The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  When the solemn Mass was over they buried her before the lowest step of the high altar, laying over the stone a simple black cloth.

  *

  That same day at Westminster, as rain began to slash at the palace windows in an early twilight, a man in a sober black gown came to a door in the palace, knocked, and with a backward glance to see that none watched him, slipped in.

  A young man, with a long, pale, disdainful face, was writing at a table. He let his eyebrows run up towards his fair hair at the intrusion. But the other said, ‘My master is one of the doctors to the Queen’s Grace.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sir Edward Seymour stood up. Under his dignity he was eager. ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘She hath miscarried.’

  ‘Of a boy or girl?’

  ‘Of a male child.’

  ‘Not that that matters,’ Sir Edward corrected himself coldly, and the doctor’s servant let the corners of his lips drop in a sour smile. It mattered much for the Queen’s Grace.

  ‘Tell me—’ Seymour was easing a pearl ring from his forefinger, and the other, keeping his eyes away from it, began to talk, doctor’s stuff at first, which was mere words to the uninstructed, but afterwards things more understandable.

  ‘As soon as she could speak,’ said he, ‘she asked her woman “Knave or girl?” and when they said, “Knave,” she let out a cry, and on that same moment swore that the fault was her uncle’s the Duke of Norfolk, because he had told her that the King had fallen in the tilt-yard. “And he looked so white and wizen,” says she, “I thought His Grace was dead, the which pierced my heart like a dagger, and I shrieked, and the pains came.”’

  ‘His Grace hath been told?’

  The doctor’s servant nodded as he took the ring from Seymour’s fingers, and now he let his eyes take a look at it, before he put it by in his pouch, and tightened and knotted the strings. It was a ring of price, and according to his lights he was a man who liked to be honest, and give value for money. He came close and whispered.

  ‘I spoke with him who brought the news to His Grace. He heard the King say that now he was sure that black sorcery had been the means by which he was brought to this present unhappy marriage.’

  Sir Edward put by the fellow’s hand from his arm, and said stiffly that news, so it were true, should always find its reward. When the doctor’s servant had gone off, circumspectly, he also came out from the room, and went up through the Palace towards the chambers of the Queen’s Maids, to find his sister, Mistress Jane Seymour. He thought it well she should be told all that he had just heard.

  February 4

  Dinner at Marrick Manor began with veal chawetts, and for a while the Prioress and Dame Nan talked of how these should be cooked. The Priory made its chawetts with wine, a little verjuice, and dates, raisins, currants and mace. These chawetts of the Bulmers had green cheese in them, and no wine nor dried fruits. The Prioress professed herself eager for the receipt, and Dame Nan said over her shoulder, ‘See to it, John,’ and one of the men waiting answered her, ‘Aye, Mistress.’

  But after that more and more the Prioress directed her conversation towards Sir Rafe, so that by the time the cloths were drawn, the servants gone away, and the three of them private (which was what the Prioress had asked for) Dame Nan’s face was set hard as a stone, and she sat beside the Prioress on the settle, remote and pale, looking down at her hands idle in her lap, while the Prioress leaned towards Sir Rafe in his chair, and told him of all that the Visitors had done and said, of Dr. Layton’s warnings, and Dr. Legh’s counsel, and thus came to the point of her errand, and the dire need of the House.

  ‘Well,’ said Sir Rafe at the end of it all, ‘if you will sell me those closes up at Owlands—’

  ‘No. But I will lease you the west side of Owlands Bargh.’

  ‘Sell it, and you shall have that which will content Cromwell.’

  They haggled about that for some time, while Dame Nan sat mute, only her chin lifted a little higher.

  When they had agreed at last, the Prioress got up to go, so they all stood, but Dame Nan moved a pace aside to separate herself from them, and looked out of the window at the garden deep in snow and shining in the sun. The Prioress was telling Sir Rafe how his brother Sir John would not pay the dower of Julian Savage this Easter, seeing that the Visitors had forbidden that she should be professed. ‘So how,’ the Prioress asked, throwing her hands wide, ‘how can I keep a growing young wench without dower till she be twenty-four, and the House squeezing out money to buy our continuance, if it may be? Nay, marry, I cannot do it. I cannot. She must away again to Sir John.’

