The Miracle at St. Bruno's (37 page)

I shivered. “How near queens are to death,” I said.

“How near we all are to death,” replied Kate.

Kate left us soon after that, and I was surprised when a messenger brought me a letter from her in which she told me she was expecting a child.

“Remus is beside himself with glee,” she wrote. “As for myself I am less gleeful. I deplore the long unwieldy months almost as much as the painful and humiliating climax. How I wish there were some other way of getting children. How much more dignified if one could buy them as one buys a castle or a manor house—and choose the one one wants. Would that not be more civilized than this animal process?”

I confess to a twinge of envy. I thought with burning resentment of my boy who had been allowed to die, how much I wanted him. And Kate was to have another child although she was never meant to be a mother.

During the next months I devoted myself to the little girls. I tried not to mourn for my lost child. I watched the gradual growth of our castle and I was amazed that Bruno should have had such wealth as to be able to create such a place.

When I asked him about it he showed great displeasure. He had changed toward me. The disappointment over the loss of the boy was intense and he made no secret of it. I could not help thinking of poor Anne Boleyn when she had failed to produce a boy. Then I remembered that Kate had referred to Bruno as a King.

Where was that young and passionate boy who had wooed me? I sometimes wondered whether that had been a part he had played for some purpose. Purpose! That was it. There was some purpose behind everything that had happened since his return.

My mother was a frequent visitor, for since I did not go to Caseman Court she must come to me.

“Your stepfather marvels at the magnificence of this new place you are building. Your husband must be a man of boundless wealth, he says.”

“It is not so,” I said quickly. “You know the Abbey was bestowed on him. We have the material we need. We are using bricks from the lay quarters, so it is not so very costly.”

“Your stepfather says that there is a movement in the country to bring back some of the monasteries, and that monks are getting together again and living together as they did before. Your stepfather thinks this is a highly dangerous way of living.”

“So much is dangerous, Mother. It is dangerous to concern oneself with the new ideas.”

“Why cannot people be sensible and live for their families?” she said irritably.

I agreed with her.

She would bring the twins with her and the children would all play together while we watched them fondly and laughed at their antics. I saw what Kate meant. My mother and I were of a kind after all—the eternal mothers, as Kate would say.

In due course Kate’s son was born. She wrote:

“He is a healthy, lusty boy. Remus is as proud as a peacock.”

When I told Bruno I saw the faint color touch the marble of his skin.

“A boy!” he said. “Some women get boys.”

It was a reproach and I cried out: “Was it my fault that my child was born dead? Do you think I rejoiced in that?”

“You are hysterical,” he said coldly.

I felt envious of Kate and my heart was filled with a burning resentment because my boy had died, while Kate, who was never meant to be a mother, had hers.

She wanted me to go to the christening.

“Bring the children,” she wrote. “Carey does nothing but plague me to produce Honey and Catherine. He has thought up all kinds of new ways of teasing them.”

Bruno made no attempt to prevent my going to Remus Castle as in due course I set out with the two little girls.

Kate’s child was christened Nicholas.

“After the saint,” she said.

After a while Kate shortened his name to Colas.

Before I went back to the Abbey news reached us that the King was dead. Oddly enough I was deeply affected. The King had been on the throne for as long as I could remember; my mind kept returning to that day when my father had been seated on the wall with his arm supporting me as I watched the King and Cardinal pass by. Then the King had been a golden young man, not yet a monster; and the Cardinal, long since dead, had traveled down the river with him to Hampton. Since then he had brought about the death of two wives and the wretchedness of at least two others. And now he himself was dead.

I was on my way back to the Abbey when I saw the funeral procession passing from Westminster to Windsor. The hearse with its eighty tapers, each one of them two feet in length, and the banners of the saints beaten in gold on damask and the canopy of silver tissue fringed with black and gold silk, were very impressive. It was the passing of an age. I wondered what augured for the future. I thought of my father’s being taken from his beloved home to a cold prison in the Tower and I could hear the cries of those who by this King had been condemned to the flames or the even worse fate of hanging and quartering. We had lived long under a tyrant. Surely we must hope for a brighter future.

