The Miracle at St. Bruno's (12 page)

When Clement and Eugene were together they would whisper about the old days; and whenever Ambrose’s name was mentioned they would hastily cross themselves. I don’t know what shocked them more—the knowledge of his sin in first begetting a child and the placing it in the crib to make a miracle, or the violent manner of his death.

As for the inhabitants of the house, we all seemed to be cowering under a blow that had momentarily stunned us. My father wore an air of resignation, almost of waiting. I knew he spent long hours on his knees in prayer. He would go into our little chapel in the west wing of the house and stay there for hours. It was as though he were preparing himself for an ordeal. My mother worked feverishly on her gardens and there was often a puzzled look on her usually placid face. She seemed to be relying more and more on Simon who, whenever he had the leisure, would carry her baskets for her and help her plant out her seedlings. Even Kate was subdued. She had craved excitement but not of the kind we had lately suffered. Rupert seemed least affected. Calmly and quietly he went about his work of tending the land as though nothing had happened.

Bruno concerned me most. His eyes would blaze with anger if Kate or I suggested that it was Brother Ambrose who had placed him in the crib. He told us fiercely that many lies had been told and one day he would prove it.

Kate recovered more quickly from the shock of events than I did, and as Bruno had come to the house she constantly sought him out. Sometimes the three of us were together as we had been in the Abbey grounds in the old days and then it was almost as it had been long ago when there had been an Abbey and we had trespassed there.

Kate teased him. “If he was divine why did he not call down the fury of the heavens on Cromwell’s men?” she wanted to know.

His eyes would blaze with fury but because she was Kate she could inspire some feeling in him which I was sure he had for no one else.

The servingwoman and the monk lied, he insisted.

And as I said, I believed him when I was with him. Rupert was twenty years old now. He should have been managing his own lands but it turned out that he had none to manage. When his parents had died their possessions had been sold to pay their debts and there was very little left. This my father had set aside for Rupert when he was of age, but he had never told Kate or Rupert the true state of affairs as he had not wished them to think they were living on charity.

Rupert told me this himself when he came on me one day in the nuttery. I was seated in my favorite spot under a filbert tree reading and he came and sprawled beside me. He picked up a nut and idly threw it from him and then he started to talk to me and I realized that I was receiving a proposal of marriage.

“My uncle is the best man alive,” he began; and he had certainly chosen the best opening to please me. I agreed fervently.

“Sometimes,” I said, “I fear that he is too good.”

Could anyone be too good? Rupert wondered; and I answered, yes, because then they endangered themselves for the sake of others. My father had taken in the monks and that might be considered an unwise thing to do. There was Sir Thomas. Had he forgotten him? He was a man who was too good and what had happened to him? He had lost his head and his once happy household was no more.

“Life is cruel sometimes, Damask,” said Rupert. “And then it is good to have someone to stand beside you.”

I agreed.

“I had thought,” he went on, “that one day I should leave here to manage my own estate and I have learned that I have no estate. Your father did not wish us to know that we were paupers so he let us believe that our lands had not been seized by our parents’ creditors when they died. So, I have nothing, Damask.”

“But you have us. This is your home.”

“As I hope it will always be.”

“My father says that the land has never been tended as you tend it. The men work for you as they work for no one else.”

“I have a feeling for the land, Damask, this land. I know your father hopes I will stay here forever.”

“And will you?”

“It depends.”

“On what?” I asked.

“On you perhaps. This will be yours one day…yours and your husband’s. When that day comes you would not want me here.”

“Nonsense, Rupert. I’d always want you here…you and Kate. You are as my brother and sister.”

“Kate will marry, doubtless.”

“You too, Rupert. And you will bring your wife here. Why, the house is big enough and we can always make it bigger. We have so much land. You are looking sad.”

“This has become as my home,” he said. “I love the land. I love the animals. Your father is as my own.”

“And I am as much a sister to you as Kate is. Oh, I couldn’t bear for all this to be broken up…as the Abbey has been.”

He picked up another nut and threw it. He said: “I believe your father hopes that you and I will marry.”

