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.”

She turned to me and I put my arms about her. She winced with pain. Her big rather flaccid body trembled.

“I’ve told,” she babbled. “I’ve told what ought never to be told. I’ve done something terrible. I wonder Satan himself don’t come down for me.”

“Begin at the beginning,” commanded Kate. “Tell us everything. You’re just babbling nonsense.”

“Yes, it’ll help you to talk, Kezzie,” I said. “I doubt it’s as bad as you think.”

“It’s terrible, Mistress Damask, I’m doomed. The gates of hell be yawning….”

“Don’t start that again,” Kate said impatiently. “Now what happened? That man sent for you and you went willingly. In fact you could scarcely wait to get there. We know that.”

“Oh, it were before that, Mistress Kate. It were long before that. It was when I found the gate in the wall. That’s when it all began.”

The gate in the wall! Kate and I exchanged glances.

“It were covered by the ivy and none would guess there was a gate there, but I found it…and I went through. I walked into sacred ground. I should have known I was damned from then.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Kate sharply. “There shouldn’t have been a gate and then you wouldn’t have found it. You couldn’t be blamed for opening and walking through. That was natural.”

“But it didn’t stop there, Mistress. I saw him there…and he’d thrown off his monk’s robe and he didn’t seem the same without it—a man, nothing more. He was tending the herbs and plucking some and he was a fine man, that much was clear. I watched him and then I called to him and when he saw me he was that startled. He bade me begone quickly. He said after he thought I was some vision sent by the devil to tempt him, which in a way I was. The devil tempted us both.”

“Go on,” said Kate excitedly, and a glimmer of understanding came to me, for I had a hazy notion as to where all this was leading.

I could picture it so clearly. Brother Ambrose working there and Keziah tempting him with that blatant sensuality which was inherent and would prove her ruin.

“I watched him working and I told him it was a pity all that fine manhood going to waste and all he could say was ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’ But I was wicked and I knew it was only a matter of waiting. I went away but I came back and I could see that he was expecting me and I couldn’t think of any other man but him and I knew how it was with him. So we lay in the long grass and we did what was only natural for most men but him being a monk made it all the more exciting like for me. For him too, I reckon. And I went back and he wouldn’t come that time because he was busy in his cell itching in his hair shirt or kneeling before the cross asking for purification or something like that. So he used to tell me, but I didn’t listen. I always knew he’d come back and that he wanted to be there as much as I did. And so it was. But then I was with child. I know it had happened to others before me but this was different. This was with child by a monk.”

“It’s not the first time that’s happened to you, I’ll swear,” said Kate, her eyes gleaming with excitement.

“That was the first time—though it’s happened since, and I’ve rid myself of my burdens with my old Granny’s help. If it hadn’t been the first time I might have acted different. But there I was with child…by a monk…I was frightened. So I said nothing…nothing to him, nothing to nobody, and then it was six months and beginning to show so I went to my old Granny in the woods. She was a wise woman. She’d know what to do. ‘You’ve left it too late, Kez!’ she said. ‘You should have come three months since. It would be dangerous now. You’ll have to have the child.’ So I told her all and that it was a monk’s seed that had made my baby and she laughed then, she laughed so long and loud that she made me feel better. ‘Go back to the house,’ she said, ‘and wear your biggest petticoats. Tell them that your aunt in Black Heath is ill and calling for you. You’re going to her for a spell.’ So I did as she said and I set out with a few things in my saddlebags and I was to travel with a party that my Granny was arranging. But I stayed with Granny and she kept me in her cottage so that no one knew because she had this idea of what we should do when the child was born. She sent for Ambrose and he came to her cottage—though he were living enclosed and that were breaking his vows—and the child was to be born about Christmastime. He didn’t want to do it but my Granny had wonderful powers. He thought she was the Devil in petticoats for he believed by now that he sold his soul to the Devil. She tempted him. ‘It’s your own child,’ she said. ‘The seed of your loins. You’ll want to see it sometimes, watch over it.’ When the boy child was born—it being Christmas, this plan came to my Granny. She sat by the fire rocking herself and talking to the cat. The child was to go into the crib, so they’d think it was a Holy Child. My Granny said they’d bring him up in the Abbey and perhaps he’d be Abbot one day. They made an educated gentleman of him which would be different from his being a serving wench’s bastard. So we planned it and on that Christmas Eve I carried my baby through the secret door and Ambrose took him and laid him in the crib….”

Kate and I were astounded. We could not believe this. Bruno—the Holy Child, whose coming had been a miracle which had changed St. Bruno’s from a struggling to a prosperous Abbey, the son of a monk and a serving girl! Yet although we cried out against this fantastic story we believed that it was true.

“You wicked creature,” cried Kate. “All this time you have been deceiving us…and the world.”

I thought she was going to strike Keziah. She was so angry; and I knew that she could not bear to think of the change in Bruno’s status. She had jeered at the Holy Child but she had wanted him to be set apart from the rest of us.

Keziah began to sob. “But I’m not deceiving now,” she said. “And this is the most wicked thing of all. Now the whole world knows.”

“Keziah,” I cried, “you have told that…man!”

She rocked herself to and fro in her misery. “Mistress, I could not help it. He sent for me to go to the inn—the Abbey Inn. I was taken to a room there and he ordered me to strip and lie down on the bed. So I did and waited for him because I thought….”

“We know what you thought, you harlot,” cried Kate.

“But it wasn’t,” said Keziah. “He came and he bent over me and he fondled me rough like and said, ‘You’re not a young harlot anymore, Keziah, but there’s a lot of the harlot still left in you, eh?’ And I laughed and I thought it was a sort of love play and then he took a rope and tied me by the ankles to the bedposts. I struggled a bit but not so much.”