  Sir Rafe began to hum and ha. He made it clear without exactly saying so, that he thought his brother in the right, since to pay a dower when the Priory might not stand was only to put money out of his own into the King’s pocket. If the money were July’s own, left by her uncle, that made no difference.

  It was then that Dame Nan spoke, surprising both of the others.

  ‘I will have the young gentlewoman here at Marrick, if Sir John and—’ she paused, ‘and his Lady allow.’

  ‘Why, Nan—’ Sir Rafe cried.

  ‘I need another gentlewoman,’ she said, never turning her face from the window.

  ‘Well, well,’ the Prioress murmured. She was indifferent what became of Julian Savage, so long as she did not eat up so much as a groat of the Priory revenue. She asked Sir Rafe when she might have the money in her hand for the leasehold, and they went out together, leaving Dame Nan just rising from a needlessly deep and stately curtsey.

  After a few minutes Sir Rafe came in again, and sat down. He looked at his wife’s back, regretted, as he often did, that things were come to be so often at cross-purposes between them, and, not being wise enough to let ill alone, said, ‘I cannot see for why you should need another gentlewoman, nor, if you do, why you should take that young wench who’s a bastard.’

  ‘And sister to your brother’s wife,’ Nan caught him up. ‘At last his wife,’ she added smoothly, and saw him scowl. He was not glad to be reminded that since Dame Anne Bulmer had died last autumn Meg Cheyne had become Meg Bulmer. And when Dame Nan added that she thought it not well that a young wench, who was to have been a nun, should go to such a sister as Meg, he was too much in agreement with her to find any retort.

  ‘And I hope,’ Nan concluded, with jagged ice in her tone, ‘I hope I may at least choose my own gentlewomen.’

  He cried then, ‘Death of God! It’s that, is it, that you grudge at? That I deal for you in a matter of land and leases, though before your face, mark you? Shall not a husband do so?’

  ‘You have tried to buy that which my ancestors gave to the Nuns.’

  Sir Rafe threw his hands wide, caught his knuckle smartly on the settle, and swore again.

  ‘There was a time you wanted the closes at Owlands,’ he told her, and she, remembering that time, and all those times when they had been one in mind and in heart, was pierced by the pain of remembering.

  ‘My ancestor, Roger Aske,’ she began stubbornly, but Sir Rafe cried a murrain on all Askes, and inquired whether she would not have the Priory to continue.

  ‘I would,’ she said in the voice which she kept for their worst quarrels.

  ‘But you would not have me help the Prioress to one hundred marks?’

  ‘One hundred marks to bribe Cromwell with.’

  ‘Well – would you that, or that the House were suppressed?’

  ‘I would not the King left his business in the hands of a rogue.’

  ‘Fie on such words!’

  ‘Fie on him for a rogue! Yea, fie on the King too! My fathers gave lands that God should be served down at Marrick. Will the King do well if he take those lands that were never his?’

  Sir Rafe rebuked her. Then, because in this also they did not really differ, only that he thought it unseemly for a woman to speak so bluntly against the King, he said, to turn the subject, that it was well the Priory had that manner woman for its Prioress the
se days.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘God’s Bread!’ he cried, ‘is it not? You know how well she has cherished the House.’

  ‘I know how she cherishes that which is her own. I know what manner woman she is, and what it is she loves. Not God, nor poverty, nor charity. No. But her will, and her way, and her goods.’

  ‘Tcha!’ was all he could say to that.

  ‘And she says that if that poor soul Malle speak more of heavenly things she’s to have a sore whipping. You heard her say it. That is how Christ is served at Marrick.’

  ‘Mercy of God!’ he asked her, did she think that the woman Malle was anything other than a poor crazed fool?

  ‘Fool or saint,’ she said, ‘it would be all one to my Lady Prioress.’

