The Miracle at St. Bruno's (7 page)

“If they’re the Madonna’s jewels they’re holy,” said Bruno.

“Madonnas don’t have jewels.”

“They do. Our Madonna has. She has finer jewels than the King has.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Bruno plucked a blade of grass and began to chew it in a very unholy manner. He remained silent and there was nothing like that kind of silence to infuriate Kate.

“Well?” she demanded. “You’re lying, aren’t you? You’re making up stories about your silly old Madonna.”

Kate looked over her shoulder as she spoke for she was very superstitious and she wondered whether she had gone too far in referring to the Madonna as silly and old.

Bruno said: “I’m not. I wish I could show you. You never believe anything that you’re not shown.”

“Then show us,” cried Kate.

“How could I? It’s in the sacred chapel.”

“All things are possible,” said Kate virtuously.

“The jeweled Madonna is in the sacred chapel and only those monks who are enclosed visit it.”

“Then how have you seen it?”

“I was taken there. I blessed her and she blessed me.”

“Oh,” said Kate, “the Holy Child of course.”

“Brother Valerian has the key and it hangs on a chain he wears round his waist.”

“You could steal it when he sleeps. He often sleeps when you are doing your lessons. You told us so.”

“I could not do that.”

“You mean you dare not. You call yourself a Holy Child and you are afraid of an old monk! Where are all your miracles? If you’re really a Holy Child you should be able to get the key…just like that.”

“I never said I could work miracles all the time.”

“But it’s what we all expect of you. How dare you appear in a Christmas crib if you’re not a holy child? It’s sacrilege. You ought to be turned out of the Abbey. You’re not a holy child, you’re a fraud.”

I had discovered that there was one thing Bruno could not endure and that was to have his holiness doubted. I was beginning to realize how much it meant to him to see himself apart from others. His face was suffused with fury. I had never seen him so put out before.

“I am,” he cried. “And don’t dare say otherwise.”

Kate, who could not learn a few lines of poetry, who could not without great difficulty add a few figures or memorize a Latin verb, was knowledgeable in the ways of people. She was immediately aware of their weaknesses and knew how to exploit them. She was determined to see the jeweled Madonna and set to work to achieve that end.

It took her a few days; but during that time she so played on Bruno’s fear that perhaps after all he was not so different from other boys that she prevailed upon him to steal the key from Brother Valerian’s girdle.

I had become caught up in the adventure so that I was as eager to see the Madonna as Kate was. I shall never forget the moment when we entered that cold gray building. I felt that at any moment we should be struck dead for daring to set foot on sacred ground but I was driven on not so much by my great desire to see the Madonna as to share in the triumph of these two—Kate for getting her own way and Bruno for proving that he was capable of acts beyond the power of mortal beings. For who but he would dare to bring outsiders into the sacred precincts of the Abbey.

He went on ahead of us and when he was sure that the way was clear beckoned for Kate and me to follow. We crept through those dank gray cloisters, into the narrow flagged corridors and up a spiral staircase. It was very eerie and so still that Kate said afterward that it was like being with the dead.

Bruno was very pale, his lips were firmly set though and I knew that nothing would deter him. Kate too, her eyes dilated it seemed, silent for once, overawed. Before we had entered the Abbey I had visualized our being discovered and the pain and surprise this would cause my father; but now I forgot that. I was as eager as Kate and as careless of flouting authority. It was a strange feeling; a certain knowledge that I was doing something very wrong and yet an inability to resist doing it.

It seemed a long time before we came to the chapel and Bruno fitted the stolen key into the lock; the door creaked as it moved inward so loudly I thought that the monks in their cells would hear.

Then we were in the chapel.

We crept across the stone flags, past the pews each guarded by a stone angel with what I presumed to be a flaming sword. There was a hush over the place. The stained-glass windows gave a bluish light to the place; the great stone buttresses were very cold.

We crept behind Bruno to the altar on which was a magnificent cloth wrought in gold and silver thread. The ornaments on the cloth were of silver and gold encrusted with jewels. We stared at them in wonder.

