The Miracle at St. Bruno's

by Philippa Carr

  “You would have lost a good friend.”

  “It is we ourselves who decide the value of our friends.”

  “You are a wicked, ungrateful girl.” He was recovering from the shock of my veiled accusation. “Good God,” he cried. “I have the feelings of a father toward you. I have tried to cherish you. I have thought highly of you and I find that you are but a willing wench who will surrender her virtue for the sake of frolic in the grass when all decent folk are in their beds.”

  In sudden fury I slapped him across the ear and this time he was too late to prevent me. I hated him not so much because his crude words and sly hints were besmirching my exalted experience, but because I felt more sure than I ever had that he was the man who had informed against my father. If I had been entirely convinced I would have wanted to kill him.

  The strength of my blow sent him reeling against the banister. He fell down two or three steps. I heard him groan as I hurried up the stairs and went along to my room.

  I sat in a chair and watched the sunrise. I lived through the night—my union with the man I loved; my encounter with the man I hated. Sacred and profane! I thought.

  I sat there dreaming and it occurred to me that there was one quality they had in common! A love of power.

  I dozed a little and dreamed of them and in my dreams I was lying with Bruno on the grass; he was bending over me and suddenly his face changed to that of Simon Caseman. Love and lust—so close in a way and yet so far apart.

  It was dawn. A fresh day. I was full of excitement, wondering what it would bring forth.

  In the morning my mother came to me.

  “Your father has sprained his ankle,” she said. “He fell on the stairs last night.”

  “How did he do that?” I asked.

  “He slipped. He will keep to his chamber today. In fact I have insisted that he rest.”

  She looked important. For once she was insisting; but I guessed that he had chosen to stay in his room because he did not wish to see me.

  “I must see that the fomentations are put on,” she said. “There is nothing like them for easing a sprain. Alternate hot and cold. Dear me. I thank God I have my chamomile lotion ready. That will ease the pain; and I think I shall give him a little poppy juice. Sleep is always good.”

  I said: “The man has merely sprained his ankle, Mother. You talk as though he is sickening for the plague.”

  “Don’t say such things,” she scolded, looking over her shoulder.

  And I marveled that this man should have brought a happiness to her which my saintly father had failed to give her.

  I wanted to be alone to dream of my future. What next, I asked myself? Shall I see him again tonight? Will he send a messenger for me? The day seemed long and irksome. Every time I heard a step on the stair I hoped it would be one of the maids come to tell me that Bruno was waiting for me.

  That afternoon my mother came to my room. I felt sick with disappointment. I had thought the step on the stair was that of one of the maids bringing a message from Bruno.

  My mother looked excited.

  “The new people are at the Abbey. Oh, dear, your stepfather is not going to be pleased. He always hoped nothing would come of it. I do hope they will be good neighbors. It is pleasant to have good neighbors. I wonder if the lady of the house is interested in gardens. There is so much land there. I believe she could be very successful.”

  “A rival, Mother, perhaps,” I said. “Shall you like it if she produces better roses than yours?”

  “I am always ready to learn improvements. I do wonder what they will do there. All those useless buildings. I suppose they will pull them down and do some rebuilding. That was what your stepfather planned to do.”

  “And now he will have to abandon his plans and we shall have him nursing a grievance as well as a sprained ankle.”

  “You are always so ungrateful to him, Damask. I don’t know what has happened to you lately.”

  She went on talking about the Abbey. She was very disappointed by my assumed lack of interest.

  I waited to hear from him. There were so many questions I would have asked him. A terrible fear had come to me. What if I should never see him again? I had had the impression that our vows and even our lovemaking had been a kind of ritual. I had had the impression that all the time he was trying to prove to me the fact that he was no ordinary human being. Even when he spoke of love it was in a mysterious fashion. It occurred to me then that he needed to believe himself to be apart. He was proud, I know, and the fact that Keziah had claimed him as her son humiliated him so deeply that he refused to accept it.

  I was trying to attach human motives to his actions. But was he after all superhuman?

  I was alternately exultant and apprehensive. I kept to my room. I did not wish to see Rupert nor my stepfather. As for my mother, her chatter irritated me. I could only long for Bruno to come to me.

  It was three days after that night when Bruno and I had made our vows, Simon Caseman had remained in his room ever since nursing his ankle, which I suspected was not as incapacitating as he made it out to be.

  I was in my room when one of the maids came out and told me that there was a visitor in the winter parlor. My mother was there and had sent for me to join them.

  I was unprepared for what was waiting me.

  As I reached the winter parlor my mother came to the door. Her face was a study of perplexity.

  “The new owner of the Abbey is here,” she stuttered.

  I went in. Bruno rose from his chair to greet me.

  Events had taken such a strange turn that I felt I could believe anything, however fantastic. Bruno, the child of the Abbey, turned adrift into poverty, who only a few nights previously had asked me to share a life of hardship with him, was the owner of the Abbey!

  At first I thought it was some joke. How could it be possible?

  As I stood facing him in the winter parlor I said something like this. He smiled at me then.

