The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  ‘Then you should have ’em pulled out.’

  She began to go up, but he said, ‘Wife!’ and she paused. ‘Who was this gentleman who came and who went again?’

  ‘Gentleman? I know of no gentleman.’

  ‘Dickon let one in.’

  ‘Then ask Dickon.’

  ‘He knew him not.’

  ‘Well,’ said July, ‘and I saw him not,’ and she went on upstairs, leaving Laurence to come up after her.

  Yet July had seen Master Purefoy very well, both coming and going, from the garret window, for she had spent all this afternoon in turning out an old chest up there. There were gowns in the chest, stuffy-smelling, stained, and some of them moth-eaten. There were swaddling bands for children, and little white embroidered caps, yellowish through being laid by. There was an old, a very old, headdress of tattered grass-green silk and gilded wire; it was crumpled, but she straightened out the frame, pulled off her own white linen cap and veil, and put on the other. When she looked in an old steel mirror which she found wrapped in a bit of kidskin she could not but laugh at the strange fashion.

  Time had passed pleasantly up there, for the sun came warmly through the window, and as she toyed with the stuff in the chest she could think her own thoughts. But she did not wish Laurence to know that she had idled away the afternoon, instead of seeing that the maids set the house to rights after the disorder of the Days of Christmas. And now she remembered that she had left the stuff all about the floor of the garret, having come down hastily because one of the maids had called her.

  So she went straight on up the stairs, saying nothing more to Laurence, but with her ears, as it were, cast back like a dog’s, to hear what he would do.

  She heard him stop outside the parlour door, and then turn in. So she was alone again, except for the living candle flame that swayed in the draught like a dancer, like a spirit in cloth of gold. She stood on the stair to let the light steady, and stared at it till her eyes were dazzled; it was a pale saffron crocus, growing within a golden yellow crocus; it was a joyful thing to see. It was joyful because to-day Master Aske (he had said so) would be riding home, free and safe. As she moved on, groping with her hand, yet with her eyes still fixed on the candle-flame, July began to sing.

  Laurence heard her and stood still.

  ‘Who?’ he said to himself, and, ‘Jesu! I never heard her sing before,’ and he began to smile. Then something pierced painfully into his mind, like a needle into the quick under a finger-nail, as he remembered how this afternoon Master Holland, the Vintner, had spoken of ‘your good wife’s friend, that same Master Aske that was Captain of the Northern men’. And Mistress Holland had said, ‘To think that your little July should have known him since she was a child,’ yet July had said of Aske that she knew him not; and now Laurence remembered with a sort of horror how she had lain shaking in bed beside him, the night he told her that Aske was Captain of the Northern men. And this afternoon a man had come to the house and gone again, without leaving any word. Yet July had said that she saw him not. And now she began to sing, sudden and sweet as a wren in the hedge, for the first time since she came to this house.

  Laurence went to the settle and plumped down on it. He began to gnaw his knuckles; then he wiped his forehead with his hand.

  ‘It was because she has been frightened that she will lie,’ he told himself; but that which had comforted him often was nothing to the point now. After a moment he sprang up as if the settle was red-hot, because a thought which he would not entertain had shown him the two of them sitting there together. ‘It will prove to be some other. It will prove to be nothing,’ he assured himself. ‘I shall find out.’ But he knew that he could not dare to ask anyone who might be able to give him the true answer.

  January 8

  Malle opened the door of the bread-oven beside the hearth and peered in. This time the loaves were well risen; she thanked God for that, and when they were all set out on the table, fresh, sweet-smelling, pale brown mounds, each with a bloom of flour upon it, she hung over them sniffing up the sweet savour and smiling.

  While the loaves were still warm, but after she had redded up the house-place and set bowls and spoons out for supper, she cut some thick spongy slices off one of the loaves and spread them thick with the herb-scented lard which the Priory cook had given to Gib. Then she tied the bread into a corner of her apron and went out looking for Wat.

  She found him where she expected, gathering sticks for kindling along the edge of the wood. It was growing dusk, with a small moon in an empty sky; there would be a hoar-frost before morning; already the grass felt crisp under foot.

