The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  Sir George, not much later, left the Duke alone to repose himself. He was not so merry as his father, though he had nothing to fear, and though the Duke had expressed great confidence in him, and bade him be ready always with his men to come to Pomfret at an hour’s warning.

  February 5

  The Prioress called from the door of her Chamber:

  ‘Shut the gate. Shut the gate, Jankin! Shut the gate, you whoreson!’

  Jankin did shut the gate just in time, and then the wild fellows outside began to pelt it with stones, to beat upon it with their quarterstaves and the butts of their pikes, and to shout, ‘Open, – let us in!’ At that the Ladies, who had crowded out of the Cloister, set up such a crying and shrieking as might have been raised in Troy when the Greeks tumbled out of the belly of the wooden horse.

  The Prioress came down into the Great Court. She had not screamed, and she turned to shake her fist at those who did, though she would not waste her breath by telling them to stop. She went up to Jankin, who was shoring up the gate with a piece of timber from the pile that was laid ready for sawing. The noise of stones and staves on the door filled the archway, and from the Great Court behind came the screams of the Ladies.

  ‘Who are they?’ she shouted in Jankin’s ear, and he shouted back that they must be men going to the new muster of the commons at Middleham. There had been bills set up on the church doors the last few days calling out the commons, just as in the first insurrection last October; but these were not like those who had risen then, being poorer, wilder, and more ignorant; some of them came from the savage parts at the head of the Dale; some came even from as far as over Westmorland way.

  ‘What do they want?’

  But Jankin, no more than the Prioress, could make anything of the confusion of voices outside.

  ‘I must find out,’ the Prioress said. ‘I’ll go up to the Guest House Chamber.’ And leaving Jankin to strengthen the door as best he might, she went to fetch the keys, which hung on the wall in his room; even in this emergency she remained sufficiently nice to nip her nose between two fingers as she went in, so potent were the mingled smells of cheese, garlic, Jankin, leather and mice.

  The Guest House Chamber above the gate was rarely entered during the winter, and the lock was stiff to turn, but she got the door open and went in. The room, when there were no strangers upon the road, was apt to be used for lumber, so now besides the settle and stools there were in it a couple of naked bedsteads, an old horse collar with the stuffing coming out of it, a pail of which the wooden strakes had sprung, and a spinning wheel that lacked a treadle. The room was also very dusty, and almost dark, because the tall arched windows at either end were shuttered, and the only light came through a little low window under the eaves on the side facing outwards on the cartway.

  The Prioress picked up a sack, and swept a space clean from dust, and the dry, light bodies of last year’s wasps and flies. Then she knelt down on the floor, and looked out upon the rabble below. There were perhaps thirty shaggy, dirty fellows; most of them were standing a little back at this moment; only one of them beat on the door with the haft of a rusty pike, and demanded, with plenty of foul words, that the Nuns should open their doors, and give them to eat, ‘For,’ said he, ‘ye Nuns, ye have too much, and we have nothing.’

  The Prioress put her head out of the window.

  ‘Stop your knocking on my door,’ she said, ‘I cannot hear myself speak.’

  He obeyed, gaping up at her; they all gaped.

  She asked them, ‘What do you want?’

  They said again they wanted meat, of which, they knew, the Nuns had store.

  She told them, ‘Who said so, lied. For this long winter has eaten up all that was laid in.’

  They said – let her give them money then, to buy victual withal.

  She said, ‘I have no money,’ and at that one of them threw a stone. She pulled her head in. Another stone just missed her, and fell among the stuff on the floor.

  She stood clear of the window. Let them shy their stones, she thought, and bawl themselves tired, for so they’ll pass on the sooner. But she picked up one stone, and with a tight smile flung it back through the little window, a shrewd throw. Someone outside gave a sort of yelp, as much of surprise as pain, and she laughed.

  But then she heard something that was no laughing matter. That was a new outcry, but this time the voices came from the Great Court and cried, ‘They’re in by the stable! They’re in by the stable!’

