The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  ‘What,’ asked the Countess, ‘does it mean?’ She guessed that some message must have come with the letter.

  ‘That my father will send me to the household of the bastard.’

  The Countess was silent.

  ‘I am,’ said Mary, ‘to be one of her waiting women.’ Her voice was steady, but, as she spoke out of the shadows, it had no more body than if a shadow had been speaking.

  ‘His Grace,’ she went on, ‘is persuaded that you – that my people – encourage me to resist his will, calling myself Princess of Wales.’

  ‘By God’s Death! so we do, and so we shall.’

  Mary went on to the end of what she must say. ‘Therefore I am to go alone.’

  This time the Countess did not use any oath. She stood silent, and without movement, except that she turned the letter over and over in her fingers. She was a woman very strong in silence; therefore till she had resolved what to say she would not speak. The thing might not be true; but she could not say that, lest it should be true. She could not say, ‘Poor child,’ because this child had been born too high for pity. She decided upon something that must be said, and, taking the Princess hard by the wrist, she spoke at last.

  ‘You must fear nothing, and you must yield nothing.’

  Now that she touched Mary she knew that the girl was shaking, but she only tightened her hold.

  ‘In Her Grace’s letter one thing is most true and most grave—’

  ‘That I should obey my father?’

  ‘That, of course.’ But it was not of that the Countess wished to speak, nor of those little tender trifles of advice, such as that the girl should keep her own keys if there were need, or recreate herself on her lute and virginals, if they allowed her to have any. ‘No,’ said the Countess, ‘but it is “that you should keep your heart with a chaste mind, not thinking or desiring any husband”.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary, ‘yes,’ but the Countess knew that she turned her head away.

  ‘What?’ she thought. ‘Not yet! She cannot favour any yet!’

  She ran over in her mind all the men, young or not so young, here or at Beaulieu. Of preference towards any of them the girl had given no sign, and yet the Countess guessed rather than knew that she was one who would need greatly to love.

  She said, because she must somehow find out what the averted face meant, ‘It is of course fitting that Your Grace should be married before long. But you cannot regret any of those betrothed to you by this treaty or that. The Emperor – you only saw him once; the Dauphin – never.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then,’ said the Countess, and let the girl’s wrist drop. Mary turned away and leaned her hands on the stone sill, staring out into the garden which she could not now see.

  ‘It is not any man. But I have thought of children – of a child – a little boy best,’ she said in a whisper.

  The Countess went away across the room till she stood beside the bed. She laid her hand on one of the curtains, and stared at it as though she learnt the pattern by heart.

  ‘Your Grace,’ she said at last, ‘Your Grace must put away such thoughts.’

  When Mary was silent she added, ‘For the love that you do owe to God.’

  ‘To God—’ said Mary.

  ‘And to your Mother, the Queen.’

  ‘To my...’ the girl began, and then hurriedly – ‘Go. Leave me. Yes. I will be alone.’

  1534

  January 11

  Dame Anne Bulmer sat for a long time in front of her mirror, though not because she took thought for what she saw in it. She sat there because she needed time to be quiet, and once the mistress of the house launches herself upon the day she has little hope of quiet, especially during the Twelve Days of Christmas, when the house is full of company, and every meal is a feast. So when her woman had pinned in place the red velvet, looped-up hood, with its gable-shaped frame of gold wire and little pearls to lift it from the face; and had put round Dame Anne’s neck a chain with a ruby hanging from it, and a shorter chain that carried a little gold case in which was a hair of St. John of Beverley; and had clasped the gilt and enamel girdle with its swinging pomander ball, Dame Anne told her to go, and sat still in the cold room. The bed, in which she had slept alone, was disordered; a thin mist crept through the window shutters, so that the candles burnt in a haze. The huge, heavy woman, with her square, swarthy face, sat still, leaning her elbows on the arms of the chair and staring straight in front of her; you would have said that she thought of the bread, beef, or beer needed in the kitchen, or of subtleties for the master’s table; but it was not so. She had put all thoughts of these out of her mind and now she meditated upon Calvary.

