had been studying since the age of three, a fact which I knew gave great satisfaction to my father.

  Rupert was quieter than Kate; one would have thought she was the elder, but he was much taller and slender; he had the same color hair but lacked the green eyes—his were almost colorless-gray sometimes, faintly blue at others. Water color, I called them, for they reflected colors as water did. He was very anxious to please my parents; he was self-effacing and the sort of person people didn’t notice was there. My father thought he might learn to become a lawyer in which case he would go to one of the Inns of Chancery after leaving Oxford as Father had done, but Rupert was enamored of the land. He loved being in the hayfield cutting and carrying and at such times he seemed more alive than we had ever seen him.

  My parents were very kind to them. They guessed how sad they must be to lose father and mother and they were constantly indicating how welcome they were in our house. I was told secretly that I must treat them as though they were my brother and sister and must always remember if I was inclined to be unkind to them that I was more fortunate than they because I had two beloved parents and they had lost both theirs.

  Kate was naturally more often with me than Rupert was. When we had finished our lessons, he liked to wander off into the fields and he would talk with the cowherds or shepherds or those of our servants who worked on the land while Kate turned her attention to me; and she always managed to score as soon as we left the schoolroom to make up for my ascendancy there.

  She told me that we were not very fashionable people. Her parents had been different. Her father had gone often to Court. She told me, erroneously as it turned out, that Rupert would have a fine estate when he came of age and that it was being looked after for him by my father, who was a lawyer and so qualified to do so. “You see we are favoring him by allowing him to look after our affairs.” That was typical of Kate. She made a favor of accepting anything.

  “Then he will be able to grow his own corn,” I commented.

  As for herself, she would marry, she told me. No one less than a Duke would do for her. She would have a mansion in London and she supposed there would have to be an estate in the country but she would live mainly in London and go to Court.

  London was amusing. Why did we not go there more often? We were very near. It was just up the river. All we had to do was get into a boat and go there. But we rarely went. She herself had been taken to see the great Cardinal go to Westminster in state.

  What a sight it had been! Kate could act; she took my red cloak and wrapped it around her and seized an oran
ge and held it to her nose as she strutted before me.

  “ ‘I am the great Cardinal,’ ” she cried. “ ‘Friend of the King.’ This is how he walked, Damask. You should have seen him. And all about him were his servants. They say he keeps greater state than the King. There were the crossbearers and the ushers—and my lord himself in crimson…a much brighter red than this cloak of yours. And his tippet was of sable and the orange was to preserve him from the smell of the people. But you don’t understand. You’ve never seen anything…you’re too young.”

  She might have seen the Cardinal with his orange, I retorted, but I had seen him with the King.

  Her green eyes sparkled at the mention of the King and she had a little more respect for me after that. But we were rivals from the beginning. She was always trying to prove to me not how much more learned she was than I—she cared not a berry for the learning such as our tutors had to impart—but how much more clever, how much more worldly.

  Keziah admired her from the start. “Mercy me!” she would cry. “The men will be round her like bees round the honeysuckle.” And that, according to Keziah, was the most desirable state for any woman to be in.

  Kate was nearly eight years old when she came to us but she seemed more like eleven—so said Keziah; and there were some at eleven who knew a thing or two—Keziah herself, for instance. I was a little jealous of the effect she had on Keziah, although I was always her Little ’Un, her baby, and she always defended me, when defense was needed, against the dazzling Kate.

  But after Kate came all the little pleasures seemed to be slightly less exciting. Romping with dogs, feeding the peacocks, gathering wild flowers for my mother and seeing how many different kinds I could find and name—all that was childish. Kate liked dressing up, pretending she was someone else, climbing the trees in the nuttery, hiding there and throwing nuts down on people as they passed; she liked wrapping a sheet around her and frightening the maids. Once in the cellar she startled one of them so badly that the poor girl fell down the steps and sprained her ankle. She made me swear that I wouldn’t tell she was the ghost and from then on the servants were convinced the cellar was haunted.