The Miracle at St. Bruno's (2 page)

I did not understand the words. I did know what tragedy was and silently puzzled over what he had said. But I did remember it later and I thought how prophetic were his words that day by the river.

Then he diverted my attention. “Look how pretty the loosestrife is! Shall we gather some for your mother?”

“Oh, yes,” I cried. For I loved gathering flowers and my mother was always so pleased with what I found for her; so as I made a nosegay of purple loosestrife with the flowers we called cream-and-codlings I forgot the sadness the sight of the King and the Cardinal in the royal barge together had wrought in my father.

That had been a terrible summer. News came to us that the plague was raging through Europe and that thousands had died in France and Germany.

The heat was terrible and the fragrance of the flowers of the garden was overlaid by the stench that came off the river.

I heard what was happening from Keziah. I had discovered that I could learn far more from her than from my parents, who were always cautious in my hearing and a little afraid, while they were immensely proud, of my precocity.

She had been along to the Chepe and found that several of the shops were boarded up because their owners had fallen victim to the sweating sickness.

“The dreaded sweat.” she called it and rolled her eyes upward when she spoke of it. It carried off people in the thousands.

Keziah went to the woods to see Mother Salter whom everyone was afraid of offending; at the same time she was said to have cures for every kind of ailment. Keziah was on very good terms with her. She would proudly toss her thick fair curly hair, her eyes would crinkle with merriment and she would smile knowingly when she talked of Mother Salter. “She’s my old Granny,” she told me once in sudden confidence.

“Then are you a witch, Kezzie?” I asked.

“There’s some that have called me so, little ’un.” Then she made claws of her hands and prowled toward me. “So you’d better be a good girl or I’ll be after you.” I squealed with the delight Keziah could arouse in me and pretended to be afraid. With her laughter, sometimes sly, sometimes warm and loving, Keziah was for me the most exciting person in the household. She it was who first told me of the miracle and one day when we were out walking she said that if I were a good girl she might be able to show me the Child.

We had come to that wall where our lands joined those of the Abbey. Keziah hoisted me up. “Sit still,” she commanded. “Don’t dare move.” Then she climbed up beside me.

“This is his favorite place,” she said. “You may well see him today.”

She was right. I did. He came across the grass and looked straight up at us perched on the wall.

I was struck by his beauty although I did not realize it then; all I knew was that I wanted to go on looking at him. His face was pale; his eyes the most startling dark blue I had ever seen; and his fair hair curled about his head. He was taller than I and even at that age there was an air of superiority about him which immediately overawed me.

“He don’t look holy,” whispered Keziah, “but he’s too young for it to show.”

“Who are you?” he asked, giving me a cold direct stare.

“Damask Farland,” I said. “I live at the big house.”

“You should not be here,” answered the Child.

“Now, darling, we’ve a right to be here,” replied Keziah.

“This is Abbey land,” retorted the boy.

Keziah chuckled. “Not where we are. We’re on the wall.”

The boy picked up a stone and looked about him as though to see if he would be observed throwing it at us.

“Oh, that’s wicked,” cried Keziah. “You wouldn’t think he was holy, would you? He is though. Only holiness don’t show till they get older. Some of the saints have been very naughty boys. Do you know that, Dammy? It’s in some of the stories. They get their halos later on.”

“But this one was
born
holy, Keziah,” I whispered.

“
You
are wicked,” cried the boy; and at that moment one of the monks came walking across the grass.

“Bruno,” called the monk; and then he saw us on the wall.

Keziah smiled at him rather strangely, I thought, because after all he was a monk, and I knew by his robes that he was not one of the lay brothers who left the Abbey and mingled with the world.

“What are you doing here?” he cried; and I thought Keziah would jump down, lift me down and run, for he was clearly very shocked to see us.

“I’m looking at the Child,” said Keziah. “He’s a bonny sight.”

The monk appeared to be distressed by our wickedness.

“It’s only me and my little ’un,” said Keziah in that comfortable easy way which made everything less serious than others were trying to make it out to be. “He was going to throw a stone at us.”

“That was wrong, Bruno,” said the monk.

