The Miracle at St. Bruno's Read online

  There was always drama around Kate; she would listen at keyholes to what people said and then she would tell her own highly colored version of it; she plagued our tutor and used to put her tongue out at him when his back was turned. “You’re as wicked as I am, Damask,” she would tell me, “because you laughed. If I go to hell, you will go too.”

  It was a terrifying thought. But my father had taught me to be logical and I insisted that it wasn’t so bad to laugh at something wicked as to do it. It was every bit as bad, Kate assured me. I would ask Father, I said; at which she told me that if I did she would invent such wickedness and swear that I was guilty of it that he would turn me out of the house.

  “He never would,” I said. “He gave up being a monk so that he could have me.”

  She was scornful. “You wait till he hears.”

  “But I have done nothing,” I protested tearfully.

  “I will tell it so that it will be just as though you had.”

  “You’ll go to hell for it.”

  “I’m going there already—you said so. So what does a bit more wickedness matter?”

  Usually she insisted that I obey her. The worst punishment she could inflict on me was to remove her exciting presence and this she quickly discovered. It delighted her that she was so important to me.

  “Of course,” she was fond of saying, “you are really only a baby.”

  I wished that Rupert would have been with us more often, but we seemed so very young to him. He was kind to me always and very polite but he didn’t want to be with me, of course. One of the occasions I remember most vividly of him was in the winter at the lambing time and how he went out into the snow and brought in a lamb and sat nursing it all the evening. He was very tender and I thought how kind he was and how I could love him if he would only let me.

  Once my father took me down to the river’s edge as he used to before my cousins came and he sat on the wall while I stood there with his arm supporting me as we watched the barges going by.

  “It’s a different house now, eh, Damask?” he said.

  I knew what he meant and I nodded.

  “And you’re as happy as you used to be?”

  I was unsure and he gave me a little squeeze.

  “It’s better for you,” he said. “Children should not be brought up alone.”

  I reminded him of the time we had seen the King and the Cardinal go by in the royal barge. “We never saw him again,” I said.

  “Nor ever shall,” said my father.

  “Kate saw him in his scarlet robes and fur tippet holding his orange in his hand.”

  “The pomp and glory has passed away, poor man,” said my father quietly.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  And my father replied, “What the Cardinal had to excess and has no longer. Poor sad man, his fall is imminent.”

  I could not believe that the mighty Cardinal was a poor sad man. I was about to ask for explanations. But I didn’t. Instead I would ask Kate. That was the difference in our household. Kate had become my instructress; I no longer asked my father to explain what I did not know.

  My cousins had been with us two years when the Cardinal died and by that time it seemed to me that they had always been there. I was seven years old at that time and two years of Kate’s tuition had matured me considerably. Kate at nine—grown a little plumper—seemed at least three years older, and at twelve girls began to be considered for marriage in their not very distant future.

  I had worked hard in the schoolroom. My tutors told my father that I should be quite a scholar in a few years’ time; he compared me with the daughters of my father’s friend Sir Thomas More and they were notoriously clever. I needed the reassurance of being able to rise above Kate’s ascendancy in some ways. She pooh-poohed Latin and Greek. “Are they going to make you a Duchess? All your little quips and tags! What are they? Just repeating what someone has said before!”

  She was wonderful in the saddle and to see her there in her green riding habit and the hat with the green feather lifted the spirits like the sudden sight of bluebells misty under trees or the first call of the cuckoo. I suppose others felt the same; they always turned to look at her; and she would ignore the stares but I knew by the way she held her head and smiled secretly that she was aware of the effect she had and enjoyed it.

  She loved to dance and she did so with a natural grace which delighted our dancing teacher; and she could play the lute in a strange untutored way which was somehow more effective than my pieces which were in tune and time. She dominated the scene whether it was at Christmas when we gathered holly and ivy and decorated the great hall or at May Day when we watched the villagers dancing around the Maypole. When the Morris Dancers came to the house she danced with them and my parents, I think, were about to reprove her but she enchanted them as she did all others and soon they were applauding with the rest. She loved to dress up as Robin Hood and I would have to be Maid Marian. I must always take the lesser part.

  The servants were always laughing and shaking their heads over Mistress Kate, and Keziah used to say with her throaty chuckle, “You wait…you just wait till Mistress Kate’s a woman.”

  I had more freedom than I had before she came. My parents seemed to realize that they could not coddle me forever; and sometimes when Kate was charming everyone, I would catch my father’s eye on me and he would smile and that smile told me that I was still and always would be the darling of his heart and no one however beautiful and exciting could ever oust me from my place there.

  Kate knew that the Cardinal was dead and she gave me her version of the affair.

  “It is all due to the King’s passion for Anne Boleyn. He is determined to have her and she says, ‘No, your mistress I will not be; your wife I cannot be.’ Which shows how clever she is.” Kate threw up her hands as though warding off a persistent lover. She was Anne Boleyn. I could see in that moment that she was wondering whether a Duke was good enough to be her future husband. Why not a King?

