The Miracle at St. Bruno's (26 page)

How glad I was that I had not seen it.

A few days later I heard that the Abbey had been bestowed.

My mother had got the news from one of the servants who had had it from one of the watermen who had paused at the privy stairs while she was feeding the peacocks to shout the news to her.

My mother announced it while we were at dinner and I shall never forget the look on Simon Caseman’s face.

“It’s a lie!” he cried, for once robbed of his calm.

“Oh, is it?” said my mother, always ready to agree.

“Where had you this news?” he demanded.

Then she told him.

“It could not be true,” he said; and I knew that he was imagining himself master of that place.

But it seemed that it was true. That week there were workmen putting back the lead on the roof. Simon went over there to talk to them, and when he came back he was pale with fury.

The workmen had been instructed to repair the roof; others were there cleaning the place.

They did not know on whom it had been bestowed. They merely had their orders to make it ready for habitation.

I
T WAS JUNE AND
the weather had turned hot. I had never seen so many bees at work on the clover, and the pimpernel made an edge of scarlet around our cornfields. Down by the river the nettles bloomed in profusion. My mother would be gathering them soon to make some potion. I believe she was happy. It amazed me that she could so soon recover from my father’s death. The fact that a new life was stirring within her might have been responsible for this; but I had grown farther from her though I had never really been close.

I was thinking that soon they would be cutting the hay, and that this would be the last time Rupert would supervise that activity. He would leave us after harvest and I would have to make up my mind whether I was going with him. The workmen were apprehensive; they had trusted and relied on Rupert. I wondered idly whether people worked better through fear or love. Then I fell to thinking of haymaking in the good days before the King broke with Rome and we had not thought State affairs could so disrupt our house. Everyone used to be called in to work in the fields and the greatest fear in those days was that the weather might break before the crop was carried in. Father himself used to join us and I would come out with my mother to bring refreshment to workers in the fields so that little time should be lost.

I had almost made up my mind to go with Rupert for it was clear that I could not remain under Simon Caseman’s roof. Kate had written urging me to come to Remus Castle and I thought that perhaps I should go to her for there I could discuss my future. She would urge me to marry Rupert. I knew that she still thought I would in time come to see the reason of this. Once she had plans for making a grand marriage for me. This was hardly likely now that I had no dowry. Nor did I care for that.

It was twilight—the end of a lovely summer’s day. The night was calm and still for the slight breeze of the day had disappeared.

As I sat at my window one of the servants came by. She looked up at me and said: “I have a message for you, Mistress Damask. ’Twas from a gentleman who would have word with you.”

“What gentleman?”

“Well, Mistress, he would not say. He said to tell you that if you would go to the ivy-covered gate he would be there and you would know who had sent the message.”

I could scarcely hide my excitement. Who could have sent such a message but Bruno? Who else knew of the ivy-covered door?

I said: “Thank you, Jennet,” as calmly as I could, and as soon as she had gone I went to my room, changed my gown and arranged my hair in its most becoming fashion. I took a cloak and wrapped it around me and I went at once to the door in the Abbey wall.

Bruno was there. His eyes were alight with a kind of triumph which could only be because I had come. He took my hands and kissed them. He seemed different from ever before.

“So you have come back!” I cried.

“And you are pleased?”

“It is not necessary for me to tell you what you know already.”

“I knew you would be happy to see me. Damask, you are different. Are you happier now?”

“Yes,” I replied, because it was true. In this moment I was happier because he was back. “What happened? Where did you go? Why did you leave us so mysteriously?”

“It was necessary,” he said.

“To leave us…without a word of explanation.”

“Yes,” he replied. “And since I went you have lost your father.”

“It was terrible, Bruno.”

“I know. But I am back now. I shall stop you grieving. You can be happy again now I’m back.”

He held my hand firmly in his; with the other he opened the door and we went through into the Abbey grounds.

I drew back. “It has been bestowed now, Bruno.”

