“Tom Seymour has hopes of the Lady Elizabeth,” Kate told me. “You can see where that is leading.”

“She could never be Queen of England,” I said. “There is Mary before her, and would the old King not have both considered to be illegitimate to suit his own purposes?”

“Poor Edward is a sickly child. It’s to be doubted whether he will ever beget children.”

“I daresay they will marry him off as soon as possible.”

“He is devoted to his cousin, Jane Grey. I think he would be delighted to take her.”

“Which would be a satisfactory match since she herself has some pretensions to the throne.”

“Have you thought that it could be a Protestant match, Damask, and what that could mean to the country? I would rather see someone gay on the throne. Jane is a prim little thing, so I have heard. Rather like you were, I imagine. So good with her Latin and Greek. Quite the little scholar.”

Days had always passed cozily at Remus and now it had become a kind of oasis for me. There were no problems and I realized how relieved I was to leave the Abbey for a while.

Kate, restless because she was confined to the house in supposed mourning for her husband, planning the entertainments she would give at the Castle when that period was over, parading in her velvet gowns with only me and the occasional visitor to admire her, found the best method of passing the time in talking to me.

She enjoyed going over the past and she remembered more incidents from our childhood than I had believed she would. I remembered, yes, but then I was more introspective than she. So it was surprising to discover that these little incidents which had appeared too insignificant to mean much to her had somehow remained stored in her mind.

She frankly admitted that she had always intended to get what she could from life.

“And you must concede, Damask, that I have got a great deal. Life has been kinder to me than to you, yet you have been a better woman than I. You loved your father and you suffered deeply when you lost him. You thought I did not know how deeply but I did, Damask, and while I was sad for you I thought how foolish it was to love one person so much that to lose him can be such a tragedy. I would never love like that…except myself of course.”

“There is great joy in loving, too, Kate,” I said. “I remember so many happy times with my father. I would not have missed those for anything in the world.”

“The more happiness you had the greater was your grief. People like you pay for the happiness they get.”

“But not you?”

“I am too clever for that,” retorted Kate. “I am sufficient for myself. I make myself dependent on no one.”

“Have you never loved?”

“In my fashion. I am fond of you. I am fond of Carey and young Colas. You are my family and I am happy to have you round me. But this complete and utter devotion—it is not for me.”

We talked of Bruno and what he had done at the Abbey, and what he proposed doing.

“Bruno is a fanatic,” she said. “He is the sort of man who will end up at the stake.”

“Don’t say that, Kate,” I said quickly.

“Why? You know it to be true. He is the strangest man I have ever known. Sometimes he almost made me believe that he was indeed sent from heaven for some purpose. Did you feel that, Damask?”

“I am not sure. I may have felt it.”

“But no longer do?”

I was silent.

“Ah,” she accused. “I see you do not. But he believes it, Damask. He must believe it.”

“Why must he? If it were proved….”

“He must. He dare not do otherwise. I know your husband well, Damask.”

“So you have told me before.”

“I understand him as you cannot. We are of a kind in a way. You are too normal, Damask. I know you well.”

“You always did believe you knew everything.”

“Not everything but a great deal. How he must have suffered when Keziah and the monk betrayed their secret. I pitied him then because I understood him so well.”

“We never speak of it,” I said.

“No. You dare not. Don’t speak of it. You see what he is trying to do, Damask. To prove himself. I think I might be the same. But I do not have to prove myself. I am beautiful, desirable. You see how I took Remus. I would take any man I wanted. I know I can; they know it; there is no need to prove it. But Bruno has to prove to himself that he is superhuman. That is what he is doing. But how is he doing it? How is it possible for one who had nothing…who was turned from his secluded life into the world, to become so wealthy that he can do all that Bruno is doing now? I doubt Remus could have afforded such a vast expenditure.”

“It worries me at times.”

“I doubt it not.”

“Somehow it has all become fantastic…like a dream. Before I married Bruno there was a reason for everything. Now I often feel as though I am groping in the dark.”

“I have a feeling, Damask, that you will grope for a long time and that perhaps it is better so. The darkness is a protection. Who knows what you might see in the blinding light of truth.”

“I would always wish for the truth.”

“Mayhap not if you knew it.”

There were many such conversations with Kate, and I often came from them with the notion that she knew something and was holding it back. These talks stimulated me as they did her. I too liked to watch the children at their games. I devised entertainments for them; and I gave a party for them and some children of the neighborhood. We danced country dances and played guessing games and it was the best of good fun.

Kate never joined in but she sometimes liked to watch.

She called me the eternal mother.

“I’m never going to be able to placate Carey,” she said, “when you and the girls depart.”

My mother wrote that the twins were well and the sweat was abating; but I still stayed on.

Kate invited guests to Remus and those were exciting days when we watched from the keep while they rode under the portcullis and into the courtyard.

There would be interesting conversation at dinner and we learned that the Queen Dowager, Katharine Parr, had married Thomas Seymour, with whom she had long been in love.

