At length I said: “Mother, what is this book you are reading?”
“Oh,” she said with a grimace, “it is very dull, but I am struggling through it to please your stepfather.”
“He wishes you to read it?”
“He insists.”
“Mother, I do not think you should leave such a book where any might pick it up.”
“Why should I not? It is but a book.”
“It is what it contains. It is a plea for the reformed religion.”
“Oh, is it?” she said.
“To please me be more careful.”
She patted my hand. “You are just like your father,” she said. “You are one to make something from nothing. Now look at this. Already Master Paul is growing out of it. The rate that child grows astonishes me!”
I was thinking: So Simon Caseman is dabbling with the reformed religion!
I thought of the Abbey where a community life alarmingly similar to the old was gradually, perhaps subtly, but certainly being built up.
It occurred to me then that Simon Caseman, for harboring such a book in his house, and Bruno, for installing monks in his newly acquired Abbey, could both be deemed traitors.
A short while ago I would have gone home and argued the matter with Bruno. I might even have gone so far as to caution Simon Caseman, but strangely enough the matters seemed of secondary importance for I had just begun to feel the movement of my child and I forgot all else.
I was like my mother, shut into a little world in which the miracle of creation absorbed me.
Perhaps all pregnant women are so.
Christmas was almost upon us and I had decorated Honey’s little room with holly and ivy and told her the Christmas story.
In those December days preceding Christmas there had been a great deal of talk about the King’s matter. Even my mother mentioned it. There was great sympathy for the Queen who it was said was in a state of hysteria and had been ever since her accusation. Many believed that this was an implication of her guilt.
“And if she had taken a lover, poor soul,” I said to my mother as we sat over our sewing, “is that so very wrong?”
“Outside the bonds of matrimony!” cried my mother, aghast.
“She believed herself married to Dereham.”
“Then she deserves death for marrying the King.”
“Life is cruel for a woman,” I said.
My mother pursed her lips virtuously. “Not if she is a dutiful wife.”
“Poor little Katharine Howard! She is so young to die.”
But my mother was not really moved by the young girl’s fate. It occurred to me that in a world where death came frequently the value of life was not really great.
It was just before Christmas that Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpepper were executed. Culpepper was beheaded but Dereham, because he was not of noble birth, suffered the barbarous hanging and quartering, the traitor’s death.
I thought of them all that day—poor young men, whose crime had been to love the Queen.
At that time we thought these deaths would be enough and that the King so loved Katharine Howard that we were sure he would pardon her. Alas it was not to be so. The Queen had too many enemies. As a Howard she was a Catholic and many of the King’s ministers did not wish to see a Catholic influence on the King.
Her fate was sealed when the King’s ministers, before he could prevent them, circulated the story of her misconduct abroad and after this the King’s own honor being involved he could scarcely with dignity take her back.
François Premier sent condolences. He was shocked by the “great displeasures, troubles and inquietations which his good brother had recently had by the naughty demeanor of her, lately reputed for Queen.”
Distressed, wounded and humiliated (this last a state calculated to arouse his anger against the cause of it) the King did not intervene to save Katharine and on a bleak February day the King’s fifth wife walked out to Tower Hill where but six years before her cousin Anne Boleyn had met a similar fate.
A hush was on the land on that terrible day. Five Queens—two divorced, one died in childbirth (and who knew what her fate would have been had she lived?) and two beheaded.
The people were beginning to wonder what monster this was who sat on their throne; and when they saw him, as they did occasionally on public occasions, and in place of the handsome golden boy who thirty years before had been romantically in love with his Spanish wife, was a portly bloated figure—purple of complexion, tight-mouthed, eyes peering through slits in that unsightly countenance, a suppurating ulcer on his leg, they lowered their eyes but they dared do no other than shout “Long live the King.”
They remembered that whatever else he was, he was their all-powerful ruler.
My baby was due in June. The larger I grew the more impatient I became. One of the men who had come to the Abbey and who I suspected used to help Brother Ambrose in the old days had made a little garden for me at the back of the Abbot’s Lodging. My mother had advised and sent me plants and I grew quite fond of it. Here I would sit with my sewing and watch Honey at play. Now over two years old, she was a lively child; I had told her that she would soon have a companion and she used to ask every day how much longer it would be before it arrived.
My mother had advice to offer every time we met. She had become a frequent visitor to the Abbey. I wondered whether she would notice that some of the workers were onetime monks, and mention this to Simon. I remembered the book I had seen in my mother’s room. If Simon was flirting with the new religion he might do us some harm. Besides, I had a feeling that he would not forgive me for refusing him and for taking the Abbey and Bruno. But as he too was acting outside the King’s law, he would have to walk very warily himself.
My mother, however, noticed nothing strange; she would only comment on the manner in which I was carrying the child and impress upon me that the moment I felt the first signs I was to send a messenger to Caseman Court. She would at once send for the midwife and come herself. That was only if we should have miscalculated the time. If we had been right then the midwife would be in residence days before the expected event.
It was April—two months before my child was due—when I became aware of a change in Bruno. He was often absentminded. Sometimes when I spoke to him he did not answer.
I said to him: “Bruno, all this rebuilding must be very costly. Are you perchance anxious about the expense?”
He looked at me in a startled fashion.
“What gave you that notion?”
“You seem preoccupied.”
He frowned. “Mayhap I am anxious about you.”
“About me? But I am well.”
“Having a child is a trying time.”
“You must not fear. Everything will be all right.”
“I shall be glad when our son is born.”
“I’m afraid when you say ‘our son’ in that way. What if we should have a daughter?”
“My firstborn must be a son,” he said, and what I thought of as his prophet’s face was very apparent. “It will be so,” he continued firmly.
He convinced me then, as he could at times, that he had special powers.
I smiled complacently. Son or daughter I should love either. But if Bruno cared so intensely that it should be a son then I hoped so too.
“I am glad there is no need to worry about money. You must be exceedingly rich. I know this place cannot be producing much so far.”
“I beg you, Damask, leave these matters to me.”
“I would not have you worried. Mayhap we could postpone some of this building until the farm and the mill begin to show a profit.”