The Miracle at St. Bruno's (32 page)

“Tell me what has happened. I have heard nothing.”

“You soon will for I believe all that her enemies would wish has been proved against the Queen.”

“The poor child,” I murmured. “For she is little more.”

“She is a little older than you and a little younger than I, which I am ready to agree is young to leave this life.”

“It has not come to that.”

“If all that is rumored is proved against her she may well be walking out to Tower Hill as her fascinating cousin did some six years ago.”

“Can the King have had so many wives in such a short time?”

“Indeed he can. Was there not sly Jane to follow Anne who followed Spanish Katharine? Of course his marriage to her lasted twenty years and for all that time he remained married to one wife; and then Anne of Cleves who was not at all to his liking. She was the fortunate one. She now enjoys life mightily at Richmond, I believe; and now pretty little Katharine Howard.”

“With whom he is so happy.”

“With whom he
was
happy. Poor Katharine, rumor has it that she learned a loose way of life in the dormitory she shared with the other girls of her grandmother’s household—some lowborn and little more than servants—and that as young as thirteen she had taken a lover. These unscrupulous women found the corrupting of this nobly born young girl’s morals an amusing occupation. It is said that young Katharine had soon formed an immoral association with a musician and that was but a beginning. Afterward she went through a form of marriage with a young man named Francis Dereham. Thus she was no virgin when she married the King although I’ll swear she professed to be.”

“Her grandmother is surely the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk?”

“Of a surety she is, and little care she took of her fascinating granddaughter. Poor Katharine! Daughter of a younger son, she was of little account until the King singled her out for notice. Then my Lord Norfolk begins to appreciate his niece, just as he did with that other niece, Anne Boleyn. But you remember how he deserted her when she needed support. I’ll swear the fellow is now preparing to desert Katharine.”

“Is Katharine in danger?”

“Unlike Anne, she is really a little fool, Damask. Oh, how differently I should have managed my affairs had I been in her place!”

“Queen Anne could not have managed her affairs with any great skill for they led her to Tower Hill and the executioner’s sword.”

“True enough,” admitted Kate. “But this is different. Anne could not get a boy and the King was obsessed with the need for a boy.”

I thought of Bruno then. I believed he was obsessed by the desire for a boy. At least, I thought ironically, he could not cut off my head if I failed to provide one.

“He was also enamored of Jane Seymour,” went on Kate. “This is why Anne lost her head—through circumstances outside her control. It is not quite the same with Queen Katharine Howard. She was loose in her morals, they say; she had several lovers and allowed this to be known by the unscrupulous people of her grandmother’s household. I am told that several of them acquired places in her Court because they asked for them with veiled threats and she was perforce obliged to give them to them.”

“And all this has been brought to the King’s ears? I was of the opinion that he loved her dearly and if this is so surely he will forgive what she did before he married her.”

“You live in a backwater, Damask. You do not know what goes on. Do you not realize that this country is split by a great religious conflict? Have you ever heard of a man called Martin Luther?”

“Of course I have,” I said hotly. “I fancy that my father and I have had more discourse on theology in one week than you ever had in your life. And Bruno and I talk of these matters too.”

“I know your discourse. You would argue the rights and wrongs. I mean not that. This is politics. There is fast growing in this country two great parties—those who support the Catholic Church and those who would reform it. Did you know that Anne Boleyn was growing very interested in the reformed ideas? This brought her many enemies from the Catholic side. Of course, they had always detested her because of the divorce. How big a part they played in bringing about her downfall we shall not know, but depend upon it they played a part. Now our little Queen Katharine cares not for religion. She merely wishes to be happy and gay and to keep her royal husband so. But she comes from the Norfolk family—the Duke, her uncle, is a leader of the Catholic party. Cannot you see that those of Reformed party are determined to bring her down? She would not dabble in politics. She would not understand what it is all about. So…they will delve into her past; they will discover that she has lain carnally with several men and may have called herself married to one of them. We are going to see fearful happenings at Court. You may depend upon it, Damask.”

“We must pray for her.”

“Forget not that the Reformed party prays for her destruction. So many prayers coming from Catholics! So many from those who wish for reforms. And all to the same God. How can they all be answered, Damask?”

I said: “I shall pray for the Queen, not for any form of religion. She is only about our age, Kate. It is tragic. Is she going to lose her head?”

“The Reformed party is beside itself with anxiety. It fears she may not, for the King dotes so much upon her.”

“If this is true the King will never let her go.”

“I am told that that is what she believes. But she has some powerful minds against her. Archbishop Cranmer has examined her, they say, and methinks he will not be a very good friend to her.”

After that conversation I could not get the poor little Queen out of my mind. I pictured her agony as she recalled the fate of her cousin Anne Boleyn, and she would lack the reasoning and mental powers of that Queen. Poor uneducated little Katharine Howard, who had had the misfortune to be attractive enough to catch the King’s fancy!

Then I ceased to think of her because the miraculous event had come to pass. Before Kate left us to return to Remus Castle I knew that I was with child.

When I told Bruno he was overcome by joy. The difference which had arisen between us over the arrival of Honey was swept away. This was what he had longed for. A child—a son of his own.

This paternal pride was indeed a human quality, and it delighted me. And what pleasure we had in talking of the child we would have.

At this time I was able to bring Honey into our little circle. He rarely spoke to her and his indifference was hurtful, but at least she was allowed to be in our company. She accepted that and if he ignored her she did the same to him; but I was pleased that she no longer seemed afraid of him, and she did not cower close to me when he was present.

We had added to our household considerably; during the weeks after Kate’s departure several men arrived at the Abbey to offer their services for the great amount of work that would in due course have to be done out of doors. I had engaged new servants. I had a housekeeper now, a Mrs. Crimp, who, I was delighted to say, took a great interest in Honey.

