The Miracle at St. Bruno's (27 page)

“When you plighted your troth to me in the chapel we were as one.”

“Bruno,” I said, “you were always different from everyone else. That is why I have always loved you, but if we are to be married I shall have to tell my mother. There will be a ceremony….”

“That will be for later. You belong to me now. You trust me. You believe in me. It must be so or you would not be my chosen one or I yours. You have said you love me enough to give up everything—a life of easy comfort, yet you do not know what hardship is. Are you sure, Damask? It is not yet too late.”

“I am sure. I will cook for you, work for you….”

“And believe in me,” he added.

“I will be everything you wish,” I promised. “I shall be happier with you in a cottage than in a castle.”

“It must be so. You
must
trust me, believe in me, work with me and for me.”

“So shall I, with all my heart.”

“This is our wedding night,” he said again.

I understood his meaning and drew back. I was a virgin. I had been brought up to believe that this was a state which should not be surrendered until marriage—but this was marriage, he had said, and I must not expect life with Bruno to be as it would with other men.

“You are thinking that I plan to seduce you and leave you?” he said sadly. “So you doubt me after all.”

“No.”

“But you do. You hesitate. I thought you were brave. I believed you when you said you trusted me. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps you should go back to the house…. Perhaps we should say good-bye.”

He kissed me then with a passion I had not dreamed of.

I said: “Bruno, you are different tonight. What has happened?”

“Tonight I am your lover,” he replied.

“And I am ignorant of love…this kind of love. I will do anything you ask of me, but….”

“Love has many facets. It is like the diamond in the Madonna’s crown. Do you remember it, Damask? It shone with a pale light and a fiery light—it was red, blue, yellow…all the colors of the spectrum…. But it was the same diamond.”

As he spoke his hands moved over my body and I was never more aware of the strange nature of the fascination he had for me. I was conscious of his power over me but I was not sure whether my feelings for him were love as others had experienced it. It was not what I felt for Rupert or my father. Nor was his love for me like Rupert’s. I sensed in Bruno a need to subdue me and in myself an urgent desire to be subdued.

I could believe in that moment that he was different from all other men. Perhaps every girl feels this of her lover. I did not mean merely that he possessed all the perfections. I felt in that moment that there was some godlike quality about him and that no matter what the consequences I must obey him.

My will dissolved I was willing and eager to cast aside everything that I had been taught, to throw aside my respect of that chastity which must be surrendered only to my husband. But Bruno was my husband.

I had convinced myself. Bruno knew it. I heard his low laugh of triumph.

“Oh, Damask,” I heard him say. “You are the one for me. You love me, do you not…utterly, completely…so that you are ready to give up all for me?”

I heard myself answer: “Yes, Bruno. I do.”

And that was my wedding night; there on our bed of bracken we were as one.

Nothing, I knew, could ever be the same again; and even in these moments of passion I could not rid myself of the thought that I was taking part in some sacrificial ceremony.

It was early morning when I crept into the house, bemused and disheveled. We had walked back to the house together, our arms about each other, and Bruno had stood waving until I disappeared inside.

I was in a state of exultation and wonderment after my experience and I could think of nothing else. Life had become a glorious adventure. I had reached a peak of happiness and for the time I did not want to look back or look forward; I wanted to remain poised as though on my mountaintop, to savor all that had happened, to remember our whispered words, our need of each other, to recall the moments of perfect union.

Bruno seemed to me like a god. That sense of power which had always been apparent was magnified.

There is no one like him in the whole world, I thought. And he loves me. I am his and he is mine forever.

I had come across the hall and as I was about to mount the stairs I was aware of a movement. A figure appeared. I was looking up at Simon Caseman. In the dim light his face looked chalky; the fox’s mask stood out clearly, his eyes were narrowed.

“So,” he said quietly but venomously, “you creep out at night like other sluts.” His hand darted forward and I thought he was going to strike me, but he had plucked a leaf from my sleeve. “You could have chosen a more comfortable bed,” he added.

I attempted to walk past him but he barred my way.

“I am your guardian, your stepfather. I want an explanation of this wanton behavior.”

“What if I don’t propose to give it?”

“Do you think I shall allow this? Do you think you can deceive me? You betray yourself. I know what has happened. Nothing was ever more clear to me.”

“It is my own affair.”

“And do you expect me to feed and clothe your bastards when they come along?”

I was suddenly so angry that I brought up a hand to strike him. He caught my arm before I could do so and he brought his face close to mine. “You slut!” he cried. “You….”

“Do you wish to wake the household?”

“It would be good to do so that they might know what sort you are. Whore! Doxy! Any man’s for the asking!”

“I proved I was not that to you.”

“By God,” he said, “I will teach you….”

I could see the lust in his eyes and it frightened me.

“If you do not release me,” I said, “I shall awaken the whole household. It would be well for my mother to know the kind of man she has married.”

“A man who is doing his duty by her daughter?” he asked, but I could see that I had alarmed him. He knew my sharp tongue and he feared it.

He stood back a few paces. “I am your stepfather,” he said. “I have a responsibility toward you. It is my duty to take charge of you.”

“As you took charge of my father’s possessions?”

“You ungrateful slut! Where would you have been if I had not allowed you to stay here? If I had not come here….”

The words slipped out: “Perhaps my father would be free now.”

He was taken aback, and I thought: I believe it’s true. I believe he betrayed him.

Loathing for him swept over me. He was about to speak but he changed his mind. It was as though he were trying to pretend he had not understood the significance of my words.

There was a silence while we looked at each other. I knew my suspicion of him showed in my face; in his a certain hatred mingling with his lust.

He said: “I have tried to be a father to you.”

“When you were rejected as a husband!”

“I was fond of you, Damask.”

“You were fond of my inheritance…that which is now yours and should have been mine.”

