The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  ‘To-morrow, then,’ said the man to the elder of the two children. ‘And now a kiss, sweetheart.’

  He had his arm half about her but she drew back with a twist as strong and graceful as the motion of a fish turning about in a running river. He looked angry and muttered to her: ‘You wait till to-morrow.’

  ‘And so do you,’ said she, and dipped him a curtsey that did not accord with her company. Then she went back into the gates. The man went on just in front of Darcy; the old woman picked the child up from the kennel, and carried her, kicking, and clutching to her a trampled cabbage leaf, back into the great house.

  It was not till Darcy had passed the garden of the Red Rose that he remembered who the elder of the two young girls must be. She was, he was sure, that bastard daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, who, had her father lived, would have been the wife of young Fitzgerald. And now, Darcy supposed, she was to marry the man who had wanted a kiss from her, a comfortable, worthy London merchant by his look.

  Her beauty was such a rare thing, in tint so delicate, in contour so rich, and in spirit so quick and keen, that Darcy was still thinking of her when he reached the Pope’s Head. He wondered how she came to be living still in the great deserted house. To the other little girl he did not give a thought, supposing her to be some neighbour’s child.

  The Chronicle is broken to speak of Julian Savage, Gentlewoman.

  Julian Savage, Gentlewoman

  Yet little Julian was, as well as Margaret, the bastard daughter of the Duke, by Agnes Savage, the priest’s niece at Southampton, whom Edward Stafford had first seen one evening in the summer of the year young King Harry became King – that is, in 1509. She was down by the sea, shrimping at low water, when he and some others came riding back from trying their horses, one against the other, along the shore. She had on a coarse gown of soiled white woollen, and it was kilted up about her legs, as she stood almost to her thighs in the water. The sun, which was low and golden, lit her white and her gold to a lovely rose, and Edward Stafford knew that he had never seen so beautiful a creature. He rode on with the others, and as soon as he could rode wildly back to the shore again, and caught her up, pulling his horse back on its haunches with a long slither that cast the sand up all about like gouts of water. Then he sat, looking down into her face, and at the wet gown where it clung to her.

  The sun had dropped below the horizon, but all the sky towards the west was warm, and in the east a full moon hung. The tide ran whispering in, with only the laziest small tumbling waves at the edges, that broke and spread forward, and then lapsed back. She stood quite still, meeting his eyes, until slowly, for in everything she did she was slow, she flushed as rosy as when the sunset light had painted her with rose. He took the wet sack of shrimps out of her hands, and rode back beside her, through the dunes, not even knowing that the salt water from the shrimps was soaking his hosen and spoiling his long green riding-boots of Spanish leather.

  He had her to Thornbury that autumn, caring nothing for what his wife said or thought about it, and Margaret was born almost a year to the day after that on which Edward Stafford first saw her mother. Then the Duke married her to the Miller of Rendecombe, giving her a good portion, a gown of green sarcenet and some fine shifts, and a chain of gold for little Margaret when she grew up; the Stafford knot set with garnets and pearls hung from the chain.

  He did not see her again for nine years, and then only by one of those seemingly casual decisions which can bring life or death as their consequences. He was in the West Country, and, in the summer of 1519, found himself one day alone in a great wood, having lost the rest of the hunt. He followed a track that brought him to the fall of the hillside and thence, through the tree-tops, he saw far below a valley, a river, and a mill. A hind passing up into the wood with an axe on his shoulder told him that it was Rendecombe. When the hind had gone by the Duke sat looking down at the quiet and sheltered place. But for some red and white cows in the closes down by the river it seemed deserted. And then he saw a thin feather of smoke, blue as wood bluebells, go up from the chimney of the mill.

  Between him and that distant quiet place the woods were dressed in all the colours of autumn’s arrogant, mortal beauty, but the valley seemed still to be green with an unfading summer. He put his horse to the downward track with something of the impatience and the despair that had made him separate himself from the rest of the hunt. He was come, early in his years, to that time in his life when a man asks himself what he has been seeking? Whether he has found it? Whether it has been worth finding?

