The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  Mountjoy spoke. They had, he said, come to her as she had yesterday commanded them, to read to her their report of that interview, before they sent it to His Grace’s honourable Privy Council, to give account of the performance of the commission enjoined on them by the same honourable Council.

  ‘Shameful commission!’ cried one of the younger ladies, then flushed crimson, and nearly burst into tears when the Queen rebuked her with a frown.

  Yet the faces of the gentlemen seemed to give colour to her words; yesterday they had felt shame in declaring to their mistress that her marriage with the King, in which she had lived blameless, honourable, and honoured, was a thing ‘detestable, abominable, execrable, and directly against the laws of God and nature’. And to-day they looked as hangdog as any collection of respectable and well-intentioned persons might look.

  ‘To whom,’ asked Queen Katherine of Mountjoy, ‘do you say in your Report that you have discharged your commission’?’

  He told her, looking on the ground, ‘To the Princess Dowager.’ Queen Katherine drew herself up on the bed till she sat upright.

  ‘Bring me the Report!’ she said to the gentlemen, and to the ladies, ‘Bring me pen and paper.’

  She was obeyed by both, though all in that room knew what she would do. When one of the ladies knelt by her, holding the ink, she set the Report on her knee and scribbled out the words ‘Princess Dowager’ wherever they came. As she did it the sharp complaint of the driven quill and the Queen’s harsh coughing were the only sounds in the room.

  The gentlemen received again the Report and asked leave to depart. But before they went the Queen spoke, while they stood twisting their caps and looking more like schoolboys in disgrace than any of them had looked for many years.

  As she spoke she was shaken more and more by her cough, and inwardly by the thought of all the injustice she suffered, so that in the end she was crying out almost incoherently, that if she agreed to their persuasions to call herself anything but Queen she would be a slanderer of herself, she would thereby confess to have been the King’s harlot for twenty-four years. She stopped a moment because she must, and when she could speak again it was in a whisper. The King had said that her case should be heard in some place indifferent, ‘but now it is determined by a man of the King’s own making, the Archbishop of Canterbury. And how much impartial he be,’ she cried, ‘God He knows. Nor is the place impartial, since the King has taken upon himself to be supremum caput ecclesiae, with greater authority than our Lord the Pope himself.’

  They waited for a while when she was silent, but she waved her hand to them to be gone, only to beckon them again to stay.

  ‘I am,’ she said, in a voice whose bitterness pierced them, ‘I am, you know, no Englishwoman but a Spaniard, and having no counsel may err in my words. But you shall say that if anything else there is in the Report prejudicial to my cause I protest against it.’

  They went away then, and the Queen bade that one of her ladies who had been reading aloud to find her place again and read on.

  So it would have seemed that nothing had happened in the dull room, except the failing and increase of light, as the wind outside gathered or drove away the clouds. But none of the ladies heard much of what was being read, and none of them could look at the Queen, though they knew that her face was composed, and that her needle moved steadily.

  August 31

  In the last of the twilight a man came and knocked at the door of the parsonage at Marrick. Gib was in, sitting at his supper of bread and cheese, beans, and a salad of cresses and radishes.

  The stranger said, ‘Friend, are you the parson of Marrick?’

  Gib stowed half a radish in his cheek, and said that he was.

  ‘Sir Gilbert Dawe?’ the stranger persisted, and again Gib said ‘Aye – that’s me.’

  The other man came in then. He was very dusty and hot, and brown as a nut; so brown that his hair and sandy beard were paler than his face. He shut the door, in spite of the warmth of the evening, and said ‘Ned Tanner of York told me of you. He said you were of us, a “known man”.’

  Gib kissed him and sat him down to supper. When it was dark, and the old mother had gone to bed, they barred the door and the shutters, and lit a rushlight, and so together read a chapter from the Apocalypse in an English translation of the Scriptures that the stranger brought out from a pocket very cunningly hidden in the back of his pouch. It was a different translation from the one that Gib kept under the floor. The stranger made a twit of that one, saying that it was old and rude, and the one he had much better. So they read in his.

