The Miracle at St. Bruno's Read online

  Cautiously we tiptoed out, and how relieved Bruno was when he turned the key in the lock. The journey through the stone corridors seemed almost an anticlimax after being in the sacred chapel. If we were caught we would be reprimanded but he would not mention that we had seen the Madonna. We instinctively knew that in looking on that we had committed a greater sin than by merely trespassing into the Abbey.

  We came out into the open and hurried to our secret meeting place. Bruno threw himself onto the ground, face downward. He was shaken by what he had done. Kate was silent; I guessed she was thinking of herself wearing that jeweled crown. But even she was subdued as we went home.

  Murder at the Abbey

  OUTSIDE EVENTS HAD THRUST themselves upon us now, intruding into our home, destroying its peace. Even my mother could not escape from this. My father said the very foundations of the Church were shaken. Brother John and Brother James sat in the garden with him; they talked in whispers, their voices grave. My father talked to me as he always did. He wanted me to know what was going on and as he said to me often: “You are not a frivolous girl, Damask. You are not like Kate, concerned with ribbons and frills. We live in dangerous times.”

  I knew of the tragedy surrounding our neighbors, the Mores. Sir Thomas had made clear his refusal to sign the Oath of Supremacy which was an admission that the King was Head of the Church as well as State and that his marriage to Queen Katharine of Aragon had been no marriage; it was an admission that the heirs the King might have by Queen Anne Boleyn were the true heirs. And Lady Mary, Katharine’s daughter, illegitimate.

  “I am afraid for Sir Thomas, Damask,” said my father. “He is a brave man and will adhere to his principles whatever evil may befall him. He has, as you know, been taken to the Tower by way of the Traitors’ Gate and I greatly fear we may never see him again.”

  There was infinite sadness in my father’s face and fear too.

  “Such a sad household it is now, Damask,” he went on, “and you know full well what a merry one it once was. Poor Dame Alice, she is bewildered and angry. She doesn’t understand. ‘Why does he have to be obstinate?’ she keeps asking. ‘I say to him, Master More, you are a fool.’ Poor Alice, she never did understand her brilliant saint of a husband. And there is Meg. Oh, Damask, it breaks my heart to see poor Meg. She is his favorite daughter and none closer to him than Meg. Meg is like a poor lost soul, and I thank God she has a good husband in Will Roper to comfort her.”

  “Father, if he would sign the Oath this need not be.”

  “If he signed the Oath it would be to him as though he had betrayed his God. He has been a good servant to the King but as he has said to me, ‘William, I am the King’s servant, but God’s first.’ ”

  “And yet because of this they are so unhappy.”

  “You will understand when you are older, Damask. Oh, how I wish you were a little older. I wish you were of Meg’s age.”

  I wondered why Father wished I was older then; and I understood later.

  I remember the day Bishop Fisher was executed. Then there were the monks of the Charterhouse who were most cruelly killed. They were drawn to the place of their execution, hanged and cut down when alive and fearful agonies inflicted on them. That day Brother John and Brother James came to see my father. I heard Brother John say: “What is to become of us, William? What is to become of us all?”

  Bruno told us that there was continuous prayer in the Abbey for Bishop Fisher, for the monks of the Charterhouse and for Sir Thomas More; and that Brother Valerian had said what happened to them could happen to others and much hung on the fate of Sir Thomas More. He was a man who was greatly loved; if the King allowed him to die the people would be angry. Some said it was more than the King dared do; but the King dared all. He would brook no interference and he had declared that any who denied his supremacy were traitors, be they onetime Chancellors and friends of his. No man was his friend who stood against him and none who did so should escape his wrath.

  There came the terrible day when Sir Thomas came from the Court in procession with the ax turned toward him. We heard of it from those who witnessed it; and how poor Meg ran to him and threw her arms about his neck before she fell fainting to the ground.

  “They’ll never do it,” said my father. “The King cannot kill a man he once professed to love; he cannot murder a saint.”

  But the King would allow no one to defy him. I often thought of him as I had seen him on his barge laughing with the Cardinal…another who had died, they said, through his displeasure. No man could afford to displease the King.

