“My dearest child, that is what every woman is meant to do.”
“Every woman except Kate,” I said. “Well, am I to go?”
“It is for you to say.”
“So I have your permission?”
He nodded. He was looking at me in a quizzical, tender way. Afterward I wondered whether he had a premonition.
“I shall hate leaving you,” I told him.
“The birds have to leave the nest at some time.”
“It will not be for very long,” I assured him.
The next day Amos Carmen left and I was busy making my preparations. It would be the first time I had been away from home. I looked wryly at my clothes. I guessed they would seem very homely in Kate’s grand mansion.
We were to go by barge some ten miles upriver; and there we should be met by members of the Remus household. I should take two maids with me and Tom Skillen would be in charge of the barge. Then our baggage would be put onto pack mules and horses which would be waiting to take us to the Remus Castle.
I was so excited and eager to see Kate again. It was true that without her and Keziah—as she used to be in the old days—life was a little drab. Then there was Bruno whom in my heart I knew I missed more than any. I often wondered why. He had seemed so remote to me and I had often thought that it was only rarely that he remembered my existence. But I, no less than Kate, had felt this strong emotion for him—in Kate it was an imperious desire for his company; in me a kind of awed respect. Kate demanded it while I was glad when it came my way. I was eager for the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table while Kate was seated at it as if she were supping there.
The day before I was due to leave Amos Carmen came back to the house. I came upon him with Father. They were standing by the stone parapet near the river in earnest conversation.
“Ah,” said my father. “Here is Damask. Come here, daughter.”
I looked from one to the other; I knew at once that they had something on their minds and I cried anxiously: “What is it?”
My father said: “You may trust this girl with your life.”
“Father,” I cried, “why do you say that?”
“My child,” he said, “we live in dangerous times. Tonight our guest will be on his way. When you are in the household of Lord Remus perhaps you should not mention that he visited us.”
“No, Father,” I said.
They were both smiling placidly, and I was so excited at the prospect of my visit to Kate that I forgot what their words might have implied.
The next day I set out. Father and Mother with Rupert and Simon Caseman came down to the privy stairs to wave me off. Mother asked me to take note of how the gardeners at Remus dealt with greenfly and what herbs they grew and to find out if there were any recipes of which she had not heard. Father held me against him and bade me come home soon and to remember that in Kate’s house I was not at home and to guard well my tongue. Rupert asked me to come home soon and Simon Caseman looked at me with a strange light in his eye as though he were half exasperated with me, half amused. But he implied at the same time that his great desire was to make me his wife.
I waved to them from the barge and I sent up a silent prayer that all would be well until my return.
Tom Skillen had changed; he was more subdued now that he had lost Keziah; skillfully he took the barge upriver; we passed several craft and I beguiled the time by asking Tom Skillen if he knew to whom they belonged. When we passed Hampton, the great mansion which was growing more and more grand every week, I thought often as I always did of the King’s sailing down the river with the Cardinal at his side.
Then I reflected how pleasant it would be to sail with the whole of the family on a barge like this which would carry us all miles away, right into the country where I believed people could be safe from the troubles which seemed to beset us all. I visualized a peaceful house, exactly like ours, but too far away to be involved in unhappy events.
Far away? But where was one safe? I remembered the men of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire who had risen against the reforms in the Church which the King and Thomas Cromwell had brought about. What had happened to them? I shuddered. I remembered the body of the monk outside the Abbey and that of Brother Ambrose, swinging on the gibbets. There was no peace anywhere. One could only pray that one was not caught up in danger. Had those men of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire known when they began their Pilgrimage of Grace that so many of them would end on a gibbet?
Death, Destruction, Murder. It was everywhere.
I prayed fervently that it would never come to that house by the river which had been my home. But as my father had often said: We lived in violent times and the disaster which befell anyone concerned us all. We were all involved. Death could point its finger at any one of us.
Was it so in the reign of the previous King? He had been a stern man and a miser; he had never been the people’s idol as the present King had been. He was not a man of passion. As the grandson of Owen Tudor and Queen Catherine, widow of Henry V, his claim to the throne was somewhat dubious; and some said the marriage between the Queen and the Tudor had never in fact taken place. But to substantiate his claim he had married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV—and thus by one stroke he had strengthened the royal stem and united the houses of York and Lancaster. A clever King—devious and unlovable, but he had made England rich. No doubt there had been dangers in his day, but there had never been so many pitfalls as at this time. There had never been so willful a man whose passions must be satisfied and his conscience placated all at the same time.
But enough of fear. I would think of Kate and her marriage and of my own, which I suppose could not be long delayed.
I had a choice—Rupert or Simon—and I knew it could never be Simon. Good as he was—a clever lawyer, said my father, an asset to his business and his household—he somehow repelled me. It would be Rupert, good kind Rupert, of whom I was fond. But his mildness made me feel indifferent toward him. I suppose like all girls I dreamed of a strong man.
Then I was thinking of Bruno. How little one knew of Bruno! It was never possible to get close to him. But ever since I had heard the story of the child found in the Christmas crib he had represented an ideal for me. His very strangeness attracted me as I am sure it had Kate. We believed then that he was aloof from us all and in our different ways we loved him.
This was why I could not contemplate marriage with Rupert with any enthusiasm. It was because deep within me I had this strange, rather exalted emotion for Bruno.
The two serving girls, Alice and Jennet, were giggling together. They had been in a state of excitement ever since they had known they were going to accompany me. I knew they believed that life in Kate’s household would be far more exciting than in ours.
It was very pleasant on the river and in due course we arrived at that spot where we were to disembark and there were the servants in the unmistakable Remus livery waiting to help us and there were the pack mules to which our baggage was tied. We said good-bye to Tom Skillen and rode off in our little party and two hours’ ride brought us to Remus Castle.
It was of a much earlier period than our residence which had been built by my grandfather. Its solid gray-granite walls confirmed the fact that they had stood for two hundred years and would doubtless stand for five hundred more. The sun glinting on the walls picked out sharp pieces of flint so that they shone like rose diamonds. I gazed up at the machicolations of the keep as we crossed the drawbridge over the moat. We passed through the gateway with its portcullis and were in a courtyard in which a fountain played; as we clattered over the cobbles I heard Kate’s voice.