Free The Miracle at St. Bruno's by Philippa Carr Page A

want to show you something. She made me go with her up the spiral staircase to the servants’ rooms and listening at Keziah’s door I heard whisperings. Kate looked through the keyhole and made me look too. I could just see Keziah in bed with one of the grooms. Kate took out a key and locked the door and then we tiptoed down the stairs to the landing and went across to our own staircase and so to her room. Kate was stifling laughter. “Wait till he tries to get out and finds himself locked in!” she cried.
    I said, “You had better unlock the door.”
    “Why?” she demanded. “Then they wouldn’t know I’d seen them.”
    She thought it was a great joke but I was worried about Keziah for I was fond of her and somehow I knew that these adventures with men were necessary to her, and that she would not have been Keziah without them.
    Her companion of that night turned out to be Walt Freeman; he broke his leg when he scrambled out of her window soon after the dawn. As for Keziah, she couldn’t climb out of the window, and how could she get out while the door was locked? Walt told some story about his thinking he heard robbers and coming out early had tripped over a root. Kate made me come with her when she unlocked the door on a distraught Keziah.
    “So it was you, you minx!” cried Keziah.
    “We crept up and saw you and Walt in bed,” Kate told her.
    Keziah looked at me and a slow flush spread across her face. I felt sorry because Kate had exposed her to me.
    “You really are a wanton, Keziah,” said Kate, shaking with laughter.
    “There’s more ways than one of being that,” said Keziah meaningfully, which made Kate laugh all the more.
    Keziah explained to me when we were alone.
    “I’ve always had too much love to give away, you see, Dammy,” she told me. “It would have been different if I’d had a husband. That’s what I’d have liked—a husband and lots of little ’uns like you. Not like that Mistress Kate.”
    “Do you love many men, Keziah?” I asked her.
    “Well, my ducky, the trouble with me is that I love them all and not being the sort that likes to say no…there it is. So it’ll be our little secret, eh, and you’ll not tell anyone?”
    “Kezzie,” I said, “I think they all know.”
    It was a lovely May day when we heard the news of the Queen’s arrest. It shook us all although we had been expecting something like it to happen; there had been so many rumors of the King’s dissatisfaction with his Queen and it was hinted that she was a witch and a sorceress who had tricked him into marriage. He was tired of her witchery; he wanted a good quiet wife who would give him sons. Already he had laid eyes and hands on Jane Seymour and her brothers were coaching her for the role of Queen. This we had heard; but there were many rumors and it was not until that May that we knew there was truth in them.
    The King and Queen had gone to the joust together; then suddenly the King had left and the next thing was that the Queen was arrested and sent to the Tower—and some of those who were alleged to be her lovers were sent there too. One of these included her musician, a poor boy named Mark Smeaton, on whom it was impossible to believe the haughty Queen could have bestowed her favors; and more scandalous still her own brother was accused of being her lover.
    My father had never believed that Anne Boleyn was the true Queen but now he was filled with pity for her, as I believed many others were too. Kate had seen herself so clearly as the fascinating Queen that to her this seemed almost a personal tragedy. That three short years ago she had ridden through the city in her triumph and was now in a dismal dungeon in the Tower had a sobering effect on us all.
    As for Keziah she was full of compassion.
    “Mercy me!” she mourned. “The poor soul! And what will become of her? That proud head will roll off her shoulders like as not and all because she fancied a man.”
    “So you believe her guilty,