The Miracle at St. Bruno's

Catherine's face puckered. "They can't do it, can they? They can't... to him! He is your stepfather.”

"That fact will not deter them," I said sadly.

Catherine cried: "And they will burn him to death simply because he believes God should be worshiped in a certain way? I know he is a heretic and heretics are wicked, but to burn him.” "To death," said Honey somberly.

They were too young to know of such horrors. I said: "It may be that it will not happen. I am going to bring the twins over here. You will be very kind to them. You will remember that it is their father....”

They nodded.

Then I went back to my old home to look after my mother.

I sat with her and we tried to talk of other things: of her garden, of her stillroom.

But all the time her ears were alert for the sound of a barge at the privy stairs, for the voice which I knew she would never hear again.

It was no use. We must talk of him, because it was of him that she was thinking.

She told me how good he had always been to her; how happy had been her years with him.

"He was the perfect husband," she told me; and I thought of that good man, my father, and asked myself if she had mourned him like this, although I knew the answer to that.

"He was so clever," she said. "He wanted to know what people were writing... what people were thinking.”

Ah, poor Simon Caseman, he should have known that one must not display interest even where our rulers had decided that we should not.

"They should have kept Queen Jane on the throne. This wouldn't have happened then.”

No, Mother, I thought, not to you. But to others. Perhaps to Bruno.

Then I remembered that it was Bruno who had brought this about. He had done to Simon Caseman what Simon had tried to do to him.

I thought: I shall remember it forever. I had loathed the man but it sickened me to think that he had been betrayed by my husband.

The day had come. My mother wanted to go to Hampton Court, there to see the Queen and beg her to pardon her husband.

He was a heretic, proved to be a heretic, and so I heard would not diverge from his opinions. A strange man-so much that was evil in him and yet my mother thought him the perfect husband and he remained true to his belief in face of death.

I quieted my mother that day with her poppy juice and she slept.

I went out into the garden and looked toward the city. A pall of smoke was drifting down the river. The Smithfield fires were burning.

Then I went in and sat by my mother's bed that I might be there to comfort her when she awakened.

DEATH OF A WITCH

A YEAR HAD passed since Simon Caseman suffered the heretic's death. My mother seemed to have aged ten years. Caseman Court had been returned to its rightful owner-myself -for as the wife of a good Catholic who had defied the reign of heretics and in some measure reformed the old Abbey, I was in high favor.

 I did not tell my mother that the house had been returned to me. Her grief was too great for her to be concerned with such matters. She went on living there. It was a sad and sorry household.

Rupert was often there; he had offered to help with the estate and this he had done.

I saw him frequently and his gentleness to my mother moved me deeply.

I loved Rupert. It was no wild passion-just a gentle enduring affection. Since the betrayal of Simon Caseman I had felt a kind of revulsion toward Bruno. He knew this and hated me for it. Honey was right when she said he wanted admiration all the time.

I would say he wanted adoration.

In spite of her shock over Simon Caseman's death Catherine's devotion toward her father had intensified. They were often together and I believe that Bruno found pleasure in turning her from me. I was hurt that my years of love and devotion could be so easily undermined. But she was bemused by him, as others had been before her, and still were. God knows I could understand that. Was I not once as bemused as any?

Honey watched Catherine's growing devotion to her father and her estrangement from me with a satisfaction which could only alarm me.

The times were sickeningly melancholy; but never before had there been such discord in my own family circle.

I was turning more and more to my old home, where my mother was always glad to see me. Rupert was often there and we would all three sit together finding some consolation in talking of the old days.

It was a terrible year. I remember when Archbishop Cranmer was burned at the stake on a bitter March day in front of Baliol College in Oxford. They said that he held out his right hand first to meet the flames because it was with that hand that he signed a document recanting his beliefs.

Ninety-four people were burned that year-forty-five of them women; and there were even four children.

I found it difficult to go about my ordinary affairs. Whenever I went out of doors I seemed to smell the Smithfield fires. I dreamed of Simon Caseman writhing in agony, and I could not help remembering that Bruno had sent him to that fate.