I had a suspicion that some of the men who presented themselves for work were familiar with the Abbey and had worked there before. Some of them might have been lay brothers. There was danger in this but to be in Bruno’s presence was to share to a certain extent his confidence in himself; and the fact was I was obsessed by the thought of my child and longing for its arrival.

For Honey I had a deep protective love but I knew that nothing could compare with the emotion which my own child would arouse in me.

I was shut in a little world of my own. Vaguely I listened to the news from Court. Those men who had been the Queen’s lovers in the past were being questioned in the Tower. Sometimes, when on the river, I would look at the gray fortress and a brief vision of bloodstained torture chambers would flash into my mind. In the past I would perhaps have brooded on that, recalling my father’s sojourn in that dreaded place. But always the exaltation engendered by the presence of the child would overcome all other feelings.

I used to say to myself: But the King loves her. He does not wish to be rid of her. He will not let her die.

Travelers called at the Abbey for one of the guesthouses had been thrown open as it had been in the old days. They told stories of the King’s great distress when he had heard of the scandals about his wife. It was particularly hard to bear because immediately before the news had been broken to him he had told his confessor, the Bishop of Lincoln, that he was so delighted to have found matrimonial bliss at last that he wished him to arrange a thanksgiving to God for giving him such a loving and virtuous Queen.

We heard also that when the poor little Queen was told of what she had been accused her fears sent her into a frenzy, and knowing that the King was at prayers in the little chapel at the end of the long gallery in Hampton Court she had run down this, screaming hysterically while her attendants who had been ordered to keep her under restraint captured her and forced her to return to her apartments.

A brooding sense of disaster was in the air. The King was all powerful. He stood between the two factions—Papists and anti-Papists—and in his eyes they could both be traitors, because those who did not accept the religion set out by him were enemies who should be punished by death. He made it clear that nothing was changed, but the head of the Church—the King instead of the Pope. He hated the Pope no less than he hated Martin Luther.

But for me there was nothing of any great importance but the gestation of my child. I shut my eyes to the fact that the atmosphere in the Abbey was changing each day, and that since I had become pregnant I was treated with the awed respect which I had noticed was accorded to Bruno.

When my mother heard of my condition she was overjoyed. She came to the Abbey bringing herbs and some of her concoctions. I would visit her and we talked together as women do. We were closer now than we had ever been.

I admired the twins—Peter and Paul—two well-formed, lusty little boys. She doted on them, and could scarcely bear them out of her sight. They had even lured her from her garden. Constantly she discussed their tempers, their intelligence and their beauty. She refused to swaddle them because they protested lustily when she did so and she liked to see them kick their little limbs.

I began to enjoy our chats. She had so much advice to offer and I knew that it was good. The midwife who had attended her she fancied was the best in the neighborhood and she was going to insist that she attended me when my time came.

She made little garments for my baby when I knew she would rather have been stitching for her adored twins.

I took to visiting her often for we had become not so much mother and daughter but two women discussing the subject nearest to our hearts. She confided to me that she hoped to have more children but even if she did not she considered herself singularly blessed to have had her two little boys and both healthy.

One day though a tinge of alarm touched me.

I was in her sewing room when beneath the material on which she was working I discovered a book. It was so unlike my mother to read anything that I was surprised and even more so when I picked it up. I opened it and glanced through it and as I did so I felt my heart begin to beat very quickly. There clearly enough were set out the arguments and the tenets of the new religion. I hastily shut the book as my mother approached but I could not forget it.

At length I said: “Mother, what is this book you are reading?”

“Oh,” she said with a grimace, “it is very dull, but I am struggling through it to please your stepfather.”

“He wishes you to read it?”

“He insists.”

“Mother, I do not think you should leave such a book where any might pick it up.”

“Why should I not? It is but a book.”

“It is what it contains. It is a plea for the reformed religion.”

“Oh, is it?” she said.

“To please me be more careful.”

She patted my hand. “You are just like your father,” she said. “You are one to make something from nothing. Now look at this. Already Master Paul is growing out of it. The rate that child grows astonishes me!”

I was thinking: So Simon Caseman is dabbling with the reformed religion!

I thought of the Abbey where a community life alarmingly similar to the old was gradually, perhaps subtly, but certainly being built up.

It occurred to me then that Simon Caseman, for harboring such a book in his house, and Bruno, for installing monks in his newly acquired Abbey, could both be deemed traitors.

A short while ago I would have gone home and argued the matter with Bruno. I might even have gone so far as to caution Simon Caseman, but strangely enough the matters seemed of secondary importance for I had just begun to feel the movement of my child and I forgot all else.

I was like my mother, shut into a little world in which the miracle of creation absorbed me.

Perhaps all pregnant women are so.

Christmas was almost upon us and I had decorated Honey’s little room with holly and ivy and told her the Christmas story.

In those December days preceding Christmas there had been a great deal of talk about the King’s matter. Even my mother mentioned it. There was great sympathy for the Queen who it was said was in a state of hysteria and had been ever since her accusation. Many believed that this was an implication of her guilt.

“And if she had taken a lover, poor soul,” I said to my mother as we sat over our sewing, “is that so very wrong?”

“Outside the bonds of matrimony!” cried my mother, aghast.

“She believed herself married to Dereham.”

“Then she deserves death for marrying the King.”

“Life is cruel for a woman,” I said.

My mother pursed her lips virtuously. “Not if she is a dutiful wife.”

“Poor little Katharine Howard! She is so young to die.”

But my mother was not really moved by the young girl’s fate. It occurred to me that in a world where death came frequently the value of life was not really great.

It was just before Christmas that Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpepper were executed. Culpepper was beheaded but Dereham, because he was not of noble birth, suffered the barbarous hanging and quartering, the traitor’s death.