  And the sun was as black as sackcloth made of hair, and the moon waxed red as blood, and the stars of heaven fell into the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And all mountains and isles moved out of their places. And the Kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and every bondman and every free man hid themselves in dens and rocks of the little hills.

  The stranger stopped here to explain that King Henry was not such a King, for he was a noble Prince, and executor of the wrath of the Lamb upon wicked men and fools, such as those who believed that the Bishop of Rome had any primacy among other Bishops.

  September 1

  Next morning Gib saw him take the track across the fells towards Washfold while it was still barely light. Then he went back to the bed where they had slept together, but his thoughts followed Master Trudgeover; that was what the stranger had called himself, and though Gib did not believe that it was his real name, one name was as good as another. Gib thought with envy of him tramping through England empty almost as an animal of the care of worldly things, and full of the marvellous riches of the spirit; less a man than a trumpet to sound to judgement and to destruction of God’s enemies. Here lay he, Gib Dawe, as eloquent, as fervent, as truly grounded in the truth, but shut up in the narrow Dale to preach to clods, who thought small beer of him because he was a Marrick man born, and no stranger like Trudgeover. And besides being shut up in the narrow Dale, he was shut up too in the parsonage, with an old woman and a dumb brat.

  September 4

  The Princess Mary sat at dinner in the royal house of Beaulieu in Essex. Only the Countess of Salisbury dined at the same table as the Princess; the other ladies, and those gentlemen who were not on duty carving or waiting, sat at a table nearer the door. They were cheerful enough, though subduing their voices out of respect for their betters, but the Princess sat silent, and the Countess did not try to rally her. She herself knew what lay like a shadow across the girl’s mind, for it darkened her own too as they waited for the news that might come any day now. But besides that, Master Hugh Pennington was serving at table, ‘and although he’s a good youth,’ thought the Countess, ‘and of gentle conditions, yet he has the most careless and chancy hand at waiting of them all.’ She fixed her eyes upon the plate he was setting down before the Princess: he had carved the pork well, cutting it finely without disturbing the almonds that were stuck all over the crackling. But the gravy, rich and full of raisins and spices, all but swam over the roped edge of the silver plate as he set it down. The Countess breathed deeply in relief, and then because she saw the Princess’s hands suddenly clutch upon the table, she looked up and forgot Hugh Pennington.

  Mary was staring down the room to the door which was just closing. Now she turned to the Countess.

  ‘Madame, I saw Charles. I know I did. Send for him to come in. No. I’ll not wait. At once.’

  The Countess frowned, though not because it was unnatural in a girl of seventeen to be impatient for her mother’s message. It was natural, and it would have been right, if things had not been so wholly and shamefully wrong. But as they were so wrong this royal child would have need of a fortitude greater than natural, and it had been the Countess’s aim, in the last unhappy years, to train her charge to such a self-command that nothing should shake her. The Countess, herself of the old blood-royal, and of a masculine co
urage, had wished, during wakeful nights, that she could somehow give to the girl of her own strength; that could not be done, and now she doubted if there would be time for the Princess to acquire it from practice or precept, for she believed that the hour drew near.

  She raised her hand, and told one of the servants to bring in the man Charles.

  He came in, and knelt before the table opposite the Princess. When she asked him how the Queen did, he said, ‘Well,’ and no more. When she asked him, had he a letter, he said, ‘No. No letter.’

  ‘Then,’ said the Princess, ‘what message?’

  He glanced over his shoulder, and the Countess too looked down the room. At her glance the ladies and gentlemen at the lower table turned quickly to their food again; David Lloyd, making music with two others, had just shaken out his recorder and now held it to his mouth again, his lips pursed to blow, but instead of blowing he only stared and listened. When he caught her eye he put the instrument so hastily to his mouth that it let out a faint, involuntary toot.

