The Miracle at St. Bruno's (8 page)

He was silent for a while and he gazed along the river and I knew he was thinking of that bereaved house in Chelsea.

And never before had I been so aware of the uncertainty of our lives.

That summer seemed long and the days filled with perpetual sunshine. Whenever we had visitors to the house, which we did frequently for no travelers were ever turned away—rich or poor—there was usually a place for them at the table. If they came from Court, Kate would waylay them and try to lure them out of earshot of my father, perhaps into the gardens to see the peacocks or the dogs that she might talk of the Court.

Thus we learned that the King was indeed tiring of the Queen; that they quarreled and that the Queen was reckless and snowed little respect for the King’s Majesty; we heard that the King had cast his eyes on a rather sly and not very handsome young woman who was one of the Queen’s maids of honor. Jane Seymour was meek and pliable, but with a very ambitious family who did not see why since the King had cast off Katharine of Aragon, a Spanish Princess and aunt of the great Emperor Charles, he should not mete out the same treatment to the daughter of comparatively humble Thomas Boleyn.

If there had been a son, we heard, all would have been different. But Anne could not get a son any more than Katharine had and there were rumors that Jane was already pregnant by the King.

Kate used to stretch out on the long grass and talk endlessly about Court affairs. She had ceased to fancy herself as Queen Anne. She was now Jane Seymour, but the role of meek Jane subservient to ambitious brothers did not suit her as well as that of proud Anne Boleyn. She was inclined to be scornful of Jane.

“How long does she think she will last?” she demanded almost angrily.

Sometimes we went through the secret door into the Abbey, and there she would talk about the jeweled Madonna. The thought of all those jewels looked at only by monks was maddening, she said. How she would like to wear them!

Her attitude toward Bruno was changing, as mine was too. I looked forward to our secret visits. I liked to watch his face as he talked and I always tried to take the conversation out of Kate’s range. It made me feel closer to him. He liked to talk to me but he liked to look at Kate; in fact he rarely glanced at me when she was there. She bullied him; she was inclined to order him about, a fact which exasperated and angered him but only seemed to increase his interest in her. Once or twice she made veiled allusions to the fact that he had taken us into the Abbey and shown us the Madonna.

“But it was you who wanted to go,” I said, for I always contrived to be on the side of Bruno against her.

“Ah,” she replied, “but
he
was the one who took us.” She pointed at him gleefully. “His was the greater sin.”

Then she taunted him with being the Holy Child so unbearably that he ran after her and I heard her laughing as he chased and when he caught her they rolled on the grass together and he pretended that he was going to hurt her. She goaded him as though she wanted him to do so, so that she would have something else with which to taunt him; I was always a little apart from these frolics; I could only look on; but I was aware of the excitement that seemed to grip them both when they played these rough games.

I grew up fast that summer; I passed out of my childhood. I knew that Kate had special privileges with Keziah because Keziah used to let Tom Skillen into her room at night, and not only Tom Skillen. Keziah was like Kate in as much as she had great interest in men; she changed in their presence even as Kate did; but whereas Keziah was soft and yielding, Kate was arrogant and demanding. But I did notice the men were immediately aware of them both, as they were of men.

Kate took me into her confidence a little. “It’s time you grew up, young Damask.”

One night she came into my room and said, “Get up. I want to show you something. She made me go with her up the spiral staircase to the servants’ rooms and listening at Keziah’s door I heard whisperings. Kate looked through the keyhole and made me look too. I could just see Keziah in bed with one of the grooms. Kate took out a key and locked the door and then we tiptoed down the stairs to the landing and went across to our own staircase and so to her room. Kate was stifling laughter. “Wait till he tries to get out and finds himself locked in!” she cried.

I said, “You had better unlock the door.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Then they wouldn’t know I’d seen them.”

She thought it was a great joke but I was worried about Keziah for I was fond of her and somehow I knew that these adventures with men were necessary to her, and that she would not have been Keziah without them.