  The Prioress beat her hands together as she remembered what she had till now forgotten. When a piece of the stable roof had fallen in last year the Nuns had not mended it, because of all the money that had gone to buy Lord Cromwell’s favour, since it was at a corner and no beasts stood just there. She stamped her foot, and went towards the stair. But when she tried to open the door she could not. She shook it, and hammered on it with her fists, but no one came to let her out.

  A good deal later Jankin came and opened for her, but he knew not, he said, and stoutly maintained, who had turned the key.

  Nor did anyone else know, or would admit to knowing it. By no means could the Prioress discover either who had done it, or their motive – whether of kindness to the Lady, to keep her out of harm’s way, or of favour to the rabble who had broken in.

  But the damage which these fellows had done was only too easy to ascertain. While the Prioress paced up and down the Guest House Chamber, now stamping on the floor and shouting, now silently biting her nails, they had eaten up the Ladies’ dinner, and when they went away they carried with them a pannier full of white sweet cheeses, as well as two sides of bacon, four hams, the whole of one of the Ladies’ salted beeves, a firkin of sprats, a dozen hens and the red cock.

  February 6

  To-day all the gentlemen of Yorkshire were to come to York to take a fresh oath of allegiance to the King, seeing that their first had been so largely broken. Robert Aske left Aughton very early, so early that only ploughmen and ditchers and such were on the roads. He would not wait for Jack, because he knew that while Jack would not have refused that they should ride together, yet he had some qualms about it. As for Mistress Nell, the thought that Jack should appear in York at the side of the chief rebel of all had fretted her almost into a fever.

  Inside the gate of York the first man that Aske met was Will Bapthorpe, who came out of his lodging with a frowning brow and important air. He, Aske knew, had gone to the Duke at Doncaster, and followed him since. He waved a hand to Aske, and then walked alongside, and whispered so that Aske had to stoop from the saddle to hear him.

  ‘You got my letter?’

  ‘Yes. And thanks to you for it.’

  ‘You understand? The Duke, being the King’s Grace’s Lieutenant, cannot—’ He looked aslant at Aske and gestured with his hands in a way that he meant should be eloquent.

  ‘Cannot what?’

  ‘Sh! Cannot show himself gracious to any – to one – to you who—’

  ‘To me, having the King’s pardon?’

  ‘Will you not speak low?’

  ‘No,’ said Aske, ‘why should I? But it was kindly in you to write and assure me of the Duke’s favour.’

  Master Bapthorpe had, however, stiffened. He drew up the fur collar of his coat, dipping his chin deep into it, and stepped aside to let Aske and his people pass on.

  The next to hail Aske was Rudston, who leaned out of an upper window just above his head, and cried, ‘Turn in! Turn in, neighbour Aske, and we’ll drink together.’ He was dressed remarkably fine in plum-coloured velvet, and a gilt chain swung out from his breast as he leaned from the window, and shone in the frosty sunlight.

  Aske lifted his head and looked him between the eyes.

  ‘Not so early,’ said he, ‘but later I’ll think of some treasonous words to speak, that you may report on them.’

  Except for these two no one whom he knew seemed to be pleased to speak with him. Either they avoided his eye, or, at most, gave him a hasty gr
eeting, and turned away. It was so as he went to his lodging that morning, and through the day, and as he waited with the others to take the oath. It was not difficult for him to get the measure of it; only those sure of the Duke’s favour, such as Bapthorpe, or nosing about like Nick Rudston for information, the disclosure of which should demonstrate their own loyalty, would willingly consort with him; the others would avoid him as his fellows avoid a man that may carry the plague.

  That afternoon, in an early dusk, as he knelt in the Cathedral after Vespers, the singing having died away, and the footsteps of the singers rustled into silence on their way to the Cloister, someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Master Robert Aske?’

  Aske stood up and said he was that same.

  ‘I am one of the Duke of Norfolk’s gentlemen. My Lord would have a word with you.’

  Aske went with him. The Duke’s gentleman suggested that it would be well if he hid his face as much as he could in his cloak, and he did so.