The boy lifted his head and said: “They shouldn’t be here, Brother Ambrose.”

“But you must not throw stones. You know that Brother Valerian teaches you to love everybody.”

“Not sinners,” said the Child.

I felt very wicked then. I was a sinner. He had said so and he was the Holy Child.

I thought of Jesus who had been in His crib on Christmas Day and how different He must have been. He was humble, my mother told me, and tried to help sinners. I could not believe that He would ever have wanted to throw stones at them.

“You’re looking well, Brother Ambrose,” said Keziah. She might have been talking to Tom Skillen, one of our gardeners to whom she did talk very often. There was a little trill at the end of her sentence which was not quite a laugh but served the same purpose since it betrayed her refusal to admit anything was very serious in any situation.

The Child was watching us intently, but strangely enough I found my attention becoming fixed on Keziah and the monk. The Child might become a prophet, I had heard, but at this time he was simply a
child
, though an unusual one, and I accepted the fact that he had been found in the Christmas crib as I accepted the stories of witches and fairies which Keziah told me; but grown-up people interested me because they often seemed to be hiding something from me and to discover what was a kind of challenge which I could not resist meeting.

We saw the lay brothers now and then in the lanes, but not the monks who lived the enclosed life; and I had heard that in the last years when the fame of St. Bruno’s had spread the number of lay brothers had increased. Sometimes they went into the city because there were the products of the Abbey to be disposed of and business to discuss; but they always went into the world outside the Abbey in twos. Wealthy parents sent their sons to the Abbey to be educated by the monks; men seeking work often found it in the Abbey farm, mill or bake and brew houses. There was a great deal of activity, for not only was there the monastic community but mendicants, and poor travelers would always be given a meal and a night’s shelter for it was a rule that none who lacked these should be turned away.

But although I had seen the brothers in pairs walking along the lanes, usually silent, their eyes averted from worldly sights, I had never before seen a monk and a woman together. I did not know then what kind of woman Keziah was, but in spite of my youth I was very curious on this occasion and surprised by the challenging and the jocular disrespect which Keziah seemed to show toward Brother Ambrose. I could not understand why he did not reprove her.

All he did say was: “You should not look on what you are not meant to see.”

Then he took the Child firmly by the hand and led him away. I hoped the boy would look around but he did not.

When they had gone Keziah jumped down and lifted me off the wall.

I chattered excitedly about our adventure.

“His name’s Bruno.”

“Yes, after the Abbey.”

“How did they know that was his name?”

“They gave it to him, and right and proper it is.”

“Is he Saint Bruno?”

“Not yet—that’s to come.”

“I don’t think he liked us.”

Keziah did not answer. She seemed to be thinking of something else.

As we were about to enter the house she said: “That was our adventure, wasn’t it? Our secret, eh, Dammy? We won’t tell anyone, will we?”

“Why not?”

“Oh, better not. Promise.”

I promised.

Sometimes John and James, two of the lay brothers, came to see my father, who told me that once, long ago, he had lived at St. Bruno’s Abbey.

“I thought I would be a monk and I lived there for two years. After that I came out into the world.”

“You would have made a better monk than Brothers John and James.”

“You should not say that, my love.”

“But you have said I must say what is true. Brother John is old and he wheezes, which Keziah says means his chest is bad. He needs some herbs from Mother Salter. And Brother James always looks so cross. Why did you not stay a monk?”

“Because the world called me. I wanted a home and a wife and a little girl.”

“Like me!” I cried triumphantly. It seemed a good enough reason for leaving the Abbey. “Monks can’t have little girls,” I went on: “But they have the Child.”

“Ah, but his coming was a miracle.”

Later I thought how sad it was for my father for I came to believe he craved for the monastic life of solitude, study and contemplation. He had wanted a large family—stalwart sons and beautiful daughters. And all those years he had longed for a child and had been denied his wish—until I came.

I always liked to be near when Brothers John and James called at our house. In their fusty robes they repelled while they fascinated me. Sometimes the sight of James’s sad face and John’s pale one made a lump come into my throat, and when I heard them call my father Brother, I was strangely moved.

