The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  ‘It is no matter unless you will grudge at your pottage being cold,’ said Darcy, just on the hither side of discourtesy.

  ‘Pottage?’ says the Archbishop, and sniffed at the plate. ‘Leek pottage again?’

  ‘The leeks grow in the garden,’ said Darcy. ‘When they are at an end maybe we’ll sup pottage without even leeks to flavour it. For if it comes to a siege there’ll be little to eat.’

  The Archbishop turned in his chair. ‘Do you not take victuals into the castle?’ he asked.

  ‘And did your grandmother not know how to suck eggs? I would take in victuals if I could get them. But what the townsmen will bring in is naught, and these rebels are taking up all about.’

  ‘Have you then,’ the Archbishop asked, with a slight shake in his voice, ‘written to the King’s Grace to send help?’

  ‘Once, and had no answer. And again to-day,’ said Darcy, and helped himself to a handful of nuts and began to crack them between his teeth. He glanced again at Constable, and again the spark of anger and angry laughter was in his eyes.

  ‘But,’ said Sir Robert, whose sense of propriety was a little troubled by my Lord’s baiting of so reverend a spiritual personage, ‘but it is not to be thought that a rout of poor commons and husbandmen will assault such a castle as Pomfret.’

  ‘No,’ said the Archbishop.

  ‘No?’ said Darcy. ‘If I thought that I should sleep the easier. But I think they will, and shall I tell you for why?’

  The Archbishop took out the spoon from his pottage and laid it on his tranch of bread. He waved his hand to show that they should take away the pottage, and his gesture conveyed by its delicate langour that worn though he might be by the cares of his high station, and in need of sustenance, yet to set leek pottage before him was not so much a stupidity as an irreverence.

  ‘Shall I, my Lord Archbishop,’ said Darcy again, ‘tell you for why?’ and leaned towards him and said, nailing his words, as it were, to the wood of the table with a stiff forefinger. ‘Because you, my Lord, are come into the castle, therefore the commons will not pass it by.’

  ‘I?’ said the Archbishop haughtily. ‘What have I done against them?’ He looked at the plate of cold rabbit pie set before him with a pained disgust. ‘I have done nothing against them,’ he muttered, with a trace of anxiety in his voice.

  ‘It is not what you have done against them, but what you shall do for them,’ said Darcy.

  ‘For them? I’ll do nothing for them.’

  Sir Robert asked what should my Lord do for them, and Darcy turned to him to say, ‘Why, write the Articles of their grievances that they shall send to the King.’

  ‘No,’ cried the Archbishop from his other hand. ‘Never! Never! I will die first before I should give aid or counsel to traitors.’

  ‘But see, my Lord,’ Darcy turned to him, ‘see what they do for you – perilling their necks to save the privilege of the spiritual men, and defend the faith of the Church! Meetly – as it seems to me might they ask of your counsel, and think to have you go along with them.’ He turned again to Sir Robert. ‘You’ll have heard how they call this their “pilgrimage”, so it is seen that in their eyes it is all for the sake of the Church, and of the spiritual men.’

  ‘They are mistook. The Faith is in no peril. The King hath so provided by his late book. It is rebellion. I would see them all hanged, everyone. You hear me say it.’

  ‘Then let us pray,’ said Darcy, ‘that it cometh not to that pass that I must surrender the castle to them.’

  The Archbishop’s mouth opened as though to breathe, ‘Surrender?’ but he shut it again. Then he said hastily and softly, ‘I am not well,’ and got up from the board and went out.

  Darcy gave a sharp laugh and stood up. ‘Come on, Robert,’ he said, ‘let’s take view of the well, and the offices. And I told the carpenters to look to the timbers of the bridge and tell me how they stand.’

  They had seen to all these things, and found all in bad state, and were on their way back to the Great Chamber; my Lord said he would write a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury, who lay at Nottingham, gathering men. ‘But they come in slowly,’ said Sir Robert, who had this very morning come from there. They opened the door of the brew-house yard, and came on a little space of garden beside an old pear-tree on a wall, where great tits, handsome and bold, swung and sported. There were leeks growing here, proudly fountaining their dagger-pointed leaves, which from the plait-pattern in the centre sprang up and out, to drop with a sudden stately fall.