  And then on that day of mourning the bell tolled for Sir Thomas, and his head was severed from his body and stuck on a pole on London Bridge, from which spot Meg later retrieved it.

  My father shut himself into his room; I knew that he spent the hours of that day on his knees and I did not believe he was praying for himself.

  He talked to me again, his arm through mine down there by the loosestrife and the long grass that grew on the riverbank, there where we could talk with no fear of being overheard.

  “You are nearly twelve years old, Damask,” he said; and he repeated: “I would you were older.”

  “Why so, Father?” I asked. “Is it because you wish I could understand more easily?”

  “You are wise beyond your years, my child. If you were fifteen or sixteen perhaps you might marry and then I would know that you had someone to care for you.”

  “Why should I want a husband when I have the best of fathers? And I have Mother too.”

  “And we shall care for you as long as we shall live,” he said fervently. “I think that if by some mischance….”

  “Father!”

  He went on: “If we should not be here…if I should not be here….”

  “But you are not going away.”

  “In these times, Damask, how can we know when our time shall come? Who would have believed a few years ago that Sir Thomas would be taken from us?”

  “Father, you will not be asked to sign the Oath?”

  “Who can say?”

  I clung to his arm suddenly.

  Then he said soothingly: “The times are dangerous. It may be that we may be called upon to do what our consciences will not permit. And then….”

  “Oh, but that is cruel.”

  “We live in cruel times, child.”

  “Father,” I whispered, “do you believe that the new Queen is no true Queen?”

  “ ’Tis better not to say such words.”

  “Then do not answer that question. When I think of her….lying in the litter smiling, so proud, so glad because all that pomp and ceremony was for her….Oh, Father, do you think that she spared a thought for all the blood that would be shed for her….Men like Sir Thomas, the monks….”

  “Hush, child. Sir Thomas expressed his pity for her. Heads have been cut off because of her. Who can say how long she will keep her own?”

  “Kate heard it said that the King was growing tired of her, that she has given him no son…only the Princess Elizabeth…and that he is already looking at others.”

  “Tell Kate to keep a curb on her tongue, Damask. She’s a reckless girl. I fear for Kate—yet somehow I fancy she has a talent for self-preservation. I fear more for you, my beloved daughter. I would you were old enough to take a husband. What think you of Rupert?”

  “Rupert? As a husband, you mean? I had not thought of that.”

  “Yet, my child, he is a good boy. Reserved in temperament, good-natured, hardworking; it is true he has very little of his own but he is our own flesh and blood and I would like to see him continue to care for the estate. But most of all I would feel I was putting you into safe hands.”

  “Oh, Father, I hadn’t thought of…marriage.”

  “At twelve it is time you gave that important matter a little consideration. Perhaps in four years’ time. Four years! It is long.”

  “You sound as though I am a burden you would be relieved to be rid of.”


  “My darling child, you know you are my life.”

  “I know it and I spoke carelessly. Father, are you so much afraid for yourself that you wish I had another protector?”

  He was silent for a while and he gazed along the river and I knew he was thinking of that bereaved house in Chelsea.

  And never before had I been so aware of the uncertainty of our lives.

  That summer seemed long and the days filled with perpetual sunshine. Whenever we had visitors to the house, which we did frequently for no travelers were ever turned away—rich or poor—there was usually a place for them at the table. If they came from Court, Kate would waylay them and try to lure them out of earshot of my father, perhaps into the gardens to see the peacocks or the dogs that she might talk of the Court.

  Thus we learned that the King was indeed tiring of the Queen; that they quarreled and that the Queen was reckless and snowed little respect for the King’s Majesty; we heard that the King had cast his eyes on a rather sly and not very handsome young woman who was one of the Queen’s maids of honor. Jane Seymour was meek and pliable, but with a very ambitious family who did not see why since the King had cast off Katharine of Aragon, a Spanish Princess and aunt of the great Emperor Charles, he should not mete out the same treatment to the daughter of comparatively humble Thomas Boleyn.

  If there had been a son, we heard, all would have been different. But Anne could not get a son any more than Katharine had and there were rumors that Jane was already pregnant by the King.

