The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  He was sure of it when she persisted, with a smile he took for brazen, ‘Who – who was she?’

  ‘I’ll tell you the story. Come up with me to the little room.’

  She went, dumb and helpless. She was helpless because he was Dame Anne’s nephew – one of the good people, quite different from Meg. She knew that he was so, therefore if she said she would not go, she could not tell him why. Indeed there was no reason, for surely there could be nothing to fear. Yet she shook with fear.

  There was a little stair leading up from the old spicery into the ancient part of the castle. They climbed up it, by the light of Rafe’s lanthorn, July going first, he coming after with his hand on her all the time.

  *

  Dame Anne had gone down to speak to the Clerk of the Kitchen because when Sir John had called for figs to eat at the fireside in the Great Chamber, where he and his guests sat together talking and telling stories, and singing now and again, the Clerk of the Kitchen had sent back word that there were no figs.

  So Dame Anne went down, found the Clerk and took him with her to look; she moved about in the dark corners of the store-room, while he carried a torch after her.

  ‘I know there was a coppet of figs,’ she muttered. ‘I know it was not opened. What is that?’

  ‘A coppet of great raisins, Madame.’

  ‘I know,’ she repeated, dogged and distressed, ‘that there is a coppet of figs.’ Then she turned, to tell him to bring the torch nearer, and saw that he had backed a little away, and was staring out along the little passage, staring and smiling. She did not like the smile.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded.

  ‘Madame, nothing.’ He was grave at once, and came near again with the torch.

  She went to the door and looked out.

  ‘There is no one there.’ Her mind returned to the figs. Sir John was displeased that they were lacking, displeased too that she had come to look for them. He would be more displeased still if she were away long. She turned again into the stillroom, and as she turned remembered the little dim room along the passage. She guessed what sort of thing it was that the Clerk had seen, and was angry.

  ‘Did you,’ she asked him, ‘see someone go into the chamber there?’

  He hesitated, and she stamped her foot.

  ‘You did? Who? Who?’

  He mumbled something about Christmas.

  ‘And you think the men and wenches have licence to be wanton because it is a holy feast. But I’ll not have it. Not in my—’ she stopped short because it came back into her mind with a new shame and desolation that her own husband thought he had licence to be wanton, in her house. But though she flushed a hot, ugly red before the man’s face she did not turn away.

  ‘Go and knock on the door,’ she told him. ‘Bid them come out.’

  ‘Madame,’ he said, hastily and confusedly, ‘let alone. It is nothing. They have come here each day,’ he added, as if that made it better.

  She went out of the stillroom, and he came behind her, half sorry, half relishing the humour of it. When she had thumped on the door and flung it open he was at her shoulder, peering in.

  But Dame Anne did not let him stay, and when she had driven him off she sent Rafe also away. He, who had never before seen his aunt angry, was frightened by her. He tried to hold his ground, tried to assure her lightly that a few kisses were all; all he intended, all he’d got, and that they were nothing. ‘There was no more.’ He turned to July for her to confirm that, but she had her hands still over her face, and they could see her whole body shake.

  He shouted at her, suddenly angry.

  ‘As if you knew naught of such things. As if you had never seen, nor heard – You with a sister who—’

  He went then because Dame Anne said, ‘Go,’ and he dared not linger. She shut the door behind him, and then she turned and spoke to July. She had suffered her husband to bring his bawd to the house where she lived. She would not suffer that another of that corrupt blood should befoul Rafe – Rafe who was almost more her own than her own boys, being Bigod as she herself was Bigod. She proceeded, slowly and implacably, to maul July with words. If she could have killed with words, she would have killed.

  January 8

  Lord Darcy had with him his steward, Thomas Strangways, who had just reached London. They had turned their backs on the table, littered with papers, pens and ink, rolls of accounts, and the sheepskin pouches that held wax, seals, laces, scissors, and all the things needed for letters or chirographs. Now they sat side by side on the settle before the fire, with a dish of winter apples between them, exchanging news of the North for news of London where doings were greater and graver.