  ‘Pottage for the Archbishop,’ said Darcy grimly, and laughed.

  ‘What,’ asked Sir Robert, ‘was the news that fellow brought you just now?’ A man in a homespun coat and clouted shoes, but with a sharper face than a poor country hind was like to have, had whispered with my Lord in the wood-yard.

  ‘He? Oh! he saith that the Howdenshire men and those beyond Derwent were yesterday at Weighton. That means Howdenshire has joined itself with Beverley and Holderness.’

  Sir Robert looked grave at that, and stood frowning along the ranks of leeks. At last he said: ‘And yet it sticks, like a crumb in my throat, that what we hold for the King we hold to keep that hound Cromwell in place, and others as great heretics as he.’ He glanced at Darcy and then added, ‘Yet we can do no other.’

  Darcy looked down at him, and the corners of his mouth twitched. Constable, when he would be indirect, was so transparent.

  ‘Ask me outright, Robert, “Will you surrender Pomfret?” But first answer me this. Do you conceive me a man lightly to surrender such a castle to such an enemy?’

  ‘No,’ Sir Robert muttered, a little red, ‘that I do not.’

  ‘But,’ cried Darcy, ‘our most reverend father in God, the Archbishop, by God’s Passion I am sick to hear him!’ and he laughed a little. ‘I like to make him quake, now for fear of the King, and now of the commons.’

  October 17

  Julian was in bed already, and Laurence was just pulling his shirt off over his head. She let her eyes slide away from his thin shanks, and looked beyond him to the press, which had the story of Deborah, Jael and Sisera carved on it; July did not know it, but Deborah, a stalwart lady in a wide starched veil, always reminded Laurence of the first Mistress Machyn.

  ‘They say,’ said Laurence, through his shirt, ‘that this rebellion in Lincolnshire is worse than was thought.’

  ‘I supposed,’ July murmured, ‘that it had been put down.’ After a great scare, when she had first heard of ‘trouble in the North’, she had ceased to take any interest in the business. Lincolnshire was not Yorkshire.

  Laurence folded his shirt neatly and padded across the rushes to the bed where his night-shirt lay. ‘The Lincolnshire traitors are put down. But now they rise in Yorkshire, under one Aske. What he is, I know not – some low fellow.’

  July sat up in bed. Laurence, slipping the night-shirt over his head, did not see her wide, frightened eyes, nor the hand which covered her open mouth. He turned and blew out the candle. When he groped his way into bed he put his hands out to draw her to him.

  But she pushed him stiffly away, and he knew she was shaking all over.

  ‘What is it, sweet?’ he asked hastily, thinking her to be ill.

  For a minute she would only hold him off, saying nothing. Then she muttered, ‘Who? Where?’

  At first he did not know what she was asking. But she said, ‘Who – leads this – this new insurrection?’ and he told her again, ‘It is one Aske, so they say. But you do not know him?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

  Laurence heard her teeth chatter together as she spoke. He thought, ‘She is as scared as a bird,’ and his heart melted, as if it laughed and cried over her at once.

  He said, ‘Peace, peace, my sweeting. They shall not come here.’ He might have been soothing a child wakened out of a nightmare.

  Not because of his words, but because his hands ceased to constrain her, she suddenly flung herself towards him in the bed, clu
tching him by the wrists.

  ‘It’s not that. It – it is – it is—’ She stopped, and then made herself speak. ‘It is what is done to traitors.’

  He did his best to soothe her then, using all the gentleness he knew, and, at last, when he thought she slept, he lay long awake, pondering upon her, upon her terrors, and upon the frightened child, the frightened lass, whose life, fugitive as any wild, hunted thing, these terrors seemed to betray.

  ‘But,’ he thought, ‘if God would give us a child – then it would be well with her. For,’ he said to himself, ‘she should see it grow and thrive, God of His grace permitting, like a flower. And nor it, nor would I, do anything that might frighten her. And so she would forget to be afraid.’

  October 16

  Robert Aske rode, the first of all the host, through Walmgate Bar into York. Under the ringing hollow of the arch the sound of his own horse’s hoofs swelled so that it overmastered even the tramp of all the horsemen behind him. Then he came out into the street beyond, and was met by the shouting of a great crowd. And while the people still shouted the bells began to peal, from all the church towers in York, and among them the bells of the Minster, dancing up and down unseen stairways of sound, till the air was wild with their flying feet, running after each other, overtaking, clanging together.

