The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  Yet when she had gone, fumbling for the door latch, and he had heard her shut herself into the kitchen, he went quietly out of the house and to Newgate, where the Cook lay, having been handed over by the Bishop to the secular arm. To-morrow he was to be burned.

  It cost Gib an angel, which he could ill spare, to be taken down to the dungeon of the prison, and the parting with so great a sum, and the foul air, the fear of the prison, and his old dislike of the Cook all made him very resentful.

  They had gone down a good flight of steps; it was quite dark when the warder took out a key and, while Gib held the torch, set it in the lock. It was very quiet down here, damp, and horribly cold; as the key turned and Gib moved he saw a rat’s eyes burn green in the light; it scuttered away as the door opened.

  Gib went in, and the warder shut the door on him and locked it. Gib’s spine grew cold at the sound. The Cook was sitting with his back to one of the old squat pillars, and upon a bed of straw. He had a tallow candle in his hand and a book on his knee. He got up, looking doubtful and not altogether pleased, but Gib greeted him as ‘brother’ and took his hand; so they sat down together on the straw. Gib could not think now, any more than he had been able to think on the way here, how he would begin; but the Cook did not wait for him to speak and asked eagerly if his wife had sent him meat or drink or something warm for to put on his back.

  Gib had to say, ‘No,’ – that she had not known he was coming – and at that the Cook grew angry, because it would have been so easy for Gib to tell her, ‘And then,’ said he, ‘I’ll be bound she would have sent me something to comfort me.’

  Gib resented the criticism, both because he knew the Cook’s wife had been fretting to send her husband a pottle of old Malmsey and a sleeveless coat of rabbit skins, and also because he thought that a man who was to be burned to-morrow for the truth’s sake should not have his mind on such things.

  So when he opened his business it was not in the friendly tone he had intended, but harshly.

  ‘Tell me,’ said he, ‘the articles for which you are condemned, for no man should consent to death unless he has just cause to die in, and it were better to submit to the ordinances of men than rashly to finish your life without good ground.’

  ‘The first article,’ replied the Cook stiffly, ‘is that I hold Thomas à Becket a traitor, and damned if he repented not; for he was in arms against his Prince, and had provoked other princes to invade the realm.’

  ‘Where,’ cried Gib, furious at the man’s wrong-headed foolishness, ‘where read you that?’

  ‘In an old history,’ the Cook told him with his usual stubborn, downward look.

  ‘And it may be a lie. So it were madness for a man to jeopard his life for such a doubtful matter.’

  ‘It’s no lie.’ The Cook breathed hard through his nose, and Gib cracked his finger joints as he did when he was angry; but in a minute he was able to command himself and asked, ‘What else?’

  ‘I spoke,’ said the Cook in no friendly tone, ‘against purgatory – that it is a word the priests use to pick men’s purses withal; and against masses to make satisfaction for sin.’

  ‘Hm!’ Gib muttered, and again, ‘Hm!’ because these were matters in which he also believed that a man might stay his soul so that he would die rather than recant. ‘But,’ he warned the Cook, ‘beware of vain-glory with which the devil will try to infect you when you come into the multitude of people and see the high stake set up in the midst, where you are to die, and all watching you.’

  ‘God’s Body!’ cried the Cook very loud, and he jumped up from the straw and rushed to the door and began to beat upon it. When the warder opened it he begged him to take this man away and leave him in peace.

  Gib was ashamed then and tried to find something to say. ‘The good woman your wife—’ he began, but the warder pushed him towards the door.

  Then it seemed that the Cook was sorry too, for he tried to catch Gib back.

  ‘Tell her—’ said he, but the warder cried that he had no patience with either of them, and he showed Gib out into the passage and shut the door. Before it was quite shut Gib had a glimpse of the Cook standing there, holding out his hands, the candle in one of them, and the light of the candle glittering on the tears that were running down his cheeks.