  He said to himself that he was a fool to turn out of his way to see her, that by now she would have grown fat; and once he pulled up and half swung the horse round. Yet he went on.

  He found her standing in the hazy autumn sunshine among the beehives, spinning. If she had been lovely before, now she was glorious.

  Yet it was not her beauty which this time gave him happiness, because now what he needed, and what she brought him, was security, quiet, and rest. She chose, and he would in nothing gainsay her, to go back to the old priest at Southampton. ‘Then,’ he said, speaking lightly, but clinging to her hands as if she were saving him from drowning, ‘then I shall come to you whenever the King goes to war with France.’ She said, ‘I shall be there.’

  She went back, and at Southampton, during the next summer, when the Duke was in France with the King, she bore him another female child, and died. He learnt it when he came again to find her, and found only the priest, a wailing infant, and Margaret, a little girl in a ragged gown and barefoot, but already beautiful.

  So she and the baby, Julian, came up to London with the Duke, and with a country woman whom he had hired to suckle the baby, and Julian had swaddling bands of the finest, and a little cap worked with gold, and a fine carved cradle, for the Duke was unmeasured in his desire to care for Agnes’s children; and in the autumn of the year he betrothed Margaret to young Fitzgerald, of whom he had the wardship.

  But before Agnes had been dead a year the Duke himself had gone the same way, by the axe, and for a week the two little bastards remained in a strangely quiet house, whose ordinary inhabitants were almost all gone, being replaced by men in the King’s or the Cardinal’s livery, who went round into every room, making lists of all that was there, even of the cradle in which Julian Savage lay.

  Soon after that the two were fetched away by the late Duke’s brother, Henry Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire. The little caps stitched with gold, which Julian had worn, were now replaced, when she had outgrown them, by plain ones of linen, and Margaret was no longer the betrothed of young Fitzgerald, but one of the serving gentlewomen to Earl Henry’s Countess; that was a change of fortune which grieved only Margaret, since the little one cared nothing for gold upon her caps, so long as she was wrapped warmly and had her posset regular.

  And as she grew, and began to blunder about the house, the Earl took note of her, because of the almost absurd and increasing likeness that there was between them. Unless she changed very much Julian would be no beauty, like her sister, for the Earl, who was a thin man and lightly built as his brother the Duke had been, lacked his fine features; Henry Stafford’s jaw was so heavy as to make him almost seem undershot, his colouring was indeterminate and sandy, and the little lass was a small copy of him.

  Afterwards, when she was a grown girl, Julian could not remember her uncle’s face, but only the jewelled buttons of his doublet, and a great pearl with some emeralds round it that he sometimes wore, and, clearer than all these, the velvet or damask pouches that hung at his belt and out of which came comfits, or money to buy them, or sometimes a gift of greater value, such as a ring for her finger, or a brooch to pin her gown. She remembered too the roughness of his cheek and chin as he kissed her; a salutation which she much disliked; and apart from these tangible things he remained in her mind as a person who was always kind. Not everyone in that house, which was the first place she remembered, was kind, but he was, and another man, an old priest who n
ever kissed her but once, because he saw how she turned her baby face away, but who would let her climb over him, and make her cat’s cradles, or show her the painted pictures in his books when her hands were clean.

  But he died before her uncle, when she was not three years old, and Julian took good care not to remember him, except sometimes when she was going to sleep, and then would waken screaming, because she remembered something else (unless it was a nightmare) which made her stop her ears and dive under the bedclothes. There had been a dog that ran about slavering, and people had screamed and shouted. The old priest had tried to catch hold of the dog; some of the men had come running out with bows and shot it, but not before it had bitten the old man. And afterwards – he – he – had died. For long after when the memory stirred, Julian, cowering in bed, would drive her thumbs into her ears, saying to herself: ‘It did not happen. I am awake. It is not true.’