We had a new King—Edward who was but ten years old, too young to govern, but he had a powerful and ambitious pair of uncles.

I reached the Abbey. It seemed to rise over me menacingly and I felt little confidence in the future.

T
HERE WAS CONSTERNATION IN
the Abbey. James, one of the fishermen who had gone into the City to sell the surplus of fish which had been salted down, came back with the news that he had seen images taken from churches and being burned in the streets. He had joined a crowd in the Chepe and had listened to ominous conversation.

“This is the end of the Papists. They’ll be hanging them from their churches ere long.”

The new King was leaning toward the Reformed ideas and he was surrounded by those who shared his views—and perhaps had formed them. In his chapel prayers were said in English, and it would no longer be an offense to have a translation of the Bible in one’s possession.

My mother visited us with the first spring flowers from her garden.

“The King is gone, God rest his soul,” she said, “and it would seem to be the beginning of a new and glorious reign.”

I knew that she was repeating what she had heard and I guessed that Simon Caseman was one who was not displeased with the turn of events.

I was uneasy though. Bruno would have to be careful. If the new religion was in favor, those in authority would frown on a community such as Bruno was attempting to build up, and although he might try to give an impression that he was merely the head of a large country estate, he would assuredly be under suspicion.

Because the King was too young to rule, his uncle, the Earl of Hereford, was made protector. He was immediately created Earl of Somerset and became the most powerful man in the country. He was ambitious and eager to carry on the war in which the late King had interested himself and less than six months after the death of Henry VIII he was marching up to Scotland. Remus was with him and actually took part in the famous battle of Pinkie Cleugh, a costly victory for the Protector.

It brought the war home to us too—in the past it had all seemed too far away to concern us much—for at Pinkie Remus was killed.

Kate wrote of her dear brave Remus but it was not in her nature to mourn or to feign grief which she did not feel. She was now rich and free, so I guessed that she would not repine for long.

Our castle was now complete. I called it castle, although it still bore the name of St. Bruno’s Abbey, for with its gray stone walls and Gothic style it had a medieval aspect. The Abbot’s Lodging had been completely swallowed up in this magnificent structure. It had been built in the form of a square closely resembling Remus Castle with circular towers at the four corners. There were two flanking towers at the gateway with oiletts as seen in Norman structures and which were meant for arrows—something of an anachronism in our day, but Bruno had said that since we were building with old stones which had been used two hundred years before when the Abbey was built we must use them in the manner in which they were intended.

Some of the outbuildings should be built in modern style perhaps; but he was not yet concerned with those.

The parapets were embattled so that the vast and impressive building had the aspect of a fortress.

Although the exterior was that of a medieval fortress, the interior possessed all the luxury and elegance which I imagined could be found in places like Hampton Court.

Each tower had four stories and on each floor was a hexagonal chamber. These towers were like little houses in themselves and it would be possible to live in them quite apart from the rest of the household. Bruno took one of these as his own and spent a great deal of time there. The highest room was a bedchamber and since we moved into the new dwelling I saw very little of him.

Some of the old rooms had been left, but so much had been added that it was easy to lose oneself in the place.

There was a great banqueting hall and for this Bruno was seeking fine tapestries. He went to Flanders to find them and they were hung on the walls; at the end of the hall was a dais on which a small dining table was placed which would be for Bruno and his honored guests while the rest of the household would eat from the big table.

When I saw this place I could not understand why Bruno had reconstructed it. Sometimes I thought he wished to live like a great lord; and at others I wondered whether he was trying to establish a monastic order.

He gave a great reception when we went to live in the castle and many of our neighbors were invited; Simon Caseman came with my mother; Kate came too.

The great hall was decorated with leaves and flowers from our gardens, and it was indeed a grand occasion.

I stood with Bruno and received our guests and I had rarely seen him as excited as he was on that occasion.

