by D. L. Bogdan
Cecily meantime was attended by Matilda, who rubbed salve made from marigolds, beeswax, and honey given to her by Dorothy on her angry red scar to encourage healing, and she remained abed. The baby was nursed by a sturdy and loving young woman called Bertie Stokes and Cecily was just as content to leave him to her care. She would have no energy for it. As it were, Cecily did not enjoy one pain-free moment; her breasts had filled and she endured the agonizing process of drying up while her belly still cramped. The wound with its massive stitches frightened her when she saw it in between dressings and she found herself filled with self-loathing for her inability to recover. Now she had a better sense of the frustration Hal had felt when recuperating from his illness.
Cecily received visits from the local noblewomen, Alice among them. Even some of the tenants’ wives called with bread and cheese and blankets sewn by their own loving hands. Cecily was grateful for the solicitousness of those around her, but nonetheless the feeling of gloom remained. She was possessed by dark fancies and had nightmares while she was awake about someone killing the baby. The image that terrorized her most was that often that someone was herself. She did not understand it. She had never entertained such notions before, even in her angriest moments, and that the object of her dark fantasy should be her own innocent baby terrified her. She was shaken with fear. Surely these thoughts come straight from the vilest depths of Hell, she thought, and she prayed for forgiveness, hoping God would rescue her from these fiendish visions.
She longed for Mirabella, remarkably. She did not want to confess her imaginings to a priest, who would probably say she was taken by a devil, and thought that the novitiate nun might prove a little more understanding.
In the end, however, she told no one and tried to suffer through them. She found the less she saw of the baby the less the disturbing images taunted her. Instead she was left with the hollowness of sadness undefined and all consuming. She had every reason to rejoice; she had lived through her ordeal, delivered a healthy son, and, though she did not feel like it, was recovering with remarkable speed according to the midwife.
But she could not rejoice. She found, much to her dismay, that she could not do much of anything.
She was as immobilized as Hal had ever been.
It was overwhelming.
One afternoon while Cecily nibbled on some savory goat milk cheese, Hal burst into her apartments, wearing a bright smile and carrying a sack.
He sat on the bed. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Do you remember what you told me?” He shook his head. “Of course not, you tell me so many things!” he added with a laugh.
Cecily could not help but smile in his presence. “What did I tell you, Hal?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.
“When you convinced me to stop wearing the hair shirt,” he said, casting his eyes downward as though the memory of the shirt and the reasons he had employed it still brought him great pain. “You took the sandglass and threw it out the window, saying it represented the past and we were to start anew.” At this point Hal reached into the sack and retrieved a new sandglass, this one elaborately carved out of beautiful mahogany with roses and ivy twining about the supports. The glass was large enough to time one hour.
“A new sandglass,” he said. “To represent our new life.” He gave it to Cecily. It was heavy in her hands. “We have both endured a great deal of pain. But every day is a new start, Cecily, a chance to heal from old wounds. Every time we need to start again, whether we have had an argument or have suffered a tragedy, we will turn this glass about to remind each other that we can begin again. You see?”
Cecily’s eyes brimmed with tears. Her heart constricted with love as she ran her hand over the wood. Her fingers ran across something, a defect perhaps, and when she looked down she found two dates carved into it. One was their wedding date and the other the birth date of their son.
“Oh, Hal ...” she murmured, allowing her tears to fall.
“Every time we need to turn it about—when we’re not actually using it to keep time, that is—” he added with a little chuckle, “we will carve the date of our new beginning in it. Even if it marks the end of something sad.”
“It is a beautiful notion,” Cecily said. She sat up with great effort, swallowing the urge to cry out as a searing pain flashed down her belly, and wrapped her arms about Hal’s neck, kissing him firmly on the mouth.
She would banish the bad thoughts and start living again. She had a baby to care for and a large household to run.
She turned the glass about, watching the grains of sand drizzle to the empty base.
It was time to begin again.
Cecily was moving about slowly. She was still in a tremendous amount of pain and could not stand straight, but she managed to attend to the needs of her household, finding that the distractions kept her startling melancholia at bay. She began to receive visitors on a regular basis and soon the house was a hive of activity.
Harry was four months old when she felt safe enough to interact with him; even so, she felt a disconcerting distance. Harry was attached to his nurse, Bertie, and cried for her when she left the room. His eyes searched her out frantically if she was not in his immediate line of vision. Cecily swallowed tears whenever this happened. It was natural for children to be more attached to their nurses than their parents, she knew, but it did little to comfort her. She resolved to spend as much time with him as possible, tending to as many of his needs as she could, that the two might develop a closer bond. She cuddled and played with him and soon his face lit with delight upon seeing her, causing her heart to constrict with relief.
“He knows who my lady is,” Bertie told her, her voice warm with reassurance.
Cecily hated the fact that she needed this kind of encouragement, but she had done it to herself, hadn’t she, wallowing in that strange sadness she had fallen into after his birth? Now she had regrouped and was determined to be the best mother possible.
It was not without a trace of bittersweet sadness that Cecily observed Harry resembling Brey more and more with each passing day with his blond curls and inquisitive blue eyes. Cecily was not the only one haunted by it; now and then she caught Hal gazing at the child, his eyes soft with wistfulness. There was no doubt that he was recalling his first son.