  ‘The Queen’s Grace,’ said Charles, in a voice too low for any but the Princess and the Countess to hear, now that the music was playing again, – ‘The Queen’s Grace sent me to tell Your Grace that the Marchioness of Pembroke hath been brought to bed of a child.’

  ‘Man or woman?’ It was the Countess who asked the question.

  ‘A girl.’

  ‘Ah!’ Mary sighed, and they guessed how much she had dreaded to hear the other. But Charles said, ‘The heralds proclaimed the bastard “Princess of Wales” at the Cross in Cheap.’

  There was a silence in which only the gay warbling of the recorder and flutes made a fountain of bubbling sound. Then the Princess said, neither to the Countess nor to her mother’s servant, but to the food on her plate, ‘It may die.’ And then, ‘I have heard, and am persuaded, that it is not my father’s child at all.’

  The Countess said, ‘Hush!’ though Charles was discreet as death, and no one else but herself could hear.

  Mary looked at her with a little, elderly, poisoned smile, which even the Countess, good hater as she was, found shocking on so young a face.

  September 6

  Queen Anne lay propped up with pillows in the carved, painted and gilded bed that had been brought from the King’s Great Wardrobe for the occasion of the birth of the heir. The rings of the curtains, drawn wide apart now, were of silver gilt and ran along silver gilt rods. The hangings of the bed were of white and green brocaded velvet, and the counterpane which they had thrown over the bed for the King’s visit was of cloth of gold. It lay very heavy upon the Queen, making her think of the leaden shrouds in which the dead are wound – the great dead, who lie in proud tombs – but as cold as any beggar. Her cheeks and eyes were still bright with fever, and fancies such as these, each of them tainted with horror, filled her mind with moving shadows. Beside her, upon a cushion of cloth of gold, lay the small tight shape of the one-day-old child, swaddled to the neck, and wearing a little tight cap exquisitely worked in silk. Between the swaddling bands and the cap, the puckered, querulous, aged face was of a dusky red.

  There was a stir at the door, and one of her gentlemen announced the King. He came down the length of the chamber, tall and immensely broad in his puffed and slashed doublet of sanguine velvet, which to her fancy suddenly took on the likeness of raw, bloodied flesh, while the white satin that showed at the slashes was white bone. He came alone, having, by a motion of his hand, stayed those that were following him. The Queen’s people, seeing this, also drew away. They stood in two groups, not mingling, hers by the hearth, his just inside the door.

  But she was looking only at the King. He came on, his head a little bent, his shoulders swinging, till he stood beside the bed. He asked courteously and formally after her health. She said she did well. He said that he rejoiced therefore. She thanked him for his gracious visit. He said that she should command him in anything she wished. She replied that there was nothing she desired but only his gracious favour. That, he told her, she had, and promised that not only in the Royal Chapel, but in all churches and chantries, her welfare should be petitioned for. Then he went away.

  Her ladies came back. They removed the heavy coverlet and laid over her instead one of velvet brocaded in a pattern of true lovers’ knots and roses. One of them asked her, ‘Shall we leave with you this noble lady?’ rocking in her arms the child who had wakened with a shrill, piping cry.

  ‘No,’ said the Queen, ‘I shall sleep.’

  She shut her eyes so that they should think she slept. He had not touched, he had not once looked at the miserable little creature that had caused her all that wasted pain. She could, for the present at least, feel nothing but loathing for the girl who should have been a boy.

  September 11

  Dame Anne Ladyman had been to Grinton. As she climbed the stair to the Prioress’s chamber she wiped her hot face with a lappet of her veil, for the weather was like high summer, and anticipated with pleasure the long, cool drink of ale which, she confided, would soon be slipping down her throat as they two sat together, she resting her tired feet and retailing all her news – and to-day one piece of such laughable news.

  But when she opened the door she knew that all her anticipation had been vain. Opposite Dame Christabel sat the Prioress of St. Bernard’s Ladies from down the river, as erect and as iron as the fire-dogs on the hearth.