  ‘Oh!’ he cried, and got up. ‘Here is but spite and ill-will and a woman’s shrewishness’, and he left her there. She stood for a long time by the window looking out. The sun had gone down now, and the snow was bright no longer, but only a shroud over the frozen earth. She laid her face against the bubbled quarrels of the casement, and kept it so till it ached with the cold, smelling the thin, chill smell of the glass, and feeling her heart like the flesh of her cheek, both aching and cold.

  February 16

  A servant had been sent down from Marrick Manor with a mule, and a Priory servant was to go up with Mistress Julian Savage to fetch back the baggage pony that carried her little trussing coffer and bed, which was all she had brought to Marrick. Two of the Ladies, Dame Margaret Lovechild and Dame Bet Singleton, came to the gate-house with her, and saw her lifted up on the mule, and cried to her to come and see them often, and that she was not far away, and must not forget them. They waved their hands to her, and then turned back into the Great Court, because they ought not to have been there at all, but in the Cloister, and the bell in the tower was ringing for None. As they picked their way through the trampled snow, which the great frost kept crisp yet, Dame Margaret was wiping her eyes.

  ‘Poor child,’ said she, ‘poor little wench.’

  ‘But when I asked her yesterday was she sad to be gone from us, she said, “It matters not. It is all one.” And to-day she did not shed a tear.’

  ‘Ah! But she was sad for all that. And perhaps she meant that it was all one, if the House did not continue.’

  Dame Bet cried out, ‘Fie! we shall continue,’ for the Ladies were getting their courage again, and could not conceive that Marrick should be suppressed, and the Priory void, and they all sent away to those homes that they had seen only now and again for many years.

  Meanwhile July and the two servants went up by the longer way to Marrick Manor through the bright day, July riding a little in front of the men. She did not once look back, but neither did she look forward, only down at the mule’s shoulders where the muscles slid under the mouse-grey hide.

  Just about the time that July sat down to her dinner at Marrick Manor the Nuns’ bailiff came back to the Priory; he had been on the road from London for the last three days, but he was brought at once to the Prioress, delivered his message and handed her a letter.

  She looked down at it in her hand, and asked again, though she had heard him well enough, ‘You say the Chief Secretary promised to be good lord to us, and bade us not to fear?’

  ‘He said to me those very words.’

  She broke the seal then, and opened the letter. The same was written by one of Master Secretary’s clerks, and signed with Thomas Cromwell’s own hand; the Ladies of Marrick should not fear if in their House God’s service was well kept, ‘for it is not the King’s intent to suppress any but Abbeys in which manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used’. So Master Cromwell accepted the gelding, and promised to accept one hundred marks next year.

  Within the hour the news became known in the Parlour where the Ladies sat, and then all pretence of silence and meditation ceased.

  Never, they told each other, had they believed that Marrick should fall, and that was true, but for the last few weeks they had not been easy, so that now, as their confidence returned, they grew very cheerful. Yet it did not take them long to grow accustomed to this security which was so natural to their thoughts. Before supper-time Dame Anne Ladyman was heard to lament that, it being a Friday, they would have to eat ‘those everlasting beans once more’. And Dame Bess Dalton, who was darning a tenter-hook rent in the skirt of her habit, remarked that she supposed there’d be no new gowns for them now for many a year, aye, and long after the Lady had redeemed Owlands Bargh. ‘Surely,’ said Dame Bess, ‘this same pretext will serve her bravely whenever she will stint us of this or that.’

  March 6

  The Prioress, looking from her window, saw the bailiff talking to one of the hinds who was ploughing. So she put on her pattens, and a big cloak, for the evening was setting in fine and frosty, under a clear sky, and hurried out to catch Master Bailiff before he went off to the ale-house at Grinton.

  She caught him, and kept him standing first on one leg, then on the other, at the edge of the field, while the hind trudged up and down the furrows. There was much to be spoken of, for barley sowing was on hand, and harrowing would follow. Then grafting must be finished in the orchard before the moon began to wane. And this year white peason should be sown in more plenty, for the Prioress thought she should have enough for the pot, and to sell also.