  When her nephew Rafe knocked and came in she turned her face slowly towards him, and smiled. Rafe, being, as she was, a Bigod, neither missed nor misunderstood the beauty of the smile, but it made him angrier, and more determined to say all that he had come to say.

  She let him go through with it, listening patiently, not looking at him, but now and again moving the powder box on the hutch in front of her, or the comb or the nightcap, in her slow heavy way. And when he had finished she took her time before she answered him.

  ‘I bear it because it is that which Our Saviour has laid upon me to bear, and—’

  ‘But it dishonours us – it dishonours you and Frank and me – that he should have brought his bawd into this house.’

  She shook her head, rebuking him for the interruption, and finished, ‘and so I follow Him, though a long way off, and halting.’

  ‘God’s Death!’ cried Rafe, in a hot rage, but when she hushed him he was ashamed, for he understood her, since he shared with her, and with his elder brother, that same quality which made some call them the mad Bigods – as if a lute string had been tuned to a note too high for ordinary ears.

  Dame Anne lumbered up, like a cow rising in the meadow; she laid her hand for an instant along his cheek, meaning that the touch should speak for her, and it did. Rafe caught her hand to kiss it, and muttered, ‘Then we can suffer it too,’ while the blood ran up, bright as a girl’s, to his hair.

  ‘And now, nephew,’ Dame Anne said, going away from him to a chest at the foot of the bed, ‘you shall do an errand for me, if you will.’

  He said he would, and willingly, but when she told him what it was he was astonished and reluctant.

  ‘Yea, yea,’ he cried impatiently, ‘I can see that it is not the child’s fault that her sister is a bawd, but that you should send her a New Year’s gift – it seems – it seems—’

  Dame Anne came back and laid on his knee a little gay bunch of ribbon points.

  ‘Give them to her and bid her Merry Christmas. I chose them of bright colours such as children love.’ She went away from him, her heavy crimson gown hissing over the rushes. ‘Rafe,’ she said, not turning to him, but fingering the dribbled wax that had run down the side of a candle, ‘Rafe, she is not like a child, that poor little maid. I have watched her since – they came. None of the servants will speak with her, not one. And the lads tease her. One of them threw a dead cat at her. She didn’t cry out, or run, like a child. But she went past me, white as a ghost, and her eyes cast back like a hare’s when the dogs are close. A child should not look so.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Rafe – ‘Well, I’ll give it to her,’ and he went out.

  July was hovering at the kitchen door, looking and smelling. Inside the cooks ran about very hurried and hot, yet to-day never out of temper, and always with time enough to change jokes with any of the guests’ servants who sat along a bench, each man dandling a cup of ale. On the long spits at the fire there were rows of small birds, as well as capons and partridges, which whirled slowly this way, then that way, as the scullion boy turned the wheel. Below them on a bigger spit were rounds of beef, and a young pig, cut off at its middle and joined to the body of a fat goose. All these things hissed and spat, and smelt most toothsome. There were piles of mince pies on the table, and veal collops waiting for their s
auce, and eggs, saffron, raisins of the sun, half a sugar loaf, and a lot of little bottles of spices waiting to flavour the sauces; from the Pastry came the sweet scent of pies and tarts baking. July’s mouth watered, and then someone came up behind her and touched her arm, and she jumped round and away in the same movement.

  ‘Mistress,’ said Rafe, ‘I am to bid you Merry Christmas and to pray you have this gift from my Lady Anne.’

  July looked at the little bunch of bright ribbons, and Rafe looked at her, and saw what Dame Anne had seen, a child too young to have the right to that look of fear with which she had sprung from him. He was not only a Bigod, but also very young, and his mood changed in less than a breath from condemnation and disgust, to pity and rage for her sake. In the perturbation and enthusiasm of his feelings he cast the distance of the five years that were between them, and spoke like a boy of her own age.