  Strangways listened while Darcy talked, rasping his forefinger down the bristles of his hard weather-beaten cheek. He was a man of a few years younger than Darcy, with a look open, choleric and bold. They had been good friends ever since the days when Darcy had been Captain of Berwick Castle and Strangways gentleman porter of the city.

  ‘And so,’ said my Lord, ‘this Parliament is set to do fine things, at the King’s bidding. For the King will make Bishops now, and is Head of the Church, and not the Pope.’

  ‘That,’ said Strangways, ‘he cannot be. How can a secular man be Head of the Church? Will he be Head of all Christendom?’ His face was flushed up to his hair by the heat of the fire or by indignation. ‘Not of all Christendom, but of the Church in England only.’

  ‘But there’s no more than one Church Catholic.’ When Darcy let that go in silence Strangways muttered, ‘Will this thing be suffered?’ and a little later, ‘If man will not, then shall we surely see God Himself take a hand.’

  ‘There was—’ Darcy spoke at last, ‘this Nun in Kent with her visions that the King should not live, but he has lived, and she and those that trusted her are like to die instead. Soon there will be a Bill brought in to attaint them.’

  He looked sideways at Strangways as if uncertain whether to say more or hold his tongue. Then he said:

  ‘I did myself, with many others, think that God might speak by that poor soul. If it had been so—’ He broke off. ‘When I was a younger man than I am now, I took upon me a Crusade.’ Again he glanced at Strangways, sharply, as if with suspicion. ‘But in this matter I know not – I know not—’ he muttered.

  Strangways shook his head heavily. He said that there was a woman that they talked of in Swaledale, at a Priory there, that had seen a vision of late. Or so it was said in those parts.

  Darcy swung round at him. Who was she, this woman? Nun or no? Who had told Strangways of her? Was she known for a person of holy life? Last of all he asked, ‘What was it then that she saw?’ Strangways said that it was a showing of shepherds and angels on Christmas Eve.

  ‘How? Tell me as you heard it.’

  Strangways crossed his legs, and picking up an apple from the dish dandled it in his palm as he talked. The woman had seen – no, had heard, and partly by starlight seen – said she had heard and seen the blessed shepherds go by as she looked out at a little low window; they were going to find the Holy Child. And she said also that she had heard the angels sing that same night, though the words they sang she could not rehearse, ‘being a simple creature, as I was told’.

  ‘Go on,’ said my Lord.

  ‘The fellow told me that the woman said, “It was deep, deep dark, smelling of frost, with stars by the thousand. I heard them laugh and shout, and their dogs bark.” And she says, “The shepherds sang ‘Ut hoy’, and ‘Tirly Tirlow’.”’

  ‘And the singing of the angels?’

  ‘That was after.’

  ‘She saw them?’

  ‘They say, no. She said, “I saw them not, for I suppose they had put out all the lights of heaven and set open the windows that they might see him in the stable low down in the Dale.” She spoke much of peace also, so they say.’ Strangways pulled down the corners of his mouth and shook his head, but sadly.

  ‘It will serve,’ said Lord Darcy, and he laughed sof
tly.

  Strangways turned and stared. The old lord had his chin on his fist, gazing into the fire. As he sat there with his fine features, proud head, and hair warmed again to gold by the light of the fire, he looked almost a young man.

  ‘You cannot,’ said Strangways, ‘give the tale credit! Why! shall she not have heard some fellows go singing by to the ale-house? And as to the angels, what of the Ladies at their Matins and Lauds?’

  ‘Many will credit it,’ said Darcy. ‘Shall I tell you for why? Listen then. This Nun of Kent saw, or said she saw, devils whispering Queen Anne Boleyn in the ear; and when the Cardinal died, a disputation of devils. Such things move discontents. Such things may be feigned of men, using a fool, in order to move discontents.

  ‘But this talk of angels and of shepherds – it is so simple it smells all of truth indeed.’

  Strangways fidgeted on the bench. ‘Yet,’ he said, ‘there is in it nothing to our purpose.’

  ‘She can be taught to utter some words of solemnity, and so we can use her and her visions.’

  Strangways scowled and muttered something about, ‘...like this poor fool of Kent.’ Darcy looked at him quickly.

  ‘You would not have me use her?’

