“And yet because of this they are so unhappy.”
“You will understand when you are older, Damask. Oh, how I wish you were a little older. I wish you were of Meg’s age.”
I wondered why Father wished I was older then; and I understood later.
I remember the day Bishop Fisher was executed. Then there were the monks of the Charterhouse who were most cruelly killed. They were drawn to the place of their execution, hanged and cut down when alive and fearful agonies inflicted on them. That day Brother John and Brother James came to see my father. I heard Brother John say: “What is to become of us, William? What is to become of us all?”
Bruno told us that there was continuous prayer in the Abbey for Bishop Fisher, for the monks of the Charterhouse and for Sir Thomas More; and that Brother Valerian had said what happened to them could happen to others and much hung on the fate of Sir Thomas More. He was a man who was greatly loved; if the King allowed him to die the people would be angry. Some said it was more than the King dared do; but the King dared all. He would brook no interference and he had declared that any who denied his supremacy were traitors, be they onetime Chancellors and friends of his. No man was his friend who stood against him and none who did so should escape his wrath.
There came the terrible day when Sir Thomas came from the Court in procession with the ax turned toward him. We heard of it from those who witnessed it; and how poor Meg ran to him and threw her arms about his neck before she fell fainting to the ground.
“They’ll never do it,” said my father. “The King cannot kill a man he once professed to love; he cannot murder a saint.”
But the King would allow no one to defy him. I often thought of him as I had seen him on his barge laughing with the Cardinal…another who had died, they said, through his displeasure. No man could afford to displease the King.
And then on that day of mourning the bell tolled for Sir Thomas, and his head was severed from his body and stuck on a pole on London Bridge, from which spot Meg later retrieved it.
My father shut himself into his room; I knew that he spent the hours of that day on his knees and I did not believe he was praying for himself.
He talked to me again, his arm through mine down there by the loosestrife and the long grass that grew on the riverbank, there where we could talk with no fear of being overheard.
“You are nearly twelve years old, Damask,” he said; and he repeated: “I would you were older.”
“Why so, Father?” I asked. “Is it because you wish I could understand more easily?”
“You are wise beyond your years, my child. If you were fifteen or sixteen perhaps you might marry and then I would know that you had someone to care for you.”
“Why should I want a husband when I have the best of fathers? And I have Mother too.”
“And we shall care for you as long as we shall live,” he said fervently. “I think that if by some mischance….”
“Father!”
He went on: “If we should not be here…if I should not be here….”
“But you are not going away.”
“In these times, Damask, how can we know when our time shall come? Who would have believed a few years ago that Sir Thomas would be taken from us?”
“Father, you will not be asked to sign the Oath?”
“Who can say?”
I clung to his arm suddenly.
Then he said soothingly: “The times are dangerous. It may be that we may be called upon to do what our consciences will not permit. And then….”
“Oh, but that is cruel.”
“We live in cruel times, child.”
“Father,” I whispered, “do you believe that the new Queen is no true Queen?”
“ ’Tis better not to say such words.”
“Then do not answer that question. When I think of her….lying in the litter smiling, so proud, so glad because all that pomp and ceremony was for her….Oh, Father, do you think that she spared a thought for all the blood that would be shed for her….Men like Sir Thomas, the monks….”
“Hush, child. Sir Thomas expressed his pity for her. Heads have been cut off because of her. Who can say how long she will keep her own?”
“Kate heard it said that the King was growing tired of her, that she has given him no son…only the Princess Elizabeth…and that he is already looking at others.”
“Tell Kate to keep a curb on her tongue, Damask. She’s a reckless girl. I fear for Kate—yet somehow I fancy she has a talent for self-preservation. I fear more for you, my beloved daughter. I would you were old enough to take a husband. What think you of Rupert?”
“Rupert? As a husband, you mean? I had not thought of that.”
“Yet, my child, he is a good boy. Reserved in temperament, good-natured, hardworking; it is true he has very little of his own but he is our own flesh and blood and I would like to see him continue to care for the estate. But most of all I would feel I was putting you into safe hands.”
“Oh, Father, I hadn’t thought of…marriage.”
“At twelve it is time you gave that important matter a little consideration. Perhaps in four years’ time. Four years! It is long.”
“You sound as though I am a burden you would be relieved to be rid of.”
“My darling child, you know you are my life.”
“I know it and I spoke carelessly. Father, are you so much afraid for yourself that you wish I had another protector?”
He was silent for a while and he gazed along the river and I knew he was thinking of that bereaved house in Chelsea.
And never before had I been so aware of the uncertainty of our lives.
That summer seemed long and the days filled with perpetual sunshine. Whenever we had visitors to the house, which we did frequently for no travelers were ever turned away—rich or poor—there was usually a place for them at the table. If they came from Court, Kate would waylay them and try to lure them out of earshot of my father, perhaps into the gardens to see the peacocks or the dogs that she might talk of the Court.
Thus we learned that the King was indeed tiring of the Queen; that they quarreled and that the Queen was reckless and snowed little respect for the King’s Majesty; we heard that the King had cast his eyes on a rather sly and not very handsome young woman who was one of the Queen’s maids of honor. Jane Seymour was meek and pliable, but with a very ambitious family who did not see why since the King had cast off Katharine of Aragon, a Spanish Princess and aunt of the great Emperor Charles, he should not mete out the same treatment to the daughter of comparatively humble Thomas Boleyn.
If there had been a son, we heard, all would have been different. But Anne could not get a son any more than Katharine had and there were rumors that Jane was already pregnant by the King.
Kate used to stretch out on the long grass and talk endlessly about Court affairs. She had ceased to fancy herself as Queen Anne. She was now Jane Seymour, but the role of meek Jane subservient to ambitious brothers did not suit her as well as that of proud Anne Boleyn. She was inclined to be scornful of Jane.
“How long does she think she will last?” she demanded almost angrily.
Sometimes we went through the secret door into the Abbey, and there she would talk about the jeweled Madonna. The thought of all those jewels looked at only by monks was maddening, she said. How she would like to wear them!
Her attitude toward Bruno was changing, as mine was too. I looked forward to our secret visits. I liked to watch his face as he talked and I always tried to take the conversation out of Kate’s range. It made me feel closer to him. He liked to talk to me but he liked to look at Kate; in fact he rarely glanced at me when she was there. She bullied him; she was inclined to order him about, a fact which exasperated and angered him but only seemed to increase his interest in her. Once or twice she made veiled allusions to the fact that he had taken us into the Abbey and shown us the Madonna.