The Miracle at St. Bruno's (24 page)

I was torn by my doubts. My mother and Simon were kind to me. She gave me potions and ordered that the foods I had once enjoyed should be prepared for me. He was tolerant and never forced his company on me; sometimes I found his eyes on me and as mine met his he would assume a tender expression, as though he was now regarding me as a cherished daughter.

I thought, I cannot endure this.

Their wedding was to be a quiet one, for it was such a short time since my father’s death; but the entire household was now accepting Simon Caseman as the master.

I could not rouse myself. I thought, I cannot continue in this way. Soon I must make a decision. But at this time I was too stunned to do anything but let time wash over me while I lay listless believing that in due course my grief would be subdued and some notion would come to me as to how I could make something of my life.

At times I thought of going to Kate. Yet I did not wish to throw myself on the bounty of Lord Remus. I did know that since my father’s arraignment Kate’s husband was made a little uneasy by my presence. Kate however would imperiously overrule that if I had wished to go. There was another thing. Every evening at dusk I went through the ivy-covered door into the Abbey burial ground and visited my father’s grave. The rosemary I had planted was growing well. I often thought how frightened I once would have been to wend my way at dusk past the Abbey walls—empty and ghostly in the evening shadows—and to go among the graves of long-dead monks. But because his dear head was there, I knew no fear, for a belief had grown up within me that the dead protect those whom they especially loved and I certainly felt that my father was protecting me.

I lived for my visits to his grave; and when I went to the Abbey I would remember those days when Kate and I had crept through the secret door to be with Bruno. He was never far from my thoughts and I longed to see him again.

I pondered on my feeling for Bruno. It took my mind off my present uneasy situation. I compared the emotion he could rouse in me with my love for my father. I had known my father as well, I think, as it is possible for one person to know another. I was aware of his beliefs, for he had talked to me so openly; I knew before he told me what his opinions would be on almost any problem. Losing him was like losing a part of myself. But Bruno? What did I know of Bruno? Very little. I had never understood him. Bruno seemed to have built a wall about himself. One could never be sure of what he was thinking. I suppose that having for years believed himself to be a superhuman being who had been sent into the world for some special purpose, to have been certain that he was holy, must surely have had an effect on him. Then the confession of Keziah and Ambrose and all the violence which attended it, the dissolution of St. Bruno’s Abbey…what would that have done to him? He had given little indication except that he rejected the confession of those who claimed to be his parents. There was the same aloofness about him. He would never betray himself completely to anyone. Sometimes he had seemed as though he did not belong to this world, yet his arrogance, his frustrated anger were essentially worldly. I remembered Brother John’s explaining how the Child had been caught stealing cakes from the kitchen and lying when accused.

How lost and bewildered I was during those weeks!

Rupert was bewildered too. He did not know what the future held for him. He had loved the land. I had seen him come in from my father’s fields as animated as he had ever been, because they had succeeded in gathering in the harvest before the storms came. The workers were fond of him. He was a good master to them; and he understood everything that he asked them to do. He would pick up a flail and thresh corn in the barn with the most humble of his workmen; I had seen him winnowing, shaking the flat fan-shaped basket in the wind; most of all I remembered his going out in the snow at lambing time to rescue young lambs and how he himself would nurse them and feed them. Sowing and reaping, growing the foods which supplied the household and selling the surplus, this had been Rupert’s occupation and he could imagine no other.

Once when I was coming back from visiting the Abbey burial grounds I heard a voice call me. It was Rupert’s.

“Damask,” he cried, catching up with me, “you should not be out at this hour.”

“I will go out when I will,” I replied impatiently.

“It is unsafe, Damask. There are robbers about.”

“I have no fear of them.”

“But it is dangerous.”

I turned impatiently away and he said: “Damask, don’t go yet. I would like to talk to you.”

“Then talk,” I said.

“I think often of the future. What will become of us all?”

“For that we must needs wait and see.”

“There will be changes. We have a new master of the household now.”

“He has made little changes so far, but doubtless that will come, after the marriage.”

“Then what, Damask? I have worked for your father for many years. He had promised me that part of the lands which I cultivated should one day be mine. He hoped of course that you and I would marry.” He was a little wistful.

I said quickly: “He realized that marriages can only be made by two people—the two who are to become husband and wife. He would have been the first to say that they must both agree wholeheartedly.”

“And you do not feel that you could marry me?”

“I could not think of marriage. It is far from my mind.”

“I will tell you something. Lord Remus owns several estates and Kate swears that she will insist on his giving me a place of my own.”

“Then you have no need to be anxious about your future.”

“If you shared it, we could go from here together.” I shook my head. He sighed and insisted: “Your father wished it.”

“He only wished for my happiness,” I said.

“I would make you as happy as it is possible for you to be now that you have lost him. I would live solely for you. I would care for you, cherish you.”

“I know it,” I said.

“Marry me, Damask. Let us go from here. You would be safer than you are now, because those who are related to a man who has been accused of treason are in constant danger. One careless word…even a look could incriminate you. As my wife, you could lose your identity as your father’s daughter.”

I turned on him angrily. “Do you think I want that? I am more proud of it than anything that has ever happened to me.”

I turned and ran from him up to my room. I shut myself in and I wept. My tears were mingled sorrow and anger. Would I never get over my loss? And how dared Rupert suggest that I would ever wish to hide the fact that I was my father’s daughter. I considered Rupert then. He was good; he was kind; he had meant no harm. I went to my window and looked out toward the Abbey. I could just make out the gray tower. I thought of the burial ground—how ghostly it would look now with the faint moonlight shining on the tombstones above the graves of long-dead monks.