One day I had been playing with the dogs in the garden and was tired suddenly so I climbed onto my father’s knee and in the quick way that children do I fell asleep.

When I awoke Brothers John and James were in the garden sitting on the bench beside my father talking to him, so I just lay still with my eyes closed, listening. They were talking about the Abbey.

“Sometimes I wonder, William,” said Brother John to my father. “The Abbey has changed very much since the miracle. It is comforting to talk and we can talk to you, can we not, James, as to no other outside the Abbey walls?”

“That is true,” said James.

“It was a sad day,” went on Brother John, “when you made up your mind to leave us. But mayhap you were wise. You have this life…. Has it brought you the peace you wanted? You have a good wife. You have your child.”

“I am content if everything can remain as it is at this time.”

“Nothing remains static, William.”

“And times are changing,” said my father sadly. “I like not the manner of their change.”

“The King is fierce in his desires. He will have his pleasure no matter at what price. And the Queen must suffer for the sake of her who comes from Hever to disrupt our peace.”

“And what of her, John? How long will she keep her hold on his heart and his senses?”

They were all silent for a while.

Then Brother John said, “One would have thought we should have become spiritual with the coming of the Child. It is quite different. I remember a day…a June day some six months before he came. The heat was great and I came out into the gardens hoping to catch a cool breeze from the river. I was uneasy, William. We were very poor. The year before our harvest had been ruined. We were forced to buy our corn. There had been sickness among us; we were not paying our way. It seemed that St. Bruno’s for the first time in two hundred years would fall into decline. We would stay here and starve. And in the gardens that day I said to myself, ‘Only a miracle can save us.’ I am not sure whether I prayed for a miracle. I believe I willed a miracle to happen. I did not ask in humility as one does in prayer. I did not say, ‘Holy Mother, if it is thy will that St. Bruno’s be saved, save us.’ I was angry within me, in no mood for prayer. It seems to me now that my spirit was bold and arrogant. I demanded a miracle. And afterward when it came I remembered that day.”

“But whatever it was your words were heeded. In a few years the Abbey has become rich. You have no fear now that Bruno will fall into decay. Never in the Abbey’s history can it have been so prosperous.”

“It’s true and yet I wonder. We have changed, William. We have become worldly, have we not, Brother James?”

James grunted agreement.

“You do great good to the community,” my father reminded them. “You are leading useful lives. Perhaps it is more commendable to help one’s fellow men than to shut oneself away in meditation and prayer.”

“I had thought so. But the change is marked. The Child obsesses everyone.”

“I can understand that,” said my father, putting his lips on my hair. I nestled closer and then remembered that I did not want them to know that I was listening. I did not understand a great deal of what they said, but I enjoyed the rise and fall of their voices and now and then I got a glimmer of light.

“They vie with each other to please the boy. Brother Arnold is jealous of Brother Clement because the boy is more often in the bakehouse than in the brewhouse; he accuses him of bribing the Child with cake. The rule of silence is scarcely ever observed. I hear them whispering together and believe it is about the boy. They play games with him. It seems strange behavior for men dedicated to the monastic life.”

“It is a strange situation—monks with a child to bring up!”

“Perhaps we should have put him out with some woman to care for him. Mayhap your good wife could have taken him and brought him up here.”

I stopped myself protesting in time. I did not want the boy here. This was my home—I was the center of attraction. If he came people would take more notice of him than of me.

“But of a surety he was meant to remain at the Abbey,” said my father. “That was where he was sent.”

“You speak truth. But we can talk to you of our misgivings. There is in the Abbey a restiveness which was not there before. We have gained in worldly goods but we have lost our peace. Clement and Arnold, as I have said, share this rivalry. Brother Ambrose is restive. He speaks of this to James. It seems as though he cannot resist this indulgence. He says that the Devil is constantly at his elbow and his flesh overpowers his spirit….He mortifies the flesh but it is of no avail. He breaks the rule of silence constantly. Sometimes I think he should go out into the world. He finds solace in the Child, who loves Brother Ambrose as he loves no other.”