  At last she let him go, and herself came back towards the Priory. Along the hedge the blackthorn blossom tufted on the dark boughs was like pearls, like stars; away on the edges of the wood it was like spilt foam. She turned into the orchard gate, and for a while walked among the trees, pausing specially long to look at the new graftings; on the big old Bittersweet apple tree she had had the bailiff set three grafts, of Pomewater, Ricardon, and Blandrelle. So in five year’s time, or seven, that tree would bear his four manner apples; a great subtlety it would be and much admired.

  Before she left the orchard she took a look also at the three young walnut trees, clean, slim, and silver grey. They would be slower; perhaps in twenty years the Nuns would have of them plenty of nuts. She looked at them kindly; she did not wish to hustle them. She doubted if even in twenty years’ time their neighbours, the Ladies of St. Bernard, would have thought of planting walnut trees – that is if, in twenty years’ time, there were any Ladies in the little House a mile down the river. And then she reflected with some satisfaction on the elimination of the Ladies of St. Bernard, who had not Thomas Cromwell to their friend.

  So, as she latched the orchard gate carefully behind her, her mood was contented, and in tune with the quiet evening. And she smiled to see that big lad, Piers Conyers, bumping along from Grinton on a chestnut cob. He smiled too, and pulled up to walk the pony alongside her, his blue cap in his hand.

  ‘Well,’ said she, ‘and what mischief have you had in hand?’

  He grinned, then laughed. There was down on his chin, but his cheeks were yet soft and round as a child’s cheeks; and so was the nape of his neck, where the brown hair fell in a soft curve. He said, demurely, ‘Madame, no mischief, but an errand for my lady.’

  ‘Faith!’ she told him, ‘I thought you had helped yourself to Mistress Doll’s little cob.’

  ‘And so I did.’

  They both laughed, and she said, ‘I’ll not tell. Get on. Get on with you. But rub him down well and water him, for I can see you’ve been riding races.’

  So he went, shouting, and beating the little beast to a canter with his heels, and she came on slowly, smiling at him, and smiling in her mind at another boy, younger than him, and a long time ago. John was in her thoughts as he had not been for many a day, he and Piers together. She felt their kindness for her, and it was as if John and she were still as young and silly as they had been. Then she laughed outright, as she remembered Dame Anne coming in with the candle in her hand, and all her solemn horror, so palpably enjoyed. She had never laughed at that before, only, if she thought of it, had been able to smile bitterly. But now she th
ought, ‘Mother of God! How silly we all were!’ and she laughed comfortably in her mind at all of them. Then she thought, ‘It is because I grow old that I can laugh.’ It did not grieve her to think of growing old, but gave her a feeling of greater security and quietness.

  As she turned under the gate-house she heard Jankin’s fire crackling merrily, and saw the light of the flames sliding and shaking upon the opposite wall. It was a pleasant sound, and when she came into the Great Court it was pleasant and a great surprise to see the Lent Pedlar and his tall white donkey. Jankin was unloading the donkey, but the Pedlar stood near, and Dame Margery Conyers and Dame Anne Ladyman were with him. They saw her and they all stood stiff, as if they had been caught at some shocking deed. Jankin stood with one of the packs held against his stomach, Dame Margery’s hand went up to her mouth, Dame Anne and the Pedlar stood still staring.

  Then the two Ladies cried, as if with one voice – ‘Madame! Madame! Have you heard?’

  They told her, the Pedlar, Jankin and the two Ladies chiming together like dogs, that Parliament had given into the King’s hands all the Abbeys. ‘No,’ said the Pedlar louder than all, ‘only the little Abbeys, such as this one,’ to be suppressed and altogether brought to an end.

  When they had finished telling her there was a silence so complete that she could hear again the crackle of the sticks in Jankin’s fire in the gate-house. She said at last, to Jankin, and pointing to the Pedlar, ‘Give him to eat, and his beast,’ and then went up into her Chamber. She had not told the Ladies to follow her, but she was not surprised to find them in the room with her.