The Miracle at St. Bruno's

I saw the flicker of his eyes; the marking of the fox mask was clearer for a moment.

"You know my feelings for you." He had taken a step toward me.

I held him off.

"Do not forget that you are an affianced bridegroom," I said sharply. I looked at him steadily. "Tell me, who betrayed my father?" I added.

He clenched his fists together. "I would I knew," he said.

"Someone betrayed him," I said. "I shall not allow it to be forgotten. I shall never rest until I discover who it was.”

He held out his hand to me. I stared down at it.

"I want to make a bargain with you," he said. "We shall both try to find that man who took the happiness from the household and brought about the death of the best man on earth.”

The tears started up in my eyes and he looked at me with tenderness, so that I was sorry momentarily that I had suspected him.

I turned and ran from him back to my room. I could not go down to the hall to eat.

My mother sent up a leg of chicken for me and a slice of the crusty cob loaf which I used to love. I could eat nothing; and when finally I slept, for I believe she had laced my wine with one of her potions, I dreamed of Simon Caseman. He had the face of a fox and in my dream I believed him to be an evil man.

I was torn by my doubts. My mother and Simon were kind to me. She gave me potions and ordered that the foods I had once enjoyed should be prepared for me. He was tolerant and never forced his company on me; sometimes I found his eyes on me and as mine met his he would assume a tender expression, as though he was now regarding me as a cherished daughter.

I thought, I cannot endure this.

Their wedding was to be a quiet one, for it was such a short time since my father's death; but the entire household was now accepting Simon Caseman as the master.

I could not rouse myself. I thought, I cannot continue in this way. Soon I must make a decision. But at this time I was too stunned to do anything but let time wash over me while I lay listless believing that in due course my grief would be subdued and some notion would come to me as to how I could make something of my life.

At times I thought of going to Kate. Yet I did not wish to throw myself on the bounty of Lord Remus. I did know that since my father's arraignment Kate's husband was made a little uneasy by my presence. Kate however would imperiously overrule that if I had wished to go. There was another thing. Every evening at dusk I went through the ivy-covered door into the Abbey burial ground and visited my father's grave. The rosemary I had planted was growing well. I often thought how frightened I once would have been to wend my way at dusk past the Abbey walls empty and ghostly in the evening shadows-and to go among the graves of long-dead monks. But because his dear head was there, I knew no fear, for a belief had grown up within me that the dead protect those whom they especially loved and I certainly felt that my father was protecting me.

I lived for my visits to his grave; and when I went to the Abbey I would remember those days when Kate and I had crept through the secret door to be with Bruno. He was never far from my thoughts and I longed to see him again.

I pondered on my feeling for Bruno. It took my mind off my present uneasy situation.

I compared the emotion he could rouse in me with my love for my father. I had known my father as well, I think, as it is possible for one person to know another. I was aware of his beliefs, for he had talked to me so openly; I knew before he told me what his opinions would be on almost any problem. Losing him was like losing a part of myself. But Bruno? What did I know of Bruno? Very little. I had never understood him. Bruno seemed to have built a wall about himself. One could never be sure of what he was thinking. I suppose that having for years believed himself to be a superhuman being who had been sent into the world for some special purpose, to have been certain that he was holy, must surely have had an effect on him. Then the confession of Keziah and Ambrose and all the violence which attended it, the dissolution of St. Bruno's Abbey... what would that have done to him? He had given little indication except that he rejected the confession of those who claimed to be his parents. There was the same aloofness about him. He would never betray himself completely to anyone. Sometimes he had seemed as though he did not belong to this world, yet his arrogance, his frustrated anger were essentially worldly.

I remembered Brother John's explaining how the Child had been caught stealing cakes from the kitchen and lying when accused.

How lost and bewildered I was during those weeks!

Rupert was bewildered too. He did not know what the future held for him. He had loved the land. I had seen him come in from my father's fields as animated as he had ever been, because they had succeeded in gathering in the harvest before the storms came.