  As fast as Gib could he went from Newgate to the House of the Black Friars, and there found Friar Laurence reading over his charcoal brazier, nibbling raisins of the sun and spitting the pips into the fire. Gib plumped down on the bed and told him all that he had said to the Cook, and the Cook to him, while Friar Laurence murmured from time to time, ‘Do not speak so wildly, man,’ or, ‘Do not weep so.’ But Gib could not control himself, and in the midst of all his talk he would stop to knock his breast, crying loudly, ‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ meaning not only his own body but his own self that sickened him.

  In the end he quieted down, and saw that the Friar was weary of him, for, though Brother Laurence had a long patience, Gib had tried him too much and too often.

  ‘I will go,’ said Gib, getting up from the bed. Then it came to him that if he could go far away perhaps he might somehow leave his self behind. ‘Where can I go?’ he cried sharply. ‘Is there any place I can go to?’ and burst out of the Friar’s room to roam about the streets till nightfall.

  When he went back to the Cook’s house he found that a letter from the Friar was waiting him.

  Here but now was Sir John Bulmer praying me, for his brother, to find a priest for that very parish called Marrick, that you come of. Therefore, friend, if you will, you shall have this benefice, and bring the true light of the gospel into those parts which all men say are very superstitious.

  Gib said to himself, ‘He would be glad to have me gone where I can no longer trouble him.’ And he could well understand that the Friar should feel so. He wrote a letter at once, saying he would willingly go back to Marrick as priest of the parish, and finding a neighbour’s boy, playing with his top in the street, gave him a penny to take the letter to the Black Friars’ House in the Strand.

  March 20

  It was Master Cheyne’s birthday, so he had to supper other Master Vintners and their wives. After supper, while the older men sat longer to drink, the women went upstairs, and Master Cheyne could not prevent two of the younger husbands, whose wives were merry and fair, going up with them, although he would have preferred that his own wife should have no man’s company.

  Up in the solar the wives sat down to sew and to talk; one of the young men found Meg’s lute in the corner by the hearth, and so, while he played, they sang songs. Julian, who acted now as her sister’s waiting woman, since that saved Master Cheyne a woman’s wage, was sitting on her heels in front of Meg holding a skein of dark red silk which Meg was winding.

  In a pause between the songs one of the Vintners’ wives began talking about the Queen. She was a fair fat woman who was embroidering a fine width of white silk for a petticoat, with little flowers of every colour, and snails stitched in gold thread sitting on the flowers. As she bent over the work to snap off a thread of green with her strong teeth, she said: ‘That black-eyed whore of the King’s came by the other day, from the royal barge, going with as much state as if she were Queen. But I and my maids, and a neighbour or two who were standing in the street, cried out on her, “Fie! Fie on you, Mistress, for a brazen hussy!”’

  The others exclaimed at such daring, and the young men thought it a foolish thing to do, and one that might get the women’s husbands into trouble. But all the wives there were for the Queen; and some thought the King was tiring of Mistress Anne and would put her away; and some said that the Holy Father would never let the Queen’s cause fail.

  ‘And what do you say, Mistress?’ one of them asked Meg, just as the door opened and the elder men came in.

  ‘Marry, I think here’s a coil the Queen makes to be the King’s wife still. There are some women would do as much to be unwed.’

  She spoke ver
y high so that all heard, and then there was silence till she laughed and said, ‘Goodman husband, you’ll not spend money to have a divorce of the Holy Father. But if some man will buy me, will you sell?’ She laughed as if it were a jest, but they all knew that there was no jesting in it. Master Cheyne ground his teeth, and said, ‘Sell her? Yea, that I would,’ and in a great hurry another of the men began to talk about the repair of Galley’s Key, where the Venice galleys unloaded their wine, and no one said any more about the King or Queen or divorce. But Meg caught July a sound box on the ear because the child’s hands were shaking so that it was difficult for Meg to wind the silk. July knew that at night, when the guests had gone, Master Cheyne would take it out of Meg for her words, and out of July too for being Meg’s sister.

  March 30

  In the Church of the Black Friars, where the lords sat in Parliament, it was so dark that they had lit the candles; but even now those on the one side could hardly see the faces of those on the other. Above the high, painted vaulting, blue as blue heaven and scattered with golden stars, rain drummed on the roof.