  Kate used to stretch out on the long grass and talk endlessly about Court affairs. She had ceased to fancy herself as Queen Anne. She was now Jane Seymour, but the role of meek Jane subservient to ambitious brothers did not suit her as well as that of proud Anne Boleyn. She was inclined to be scornful of Jane.

  “How long does she think she will last?” she demanded almost angrily.

  Sometimes we went through the secret door into the Abbey, and there she would talk about the jeweled Madonna. The thought of all those jewels looked at only by monks was maddening, she said. How she would like to wear them!

  Her attitude toward Bruno was changing, as mine was too. I looked forward to our secret visits. I liked to watch his face as he talked and I always tried to take the conversation out of Kate’s range. It made me feel closer to him. He liked to talk to me but he liked to look at Kate; in fact he rarely glanced at me when she was there. She bullied him; she was inclined to order him about, a fact which exasperated and angered him but only seemed to increase his interest in her. Once or twice she made veiled allusions to the fact that he had taken us into the Abbey and shown us the Madonna.

  “But it was you who wanted to go,” I said, for I always contrived to be on the side of Bruno against her.

  “Ah,” she replied, “but he was the one who took us.” She pointed at him gleefully. “His was the greater sin.”

  Then she taunted him with being the Holy Child so unbearably that he ran after her and I heard her laughing as he chased and when he caught her they rolled on the grass together and he pretended that he was going to hurt her. She goaded him as though she wanted him to do so, so that she would have something else with which to taunt him; I was always a little apart from these frolics; I could only look on; but I was aware of the excitement that seemed to grip them both when they played these rough games.

  I grew up fast that summer; I passed out of my childhood. I knew that Kate had special privileges with Keziah because Keziah used to let Tom Skillen into her room at night, and not only Tom Skillen. Keziah was like Kate in as much as she had great interest in men; she changed in their presence even as Kate did; but whereas Keziah was soft and yielding, Kate was arrogant and demanding. But I did notice the men were immediately aware of them both, as they were of men.

  Kate took me into her confidence a little. “It’s time you grew up, young Damask.”

  One night she came into my room and said, “Get up. I want to show you something. She made me go with her up the spiral staircase to the servants’ rooms and listening at Keziah’s door I heard whisperings. Kate looked through the keyhole and made me look too. I could just see Keziah in bed with one of the grooms. Kate took out a key and locked the door and then we tiptoed down the stairs to the landing and went across to our own staircase and so to her room. Kate was stifling laughter. “Wait till he tries to get out and finds himself locked in!” she cried.

  I said, “You had better unlock the door.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “Then they wouldn’t know I’d seen them.”

  She thought it was a great joke but I was worried about Keziah for I was fond of her and somehow I knew that these adventures with men were necessary to her, and that she would not have been Keziah without them.

  Her companion of that night turned out to be Walt Freeman; he broke his leg when he scrambled out of her window soon after the dawn. As for Keziah, she couldn’t climb out of the window, and how could she get out while the door was locked? Walt told some story about his thinking he heard robbers and coming out early had tripped over a root. Kate made me come with her when she unlocked the door on a distraught Keziah.

  “So it was you, you minx!” cried Keziah.

  “We crept up and saw you and Walt in bed,” Kate told her.

  Keziah looked at me and a slow flush spread across her face. I felt sorry because Kate had exposed her to me.

  “You really are a wanton, Keziah,” said Kate, shaking with laughter.

  “There’s more ways than one of being that,” said Keziah meaningfully, which made Kate laugh all the more.

  Keziah explained to me when we were alone.

  “I’ve always had too much love to give away, you see, Dammy,” she told me. “It would have been different if I’d had a husband. That’s what I’d have liked—a husband and lots of little ’uns like you. Not like that Mistress Kate.”

  “Do you love many men, Keziah?” I asked her.

  “Well, my ducky, the trouble with me is that I love them all and not being the sort that likes to say no…there it is. So it’ll be our little secret, eh, and you’ll not tell anyone?”

  “Kezzie,” I said, “I think they all know.”

