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.
“Wake up,” she said. But I had not been asleep. I don’t know whether it was some premonition which kept me awake on that night. It was almost as though I was aware that this was going to be the end of an era.
She said: “Keziah’s not in her room.”
I sat up in bed. “She’s with one of the men.”
“Yes, she’s with a man. She’s at the Abbey, I dareswear.”
“That man. He’s sent for her again!”
“She went willingly enough. It’s…horrible.”
“Keziah was always like that.”
“Yes, I know. A man only had to beckon and she was after him. I wonder your father allows her in the house.”
“I don’t think he knows.”
“His head is in the clouds. One day he will lose it if he is not careful.”
“Kate, don’t dare say such things!”
“I must say what I feel. Everything has changed so much. Do you remember when we went to see Queen Anne? How different it seemed then. Now everything has changed.”
“No, it was changing then. It has always been changing, but it seems now that tragedy is coming near…nearer to us.”
Kate sitting on the edge of my bed clasping her knees looked thoughtful. She did not want this kind of excitement. She wanted balls and gaiety, the pleasure of wearing fine clothes and jewels and men desiring her.
“It’s time your father thought of a match for me,” she said. “And all he thinks of is what is happening at the Abbey.”
“We all think of it.”
“It’s so long since we’ve seen Bruno,” said Kate. “I wonder….”
I had never seen her so concerned for anyone before. She said: “Let’s talk of pleasant things. Let’s forget Weaver and his men and the Abbey.”
“We could not forget it for long,” I said, “because it is so much a part of our lives and what is happening there is happening to us.”
But Kate wanted to talk of pleasant things. Her marriage, for instance. The Duke or Earl who would take her to Court. He would be rich and doting; but she was halfhearted and as she talked of the splendors to come I knew she was thinking of Bruno.
Was it premonition?
It was five of the clock when Keziah came in. Kate had seen her staggering across the courtyard and brought her to my room. She was without shoes or stockings and her feet were bleeding; her gown was torn and I saw a great bruise across her shoulder. She seemed as though she were intoxicated but I could smell no drink on her breath.
I cried out: “What has happened?”
“She seems to be demented,” said Kate. “Something’s certainly happened to her.”
Keziah looked at me and held out a hand. I took it. She was trembling.
I said: “Keziah, what is it? What happened? You’ve been hurt.”
She said: “Mistress Damask. I’m a sinner. The gates of hell are yawning for me.”
I said, “Pull yourself together, Keziah. What happened? How did you get into this state?”
“She’s come from the Abbey,” said Kate. “You’ve come from the Abbey, Keziah. Don’t try to deny it.”
Keziah shook her head. “No. Not the Abbey,” she said. “I’ve sinned….I’ve sinned something awful. I’ve told what should be locked away in here.” She beat her breast with such violence that I thought she would injure herself.
I said: “For God’s sake, Keziah, what have you done?”
“I’ve told them. I’ve told him and now ’tis for the whole world to know what was a sacred secret. What’ll they do now, Mistress Damask? What’ll they do now they know?”
“You’d better tell us what they know,” said Kate. “And you’d better be quick about it.”
Keziah rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and then burst into bitter sobbing.
I felt I had strayed into a nightmare. I knew that something portentous had happened. I had never seen careless, sensuous Keziah in such a state before. Had she been an innocent young girl I should have thought that she had been raped by the monsters who had invaded the Abbey, but Keziah was no innocent girl, she was one who would find rape an enjoyable experience.
But this was real sorrow—abandoned sorrow. Keziah was in torment.
I said gently: “Tell us, Kezzie. It’ll help. Start at the beginning and tell us all.”