  Two years after his brother, the Earl died, and after that Julian got no more kisses and no more comfits. But though she did not know it, her uncle had set a charge upon his manor of Shute in Devon to give her a marriage portion, or, if she went into religion, a dower. It was no great thing, but more than Margaret got, for she got nothing. That, to Henry Stafford’s mind was fair enough; Margaret had her beauty; Julian had nothing but her likeness to himself, and it was right she should profit by it.

  As for Margaret, her beauty was unfolding like the young leaves in spring, as fresh, as vivid, and as delicate. Once, after the Earl died, Julian let out to the Countess that Master John Bulmer had kissed her sister, a lot of times, behind the screens in the Hall. She never was so indiscreet again, whether it were Master John who kissed, or any other, for Margaret was well beaten, and from the beating came away, without a tear on her cheeks, but flushed and dishevelled, and beat Julian, telling her not to be such a little silly, not ever again. Julian never was; whatever she saw, she kept to herself.

  One noon in November, a year after the Earl’s death, Julian was playing by herself inside the well-house with some coloured pebbles which she had collected. She was cold, but she blew on her fingers and spat once more on the pebbles to brighten their colours. Margaret came in wearing her cloak and hood. She said nothing but, ‘Hush! Quiet!’ and when the horns blew for dinner would not let Julian go in, but after waiting a little took her hand and led her, by way of the stables and privies, to the little gate of the house that let out on Gracechurch Street. A bundle and a very small trussing coffer lay on the ground by the gate. Margaret picked them up, bade Julian, ‘Keep hold of my gown, and don’t let go or the Blackamoors’ll get you,’ and then they both went out into the street.

  The house they came to Julian did not at all remember, though Meg said that they had lived there with their father, and it frightened her because it was so empty and so quiet. Only an old woman and her husband lived there now in one small room beside the gate. But Margaret insisted on going about, opening doors upon empty echoing chambers where rats scuttled away, and great clogged spiders’ webs hung across every corner. Julian began to cry, and hung back, but Margaret would have her come on, and up the narrow turning staircase – ‘For,’ said she, ‘you shall see the great chamber where my Lord Duke slept.’ And when they came into a long room, lighted dimly now by three windows in which the coloured glass was all thickly clouded with dirt, she said: ‘Here my father slept. He was your father too,’ she added, but rather as though he had been so only in some indirect, secondary way. Then she told Julian where the bed had stood, and told her of the sparver and tester, damask cloth of gold with the Stafford arms, and here a great painted chest, and just here a little coffer of ivory, very precious. ‘And all round the walls there were hangings of arras. One was of the tale of King Arthur, and it was woven with gold in the woof.’ The walls were bare now, and only the pegs for the hangings showed below the carved timbers of the ceiling.

  Julian was glad to come back to the fire and the untidy huddle of the little room by the gate, though she was not glad to find Master William Cheyne there. Margaret did not seem to welcome him either. ‘Well, Sir,’ she cried, ‘did you give him my message; and will he or no?’ She looked at him with her chin up, very haughty but lovely as a thorny rose.

  Master Cheyne looked away from her, and at the fire.

  ‘He will, in a manner.’

  Margaret gave Julian a push from her, and went to the hearth, moving with her light step, that was almost dancing even when she walked. ‘What manner?’ she asked, and Julian, knowing by her voice that she was angry, got herself away into a corner.

  Master Cheyne was a pale young man with a pink-and-white complexion, fair hair, and a thin face with full lips; he had a sidelong glance that seemed to wait its opportunity for a stabbing look when others should be off their guard. Now his eyes came no higher than Margaret’s knee.

  ‘He says he cannot put away his wife.’

  ‘He told me he would.’

  ‘She has borne him five children, he says.’

  ‘Not since this day fortnight.’

  Master Cheyne looked as though he felt himself to blame. He rubbed his chin and mumbled something about it being best that Margaret should go back to her kinswoman.

  ‘She’s none of mine.’ And Margaret, forgetting for a moment the matter in hand, told Master Cheyne of all she had suffered at the hands of her uncle’s widow, the Countess. ‘And now she would have had me married to that creature with a hump on his back, and no more than a merchant; not one drop of gentle blood, let alone noble, in all his miserable body.’ As she ran on, Cheyne continued to shake his head and to murmur what might have been sympathy or advice.