Her companion of that night turned out to be Walt Freeman; he broke his leg when he scrambled out of her window soon after the dawn. As for Keziah, she couldn’t climb out of the window, and how could she get out while the door was locked? Walt told some story about his thinking he heard robbers and coming out early had tripped over a root. Kate made me come with her when she unlocked the door on a distraught Keziah.

“So it was you, you minx!” cried Keziah.

“We crept up and saw you and Walt in bed,” Kate told her.

Keziah looked at me and a slow flush spread across her face. I felt sorry because Kate had exposed her to me.

“You really are a wanton, Keziah,” said Kate, shaking with laughter.

“There’s more ways than one of being that,” said Keziah meaningfully, which made Kate laugh all the more.

Keziah explained to me when we were alone.

“I’ve always had too much love to give away, you see, Dammy,” she told me. “It would have been different if I’d had a husband. That’s what I’d have liked—a husband and lots of little ’uns like you. Not like that Mistress Kate.”

“Do you love many men, Keziah?” I asked her.

“Well, my ducky, the trouble with me is that I love them all and not being the sort that likes to say no…there it is. So it’ll be our little secret, eh, and you’ll not tell anyone?”

“Kezzie,” I said, “I think they all know.”

It was a lovely May day when we heard the news of the Queen’s arrest. It shook us all although we had been expecting something like it to happen; there had been so many rumors of the King’s dissatisfaction with his Queen and it was hinted that she was a witch and a sorceress who had tricked him into marriage. He was tired of her witchery; he wanted a good quiet wife who would give him sons. Already he had laid eyes and hands on Jane Seymour and her brothers were coaching her for the role of Queen. This we had heard; but there were many rumors and it was not until that May that we knew there was truth in them.

The King and Queen had gone to the joust together; then suddenly the King had left and the next thing was that the Queen was arrested and sent to the Tower—and some of those who were alleged to be her lovers were sent there too. One of these included her musician, a poor boy named Mark Smeaton, on whom it was impossible to believe the haughty Queen could have bestowed her favors; and more scandalous still her own brother was accused of being her lover.

My father had never believed that Anne Boleyn was the true Queen but now he was filled with pity for her, as I believed many others were too. Kate had seen herself so clearly as the fascinating Queen that to her this seemed almost a personal tragedy. That three short years ago she had ridden through the city in her triumph and was now in a dismal dungeon in the Tower had a sobering effect on us all.

As for Keziah she was full of compassion.

“Mercy me!” she mourned. “The poor soul! And what will become of her? That proud head will roll off her shoulders like as not and all because she fancied a man.”

“So you believe her guilty, Keziah?” I asked.

“Guilty,” cried Keziah, her eyes flashing. “Is it guilty to bring a little comfort to those who need it?” She had been frank with me since that night when Kate had locked her bedroom door, shutting her in with her lover. I was no longer a child. I had to learn about life, she had said, and the sooner the better. Life to Keziah was the relationship between men and women. “Men.” Her eyes flashed with anger and it was rarely that she was angry with men. She adored them, joked with them, placated them, soothed them, satisfied them, and if they were rough or gentle, pleading or demanding, she loved them all; but she did resent that what they might do with impunity was considered a crime in a woman; they might go their way and follow their will as far as she was concerned as long as the women who pleased them were not blamed for doing the same. But when a woman was shamed for sharing in what for a man was considered natural, she could be angry; and she was angry now.

“The King,” she said, “is not above a bit of fun and frolic. And if the Queen, poor soul, wishes for the same…well, then, why not?”

“But she will bear the King and the future King must be the son of the reigning one.”

“My patience, we are clever! We’re growing up and I’m glad. We can have some cozy chats now, Mistress Damask. But don’t you go thinking hard of the Queen.”

“What does it matter what I think of her? It’s what the King thinks that counts and he is determined to think ill because he is off after Mistress Seymour.”

