The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  ‘Sir,’ Gib said, leaning on the hedge-stake he carried, ‘Sir, last Sunday I heard you pray for the Bishop of Rome.’

  ‘You heard me—?’

  ‘I was in the Parish Church. I heard you well through the grille. You said quite clear, “Oremus et pro beatissimo Papa nostro.”’

  The Nuns’ Priest ruffled up and became very dignified.

  ‘I shall so pray,’ said he, ‘till I have further command to the contrary.’

  Gib heard footsteps behind him above the tumult of the wind. He turned and saw that the smith was coming up and was indeed quite near. In a moment he ranged up alongside Gib and stood looking down at the Nuns’ Priest.

  ‘It is forbidden that any priest should pray for the Bishop of Rome,’ Gib said in his grating voice, and hearing that the smith cried, ‘Ho! Marry! Say you so. Doth he pray yet for the Bishop of Rome?’

  The Nuns’ Priest had grown red and a little flustered, but he held his ground, saying again that he would so pray till commanded to the contrary.

  ‘Yea! Cock’s Bones!’ shouted the smith, who had been drinking at Grinton. ‘Will you pray for Dr. Pupsie though it’s forbidden?’ and he began to slap his thighs and to laugh uproariously at his joke, repeating, ‘Dr. Pupsie! Dr. Pupsie!’

  The little Priest grew nearly purple and he spluttered.

  ‘Mass!’ he cried, ‘and if it be forbidden by these new laws! Yea, nowadays we have many new laws. And if we take no heed I trow we shall have a new God shortly,’ and he put his head down and moved forward with such decision that both Gib and the smith made way, and the Nuns’ Priest went on towards the Priory.

  Gib and the smith continued along the road in the other direction. The smith was very noisy, laughing and hooting and shouting, ‘Dr. Pupsie.’ Gib stalked on in silence, angry almost as much with him as with the Nuns’ Priest and all other idolaters.

  May 15

  ‘What does it mean?’ said the old Treasurer of Paul’s who had kept one of the three keys of the Cathedral Treasure for the last thirty years. He turned over the letter of Master Cromwell, the King’s Chief Secretary, and peered at it upside-down.

  ‘Surely,’ one of the Canons told him, ‘it means that the King has been informed of this precious little crucifix of ours and hath taken a high affection and pleasure of the sight of the same, even as the letter saith.’

  ‘And,’ said another Canon, a big, gaunt man, with a sour face, ‘it means that seeings will be keepings.’

  ‘Fie!’ the first rebuked him, while the old Treasurer looked from one to another. ‘It means that we shall tender the same to His Grace as a free gift, trusting in his charitable goodness towards our Church of St. Paul.’

  ‘And as little daring to refuse,’ said the tall Canon, ‘as any way-faring traveller dare refuse a robber his desire.’

  ‘Fie!’ the first Canon cried again, and others too. ‘To liken the King’s Grace to a robber!’

  The tall Canon denied that he had done so. ‘It is the Chief Secretary that writ the letter,’ he argued.

  But all of them felt that the less said the better, and that, whether they liked it or not, they had no choice but to make the gift. So the first Canon was set to write a letter to Master Cromwell, and the old Treasurer together with the Dean and the Sacrist went with their three keys to open the Treasure House, where the precious little crucifix lay.

  And when he had taken it out the old Treasurer dandled it in his hands, trying, with his bleared old eyes, to see it by the light of the torch they had brought. It was very precious and beautiful, for it was of pure gold, with a rich ruby in the side, besides four great diamonds, four great emeralds, four large balases, and twelve great orient pearls. The old man began to cry over it, because indeed he could not think that it was right that the King should have it, seeing that it belonged to God and to St. Paul.

  May 20

  Of a sudden it was summer. The sun shone and cuckoo shouted day long. Among the thorn bushes below Gawnless Wood the grass was clouded blue with bluebells. The Nuns’ Priest climbing the stairs to the Prioress’s Chamber felt the delicate stir of the gracious season, which was warmth and a vibration, and a note of singing just too high for human hearing; but he sighed as he raised his hand to knock.