I sat at the dais on his right hand, Kate was on his left and Simon Caseman and my mother were there. Bruno told me to invite some of the rich men whom my father had known and I had done this. They had all come eager to see if the rumors they had heard of the rebuilding of the Abbey were true.

There was feasting for Clement had excelled himself. I had never seen such an array of pies and tarts and great joints of mutton and beef. There was sucking pigs and boars’ heads and fish of all kinds. My mother was in a state of wonder, tasting this and that and trying to guess what had given certain flavors.

There was dancing afterward. Bruno and I opened the ball and later I found myself partnered by Simon Caseman.

“I had no notion,” he said, “that you had married such a rich man. Why I am but a pauper in comparison.”

“If it galls you it is better not to make comparisons.”

Bruno danced with Kate and I wondered what they talked of.

A strange thing happened during the ball, because suddenly a black-clad figure was noticed in our midst—an old woman in a long cloak, her head concealed by a hood.

The guests fell back and stared at her for they were sure, as I was, that she was some harbinger of evil.

Bruno strode over to her.

“I had no invitation to the ball,” she said with a hoarse chuckle.

“I know you not,” replied Bruno.

“Then you should, my son,” was her answer.

I recognized her then as Mother Salter, so I went to her and said: “You are welcome. May I offer you refreshment?”

I saw her yellow fangs as she smiled at me.

And I thought: She has every right to be here; she is the grandmother of Bruno and Honey.

“I come in two minds to bless or curse this house.”

“You could not curse it,” I said.

She laughed again.

Then she lifted her hands and muttered something.

“Blessing or curse,” she said. “You will discover which.”

Then I called for wine for I was filled with a terrible premonition of evil, and I remembered in that moment that after Honey had been lost in the woods I had lost my baby.

She drank the wine; and then walked around the hall, the guests falling back as she passed. When she came to the door she said again: “Blessing or curse. That you will discover.” And with that went out.

There was a hushed silence; and then everyone began to talk at once.

It was some sort of entertainment, they said. It was a mummer dressed up as a witch.

But there were some who recognized Mother Salter, the witch of the woods.

Some months after our grand ball Honey caught a chill. It was nothing much but I was always uneasy when either of the children were not well. I had made a nursery for them next to the room which had been mine and Bruno’s bedchamber and was now more often mine alone, for he had lived more often in his tower. Honey had a persistent cough which was apt to wake her. I kept a bottle of cough mixture by her bed which my mother had made and which was always effective and as soon as she started to cough I would be in her room with it.

On this cold January night she started to cough. I was out of bed and into the children’s room. Catherine was sleeping peacefully in her cot. Honey, now big enough for a pallet, gave me that intensely loving look when I appeared.

I said: “Now, my pet, we will soon stop that nasty old cough.”

I gave her the draft, propped up pillows and put my arm around her as she lay sleepily and happily against me.

I think she was almost pleased to have a cough so that she could have my special attention.

“Cat’s fast asleep,” she whispered delightedly.

“We mustn’t wake her,” I whispered.

“No, don’t let’s wake her. This is nice.”

“Yes. Are you cozy?”

She nestled against me. I looked down at her; the thick lashes making an enchanting semicircle against the pallor of her skin, her thick dark hair falling about her shoulders. She was going to be our beauty. Catherine was vivacious, careless, lighthearted; Honey was intense and passionate. If she were displeased and it was usually through her jealousy of Catherine that she was, she would be sullen for days, whereas Catherine would fly into a storm of rage and a few moments later she would have forgotten her grievance. They were completely unalike. Catherine was pretty—her lashes were light brown tipped with gold; her hair was brown with light streaks in it; her skin delicately tinted. Catherine was enchanting, more lovable, less demanding, but Honey was the beauty. She disturbed me even now because of her continual watchfulness lest I should show I cared more for Catherine than I did for her. I was the center of her world. If she were proud of some achievement, I was to be told first; for me she gathered flowers—often those from my own garden. She watched me continually and she wanted me to remember always that she was my girl and that she had come to me before Catherine.