Keziah put her finger to her lips. “Ah, that’s the root of it all, Mistress. This pale beauty has caught his fancy and he wants change. Men are rare ones for change, though there’s some that’ll be faithful. I’ll tell you this, Mistress Damask, there’s little about men that I don’t know. But you find out a little more every time. I knew about men before I was your age. I’d had my first by then. A handsome gentleman who came riding in the woods when I was with my Granny and he said to me, ‘Meet me in the woods close by the cottage’…that was my Granny’s cottage…‘and I’ll have a fairing for you.’ And I met him and our bed was the bracken which, when all’s said and done, can prove as good a virgin’s couch as feathers. It was dusk, I remember, and the air full of the scent of spring and when I got back my Granny was sitting there by the fire she always kept and the pot was brewing and her black cat that she used to say had more wisdom in his tail than most folk had in their whole bodies mewed and rubbed himself round my legs when I came in. She said, ‘Whafs that you’ve got, Keziah?’ I said, ‘A fairing.’ It had blue ribbons on it and was made of marchpane. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘so you’ve gained a fairing and lost your virginity.’ And I was afraid being less than your age. But Granny said, ‘Well, you can’t learn the ways of the world too soon and you’ll always be one who’ll never say no to the men nor they to you, so whether you take your first now or in two years’ time it’s of no matter.’ He came back…that fine gentleman, and we tried it under the hedge and even in a good feather bed and it was better every time. And then he disappeared and I was sad but soon another came riding by…and so it’s been.”

I said, “Keziah, are you not what is called a wanton?”

“Well, my love, I’ve always kept it quiet. I’m not one to brazen it round, I’ve always tried to make it so that it was just a little matter between the two of us. My word, my tongue runs away with me and all because of the King and his Queen.”

I thought a great deal about the Queen lying in her dismal prison. I shuddered when the barge carried us up the river past that grim gray fortress. I averted my eyes when we passed the Mores’ house. It was now deserted and I thought how it used to be when the peacocks strutted on the lawns and there was usually a glimpse of some members of that family walking in earnest conversation, or laughing together as they played some game.

Then came the day when the Queen walked out of her prison to Tower Hill where her head was cut off by the executioner’s sword which had been brought from France for this purpose; and the guns boomed out and the King rode off to Wolf Hall to be married to Jane Seymour.

I kept thinking of her lying in her litter, proud and triumphant. That she had come to this was tragic and I remember my father’s comment that the tragedy of one could be the tragedy of us all.

Meals were more silent than they used to be; guests who called on us and shared our meals no longer talked as freely as they once had.

We heard the new Queen was expecting a child and then one day the guns boomed; there was great rejoicing for Jane Seymour had given the King what he desired more than anything—a son. In conferring this great blessing she lost her life but the important matter seemed to be that at last the King had his heir. We were all commanded to drink to the new Prince; and we loyally did so.

Poor motherless Edward, the King’s heir! Doubtless he would join his sisters in their nursery—Mary, the daughter of Queen Katharine, who was now a young woman of twenty-one, and Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who was but four years old.

We all guessed it would not be long before the King was seeking a new wife. Poor Queens—Katharine, Anne and Jane! Who would be the next?

It was not of the King’s next Queen that we heard but of something quite different. Keziah was laughing about it with Tom Skillen.

“Mercy me. Well, it seems nuns and monks are human after all.”

“Ain’t what you’d expect ’em to be,” said Tom; and they giggled together.

Others took the matter more seriously. My father was very grave. It seemed that there had been several complaints concerning the conduct of nuns and monks in various nunneries and monasteries all over the country and this was giving rise to great scandals.

Kate told me about it. “A monk was found in bed with a woman,” she said. “And he was blackmailed and has been paying for months. One Abbot has two sons and he has been making sure that they both have good positions in churches.”

“But monks don’t go out into the world. How could they do these things?”

Kate laughed. “Oh, there are stories. They say that there’s a tunnel connecting a nunnery and a monastery and that the nuns and monks meet for orgies. They say that there is a burial ground where they bury the babies the nuns have, and that sometimes they smuggle them out.”

“It’s all nonsense,” I said.

“There may be some truth in it,” insisted Kate.

“But why should monks and nuns suddenly become depraved?”