  ‘Mistress July,’ he said, ‘have you seen that room where they found the bones of the man long dead, with gold pieces between his fingers?’

  ‘Oh!’ she whispered. ‘No!’

  ‘Shall I show it to you?’

  ‘Oh! – Yes!’

  The little room he led her to was in the oldest part of the house and Rafe pointed out the arched doorway which had been walled up and forgotten for many years. The room beyond was small, and even by day almost dark, because there was nothing to light it but a slot window, set high up in one wall. Rafe had to make a light and set it to a candle that stood on the heavy table. Besides the table there was only a trussing bed, a small iron-bound coffer, a few old swords in one corner, and a mousetrap in another.

  But here, at the table, Rafe said, they had once found a dead man, or at least his bones. The bones had been dressed in a gown of red silk such as came from Cathay, with patterns on it like feathers; a heavy belt had hung sagging about the thigh bones, made of square gilt bosses of goldsmith’s work and a precious stone in each square. On the table the dry, white finger-bones had clutched gold pieces of more than a hundred years ago.

  July shuddered with a not unpleasant horror. She was indeed so warm with happiness that even the terror of a dead man could not chill her. Dame Anne had forgiven her for being Meg’s sister.

  She sat down beside Master Rafe Bigod upon the bed. She was shy of him now, and would look nowhere but at the pretty ribbons as she turned them about her fingers. He, though she could not have supposed it of one so old and important, was shy too; his long sensitive face was bright with embarrassed colour. There were, he was discovering, so few things that he could say to her, seeing that she was Meg Cheyne’s sister. He wished, with passion, that he had not brought her here, then remembered his motive, and thereby found a topic which was not forbidden.

  ‘Mistress July,’ be broke out abruptly on the silence, ‘you should thank God that has given you licence to live in this time, for the Gospel of Christ was never so truly preached as it is now.’

  She looked up at him, startled and quite uncomprehending, and in the blankness of her surprise he read her need of instruction. He lost his shyness, and began to talk eagerly, looking at her, or beyond her, but always with a strange lit look, as though the things he spoke of were bright as a coloured sunset. July did not miss that look, but could not guess what caused it; he was telling her that the Mass was nothing, priests nothing, the Pope nothing, Our Lady nothing. Such a sweeping elimination left her disturbed and a little shocked, but not otherwise moved, for these matters were not such as she was used to give much thought to.

  Yet when he told her to come to the little room again to-morrow she promised him that she would.

  ‘I’ll read to you in a book I have; It is a godly book called The Prick of Conscience.’

  July did not find the title promising, but Rafe was Dame Anne’s nephew, and he and his aunt were the only people in the world – that she could remember – who treated her as herself, and not as Meg’s sister.

  January 5

  July came back to Meg’s room in the dusk. There was a little table near the fire set for two – that meant Sir John Bulmer would be coming to sup with Meg. Two boys with viols, and a flute player, whom Sir John had sent up, were tuning and trying their instruments, and even now the little fat lad, whom Sir John had given Meg for a page, was on his knee before her with a bowl of water, and the towel for her hands laid ready over his shoulder.

  July had hoped to slip in unnoticed, but Meg saw her directly, and called, ‘Sister! Sister!’

  July went near, till she stood behind the kneeling page, who turned his round apple-blossom face and blue eyes to stare at her; the women stared too, and July’s heart sank as she curtseyed.

  ‘And where,’ asked Meg, with her wild laughing glance that took in all the room, ‘where have you come from, creeping in so quiet as a nun?’

  July looked at her with her dark, unchildish look, but was silent.

  ‘Marry!’ Meg lifted her finger-tips from the water, and, laughing, splashed a few drops in July’s face. ‘Marry! Mistress Sly, but I know, and I’ll tell you – where, and who, and what. And when too – and when is to-day and every day of this New Year.’

  She told them also, truly enough, where and who, but when she began to tell what, July, whose face had changed from burning to white, stopped her.

