She had been to Court. She had seen the King. He was magnificent—enormous, royal and terrifying. He bellowed his wishes and everyone obeyed without a second’s hesitation. His temper was notoriously short, especially when his leg pained him. He sparkled with jewels and every square inch of flesh on his big body was royal. He had smiled on Kate; he had patted her hand. In fact if he had not been completely besotted by the young and giddy niece of Lord Norfolk who knew what might have happened? Kate was a little regretful but not much. It was a precarious existence, everyone realized, to be singled out for very special attention by the King. A pat of the hand and smile of appreciation were very welcome and by far more comfortable.
She was bubbling over with the joy of being the harbinger of exciting news.
He disliked Anne of Cleves so much that it was very likely Cromwell would lose his head for arranging the marriage, and it was said that the Duchess had no great liking for the King. It was said that there had been no consummation on the wedding night and the King was furious with Hans Holbein for making such a flattering picture of a plain woman for whom he could have no fancy. And there was Katharine Howard, fluttering her eyes at the King with a mixture of awed Oh-Your-Grace-can-you-really-be-glancing-my-way and a promise of all kinds of sexual excitements. She had secretive eyes and a certain wanton manner. It was said that Norfolk was pleased. One niece, Anne Boleyn, had come to grief soon after insisting on the crown; but the King was older now, his leg was a perpetual irritation and as Katharine was young and pliable it seemed possible that she might hold the King’s attention; and if she could give him a son, who knew he might be satisfied. Though it was not even of such vital importance to get a son now that there was Prince Edward in the royal nursery.
So Kate rambled on of the glories of Windsor and hunting in the Great Park; of a ball at Greenwich and a banquet at Hampton.
“Do you remember how we used to sail past Hampton, Damask, and talk about the great Palace?”
“I remember it well,” I told her. I should never forget the sight of the Cardinal sailing by our privy steps with the King.
Kate had more news for us. She was to have a child.
Lord Remus was delighted. He had not believed this possible but his beautiful clever Kate was capable of anything. He followed her with his eyes, marveling at her grace and beauty. Kate reveled in it; she laughed and flirted gaily with her husband and it was only to me that she talked freely.
She wanted to go to her old room, she said; and I went with her there. When we reached it, she shut the door, and the first thing she said was: “Damask, have you seen him? Has he ever come back?”
I didn’t have to ask to whom she was referring. I said: “Of course he has not come back.”
“He went because I married. He told me he would go right away and he would not come back until he was ready. What did he mean by that, Damask?”
“You knew him so much better than I.”
“Yes, I did. I think, in his way, he loved me.” She eyed me maliciously. “You are jealous, Damask. You always wanted him, didn’t you? Don’t deny it. I understand. It was a way he had. He was different from all others. You could never be sure whether he was a saint or a devil.”
“I never thought that.”
“No, you thought he was a saint, didn’t you? You adored him too openly. You were no challenge to him as I was. He had to convince me. You were already won. So he loved me, but it wasn’t good enough for me.”
“You wanted riches. I know that full well.”
“And see how happy I have made my husband. A child. He never thought to get that…at his time of life. He’s so proud. My patience, how he struts! As for me, I’m a marvel, I’m as much a miracle to Remus as Bruno was to the monks of the Abbey. I rather enjoy being a miracle. That’s why I understand Bruno so well. I feel for him. I understand his bitter disappointment.”
“But you didn’t love him well enough to marry him.”
She smiled ruefully. “Imagine me, the wife of a poor man…if you can.”
I agreed that I could not.
“You can’t be happy,” I said.
“I can always be happy when I get what I want,” she retorted.
Keziah grew more and more strange. I spoke to my father about her.
“Poor woman,” he said, “she is paying for her sins.”
I was always touched by Father’s attitude for I had never met anyone who could be as good as he was and yet have such sympathy for sinners.
One day one of the servants came to tell me that Keziah was missing. She had not slept in her bed that night. I wondered whether she had found another lover but I thought that could hardly be the case for she was now within a month or so of her confinement. I was alarmed and some instinct sent me to the witch’s hut in the woods.
She was there.
Mother Salter bade me enter. I felt the shiver of apprehension I always felt in her house. It was a small cottage with one room in which was a short spiral staircase. This opened into the room above. It was overcrowded; there were cabalistic signs on the wall and bottles in which she kept her concoctions. There were jars of ointment on the shelves and from the beams there always hung bunches of drying herbs. The smell was peculiar; a mixture of herbs and something indefinable. A fire always seemed to be burning and a great sooty-sided caldron hung over it suspended on a chain. There were two seats on either side of the fireplace and whenever I had seen Mother Salter she was seated in one of them.
It took a great deal of courage to enter her house; the sickly did because they hoped to be cured; those who wanted a love potion came; as for myself I was so anxious about Keziah that I walked boldly in.
She pointed to one of the seats beside the fireplace and smiled at me. She was very old but her eyes were lively and young. They were small and dark, embedded in wrinkles, crafty and knowledgeable, rather like a monkey’s.
I said, “I’m worried about Keziah.”