  The Prioress was feeding the small brown bitch which had whelped lately, so she heard him first with only half her attention. But when his meaning became clear she put down the platter for the animal to feed or not as it would. He was asking her whether she would have him disobey the King’s command, and continue to pray for the Pope.

  ‘Disobey?’ she cried, at once seeing danger to the House. ‘No, you shall not.’

  ‘I have till now disobeyed,’ he said.

  She had not noticed it, but then one did not attend to every word that was said in Church.

  She repeated, ‘You shall not disobey. It might imperil the House.’

  He fidgeted with his feet and ran the thong of his belt backwards and forwards through the buckle so that the leather made little sharp slaps as he drew it tight.

  ‘I thought—’ he began, ‘I fear – Madame, I cannot think it well, that which is now done. There is the whole Church Catholic which prays for His Holiness; how can we alone forbear?’

  The Prioress sat down in her chair and looked him over with more attention than she had given him for many a long day. She could not have expected, she thought, to find such a strain of scrupulosity in a man so round, so pampered, so easy. His gown was of very fine cloth of a dark crimson, and the sleeves were lined with silk; his fair hair, thin now, was as carefully laid in waves as ever; but his little mouth was troubled. She was honestly sorry for him, but he must not be allowed to damage the House. She tried subtlety.

  ‘Sir,’ said she, ‘I think you are in the right. But these things which are new – I do not look for them long to endure. Soon we shall see them laid by, and all return as it was.’

  ‘You think so?’ he cried. He was ready to think so himself. He had said, miserably, what conscience had goaded him to say, but he had no lust for the martyr’s part. He had been a sorely frightened man when he came in to the Prioress, and here was balm.

  She told him she did think so indeed, and truly!

  ‘Then what shall I do?’

  She was going to say ‘Conform!’ but something obstinate about his look made her alter that into, ‘Go away from here for a little time. Let me say you are sick. Go and stay with the good yeoman your brother. There you can sing your Masses to the sheep and none wiser if you pray for the Pope or no.’

  He demurred a little, but not much. Only what would the Ladies do for a priest? The Prioress said, ‘Sir Gilbert can sing our Masses for us.’

  The Priest frowned at that and muttered that he thought sometimes Sir Gilbert was half a heretic.

  ‘Then,’ cried the Prioress gaily, ‘when you return you shall convert and lead us back into Holy Church. And we’ll all bear faggots on our necks and wear white shifts.’

  She would not take the matter seriously any more, and soon the Priest cheered up, and drank some wine before he left.

  He stood for a moment outside the Prioress’s door and felt again the touch of the sweet day on his face. When he had paused here before the chill of fear had impaired the sweetness. Now, as well as a blessed relief, there was only a very slight twinge of dissatisfaction in his mind; but that, he was sure, would pass.

  July 1

  The flecks of blue and ruby and thin grass green which the sun cast on the pavement through the coloured windows of Westminster Hall had slid only an imperceptible distance when the jury came back, so short a time had it taken them to decide on their verdict.

  Sir Thomas More saw them file in and lifted his head to meet what was to come.

  When they were silent Lord Chancellor Audley asked them, ‘Guilty, or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty,’ they said, and the Chancellor stood up and pronounced the sentence of death.

  More, who had sat so st
ill, shifted now in his chair. He unclasped his hands from the little ivory crucifix on his knee, laid them instead upon the arms of the chair, and leaned forward. They all watched him and silence fell as the crowd in the Hall hushed itself to listen.

  ‘My Lords,’ he said, ‘since I am condemned – and God knows how – I wish to speak freely of your statute, for the discharge of my conscience.’ Audley opened his mouth and shut it again. ‘For the seven years that I have studied the matter, I have not read in any approved doctor of the Church that a temporal Lord could or ought to be head of the Spiritualty.’

  ‘What, More!’ cried the Chancellor now, and laughed derisively, ‘You wish to be considered wiser and of better conscience than all the Bishops and Nobles of the realm?’ and he picked up the posy of sweet smelling flowers and herbs before him, and smelt at it, and laughed again, glancing at the other Lords for their approval. Sir Thomas waited till a few of them had laughed, and then began speaking again.

