The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  December 31

  The Cellaress had gone into the kitchen to make wafers for the New Year Feast. She would trust no one else to make them. She guessed that if she left it to the cook much of the cream and some of the rosewater would go into dainties that would never come to the Nuns’ tables.

  The cook was very busy to-day preparing for to-morrow’s dinner that all the Priory servants would eat. There was a big cauldron of souse steaming over the fire, and on the table a row of pots where the brawn was just setting in a rich jelly, and five great pies. The women were plucking poultry and in the yard outside one of the men was singeing off the bristles of the pig that had been killed. He passed the flame over the carcase, shielding his eyes from the smoke as well as he could, while some of the carter’s brats watched him, absorbed. Now and again he would flourish the burning straw towards them to make them jump back, and then the sparks dripped, and the flame curled back on itself like a horse’s tail in the wind.

  The cook went by the Cellaress towards the big bake-oven. He paused a moment, leaning on the long wooden shovel for lifting out the loaves.

  ‘They’ll have a rare feast and right good cheer,’ said he, wagging his head about at all the food. The Cellaress was just breaking her eggs. She tipped the oozy yolk of one backwards and forwards from one half of the shell to another, and let the white drain sluggishly down. She tossed the yolk into the bowl of finest white wheat flour, before she answered.

  ‘Give ’em good cheer, and they’ll work the better. I’ll not grudge it them, nuts and apples, carols and all.’

  The cook went on and opened the bake-oven, letting out a tide of warmth, and an exquisite sweet smell of bread. When he had got out the loaves he shovelled them on to a wooden tray, and carried them out on his shoulder. The Cellaress glanced at them as they passed her, and stopped sprinkling cinnamon into her batter. ‘What are those?’ she asked him sharply.

  ‘Loaves,’ he told her, a little saucily, but dropped his eyes when she looked at him.

  ‘Of wheat flour? I thought you had baked enough for the Ladies’ tables, and for the servants.’

  ‘These,’ he said, ‘are for the poor men’s dole,’ and he went on with them, hurrying, as if they were too heavy to linger with. She did not speak again till he came back, and then she told him that the poor did not have wheaten bread, but maslin, – ‘and see that you put in a fit amount of rye, not just a handful to say it’s maslin.’

  If it had not been Christmas-time, and he had not already drunk a good pot of mulled ale, he might not have tried to argue. But now he said, ‘It’s Christmas. The poor’s fed for Christ his sake—’

  ‘Not on white wheat flour,’ she told him. ‘Poor man means idle man. If they’ll eat let them work. If you kindle more faggots in the oven at once you can bake the maslin after the pies.’

  He went off mumbling inaudibly, while she continued to beat the creaming batter in which the long, sluggish bubbles were rising.

  1527

  February 13

  Margaret Cheyne kept the door of the solar open long enough for her husband and all the company drinking there to hear her mocking laughter. Then she slammed it and went off, still laughing, down the stairs and into the kitchen. Yet she was afraid. ‘But – No!’ she told herself, pausing outside the door of the kitchen, and hearing the din inside there. ‘I’ll not fear him,’ and she tossed up her chin. She was beginning to learn that she could, almost, make William Cheyne fear her. But to do that she must be herself reckless and fearless. She thought, loitering in the darkness, and thinking of his anger, ‘I must goad him, and goad him, until—’ But she did not know whether it would be until he was goaded into a killing cruelty, or into fear of nothing more substantial than her spirit. ‘I’m a Stafford!’ she cried out to that spirit, to hearten it. ‘He shall smart for all.’

  She opened the door of the kitchen, and stood still. At the sight of her the babel died down, and it was not because she was the mistress, but because even the most fuddled of the men drinking there saw her beauty in that moment glowing like a blade before the smith seethes it.

  ‘Where is my sister?’ she asked them, looking about for July.

  She was not there, but one said this, and another that, and then one of the men said he’d seen her at the stable door. Margaret knew now where she would be, and left them to drink.

  But though she knew Julian’s bolt-holes she had much trouble in laying her hands on the child in the darkness of the hay-loft, and before she succeeded she caught her foot in her new gown and heard the damask rip. So when she had Julian by the arm she twisted it with even more intent to hurt than she would have meant otherwise, and Julian kicked and screamed, and so got a crueller wrench yet.

