I covered my face with my hands and she was holding me in her arms. “My child,” she said, “my baby. I understand. You are upset. You and he were as one. I used to feel shut out. You never had much time for me, did you? I understand. Try to accept this, daughter. Try to see that we have to go on and this is a way.”
I felt limp and exhausted by my emotion. I allowed her to take me to my room and tuck me in. She brought me a potion. She had just devised it, she said. There was pimpernel to make me feel happy and thyme to give me pleasant dreams and there was an ashen branch to lay on my pillow for it was said to drive away evil spirits—those who put cruel thoughts into the mind.
I let her soothe me and, worn out with emotion, I slept.
When I awoke I was refreshed. I thought of my mother, helpless like her shrubs in the gale, blown this way and that by circumstances which were too much for her. I could not blame her. I knew her character well. She was a good housekeeper; she wanted to live in peace; my father had had little in common with her for she had never been educated beyond learning to read and write; she could never follow his reasoning. He had determined to educate me and he had often said that education was not learning the fruit and flowers of other men in order to repeat them and make a show of erudition; its purpose must be to set the mind in motion that it might produce flowers and fruit of its own.
I must not blame her.
And she was right. I had now to fend for myself. I would have to make some plan, for I did not believe I could continue to live under this roof and see that man in my father’s place. I had been wrong to voice my suspicions of him, for I must admit they were but suspicions. Could he really have been responsible for my father’s betrayal? Perhaps he was merely the jackal who waited for the moment to come in after the kill.
I must be fair. What had he done? He had asked me to marry him and I had refused. My father had been murdered and his estates given to Simon. Why? I must be reasonable. I must be logical. Could it in truth be because he was my father’s betrayer? I could not be sure and because I was not sure I must not accuse him. I would find out though. And meanwhile must I live on his bounty?
I dreaded meeting him but I could not avoid him for long. I came from my room and found him in the hall. He watched me as I walked down the stairs.
“Welcome home, Damask,” he said.
I stared blankly at him.
“It is good to have you back,” he went on.
“I suppose you are expecting me to congratulate you on your forthcoming marriage.”
“No, I was not expecting that. You take it hardly, I know.”
“The murdered husband is scarcely cold in his grave.”
“My dear Damask, you have been infected by those Greek tragedies on which you set such store. Now I am going to ask you to take care. I would not have you in disgrace. Curb your tongue, I beg of you. You could be in dire trouble so easily. I am going to take care of you now. I shall be your stepfather….”
I laughed. “It was not quite the role you at first chose for yourself!”
“I think you understand my feelings for you.”
“Which were conveniently transferred to my mother.”
“Your mother and I are scarcely young romantic people.”
“I believe she is some years older than you.”
“It is not a great deal.”
“So convenient! Although had she been thirty years older I am sure you would have found that no obstacle.”
“My poor sad Damask!”
“I am not your possession yet.”
“I am devoted to you and to your mother,” he said. “These estates have been bestowed on me. I could not take them from you. So this marriage seems to be the best solution.”
“You could always hand them back.”
“I do not think that would be allowed. I am doing what I think is best for us all.”
“And if I had agreed to marry you, what then?”
I saw the flicker of his eyes; the marking of the fox mask was clearer for a moment.
“You know my feelings for you.” He had taken a step toward me.
I held him off.
“Do not forget that you are an affianced bridegroom,” I said sharply. I looked at him steadily. “Tell me, who betrayed my father?” I added.
He clenched his fists together. “I would I knew,” he said.
“Someone betrayed him,” I said. “I shall not allow it to be forgotten. I shall never rest until I discover who it was.”
He held out his hand to me. I stared down at it.
“I want to make a bargain with you,” he said. “We shall both try to find that man who took the happiness from the household and brought about the death of the best man on earth.”
The tears started up in my eyes and he looked at me with tenderness, so that I was sorry momentarily that I had suspected him.
I turned and ran from him back to my room. I could not go down to the hall to eat. My mother sent up a leg of chicken for me and a slice of the crusty cob loaf which I used to love. I could eat nothing; and when finally I slept, for I believe she had laced my wine with one of her potions, I dreamed of Simon Caseman. He had the face of a fox and in my dream I believed him to be an evil man.
I was torn by my doubts. My mother and Simon were kind to me. She gave me potions and ordered that the foods I had once enjoyed should be prepared for me. He was tolerant and never forced his company on me; sometimes I found his eyes on me and as mine met his he would assume a tender expression, as though he was now regarding me as a cherished daughter.
I thought, I cannot endure this.
Their wedding was to be a quiet one, for it was such a short time since my father’s death; but the entire household was now accepting Simon Caseman as the master.
I could not rouse myself. I thought, I cannot continue in this way. Soon I must make a decision. But at this time I was too stunned to do anything but let time wash over me while I lay listless believing that in due course my grief would be subdued and some notion would come to me as to how I could make something of my life.
At times I thought of going to Kate. Yet I did not wish to throw myself on the bounty of Lord Remus. I did know that since my father’s arraignment Kate’s husband was made a little uneasy by my presence. Kate however would imperiously overrule that if I had wished to go. There was another thing. Every evening at dusk I went through the ivy-covered door into the Abbey burial ground and visited my father’s grave. The rosemary I had planted was growing well. I often thought how frightened I once would have been to wend my way at dusk past the Abbey walls—empty and ghostly in the evening shadows—and to go among the graves of long-dead monks. But because his dear head was there, I knew no fear, for a belief had grown up within me that the dead protect those whom they especially loved and I certainly felt that my father was protecting me.
I lived for my visits to his grave; and when I went to the Abbey I would remember those days when Kate and I had crept through the secret door to be with Bruno. He was never far from my thoughts and I longed to see him again.
I pondered on my feeling for Bruno. It took my mind off my present uneasy situation. I compared the emotion he could rouse in me with my love for my father. I had known my father as well, I think, as it is possible for one person to know another. I was aware of his beliefs, for he had talked to me so openly; I knew before he told me what his opinions would be on almost any problem. Losing him was like losing a part of myself. But Bruno? What did I know of Bruno? Very little. I had never understood him. Bruno seemed to have built a wall about himself. One could never be sure of what he was thinking. I suppose that having for years believed himself to be a superhuman being who had been sent into the world for some special purpose, to have been certain that he was holy, must surely have had an effect on him. Then the confession of Keziah and Ambrose and all the violence which attended it, the dissolution of St. Bruno’s Abbey…what would that have done to him? He had given little indication except that he rejected the confession of those who claimed to be his parents. There was the same aloofness about him. He would never betray himself completely to anyone. Sometimes he had seemed as though he did not belong to this world, yet his arrogance, his frustrated anger were essentially worldly. I remembered Brother John’s explaining how the Child had been caught stealing cakes from the kitchen and lying when accused.