  “What of the Queen?” I asked.

  Kate’s lips curled. “She is old and no longer beautiful. And she can’t give the King a son.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not what, idiot? Why is she not beautiful? Because she is old and it’s horrid to be old. And why can’t she give him a son? I can’t explain that to you. You are too young to understand.” Kate’s favorite explanation when she did not know herself was that I was too young. I had pointed this out to her and it had the effect of making her use it more than ever.

  She went on: “The Cardinal tried to stop the King. Silly man! So…he died.”

  “The King killed him?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Old Brother John told your father he died of a broken heart.”

  “How terrible!”

  I thought of that day when I had seen them in the barge together, standing close, laughing.

  “He should not have annoyed the King. He was silly so his heart broke. The King is going to divorce the Queen and then he can marry Anne Boleyn and they will have a son who will be King in his turn. It’s all very simple.”

  I said it didn’t seem simple to me.

  “That’s because you’re too young to understand.”

  What I did understand and what she failed to was the difference in our household since the death of the Cardinal. A gloom seemed to have fallen over it. My father often looked sad and when I talked to him he would smile and draw me to him as in the old days, but I fancied that his gaiety was forced. He seemed to be over-watchful; and when we were at meals I would catch him listening as though he expected some messenger who would not be very welcome.

  Friends often called at the house and they would join us at table. Father had many friends both in Law and at Court. During their visits the conversation would be lively at the table and when they had drunk freely of the wine my father served them they would often talk about the affairs of the country. One thing that occupied most of the conversation was “The King
’s Secret Matter.” I noticed how Kate’s eyes glistened when it was referred to; and my father said on one occasion: “Remember, my friends, it is The King’s Secret Matter, and therefore it is not for us to discuss or pass judgment.”

  That sobered them; and I noticed how they almost glanced furtively over their shoulders and were very insistent that it was indeed The King’s Secret Matter and none of his subjects should attempt to question royal decisions.

  Yes, it was uneasy.

  But Brother John and Brother James were perhaps more uneasy than anyone. They used to come often and sit and talk with my father. I was too old now to curl up on his lap and listen. Kate was not very interested in them. She wrinkled her little nose with disgust and said: “Monks. Silly old men who go and live in monasteries and kneel for hours in prayer. Their knees must be quite sore. Mine get sore in church. And they live on bread and water and are always telling God how sinful they are—as if He doesn’t know without their telling Him! They wear hair shirts. Ugh. I like silk and satin and cloth of gold. When I grow up I shall always wear cloth of gold—or do you think silver tissue would suit me better?”

  So I did not know of what Brother John and Brother James talked to my father, but I believed that their conversation was full of forebodings and I caught their lack of ease. But only temporarily for Kate soon dispelled it. Life for her was gay and it must be for me if I was to share it. She discovered so much. She told me that Jim, the chief stableman, who had a wife and six children and lived in a cottage on our estate, crept out into the woods to meet Bess, one of the housemaids, and she had seen them lying in the bracken.

  “What would she do about it?” I asked. “Would she tell my father, or Jim’s wife?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll tell no one but you…and you don’t count. I’ll remember it. It will be useful when I want to use it.” Then she burst out laughing. She liked power. She wanted to have control over us like the puppeteer had over the dolls which he had shown us at Christmastime when he had come with the mummers.

  And then she became interested in the boy.

  One day she came to me when I was in the orchard sitting under a tree whither I had taken my Latin exercise. It was a beautiful day and I decided that I could work more easily out of doors.

  “Put down that silly old book,” commanded Kate.

  “It’s far from silly, Kate. In fact it is very difficult to read. I need all my powers of concentration.”

  “Powers of rubbish!” cried Kate. “I want to show you something.”

  “What?”

  “First,” said Kate, “you have to swear to tell no one. Swear.”

  “I swear.”

  “Hold your hand up and swear by the saints and the Holy Mother of God.”

  “Oh, Kate, that sounds like blasphemy.”

  “Swear or you will be told nothing.”

  So I swore.

  “Now come on,” she said.

  I followed her out of the orchard, across our land to that stone wall which separated us from the Abbey. Tangled ivy grew thick over certain parts of this wall. At one spot she drew it aside and to my surprise disclosed the outline of a door.

  “I noticed that the ivy looked as though it had been disturbed and I investigated,” she said with a laugh. “And so I found this door. It’s hard to open. You have to push it. Come on. Heave with me.”

  I obeyed. The door gave a protesting creak and then swung open. She stepped through onto Abbey land.

  I stood on the other side of the door. “We are not supposed to. It’s trespassing.”

  She laughed at me. “Of course I knew you’d be a coward. I wonder I bother with you, Damask Farland.”

  I was already stepping through the door and when I had done so the ivy swept back into place covering it. I looked about me, expecting the Abbey land to be different from any other. The grass was the same luscious green; the trees about to break into leaf. No one would guess that we were in what had always seemed to be sacred ground.

