The Miracle at St. Bruno's (38 page)

I assured myself that she would grow out of this. At the moment she was but a child. Yet she was seven years old—an age they say when character is developed. I had given them lessons from the time Honey was four, remembering my father’s maxim that a child cannot be taught too young. They must read as soon as it is possible for them to do so, my father had said, for thus a world is open to them which would otherwise be shut. I was in agreement with this and I was determined that my girls should be scholars if they had a tendency to be so, and if not at least educated ladies. Later I should arrange for Valerian to teach them. I had already spoken to him of this and he was delighted with the idea. He was a very good teacher. All this I thought as Honey and I exchanged whispers and finally she was quiet so I knew that she slept. Gently I removed my arm and crept back to my own room.

It was a moonlit night and still thinking of the children I went to a window and looked out. The sight of the Abbey buildings never failed to excite me and I could never become accustomed to living in such a place. I fell to thinking of the strangeness of my life and how different I had imagined it would be in the days when my father was alive. I thought of the strangeness of my husband and when I tried to dissect my feelings for him I could not do so. I had begun to suspect that I did not wish to because I was afraid of what I should find. He was a stranger to me in so many ways. Our closeness had always been a physical closeness. We could be lovers still. Was it because we were both young and felt the need of such contact? From his thoughts I often felt completely shut out; and I wondered whether he did from me—or whether he considered such a matter at all. I had disappointed him because I had not produced a son. We were always hoping that I should do so.

Then suddenly I began to think of Rupert and the tenderness he showed to me whenever we met, and I admitted that was something I missed in Bruno. Had he ever been tender?

I had felt tender toward him on those occasions when I believed that he needed me; and he did need me. In what ways? He needed to
prove
something.

I switched my thoughts away because I was fearful that I might make some discovery.

And then I saw a figure emerge into the moonlight. Bruno—again coming from the tunnels. I watched him make his way to the tower. I saw him enter. I watched and then I saw the light of lantern at his window.

It was the second time I had seen him coming from the tunnels in the night. I wondered why. It could only be because he did not wish anyone to know that he was there.

I returned to my bed. I wondered whether he would join me.

He did not. And in the morning he told me that it was necessary for him to take another trip on the Continent. This time he wanted to buy more tapestry for the walls of some of our rooms.

It occurred to me later that when I had seen him during the night on that other occasion he had almost immediately gone abroad afterward.

I wondered whether there was any significance in this. It was typical of our relationship that I did not feel it was possible to ask him.

My mother came visiting over to the Abbey, her basket full of lotions and unguents.

“My dear daughter,” she cried, “watch over the children. One of our men has come in from the city with a tale that he saw a man dying in the Chepe. He saw another on one of the barges at the Westminster stairs. The sweat is with us.”

I was alarmed for the children. I dosed them with my mother’s remedies and forbade them to leave the house, but how could I be sure that someone had not brought the dreaded sweat into the Abbey?

Honey, sensing my fear, showed a terrified delight; she clung to me as though she were afraid that I was going to be snatched from her. Catherine was scornful and tried to slip away when she could. I chided her and she was penitent but I knew she would forget the warning the very next minute.

Kate came to the rescue.

“I hear the sweat is raging in London. You are too near for my comfort. You must bring the children to Remus. Here you will be safe from the evil.”

I was delighted and prepared to set out for Remus Castle.

Widowhood suited Kate. She was rich and although so far no one had sought her hand—the death of her husband being too recent—there were one or two who were biding their time though they would not wait long, for the late King’s speedy marriage to Jane Seymour before Anne Boleyn was cold in her grave had set a fashion.

Lord Remus had never been an exacting husband and had always been ready to indulge his wife, but now Kate was the mistress and master of the house and determined to enjoy her new position.

She had gowns of velvets and silks and I had never seen such puffing and ruching of sleeves before.

“You know nothing of Court fashions,” she told me contemptuously.

Carey was now Lord Remus; he was a very important young gentleman. Someone had told him that he must take care of his mother—ironically, I thought, for no woman could care for herself as well as Kate; but Carey took it seriously. He could ride well, and was learning to shoot in the archery courtyard; he had a falcon which he was learning to use. Every time I saw him he seemed a little more grown up. He was some months younger than Honey, and a year or so older than Catherine; but he was cock of the walk in his own farmyard, I noticed.

Catherine quarreled with him incessantly; but he and Honey were good friends. I began to think that Honey showed a preference for him because he and Catherine were such enemies.

Kate was already making plans for the future. The Court, she said, had become nonexistent since the death of King Henry. How could a boy of eleven years or so hold a Court! The Protector Somerset was of course the real King and his brother Lord High Admiral Thomas Seymour was perhaps a little envious of him.

“Tom Seymour has hopes of the Lady Elizabeth,” Kate told me. “You can see where that is leading.”

“She could never be Queen of England,” I said. “There is Mary before her, and would the old King not have both considered to be illegitimate to suit his own purposes?”

“Poor Edward is a sickly child. It’s to be doubted whether he will ever beget children.”

“I daresay they will marry him off as soon as possible.”

“He is devoted to his cousin, Jane Grey. I think he would be delighted to take her.”

“Which would be a satisfactory match since she herself has some pretensions to the throne.”

“Have you thought that it could be a Protestant match, Damask, and what that could mean to the country? I would rather see someone gay on the throne. Jane is a prim little thing, so I have heard. Rather like you were, I imagine. So good with her Latin and Greek. Quite the little scholar.”

Days had always passed cozily at Remus and now it had become a kind of oasis for me. There were no problems and I realized how relieved I was to leave the Abbey for a while.

Kate, restless because she was confined to the house in supposed mourning for her husband, planning the entertainments she would give at the Castle when that period was over, parading in her velvet gowns with only me and the occasional visitor to admire her, found the best method of passing the time in talking to me.