There was talk now that the Abbey was haunted. One of the farm workers and his wife returning home at dusk declared they had seen a monk emerge from the Abbey wall. The monk had appeared to pass through the stones; he had stood for a while, and they had been so frightened that they had run.

It was natural, was the verdict. How many of the monks had died because of what had happened? Think of those two who had hung in chains at the Abbey’s Gate. There was he who had sought to escape to London with some of the Abbey treasures and had been caught and hanged; there was Brother Ambrose who had murdered Rolf Weaver. There was the Abbot who had died of a broken heart. Wasn’t it natural that such men should be unable to rest in their graves and come back to haunt the place where they had lived and suffered?

People were afraid to go near the Abbey after dark. Even in daylight they liked to have a companion.

Strangely enough this had no effect on me. I could not feel afraid and I continued to visit my father’s grave.

My mother had become Simon Caseman’s wife. Now that the wedding was over I was aware of a change creeping over the household. It was subtle at first but none the less there. The servants were made aware of a different rule in the house. Simon was not going to be the lenient master my father had been. He walked with a certain swagger; the servants must always call him Master. The men must never forget to touch their forelocks and the maids must make sure they curtsied almost to the ground. He watched the household accounts with care. He dismissed a few of the servants as being unnecessary. Beggars would no longer be sure of food and wine; he ordered that travelers should not be encouraged to regard us as a kind of hostelry. Not that we had had many such since my father’s death; knowing that he had been arraigned and condemned, people were afraid to come near us. But now that there was a new master they might come, so Simon Caseman gave the order that they were not to be encouraged.

My mother had become a little nervous, I noticed. She was very eager to please him. She agreed with everything he said; and what disgusted me was that she had a kind of adoration for him and this, when I considered her lack of appreciation of my father, angered me.

I was certainly beginning to feel things more strongly which was, I suppose, a sign that I was growing away from my grief.

One day I discovered lettering on the wrought-iron gates of the house. This was
CASEMAN’S COURT.
Before the house had had no name. It was simply known as Lawyer Farland’s House. The resentment when I saw those letters affected me like a physical pain.

He was the master. He wanted us all to know that. He wanted us all to know that we lived on his bounty. My mother must present her household accounts to him—something she had never done to my father. She was an excellent and thrifty housewife but I noticed that she was always nervous on Fridays, the day she must produce her accounts.

Rupert’s position had changed. He was no longer treated like a member of the family. He was a workman, though a superior one. He was not allowed to make his own decisions.

I alone was not subjected to this treatment. If I wished not to join them for meals I did not and I was not called to order for this. I was not expected to do anything in the house. I often found his eyes fixed on me in a strange kind of way. I was suspicious of him, disliking him. I was constantly looking for the fox’s mask on his face; it seemed to have become more apparent; his eyes were sharper, more tawny. I was very wary of him and I hated him and the changes he was making in our house, for these very changes reminded me more and more of the old days and my dear father.

Less than two months after the marriage my mother told me that she was going to have a child. I was horrified, although I suppose it was natural enough. She was thirty-six years of age, young enough to bear a child; but the fact that she should so soon be fruitful seemed to me an insult to my father and I was disgusted. How she had changed. She seemed to me simpering and foolish, pretending to be as a young wife might have been with her first child.

Simon Caseman was delighted. He seemed to regard it as a personal triumph. He knew that my father had longed for a family and he had only been able to get one girl who lived; whereas he, married but two months, had already given evidence of his virility.

I knew now that I wanted to go away and I decided I would write to Kate and ask if I might stay with her for a while.

Simon cornered me one day in the garden and he said: “Why, Damask, I see so little of you. I might think that you deliberately avoid me.”

“You might well think it,” I said.

“Have I offended you in some way?”

“In many ways,” I replied.

“I am sorry.”

“You appear to be far from that.”

“Damask, we must accept circumstances, you know, even when they go against us. You know that I have always been fond of you.”

“I know that you offered me marriage.”

“And you are a little hurt that I married another.”

“Not on my own account—only on that other’s.”

“She seems well content.”

“She is perhaps easily content.”

“I’ll venture to say that she was never more content than now.”

“You venture too far.”

“It does me good to speak to you.”

“I don’t reap a like benefit,” I retorted.

“I am sorry that I have taken that which should be yours.”

“You lie, sir. You are very happy to have what you always wanted.”

“I did not get all that I wanted.”

“Did you not? It is a fair house; the land is good. And you do not talk like a good husband?”

“I hear that you wish to go to your cousin.”

“Don’t tell me that you propose forbidding me to do so.”

“I would not presume to do that.”

“I am glad because it would have been useless.”

“Let us be good friends, Damask,” he said. “I want to tell you that you are welcome here as long as you care to stay.”

“It is a very gracious gesture to allow me to remain as a guest in my own house.”

“You know that it is mine.”

“I know you took it.”

“It was bestowed on me.”

“Why on you? Could you tell me that? It is a question on which I have long pondered.”

“You can guess, can you not? Because I was capable of managing it. It had been my home for some years. I was ready to marry the widow of the previous owner which would relieve the family hardship considerably. It seemed a good arrangement.”

“For you, yes.” I walked off and left him.

Rupert asked me to walk with him in the nuttery. It used to be a favorite place of mine but since the hut in which my father had hidden Amos Carmen was there, it had become too painful a reminder of all that had happened.

He slipped his arm through mine. “Damask,” he said, “I must talk to you very seriously.”

“Yes, Rupert.”

“I am going away. Lord Remus has offered me a farm. I shall manage it and in a short time it will be my own. Kate has prevailed on him.”

“Her marriage was a great blessing not only to her but to you.”

“Damask, you are growing bitter.”

“Circumstances change us all, doubtless.”