She pointed upward.
My relief was obvious. “So she is here.”
She smiled at me and nodded. “Her time is near,” she said.
“So soon?”
“The babe is eager to get out into the world. She’ll come before her time.”
“It’s to be a girl?”
Mother Salter did not answer. She knew such things and had often prophesied correctly the sex of a child.
“And Keziah?”
Mother Salter shook her head. “Her time is running out,” she said.
“You can save her.”
“Not if her time has come.”
“It can’t be,” I cried. “You can do something.”
She gave me a grin which was not pleasant to behold. There was something malevolent about it and it showed her blackened teeth. Then she stood up and beckoned to me. She started up the short spiral staircase. I followed.
I stepped straight into a room with a small latticed window. It was darkish but I recognized the figure on the pallet.
“Keziah,” I said, and knelt beside it.
“It’s the little ’un,” she said. “It’s Dammy.”
“Yes, I’m here, Kezzie. You gave me a fright. I wondered what had happened to you.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me again on this earth, little ’un.”
“That’s foolish talk,” I said sharply. “You’re going to be all right once…once this is over.”
“He were going to kill me,” she said. “This is his way of doing it. What a man he were! All that man going to the worms, where I shall soon be going.”
“What talk is this!” I cried indignantly.
Mother Salter cackled. She was standing there like a vulture watching us.
“Keziah,” I said, “come back to us. I’ll look after you. I’ll look after the baby….”
Keziah seized my hand; hers was hot and burning. “You’ll look after the child, Dammy? You’ll look after my little baby? You’ve promised me.”
“I promise you, Keziah,
we will look after the child.”
“She’s to be brought up like a little lady. She must sit at the table where you used to sit with Mistress Kate and Master Rupert. That’s what I want to see. I want her to be full of booklore, like my boy. But he never looked my way. He wouldn’t have me for his mother. He wouldn’t believe it. But I want her to have book learning. I want her to be a lady. I call her my little Honey. I remember it well…there he was standing over me and it had never happened that way before and through the window I smelt the honeysuckle…and that’s when my baby was made. Honeysuckle, sweet and clinging. I call her my little Honey.”
Then I knew that Keziah was part of my life and that if she were no longer there I should have lost that part; and perhaps, next to my father, Keziah when I was very young had been nearest to me, for my mother had never really been close.
Now she lay there with the beads of sweat clinging to the faint hairs about her lips; and the rosy color of her cheeks replaced by a network of tiny reddish lines. Something had gone out of her, that gaiety, that love of living. She was no longer in love with life and that could only mean she was preparing to leave it.
I said urgently: “Keziah, you’re going to get well. You’ve got to. What shall I do without you?”
She said: “You’ll do very well. You don’t need me now…haven’t for a long time.”
I said, “The baby will need you. Your little Honey.”
She grasped my hand firmly; hers was hot and dry. “You will, Mistress Damask. You’ll take her. You’ll look after her as though she was your little sister. Promise me, Damask.”
I said: “I promise.”
Wrekin the cat had come up. He pressed his body against my foot and purred. Mother Salter nodded.
“Swear it,” she said. “Swear, my girl. I and Wrekin will be your witness.”
I was silent, looking from the rather malevolent face of her whom we called the witch to the strangely altered one of Keziah on the bed. I sensed that it was a solemn moment. I was swearing to make a child my concern, the child of a serving girl and a man whom I had seen murdered and whom I could never regard as anything but as low as the beasts of the forest. Worse, because at least they killed from fear or from the need for food. He had found joy in torturing others; and I had rarely been so disgusted in my life as when I had witnessed Keziah’s desire for this man. And I was promising to care for their child! But Keziah’s dry hand was pressing mine. I saw the anguish in her eyes.
I bent over her and kissed her. And it was not fear of Mother Salter but love and pity for Keziah that made me say: “I swear.”
It was a strange scene in that bedroom. Keziah dying and the old woman standing by yet showing no grief.
“You’ll come to bless this night,” she said to me. “If you keep your word. If you don’t you’ll come to curse it.”
Keziah moved uneasily on the bed. She whimpered. Mother Salter said to me: “Be gone now. When the time comes you will know.”
I came out of the cottage into the woods and ran all the way home.
I knew that I must tell my father of my promise. If I told my mother she would say: “Yes, the girl can come to us and she shall be brought up with the servants.” Then she would forget about it and the child would become part of our household. There were children now in the servants’ quarters for one or two of them had been got with child and my father would never turn away a deserted mother.
But this was different. I had promised that Keziah’s child should be brought up in the house, sit at the schoolroom table. I knew I must keep my word.
I told my father what had happened. I said: “Keziah has been almost as a mother to me.”
My father pressed my hand tenderly. He knew that my own mother while she had looked after my physical needs in an exemplary manner had perhaps sometimes been a little absentminded when absorbed by her garden.
“And,” I went on, “this is Keziah’s child. I know she is a servingwoman but this child who is about to be born will be the brother or sister of Bruno…if it is true that he is Keziah’s son.”