  She stooped to gather with him, and then straightened herself to wipe the back of her hand across her nose. ‘Wat, there’s naught any more to fear. For already, already God has done it. Whatsoever ill news cometh, that good news cometh after. Already, already it is done.’

  They saw Gib go by beneath them along the road; he did not look their way, but they kept very still till he was out of sight.

  ‘Already! Already!’ Malle said, as though that word was key to a marvel. She ruffled Wat’s hair with her hand. ‘“What’s done?” says you? Why, that you know well, having seen Him. It’s His work, it’s God’s great work that is done. Afore time was He thought it, and as He built the world He built His own hurt into the walls of it, for mortar to hold the walls to stand for ever.’

  She said – ‘See here, what I have brought you for your supper,’ and untied the corner of her apron, so that Wat grabbed at the bread and began to eat. ‘So,’ said Malle, ‘you needn’t be seen by your father this night.’

  ‘Wuf!’ said Wat, and ‘Gur!’ for that pleased him as much as the fine fresh bread, oozy with half-melted lard.

  ‘So it is,’ said Malle, ‘that already, little as they may know it, He hath all men taken in His net. And when He will, He may hale in, to bring us all home. How else? Shall that strong One fail of His purpose? Or that Wise, Who made all, be mistook?’

  January 10

  Archbishop Lee said, in a whisper, though the door was safe shut, and no one in the little warm room, with its painted and gilded wainscot, but himself and Gib Dawe, ‘You have the letter safe?’

  ‘In my shoe’s sole.’

  ‘They will give you a horse at the stables. I have put money in your purse. If you are questioned show the other letter, the one to the Bishop of London.’

  Gib bowed his head and said nothing. There was no need for the Archbishop to tell him all this again, since he was, he conceived, no fool. He looked down at the Archbishop’s delicate hands, poised over his silver plate; one held a knife with a silver-gilt handle, the other a little two-pronged thing, also of silver-gilt, with which he now spitted the body of a wild duck, in an action that seemed to Gib intolerably and fantastically dainty.

  ‘You understand? You will show the other letter to none, till you come to my Lord Privy Seal. Then give it to him, and such news as he will have of you of the new rebellious stirrings here.’ Having thus delivered his final instructions the Archbishop popped into his mouth a neat sliver of the wild duck. ‘Go now, go now,’ he said, and was raising the cup of wine to his lips as Gib laid his hand on the latch. The Archbishop’s blessing, an afterthought, and hasty, followed Gib into the passage, and then he shut the door on this Prince of the Church, snug as a hare in her form, and as timid – thought Gib – eating his meat off silver (like a fine court lady), too dainty to touch it with his fingers; duck for him, and beans and bacon for such as us... So, as if jolted by each step of the stairs, the little spurts of malice jetted up in his mind. ‘And a poor wretched nag it will be that they’ll give me,’ he thought, forgetting to be glad that he would have a nag at all for his journey to London.

  The horse was, indeed, nothing much to look at, but it proved itself a serviceable beast, so that he went through Doncaster as the sun drew near to setting. Beyond Doncaster, where the road ran up a hill beside a wood, with a village a little way below upon t
he right, he stopped, and for a moment looked back, and around him. The quiet sunny afternoon was closing in peace; the village, with the veiled orange glow of the sunset behind it, and the big stacks standing up almost as tall as the houses, seemed to fold itself in a smiling security, as much at ease as a man sitting down on his settle by the fire in the twilight, slipping off his shoes, warming his fingers and toes, thinking of his meat.

  Gib, having cast one last glance back over his shoulder towards the North, where all was grey, and night coming up in a creeping mist, turned down the lane to the village. He too was at ease in his mind, wonderfully at ease.

  Clearly, he thought to himself, as he jogged down towards the gathering of small houses and big stacks among the elm-trees – clearly it was a man’s duty to his Prince to carry news of treasonable words, discontented mutterings, threatenings of insurrection. Yet this, which had been his pretext when he came yesterday to the Archbishop at Cawood, and found him, surely by the dispensation of Providence, in need of a secret messenger, was not the chief cause of Gib’s inner content.