  “Is it true then that you doubt me, Damask?” he had said reproachfully.

  And I knew that he meant doubt his ability to rise above all other men, doubt his special powers.

  Fortunately my mother’s inborn habits and her insistence on the correct manner in which to receive guests got the better of all else. She would ring for her elderberry wine to be brought.

  And while we drank it Bruno told us of his good fortune, of how he had prospered in London; how he had gone to France on the King’s business and because he had executed that business with an especial skill he had been in a position to acquire the Abbey.

  From anyone else it would have sounded incredible but his presence, his assurance and that air which was unlike anyone else’s insisted on our belief.

  I could see that my mother did not doubt it at all.

  “And all that land…all those buildings that make up the Abbey,” she said.

  “I have plans,” he answered, smiling.

  “And the gardens?”

  “Yes, there will be gardens.”

  “You will live there alone?”

  “I am planning to marry. It is one of the reasons I have called on you today.”

  He was smiling at me and my heart was lifted. All the misery of the past fell away from me then.

  “I have come to ask you for Damask’s hand in marriage.”

  “But this is all so…unexpected. I must consult my husband.”

  “There is no need,” I said. “Bruno and I had already decided to marry.”

  “You…you knew…,” stammered my mother.

  “I knew that he would ask my hand and I had already made up my mind to accept him.”

  I held out my hand; he took it. It seemed symbolic. Then I saw the look of pride in his eyes; he held his head high. He was so clearly delighted by the effect this had on us. And why had he not told me on that night that he was the new owner of the Abbey? Clearly because he had wanted to be sure that it was for himself that I would marry him. It was h
is pride—his human pride. And I was glad.

  He was so proud now that momentarily I was reminded of the peacocks strutting on the lawn. There was no divinity in such an attitude surely, I thought tenderly.

  It was a human attitude and it pleased me for that reason. I wanted him to be human. I did not want a saint or a miracle man. That’s what I would teach him. I wanted a husband whom I could love and care for, who was not all-powerful, who needed me.

  There was so much to learn, so many explanations to hear, but for that moment in the winter parlor, I was happy as I had never thought to be again.

  It was the only topic of conversation. Bruno, the child who had been discovered in the Christmas crib, was the new owner of the Abbey.

  Of course, said the wiseacres, it was another miracle. They had never trusted Keziah. She had been made to confess under torture.

  It had seemed strange that the Abbey had had to be dissolved but the divine purpose was rarely other than mysterious. Now they would see…what they would see. He, who had clearly been intended to rule the Abbey, was back, and it all had a seemingly natural appearance which was often the way of miracles.

  Bruno was lighthearted. Here was another side to his nature. He had never been like this in the old days.

  He made plans. He was going to build from the stones of the Abbey a mighty mansion. Like the phoenix of old a new Abbey would arise to replace the old one.

  I lived a fantastic existence during those months. Bruno wanted the wedding to take place immediately.

  My mother was shocked. A wedding must be prepared for. What of my dowry? What of the formalities to which well-brought-up people must submit?”

  “I want no dowry,” said Bruno. “I want only Damask.”

  The effect on Simon Caseman was what I would have expected. At first he was angry. He had lost the Abbey on which he had set his heart; and that he had lost it to Bruno, the penniless waif, the bastard of a serving girl and a monk was impossible for him to believe at first.

  “It’s a hoax,” he declared. “We shall find that he is deceiving us. How could it be possible?”

  “People say,” said my mother timidly, “that with him everything is possible.”

  “It’s a trick!” insisted Simon.

  But when he had to accept the fact that it was indeed true a smoldering silence was his response. When he learned that I was to marry Bruno he said nothing but I knew that he was far from unmoved; and if I had not been in such a state of bliss I might have been apprehensive, for I was certain that he was a dangerous man.

  Rupert was bewildered. “It seems so incredible, Damask,” he said.

  I repeated what Bruno had told us about finding good fortune in London and pleasing the King.

  “It’s impossible,” said Rupert. “Such a thing could not possibly happen in such a short time. Even Thomas Wolsey, whose rise was phenomenal, did not succeed like that.”

  “Bruno is not like ordinary people.”

  “I don’t like it, Damask. It smacks of witchcraft.”

  “Oh, no, Rupert! We just have to accept that Bruno is different from the rest of us.”

  “Damask, are you truly happy?”

  “As I never believed it possible to be after my father died.” Rupert did not answer. He was very unhappy, I know. His dream that he and I should one day marry was shattered; but it was more than that. His nature was such that while he saw his own plans for his future life in ruins he could still be apprehensive for that which I had chosen.

  As soon as the harvest was over he would go to the Remus estate. Then I supposed I should see very little of him.

  It has always surprised me how when something becomes a fact—however mysteriously it happens, however fantastic it is—in a short time people grow accustomed to it and cease to regard it with wonder.

  So it was with the return of Bruno and his acquisition of the Abbey.