She enjoyed going over the past and she remembered more incidents from our childhood than I had believed she would. I remembered, yes, but then I was more introspective than she. So it was surprising to discover that these little incidents which had appeared too insignificant to mean much to her had somehow remained stored in her mind.

She frankly admitted that she had always intended to get what she could from life.

“And you must concede, Damask, that I have got a great deal. Life has been kinder to me than to you, yet you have been a better woman than I. You loved your father and you suffered deeply when you lost him. You thought I did not know how deeply but I did, Damask, and while I was sad for you I thought how foolish it was to love one person so much that to lose him can be such a tragedy. I would never love like that…except myself of course.”

“There is great joy in loving, too, Kate,” I said. “I remember so many happy times with my father. I would not have missed those for anything in the world.”

“The more happiness you had the greater was your grief. People like you pay for the happiness they get.”

“But not you?”

“I am too clever for that,” retorted Kate. “I am sufficient for myself. I make myself dependent on no one.”

“Have you never loved?”

“In my fashion. I am fond of you. I am fond of Carey and young Colas. You are my family and I am happy to have you round me. But this complete and utter devotion—it is not for me.”

We talked of Bruno and what he had done at the Abbey, and what he proposed doing.

“Bruno is a fanatic,” she said. “He is the sort of man who will end up at the stake.”

“Don’t say that, Kate,” I said quickly.

“Why? You know it to be true. He is the strangest man I have ever known. Sometimes he almost made me believe that he was indeed sent from heaven for some purpose. Did you feel that, Damask?”

“I am not sure. I may have felt it.”

“But no longer do?”

I was silent.

“Ah,” she accused. “I see you do not. But he believes it, Damask. He must believe it.”

“Why must he? If it were proved….”

“He must. He dare not do otherwise. I know your husband well, Damask.”

“So you have told me before.”

“I understand him as you cannot. We are of a kind in a way. You are too normal, Damask. I know you well.”

“You always did believe you knew everything.”

“Not everything but a great deal. How he must have suffered when Keziah and the monk betrayed their secret. I pitied him then because I understood him so well.”

“We never speak of it,” I said.

“No. You dare not. Don’t speak of it. You see what he is trying to do, Damask. To prove himself. I think I might be the same. But I do not have to prove myself. I am beautiful, desirable. You see how I took Remus. I would take any man I wanted. I know I can; they know it; there is no need to prove it. But Bruno has to prove to himself that he is superhuman. That is what he is doing. But how is he doing it? How is it possible for one who had nothing…who was turned from his secluded life into the world, to become so wealthy that he can do all that Bruno is doing now? I doubt Remus could have afforded such a vast expenditure.”

“It worries me at times.”

“I doubt it not.”

“Somehow it has all become fantastic…like a dream. Before I married Bruno there was a reason for everything. Now I often feel as though I am groping in the dark.”

“I have a feeling, Damask, that you will grope for a long time and that perhaps it is better so. The darkness is a protection. Who knows what you might see in the blinding light of truth.”

“I would always wish for the truth.”

“Mayhap not if you knew it.”

There were many such conversations with Kate, and I often came from them with the notion that she knew something and was holding it back. These talks stimulated me as they did her. I too liked to watch the children at their games. I devised entertainments for them; and I gave a party for them and some children of the neighborhood. We danced country dances and played guessing games and it was the best of good fun.

Kate never joined in but she sometimes liked to watch.

She called me the eternal mother.

“I’m never going to be able to placate Carey,” she said, “when you and the girls depart.”

My mother wrote that the twins were well and the sweat was abating; but I still stayed on.

Kate invited guests to Remus and those were exciting days when we watched from the keep while they rode under the portcullis and into the courtyard.

There would be interesting conversation at dinner and we learned that the Queen Dowager, Katharine Parr, had married Thomas Seymour, with whom she had long been in love.

Kate was amused. “Of course he wanted the Princess Elizabeth but she was too dangerous so he took Queen Katharine instead. A King’s widow instead of a Princess who thinks she might have a claim to the throne! Anne Boleyn’s daughter.” She was pensive, thinking of the glittering, elegant woman whom she had so admired.

Kate giggled over the scandals of the Dower House where the Queen and Seymour lived, for the young Elizabeth was under the Queen’s care and there were rumors of a far from innocent relationship between the Princess and Seymour.

On the day when the Queen Dowager died in childbed I returned to the Abbey.

There followed what I thought of afterward as the quiet years. There were changes but they were so gradual that I scarcely noticed them. There were many workers on the Abbey estate now and always great activity on the farm for more workers had joined us. More building had been done. There had even been extensions to our mansion. Bruno never seemed to be satisfied with it. Tapestries adorned many of our rooms. Now and then Bruno made trips abroad and often returned with treasures.

Honey was now eleven and she had lost none of her beauty. Catherine, more than two years younger, was more vivacious and independent. They were both bright and intelligent children and I was proud of them. Valerian had now taken over the control of their studies and each day they took lessons in the scriptorium. It was a disappointment to me that I had no other child. My mother, who imagined that she was learned in such things, said that perhaps I desired one too passionately. She was always concocting potions for me but nothing happened. Sometimes I had the notion that Mother Salter had indeed put a curse on me because she had feared I did not care sufficiently for Honey.

I often visited Kate and she came now and then to the Abbey. She had not married although she had been betrothed twice, but had decided against marriage before the ceremony was performed. She told me that she liked her freedom and since she was rich she had no need to marry for what she called the usual reasons.

The children now looked forward to their reunions. Catherine and Carey quarreled a good deal. Honey was aloof; she always seemed much older than Carey. Little Colas was always ignored by the others and only allowed to play with them if he took the minor parts in games—the usual fate of the youngest.