The Miracle at St. Bruno's (47 page)

She was a power in her little cottage as Bruno was in his Abbey and the reason was that we all believed—in lesser or greater degree—in the extraordinary powers of these people. I no less than the most gullible of my serving girls.

So I lost no time in going to Mother Salter in the woods.

I was shocked when I saw her. She had always been lean, now she was emaciated.

I cried out: “Why, Mother Salter, you are ill.”

She caught my hand, hers was cold and clawlike; I noticed the brown marks on her skin which we call the flowers of death.

“I am ready to go,” she said. “My grandson’s fate is in his own hands. I have provided for my granddaughter.”

I could have smiled for was I not the one who had nurtured Honey and educated her so that she was a fitting bride for a noble gentleman? But I knew what she meant. She had insisted that I care for Honey; and if Keziah could be believed, it was Mother Salter who had planned that the child should be placed in the Christmas crib.

“You have done well,” she said. “I wanted to bless you before I go.

“Thank you.”

“There is no need to thank me. Had you not cared for the child I would have cursed you.”

“I love her as my own. She has brought great joy to me.”

“You gave much—you received much. That is the law,” she said.

“And you are unfit to be alone. Who cares for you here?”

“I have always cared for myself.”

“What of your cat?” I said. “I do not see it.”

“I buried it this day.”

“You will be lonely without it.”

“My time has come.”

I said: “I cannot allow you to stay here to die.”

“You, Mistress, cannot.”

“These woods are Abbey woods, and are you not my Honey’s grandmother? Could I allow you to stay here alone?”

“What then, Mistress?”

“A plan has come to me. It will do much good, I think. I shall take you to my mother. She will care for you. She needs help for she is a sad woman. You will give her that. She is very interested in herbs and remedies. You could teach her much.”

“A noble lady with old Mother Salter in her house!”

“Oh, come, old Mother Salter has not such a poor opinion of herself.”

“So you give orders here.”

“I care for the sick on my husband’s Abbey lands.”

She looked at me slyly. “You would not take me to my grandson.”

“I would take you to my mother.”

“Hee-hee.” She had what I had always thought of as a witch’s cackle. “He would not be pleased to see me. Honey used to come to me. She confided in me. She told me of her love for you and how she feared you loved your own child more. ’Twas natural. I blamed you not for that. You have done your work well and I don’t forget it. But let those who heed me not take care.”

My heart was filled with pity for this poor old woman, sick and near to death, still clinging to the powers which she had possessed or led people to believe she possessed.

I said I would prepare my mother to receive her and I went to her immediately. She agreed to take in Mother Salter once she had grown accustomed to the incongruous idea; she commanded her servants to prepare a room, put fresh rushes on the floor, and make up a pallet as a bed. Then she and I went together and we set Mother Salter on a mule and brought her to Caseman Court.

It was an unconventional thing to have done. Bruno was aghast.

“To take that old woman to your mother’s house! You must be mad. Are you going to gather up all the poor and set them up in Caseman Court?”

“She is no ordinary woman.”

“No, she has an evil reputation. She traffics with the devil. She could be burned at the stake for her activities.”

“Many a good man and woman has met that fate. Surely you understand why I must give this woman especial care.”

“Because of her relationship to the bastard you adopted.”

Then because I could not bear him to refer slightingly to Honey I cried out: “Yes, because she is Honey’s great-grandmother…and yours.”

I saw the hatred in his face. He knew that I had never believed in the miracle and this was at the very root of the rift between us. Before I had implied my disbelief; now I said it outright.

“You have worked against me always,” he said savagely.

“I would willingly work with you and for you. And why should facing the truth interfere with that?”

“Because it is false…
false
…and you alone whose duty it was to stand beside me have done everything you can to plant these false beliefs.”

“I am guilty of heresy then,” I said.

He turned and left me.

Strangely enough I had ceased to care that all love was lost between us.

I could not have done a better thing for my mother than take Mother Salter to her. When I next visited her I found the sick room fresh and clean. On a table beside the witch’s pallet were the potions and unguents which my mother had prepared. She was excited and important and fussing over the old woman as though she were a child, which seemed to amuse Mother Salter.

Of course the old woman was dying; she knew it and she was amused to be spending her last days in a grand house.

My mother told me that she had imparted to her much knowledge of plants both benign and malignant. She would not allow my mother to write them down perhaps because she who could not write thought there was something evil in the signs that were made on paper. My mother had a good memory for the things in which she was interested and she became very knowledgeable during that time, which I was sure was ample payment for all that she had done for Mother Salter. But here was more than that. Whether the old woman had powers to bless or curse I cannot say, but from that time my mother really grew away from her grief and while Mother Salter was in her house I heard her sing snatches of songs.

Two or three days before she died I went to see her and was alone with her. I asked her to tell me the truth about Bruno’s birth.

“You know,” I said, “that he believes he has special powers. He does not accept the story that Keziah and the monk told.”

“No, he does not believe it. He has special powers. That is clear, is it not? Look what he has done. He has built a world about himself. Could an ordinary man do that?”

“Then it was lies Keziah told?”

She gave that disturbing witch’s chuckle. “In us all there are special powers. We must find them, must we not? I was born of a woodcutter. True I was the seventh child and my mother said I was the seventh of a seventh. I told myself that there is something different about me…and there was. I studied the plants. There was not a flower nor a leaf nor a bud I did not know. And I tried them out and went to an old woman who was a witch and she taught me much. So I became a wise woman. We could all become wise men or women.”

“And Bruno?”

“He is my Keziah’s son.”

“And it is true that he was put into the crib by the monk?”