  The Duke was at Sir George Lawson’s house, and sat in that same room, and in that same chair where Aske himself had sat, only last October, and had heard music go through the streets as the people brought the monks back to their Houses.

  The Duke did not rise, but, greeting Aske with a kind of high and distant courtesy which became his rank and reputation, waved him to a stool, and then, wrapping himself closer in his fur-lined, black velvet gown, said:

  ‘Mr. Bapthorpe wrote to you that I would open to you in secret the reasons whereby I cannot show you very friendly countenance?’

  Aske bowed his head, and replied that he had received the letter.

  ‘But I did not show Master Bapthorpe those reasons, Master Aske.’ Aske bowed again, thinking, ‘Mass! for a breath of fresh air and plain dealing.’ The room was very hot, as well as sweet with perfume. Sir George Lawson was eager to do all that he could in honour of the King’s Lieutenant, and my Lord of Norfolk was known to be of a very chilly humour.

  ‘But with you,’ said the Duke, ‘I will be plain. It was because I dared not.’

  Aske almost gaped at him. Here was plain dealing indeed.

  ‘If, Master Aske, you knew the crafty drifts used here to bring me out of credit, you would say that I am not well handled.’

  For once Aske was at a loss for words. Craft and intrigue – that had been the very burden of his own thoughts, but the marvel was that the Duke should share it with him. He could only stare into Norfolk’s long face, with its sagging flesh, heavy hooked nose, and eyelids drooping over eyes that seemed weary to look out on the world.

  ‘Tell me,’ the Duke leaned towards him, watching him narrowly, ‘do men here in the North hold me for one who stands for the old ways, or as one of those who for fear or favour will consent to this New Learning which you call heresy?’

  Aske chose his words with care. ‘When we came to Doncaster, all men, my Lord, thought the first.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Some still think it.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I have thought both the one and the other.’

  ‘The one then, the other now?’

  Aske said, with his eye on the Duke’s, ‘The first then, the second now.’

  The Duke looked down at his hands, not as if abashed, but considering. At last he smiled. ‘I like you, Master Aske.’

  At the Duke’s tone, and at his friendly look, Aske felt as if his heart had tripped. What the Duke had said was nothing, he knew, but how he said it – that was a different matter. For the first time since he had come back from the King, a month ago, he saw a gleam of daylight ahead.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, and in so eager a voice that it was as though another man spoke, ‘my Lord Darcy told me that, before ever this Pilgrimage was made, fifteen great lords swore together to suppress heresy and its maintainers. If you—’

  ‘Fifteen great lords?’ Norfolk had spoken sharply enough to interrupt, but now his tone was slow and reflective – ‘Who were they then?’

  ‘He never told me their names.’

  Norfolk leaned back again in his chair. ‘Well, I can guess their names. Go on.’

  ‘My Lord Darcy told me this to put me in comfort not to fear the heretics,’ Aske explained. ‘The appointment of those lords took none effect. But if the great nobles are of our part, and if they will come forward in time, then our cause is not lost. But they must come forward in time. They must come forward now, or all will be to do again.’

  ‘Master Aske,’ said the Duke, ‘will you raise war in the realm as it was in my father’s and your grandfather’s time?’

  ‘That was different. That was House against House, and King against King. The cause now – I hold it to be of God.’

  ‘But you would move war against your Prince, for any cause?’

  ‘My Lord,’ said Aske steadily, ‘I have always thought, as did we all, that it were best to get the statutes reformed first by petition, but if we could not so obtain, then to get them reformed by sword and battle.’

  ‘Now,’ he thought, ‘he must dismiss me.’ But the silence lengthened. Aske looked beyond the Duke’s shoulder to where, pictured on the woven hangings of the room, a dog came out of a lake carrying a duck in its mouth; beside the lake a tree stood, on which a huge hawk perched; the tree bore six leaves as big as trenchers, and three acorns. It was the same hanging that had been here on the night when he sat writing the Oath of the Pilgrims; in the silence now, as then, the Cathedral bells spilled out their notes on the air with the same cool, sweet deliberation.