  The Chancellor stood up, and the lords became silent and kept their eyes on him, but as Sir Thomas More spoke he looked neither to right nor left but only at the high altar and the steady light that hung in the shadows above it.

  He spoke, as the King’s mouth, and as the King had commanded him, declaring there were some who had put it forth that the King pursued this divorce out of love for some lady, and not out of any scruple of conscience. ‘But these,’ said he in a grave, steady voice, ‘these are lies, for His Grace is moved thereto only in discharge of his conscience, which, by means of all that he has read and discovered from doctors and from the Universities, is sorely pained by his living with the Queen. And this will appear by the seals of the Universities which I shall show you, and of which ye shall understand the tenor and substance by what Sir Bryan Tuke shall presently read unto you.’

  When Sir Thomas sat down Sir Bryan stood up and read loudly, in English, that which doctors in the universities of France, and of some other nations, had written of the King’s divorce, declaring that his first marriage was incestuous and void. As he read the rain took off, and the sky so lightened that a fleeting gleam of watery sunshine swept through the Church dulling the candle flames. By the greater light many looked more narrowly at Sir Thomas, but could read nothing in his face.

  ‘Ah! watch now, Talbot!’ my Lord Darcy murmured in the ear of the Earl of Shrewsbury, sitting in front of him. ‘Soon will come in chiming other hounds of the King’s pack!’ For the Bishop of Lincoln had stood up and began to speak.

  ‘And now London,’ Darcy muttered as Lincoln sat down.

  Shrewsbury made no answer, and shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. He, no less than Darcy, disliked all these doings, but he wished to be discreet, for he was a man who loved peace. Therefore he took no more notice of the other lord’s mutterings than if it had been a fly pestering him.

  ‘Those two,’ Darcy chuckled, ‘those two trust that as Bishop Fisher is not here to answer, none else will dare.’ Darcy did not think much of Bishops, regarding their part in this controversy rather as the play of children. It would not be the Bishops, he thought, who would check the King. Yet, when first the Bishop of St. Asaph, and then he of Bath, stood up and spoke against the other two, he grunted approval, especially as they spoke both manfully and with subtle reasoning.

  Bath, however, was not allowed to finish, for the Duke of Norfolk got up, so hastily that he knocked down the walking staff of an old lord beside him, which fell clattering; the little sharp echoes ran into the aisles and chapels and died there. The Duke said that it was not the King’s purpose that they should debate the sentence of the learned doctors of Christendom. ‘But,’ said he, ‘you have heard the King’s mind by the mouth of the Lord Chancellor.’

  It seemed then as though no other would speak; Sir Thomas stood up as though to conclude the business, when someone said:

  ‘My Lord Chancellor, you have declared the King’s mind. What is your mind in the matter?’

  Sir Thomas More turned about.

  ‘My Lord, I have many times declared it to the King’s Grace.’

  They waited, but they got no more of him, and then someone behind Norfolk asked what my Lord of Shrewsbury thought, because they all knew that he and the Chancellor agreed together on this. But Talbot would say no more than that it was not for him to give an opinion in such a matter.

  Then, after a little uneasy silence, the Chancellor went away down the Church to declare the King’s words to the Commons. Norfolk, Suffolk, the Bishops of Lincoln and London, Sir Bryan Tuke, and many others went with him.

  The rest of the lords sat waiting, without much talking, and heard the rain begin again to mutter on the roof.

  April 1

  In the evening Gib Dawe came home to Marrick. It was one of those days when a cold and winterly spring is, at one stride, overtaken by the heat of summer. The new chestnut leaves hung limp and very green. Roads were deep in dust, and for the first time the sweet smell of grass breathed in the air.

  It was nearly a month since Gib had left London, and to-day he had walked from Richmond. He came from the open fells to the first of the village fields where the oats were pricking up. The sun had just dropped below the opposite side of the dale but the sky that way was of a flushed gold, like an apricot. All the way across the fells the air had been full of the crystal singing of the larks; now that he came near the big chestnut trees behind the Manor he could hear a blackbird lazily spilling notes that were rich as honey.