  Bruno had taken the name of Kingsman. It had not occurred to me before that he had no surname. I suppose he should have had that of Keziah but he refused to take it. He told me why he was called Kingsman. When he had gone to France on the King’s service His Majesty had been so delighted with him on his return that he had granted him an audience and asked his name. Bruno had told him that he did not know his parents and that he had had no need of a name until that moment. He had decided to call himself the King’s man. This delighted the King who had greatly approved, and had increased his favor with His Majesty and had made the way to acquiring the Abbey easy.

  “There is so much I want to know,” I said.

  “You will know in time,” Bruno replied.

  He was eager to show me the Abbey. “Your new home,” he called it, and together we wandered through that vast estate.

  “There are bricks here in plenty,” said Bruno, “to build us as fine a mansion as you could wish.”

  “Will that not be costly?”

  “There is one thing you will have to learn, Damask. Never apply the same standards to me as you must to other men.”

  “You talk as though you have endless wealth.”

  He pressed my hand. “Much will be revealed to you.”

  “Now you talk like a prophet.”

  He smiled and the look of pride was on his face.

  We would leave the church tower, he said, which was particularly fine and Norman; we would leave the Lady Chapel too because a house of this size would need its chapel; but the lay brothers’ dorter, their infirmary and kitchens would be demolished. The monks’ dorter and refectory would in time be the servants’ quarters. He had grand plans. We should see great changes during the next months. I should help him plan our new establishment.

  “You will marry a rich man after all, Damask,” he said. “And you believed, did you not, that you were to marry a poor one?”

  “Why did you tell me this? Why did you think it necessary to test me?”

  “I wanted to be sure that you wished to come to me…for myself only.”

  “And you—who know so much—did not know that I would do that!”

  “In truth I never doubted you. I knew…because I know these things. But I wanted to hear you say it. I wanted you to know yourself.”

  “None knows me better, Bruno.”

  “Perhaps I do.”

  He was smiling enigmatically now—the mystic.

  I insisted on his giving me details of his rise to fortune.

  He hesitated but finally he told me, and his story was, as Rupert had pointed out, incredible.

  When it was known that Rolf Weaver was in the Abbey and that his purpose was to make an inventory of the treasures there and divert them from St. Bruno’s Abbey to the King, there had been time to secret some of the jewelry into hiding places in the tunnels and cellars. The Abbot died and because of the scandal created by Ambrose and Keziah it was known there would be no compensation for anyone there. All the monks would be turned adrift to fend for themselves. Brother Valerian had therefore given each monk a few jewels which would perhaps give him a start so that he might not die of starvation and have to suffer the indignity of begging. Had this been discovered death would have been the reward of those who had jewels in their possession but the desperate nature of their situation made them ready to take that risk.

  As I knew, Bruno had come to our house for a while. There he had kept the jewels secreted on his person and later he had left us to go into London. He had reason to believe that Brother Valerian had given him jewels of some special value; he knew too that several monks had been discovered selling jewels from abbeys and monasteries and had been condemned to death for this, so he delayed before selling and came to our house that he might have somewhere to live during that waiting period. He then tried the smallest of the jewels in his possession and this realized enough money to take him abroad. He had decided to go to France, Italy or the Low Countries and there sell the remainder of the jewels in his possession.

  He had when in London made the acquaintance of one of the King’
s most important ministers who, aware of who he was and being convinced that the confession of Keziah and Ambrose had been wrung from them by torture, befriended him; and hearing that he was going abroad suggested that he might take a message to an important minister who served the Emperor Charles.

  This Bruno had done so successfully that he was brought to the King’s notice and the King had received him and thanked him personally for the service rendered. Now that he was growing older and he suffered so acutely from the abscess in his leg, the King had grown more interested in booklore and the erudition of Bruno had attracted him. They had even enjoyed a very pleasant discourse on theology and Bruno, being well versed in the King’s own book which had years ago earned for him the title of Defender of the Faith, the King found the conversation very agreeable.

  Bruno disposed of more jewels advantageously and was able to live like a man of some means, so no surprise was shown when he let it be known that he was interested in acquiring an estate and that Abbey lands would suit him very well.

  St. Bruno’s had not yet an owner and was available to someone who could pay what was necessary.

  “So,” he finished, “that is why I am here and the mansion which will arise from the ashes of the old Abbey will be my home, your home and that of our children.”

  It was a strange story and had it been anyone but Bruno, would have been hard to believe; but when told it I was ready to accept the fact that with him—who was different from other mortals—nothing was too strange to be true.

  There was the excitement of wedding preparations. My mother was ready to forget everything in her desire to do all that was necessary.

  That I was to live near by delighted her; that I was to marry a man of great wealth—for so it seemed—pleased her too. She had been secretly worried about my dowry.

  Now there was the bridecake to be made and my dress to be planned, she was in a fever of excitement—so much so that she did not even notice the glowering looks of her husband.

  Clement was determined to excel himself. He and Eugene had already spoken to Bruno. As soon as the wedding was over they wanted to come to the Abbey. We should need masters of our bake and brew houses. And who knew the Abbey’s better than they?