  ‘You’re not to lie, you hear, you little jade,’ Margaret cried, shaking the child.

  Julian screamed at her. ‘You lie. You do. You said that chain was your own that Sir John Bulmer gave – Ow! Stop it! Don’t!’

  ‘Hold your tongue then. It was my own since it was given me. And if you tell him that Sir John...’

  ‘I’ll not. I’ll not. Oh! Meg, do stop.’

  ‘Very well. But you’re not to tell lies.’

  Julian dropping on the hay, mumbled that she had to tell lies. ‘Then don’t tell such as he must know are lies. Saying it was one of the cats that ate the marchpane off that subtlety, and then being sick of it all over the place when he beat you.’

  ‘I wasn’t sick of it till he did beat me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Meg, ‘if he beats you I shall twist your arm, because when he’s beaten you he’s as likely as not to beat me.’

  May 6

  The King, passing through the gallery that looked onto the orchard at Greenwich Palace, stopped to speak to this one or that. When he came to where Lord Darcy and the Marquess of Exeter leaned beside a window, sunning themselves, he stayed quite a long time talking and was very gracious. Darcy had been speaking to the Marquess of the hospital and free school that he had been building, and the King asked questions about it, and spoke nobly and gravely of the value of such foundations, ‘so many in old time, and so few, alas, in ours,’ said he. And then he must give Darcy something for the Chapel of the Hospital; ‘Go to the Keeper of the Great Wardrobe. Ask him for something of the chapel stuff he has: a Mass book or a cope, or what you will. Here – I’ll write an order.’ He called, then blew on a little golden whistle that hung on a chain round his neck, and when someone had fetched a clerk an order was written, and Darcy put it in his pouch.

  But while the clerk wrote, and while Darcy was speaking his thanks, the King began to fidget, and to glance towards the open window beyond Darcy’s shoulder, and at last he pushed past him, put Exeter by with his hand, and leaned out of the window. A girl’s voice was singing down below in the orchard while someone thrummed on a lute. Darcy caught the eye of the Marquess, and each looked to the ground. They knew what it was that the King wished to see, for they had been watching before he came a group of young men and women sitting together on the grass, the women all gabbling like ducks. Mistress Anne Boleyn was among them, and she it was who was singing.

  The King turned at last from the window. He had a look as of a man who has opened a box to feed his eyes on the sight of a very rare jewel; now he had closed the box, but the glow and softness of delight was still on his face and a little private smile that faded quickly. He went away, and they saw the crowd open for him, and in the empty space he met the Cardinal and the French Ambassador.

  When the King and these others had gone, many people left the gallery, but the Marquess and Darcy stayed at the window. The young things below had begun to play Hoodman Blind, and had scattered among the trees, with laughter, screams and shouting.

  The Marquess turned his long, serious, irresolute face to Darcy, and he was frowning.

  ‘My Lord of Norfolk,’ said he, ‘swears that niece of his to be a very virtuous and chaste lady. But—’

  Darcy could have laughed to see this g
reat nobleman blushing for a girl who had, Darcy thought, forgotten how to blush before she was well out of the schoolroom.

  ‘They say her sister—’ he began, but the Marquess did not let him finish, muttering hastily, ‘Nay, my Lord, nay. Let be!’

  Darcy let it be, and asked what else Norfolk had said.

  ‘It was all in praise of Mistress Anne. How she would leave the Court and away to Hever, though her father was angry.’

  ‘He would be,’ said Darcy. ‘Some fathers would be sorry that a daughter should be a minion, even if it were a King’s, but not Sir Thomas Boleyn.’

  The Marquess shook his head, though not in disagreement, for he cared as little for the Boleyns as Darcy did.

  ‘And who,’ Darcy persisted, ‘are this virtuous, chaste lady’s friends? Sir William Compton that’s an open adulterer; Bryan – Bryan – By the Rood! he’s made the name common enough in the stews. And, if it comes to a point, who is my Lord of Norfolk to talk of virtue, who keeps that drab Bess Holland in the same house as—’

  Exeter hushed him again. ‘And,’ says he, ‘surely a wench is virtuous that will resist a king’s desires. Grant her that.’

  ‘Or grant her a clever, scheming jade that dares to play for a high stake.’