  He passed two little girls, naked, with water pots hugged to them, on their way to the well; they shied off the road at the sight of a stranger, and one of them threw a stone after him. He came to the green opposite the ale-shop; the ale-shop bench was full; he recognized more than one sitting there, but he hurried by, so that they should not know him, or should not greet him. The road now ran between cottages on one side and a stone-walled orchard on the other. At the town end, the very last cottage before the way went steeply down to the Priory was the one in which he had been born. There were a couple of lambs under the tree, and a sow rooted by the wall. In the garden beyond the cottage he could see rows of onions, kale and cabbages. He came abreast of the door and looked in. Smoke from the fire swam out, hot and blue in the bright warm air. His mother, small and very bent, stood over the fire. She stirred something with one hand, and with the other held up a lappet of her kerchief to shield her eyes from the heat of the flames. He went inside and greeted her.

  They ate their supper sitting on the door step; there was pottage in wooden bowls, and black bread and cheese. Hankin, the old dog, sat opposite them, moving his eyes from one to another as Gib or his mother lifted hand to mouth. The brown and speckled hens picked at crumbs in the dust at their feet, moving with jerky nods that shook the fringes of their feathered hoods about their shoulders.

  After supper the old woman brought out her spindle. Gib bent and pulled off his shoes. His leather hosen were of the kind that has no foot; he waggled his toes, and began to shift his feet softly to and fro in the warm dust, pleased to think that to-morrow he would not have to take his staff and wallet and trudge off again.

  ‘That wench that you went off with—’ said his mother behind him, and tittered. Gib jumped as though a flea had bitten him. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘She told me when she came back. But you needn’t fear. She’s told no one else.’

  ‘She has come back?’

  ‘She came. Then she died. Last Martinmas.’

  Gib knew that he was very glad of that. Though now he believed that it was well for a priest to be married, he did not wish ever to see the miller’s Joan again.

  ‘And,’ his mother went on, ‘the little knave won’t tell neither, for he’s dumb, and a fool too. And moreover the miller sells him, if he hath not yet sold him, to the lead miners up beyond Owlands.’

  ‘The little knave—’ Gib
repeated as though the words were news to him. But indeed he had only forgotten. Then he asked,—

  ‘How old is he?’

  She cackled at that. ‘You should know.’ But Gib could not remember. ‘A four or five years child, by his looks,’ his mother told him.

  A little while after she left him to milk the cow, and he sat there, his body at ease, but not his mind.

  May 31

  The ladies who were to undress the Queen had taken off the billement of pearls and sapphires that surrounded her neck and was tucked into the bosom of her gown, and it lay beside the rings from her fingers, and the collar of gold with the great table sapphire and three hanging pearls, upon the velvet cushion which another held, kneeling. Then someone knocked, and when the door was opened word came that, late as it was, a great company of lords were asking audience of the Queen.

  ‘What lords?’ she asked. They had taken off her velvet head-dress and her hair, pale silver-gold now, was bare; she looked older so, and less stately.

  They told her – ‘My lords of Norfolk, Suffolk, Shrewsbury, Northumberland, Wiltshire—’

  ‘That is enough. Friends, a few – and unfriends,’ she said, and broke off, to sit frowning for a minute. Then she motioned to them to put on again her headgear, but when they would have added the pearls she said, ‘No. Not those,’ and so went out to the lords, who, thirty or more of them, waited in her chamber of presence. She would have none of her own people to follow her, except two or three of her elder ladies.

  The lords had come, as she knew well, from the King, and, as she might guess, with reproaches against her, for being the occasion of His Grace being cited to appear before the Pope at Rome. They delivered their message, and she answered the reproaches patiently, having learnt patience in a hard school.

  But at last Doctor Lee, the Archbishop elect of York, spoke, saying that since her first husband, Prince Arthur the King’s brother, had had carnal knowledge of her, therefore the marriage between her and the King was very detestable and abominable before God and the world, as learned doctors and the universities had declared. At that the Queen flushed crimson, and then went white. Her hands closed on the carved arms of the chair she sat on, until her knuckles too showed white. Yet she let him finish.