  That which had begun in pure, simple, almost physical relief, just to be clear of the Dale, of Richmond, and of any country he knew, had grown deeper as he rode, had become, he was sure of it – most sure, God be thanked – a refreshment of the spirit such as he could not have dreamed of, nor hoped.

  For he had confessed to God, not, as the Papist idolators, to man, not in a church made with man’s hands, but under no less a vault than the floor of Heaven itself built before the world – his thoughts swinging in widening arcs, like a hawk mounting, lost touch with words. He only again remembered the melting as of frost, as of grief into tears, that came when he had cried in his heart, ‘Lord, I have failed. Lord, I am not able to do it.’ And then, out of a great self-loathing and despair, ‘Master, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.’ At that moment came the melting, and the tears, and a great welling-up of comfort and humble confidence. He told himself now, ‘I am a sinner and can do no good thing: But I am forgiven.’ And once in London he would strive, not only against God’s enemies, but against himself, God’s worthless servant.

  He came to where, as it reached the village, the road narrowed sharply, hemmed in between a steep bank with the church-yard wall on top, and the stone flank of a barn on the other side; beyond these it swung left-handed, so that the corner was blind as well as narrow. And there Gib knew that had the angel stood in his way, and had the Archbishop’s nag turned aside crushing his foot against the wall, as the ass crushed Balaam’s foot, then he would have beaten the nag till he had forced it on, or he would have gone by on foot, or he would have gone about. But not for God’s own angel would he have turned and ridden back again to Marrick. He knew this, but he shut the door upon the knowledge, locked the door, and drowned the key.

  No angel stood in his way. He rounded the comer, saw the geese on the green and cows driven home, and heard the bell begin to jow in the church. Everything was sweet, kindly, and at peace.

  January 15

  When it was supper-time Dame Eleanor Maxwell came into the Prioress’s Chamber and settled herself at table, with noisy sighs and breathings of which she herself heard nothing. The Prioress did not yet move from her chair beside the fire. A servant was laying for supper, a pewter plate and a wooden plate, the Prioress’s great cup, and the little horn cup that was used by whichever of the Ladies sat with her at table. She set on cheese and bread, a dish of lemons and a jug of ale. Now she went off to fetch the salt herrings, and the eels, for to-day was Friday.

  Dame Eleanor sighed yet more loudly and said, ‘Now that the Priest’s gone – and God knows where – the woman and that child will starve.’

  The Prioress said nothing. It was useless to say anything to Dame Eleanor; only a shout in her ear could penetrate her deafness. But she nodded to show that she knew what the old lady was talking about.

  ‘If,’ said Dame Eleanor, ‘Malle should come back here – the henwife’s rheumatism is worse each year.’ A few minutes later she said, ‘Why should she not come back?’ and she looked at the Prioress and waited.

  ‘Now,’ thought Christabel, ‘neither to nod nor shake my head will answer her that.’ Nor did she truly know how to answer. Now that Marrick Priory had the King’s letter for its continuance, and, on top of that, now that this late rebellion had braved the King for the sake of the Abbeys, she need not fear. Surely it would take more than a fool’s babbling to endanger the House.

  She nodded her head.

  ‘Ah!’ cried Dame Eleanor, and pressed her hands together. ‘Then she may come back and bring the child with her?’

  The Prioress nodded again, and so it was settled. After that they sat in silence, except that the Prioress, who had a lute upon her knee, let her fingers toy with the strings, plucking no more than a tingling silver thrill from the minikin strings, and from the solemn bass a humming reverberation.

  She bent her head; she would not look again at Dame Eleanor, because beyond her was the little secret recess which the Master Carpenter had made when he wainscoted the Chamber. Not half an hour ago, with the door barred, the Prioress had drawn from her breast the key, warm with the warmth of her flesh, and set it in the cunningly hidden lock. She had opened the door panel and looked in; even in that dark corner the firelight found the jewels in the little golden pyx inside the recess; the gold was in a buckskin bag lined with scarlet damask silk – rose nobles and angels – in value still a good sum, and always the same in the beauty of its sultry sullen gleam, as she poured it out upon her palm, and, covering it with the other, clenched both hands upon it.