  ‘What can she win? God’s Body, my Lord, not that! She cannot think to be Queen.’ He had whispered the word, but still he looked back into the almost empty room behind them.

  Darcy raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. ‘If it is that she aims at, she plays well. Three years ago His Grace began to affect her, and now he looks at her as if he were a boy in love.’

  The Marquess, remembering the King’s face as he turned from the window, fell into a very troubled silence.

  *

  Meg had let Julian come out with her when she went to buy a pair of gloves, a sugar loaf, and some saffron. Meg walked ahead, leading a black-and-white dog on a leash of green ribbon, and Julian came behind with old Cecily who was to carry home in her basket the sugar loaf and the saffron.

  In Lombard Street they came on Sir John Bulmer. He was talking to another young man, or rather, the other was talking to him, very merrily, in a voice that had in it a ringing note like that of a finely cast bell, and with a broad North Country touch in his speech like Sir John’s own.

  Sir John saw Meg, and said something hastily to the other, and left him to come to her.

  ‘Who was that?’ Meg asked, looking after the young man who had waved his hand to Sir John and gone off down the street; as he went they could see him turn his head this way and that, alert and quick.

  ‘He looks a merry gentleman,’ Meg persisted, knowing that Sir John, if he could, would have emptied the streets of men when she came out. ‘And comely too, though it’s a pity he hath not another foot to his height.’

  ‘And another eye to his face!’ Sir John cried derisively.

  ‘God ’a mercy! Hath he but one eye? How did he lose the other?’

  ‘How do I know? I never asked him.’

  ‘But tell me his name.’

  Sir John told her very crossly that his name was Aske – Robin Aske. ‘And I don’t know why you care to know,’ said he.

  ‘I don’t care. But I like to see you chafe.’ She looked up at him sidelong, laughing, and then became serious and drew near to him as they walked. By the time they reached the glover’s shop he was in a very good humour, and bought Meg two pairs of Louvain gloves.

  The Chronicle is broken to speak of Robert Aske, Squire.

  Robert Aske, Squire

  The Askes, the younger branch of the Askes of Aske, had been at Aughton for about a hundred years – since the time when an Aske had married an heiress of the de la Hayes. For much more than a hundred years the old castle on the mound above the fen had been deserted and left to crumble; cows and goats had browsed over it, and down to the low-lying ings beside the river, for longer than anyone could remember to have heard tell, even by the oldest grandfathers. Instead, the lords of the Manor of Aughton, de la Hayes first, and Askes after them, had lived in the moated house a little to the south-east of the castle mound, and exactly east of the chancel of the parish church, so that they went to Mass through the orchard, and across a little bridge over the moat, and so into the churchyard.

  Mound and church and moated house all stood at the tip of a tongue of land jutting out from a sort of low, flat-topped island in the fen; east of them on the same island was Aughton village, and to the north Ellerton, where the Gilbertine Canons were; but between Aughton church and the Derwent was nothing in summer but the green ings where the cattle grazed and grew fat, and pools and twisting channels where the rushes whispered, and marshy land with tussocks of reed; in the winter, when Derwent was in flood, the river came up, filling all the pools and waterways, drowning the reed-beds and black quaking paths which only a man born in Aughton would dare to use, so that the feet of the churchyard wall were in the flood, and the squat Norman tower looked out, west and south, over nothing but water.

  The house, at first cramped up within its moat, had now straggled over it towards the village, letting the ditch on this side silt up with farm refuse, so that when you came to the Manor from the village you passed first all the huddle of barns and stables, the stack-yard, the carpenter’s shop, and the long thatched shippens. Only after these you came to the corner of the old dairy where the moat began again, and so to the little gate-house, stone below, and timber and daub above, for stone was scarce in these parts.

  Inside the gate-house lay the court-yard: the new dairy to the right, the brew-house to the left, and opposite you the Hall, its roof as high as the upper storeys of the rest. Partly to please his wife, and partly because so many were doing it in these days, Sir Robert Aske had pulled down the old buildings at the further end of the Hall from the screens, and built a fine winter parlour there looking out on the stack-yard, and also southward over the fen; above it were two new bedchambers, in one of which all the younger children, from Robin downwards, had been born. That older chamber, at the other end of the Hall, above the kitchen, in which Sir Robert himself had been born, and in which his father had died, was now divided into several smaller rooms where the older children slept, joined every now and then by the newest and youngest, just promoted from the cradle to share a bed with an elder sister or brother.