  The long procession of horsemen came out from Petergate into the great space before the West door of the Cathedral. There had been rain that day, and a high wind which had only dropped towards sunset, leaving the air very clear, and the sky swept and blue. There were pools in the paving, and great leaves blown from the chestnut trees lay scattered there. The chestnut leaves were bright gold, and the pools reflected all the colours of the riders’ cloaks, in flashes and gleams of scarlet, green, sanguine, murrey and blue.

  When they had got down from their horses the Minster bells stopped ringing, leaving a great silence troubled only by little and near noises, and by the dancing of more distant bells. Then those who stood close to the West doors heard the great bolts run back; the doors groaned as they swung inward, and at that same moment the choir began to sing just inside, boys and men, sweet and deep, high and low, while beyond the organ pealed and rumbled. So they went in, the choir leading, then the priests, vested in cloth of gold and silver, in satin and velvet, spangled with jewels and stiff with gold embroideries, a Paradise garden of colour, towards the High Altar. The Captains followed the priests, Aske first, and after him the other Captains, and after them the host, till the great church was crammed.

  Through all the solemnity of Vespers Aske knelt, stood, knelt again, and knew no meaning in what he did. Trifles possessed his mind: the miller of Snaith’s cloak had a long darn on one shoulder; there was a priest in a blue velvet vestment who was very like old Dom Henry at Ellerton, but with a wart on his nose. And a foolish anxiety beset him – lest he should miss the signal which would call him from his stall to make his offering upon the High Altar. He did not miss the signal, and in a few moments he was back again, and a blue velvet purse fringed with silver lay on the altar; now his thoughts strayed to the farm at Bubwith which he had pledged to raise the money in the purse; there was the rick-yard stuffed for winter, the oxen were coming slowly home from ploughing in the last light, and hens were scratching round the kitchen door.

  They knelt again. The priest at the altar raised his hand for the blessing, and in a moment the voices of the choir flowered again in the silence. Aske, in the darkness that his hands made before his face, tried to collect his thoughts. But he could not do it; the most he could reach was a confusion of words as empty of meaning as chaff is of the winnowed grain. ‘Deo gratias! Miserere mei Domine!’ he muttered, and did not know whether he gave thanks or prayed for mercy.

  Close on midnight Will Wall knocked at the door of the chamber in Sir George Lawson’s house where his master was to sleep. But he was not sleeping yet. His voice called out to come in, and, when Will went in, there he sat at the table, with Master Monkton on one hand and Master Rudston on the other, and the three of them busy writing. Gervase Gawood, a man from Howden and a Captain in the host, was on the settle by the fire notching tallies with his knife as they called out numbers to him.

  Will shut the door before he said that there was one come in secret.

  ‘He says he is my Lord Darcy’s steward.’

  ‘Ha!’ cried Master Rudston, and clapped his hand down open on the table. ‘So my Lord would be with us!’

  Aske said, ‘Bring him in. And keep the door, Will.’

  So Will brought him in – a big, gaunt, grey-haired man with a red face.

  Will kept the door for perhaps half an hour, and then out came Rudston, Monkton, Gervase Cawood, and my Lord Darcy’s steward. So after they had been gone downstairs a little while Will went in to his master, and found him sitting at the table with pen in his hand and paper before him, but staring at the page as if he did not see it.

  Will went softly about the room for a while, glancing at Aske from time to time, but he did not move.

  At last Will said, ‘Master, will you not sleep?’ And then, ‘Oh, Master Robin, this is a blessed day. Listen yonder!’ From the streets, which should have been quiet hours ago, came a distant sound of pipes, tabrets and fiddles. Just below the window a boy went by singing very sweetly, ‘Salve Regina.’

  ‘The commons,’ said Will, ‘are putting in the Monks that have been turned out. They will do it, late as it is, and this night God shall be worshipped again,’ and he ran to Aske and knelt and would have kissed his hand.