  Now, with Dame Eleanor in the room she would not look that way, but she thought of the pyx, and of the gold. Not for all their talking should the Ladies have the pyx back again in the Church. Let them guess, and guess again, whether or how the King’s Visitors had laid hands on it and taken it away. It should not go back into the Church, to be seen and coveted by other new Visitors that might be sent by the King; next time, there was no telling, these Visitors might come to take away the holy vessels, such as were of value. And then the Ladies would be sorry. But the little pyx was safe where it lay; and moreover, while it was in the hidden recess it was as good as her own.

  ‘No,’ said Christabel Cowper in her mind, as if Dame Eleanor had spoken an accusation, instead of only venting one of her wordless grunts. ‘It is not that I am avaricious. The pyx I keep for the sake of the House’ – almost she was able to think, ‘for the sake of God’ – but let that pass; she’d be honest and set her claim too low rather than too high. ‘And the gold,’ she thought, ‘it is not that I love the gold itself.’ She bent lower over the strings of her lute. Gold was a soft cushion to sit on. Gold was a rod to rule with. Gold bought things of good craftsmanship, things that were beautiful, things that made the heart rejoice. Without gold man in this world went very nakedly and wretchedly; with gold, strong and hearty, he might the better praise God. ‘Gold,’ she thought, ‘it’s gold that bought this fair lute,’ and suddenly struck a full chord in which the voice of the strings mingled tingling sweetness and a sombre compassionate solemnity. She listened while the notes pulsated, dwindled and died.

  Without raising her head she looked up at the old woman who sat mumbling with her lips like a rabbit.

  ‘Surely,’ said the Prioress, in a low but defiant tone, ‘surely gold is good.’

  Dame Eleanor sighed deeply.

  January 16

  It was a bright open day, cold, with a strong wind that went through the three beech-trees on top of the moot hill at Settrington like a tide of hurrying water, but with little noise because of their winter bareness. Now and again the wind sent up a cloud of dead leaves from the fallen drifts under the trees, lifting and spinning them against the blue sky; even when almost all had dropped again a few would loiter high in the sunshine, like butterflies.

  Thirty or so husbandmen stood on the moot hill looking down towards Settrington, and talking together, but ne
ither loudly nor freely, for none knew why they were here, except that Settrington beacon had been fired last night, and that could only mean tidings of discomfort.

  At last one said, ‘There’s horsemen coming through the Coppins!’ and all could see the winking flicker of sunshine on the steel caps of horsemen down there. So after that they waited in silence while Sir Francis Bigod and close on forty gentlemen and yeomen came up the hill.

  Sir Francis was armed, except for a helmet. When he had wheeled his horse amongst the beech-trees he pulled off his cap, waved it to them all, and began to tell them why the beacon had been fired.

  It was indeed ill news. At the first he made them catch their breath by telling them that if they did not look well upon many causes, all they should shortly be destroyed.

  ‘For,’ said he, ‘the gentlemen of the country have deceived the commons.’

  He let that sink in, and then, looking about and smiling, promised them that the Bishopric and Cleveland were up under Sir John Bulmer, to ensure that the commons be not tricked, ‘trusting,’ said he, ‘that you will not leave them in the dust, seeing that they took your part before, and that it is in the defence of all your weals.’

  He waited then for a shout, but, though there was a murmur, most looked on their neighbours silently and with glum faces. So he went on, leaning forward in the saddle, his voice rising higher and the wild Bigod look more apparent in his glance.

  ‘For my Lord of Norfolk comes with twenty thousand men to take Hull and Scarborough, and other haven towns, which shall be our destruction unless we prevent him therein, and take them before; and so I and my fellow Hallom purpose to do.’

  They shouted then for the first time, for Hallom was one of themselves, and if he were in this—! They pressed closer, and Sir Francis, seeing it, took fire, and from this time on he had them hanging on him, so that they groaned when he said that they were deceived by the colour of a pardon, which though it were called a pardon was none, but a proclamation; and one cried out to curse Privy Seal. Then they were silent again as death, while he read over to them the words of that same so-called pardon.