Then Bruno drew aside the heavy curtain decorated with gold embroidery. We were in a small holy of holies and facing us was the Madonna.

Kate caught her breath in wonder for she was beautiful. She was carved out of marble but her cape was of real lace and she was wearing a flowing gown of some thick embroidered material. This gown was aflame with the most glittering jewels imaginable. It was dazzling. Rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls had been fixed onto it. I remember thinking how heavy it must be. The Madonna’s hands had been beautifully carved and rings glittered on her fingers. There were diamonds, sapphires and pearls in the bracelets which adorned her arms. But it was her crown which was almost blinding in its brilliance. In the center of this glittered an enormous diamond; and about this was clustered gems of all colors.

I thought to myself Kate will have to admit that the Madonna is richer and more sparkling than the new Queen on the way to her coronation.

Kate clasped her hands in ecstasy. She had never seen such jewels. She wanted to touch the jeweled robe but Bruno restrained her.

“You daren’t. You would be struck dead,” he said.

And even Kate drew back.

Having proved his point Bruno was now eager to get us out of the chapel; and I think that we were anxious to go although it was difficult to take one’s eyes from that glittering figure.

Cautiously we tiptoed out, and how relieved Bruno was when he turned the key in the lock. The journey through the stone corridors seemed almost an anticlimax after being in the sacred chapel. If we were caught we would be reprimanded but he would not mention that we had seen the Madonna. We instinctively knew that in looking on that we had committed a greater sin than by merely trespassing into the Abbey.

We came out into the open and hurried to our secret meeting place. Bruno threw himself onto the ground, face downward. He was shaken by what he had done. Kate was silent; I guessed she was thinking of herself wearing that jeweled crown. But even she was subdued as we went home.

O
UTSIDE EVENTS HAD THRUST
themselves upon us now, intruding into our home, destroying its peace. Even my mother could not escape from this. My father said the very foundations of the Church were shaken. Brother John and Brother James sat in the garden with him; they talked in whispers, their voices grave. My father talked to me as he always did. He wanted me to know what was going on and as he said to me often: “You are not a frivolous girl, Damask. You are not like Kate, concerned with ribbons and frills. We live in dangerous times.”

I knew of the tragedy surrounding our neighbors, the Mores. Sir Thomas had made clear his refusal to sign the Oath of Supremacy which was an admission that the King was Head of the Church as well as State and that his marriage to Queen Katharine of Aragon had been no marriage; it was an admission that the heirs the King might have by Queen Anne Boleyn were the true heirs. And Lady Mary, Katharine’s daughter, illegitimate.

“I am afraid for Sir Thomas, Damask,” said my father. “He is a brave man and will adhere to his principles whatever evil may befall him. He has, as you know, been taken to the Tower by way of the Traitors’ Gate and I greatly fear we may never see him again.”

There was infinite sadness in my father’s face and fear too.

“Such a sad household it is now, Damask,” he went on, “and you know full well what a merry one it once was. Poor Dame Alice, she is bewildered and angry. She doesn’t understand. ‘Why does he have to be obstinate?’ she keeps asking. ‘I say to him, Master More, you are a fool.’ Poor Alice, she never did understand her brilliant saint of a husband. And there is Meg. Oh, Damask, it breaks my heart to see poor Meg. She is his favorite daughter and none closer to him than Meg. Meg is like a poor lost soul, and I thank God she has a good husband in Will Roper to comfort her.”

“Father, if he would sign the Oath this need not be.”

“If he signed the Oath it would be to him as though he had betrayed his God. He has been a good servant to the King but as he has said to me, ‘William, I am the King’s servant, but God’s first.’ ”

“And yet because of this they are so unhappy.”

“You will understand when you are older, Damask. Oh, how I wish you were a little older. I wish you were of Meg’s age.”

I wondered why Father wished I was older then; and I understood later.

I remember the day Bishop Fisher was executed. Then there were the monks of the Charterhouse who were most cruelly killed. They were drawn to the place of their execution, hanged and cut down when alive and fearful agonies inflicted on them. That day Brother John and Brother James came to see my father. I heard Brother John say: “What is to become of us, William? What is to become of us all?”

