When he came to say good-bye Dom Henry was kinder. He kissed Robin, blessed him, clapped him on the back, told him not to forget his latinity, and gave him a little gold brooch with a crucifix upon it. He was really sorry to part, but having always made a semblance of finding boys even more ridiculous creatures than men, he could not well show it.
So Robin set off to Wressel Castle with his father, in a new doublet of the Percy colours, crimson and black, and crimson hosen under his long riding boots. Will Wall, who was to be his servant, rode behind with the two men who would go back to Aughton with Sir Robert. Will was fifteen, but saucy enough to teach monkeys, the two men said, as they were riding home again. Sir Robert replied that to live in so great a Household would teach him sense and a meekness proper to his age and station. He did not say that it should do the same for Robin, who, though not exactly saucy, was in his opinion too positive and pragmatical a lad; but that was what he was thinking when he rode under the gate-house at Aughton, and the three little girls, Nan, Moll and Doll, ran out to welcome him. Mistress Nell, Jack’s wife, came out more slowly, and rebuked them, telling Nan to pick up the spindle she had dropped, before everyone had caught their feet in the wool and fouled it. Nell was seventeen now, and very pleased to rule the household and the little girls.
But that same evening Sir Robert found Nan and Moll, the two who came after Robin in age, sitting together on the top step of the stairs going up to their bedroom. Nan was sniffing and gulping after tears, and Moll was helping her to wipe them from her face with the hanging lappet of her coif. Nan said that she was crying because Robin had gone away.
‘Silly little goose!’ Sir Robert told her, but not unkindly. ‘Look at Moll. She does not cry.’
Moll answered for Nan that though she did not cry, yet she was sad for it. ‘But,’ said she, ‘it is Nan loves him best,’ and then she screwed up her face and began to whimper too.
Sir Robert, thinking of the way that Robin teased and tyrannized over the girls, more than either of his elder brothers had ever done, hoped that there was something good in the lad that made them now cry for his going.
He did not come home for close on three years, and by then he was for his sisters a young man, and a stranger, with already a dark shaven chin, and lips that pricked when he kissed them.
Yet to Dom Henry it seemed at first that the young man held out a hand, as it were, to the very young Robin, the careless, good-humoured boy, over the head of that lad who had begun to appear before he went away. Dom Henry was down near the river among the fish-ponds when Robin came to him. It was a day in late October with a steady wind, and the sky looming blue through grey cloud. Some of the willows had already turned yellow, while others kept their grey-green, but all had been thinned out by last night’s storm. Now the wind, flowing through their branches as strongly as the swollen Derwent in his course, streaked all the tiny sharp leaves one way.
Dom Henry had been in a mood of chilly melancholy, but he brightened up when he saw Robin. He was pleased that Robin had sought him out, and at the new grace with which he went down on his knee for a blessing; he had not grown much taller, but had broadened, and wore his livery well – a thought carelessly as a gentleman should. They walked together towards the Priory gate. At first the young man seemed to think that the last two months which he had spent with his master, young Henry Percy, in the Household of the Cardinal of York, qualified him to correct Dom Henry when they spoke of a book by Erasmus of Rotterdam which the monk had read and he had not. It did not take his old schoolmaster long to put him right on that point, and then he became just an eager boy, talking of all the strange things and people that were to be seen in London: ships from Spain, Italy, the Levant; Venetian merchants in silks that noblemen envied them; French gentlemen that came and went with the Ambassador, all chattering like monkeys; the wonderful things, gold plate, clocks, pictures, to be seen in the Cardinal’s house.
‘By St. James!’ said Dom Henry, ‘though Kit has his books – did you know that he is copying a great book on hunting with his own hand? – and Jack his wife and those three stout knave children of his, I think you have better than either.’
Robin made no answer for a minute. His face was lifted and he seemed to be intent upon a couple of wild duck flying fast down the wind; his blind eye was towards Dom Henry, but the monk could see the new hard line of the jaw where before had been a boyish softness.
Then Robin said, ‘If he – if my master were another manner man! But he’s sick, and he’s silly. Oh! you know not how many hours we kick our heels, waiting on him, while he’s slugging abed, or biting at his nails in his chair. If I could but have some work to set my hand to now I am a man – Some good work.’