  ‘Will! Will!’ said Aske, touched, but more displeased. If only this strange, unaccountable creature that was his serving-man would cease to swing between moods of devotion and beastly drunkenness, ‘then,’ thought Aske, ‘it would be the better for both of us.’

  ‘No, Master,’ Will cried, mistaking Aske’s tone, ‘I’ve not drunk. Not to-night. I would not touch the ale to-night,’ and he fell to crying wildly.

  ‘Tchk!’ said Aske under his breath, and patted Will on the shoulder, and, to quiet him, began to talk about Lord Darcy’s steward. My Lord, it seems, had sent him to bring away a copy of the Commons’ Oath, and of their Articles, ‘And he asked to know whether we would agree to a head Captain, if the Articles should please my Lord.’

  ‘God’s Passion!’ cried Will hotly. ‘You’re our chief Captain.’

  ‘I told him,’ Aske said, as if Will had not spoken, ‘that a nobleman of the King’s Council was more like to send a spy than a true messenger to know the purpose of the commons. This man, Strangways, promised us we should have Pomfret if we came there. Would God that we might. But my Lord would never yield up the King’s strong castle.’

  ‘Would he not? Why not?’

  ‘No man would,’ said Aske, but he meant, ‘I would not,’ and then he got rid of Will by sending him, late as it was, with the copy of the Oath of Lincolnshire. ‘And bid Master Strangways be forth out of York before daybreak, for I’ll not have my Lord Darcy’s man see the muster,’ said he, ‘when it is held.’

  After Will had gone he sat awhile, thinking of my Lord – of all that he knew of him in the past, and of what Darcy’s steward had said of his master – and there was little of it that pleased him, for he said to himself, ‘He’s a man of deep counsels, wily, full of statecraft. That which we have entered on is not for such as him.’

  And suddenly he knew clearly what it was that they were entered on. He took a fresh quill, and a fresh sheet, and wrote—

  The Oath of the Honourable Men,

  and under that—

  Ye shall not enter into this our Pilgrimage of Grace for the Commonwealth, but only for the love that ye do bear unto Almighty God, his Faith, and to Holy Church militant and the maintenance thereof, to the preservation of the King’s person and issue, to the purifying of the nobility, and to expulse all villein blood and evil Councillors against the Commonwealth from his Grace and his Privy Council of the same. And that ye shall not enter into our said Pilgri
mage for no particular profit to yourself, nor to do displeasure to any private person, but by counsel of the Commonwealth, nor slay nor murder for no envy, but in your hearts put away all fear and dread, and take afore you the Cross of Christ, and in your hearts his faith.

  Will came in. Aske said, ‘I have nearly done.’ After a moment more he laid down his pen.

  ‘Here is the Oath that we shall swear to-morrow,’ he said, and read it aloud.

  October 17

  Thomas Strangways found Sir Robert Constable in the Great Chamber at Pomfret; it was crowded, but Sir Robert sat in a corner bent over a chessboard upon which he had set out a random number of pieces; he was plotting subtle moves and dark serpentine approaches against an imaginary opponent, and his face when he looked up wore an expression of pure, blissful absorption. But as he saw Strangways it changed.

  ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘You! You are to go in. My Lord’s in his bath, but he will not care for that.’

  So they went in together to the smaller Privy Chamber beyond where my Lord simmered, pink and sweating, in his tub, with one soaping his back. The room smelt damp and sweet from the steam and the sweet herbs strewed on the water.

  ‘You!’ said my Lord, as Sir Robert had done, and told the servant to put a towel round his shoulders and then go away. ‘Well,’ said he, when they were alone, ‘and what treason have you been pledging me to, you old whoreson?’ and he laughed.

  But Strangways was solemn.

  ‘I’ve the copy of their Oath, and the Articles that you bade me bring,’ said he, and my Lord beckoned and bade him hold it for him to read, ‘For my hands are wet,’ he said.

  So they were silent while my Lord read the two papers, making little dabbling noises in the water under the towel as he read, and sometimes swearing and sometimes laughing below his breath.

  Then he said, waving Strangways away: ‘What are the numbers of their muster?’

  Strangways said he could not tell, for he had come to York long after dark, ‘And their Captains said I must forth before daybreak that I might not see them. But York seemed stuffed with men, as for an expedition against the Scots.’