Cecily found it a little disturbing that she was the mother of Brey’s brother. She did not know why this should make any difference, but she was disconcerted nonetheless. She could not stop thinking of her, Brey’s, and Hal’s blood flowing through the same veins—they had all become one in the body of this remarkable creature.
Yet, strange as it was, it was that thought that consoled Cecily. In little Harry life was renewed. He was their hope, their new beginning, and whenever she looked upon the sandglass Hal had given her she ran her fingers along the carving of Harry’s birth date.
Someday she would tell him of his sweet brother and how she had loved him so. But that would not be for a very long time.
If Harry resembled Brey in temperament as much as he did in looks, he would be a lad in whom to take much pride.
“We live in dangerous times,” Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was telling Father Alec when they were alone in Cranmer’s apartments at Lambeth Palace.
Father Alec found the words to be a gross understatement, but then who could articulate best the horrors of the past three years? Words could never encompass the tragedies they had witnessed. Thomas More, the former lord chancellor who would not sign the king’s Oath of Succession, was dead, beheaded on Tower Green, as Bishop Fisher had been. Princess Catherine of Aragon had died in January 1536 and was buried the same day Anne Boleyn was delivered of her stillborn prince.
Within months, Queen Anne, that pretty, spirited girl, was accused of treasonous acts that included incest with her own brother, adultery, and witchcraft. She was beheaded along with her brother while the other men who had “criminal knowledge” of her were hanged and eviscerated. But when Father Alec looked into those hard, proud
black eyes the day she knelt before the French swordsman, he knew in his soul she was not guilty. The only reason she was condemned to die was because she failed just as her predecessor had failed. She could not produce a son for the king. Now there was a new queen, the pious Jane Seymour, who was meek and dainty and would not push for reform as clever Anne had done. Henry VIII would not be manipulated by a woman again.
“All we can do is cautiously move forward,” Cranmer was telling Father Alec. “We must push our reforms through as subtly as possible. And everything, absolutely everything, must be credited to His Majesty.”
The thought of the king, whom Cranmer still loved with a devotion Father Alec would never understand, made him want to retch. Henry VIII had grown fat over the years and his paranoia increased with his belt size. No one was safe around him; he raised men up and cast them down on a whim. The Howards, Anne Boleyn’s ambitious family and once the shining stars of the kingdom, were all but in hiding, yielding to the rise of the favored family of the moment: the Seymours. Father Alec wondered how long it would be before they committed some concocted offense against His Majesty and tumbled from grace. One had only to look at the king the wrong way to do so.
As long as Father Alec was beside Cranmer he felt safe. Cranmer was one of the king’s most beloved companions, and as Father Alec lacked political aspirations for himself, he immediately set men at ease. His only aim was to serve his archbishop, who was a living manifestation of his every ideal.
The unspoken bone of contention between the men was that the archbishop’s only aim was to serve his king.
And the king frightened Father Alec to death.
“I believe in him, you see,” Cranmer said, as though reading his thoughts. It was a disturbing habit the archbishop indulged in often, and sometimes Father Alec entertained, albeit briefly, the notion that the man did possess some otherworldly quality about him. “I believe in the strain of the Almighty that runs through his veins and it is that strain which will ultimately compel him to do good—if he is guided correctly, delicately, and with love.”
“You truly do love him,” Father Alec observed, trying to contain his awe.
“He is my king ... and he is greatly troubled. He needs ...” He searched for the words. “He needs our help.” He sighed. “If you could only have seen him when I first met him. He was so vibrant, so inspired. His depth and breadth of knowledge is still incomparable. He loves to learn; he tries so hard to understand and make sense of the world around him. He is driven by a conscience we sometimes do not understand, but when you look into his eyes you cannot doubt its existence.” The passion in Cranmer’s tone touched Father Alec. “He longs to be a good king. In his eyes to be a good king means ensuring the succession with a male heir. He will feel as though he has failed if he does not.” Cranmer’s eyes were lit with the intensity of his convictions.
“And what of Queen Jane?” Father Alec was compelled to interpose. “If she cannot bring forth an heir ...” He cocked a speculative brow. There was no need to say more.
Cranmer squeezed his eyes shut a moment, as though warding off a terrifying vision of Hell itself. He drew in a breath. At last he said, “I am constrained to help His Majesty, to pray for his soul. It is difficult to see now in the light of recent events, but we must have faith in the fact that King Henry is, in his soul, a good man.”
It was a convoluted analysis, justifying the king’s horrific actions through the biased eyes of one who loved him, but Father Alec would not dispute him.
In his heart, of course, he thought no such thing.
Henry VIII was a madman and Father Alec knew without a shred of doubt that the indirect murder of Queen Catherine followed by the slaughter of Queen Anne signified a new chapter in their lives.
It was the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign of terror.
“He is mad,” Mirabella seethed to the abbess, Anna Shelby, when the older woman tearfully explained the fate of Sumerton Abbey in chapter that evening.
Anna Shelby fixed Mirabella with a steely stare. Though chapter was the time to air out grievances, she seldom tolerated outbursts, no matter how justified they may be.