He stopped, then muttered, ‘for Christendom,’ and turned his face full on Dom Henry, looking at him with an eye that was hard and ready to be angry.
But Dom Henry did not wish to laugh at the great solemnity of the young. He was thinking that the other Robin was there, and had just looked out; Jack had sweetness, and Kit was clever, but here was strength. He was silent, and by his side Robin soon rattled on again with one tale after another.
‘Well,’ says Dom Henry at last, stopping and looking at him with his odd quirk of a smile, ‘they haven’t cured you of talking, nor you’ve not grown out of it for yourself.’
The lad stopped, flushed, then laughed.
‘They say I could talk the hind leg off my Lord Cardinal’s mule, did I set my mind to it.’
This was in the autumn. After Christmas Day Henry caught one of his colds; it went to his lungs, and, being a man of a full habit of body and no longer young, his heart could not stand it, and he died on Twelfth Night in the year 1519, so that he and Robin did not see each other again.
1527
May 12
Master Robert Aske sat on a stool in a small room in the lodgings of Sir Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, in the village of Westminster. It was a small room, dark even on this bright day, and the hangings were old and faded. Aske sat with his legs stuck stiffly out in front of him, staring under his heavy brows at the woven picture of a woman in a gown of the fashion of eighty years ago. She knelt and put a black shoe on the foot of a man sitting on a flowery mount in the garden. Aske turned his head and looked round at the other walls of the room.
‘What’s it all about?’ he muttered. ‘There’s a man kneeling on his cap and sticking a duck’s bill into the ground. Why? And look at that king in his crown, taking up the harvest man by his middle. Why? There’s no sense in it, that I can see.’
Another young man, tall, slim, and pale, who perched on a trestle table dangling his legs, asked, in the same low voice – what did it matter whether there were sense in it or not.
‘I like to know,’ said Aske; and he got up and began to rove softly round the room staring at the hangings, his tongue running on, bidding look here, at this king crowning another king, and this woman with a banner and a helmet. ‘Well,’ said he at last, ‘either the folk of old time were mad as geese or the servants have got these pieces all mixed up like Christmas Pie,’ and he came back to his stool, and sat down. Then they both looked over their shoulders to where, in a deep window, a third young man sat lumping on cushions. His back was against the wall, his chin on his chest, and he snored gently from time to time. Henry Percy slept after his dinner. He was not dressed with any greater show than either of the other two, and indeed they were all three a little shabby, but upon Henry Percy’s slack hand a great emerald caught the sunlight and sent up a fuzz of light.
The young man on the table said, speaking quietly, ‘When the Earl, his father, dies, what’ll he do?’ and he jerked his head towards the sleeper.
‘Do?’ Aske grinned. ‘What he’s doing now. Unless the Cardinal chivvies him up North again to the Border.’
‘Would you be glad of that?’
Aske did not answer at once. Then he said, ‘Whether he goes or no; I’ll not be there.’
‘Mass,’ the other cried, then slapped himself across the mouth, looked anxiously at Henry Percy, and whispered, ‘You’ll leave his Household? For my Lord of Cumberland?’
Aske pulled down the corners of his mouth and shook his head.
‘You could. For your mother was a Clifford.’
Aske thanked him politely. ‘But have me excused,’ said he. ‘My brother Kit’s with the Earl. One Household isn’t big enough for Kit and me. We always fall out. Kit thinks I’m too cocket.’
The other turned his face away to smile because that was so exactly what others thought of Robert Aske. ‘Well,’ he concluded, ‘I suppose I shall stay with this Earl Henry when Henry the Magnificent is dead.’
‘That, my good fellow,’ Aske told him, ‘is what you will not do.’
‘Won’t?’
‘Won’t. The Cardinal will see to it.’
‘God’s Death! But the Cardinal has nothing to do with it. He can’t turn off Lord Henry’s gentlemen, more especially when he’s Earl.’
‘Can and will – all of them but one or two and a groom or so. The old Earl’s deep in debt, I know. And the Cardinal will see that till his debts are paid this Earl shan’t have two groats in his pouch to jingle together.’