  It was a lovely May day when we heard the news of the Queen’s arrest. It shook us all although we had been expecting something like it to happen; there had been so many rumors of the King’s dissatisfaction with his Queen and it was hinted that she was a witch and a sorceress who had tricked him into marriage. He was tired of her witchery; he wanted a good quiet wife who would give him sons. Already he had laid eyes and hands on Jane Seymour and her brothers were coaching her for the role of Queen. This we had heard; but there were many rumors and it was not until that May that we knew there was truth in them.

  The King and Queen had gone to the joust together; then suddenly the King had left and the next thing was that the Queen was arrested and sent to the Tower—and some of those who were alleged to be her lovers were sent there too. One of these included her musician, a poor boy named Mark Smeaton, on whom it was impossible to believe the haughty Queen could have bestowed her favors; and more scandalous still her own brother was accused of being her lover.

  My father had never believed that Anne Boleyn was the true Queen but now he was filled with pity for her, as I believed many others were too. Kate had seen herself so clearly as the fascinating Queen that to her this seemed almost a personal tragedy. That three short years ago she had ridden through the city in her triumph and was now in a dismal dungeon in the Tower had a sobering effect on us all.

  As for Keziah she was full of compassion.

  “Mercy me!” she mourned. “The poor soul! And what will become of her? That proud head will roll off her shoulders like as not and all because she fancied a man.”

  “So you believe her guilty, Keziah?” I asked.

  “Guilty,” cried Keziah, her eyes flashing. “Is it guilty to bring a little comfort to those who need it?” She had been frank with me since that night w
hen Kate had locked her bedroom door, shutting her in with her lover. I was no longer a child. I had to learn about life, she had said, and the sooner the better. Life to Keziah was the relationship between men and women. “Men.” Her eyes flashed with anger and it was rarely that she was angry with men. She adored them, joked with them, placated them, soothed them, satisfied them, and if they were rough or gentle, pleading or demanding, she loved them all; but she did resent that what they might do with impunity was considered a crime in a woman; they might go their way and follow their will as far as she was concerned as long as the women who pleased them were not blamed for doing the same. But when a woman was shamed for sharing in what for a man was considered natural, she could be angry; and she was angry now.

  “The King,” she said, “is not above a bit of fun and frolic. And if the Queen, poor soul, wishes for the same…well, then, why not?”

  “But she will bear the King and the future King must be the son of the reigning one.”

  “My patience, we are clever! We’re growing up and I’m glad. We can have some cozy chats now, Mistress Damask. But don’t you go thinking hard of the Queen.”

  “What does it matter what I think of her? It’s what the King thinks that counts and he is determined to think ill because he is off after Mistress Seymour.”

  Keziah put her finger to her lips. “Ah, that’s the root of it all, Mistress. This pale beauty has caught his fancy and he wants change. Men are rare ones for change, though there’s some that’ll be faithful. I’ll tell you this, Mistress Damask, there’s little about men that I don’t know. But you find out a little more every time. I knew about men before I was your age. I’d had my first by then. A handsome gentleman who came riding in the woods when I was with my Granny and he said to me, ‘Meet me in the woods close by the cottage’…that was my Granny’s cottage…‘and I’ll have a fairing for you.’ And I met him and our bed was the bracken which, when all’s said and done, can prove as good a virgin’s couch as feathers. It was dusk, I remember, and the air full of the scent of spring and when I got back my Granny was sitting there by the fire she always kept and the pot was brewing and her black cat that she used to say had more wisdom in his tail than most folk had in their whole bodies mewed and rubbed himself round my legs when I came in. She said, ‘Whafs that you’ve got, Keziah?’ I said, ‘A fairing.’ It had blue ribbons on it and was made of marchpane. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘so you’ve gained a fairing and lost your virginity.’ And I was afraid being less than your age. But Granny said, ‘Well, you can’t learn the ways of the world too soon and you’ll always be one who’ll never say no to the men nor they to you, so whether you take your first now or in two years’ time it’s of no matter.’ He came back…that fine gentleman, and we tried it under the hedge and even in a good feather bed and it was better every time. And then he disappeared and I was sad but soon another came riding by…and so it’s been.”