  Because his blind side was towards the Duke he did not know how closely he was being studied, but at last the Duke spoke.

  ‘Master Aske,’ said he, ‘what I shall tell you, I should tell few other men. Will you promise me that you will keep my words to yourself?’

  Aske promised, and as he did so thought, mistakenly – ‘None but an honest man would think an honest man’s word enough.’

  ‘Have you,’ the Duke said, ‘ever considered that patience and endurance may better serve than to resist? No. Don’t answer me yet. You are a man of the law, they tell me; you will have read in the histories of old time, both of this realm and of others, how some things continue ever, some cease, and some, after mutations, return. And how, above all, there is no man, no man, Master Aske, but is mortal.’

  Now he waited, and Aske said, ‘You mean – the Cardinal died, and—’

  Norfolk held up his hand. ‘Enough. We understand each other.’ Then he sighed. ‘All this that has come upon the realm has come of a wench’s black eyes, and I wish, though she were my niece, that she had never been born.

  ‘But consider. For close on a thousand years there have been monks in England, and Holy Church has been one through Christendom. Is it likely that in one day one man, and that man not the King but a low-born fellow, shall pull down the one, and cleave asunder the other, forever?’

  Aske shook his head.

  ‘No!’ said the Duke, looking pleased, but he had mistaken Aske’s meaning.

  ‘No,’ said Aske again. ‘Yet it could be so did none take a hand to stay it, neither in this day, nor in time to come.’

  ‘I cannot much fear it,’ the Duke said loftily. ‘But even if we fear it, how we should best stay it is the question.

  ‘Take my case.’ He leaned forward, incredibly gracious and familiar. ‘Say I let my likings show, what will happen? I know. I can tell you. At the best I shall be at Kenninghall, in the country, speaking my counsel to the ditches and the willows, but never to the King’s ear. What can I do then? And that is at the best. At the worst it will be Tower Hill on some threadbare pretext.

  ‘But if I serve loyally my Prince, I may the better also serve Holy Church, since if I serve not my Prince, other men, and worser, will be in my place.’

  They were silent again then. Aske, though unconvinced, did not, for respect’s sake, wish to insist on that which he had already made clear as a line. The Cathedral bells chimed again, and then
there came another sound, at which the Duke turned his head towards the shuttered windows. The sound grew till the hoofs of the hard-ridden horse rang below them on the cobbles of the street and stopped with a clattering slide. There was some shouting, a door slammed, then another door, so that the house shook. Before even Master Appleyard had tapped, Norfolk cried, ‘Open there! Open!’ Behind Appleyard came in a messenger, booted and cloaked, with his cap in his hand, but his hood yet on his head.

  ‘From the King’s Grace,’ he said. Norfolk dropped on his knees and took the letter. ‘Go,’ he said to Aske, and already his long fingers were picking at the seal.

  Aske moved towards the door after the other two who had already gone out. But he lingered, because he had remembered something which, when he came into the room, he would not have believed himself able to forget.

  ‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘there is one thing I must speak of, if I have leave.’

  ‘I’ve no leisure now,’ said the Duke.

  ‘Yet I must,’ Aske said, and at his voice and his stubborn look the Duke stared, but could not stare Aske down.

  ‘Well, be brief.’

  ‘I charged Master Bapthorpe,’ said Aske, ‘with a message about one Levening – I do not think he gave it.’

  ‘Levening that’s a prisoner now? No. He did not.’

  Aske plunged into it then. Levening was innocent of treason.

  Bigod had forced him to come out in that last insurrection, and Hallom had threatened to burn his farms if he did not

  The Duke turned his back, and moved away now to the fire. He gave Aske barely time to finish, then said:

  ‘Why do you tell me this?’

  ‘I promised him I would speak for him. He came to me because he feared he would be indicted.’

  ‘He was right to fear. I must do justice, Master Aske, and terrible justice.’

  ‘It would not be justice to hang Levening.’

  Norfolk looked at him over his shoulder.

  ‘Master Aske, Bapthorpe knew, but it seems you know not, that it is dangerous to speak so.’