I said sharply: “That is not something that can be done because it would be comfortable and convenient to do it.”

“Oh, no, no,” said Rupert quickly.

I felt a little hurt. It was in a way a proposal, my first, and it had been offered to me as a convenient arrangement for the disposal of my father’s lands.

I murmured that I had a Latin exercise to complete and Rupert, flushing a little, rose to his feet and went away.

I thought of marriage with Rupert and children growing up in this house. I would like a large family; I flushed uneasily, because the father I visualized for them was not Rupert.

I went up to my room. I sat on the window seat looking out through the latticed window. I saw Kate and Bruno walking together. They were talking earnestly. I felt sad because Bruno never talked to me in that earnest manner. In fact he talked to no one like that—but Kate.

When Keziah had heard that Ambrose was hanged at the Abbey’s Gate she had gone to the gibbet and stood there gazing at him. It was difficult to get her away. One of her fellow servants had brought her home but she was back again and the first night that he hung there she kept her vigil at the gibbet.

On the second day Jennet, one of our housemaids, brought her back and told me that Keziah seemed to be possessed and was acting in an unusual way. I went to her and found her in a strange state. I put her to bed and told her she was to stay there. She remained there for a week. The weals on her thighs had become inflamed and as I couldn’t think how to heal them I went to Mother Salter in the woods and asked her advice. She was pleased that I was looking after Keziah and gave me some lotions to put on the sore places and a concoction of herbs for Keziah to drink.

I nursed Keziah myself. It was something for me to do during that strange time. I think part of her trouble was that she could not face people. Ambrose was dead and she stood alone and as the perpetrator of that wicked hoax she was afraid to face the world.

She used to ramble in her talk sometimes as I sat by her bed. There was a great deal about Ambrose and the manner in which she had tempted him; she blamed herself; she was the wicked one.

“Oh, Damask,” she said, “don’t think too bad of me. It were as natural to me as breathing and there was no holding back. ’Tis like that with some of us…though ’twill not be with you maybe…nor with Mistress Kate. The men should beware of Mistress Kate…all fire on top and ice beneath…and them’s the dangerous ones. And you, Mistress Damask, you’ll be a good and faithful wife, I promise you, which is the best thing to be.”

Then she talked about the boy. “He never looks at me, Damask…or when he does it’s to despise me. He’ll never forgive me for being his mother. He’s dreamed dreams, that boy. He believed he was sent from Heaven. A Holy Child, he thought, and then he finds he’s the result of a win between a wanton servant wench and a monk who broke his vows.”

I begged her to be at peace. The past was over; she must start afresh.

“Mercy me,” she said with a return of her old smile. “You talk like your father, Mistress Damask.”

“There’s no one I would rather talk like,” I assured her.

I was a comfort to her strangely enough; and it was I who dressed her wounds with the ointments her grandmother had given me; I assigned her duties to another of the maids that she might rest in solitude until she could face the world.

She used to sit at her window and watch for a glimpse of Bruno. I believe he knew that she watched for him; but he never glanced up at her window.

Once I said to him: “Keziah watches for you. If you would look at her window and smile it would do her so much good.”

He looked at me coldly. “She is a wicked woman,” he said.

“She is your mother,” I reminded him.

“I don’t believe it.”

His mouth was grim; his eyes cold. I saw then that he forced himself not to believe this. He dared not believe it. He had lived so long with the notion that he was apart from us all that it was more than he could endure to accept it as otherwise.

I said softly: “One must face the truth, Bruno.”

“The truth! Is that what you call the words uttered by a wicked monk and a lecherous serving girl?”

I did not tell him that I had heard Ambrose talking to him a few moments before he had murdered Rolf Weaver.

“It’s lies!” said Bruno almost hysterically. “Lies, lies, all lies.”

In a way, I thought, he is like Keziah. She cannot face the world and he cannot face the truth.

How quickly one becomes accustomed to change. It was but a month since the last packhorse laden with Abbey treasure had departed and there we were adjusted to our new way of life.

