Read Online The Miracle at St. Bruno's by Philippa Carr - Free Book Online Page B

turned toward him. We heard of it from those who witnessed it; and how poor Meg ran to him and threw her arms about his neck before she fell fainting to the ground.
    “They’ll never do it,” said my father. “The King cannot kill a man he once professed to love; he cannot murder a saint.”
    But the King would allow no one to defy him. I often thought of him as I had seen him on his barge laughing with the Cardinal…another who had died, they said, through his displeasure. No man could afford to displease the King.
    And then on that day of mourning the bell tolled for Sir Thomas, and his head was severed from his body and stuck on a pole on London Bridge, from which spot Meg later retrieved it.
    My father shut himself into his room; I knew that he spent the hours of that day on his knees and I did not believe he was praying for himself.
    He talked to me again, his arm through mine down there by the loosestrife and the long grass that grew on the riverbank, there where we could talk with no fear of being overheard.
    “You are nearly twelve years old, Damask,” he said; and he repeated: “I would you were older.”
    “Why so, Father?” I asked. “Is it because you wish I could understand more easily?”
    “You are wise beyond your years, my child. If you were fifteen or sixteen perhaps you might marry and then I would know that you had someone to care for you.”
    “Why should I want a husband when I have the best of fathers? And I have Mother too.”
    “And we shall care for you as long as we shall live,” he said fervently. “I think that if by some mischance….”
    “Father!”
    He went on: “If we should not be here…if I should not be here….”
    “But you are not going away.”
    “In these times, Damask, how can we know when our time shall come? Who would have believed a few years ago that Sir Thomas would be taken from us?”
    “Father, you will not be asked to sign the Oath?”
    “Who can say?”
    I clung to his arm suddenly.
    Then he said soothingly: “The times are dangerous. It may be that we may be called upon to do what our consciences will not permit. And then….”
    “Oh, but that is cruel.”
    “We live in cruel times, child.”
    “Father,” I whispered, “do you believe that the new Queen is no true Queen?”
    “ ’Tis better not to say such words.”
    “Then do not answer that question. When I think of her….lying in the litter smiling, so proud, so glad because all that pomp and ceremony was for her….Oh, Father, do you think that she spared a thought for all the blood that would be shed for her….Men like Sir Thomas, the monks….”
    “Hush, child. Sir Thomas expressed his pity for her. Heads have been cut off because of her. Who can say how long she will keep her own?”
    “Kate heard it said that the King was growing tired of her, that she has given him no son…only the Princess Elizabeth…and that he is already looking at others.”
    “Tell Kate to keep a curb on her tongue, Damask. She’s a reckless girl. I fear for Kate—yet somehow I fancy she has a talent for self-preservation. I fear more for you, my beloved daughter. I would you were old enough to take a husband. What think you of Rupert?”
    “Rupert? As a husband, you mean? I had not thought of that.”
    “Yet, my child, he is a good boy. Reserved in temperament, good-natured, hardworking; it is true he has very little of his own but he is our own flesh and blood and I would like to see him continue to care for the estate. But most of all I would feel I was putting you into safe hands.”
    “Oh, Father, I hadn’t thought of…marriage.”
    “At twelve it is time you gave that important matter a little consideration. Perhaps in four years’ time. Four years! It is long.”
    “You sound as though I am a burden you would be relieved to be rid of.”
    “My darling child, you know you are my life.”
    “I know it and I spoke carelessly. Father, are you so much afraid for yourself that you wish I