  “Come on,” said Kate and seizing my hand drew me across the grass. I followed her reluctantly. We went through the trees and suddenly she stopped because we had come in sight of the gray walls of the Abbey. “Better not go too near. They might see us and find out how we got in. They might stop up the door. That would never do, for I intend to come here whenever I wish.”

  We drew back into the shelter of the bushes and sat down on the grass. Kate watched me intently, knowing exactly how I was feeling and that I was really longing to go back through the door because I hated being where I knew I should not be.

  “I wonder what musty old John and James would say if they found us here?” said Kate.

  A voice behind us startled us. “They would take you down to the dungeons and hang you up by your wrists and there you would stay until your hands dropped off and you fell to the ground…dead.”

  We turned around and standing behind us was the boy.

  “What are you doing here?” demanded Kate. She did not scramble to her feet as I did. She merely sat there calmly looking up at him.

  “You ask such a question of me?” said the boy haughtily. “That I find amusing.”

  “You should never creep up on people,” said Kate. “It could be alarming.”

  “Particularly when they are where they should not be.”

  “Who says not? The Abbey door should always be open.”

  “To those who are in need,” said the boy. “Are you in need?”

  “I’m always in need…of something different…something exciting. Life is very dull.”

  I was hot with indignation for I thought her very ungrateful and I resented the reference to life in our household.

  “My parents are very good to you,” I said. “If they hadn’t taken you in….”

  Kate’s mocking laughter rang out. “My brother and I are not beggars. Your father is paid well to manage our estate. Besides he is a sort of cousin.”

  The boy had turned his gaze from Kate to me and I felt a strange exultation possess me. I thought of his being placed in the Christmas crib by angels and a great destiny awaiting him. There was a quality about him of which, young as I was, I was aware. He was aloof, seeming to be conscious of the difference between himself and ordinary mortals. It was a sort of sublime arrogance. Kate had it too but hers was the result of her beauty and vitality. Although I was apprehensive I rejoiced that Kate had found the door in the wall and thus given me a chance to see him so closely. He seemed a good deal older than I although there was not a year between us. He was taller than Kate and capable of subduing even her.

  Kate was bubbling over with questions. What was it like to be a holy child? she wanted to know. Did he remember anything about Heaven because he must have come from there, mustn’t he? What was God like? What about the angels? Were they really as good as people said they were? That must be very dull.

  He studied her with a sort of amused tolerance. “I cannot speak of these things to you,” he said coldly.

  “Why not? Holy people ought to be able to do anything. Being holy seems to be no different from anything else.”

  She was deeply impressed by him however much she might pretend not to be, and it must have been clear to her that she could not tease or torment him as she did me. He was too grave and yet there was a strange gleam in his eyes which I couldn’t understand. I thought of what I had overheard about his stealing cakes from the kitchen.

  “Do you have lessons like everyone else?” I asked.

  He replied that he studied Latin and Greek.

  I told him enthusiastically that I studied with Mr. Brunton and at what stage I had reached.

  “We didn’t come through the door in the wall to talk of lessons,” complained Kate.

  She rose and turned a somersault on the lawn—she was adept at this and practiced it frequently. Keziah called it wanton behavior. Her object in doing it now, I knew, was to divert attention from me to herself.

  We both looked on at Kate tu
rning somersaults and suddenly she stopped and challenged the boy to join her.

  “It would not be seemly,” he said.

  “Ah.” Kate laughed triumphantly. “You mean you can’t do it?”

  “I could. I could do anything.”

  “Prove it.”

  He appeared to be at a loss for a moment and then I had the strange experience of seeing wayward Kate and the Holy Child turning somersaults on the Abbey grass.

  “Come on, Damask,” she commanded.

  I joined them.

  It was an afternoon to remember. When Kate had proved that she could turn somersaults at a greater speed than either of us, she called a halt and we sat on the grass and talked. We learned a little about the boy, who was called Bruno after the founder of the Abbey. He had never spoken to any other children. He took lessons with Brother Valerian and he learned about plants and herbs from Brother Ambrose. He was often with the Abbot whose house was the Abbot’s Lodging and the Abbot had a servant who was a deaf-mute and as tall as a giant and as strong as a horse.

  “It must be very lonely in an Abbey,” I said.

  “I have the monks. They are like brothers. It is not lonely all the time.”

  “Listen,” said Kate in her commanding way. “We’ll come again. Don’t tell anyone about the door under the ivy. We three shall meet again here. It’ll be our secret.”

  And we did. Any afternoon that we could get away we went through the secret door and very often we were joined by Bruno. It was a strange experience because at times we forgot how he had appeared in the Christmas crib and he seemed just like an ordinary boy, and sometimes we played games together—boisterous games at which Kate scored, but he liked guessing games too and that was when I had a chance. He and I were rivals in that just as he and Kate were at those which involved physical effort. He was always determined though to beat us both—his wits were sharper than mine and he had a physical strength which Kate could not match.