  ‘We did not – He did not – I sat beside him on the bed, but—’

  The women so screeched with laughter that she stopped. Meg laughed too. ‘What then did he – and thou – and the pair of you if you did not that?’

  ‘He talked to me – of – of – he said the Mass was but a May game.’

  They cried ‘Fie! Fie!’ but they laughed again, perhaps believing her, for all knew the two young Bigods for the maddest heretics, yet teasing her. At last, hearing Sir John on the stairs, Meg hushed them. ‘Not a word more. But,’ she whispered before the door opened, ‘next time perhaps there’ll be a different tale to tell, for even godly young men may wax wanton at Christmas-time.’

  That night July lay long awake. Meg’s two women lay in the same room; one snored steadily; the other muttered now and again in her sleep. Outside the wind had risen; it moved like a great beast in the valley; sometimes by the sound it seemed to turn over and over and thrash about with its tail; sometimes it passed roaring by.

  July, cold and very unhappy, listened, trying to resolve what she must do. If she went not to the little room to-morrow Master Rafe would think her ungrateful. If she went – Meg had so soiled her with the words she used that July believed he would see it in her face. Besides, it seemed that Meg had soiled him too.

  The wind flung drumming showers against the window; after that there was a steady hush of rain as the wind ebbed; at last came the empty silence which wind and rain had left behind them, and in which snow began to fall. July slept. She had made up her mind that she could not bear to go.

  January 6

  It was nearly supper-time and already dark. July had sat all afternoon and evening industriously sewing, or obligingly singing, according as Meg desired silence or music. Now she began to believe that the day would pass safely, and perhaps to-morrow would take Master Rafe hunting, and the day after that – but she would go no further than to-day.

  Then the hue and cry began after Pourquoi, Meg’s little dog, who had a French name because he had been brought from Calais, and who was very dear to his mistress. They sought everywhere, under beds, on beds, in the attics, and at last Meg said that July and the women should go round and about the castle and even through the yards and outbuildings, carrying lights and whistling and calling for Pourquoi.

  So July went, but would in no wise part from the elder of the two women, though Gill had bidden her several times to ‘go seek you in that direction and I’ll go in this’. ‘No! No!’ July would say. ‘Let us go together.’

  They were crossing a little yard between the old spicery and the carpenter’s shop, when two gentlemen with a lanthorn came out of one of the buildings. At the sight of July and Gill standi
ng in the midst calling, ‘Pourquoi! Pourquoi!’ the shorter and stouter of these raised a laugh and a shout.

  ‘Mass!’ he cried, coming swaggering over to them. ‘What’s here? Bring the light, Rafe.’ Gill, giggling delightedly, would have boxed his ears; he caught her by the wrists, laughing, then swearing, then silent, because she was a strong wench and bold. They struggled together, in a violent, unseemly fashion that grew more and more ugly, until his foot slipped in the trodden snow of the yard, and then he stumbled and loosed her. She fled, but when he had recovered he was after her. The other two heard her scream, heard him laugh, and then there was silence, and they stood alone in the little yard, Rafe Bulmer still stupidly holding aloft the lanthorn that the other had bidden him bring near.

  By its light July could see that he was dressed very fine in brocade the colour of ripening corn; she saw too that his face was flushed and loosened with wine.

  He looked down at her. After what they had just seen her shrinking was a provocation. He remembered also that her sister was John Bulmer’s bawd.

  ‘I – I seek my sister’s little dog,’ she said breathlessly, hoping to fend off with words that which Meg loved to angle for.

  ‘Why did you not come to the little chamber this forenoon?’ he asked. When she only shook her head, ‘Nay. You shall tell me,’ he persisted.

  Her eyes, avoiding his, were caught by the gleam of the jewels in his cap. She tried, faintly and clumsily, to fence with him.

  ‘What is that pretty thing?’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘In your cap.’

  He pulled off his cap and looked at the little gold and jewelled brooch.

  ‘Leda and her swan,’ he told her, and met her eyes and saw them flinch. ‘No, by the Mass,’ he thought, ‘she’s no innocent.’