Bruno told us that there was continuous prayer in the Abbey for Bishop Fisher, for the monks of the Charterhouse and for Sir Thomas More; and that Brother Valerian had said what happened to them could happen to others and much hung on the fate of Sir Thomas More. He was a man who was greatly loved; if the King allowed him to die the people would be angry. Some said it was more than the King dared do; but the King dared all. He would brook no interference and he had declared that any who denied his supremacy were traitors, be they onetime Chancellors and friends of his. No man was his friend who stood against him and none who did so should escape his wrath.

There came the terrible day when Sir Thomas came from the Court in procession with the ax turned toward him. We heard of it from those who witnessed it; and how poor Meg ran to him and threw her arms about his neck before she fell fainting to the ground.

“They’ll never do it,” said my father. “The King cannot kill a man he once professed to love; he cannot murder a saint.”

But the King would allow no one to defy him. I often thought of him as I had seen him on his barge laughing with the Cardinal…another who had died, they said, through his displeasure. No man could afford to displease the King.

And then on that day of mourning the bell tolled for Sir Thomas, and his head was severed from his body and stuck on a pole on London Bridge, from which spot Meg later retrieved it.

My father shut himself into his room; I knew that he spent the hours of that day on his knees and I did not believe he was praying for himself.

He talked to me again, his arm through mine down there by the loosestrife and the long grass that grew on the riverbank, there where we could talk with no fear of being overheard.

“You are nearly twelve years old, Damask,” he said; and he repeated: “I would you were older.”

“Why so, Father?” I asked. “Is it because you wish I could understand more easily?”

“You are wise beyond your years, my child. If you were fifteen or sixteen perhaps you might marry and then I would know that you had someone to care for you.”

“Why should I want a husband when I have the best of fathers? And I have Mother too.”

“And we shall care for you as long as we shall live,” he said fervently. “I think that if by some mischance….”

“Father!”

He went on: “If we should not be here…if I should not be here….”

“But you are not going away.”

“In these times, Damask, how can we know when our time shall come? Who would have believed a few years ago that Sir Thomas would be taken from us?”

“Father, you will not be asked to sign the Oath?”

“Who can say?”

I clung to his arm suddenly.

Then he said soothingly: “The times are dangerous. It may be that we may be called upon to do what our consciences will not permit. And then….”

“Oh, but that is cruel.”

“We live in cruel times, child.”

“Father,” I whispered, “do you believe that the new Queen is no true Queen?”

“ ’Tis better not to say such words.”

“Then do not answer that question. When I think of her….lying in the litter smiling, so proud, so glad because all that pomp and ceremony was for her….Oh, Father, do you think that she spared a thought for all the blood that would be shed for her….Men like Sir Thomas, the monks….”

“Hush, child. Sir Thomas expressed his pity for her. Heads have been cut off because of her. Who can say how long she will keep her own?”

“Kate heard it said that the King was growing tired of her, that she has given him no son…only the Princess Elizabeth…and that he is already looking at others.”

“Tell Kate to keep a curb on her tongue, Damask. She’s a reckless girl. I fear for Kate—yet somehow I fancy she has a talent for self-preservation. I fear more for you, my beloved daughter. I would you were old enough to take a husband. What think you of Rupert?”

“Rupert? As a husband, you mean? I had not thought of that.”

“Yet, my child, he is a good boy. Reserved in temperament, good-natured, hardworking; it is true he has very little of his own but he is our own flesh and blood and I would like to see him continue to care for the estate. But most of all I would feel I was putting you into safe hands.”

“Oh, Father, I hadn’t thought of…marriage.”

“At twelve it is time you gave that important matter a little consideration. Perhaps in four years’ time. Four years! It is long.”

“You sound as though I am a burden you would be relieved to be rid of.”

“My darling child, you know you are my life.”

“I know it and I spoke carelessly. Father, are you so much afraid for yourself that you wish I had another protector?”