  ‘They spoke of her as a very simple poor creature.’

  ‘Ah! Tom,’ said Darcy, ‘none would think, to look at that leathern face of yours, that it hid so pitiful a mind. You’d not have me bring another poor fool into peril of her life?’

  ‘If the North rise for a right cause,’ Strangways grumbled, ‘what need to use her?’

  Lord Darcy did not answer. A strange doubt had touched him. For if these things were indeed of God, ‘it is my own soul I bring in peril,’ he thought.

  After a moment he laid his arm across Strangways’ shoulders, and said, ‘God forgive us worldly men, and bless the poor humble folk, for Christ was born in a manger.’

  January 9

  Meg stopped July at the door of the winter parlour. She caught July’s shoulder and pressed it so hard that her rings bit on July’s bone.

  ‘Now mark and remember!’ she whispered. ‘Whether or no there was more than kisses I shall say there was, for so shall I wring out advantage for you. And do you say the same.’

  July wriggled in silence; Meg loosed her shoulder, opened the door, and marched in, braving them all with her heavy body, great with a seven-month child, and her face quick as bright flame. Sir John stood with one foot on the hearth; Dame Anne sat opposite him, her fingers straining at her beads; Rafe straddled a bench under the window, and glowered down at a little toy of a dagger he wore. His brother, Sir Francis Bigod, older, thinner, and with a kind of noble ferocity of look, sat on a settle, and kept his eyes, blue and hard, upon his brother. Beside Sir Francis on the settle was Sir John Bulmer’s brother, Sir Rafe Bulmer of Marrick, and beyond him Sir Rafe’s wife Nan followed with her finger down the page of a book on her knee, reading how best to shoe jennets.

  There was no place for Meg, except Sir John’s own great chair, and Dame Anne, sitting broad as a crouching frog, dared Meg with her eyes to take it. But then Sir Francis sprang up, and Meg, going by him with a very sweet, kind look, sat down in his seat. He met that look with one of such disgust that even Meg’s cheeks tingled at it, and on the settle Sir Rafe slid himself away from her, crowding up on his wife. No one marked July, stiff as wood by the door.

  Meg looked round at them all and laughed her high wild laugh, and plunged at once into battle.

  The clamour of tongues died after a while. Meg sat panting, her hand to her side, biting her lip at Sir John, who had just bid her be silent for a fool: ‘You’re mad to think that Rafe should marry the little bastard – no matter whether the lad had—’

  Dame Anne broke in there in her harsh deep voice, speaking only to her husband.

  ‘And no matter whether, either she or I shall go from Wilton.’

  ‘Fie!’ cried Meg, ‘turn from the door a gentlewoman so wronged!’

  ‘A wanton and a bastard.’

  ‘God’s Death! Peace!’ cried Sir John, for this was to begin all over again, and then he repeated for the third or fourth time that there’d be no harm done, and no blame if they married the little wench to a good, sober yeoman.

  ‘Disparagement!’ Meg cried once more, and shot a flaming proud glance at them all. ‘Bastard she may be, but of a House that overmatches any blood here.’

  Sir Rafe Bulmer of Marrick had said nothing all the time, but now he broke in with a laugh, liking Meg for her beauty and her spirit.

  ‘Make the lass a nun,’ said he.

  ‘No!’ said Sir Francis Bigod.

  They all turned to look at him. He came and stood in the midst, and again said, ‘No.’ There was on his face that shining look July had seen in Rafe.

  ‘Will you,’ he asked, ‘so choose them that are to serve God? If my brother have deflowered the maid he shall marry her.’

  ‘Frank!’ cried Dame Anne, ‘I’ll not endure it.’

  ‘Aunt,’ he rebuked her, ‘you and I and he alike must endure it. It is the punishment of his sin.’

  ‘But,’ Nan Bulmer’s cool light voice came gently upon a shocked silence, ‘if the little wench should choose to be a nun?’

  ‘She? She will not!’ Dame Anne looked at July and the look said, plain as words, ‘A whore, and a whore’s sister.’

  ‘But ask her.’

  ‘Do you then,’ Rafe Bulmer told his wife.