“It fell to me when your father…lost it. How fortunate for you that it came to me and not to some stranger. Think what would have happened to you and your mother if I had not been here to take care of you.”

“I am thinking of what would have happened if my father had never taken you into his office. I am thinking of what would have happened if he had never given you a home here.”

“You would have lost a good friend.”

“It is we ourselves who decide the value of our friends.”

“You are a wicked, ungrateful girl.” He was recovering from the shock of my veiled accusation. “Good God,” he cried. “I have the feelings of a father toward you. I have tried to cherish you. I have thought highly of you and I find that you are but a willing wench who will surrender her virtue for the sake of frolic in the grass when all decent folk are in their beds.”

In sudden fury I slapped him across the ear and this time he was too late to prevent me. I hated him not so much because his crude words and sly hints were besmirching my exalted experience, but because I felt more sure than I ever had that he was the man who had informed against my father. If I had been entirely convinced I would have wanted to kill him.

The strength of my blow sent him reeling against the banister. He fell down two or three steps. I heard him groan as I hurried up the stairs and went along to my room.

I sat in a chair and watched the sunrise. I lived through the night—my union with the man I loved; my encounter with the man I hated. Sacred and profane! I thought.

I sat there dreaming and it occurred to me that there was one quality they had in common! A love of power.

I dozed a little and dreamed of them and in my dreams I was lying with Bruno on the grass; he was bending over me and suddenly his face changed to that of Simon Caseman. Love and lust—so close in a way and yet so far apart.

It was dawn. A fresh day. I was full of excitement, wondering what it would bring forth.

In the morning my mother came to me.

“Your father has sprained his ankle,” she said. “He fell on the stairs last night.”

“How did he do that?” I asked.

“He slipped. He will keep to his chamber today. In fact I have insisted that he rest.”

She looked important. For once she was insisting; but I guessed that he had chosen to stay in his room because he did not wish to see me.

“I must see that the fomentations are put on,” she said. “There is nothing like them for easing a sprain. Alternate hot and cold. Dear me. I thank God I have my chamomile lotion ready. That will ease the pain; and I think I shall give him a little poppy juice. Sleep is always good.”

I said: “The man has merely sprained his ankle, Mother. You talk as though he is sickening for the plague.”

“Don’t say such things,” she scolded, looking over her shoulder.

And I marveled that this man should have brought a happiness to her which my saintly father had failed to give her.

I wanted to be alone to dream of my future. What next, I asked myself? Shall I see him again tonight? Will he send a messenger for me? The day seemed long and irksome. Every time I heard a step on the stair I hoped it would be one of the maids come to tell me that Bruno was waiting for me.

That afternoon my mother came to my room. I felt sick with disappointment. I had thought the step on the stair was that of one of the maids bringing a message from Bruno.

My mother looked excited.

“The new people are at the Abbey. Oh, dear, your stepfather is not going to be pleased. He always hoped nothing would come of it. I do hope they will be good neighbors. It is pleasant to have good neighbors. I wonder if the lady of the house is interested in gardens. There is so much land there. I believe she could be very successful.”

“A rival, Mother, perhaps,” I said. “Shall you like it if she produces better roses than yours?”

“I am always ready to learn improvements. I do wonder what they will do there. All those useless buildings. I suppose they will pull them down and do some rebuilding. That was what your stepfather planned to do.”

“And now he will have to abandon his plans and we shall have him nursing a grievance as well as a sprained ankle.”

“You are always so ungrateful to him, Damask. I don’t know what has happened to you lately.”

She went on talking about the Abbey. She was very disappointed by my assumed lack of interest.

I waited to hear from him. There were so many questions I would have asked him. A terrible fear had come to me. What if I should never see him again? I had had the impression that our vows and even our lovemaking had been a kind of ritual. I had had the impression that all the time he was trying to prove to me the fact that he was no ordinary human being. Even when he spoke of love it was in a mysterious fashion. It occurred to me then that he needed to believe himself to be apart. He was proud, I know, and the fact that Keziah had claimed him as her son humiliated him so deeply that he refused to accept it.

I was trying to attach human motives to his actions. But was he after all superhuman?

I was alternately exultant and apprehensive. I kept to my room. I did not wish to see Rupert nor my stepfather. As for my mother, her chatter irritated me. I could only long for Bruno to come to me.

It was three days after that night when Bruno and I had made our vows, Simon Caseman had remained in his room ever since nursing his ankle, which I suspected was not as incapacitating as he made it out to be.

I was in my room when one of the maids came out and told me that there was a visitor in the winter parlor. My mother was there and had sent for me to join them.

I was unprepared for what was waiting me.

As I reached the winter parlor my mother came to the door. Her face was a study of perplexity.

“The new owner of the Abbey is here,” she stuttered.

I went in. Bruno rose from his chair to greet me.

Events had taken such a strange turn that I felt I could believe anything, however fantastic. Bruno, the child of the Abbey, turned adrift into poverty, who only a few nights previously had asked me to share a life of hardship with him, was the owner of the Abbey!

At first I thought it was some joke. How could it be possible?

As I stood facing him in the winter parlor I said something like this. He smiled at me then.

“Is it true then that you doubt me, Damask?” he had said reproachfully.

And I knew that he meant doubt his ability to rise above all other men, doubt his special powers.

Fortunately my mother’s inborn habits and her insistence on the correct manner in which to receive guests got the better of all else. She would ring for her elderberry wine to be brought.

And while we drank it Bruno told us of his good fortune, of how he had prospered in London; how he had gone to France on the King’s business and because he had executed that business with an especial skill he had been in a position to acquire the Abbey.

From anyone else it would have sounded incredible but his presence, his assurance and that air which was unlike anyone else’s insisted on our belief.