The tall young man rubbed his chin. ‘Mass!’ he murmured, ‘are you sure?’ He knew that Aske always was sure, but remembered with some dismay that he was often, though not always, right. Besides, as Comptroller of the young lord’s Household he must see better than the others what was going on. His long pale face was dismal as he asked, ‘What’ll I do?’ Then he brightened a little. ‘What’ll you do?’
‘Take to the law,’ Aske told him promptly.
‘God’s Soul! But how old are you? Four and twenty? And you’ve learnt none.’
‘But I can learn. I’m not a fool.’
The other threw his head back to laugh, then, remembering the sleeping man, clapped his hand again over his mouth. Henry Percy stirred but did not wake, so he said, ‘No, Robin, no one would take you for that.’
Aske, who had begun to frown, laughed softly instead. The other slid off the table.
‘Get your bow,’ said he, ‘and I’ll take you on at the butts.’
‘But you always beat me.’
‘I do. Of course we all know that you’d beat me if you had your two eyes. But pride’s a deadly sin, so I’ll beat you soundly to save you from damnation.’
Aske got up. ‘Forward then to the good work,’ he said and both went out laughing quietly, and stepping gingerly so as not to wake their master.
May 30
Darcy was just leaving the Chamber of Presence at Greenwich Palace when he found the Duke of Norfolk at his elbow – not the old Duke, who had died three years ago, but his son Thomas Howard, who had been Earl of Surrey and got himself much honour at the Battle of Flodden. Darcy had never liked him, and liked him no more now that he was Duke, and High Treasurer of England, but Norfolk greeted him with particular courtesy, walked on with him and after a minute or two edged him away into a little closet of painted wainscot. Darcy thought he looked very pleased over something.
‘Sit, my Lord, sit,’ said Norfolk. ‘I saw you lean heavily on your stick while we waited for the King.’ There was only a stool and a pair of virginals in the closet, but the Duke would have Darcy sit on the stool, while he tucked his own backside on to the virginals, jangling all the keys once in painful discord. Then he inquired with great kindness about my Lord’s old disease.
But after a little of this he was silent, and pulled a comical face and laughed.
‘Indeed we can see that it is May-time; yea, even in London and at Court,’ he said.
Darcy did not pretend to misunderstand him.
‘How long will it last? May’s but thirty-one days, and then?’
Norfolk shook his head, still smiling, then he narrowed his eyes and looked crafty.
‘My niece is a most virtuous and chaste lady. You know the King – how set he is to have his will. Yet here he can have it not. I promise you I could weep for him, to read the letters he writes to her when she has crossed him, or runs away home from Court to be done with the importunities of his suit. “H. R.” he will sign himself at the foot, and “Aultre ne cherche” between the letters, and right in the midst of all a heart drawn, and inscribed with “A. B.”
‘Very pretty,’ said Darcy sourly. ‘But if she will have none of him, and he will not tire, what will be the end of it?’
‘Ah!’ Norfolk leaned closer. ‘She will none of him except lawfully. Yet – if the Queen should become a Nun—’ He broke off there as if he had said too much. ‘A little while ago,’ he went on, ‘she sent him a jewel, representing in diamonds a maid solitary in a ship, and the posy “Aut illic aut nullibi”. To which he replied somewhat to this end, for she showed me the letter – “My heart is dedicated to you alone, wishing that my body were so too, as God can make it if it pleases Him”.’
‘Ah!’ Darcy remarked, not without malice, ‘God?’
The Duke got up and the strings of the virginals whined. ‘My Lord, I can see God’s hand here, if you cannot. The realm lacks an heir. The Princess? Pooh! We lack a Prince. And one other we have with us that we could well lack.’ He came close to Darcy and whispered, ‘You and I think alike of the King’s prepotent subject, my Lord Cardinal. We should be friends.’
Darcy considered that for a minute, and with it the rest of what the Duke had told him. Then he said:
‘You tell me that the King means marriage with your niece?’
Norfolk was looking at the floor. He did not raise his eyes but rustled the strawing with one foot and answered softly that he believed no less.
