The Miracle at St. Bruno's

"Ill with fright" was the answer. "He's frightened because he's been found out. That's all it is. Fear.”

"The Abbot has lived a saintly life," said my father indignantly.

"That's what you think" was the answer. "Wait till we tell you all we've found out.”

"I know that any accusation which is brought against him will be false.”

"Then you'd better be careful. The King's men don't like those that are too friendly with monks.”

My father could only walk away; and I had not seen him so depressed since the execution of Sir Thomas More.

That very night Kate and I saw Keziah come in staggering a little. She had been to the Abbey, I gathered.

Kate sniffed her breath.

"You've been drinking, Keziah," she accused.

"Oh, Kezzie," I said reproachfully, "you've been with that man.”

Keziah kept nodding. I had never seen her drunk before although she liked her ale, and drank it freely. She must have had something strong to make her as she was.

Kate's eyes gleamed with excitement. She shook Keziah and said: "Tell us what happened.

You've been at your tricks again.”

Keziah started to giggle. "What a one," she murmured. "What a one! Never in all my life...”

"It was Rolf Weaver, was it?”

Keziah kept nodding. "He sent for me. 'Bring Keziah,' he said. So I had to go.”

"And most willingly you went," said Kate. "Go on.”

"And there he was and he..." She started to giggle again.

"It was no new experience to you," said Kate, "so why are you in this state?”

But apparently it had been a new experience. She could only keep nodding and giggling.

So Kate and I put her to bed. We noticed there were bruises on her big soft white body. I shivered but Kate was very excited.

A gibbet had been erected outside the gates of the Abbey. On it swung the body of a monk. He looked grotesque, like a great black crow, with his robes flapping about him. His crime was that he had tried to take some of the Abbey's treasures to a goldsmith in London. No doubt he planned to make his escape on the proceeds, but Weaver's men had caught him. This was a lesson to any who tried to flout their authority and divert Abbey treasure from the King who now laid claim to it.

It was horrible. None of us would pass the Abbey gates. We stayed indoors, afraid to go out.

Of everything that had happened this was the most terrible. It seemed as though our entire world was collapsing about us. No matter what else had happened the Abbey had always stood there, powerful and solid; now it was shaken to its foundations.

I often thought of Bruno and wondered what was happening to him. He would see those crude men sprawling at the refectory table where once the monks had sat observing their rules of silence. He would see them invading the cells, taking shrieking girls in there and just for the joy of abominating sacred places. I remembered that day when on Kate's insistence he had taken us into the sacred chapel and shown us the jeweled Madonna. I caught my breath. Those men would find her; they would tear off those glittering gems. The silent chapel would be desecrated.

I prayed for Bruno while my father prayed that no ill should come to the Abbot and the Abbey be saved - although that was a forlorn hope since Cromwell's men had come to make their inventories. Bruno was in my thoughts constantly. Perhaps he always had been, ever since we had found him that day when we went through the door for the first time. He was proud-apart from us all. The Holy Child. Sometimes I wondered what I should have been like if instead of being born in a normal way I had been found in a crib in a holy place.

 Kate and I talked about Bruno while other people talked about the Abbey.

"We ought to try and see him," she said. "We could go through the door.”

I thought of all those rough men wandering about the Abbey. "We dare not now," I said.

Kate saw my point for once. Perhaps she had visions of being seized by one of them and forced into one of the cells for many of the girls had talked of having been forced. That offended Kate's fastidious nature. Kate wanted to receive admiration rather than give physical satisfaction. She was the sort of woman, I was to discover later, who wishes to be perpetually wooed and rarely won.

She did not consider the idea that we should go through the door now. But she talked of Bruno and there was something in her manner when she spoke of him that made me sure that he was almost as important to her as he was to me.

"There'll be a miracle," she said to me. "You'll see. This is what it was for. This is why he was sent. He was put in the crib so that he could be here at this time.

You'll see.”

She voiced the thoughts of us all. We were all waiting for a miracle; and it would come from the Holy Child.

The atmosphere was tense with expectancy.

And then the climax came. But it was not the miracle we were expecting.

Kate came to my room. It was past midnight. She looked beautiful in a blue robe with her long tawny hair about her shoulders.