  ‘She would have been glad to disparage me by such a marriage,’ cried Margaret at last, ‘but she shall not.’

  Cheyne became audible then. He said that bastards could suffer no disparagement.

  Margaret looked at him as if he were a sheep that had roared like a lion.

  ‘I’m a Stafford,’ she said, after a minute, and he let that go by with a shake of his head. But he had managed to remind her that though not noble, and in trade, he was true – and not base-born, and also of a gentle house. She spoke to him now in a different tone, quick and broken, almost as if she asked his help,—

  ‘I cannot go back.’

  He looked at her then with one of his sharp looks, and she dropped her eyes. ‘You said that in a manner he would...’ she muttered, turning her face from him.

  ‘Why surely,’ Master Cheyne laughed. ‘Any man would, and most gladly.’

  Margaret was, as her father had been, a creature of swift movement. She sprang at him, struck his face with her open palm, and was away again. ‘I’ll be no man’s drab,’ she cried at him, and then broke into an astonishing storm of tears.

  He watched her, and after a little went near her and took one of her hands. She turned to him then, suddenly childish, for she was still in years a child. ‘Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?’ she cried, and clung to him.

  ‘Be my wife,’ he told her, so quiet and almost casual about it that she did not take it in at first.

  When she did she drew away from him. ‘No. No.’

  But just then the old woman came back followed by her husband. She carried a pie, and he a big pot of ale. ‘Come now,’ they cried, full of good humour. ‘Fall to! Fall to!’ and when Cheyne turned to the old woman, telling her what had passed, and bidding her counsel her lady, the old woman made no bones about it, but was all for a wedding.

  Margaret looked from one to another, and then at Julian, who watched, and listened, from her corner. ‘Well,’ said she at last, ‘let’s eat,’ so they all went to table.

  At the end of it, and it was not a merry meal, Margaret spoke to Cheyne, as if they two were alone.

  ‘I cannot stay here. I will not go back. How quick can it be done?’

  He answered her, in the same curt tone, that it could be done as soon as she pleased. ‘And soonest will please me,’ he added, but she took no notice of t
hat.

  ‘Without they cry it at the Church door,’ she objected, ‘it will not be lawful.’

  ‘Trust me. It shall be lawful,’ he said; but she took him up.

  ‘I’ll trust you if I see cause.’

  Yet she did not really distrust him, and did not guess for some time after – not until he told her indeed – that he had never taken her message to John Bulmer, but had come there that evening determined to have her himself if he might.

  When it grew dusk they took him to the gate, and she refused him a kiss, and so laid up trouble for herself. Next day, very early in the morning, they were married at St. Martin’s, Vintry, for Master Cheyne was a Vintner and lived in the parish. Afterwards there was a feast, not a great affair, but there was plenty of wine to drink, and they kept it up, both friends and servants, long after the bride had been put to bed.

  Nobody remembered about Julian, so she slept on some cushions in a window, cold, unhappy, and frightened at all the strange people.

  1525

  February 20

  The Cellaress was coming back from Grinton where she had been buying winnowing fans at the market. Dame Elizabeth Close was with her, and after them a Grinton man carrying the big wicker fans.

  It was a pleasant walk back along the river side, for though the sun did not shine the clouds were high and thin, dove-coloured, except where a gleam of blue deepened them. It was dirty underfoot, but that did not matter for the two Ladies were country shod. Dame Christabel was gay as she swung along, humming a tune, and feeling pleasure in everything, in the fair soft day, the business well accomplished at Grinton market, and in herself.

  She stopped for a moment to look down at a pair of swans, softly oaring their way up the river, with silken ripples rising before them and streaming out, traced with fine lines like waving hair. One of the birds paused, turning her head to stroke the plumage of her side with a stretched snake-like head; with her nobbed brow she ruffled, and with her bill she smoothed the soft feathers. Her wings, slightly lifted, made a heart-shaped, shadowed hollow among the lovely white of her plumage.