  The Dale grudgingly credited Dame Euphemia with a kind of sanctity; for how could any woman so completely ignore every comfort of life unless she had at least some tincture of holiness? But if she were holy’ she was not beloved. Those who might kept clear; those who must be about her endured with what philosophy they could muster. She marched through life, rigid, cheerless, dispensing gloom, and not even taking pleasure in that. The whole world lay under her condemnation: her Nuns were soft indulgent creatures, yearning for worldly delights; laymen were close-fisted wretches, careless of the hardships of St. Bernard’s poor Ladies; her own House she grudged at for its poverty, Marrick Priory for its plumper endowments; her kin she condemned for proud men who believed that ancient and noble blood would save a man at the last tremendous Day (which Day was perhaps the one occasion to which she looked forward with any enthusiasm); those of lower degree than herself and her family she despised. She was of the few people who could, by means of sheer blind, bludgeoning, remorseless pride, set down Christabel Cowper, Prioress of Marrick.

  So now, when Dame Anne Ladyman came in, she found St. Bernard’s Lady with her usual look of one who has tasted verjuice; the Prioress of Marrick was flushed, but maintained an expression of smooth, controlled politeness.

  Dame Anne found herself affected, as everyone else, by the visitor’s temper. Some were struck silent by it; but she took refuge in loud and rapid garrulity. So, while Dame Euphemia’s deep and burning eyes looked down her important nose, Dame Anne rattled through the heads of the less startling items of news which she had gathered when in Grinton: how that the harvest was the greatest that any could remember; that the wheelwright’s wife had twins; that one of the hinds who had sliced his leg reaping was now doing well; that parson’s rheumatism was better. Then, breaking off, she tittered, and struck her hands together.

  ‘And now, I’ll tell you greater news than all these. I wager you knew not, Madame, that we have a holy woman among us – one that sees visions of heavenly things.’

  When St. Bernard’s Lady had arrived Dame Christabel had been reading ‘The Death of the Duchess’ in an old, beautifully written copy of Geoffrey Chaucer’s poems that had belonged to her mother. She had seen how Dame Euphemia’s eyes fastened on it, yearning to know by the title what book it was that occupied the Marrick Prioress’s leisure, but unable to read it upside down. Now, because she guessed what satisfaction Dame Anne’s loudness gave the other woman, she determined to flaunt her own frivolity, ramming down the visitor’s throat, as it were, the worldliness of St. Benedict’s Nuns. So she laid the book on the rushes at her feet, careful
ly disposed so that the title was easy to read, and even, with a provocative smile, pushed it nearer to Dame Euphemia with her foot.

  ‘No,’ she answered Dame Anne, ‘I know none such. A woman who sees visions?’

  ‘And what will you say when I tell you that this same is our serving woman Malle?’

  ‘By St. Eustace!’ the Prioress began, but then Dame Anne burst out laughing, her high trilling laugh which the Prioress so hated. Nor would she stop, except to interrupt herself with such exclamations as, ‘The Holy Malle... Her Feast will be All Fools’ Day... If she have a halo it will smoke like the kitchen fire...’

  ‘And what,’ asked Dame Euphemia, so suddenly and harshly that Dame Anne fairly jumped about to face her, ‘what hath this wench of yours seen – or says she hath seen?’

  It was those last words, spoken in a tone which stripped the Ladies of St. Benedict of any right to hope for heavenly favours, which gave the Prioress of Marrick her cue. When Dame Anne’s eyes came back to her she nodded. ‘Tell us,’ she said.

  Dame Anne took a moment to recover, and then began, stumbling a little.

  ‘I’d been to the mill, to ask if the young goslings we’re to have are ready – They are ready and I told her – But that was after. Well, I’d come nigh to the bridge and there I saw Malle, among a crowd of idlers and children, staring into the Blackburne’s yard.

  ‘There’s a wedding there this day,’ she added, with a sidelong smile.

  The Prioress knew that smile well. ‘So I heard.’ She was curt.