“It is true. And it was my plan. Keziah was with child. What would happen to the child? I said. He or she would be a servant, not able to read or write. I always set great store by writing. There’s a power in it…and what is written can be read. To read and to write—for all my wisdom I could not do that. Nor could Keziah. But my great-grandchildren did. And that was what I wanted for them. The monk should not be blamed. Nor Keziah. She did what was natural to her and he dared not disobey me. So I made the plan; they carried it out. My great-grandson was laid in the Christmas crib—and none would have been the wiser if Weaver hadn’t come. My great-grandson would have been the Abbot and a wise man and a miracle worker because these powers are in us all and we must first know that we possess them before we do.”

“You have confirmed what I have always believed. Bruno hates me for knowing.”

“His pride will destroy him. There is greatness in him but there is weakness too and if the weakness is greater than the strength then he is doomed.”

“Should I pretend to believe him? Am I wrong in letting him know the truth?”

“Nay,” she said. “Be true to thyself, girl.”

“Should I try to make him accept the truth?”

“If he could do that he might be saved. For his pride is great. I know him well though I have not set eyes on him since he was naked new-born. But Honey talked of him. She told me all…of you both. Now I will tell you this. The monk before his part in this were known, was heavy with his sin. He said that the only way he could hope for salvation after his sin was to write a full confession. He could write well. He came here now and then. It broke the laws of the Abbey but they were not my laws and I had my grandson to think of. I must see this monk who was his father; I commanded him to come to me and he did, and he showed me the wounds he had inflicted on his body in his torment. He showed me the hair shirt he wore. He felt his sin deeply. And he wrote the story of his sin and hid it away that in time to come it should be known.”

“Where is this confession?”

“It’s hidden in his cell in the dorter. Find it. Keep it. And show it to Bruno. It will be proof, and then you will tell him that he must be true to himself. He is clever. He has great powers. He can be greater without this lie than he ever was with it. If you can teach him this you will help to destroy that pride which in time will destroy him.”

“I will look for this confession,” I said, “and if I find it I will show it to Bruno and I will tell him what you have said.”

She nodded.

“I wish him well,” she said. “He is my flesh and blood. Tell him I said so. Tell him he can be great but he cannot rise through weakness.”

Our conversation was broken up by my mother who came bustling in and declared that I was tiring out her invalid.

A few days later Mother Salter was dead. My mother planted flowers on her grave and tended them regularly.

T
HE MONKS’ DORTER HAD
become a place which I avoided. There was something more eerie about it than the rest of the uninhabited part of the Abbey; and although many of the Abbey buildings had by this time been demolished and so much rebuilding had been done, the dorter was a section which had been left intact.

Since Mother Salter’s revelation I went there often. I wanted to find that confession which she said Ambrose had hidden there. If I could do this and present it to Bruno, he would then be face to face with the truth; and I could see, as Mother Salter had seen, that until he accepted it I could not respect him, nor could he respect himself.

Was this true? I asked myself. How difficult it is to test one’s motive! Did I want to say, “Look, I am right”? Or did I really wish to help him?

Once he accepted the fact that his birth was similar to that of many others, would he start to grow away from myth? Would he build his life on the firm foundation of truth?

I did not know, for I did not understand Bruno nor my own feelings for him. I had been bemused by the story of his miraculous appearance on earth. I had been drawn into this union while in a state of exultation. It had not brought me happiness, except that it had given me Catherine.

Whatever the motive, I was urged on by some compulsion to search for the document which according to Mother Salter Ambrose had left behind.

As I walked up the stone spiral stairs with its thick rope banister I thought of all the monks who had filed down this stone stairway during the last two hundred years and it occurred to me that many of them must have left something of themselves behind.

At the top of the stairs was a long narrow landing and on either side of this were the cells. Each had a door in which was a grille through which it was possible to see into the cell.

Most of the cells were bare although some contained a pallet which had not presumably been considered worthwhile taking away by the vandals. Each cell was identical with its narrow slit without glass which was cut into the thick walls. It must have been bitterly cold in winter; the floor of each cell was flagged; and there were slabs of stone in the walls. No comfort whatsoever; but monks did not look for comfort, of course.

I had heard something from Clement and Eugene of what life in the Abbey had been like. I knew of the hours of penance which had to be performed in the cells and how at any time the Abbot would walk silently along the landing and peer through the grille to see what was going on inside.

“The watchful eye which came we knew not when,” was Eugene’s way of expressing it. I knew something of their habits, how there were long periods when silence was the order of the day; how they were not allowed to touch each other in any way; how they must perform their tasks and their devotion with equal fervor. A strange life, particularly for men such as Clement, Eugene and certainly Ambrose, who had broken free of it on more than one occasion.

I could imagine the anguish of that man, the soul-searching, the earnest prayers for guidance, the suffering and torment that must have gone on in his cell.

I don’t think I should have been very surprised when I reached the top of that staircase to have come face to face with some long-dead monk who found it impossible to rest in his grave.

As I stood there on the landing I asked myself which of these identical cells had been that of Ambrose. It was impossible to know. Could I ask someone? Clement? Eugene? They would immediately report my interest to Bruno. I did not wish for that. No, I must find Ambrose’s cell and if possible his confession by myself.

I went into the first cell. I caught my breath with horror as the door shut on me. I felt a panic such as I had rarely felt before. It is amazing how much can flash through one’s mind in a short time. I imagined myself imprisoned in one of the cells. No one would think to look for me there. I should remain in my cold stone prison until there was no life left in me, and in time I should join the ghosts of the monks who haunted the dorter.

But there was no need for such panic. The door had no lock. I remembered Clement’s explaining that. Doors could be opened at any time by the Abbot or any of his subordinates without warning, in the same way that they could peer through the grille.

I stepped back into the cell. I examined the walls. I could see no place where a confession could be secreted. I touched the walls, all the time looking over my shoulder, so convinced was I that I was not alone.