“My darling, I always would.”
“I knew, dearest Mother. You are so…as a mother should be. He is different, of course. He is wonderful. Clement has been telling me what it was like in the Abbey when he came. They did not know how to look after a baby and although they knew he was no ordinary baby as Clement says, he came in the shape of one and therefore was half mortal.”
“Clement talks too much.”
“It is all so interesting. There is so much I want to know.”
“Confine your interests to your lessons for a while,” I said.
She laughed with that high-pitched, infectious laughter which I so loved to hear. “Dear Mother. Dearest Mother. You are so practical…always….So different from….No wonder Aunt Kate laughs at you.”
“So I am the butt for your amusement?”
She kissed the tip of my nose. “Which is a good thing to be and we all love you for it. Why, Mother, what would we do without you?”
“Now,” I said, well pleased, “you will just have time to gather your flowers and arrange them before you go to the scriptorium. And do not be late. I have already had complaints of your un-punctuality.”
She ran off and I looked after her with that love which was so intense that it was like suffering a pain.
After that I often found her in the bakehouse where Clement would tell her stories of her father’s childhood. She discovered facts which I had never known. Each day she became more and more interested. Bruno had noticed it and he warmed toward her. At last he was taking an interest in his daughter.
One day I went into the schoolroom and heard Catherine and Honey quarreling.
“You are easily duped, Cat. You always believe what you want to. That is no way to learn what is true. I don’t believe it. I don’t like him. I never did. I believe he is cruel to…our mother.”
Catherine spat out: “It is because he is not your father. You are jealous.”
“Jealous! I tell you I am glad. I would have any man for my father rather than him.”
I paused at the door and did not go in. Instead I crept silently away.
I thought a great deal about that conversation. It was inevitable of course now that they were growing up that they should form their own opinions. When they had been little I had kept them away from him, knowing that there was no time in his life for young children. I did wonder whether it would have been different if Catherine had been a boy.
I considered them now—Catherine was nearly twelve years old, Honey fourteen—almost a woman, Honey, for she had developed earlier than most. There was a certain touch of Keziah’s voluptuousness about her and her beauty had by no means diminished. Those startling violet black-lashed eyes alone would have made her a beauty.
But she was not as easy to know as Catherine, who was all effervescence, her feelings close to the surface, tears and anger coming quickly and as quickly dispersing. Catherine showed her affection with a quick hug or a kiss; she could laugh derisively at one’s failings and then show a quick penitence if she thought she had inflicted a wound. How different was Honey! I was aware that I must be careful with Honey and I always had been, taking the utmost pains to show that I loved her equally with Catherine. For me she had, I was fully aware, a deep and passionate devotion. It gratified me and at the same time alarmed me a little, for one could never be quite sure of Honey. How her name belied her! She was wild and passionate.
It was disturbing now that they were growing up and developing such distinct personalities; and the more adoration Catherine showed for Bruno the more loathing Honey seemed to feel; and because they were young neither of them could cloak their feelings; and as Bruno realized his daughter’s growing appreciation and interest in him, so he was aware of Honey’s intensifying repulsion.
I decided that I would speak to Honey about it and I asked her to walk with me one morning around the garden and pick flowers with me. I was growing like my mother, I thought, in that I had become so domesticated; but I never had a great interest in these things and when I did my flowers my thoughts would be far away with what was happening at Court, for instance, and what effect any change there might have on our lives.
“Honey,” I said, “Catherine talks to you often of her father.”
“She talks of nothing else nowadays. Sometimes I think that Catherine is not very intelligent.”
“My dear Honey,” I replied, in what Catherine called my unnaturally virtuous voice, “is it unintelligent for a daughter to admire her father?”
“Yes,” retorted Honey, “if he is not admirable.”
“My dear child, you must not talk so. It is…ungrateful and unbecoming.”
“Should I be grateful to him?”
“You have lived your life under his roof.”
“I prefer to think it has been under yours.”
“He provided it.”
“He never wanted me here. It was only because you insisted that I was allowed to stay. I know so much. I go to my grandmother in the woods.”
“Does she speak of these things?”
“She is a wise woman, Mother, and she speaks sometimes in riddles as wise people do. I wonder why. Is it because they are afraid that if they speak clearly we might learn as much as they know?”
“That could be a reason.”
“My grandmother has told me some truths. She says it is well for me to know of certain matters. I often think how different life might have been for me but for you.”
“My darling Honey, you have been a joy and a comfort to me.”
“I shall always endeavor to be that,” she answered fervently.
“My blessed child, you are my own daughter, remember.”
“But by adoption. Tell me about my mother.”
“Does not your grandmother tell you?”
“I would like you to tell me for people see others in different ways.”
“She was gay and in a way beautiful…though you are more so.
“Am I like her then?”
“No, not in your ways.”
“She was not married to my father. He came to disband the Abbey. What was he like?”
“I saw little of him,” I said evasively.
“And my mother fell in love with him and I was born.”
I nodded. So she had in a way and I could not tell Honey the horrible truth.
“I am his sister,” she said. “My grandmother told me. She said: ‘You are both my grandchildren.’ And when I heard it I could not believe it. My grandmother says it is why he hates me. He would rather not have to see me.”
“He does not believe it, because he will not accept the fact that your mother was his.”
“He believes himself to be divine.” She laughed. “Do divine people care so much that people shall adore them?”
“He believes he has a great mission in life. He has given homes to these people here.”
“He never gives without counting what will come back to him in return. That is not true giving.”
She was too discerning, my Honey.
“You should try to understand him.”
“Understanding does not increase my respect for him. Perhaps I understand too well, as might be expected since we came of the same mother.”
“Honey, I would like you to forget that. I think of myself as your mother. Could you not try to do the same?”
She turned to me and I saw the blazing devotion in her eyes.
“My darling child,” I said. “You cannot know how much you mean to me.”
“If I could have a wish,” she told me, “it would be that I were truly your daughter and Catherine was my own mother’s.”