The trees were in full leaf; the bracken plentiful; the shrubs green and bushy; the roses bloomed that year as never before and my mother was out in the garden through most of the day. Bruno had helped her make an herb garden because Ambrose had passed on his knowledge in this field. My mother was quite animated by this prospect and Bruno worked with her in a silence of which she did not seem to be aware.

Already weeds had started to grow in the Abbey gardens; no one interfered; they were unsure how such action would be regarded. Each day we had expected something to be done, but St. Bruno’s seemed to have been forgotten. At the end of each day several beggars would be at our gates and a bench with forms had been set up in the garden and on my father’s orders any beggar received a quart of beer and as many spice cakes as he could eat.

I sat one day in my mother’s rose garden—a delightful spot with a wall surrounding it and reached through a wrought-iron gate and I said to myself: “It won’t go on like this. This is a lull. Something will happen soon. Keziah could not stay in her bedroom; she would have to bestir herself. My father would return to a more normal life and not spend so much time in solitude and prayer. Someone would take over the Abbey. I had heard that the King made gifts of Abbey lands to those who had earned his favors. Oh, yes, it had to change.”

And while I was brooding on these matters the gate clicked and Bruno and Kate came into the garden. I noticed that their fingers were interlaced. They were talking earnestly. Then they saw me.

“Here’s Damask,” said Kate unnecessarily. I noticed that her eyes were brilliant and her expression soft; and I was sad because with Kate, Bruno could be different from the way he could be with anyone else. I felt shut out of a magic circle of which I so longed to be a part.

“The roses are more beautiful this year,” I said.

I sensed that they wanted to go away or for me to go; but I stood my ground.

“Come and sit down,” I said. “It is very pleasant here.”

To my surprise they obeyed me, and we sat Bruno between us.

I said, “This reminds me of the old days in the Abbey grounds.”

“It is not a bit like that,” retorted Kate. “This is my aunt’s rose garden, not Abbey land.”

“I meant the three of us together.”

“It’s a long time ago,” said Bruno.

I wanted to recapture the days when we were a trio of which I was a definite part.

I went on: “I shall never forget the day we went into the Abbey…the three of us and you showed us the jeweled Madonna.”

A faint color had come into Bruno’s cheeks. Kate was unusually silent. I guessed that they were, as I was, thinking of the moment when the great iron-studded door had opened and its creak had sounded loud enough to awaken the dead. I could smell the dampness, which had seemed to rise from those great flagged stones; I could feel the silence.

I said: “I’ve often wondered what happened to the jeweled Madonna. Those men must have taken her away and given her and all her jewels to the King.”

“They did not take her,” said Bruno. “There was a miracle.”

We both turned to him and I knew that this was the first time he had spoken of the jeweled Madonna even to Kate.

“What happened?” asked Kate.

“When they went into the sacred chapel the Madonna was not there.”

“Then where was she?” asked Kate.

“No one knew. She had disappeared. It was said she had gone back to heaven rather than let the robbers get her.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Kate. “Someone hid her away before the men could get her.”

“It was a miracle,” replied Bruno.

“Miracles!” cried Kate. “I don’t believe in miracles anymore.”

Bruno had stood up, his face flushed and angry. Kate caught his hand but he flung her aside; and then he ran out of the rose garden. Kate ran after him.

“Bruno!” I heard her call imperiously. “Come back to me.”

And I was left sitting there, with the realization that I could never be as close to him as Kate was and feeling lonely and sad because of it.

While I sat in the rose garden Simon Caseman came in. I thought he was looking for my mother and I told him I thought she was in the herb garden.

“But it was you I came to see, Mistress Damask,” he said; and he sat beside me. He studied me so intently that I felt embarrassed under his gaze, especially as the recent encounter with Bruno and Kate had upset me. He went on: “Why, you are growing into a beauty.”

“I do not believe that to be true.”

“And modest withal.”

“Not modest,” I said. “If I thought I were a beauty I should not hesitate to admit it, for beauty is not a thing to take credit for since it is bestowed and not earned.”