“I know it.”

“We should be trespassing.”

“You have trespassed many times before.”

“It’s true.”

“And now you are with me. It was always believed by the monks that I should become their Abbot.”

“Terrible things have happened to us both.”

“Perhaps it was necessary. There has to be a testing time for us all.”

“There is so much I want to ask you. Where have you been? Have you come back to stay? Where are you living? It is not the same with us now. Our house belongs to Simon Caseman.”

He turned to me and smiling gently, touched my face. “I know all this, Damask. I know all.”

“Do you know who has taken the Abbey?”

“Yes,” he said, “I know that too.”

“Some rich nobleman, I’ll swear. It will seem so strange. But it is better so mayhap than that it should fall into further decay.”

“It is better so,” said Bruno.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Into the Abbey.”

“It is said to be haunted. People have seen a ghostly figure…a monk. I have seen him myself.”

“
You
, Damask?”

“Yes. When I came to my father’s grave.” I told him how Rupert had brought my father’s head to me and how we had buried it.

“You are not affianced to Rupert?” he asked quickly.

“No, but mayhap I will be soon.”

“You do not love Rupert.”

“Yes, I love Rupert….”

“As a husband?”

“No, but I think we need each other.”

“You will not be afraid to go into the Abbey with me?” I hesitated and he went on: “You remember you and Kate once came in.”

“I was very frightened then.”

“Because you knew you were doing wrong. You should never have looked at the sacred chapel. You should never have seen the jeweled Madonna. But now, she has disappeared, and the sacred chapel is empty.”

“I would be afraid to go in now, Bruno.”

He gripped my arm. “You do not think any harm could come to you when you were with me?”

I did not answer for all the time we were drawing closer toward those gray walls.

He turned suddenly and I saw his face stern in the moonlight.

“Damask,” he said, “do you believe that I am not as other men?”

“But….” I could hear Keziah’s voice then, that confession of hers. “He threatened me and I told him what should never be told….I was with child by the monk….”

“I want you to know the truth,” he went on. “It is important to me that you should. Lies were told. People tell lies under torture. The woman Keziah lied; the monk lied. The world is full of lies—but one must not attach too much blame to the liars when they lie under stress. They have never learned to master their bodies. Physical torture will make a liar of many a great man who yearns to speak only the truth. I tell you this: I know I am not as other men. I came into the world…not as they would have you believe. I know it, Damask. And if you are to be with me…you must know it too. You must believe it. You must believe in me.”

He looked strange and beautiful in the moonlight—godlike—different from anyone else I had ever known and I loved him, so I said as meekly as my mother might to Simon Caseman: “I believe you, Bruno.”

“So you are not afraid to go into the Abbey with me?”

“Not with you.”

He pushed open the door through which I had seen the ghostly figure pass, and we were in the silence of the Abbey.

The coldness struck me at once after the warm air outside; it rose through the soles of my shoes from the stone floor and I shivered.

“There is nothing to fear while you are with me,” Bruno assured me.

But I could not forget Keziah’s coming back after that terrible night at the inn with Rolf Weaver and although I wanted to believe as Bruno desired me to, I could not in my heart accept the fact that Keziah could have made up such a story.

But I was with Bruno and happy as I had not been since my father’s death and I sensed that he had asked me to come tonight because he had something of great importance to say to me.

He had found a lantern which he had lighted and he said he would take me to the Abbot’s lodging. It was a strange, eerie exploration and during it I expected us to be confronted by the ghostly monk. Bruno showed me a fine vaulted hall and the many rooms where the Abbot had his dwelling. It was clear that the workmen had been there and this house was in the process of being turned into a residence of some magnificence. We left the Abbot’s lodging and Bruno showed me the refectory, a plain stone building with strong buttresses, where the monks had sat for two hundred years under the raftered oak roof.