My father was silent and a look of pain crossed his face. We rarely mentioned what had happened at the Abbey. And the fact that Bruno had disappeared had deeply affected us all. My father was becoming convinced that the confession had been a false one and that Bruno was in fact a Messiah or at least a prophet.
I went on quickly: “I gave my word, Father. I must keep it.”
“You are right,” he said. “You must keep your word. But let Keziah bring her child here and tend it. Why should she not do that?”
“Because she will not be here. That was why they made me swear. Keziah…and Mother Salter…believe that Keziah will die.”
“If this comes to pass,” said my father, “then bring the child here.”
“And she may be brought up as a child of the household?”
“You have promised this and you must keep your promise.”
“Oh, Father, you are such a good man.”
“Don’t think too highly of me, Damask.”
“But I do think it and I shall always do so. For, Father, I know how good you are—so much better than those who are supposed to be holy.”
“No, no, you must not say these things. You cannot see into the hearts of people, Damask, and you should not judge unless you can. But let us walk down to the river where we can talk in peace. Do you not miss Kate?”
“I do, Father, and Keziah too. Everything seems to have changed. It has all become quiet.”
“There is sometimes a quiet before a storm. Have you noticed that? We must always be prepared for what may happen next. Who would have believed a few years ago that where our flourishing Abbey stood there should be almost a ruin? Yet the winds had been blowing that way for some time and we did not notice them.”
“But now there is no Abbey and the King has found a new wife. Kate has said that already he has his eyes on a girl named Katharine Howard.”
“Let us pray, Damask, that all goes well with this marriage because you have seen what disaster the King’s marriage can bring to his people.”
“It was the break with Rome. Surely that was one of the most important events which ever befell this country.”
“I believe so, my child, and it has had far-reaching effects—and will doubtless have more. But when you talk to me of bringing Keziah’s child into the household, I wonder when you will be bringing up your own.”
“Father, are you still hankering after my marriage?”
“It would please me greatly, Damask, if before I died I saw you betrothed, with a good husband—one whom I could trust—to care for you, to give you children. I longed for sons and daughters and I have but one. And you are more precious to me than all the world, as you well know. But why should I not see my house peopled by children—the children you will bring me in my old age, Damask?”
“You make me feel that I must marry without delay to please you.”
“As my desire to see you happy is even greater than that for grandchildren, it would be far from my wish. I long to see you married—but for my contentment you must be a happy wife and mother.”
I pressed his arm gently. I am sure that if Rupert had asked me to marry him at that moment I should have agreed to do so because I wished to please my dear good father more than anything else on earth.
One of the serving girls brought a message for me. Mother Salter wished me to go to her. When I arrived the old woman was seated as usual on the chimney seat, Wrekin at her feet, the sooty pot bubbling over the fire.
She rose and led the way up to the short spiral staircase. On the bed lay a body under a sheet and on the sheet was a sprig of rosemary. I gasped, and she nodded.
“It was as I said it would be,” she murmured.
“Oh, my poor Keziah!” My voice trembled and she laid a hand on my shoulder; her fingers were bony, her nails like claws.
I said: “And the child?”
She led the way downstairs. In a corn
er of the room was a crib which I had not noticed when I came in. In it lay a living child. I stared in wonder and Mother Salter gave me a little push toward the crib.
“Take her up,” she said. “She’s yours.”
“A little girl,” I whispered.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
I took up the child. It was unswaddled and wrapped in a shawl. Her face was pink and crumpled looking; its very helplessness filled me with pity that was close to love.
She took the child from me.
“Not yet,” she said. “Not yet. I’ll nurture her. When the time comes, she’ll be yours.” She laid the child back in the crib and turned to me. Her claws dug into my arm. “Don’t forget your promise.”
I shook my head. Then I found that I was weeping. I was not sure for what—for Keziah whose life was over, or for the baby whose life was just beginning.
“She was young to die,” I said.
“Her time had come.”
“But it was too soon.”
“She had a good life. She loved a frolic. She could never resist a man. It had to be. Men were the meaning of life to her. It was written that they would be the death of her too.”
“That man…the father of her child…I loathed him.”
“Yes, my fine lady,” she said. “But how can any of us be sure who fathers us?”
“I am sure,” I said.
“Ah, yes, you, but who else can be? Keziah never knew who her father was. Nor was her mother sure. My daughter was another such as Keziah. They couldn’t resist the men, you see, and they both died in childbirth. You’re a fine lady and you’ll make little Honeysuckle one too.” She squeezed my arm. “You’ve got to, haven’t you? Wouldn’t dare do aught else, would you? Remember, you gave your word. And if you don’t keep it, my fine young lady, you’ll have the curse of dead Keziah on you forever and what’s worse still, Mother Salter’s.”
“I’ve no intention of not keeping my promise. I want to. I long to have the child. My father has said that I may bring her up as my own if I so wish.”
“And you must so wish. But not yet…. She’s too young yet. I’ll keep her with me until the time comes. Then she shall be yours.” She had brought with her the sprig of rosemary which she pressed into my hand. “Remember,” she said.
The Miracle at St. Bruno's Page 12