The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  Then she told him, in a voice not one of them all had heard before, so hard and sharp it was, that he could talk to others so, but not to her. ‘Nor are you my counsellor, nor are you my judge,’ said she, ‘that I should believe you. Prince Arthur knew me not.’ She stopped there because her breath was short. ‘This,’ she cried, though her voice shook, ‘this is not the place to set forth such things. Go you to Rome, Doctor, if you will, and there you will find other than women to answer you; aye, men be there who will show you, Master Doctor, that you know not, nor have not read, everything.’

  After that they spoke more bitterly, and bitterly she answered them; telling them one by one to go to Rome, to go to Rome, and at last when all that wished had spoken, she reproached them all, so many and so great, for taking her by surprise, at night, and unfurnished of Counsel.

  Norfolk spoke up then, saying, ‘That she could not complain of, seeing she had the most completest Counsel in England – as Archbishop Warham of Canterbury, the Bishop of Durham, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and others.’

  ‘Jesu!’ cried the Queen, ‘fine counsellors! for when I asked counsel of the Archbishop he answered that he would not meddle in such affairs, saying often “Ira principis mors est.” The Bishop of Durham said that meddle he dared not, being the King’s subject. The Bishop of Rochester bade me keep up my courage, and that,’ the Queen concluded, ‘was all the counsel I had from them.’

  After this, and some argument about her appeal, they asked leave to withdraw, which she gave them curtly. When they had gone, for a long while she sat in the Chamber of Presence, where the candles had been lighted. It was dark now outside, and from the garden moths swung in and whisked about, blundering into the flames and making them dip, sizzle and flare.

  At last the Queen got up, and went back into her Privy Chamber. Her head was up and her countenance serene, for all that anyone could see, but she moved slowly because of the heavy knocking of her heart, and as her heart knocked, so it seemed to her to ache.

  July 25

  The Duke of Norfolk, coming into the gallery that led to the King’s Privy Chamber, recognized the voice of his niece, Mistress Anne Boleyn. It was raised and shrill, but he was certain it was hers, though he did not catch the words. And then, from a doorway at the far end of the great room she bounced out, cried, ‘I will not! I will not! I will not!’ on a rising note that ended as high as a peacock’s scream, and slammed the door behind her.

  The Duke made as if there were nothing strange in all this. As she swept by him with a whistling of silk, he saluted her gravely, though unnoticed; and rebuked, by a long hard look, the stares of the gentlemen and pages who had got to their feet from games of dice or cards.

  He went the long length of the room slowly and with dignity, but in his mind he was wishing that the elderly and rheumatic gentleman who followed him had not arrived in time to see that bit of business, since he came as a messenger from Queen Katherine. As for his niece, the Duke thought, ‘Mass! The girl’s out of her wits. She’ll lose all by this manner.’

  ‘Wait here, Sir,’ he said to the elderly gentleman, and knocking gently on the door, went into the Privy Chamber.

  The King stood looking out of the window. He did not turn, and the sunshine, streaming past him, threw his broad shadow across the strewn rushes on the floor.

  ‘Your Grace,’ said Norfolk, down on one knee, ‘here is a gentleman come with greetings and a letter from the Queen, who—’

  Then he saw that the King had his dagger out in his hand, and was stabbing with it at the wooden sill of the open window. The silent violence of that repeated gesture was like a blow across Norfolk’s mouth. He gasped and was silent.

  ‘By God’s Death!’ The King plunged in the dagger and wrenched it out again. ‘She will not. Will she not?’ He swung round suddenly on Norfolk – ‘This girl’s your niece. Yours! Did you teach her this manner duty? The Queen never spoke to me so. I’ve made – I can unmake her.’

  Norfolk’s eyes flinched from the King’s face. He muttered something about ‘love’ and ‘loyalty’ and held out the Queen’s letter. When the King whipped it out of his hand and flung back to the window Norfolk told himself that soldiers, aye, brave men, men that feared nothing, were afraid of their Prince, so great is the majesty of kings. Yet he felt the flush on his cheekbones, and was glad that none had been there to see and to hear.