Very soon, I thought, the man on whom the Abbey was bestowed would be living here, and Bruno was taking a last look while he could still do so. He led me through the cloisters; he took me to the cells of the monks; he showed me the bakehouse where he had once sat with Brother Clement. I reminded him of what I had heard of his stealing cakes hot from the oven.

“They like to tell these tales of me,” said Bruno.

That night he showed me so much that I had never seen before. I wondered why but I guessed later. I saw the monks’ parlor and dorter; I saw the infirmaries, the Brothers’ kitchen, the cloisters, the monks’ frater. And all by the light of the lantern and the moon.

“You see,” said Bruno to me, “this is a world of its own, but now a shattered world. Why should it not be born again?”

“What will he on whom it has been bestowed do with so much?” I asked. “He will have a very fine manor house from the Abbot’s lodging, but there is so much else besides.”

“There is more—much more. And beneath it all a labyrinth of tunnels and cellars. But they are dangerous and you should not visit those.”

He took me then to the church. Although this had been robbed of its valuable ornaments and thieves had stolen the gold and silver thread from the vestments, little damage had been done to the church itself. I stared up at the high vaulted roof supported by the massive stone buttress. The stained-glass windows were intact. They represented the story of the Crucifixion. Now the shrouded moonlight reflecting the brilliant blues and reds cast an uncanny light on the scene.

Bruno drew me to a curtain which hung to the right of the altar and pulled this aside. We were in a small chapel and I knew instinctively that this was the Lady Chapel in which eighteen years before Brother Thomas had placed the crib he had fashioned and on the following Christmas morning the Abbot had come and discovered a living child in it.

Holding my hand firmly in his, Bruno drew me into the Chapel.

“It was here they found me,” he said, “and I have brought you here because there is something I wish to say to you and I wish to say it here. I have chosen you to share my life.”

“Bruno,” I cried, “are you asking me to marry you?”

“That is so.”

“Then you love me! You truly love
me?
”

“As you love me,” he answered.

“Oh, Bruno…I did not know. I never thought that you loved me enough for that.”

“What if I offered you a life of poverty?”

“Do you think I would care for that?”

“But you have been brought up in plenty. It is true now you have lost your inheritance but you could marry comfortably. Rupert will be able to offer you a good home.”

“Do you think I wish to marry for a good home?”

“You should consider well. Could you live a hermit’s life in a cave, in a hut? Could you suffer cold in winter? Could you wander the countryside with sometimes no roof but the sky?”

“I would go anywhere with the one I loved.”

“And you love me, Damask. You always did.”

“Yes,” I agreed, for it was true. I
had
always loved him, in a strange, compulsive way which was due to the fact that I had seen him always as different from other men.

“Then you would come with me…no matter what hardship you had to endure?”

“Yes,” I said, “I would come with you.”

He embraced me then. His lips warm with passion were on my own.

“You would love me, obey me and bear me children?”

“Gladly,” I cried.

“Did you not always know that I was the one for you?”

“Always, but I did not think you cared for me.”

“You thought it was Kate,” he said. “Foolish Damask.”

“Yes, I thought it was Kate. She is so brilliant, so beautiful…and I….”

“You are my chosen one,” he said.

“I feel as though I have stepped into a dream.”

“A happy dream, Damask?”

“Happy,” I replied, “as I never thought to be again.”

“Then we will plight our troth here…in this chapel where years ago they found me. That is fitting. That is what I wish. Damask, consider. A life of hardship. Can you face it…for love?”

“Gladly,” I replied earnestly. “And I rejoice that you have nothing to offer me. I want to show you how much I love you.”

Again he touched my face gently. “You please me, Damask,” he said. “Oh, how you please me. Here on this altar we will make our vows. Damask, swear to love me, and I will swear to cherish you.”

“I swear,” I said.

We left the chapel and came out into the night air. We crossed the patch of grass where we were wont to sit when we were children.

“This is our wedding night,” he said.

“But there has been no marriage ceremony.”