  Dame Elizabeth Aske was proud of her winter parlour when it was new, and spent much of her spare time embroidering cushions and stitching at hangings for it; but Sir Robert never took to it. He would go there if she asked him, for he was a good-tempered man, though not an easy one, and was, besides, fond almost to weakness of his wife. But habit kept him to the Hall, and he would, if not prompted, potter about in the big bay just inside the screens which had been built out on the foundation of what had once been a tower, where the bows stood in their racks, and his favourite hawk sat humped on her perch.

  And so, except sometimes when there were guests of great honour, the family never ate in the parlour, but had their meals in the old manner in the Hall, and Sir Robert would carry on conversations with the ploughman, or the stockman, down half the length of the room, and then turn to tease Dame Elizabeth in a boyish way that never left him, or to cuff the lads for quarrelling or for bad manners at table.

  Of these lads John did not quarrel with Kit, for John, though the eldest son, was always a gentle child, and a delicate, reserved youth. Nor did Richard, for he died when he was five, and was, for two years before that, a poor little shrimp, more often ill in bed than running about; but as soon as Robin was old enough to quarrel with anyone he and Kit were rarely at peace. Kit was five years old when Robin was born, and even from the first he resented the fuss that his elder sisters, Julian and Bet, made of the new baby. For they, being only too delighted to have such a creature to pet, certainly spoilt him outrageously, the more because Robin was a towardly child, sturdy and merry, and adorably ticklish; at any moment, just by feeling for his well-covered ribs, they could draw from h
im shrieks and gurgles of laughter. Kit therefore conceived it his duty to supply some discipline to counterpoise their petting.

  This, being five years the elder, he could at first do easily, either by tongue or hand, and even in those early days Kit’s tongue had a sting in it, and ran nimbly. As for physical correction, Kit supplied that too, when the elders were not looking, and Robin got many a buffet, at which, if he could not dodge it, he would howl lustily, till one day Jack told him that no man of worship would cry like that for a blow, but only cowards and those of villain blood. After this Robin did his best to behave like a man of worship, or at least to cry quietly and in secret.

  But by the time that he was eight, and Kit thirteen, he did not try to dodge Kit’s fist, nor passively to endure, but instead gave blow for blow. The difference in their ages did not count for so much now, and was to count for less as time went on, for Robin, always a stout and healthy child, was now a big boy for his age, not slim and graceful as both Kit and Jack had been, but stocky and sturdy, resembling in this, as in much else, his father Sir Robert. Kit, on the other hand, Kit, with his mouth already twisted and tightly compressed by the habit of enduring the intermittent pain in his back, went always lame of one leg – nothing very much, but enough to make him slow on his feet in a fight. Because of that slowness, and the lameness, and the pain, of all of which he was miserably ashamed and which he concealed as much as he could, Kit set out to make sure of a foothold for his pride. If he could not run, then he would ride; if he could not fight on foot because of his dragging leg, then at least he would shoot with the bow so that none could match him. He heard his father one day telling Tom Portington, who was to marry Kit’s sister Julian, how Kit had ridden the bay stallion, and jumped Hogman’s Pool – the mad knave. ‘Of course I beat him for it, for he might have killed the beast and himself in that black bit of bog down there. I’ve known a horse go under there in five minutes, and no one would have seen him, for we were all the other way, busy with the barley.’ Sir Robert laughed. ‘Mass! I beat him soundly, but I liked him for it. I think he fears nothing, and he’s got a good horseman’s seat, and hands you couldn’t better. Robin’s nothing to him.’ Young Portington said that Robin would come on when he was a bit older, perhaps, and Sir Robert agreed, but Kit had slunk away by then without them knowing that he had been there. He had heard enough to warm his heart for him, and he went off to the stable and petted the bay stallion; he even shed some tears on the smooth, warm and shining coat, because he was so glad. He took care, too, not to come away till there was one of the stable boys there to see him, walking out of the bay’s stall, with the beast nuzzling his ear. He knew that most people, even Sir Robert himself, were chary of going too near the stallion’s hoofs and teeth.