  The King said ‘Tchah!’ and crumpled the letter into a ball. ‘A very dutiful letter. She asks how I do, laments that I left her at Windsor without the consolation of bidding farewell. Very dutiful!’ He dropped the crumpled paper on the floor and set his foot on it. ‘And it’s she that will have me cited to Rome, and thinks I’ll forgive. God’s Blood! I’ll not see her face again.’

  He sent Norfolk away and remained alone in the small sunny room where still lay a scatter of bright silks and a piece of embroidery that Mistress Anne had thrown down when their quarrel had begun. The King tramped to and fro, rolling a little in his walk, concocting in his mind the cruellest answer to the Queen’s letter that he could devise. There were two women who crossed him, and he would make one pay for both. For already an uneasiness was growing in his mind and a restless craving. Supposing that other should – mad wench – leave him after all? He could not endure the thought.

  October 30

  Julian had been sent out to buy lemons and therefore was not present when Master Cheyne sold Meg to Sir John Bulmer. Nor was Meg herself in the room when the business was transacted, but only Master Cheyne, Sir John, and Gregory Cheyne. Gregory, who drew up the deed, was a notary and second cousin to Master Cheyne, and therefore, he considered, privileged to titter as he wrote out so strange a document, and to mutter pleasantries which he took care Sir John should not quite hear.

  William Cheyne, who felt the cold sadly since his leg was broken, sat hunched in his chair beside the fire. His head was sunk deep into the warm fur of his collar, and fur lined the wide sleeves of his dark red cloth coat. Sir John was dressed no more richly than he, for Master Cheyne, whose ships went to and fro between London and Bordeaux, could have put down gold for gold against the knight. But Sir John was far gayer; in green, with a yellow hood and scarlet hosen.

  Gregory giggled to see how neither of those two laced the other, nor seemed to be concerned in the business afoot; for Master Cheyne sat with his back to the room and his hands held out to the fire, and Sir John was astride the bench by the window, with his long thick legs stretched out; he looked, and meant to look, insolent and disdainful as he turned his big heavy head this way and that, staring about the room, and then through the window again. The room was on an upper floor and you could see, over the scanty yellowing leaves of an orchard opposite, a glimpse of the river. There were ships lying there, swung one way by the tide, and now and again a wherry went by.

  Gregory Cheyne finished the writing, and paused, his pen still poised over it as he looked aslant along the lines. The tip of his tongue had been showing between his teeth as he wrote, but now he drew it in and pursed his lips, and opened his eyes very wide, as if he were astonished or shocked at what he had written. Then he giggled.

  Sir John turned on him, but he was serious again, and intent on sanding the ink. He had sprinkled sand over the page, and now he tilted it neatly back into the pounce box, and snapped the lid shut. Next he began to root in his pouch, and brought out, and laid on the table, a medley of those things which notaries carry always with them – a twist of plaited threads and some ribbon for scales to hang on; a tinder box; two or three lumps of wax, scarlet, green and yellowish white. But he wanted none of those just now – only a pair of scissors. He found them and then began to snip the parchment across the middle in pointed jags, exactly where he had written in large, fanciful, flourished letters the word ‘Chirographia’, so that fragments of the letters remained on one half and fragments also on the other.

  There was no sound in the room except the snip of the scissors and the soft fluttering of flames
on the hearth, till Master Gregory said, ‘There!’ and, ‘God’s Bread! Never till to-day have I drawn up such a deed.’

  He got up and handed them each a half of the paper. Sir John seemed for a moment to intend to cram it into his pouch unread, but he thought better of that and spread it out on the table. Gregory bent over his cousin’s shoulder, his pen pointing along the lines till William Cheyne struck his hand away, and then he went back to his stool.

  Sir John nodded. ‘That is good enough.’

  ‘Now pay for the trull you’re buying,’ William Cheyne said.

  Sir John took a bag from the bench between his knees, and opening the throat of it let the gold pieces, marks and rose nobles, with occasionally an old angel of the last King’s time, slide out on to the table.