“Sister Mirabella! You will be silent!” she admonished in harsh tones.
Mirabella rose, the slender hand that rested on the table curling into a fist. “Forgive me, I mean not to disobey, but I cannot be silent. I cannot accept this. You have just told us that our beloved convent, along with almost every other monastic house in England, is to be closed and plundered for the sake of filling King Henry’s treasury! How can you expect any other response?”
“I understand your resentment, Sister Mirabella, but what would you have us do?” returned Anna Shelby, her eyes brimming with tears. “We are but humble women; we cannot fight His Majesty’s will.”
“No, of course we cannot fight him,” Mirabella said. “But we can resist. Perhaps the king will have mercy—”
“My dear lady, when have you witnessed an act of mercy from this king?” returned the abbess.
Mirabella was trembling with anger. “Then what are we to do? Accept our pensions, retire to the country, useless, while our world crumbles about us? How can we accept that?”
The room burst into nervous chatter until the abbess raised her gnarled hands, gesturing for them to be silent. “Sister Mirabella, change is an inevitability of life. Perhaps this is God’s will—”
“It is not God’s will!” Mirabella cried, feeling a tug at her wrist, knowing it was a warning from Sister Julia to hold her peace and ignoring it. “This is a test for us to uphold the will of God, opposing sinners who mean to work against it!” she cried with passion. “It cannot be God’s will that His devoted servants be cast into this cruel world like grains of sand—”
“Perhaps it is,” the abbess interposed, her voice soft. “Perhaps, Sisters, we have been isolated for too long. Perhaps God wishes us to be out in the world, that we may perform His work—”
“I cannot accept that,” Mirabella said with a shake of her head. “There are those called to the monastic world and those called to live outside. To take away our place of calling is tantamount to taking away our very lives.” As she spoke she noted Sister Julia searching her face. She flushed, feeling the need to defend herself against something she did not understand.
“You are wrong,” Anna Shelby said. “The king may take away our home, our property, our books, and our treasures.” She looked beyond the gathering of anxious females, fixing pale blue eyes on a plane so distant it could only be viewed from within. “But those are all things, my child. Just things. He cannot take away that which belongs to God—our souls. And that is where our calling lies. Whether cloistered or out in the world, if your soul belongs to God, nothing, not even the injustices of this life, can touch you.”
Mirabella shook her head again, squeezing back hot tears. How could the abbess betray them so easily? How could she yield to that bastard devil-king, Henry VIII?
Mirabella righted herself, standing straight and tall, her shoulders square as she addressed the chapter house. “Sisters, does no one have the courage to fight, to preserve our way of life? Can we remain passive and allow this tyrant to separate us from our Mother Church? The devil reigns in this land, cloaking himself in the New Learning, and our king has been seduced by it. I tell you, the Archbishop of Canterbury and that crony of His Majesty’s the vile weasel Thomas Cromwell—you remember him as that wicked man who slinked through here two years past to examine our fitness as a convent? Yes, that same Cromwell and Archbishop Cranmer are out to destroy the Church! Together they lead England farther away from our Lord and closer to the gates of Hell!”
The tables were silent. All of the nuns’ eyes were riveted to Mirabella, who tingled and trembled with inspiration as she spoke.
“I call you to fight for our Lord, for His Church!” Mirabella cried, raising a fist and shaking it before the assemblage. “Stand beside me when the guards come! Do not accept pensions and a life denied yo
ur purpose! Remain with me and fight! And if we should die, we die martyrs!”
The women burst into applause and Mirabella flushed with peculiar delight. She would save the convent, and if not, her sacrifice would be remembered. Someday, when the world was set right, they would speak of the brave, selfless sisters of Sumerton Abbey and how they died defending the Lord’s honor... .
“But, Sister,” a young novitiate said in timid tones, “we have no arms.”
“We need none,” Mirabella told her. “We will not fight them as soldiers. We will stand our ground. We will simply refuse to leave. They will have to run us through to move us and who would dare harm a holy woman without fear for their souls?”
“Sister Mirabella!” the abbess cried. “To my knowledge you have not been elected abbess of this institution, yet you fall into the role of command as though you are entitled to it.”
Only now did Mirabella feel the first strains of genuine humility flow through her as she fell to her knees before her superior. “Forgive me,” she said in soft tones. “Whip me if you desire, discipline me in the manner you see fit ... but know that I cannot be moved from what I am being called to do.”
“Is it God calling you, Sister?” Anna Shelby intoned as she seized Mirabella’s chin, lifting it up to gaze into her eyes. “Or are you driven by something far worldlier? Beware, my child, the sin of pride. It is pride that will separate you from God with far more success than King Henry ever could.”
Mirabella bowed her head, annoyed. How dare the abbess presume that her intentions were anything but pure?
“I beg of you, Sister, do not do this,” Sister Julia cautioned Mirabella as the two quit the chapter house, where, to the surprise of everyone and the dismay of some, Mirabella did not receive punishment for her diatribe. “You have great sway over the women here—you could lead them all into danger. Do not persist. You must accept our fate and trust in God to care for us.”
