“Because it is false…false…and you alone whose duty it was to stand beside me have done everything you can to plant these false beliefs.”
“I am guilty of heresy then,” I said.
He turned and left me.
Strangely enough I had ceased to care that all love was lost between us.
I could not have done a better thing for my mother than take Mother Salter to her. When I next visited her I found the sick room fresh and clean. On a table beside the witch’s pallet were the potions and unguents which my mother had prepared. She was excited and important and fussing over the old woman as though she were a child, which seemed to amuse Mother Salter.
Of course the old woman was dying; she knew it and she was amused to be spending her last days in a grand house.
My mother told me that she had imparted to her much knowledge of plants both benign and malignant. She would not allow my mother to write them down perhaps because she who could not write thought there was something evil in the signs that were made on paper. My mother had a good memory for the things in which she was interested and she became very knowledgeable during that time, which I was sure was ample payment for all that she had done for Mother Salter. But here was more than that. Whether the old woman had powers to bless or curse I cannot say, but from that time my mother really grew away from her grief and while Mother Salter was in her house I heard her sing snatches of songs.
Two or three days before she died I went to see her and was alone with her. I asked her to tell me the truth about Bruno’s birth.
“You know,” I said, “that he believes he has special powers. He does not accept the story that Keziah and the monk told.”
“No, he does not believe it. He has special powers. That is clear, is it not? Look what he has done. He has built a world about himself. Could an ordinary man do that?”
“Then it was lies Keziah told?”
She gave that disturbing witch’s chuckle. “In us all there are special powers. We must find them, must we not? I was born of a woodcutter. True I was the seventh child and my mother said I was the seventh of a seventh. I told myself that there is something different about me…and there was. I studied the plants. There was not a flower nor a leaf nor a bud I did not know. And I tried them out and went to an old woman who was a witch and she taught me much. So I became a wise woman. We could all become wise men or women.”
“And Bruno?”
“He is my Keziah’s son.”
“And it is true that he was put into the crib by the monk?”
“It is true. And it was my plan. Keziah was with child. What would happen to the child? I said. He or she would be a servant, not able to read or write. I always set great store by writing. There’s a power in it…and what is written can be read. To read and to write—for all my wisdom I could not do that. Nor could Keziah. But my great-grandchildren did. And that was what I wanted for them. The monk should not be blamed. Nor Keziah. She did what was natural to her and he dared not disobey me. So I made the plan; they carried it out. My great-grandson was laid in the Christmas crib—and none would have been the wiser if Weaver hadn’t come. My great-grandson would have been the Abbot and a wise man and a miracle worker because these powers are in us all and we must first know that we possess them before we do.”
“You have confirmed what I have always believed. Bruno hates me for knowing.”
“His pride will destroy him. There is greatness in him but there is weakness too and if the weakness is greater than the strength then he is doomed.”
“Should I pretend to believe him? Am I wrong in letting him know the truth?”
“Nay,” she said. “Be true to thyself, girl.”
“Should I try to make him accept the truth?”
“If he could do that he might be saved. For his pride is great. I know him well though I have not set eyes on him since he was naked new-born. But Honey talked of him. She told me all…of you both. Now I will tell you this. The monk before his part in this were known, was heavy with his sin. He said that the only way he could hope for salvation after his sin was to write a full confession. He could write well. He came here now and then. It broke the laws of the Abbey but they were not my laws and I had my grandson to think of. I must see this monk who was his father; I commanded him to come to me and he did, and he showed me the wounds he had inflicted on his body in his torment. He showed me the hair shirt he wore. He felt his sin deeply. And he wrote the story of his sin and hid it away that in time to come it should be known.”
“Where is this confession?”
“It’s hidden in his cell in the dorter. Find it. Keep it. And show it to Bruno. It will be proof, and then you will tell him that he must be true to himself. He is clever. He has great powers. He can be greater without this lie than he ever was with it. If you can teach him this you will help to destroy that pride which in time will destroy him.”
“I will look for this confession,” I said, “and if I find it I will show it to Bruno and I will tell him what you have said.”
She nodded.
“I wish him well,” she said. “He is my flesh and blood. Tell him I said so. Tell him he can be great but he cannot rise through weakness.”
Our conversation was broken up by my mother who came bustling in and declared that I was tiring out her invalid.
A few days later Mother Salter was dead. My mother planted flowers on her grave and tended them regularly.
The Monk’s Confession
THE MONKS’ DORTER HAD become a place which I avoided. There was something more eerie about it than the rest of the uninhabited part of the Abbey; and although many of the Abbey buildings had by this time been demolished and so much rebuilding had been done, the dorter was a section which had been left intact.
Since Mother Salter’s revelation I went there often. I wanted to find that confession which she said Ambrose had hidden there. If I could do this and present it to Bruno, he would then be face to face with the truth; and I could see, as Mother Salter had seen, that until he accepted it I could not respect him, nor could he respect himself.
Was this true? I asked myself. How difficult it is to test one’s motive! Did I want to say, “Look, I am right”? Or did I really wish to help him?
Once he accepted the fact that his birth was similar to that of many others, would he start to grow away from myth? Would he build his life on the firm foundation of truth?
I did not know, for I did not understand Bruno nor my own feelings for him. I had been bemused by the story of his miraculous appearance on earth. I had been drawn into this union while in a state of exultation. It had not brought me happiness, except that it had given me Catherine.
Whatever the motive, I was urged on by some compulsion to search for the document which according to Mother Salter Ambrose had left behind.
As I walked up the stone spiral stairs with its thick rope banister I thought of all the monks who had filed down this stone stairway during the last two hundred years and it occurred to me that many of them must have left something of themselves behind.
At the top of the stairs was a long narrow landing and on either side of this were the cells. Each had a door in which was a grille through which it was possible to see into the cell.
Most of the cells were bare although some contained a pallet which had not presumably been considered worthwhile taking away by the vandals. Each cell was identical with its narrow slit without glass which was cut into the thick walls. It must have been bitterly cold in winter; the floor of each cell was flagged; and there were slabs of stone in the walls. No comfort whatsoever; but monks did not look for comfort, of course.