Darcy also looked down at the Duke’s foot, and at a faded head of clover that Norfolk was shifting this way and that; it was as if neither wished to meet the other’s eyes. The Duke moved away again, but paused at the virginals, and leaning one hand that held his blue velvet cap upon the painted case of the instrument, with the fingers of the other picked out a shivering sweet cord or two. Then he looked round at Darcy.
‘And your niece, Mistress Anne, is of the same mind as yourself, my Lord, towards the Cardinal?’ Darcy inquired.
‘I promise you,’ Norfolk chuckled. ‘Sometimes I think a woman can outdo any man when it comes to pure, piercing hatred.’
When the Duke had gone Darcy sat a while alone, turning over what he had heard. Then he shrugged his shoulders and got up. He did not think it likely, on the one hand, that Mistress Anne’s virtue would prove as impregnable as Norfolk rated it; nor, on the other, if it did, that even that lively bold slip of a girl was an adversary whom the great Cardinal should fear. She might dance like a dark flame through the maskings at Court in her cloth of gold and with rubies about her neck which Darcy was sure her father had never given her, but the King must go from masking to the Council Table, and there the Cardinal would rule.
June 4
Master Robert Aske pushed his hair behind his ears, stuffed his thumbs into them, and bent over the law book again. But Will Wall’s snores could not be kept out. He shut the book at last, got up, and stretched himself, for he was stiff with long sitting, having been at work from four in the morning. This business of learning the law needed time, and he had, he felt, lost several years in Henry Percy’s Household. It was useless to try to waken Will; he was more than usually sodden with drink. ‘Miserable swillbowl!’ Aske called him as he passed him, sprawling on the straw pallet, and gave him a gentle kick. It was the second time this week that Will had come home drunk as a rat.
Hunting in the cupboard for something to eat Aske found a piece of mutton pie at which he sniffed suspiciously, and then tipped out of the window. Besides that there was only a heel of cheese, the flabby remains of a salad, and half a loaf. Well, he must make do, for he had sworn to himself that he would read so much in Bracton every day, and that left no time for going out to taverns to dine. ‘But what,’ he asked himself angrily, ‘do I keep such a serva
nt for?’ – as if he could have brought himself to send Will away from him, or persuaded Will to go.
When he had eaten a little he felt more kindly towards everyone.
‘While I read he has nothing to do,’ he argued, on Will’s behalf, ‘and so runs into mischief.’
June 8
This day Christabel Cowper’s younger brother was married for the second time, and she was at the wedding. She wore, as she ought not to have worn, a girdle woven with silver, and a silk purse hanging from it. Her veil, as it ought not to have been, was of silk, and the pins in it were of silver; she considered that this show was for the credit of the House. Besides, she was not as others, who wore such things in Cloister, thus causing temptation to assail the younger Ladies. When she was at Marrick these adornments lay in a chest, so now she could wear them heartily.
And over dinner, where the wine was good, she struck a most advantageous bargain with Master John Cocks, the Tanner. To herself she said, ‘He’ll be sorry for this to-morrow,’ but to him:
‘It’s good cheap for you, and a loss for us. But we poor Nuns must take what we can get for our ox-hides.’
July 2
Lord Darcy did not take the King’s order to the Keeper of the Great Wardrobe till this day. He had been too much occupied with business to do it before. This business was disagreeable, and sent him to the Law Courts in Westminster Hall to answer feigned bills of that villain Banks, accusing him and Lord Hussey of wasting the goods of poor Monteagle. It cost my Lord well over a hundred pounds before all was finished, what with the presents at Court, and to certain of the King’s Council, the hire of the house at Stepney, and all the letters, messages, writings, and rewards to the men of law. But at the end of it he and Hussey, Banks and young Lord Monteagle signed an accord in the house of Master Cromwell, a servant of the Cardinal’s, and very deep in his confidence; Hussey had always said that there was no hope of coming lightly out of the business when he had heard that Banks had managed, by hook or crook, to get this man for his friend. ‘Half lawyer, half moneylender,’ Hussey said, who knew more about him than Darcy.
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