  ‘Count it, Greg,’ Master Cheyne bade, turning in his chair. Gregory had put a foot down on one gold piece that had rolled over the table edge and fallen into the rushes; but Sir John, who was neither so slow nor so careless as he looked, said unpleasantly, ‘Under your foot. A rose noble.’ William Cheyne smiled for the first time.

  The money was counted and stood in piles on the table. ‘Now,’ said Sir John, and stood up, ‘send for her, and I’ll take her away.’

  ‘Fetch her, Greg. She’ll be listening at the door,’ and he pointed to the door of the inner room. As Gregory went to do as he was told, William Cheyne said, ‘And you’ll take her away in her shift.’

  Sir John was very angry at that, and so was Meg, who had been busy decking herself in the rose-coloured velvet with a cloth of silver petticoat, which was her best gown, and with jewels about her neck and hidden in her bosom. She was so angry when she knew that it must be so, and that William Cheyne would not yield, that she began to tear at her clothes, as if to strip herself before the three men.

  ‘God’s Teeth!’ she cried shrilly, ‘then I’ll go out naked and shame you.’

  That drove Sir John wild, what with Gregory’s chirrups of delight and Cheyne’s cold smile. He pushed her back into the bed-chamber, throwing his own cloak after her and bidding her roughly, ‘Take off your clothes and wrap you in that.’

  ‘You see betimes,’ said William Cheyne, ‘what you have bought. God give you grace to be glad of your bargain.’

  *

  Julian did not know till supper-time that Meg had gone, for she had dallied over the buying of the lemons till it was nearly dusk. But when she came in the kitchen was humming with the news, and supper not near ready. She listened, at first struck into a sort of blind and dark helplessness by the news. Meg was gone, and here she was, alone. It was long, black minutes before she thought, ‘I’ll go after her. I’ll find her.’ But that only brought her heart into her throat for haste and fear. She came to the group of men and maids who were all talking it over, and clawed at this girl’s elbow, and the skirts of that man’s coat, crying, ‘Where does he live? Where does he live?’

  Only after a time one turned and thrust her off, but told her, ‘In Yorkshire.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘In the North Country.’

  ‘But when he is in London—?’ They did not know or would not tell, and so Julian left them, and went into the empty Hall where the trestles were set up, but nothing on them. Master Cheyne was limping down the stairs; Gregory Cheyne came after him. In an ordinary way Julian would have bolted back into the kitchen at the sight of him, but to-day she went straight forward and dropped a curtsey. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘where is he in London? Sir John Bulmer?’

  She got less help from William Cheyne than from the servants, since the sound of Sir John’s name drove him into a fury. After he had managed to lay his stick across her shoulders once or twice he shouted at her to go, to go to the devil with her sister.

  When she saw the way clear to the street door, beyond the screens, Julian ran for it; she got the door open somehow and shut it behind her with a slam. Then she ran on till she could run no more, thinking that Master Cheyne was after her.

  So there she was, out in the streets in the owl-light, knowing only that Meg was with Sir John Bulmer, but not where to find him.

  She began by asking, here and there, where he lived, but no one could tell her, and some were angry, shoving her out of the way, and some did not seem to hear her, and others frightened her more by trying to catch hold of her. A fat, wheezy fellow did that, and so she ran again, and apprentices shouted after her and threw dirt picked up from the kennel. Then she met a monk and asked him to tell her, catching at his sleeve, but he pushed her away and shook his head and told her she was a bad wench – so young and all. He was deaf, but July did not know that.

  Once she knocked at a door because the candles were lit inside and the shutters not yet barred, and she could see a pleasant painted room with a couple of apprentices and journeymen, and maids, two or three, and the mistress of the house sitting by the hearth, while the master, a jolly merchant with a curly beard, drank his wine standing astraddle, with his back to the fire.

  When she knocked, the boy who answered the door said he’d ask, and went in, and after a minute out came the merchant, and seemed surprised, and as though he had expected to see someone else. But she told him whom she was looking for, and why, at which he laughed and said, ‘Yes, yes,’ – he’d take her to Sir John, but just now – he turned his head over his shoulder and seemed to listen, and then whispered, ‘Slip in, and through that door, and up the stairs and stay still as a mouse. I’ll come as soon as I can.’

