The Miracle at St. Bruno's

She rocked herself to and fro in her misery. "Mistress, I could not help it. He sent for me to go to the inn-the Abbey Inn. I was taken to a room there and he ordered me to strip and lie down on the bed. So I did and waited for him because I thought...”

"We know what you thought, you harlot," cried Kate.

"But it wasn't," said Keziah. "He came and he bent over me and he fondled me rough like and said, 'You're not a young harlot anymore, Keziah, but there's a lot of the harlot still left in you, eh?' And I laughed and I thought it was a sort of love play and then he took a rope and tied me by the ankles to the bedposts. I struggled a bit but not so much.”

"You thought it was going to be some new kind of what do you call it love play?” said Kate.

"I thought that, Mistress... right till I saw the whip. Then I screamed and he hit me across the face and said, 'None of that noise, you slut.’

"I asked him what he wanted of me more than he'd had and more than he could take as he wished for I had nothing more to give. 'Oh, but you have, Keziah,' he said.

'You've got something I want and you're going to give it too if I have to kill you to get it.' I was frightened, Mistress, too frightened to cry for he looked like a fiend there bending over me, gloating as a man might when he looks on a naked woman but a gloating I hadn't seen before. Then he said, 'You've had something to do with the monks. You're not going to tell me a woman like you hasn't done a little frolicking behind the gray walls. You'd have had your fill of grooms and stablemen and gardeners and any travelers that came this way. You'd want a little change, wouldn't you?’

Then with my sin heavy on me I began to tremble and he saw it and that made him laugh the more. 'You're going to tell me, Keziah?' he said. 'You're going to tell me all about this tumbling on the altar and in the holy chapels.' I cried out, 'It weren't there. It weren't there. We weren't as sinful as that.' And he said, 'Where were you sinful then, Keziah?' I shut my mouth tight and I wouldn't speak. Then he brought the whip down across me, Mistress. I screamed and he said, 'Scream all you like, Keziah. They're used to screams in this place and they daren't complain. That was a taste, a starter.' I could feel the blood warm on my thighs. He bent over me then and caressed me, in his rough way. He took my ear between his teeth and bit it. He said: 'Keziah, if you don't talk I'll make your body so that no man will ever want to lie with you again. I'll make your face so scarred men will shudder when they look at you. You'll want them just the same but they'll not want you. You won't find it so easy to give that I am-willing-and-ready-sir look you gave me in the lane when we first met.' And I was trembling and I said to myself: I must not tell. I must not tell. And I said nothing and he bent over me and he said, 'Just once more to remind you how you enjoy it, eh?' And then he was on me in that fierce sort of way that was almost more pain than pleasure. Oh, Mistress, what have I done?”

"You never told that beast!" cried Kate.

She nodded. "He had the whip. He was saying all the things he would do to me and so I cried out, Til tell you... I'll tell you everything...' And I told him about Ambrose and how I tempted him and how my Granny persuaded him to put the child in the crib and make him holy... And he just stared at me and I've never seen such a change in a man. He laughed so much I thought he was going mad. Then he untied the ropes. He said, 'You'll soon heal, Keziah. You'll be better than ever. You're a good girl, and this has been a good night's work.’

"So I put on my clothes and couldn't find my shoes.... I stumbled out of the inn and home and now it's out. The secret's out.”

How right she was.

The secret was out.

How quickly, how suddenly I was becoming aware of the violent passions of men. Those few days will always stand out in my mind as the most horrifying I have ever known.

I have perhaps since known greater horror, certainly greater suffering, but in those days I was shocked forever out of my childhood. It seemed to me that since the day I had stood with my father at the river's edge and seen the King pass by with the great Cardinal I had moved slowly but certainly toward this climax. Death and destruction were growing up all around me, like weeds in an illkept garden; but during those days I saw a man murdered and that is something that must make an impression on the mind for evermore. I had heard the bells toll for Queen Anne and for Sir Thomas More and the memory made me serious; but this was different.

All next morning we waited for the news to break. We knew it could not be long. But both Kate and I had been too shaken by it to speak of it to anyone. We hardly mentioned it to each other and when we did spoke in hushed tones.

Did Bruno know? I wondered. I couldn't bear to think of his knowing. I knew that it meant so much to him to be the Holy Child.