Kate was amused. “Of course he wanted the Princess Elizabeth but she was too dangerous so he took Queen Katharine instead. A King’s widow instead of a Princess who thinks she might have a claim to the throne! Anne Boleyn’s daughter.” She was pensive, thinking of the glittering, elegant woman whom she had so admired.

Kate giggled over the scandals of the Dower House where the Queen and Seymour lived, for the young Elizabeth was under the Queen’s care and there were rumors of a far from innocent relationship between the Princess and Seymour.

On the day when the Queen Dowager died in childbed I returned to the Abbey.

There followed what I thought of afterward as the quiet years. There were changes but they were so gradual that I scarcely noticed them. There were many workers on the Abbey estate now and always great activity on the farm for more workers had joined us. More building had been done. There had even been extensions to our mansion. Bruno never seemed to be satisfied with it. Tapestries adorned many of our rooms. Now and then Bruno made trips abroad and often returned with treasures.

Honey was now eleven and she had lost none of her beauty. Catherine, more than two years younger, was more vivacious and independent. They were both bright and intelligent children and I was proud of them. Valerian had now taken over the control of their studies and each day they took lessons in the scriptorium. It was a disappointment to me that I had no other child. My mother, who imagined that she was learned in such things, said that perhaps I desired one too passionately. She was always concocting potions for me but nothing happened. Sometimes I had the notion that Mother Salter had indeed put a curse on me because she had feared I did not care sufficiently for Honey.

I often visited Kate and she came now and then to the Abbey. She had not married although she had been betrothed twice, but had decided against marriage before the ceremony was performed. She told me that she liked her freedom and since she was rich she had no need to marry for what she called the usual reasons.

The children now looked forward to their reunions. Catherine and Carey quarreled a good deal. Honey was aloof; she always seemed much older than Carey. Little Colas was always ignored by the others and only allowed to play with them if he took the minor parts in games—the usual fate of the youngest.

Sometimes the twins came to us, but my mother liked best for me to take the children to Caseman Court. On several occasions she talked to me of the Reformed religion. She would like to see me embrace it. I asked her why.

“Oh, it’s all in the books,” she said.

I smiled at her. One faith was as good as another to her. She would be ready to follow her husband in all ways.

We seemed to have passed into a different era. The young King was as different from his father as a king could be. The times had changed. It was no longer dangerous to show an interest in the Reformed faith. King Edward himself was interested in it; so were those who surrounded him. The Princess Mary, who was the next in succession to the King, would be very different, for she was fiercely Catholic; but it would only be if the King were to die without heirs that she would have a chance of ascending the throne.

He was sickly, it was true, but they would marry him young and according to Kate he had already chosen the little Lady Jane Grey, a choice greatly approved by those who wished to see the Reformed faith flourish.

Rumors came to us over those years but they did not seem of such significance as they had when the old King was alive.

The Lord High Admiral, Thomas Seymour, had lost his head; and sometime later his brother Somerset had followed him to the scaffold.

Politics! I thought. They were so dangerous and devious and the man in high favor one day was he whose head rolled in the straw the next.

But lightly these things seemed to touch us at this time.

Now that the Seymour brothers were dead the Duke of Northumberland was in control and he had married his son Lord Guildford Dudley to the little Jane Grey.

“He had a purpose,” Kate said, during one of my stays at Remus. “If the King were to die Northumberland would try to make Jane Queen for that would mean that Guildford Dudley, Northumberland’s son, were King—or as near as makes no difference.”

“And what of the Princess Mary? Would she stand aside to see Jane Grey Queen of England?”

“It is to be hoped that the King will go on living, for if he did not there could be war in England.”

“A war between the supporters of Jane and those of Mary would be a war between those of the old faith and the new.”

“We must pray for the King’s good health for that is to pray for peace,” said Kate.

I did not know it but the quiet years were coming to an end.

The Abbey flourished. The old guesthouses were occupied by workers; and in the midst of this activity was the castlelike residence known as St. Bruno’s Abbey. We were supplying corn to the surrounding districts; our wool was bringing in big prices. We had more animals than we needed for our own consumption and these were slain and salted down and sold.

I had discovered that no less than twenty of our workers were men who had been attached to the Abbey before the dissolution—some monks, some lay brothers. It seemed inevitable that they should band together and remember the customs of the old days.

The church was intact. It was used at night. Frequently I saw from my window after the household had retired, men making their way there. I believed they celebrated the Mass as they had in the Abbot’s day.

Rupert had extended his lands; he visited us now and then and when he came Bruno took a certain pleasure in conducting him around our estate. There was no envy in Rupert; he admired everything and seemed genuinely pleased to see such prosperity.

One day he rode over. It was during one of Bruno’s trips to the Continent and I knew as soon as I saw him that something had happened. Strangely enough the first thing I thought of was: He has come to tell me that he is about to marry. I was surprised at the feeling of depression that gave me.

It was not that I had a dog-in-the-manger attitude toward him; but I had come to regard him as very important in my life, and I suddenly realized what comfort the devotion he had shown me for so long had meant to me. Sometimes when I had been deeply perplexed I had thought of his existence, a close neighbor, someone to whom I could turn in trouble—always there, always delighted to be called on.