  ‘Would you,’ said Nan, ‘be married, Mistress, or be a nun?’

  July, seeing all their faces turned on her, grew white and choked. She had not followed all that was said, but now this was clear.

  She cried suddenly, shrill as a whistle—

  ‘I will not be married to him. I will be a nun.’

  When all the rest had gone out, July the last of them and least noticed, Rafe Bulmer drew his wife to the window.

  ‘How will this fadge?’ said he. ‘Bastards should not be nuns.’

  ‘Dame Christabel will not care for that, so as the wench brings her dower.’

  He whistled. ‘Dame Christabel! You mean – fetch her to Marrick? ‘A God’s name, why?’

  ‘I do not like her sister,’ Nan told him; and when he laughed at her and said that was because Meg was so fair and beautiful a creature, she said no, it was not for that reason. ‘You know I like well that women should be fair. But I like not her.’

  He pondered over that a moment and then came back to the matter in hand.

  ‘The other Ladies may not be willing to have the girl.’

  She smiled. ‘Dame Christabel will not care for that neither.’ After a moment she gave a small laugh. ‘Those mad Bigods! There goes Frank braying out that young Rafe must suffer for wronging the wench, and the wench was never wronged.’

  ‘How dost thou know?’

  Nan looked at him with her faint grave smile.

  ‘I asked her, since none else thought to. She said, “No.”’

  ‘Then why—? But she may have lied.’

  Nan said no, she was sure July had not lied, – ‘and she is virtuous.’

  ‘What! With that sister? Though she’s but little more than a child.’

  ‘Child or woman, so she is,’ Nan told him positively. ‘And that is why she hates her sister.’

  January 20

  Those two of Queen Katherine’s ladies whose duty it was to-day to fetch food for the Queen’s breakfast met again near the door of the Pastry. Both had pink noses and blue fingers, for the air was sharp, and the perpetual winter chill of the waterlogged country all round made it colder still in the late dawn. One of the two had been waiting for the milking; watching from the door of the dark shippen, where the lanterns cast huge shadows, and caught here the cross beams of the roof, there the wide shining eye of a cow, and there the thin steam of its breath, puffing, spreading and fainting from sight. Now she brought again the pitchers full of the warm, frothed milk, and found the other waiting, stamping her feet, with a
white loaf and some eggs in a basket, and on top of the eggs a fish.

  Neither of these ladies was young, and therefore there was nothing amusing, either in having to fetch the food, or in having to cook it over the fire in the Queen’s Chamber. They did what they had to do in silence for the most part, and with set lips; they beat the eggs for the posset with anger and impatience, and having set the fish to broil, fastidiously wiped their fingers. From the further side of the room a yet older lady came and looked down at the fish, already hissing and steaming in the heat.

  ‘Is that – safe?’

  The lady who had brought it nodded. ‘Quite safe. I took it from among those for the Chamberlain’s own table. I tumbled off all that were on top. No one could have known that this was the one I would take. And I did the same with the loaves.’

  ‘Well,’ said the elder lady doubtfully, ‘I suppose there can be nothing unhonest therein.’ Not for worlds would any of them have used the word poison.

  ‘Jesu! You’d have Her Grace live wholly upon eggs, I think,’ the other replied sharply, having been a little proud of her foraging. But then they were silent, because the door opened and Queen Katherine came in from Mass. She smiled at them all, a smile which was sweet as it had always been, but which left her face dead when it faded. She sat down at the table and leaned her head upon her hand; even when they served her she still seemed to need that help to bear it up, and so toyed with the food listlessly, with one hand.

  While she was eating there came to the door the new servants appointed by the King to her Household, with dishes for her breakfast. They were told that my Lady’s Grace was already served, and went away without surprise or demur; it was well known to them by now that the Princess Dowager would now eat nothing but what was fetched and cooked by her own people.

  February 1

  The setting sun was flooding the top of the fells with gold as Sir Rafe Bulmer and his people came back towards Marrick. Near Langshaw Cross they caught up with the shepherd bringing back the Manor sheep. The servant behind whom July rode stopped to talk to Shepherd; the sheep stayed about him; when you looked at them against the golden light they seemed all to be steeped in violent purple.