  ‘My Lord Chancellor, for one Bishop of your opinion I have a hundred Saints of mine; and for one Parliament of yours, and God knows of what kind, I have all the General Councils for a thousand years. And for one kingdom, I have France and all the kingdoms of Christendom.’

  ‘Now,’ Norfolk broke in, and beat his fist on the table before him, ‘Now is your malice clear!’

  ‘My Lord,’ said More, ‘what I say is necessary for the discharge of my conscience and satisfaction of my soul, and to this I call God to witness, the sole Searcher of human hearts.

  ‘I say further that your Statute is ill made, because you have sworn never to do anything against the Church, which through all Christendom is one and undivided, and you have no authority, without the common consent of all Christians, to make a law, or Act of Parliament, or Council, against the unity of Christendom.’

  He paused and seemed to have finished, but as Audley half stood up he raised his hand, and the Lord Chancellor sat down again, and then fidgeted upon his chair as though the seat were red hot; but much as he might have liked to interrupt, he did not.

  ‘I know well,’ said Sir Thomas More, ‘that the reason why you have condemned me is because I have never been willing to consent to the King’s second marriage.’

  He looked along the row of his judges, his eyes dwelling longest on Audley, and Norfolk, and there came into his face the flicker of a smile only a little merry, but very gentle.

  ‘I hope, my Lords, in the divine goodness and mercy, that as St. Paul, and St. Stephen whom he persecuted, are now friends in Paradise, so we, though differing in this world, shall be united in perfect charity in the other. And I pray God to protect the King, and give him good counsel.’

  They all knew that he had finished there, but you could have counted ten before the Lord Chancellor stood up.

  ‘Take the prisoner away,’ he said.

  July 3

  Gib came back with the other men from the harvest; it was dusk now and they had been out since daybreak, yet still the fields were only half cut, and if this short spell of fine weather broke in thunder, as it was threatening, there was little hope of saving a quarter of the hay, after all the weeks of rain. It was of this that the men talked, looking up at the heavy sky, as they tramped homewards, weary as dogs that have hunted day long. One by one they turned off to their houses; by the time Gib came in sight of the smithy he was alone.

  One of the smith’s little girls stood inside the wide door; he could see in the dark the glimmer of her shift, which was all she wore. As he came nearer she skipped back into the shop, and when Gib came abreast of the doorway the smith was there. ‘Hi! Sir Gilbert,’ said he. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Not now,’ Gib was saying, but he saw the smith make a sign with his hand; it was a sign Gib understood, so he turned in at once. The little girl had been lurking in the shadows of the smithy, but she slipped away into the yard behind as Gib came in.

  ‘When did he come?’ asked Gib, as the smith laid his hand on the latch of the house door.

  ‘Not half an hour ago.’

  He opened the door and Gib saw Master Trudgeover sitting by the hearth, with the smith’s two youngest, one on each of his knees, his big rough bristly face bent over them while they looked up at him with eyes as round as bird’s eyes, and chirped to him in their small voices which were almost the voices of birds.

  The smith wanted Gib to sit down to supper with them all, but Gib would not, and would have Master Trudgeover come along at once to the parsonage, ‘for he’ll be safest there,’ said he; but what he wanted more was to have Master Trudgeover’s attention drawn from these piping youngsters and turned instead upon heavenly things. Gib wished to discourse with him upon the blessedness of the new knowledge of God, and with that upon the rewards prepared for those that accepted it, and the vengeance for those who refused.

  So, though Trudgeover seemed a little unwilling, Gib insisted. ‘Bring the others with you when it grows dark,’ said he to the smith. ‘If they came here there’s no knowing who might not chance in.’ That was true enough, while on the other hand few knocked at the door of the parsonage, except the smith and these same known men, who would come there to read together in their books.

  Trudgeover put down the two children and laid his large hands on their heads; Gib heard him bless them. They went out into the twilight. Once Trudgeover stopped and looked back; the smith’s children were strung out right across the road waving to him, but in silence, because even the smallest knew that he was a secret; he waved back, and kissed his hand.

  A minute after Gib heard him sigh and say, ‘I’ve five childer at home in Norfolk.’