  But just then out came the mistress, and the merchant gave July a push in the chest, and shut the door on her. So when she had picked herself up she knocked at no more doors, and inquired of no more folk, but went on, because she must go on till she could go no further.

  After a long time, seeing the steps and the dark shape of the great Cross in Cheap, all its niches and images hidden by the dusk, but the gilded cross at the top just showing a shadowy pale gleam against the deepening blue of the night sky, she sat down on the top step and made herself as small as she could, and thought that perhaps in her grey gown she might not be noticed there.

  But she had forgotten her white headkerchief, and how it would show up, and hardly had she sat down than one of two men going by glanced aside, and he told the other, and they both stood, looking at her. All July could do was to turn her face towards the stone of the Cross, and then hide it in her hands. But she knew that one of them was coming towards her, and now stood over her, and she knew somehow that his hand was stretched out to touch her.

  He did not touch her though, because he saw how she shrank. He only said, ‘Little maid, where’s your home? What do you here alone at this hour of the night?’

  She took her hands softly from her face and peered up at him, catching her breath when she saw he had only one eye. But she did not care for that; his voice was what mattered, which she thought was the most beautiful she had ever heard. Even though he spoke so gently it had a ringing note in it like a well-tuned bell.

  ‘Oh! Sir!’ she clutched his fingers, and then, with her other hand, his arm. ‘Tell me where is Sir John Bulmer?’

  ‘Mass!’ said he, ‘and you have asked one that can tell, being myself a man of the North Country. And in a manner, though distant, a kinsman, for my name’s Aske, and my grandfather married Elizabeth Bigod, who was Sir John’s wife’s aunt,’ and he went on a little about the Bigods, Askes and Bulmers, not because he conceived that the child would be interested in such an excursion into genealogy, but having himself young sisters he guessed that it would be well to give the little thing time to stop shaking so.

  ‘There now,’ he said after a minute, ‘now let us go softly over to Sir John’s lodging, and as we go you shall tell, if you will, how you come to be seeking him.’

  She told him, all in a rush, and he gave a soundless whistle in the dark. He could not now, being kinsman to Sir John’s wife, like the business, nor feel quite so sorry as he had felt for the little girl; but when Will muttered that they might well l
eave Sir John’s drab’s sister to find her own way, Aske told him to hold his tongue, and spoke gently to July, telling her that the place was not far off.

  So they went out through Newgate, and along Holborn. Here there were fields, and houses with gardens, and here gentlemen would take lodgings who preferred to be out of the noise of the city, and free from the bustle of taverns, or who for some reason wished to be private.

  It was nearly dark when they stopped at one of these houses, and Will knocked on the door.

  July caught Aske’s wrist. She had just remembered again to be frightened.

  ‘Suppose they will not let me stay.’

  Aske said, ‘I’ll come in and see they do.’

  He had not intended to come in, saying to himself, ‘Let the fellow keep his whore, but for my kinswoman’s sake I’ll have nothing to do with him or her.’ All the same, since he must go in out of pity for the child, he was not a little curious to see this wench that Sir John had bought. He was ashamed of the curiosity, but it was there.

  An hour or so later he got up from the bench beside the fire in the room upstairs, and said he must be going. Sir John at once set Margaret down from his knee; he did not seem to be very sorry to part with Aske, but Margaret said he must come again, and soon.

  At the door Aske paused. ‘Where’s little Mistress Julian?’

  Meg laughed. ‘To bed this hour ago. She was all eyes for you, and you never looked her way.’

  Aske grew a little red, because he knew where he had been looking; but he sent his duty to July, and kissed Meg on the cheek with Sir John standing close at her shoulder, and then went away.

  As he and Will walked back through a night as black as the inside of a bag, he did not exactly reckon up whether by mortgaging his Manor at Empshott in Hampshire, and selling the farms his father had given him at home, he could have raised the price which Sir John had paid for Meg, and which Meg had told him, laughing. But he did feel suddenly sorry for himself, a younger son of no great house, and not yet even a barrister. Also he felt considerable dislike for Sir John Bulmer, yet intended to cultivate his acquaintance.