The Miracle at St. Bruno's

After that conversation I could not get the poor little Queen out of my mind. I pictured her agony as she recalled the fate of her cousin Anne Boleyn, and she would lack the reasoning and mental powers of that Queen. Poor uneducated little Katharine Howard, who had had the misfortune to be attractive enough to catch the King's fancy!

Then I ceased to think of her because the miraculous event had come to pass. Before Kate left us to return to Remus Castle I knew that I was with child.

When I told Bruno he was overcome by joy. The difference which had arisen between us over the arrival of Honey was swept away. This was what he had longed for. A child-a son of his own.

This paternal pride was indeed a human quality, and it delighted me. And what pleasure we had in talking of the child we would have.

At this time I was able to bring Honey into our little circle. He rarely spoke to her and his indifference was hurtful, but at least she was allowed to be in our company.

She accepted that and if he ignored her she did the same to him; but I was pleased that she no longer seemed afraid of him, and she did not cower close to me when he was present.

We had added to our household considerably; during the weeks after Kate's departure several men arrived at the Abbey to offer their services for the great amount of work that would in due course have to be done out of doors. I had engaged new servants.

I had a housekeeper now, a Mrs. Crimp, who, I was delighted to say, took a great interest in Honey.

I had a suspicion that some of the men who presented themselves for work were familiar with the Abbey and had worked there before. Some of them might have been lay brothers.

There was danger in this but to be in Bruno's presence was to share to a certain extent his confidence in himself; and the fact was I was obsessed by the thought of my child and longing for its arrival.

For Honey I had a deep protective love but I knew that nothing could compare with the emotion which my own child would arouse in me.

I was shut in a little world of my own. Vaguely I listened to the news from Court.

Those men who had been the Queen's lovers in the past were being questioned in the Tower. Sometimes, when on the river, I would look at the gray fortress and a brief vision of bloodstained torture chambers would flash into my mind. In the past I would perhaps have brooded on that, recalling my father's sojourn in that dreaded place. But always the exaltation engendered by the presence of the child would overcome all other feelings.

I used to say to myself: But the King loves her. He does not wish to be rid of her.

He will not let her die.

Travelers called at the Abbey for one of the guesthouses had been thrown open as it had been in the old days. They told stories of the King's great distress when he had heard of the scandals about his wife. It was particularly hard to bear because immediately before the news had been broken to him he had told his confessor, the Bishop of Lincoln, that he was so delighted to have found matrimonial bliss at last that he wished him to arrange a thanksgiving to God for giving him such a loving and virtuous Queen.

We heard also that when the poor little Queen was told of what she had been accused her fears sent her into a frenzy, and knowing that the King was at prayers in the little chapel at the end of the long gallery in Hampton Court she had run down this, screaming hysterically while her attendants who had been ordered to keep her under restraint captured her and forced her to return to her apartments.

A brooding sense of disaster was in the air. The King was all powerful. He stood between the two factions-Papists and antiPapists-and in his eyes they could both be traitors, because those who did not accept the religion set out by him were enemies who should be punished by death. He made it clear that nothing was changed, but the head of the Church-the King instead of the Pope. He hated the Pope no less than he hated Martin Luther.

But for me there was nothing of any great importance but the gestation of my child.

I shut my eyes to the fact that the atmosphere in the Abbey was changing each day, and that since I had become pregnant I was treated with the awed respect which I had noticed was accorded to Bruno.

When my mother heard of my condition she was overjoyed. She came to the Abbey bringing herbs and some of her concoctions. I would visit her and we talked together as women do. We were closer now than we had ever been.

I admired the twins-Peter and Paul-two well-formed, lusty little boys. She doted on them, and could scarcely bear them out of her sight. They had even lured her from her garden. Constantly she discussed their tempers, their intelligence and their beauty. She refused to swaddle them because they protested lustily when she did so and she liked to see them kick their little limbs.