  Gib had never known that Trudgeover was a married man, and it meant little to him now. He thought of him only as the tramping preacher, whom sometimes he despised for his lack of learning and clumsy schoolboy jokes, and sometimes admired to the pitch of reverence for his way of kindling the simple, heavy countrymen till they glowed like the iron on the smith’s anvil, and laughed or shed tears, as Trudgeover chose.

  ‘I’ve heard no word of them for this four month,’ the preacher told him; but Gib said nothing to that, and in a few minutes asked what the news was where he had come from, and Trudgeover began to tell him how Master Cromwell, now the King’s Vicar-General over the whole Church of England, was with the King in his hunting this summer, and, as the King hunted, Master Cromwell visited the monasteries, making record of their treasures, turning away those monks and nuns that had taken the vow too young, giving licence to depart to any who chose, and threatening the rest with such an enforced strictness in keeping the Rule that none would be able to abide it. Trudgeover was very merry at the expense of the monks, and Gib endured it with a bitter smile, because it was good news to him, but nothing to the purpose for making jokes.

  At the parsonage they found supper behindhand because Wat had gone off on some business of his own without drawing water. ‘And I,’ said Gib’s mother, ‘must needs wait an hour or more till Goodman Tod came by and I could ask him to bring me a pailful.’ The old woman could not now do all that she had used to do, being often ailing, and sometimes in great pain.

  Master Trudgeover said that for his part he was well content to wait for supper, but Gib was very angry. He went out into the garden, and they heard him calling for Wat, each time more fiercely. After a while he gave up calling, and soon came back with his hands full of salad stuff from the garden. ‘We’ll begin with cheese and these,’ said he, ‘while the bacon’s seething.’ He lingered at the door for a minute and said, ‘The rain won’t be long.’ Then he barred the door.

  The rain began while they were still eating bread and cheese and the cool, dripping salad stuff. It was very heavy. Soon after it began they all heard the latch rattle.

  The old woman tittered. ‘There’s my fine varlet.’ Trudgeover looked at Gib, but Gib helped himself to more cheese and said nothing. Trudgeover fidgeted, kept looking towards the door and losing the thread of his talk. At last he broke off.

  ‘Br
other, let the little lad in to his supper.’

  Gib crunched a radish between his teeth. ‘There’s no supper for him.’ ‘Then let him in to bed.’ ‘He can bed with the pigs. He’s an ill-conditioned knave.’

  Trudgeover laid down his knife.

  ‘I shall let him in.’

  Gib stood up too. He met Trudgeover’s eye, and then, to his extreme anger, found that he could not meet it. He unbarred the door, and Wat came slinking in; he had his cap in his hands, full of wild raspberries.

  Gib caught him by the collar of his jacket, and, when he had driven the door to with his foot, shook him. The lad was so thin and ragged, and now so drenched, that he looked like an old clout hung on the line and shaken by the wind. Then Gib hauled him over to the little closet under the stairs and, throwing him in, shot the bolt on him.

  They finished their supper in silence, and even when the smith and the other ‘known men’ had come in Master Trudgeover seemed different – less eloquent than usual, speaking of mildness and mercy rather than of God’s glory or God’s judgements. And when the rest of the company had gone, in the last of the dwindling rain, he and Gib did not sit up together reading and talking by the rushlight. Trudgeover said he would to bed betimes against the morning, and certainly he was yawning, so that all his big yellow teeth showed. Gib said he was weary with the reaping, and they went up together in silence, and in silence undressed.

  Trudgeover soon fell asleep, but Gib could not. At first he said to himself that it was the heat, or his bedfellow’s snoring, which was indeed prodigious. But at last he admitted to himself that it was neither of these which kept him awake. How could any man suffer patiently a dumb fool like Wat, an ill-conditioned, idle, malicious imp? Lads must learn by beating. He himself had been beaten often enough. But for him Wat would have been a miners’ lad, and what was that better than a slave? Yet always, as he disputed with his own thoughts, he knew clearly at last a thing he had long blindly known: in Wat he had brought the old sin to dog his steps close as his own shadow; he hated Wat, and that was a new sin. With horror the thought came to him that he had, as it were, begotten sin upon sin.