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The Man On a Donkey

Page 75

by H. F. M. Prescott


  ‘Not to speak so to you, my Lord.’

  ‘Well, you have spoken.’ The Duke turned away again, and Aske knew that he was dismissed.

  When he came by the Minster on his way back to his lodging the moon, not quite full, shone on the East end, making the glass of the windows shine white like ice. He looked up at the great bulk of stone upon which the nearer details showed softly and solemnly, while the shadows of every buttress towered up, densely black.

  More than once he walked about the circuit of that huge creature of men’s hands, revolving in his mind the Duke’s words and looks, and the tones of his voice, recalling to himself that once he had doubted my Lord Darcy, and how needlessly; and once he had doubted the King, yet he had been gracious. At last he stopped walking, and stood with his head bent, not looking up at the height of stone above him, but very conscious of it. ‘Shall I doubt God?’ he asked himself.

  February 13

  The Prioress found her little greyhound bitch gracefully sprawling upon her new coverlet. The coverlet was of light green verders, embroidered with white butterflies and true lovers’ knots, and the little bitch had been rooting in a muddy corner of the Great Court: the Prioress’s rebuke was therefore severe, and her attention so absorbed by the damage to the coverlet that she took no notice of an outcry in the Court below. She was indeed used to such outcries, few of which needed her interference any more than those others, not so dissimilar, which arose from rivalries among the Priory poultry.

  But now, as she stooped over the fawning apologetic animal, the door opened, and Dame Bess Dalton came in, her face crimson and her voice a squeak.

  ‘They are come,’ she cried. ‘They are come to turn us out. And O! Chrissie, to take you away and hang you,’ and she threw her arms round the Prioress, remembering only the old years when they were Bess and Chrissie, whispering and tittering together behind the Ladies’ backs.

  The Prioress, who was not thinking of those days at all, disengaged herself decisively. Her mind was wholly on the present, and in that present, no longer ago than yesterday, and no further away than York, nine men, three of whom wore the monk’s cowl, had been condemned to death for their part in the late troubles.

  To do her justice, however, her thought was not wholly on this news of hangings which had been served up to the Ladies this morning with their mixtum. ‘They cannot,’ she said, and the little greyhound cowered down again at the sound of her voice. ‘We have licence to continue. They cannot turn us out. Who is come?’ she asked sharply.

  Dame Bess Dalton did not know who it was. But his men held the gate now, and had shut into the Cloister all the Ladies except herself and Dame Margery. And when she had mentioned the Chambress Dame Bess wrung her hands together.

  ‘Dame Margery laid herself down across the gate. She said the men should come in over her body only.’

  ‘And did they?’

  Dame Bess mumbled that they did. ‘They stepped over. And then she sat up.’

  Even at this moment of crisis the Prioress laughed aloud, then composed her face. She heard voices close outside.

  ‘They are at the door. Open to them,’ she said.

  The gentleman sent by the Duke came in first, with a disdainful look; he was a big man, and in half-armour, so that the floor timbers groaned under him where a joist was weak. Sir Rafe Bulmer came in after him, but patently unwilling. The Prioress, having found time to seat herself in her chair, rose with dignity and welcomed them.

  Dame Bess, who had to tell the story many times before bedtime that night, did full justice to the Prioress’s conduct of the interview.

  The Duke’s gentleman had spoken very high at first of traitors and of naughty papistical persons. ‘“Therefore,” quod he,’ so Dame Bess reported the kernel of the conversation – ‘“Therefore you must come with me, Madame, and for the rest of you, I shall turn you out of doors and leave my men here to take charge,” and thereupon he looked at me, so that I quaked.

  ‘But the Lady, she says, “The first, and welcome. But the second you may not.”

  ‘“May not?” quod he. “May not? May not turn forth a nest of traitors that have given shelter and comfort to the King’s enemies in this last treasonous disorder?”

  ‘“Sir,” then said the Lady, “shelter nor comfort we never gave but they broke in on us and spoiled us. But turn out the Ladies of this House you may not, who have the King’s own licence to continue. Lord Privy Seal also,” says she, “being good Lord to us.”’

  ‘Mass!’ cried Dame Anne Ladyman triumphantly. ‘That would give him to think on.’

  Dame Bess agreed, ‘Aye, for though he did fret and fume awhile yet he spoke no more of turning us out.’

  Dame Anne called down a blessing on Lord Privy Seal at that, and even those that in general had little liking for him looked at each other with a sort of covert pride in having such a protector.

  ‘But poor Malle! They will not hurt her, will they? There was never harm in those things she saw. Why did the Lady have her go with them to the Duke? And that poor lubber Wat too?’

  For a moment no one answered Dame Margaret Lovechild. Then, ‘Tush!’ cried Dame Anne, ‘she did not take Wat, but he ran after them. And who cares for a creature like Malle?’

  That was further than some of them would have gone, and there was danger of a division arising among them. Yet when Dame Bess explained that the Prioress had taken Malle to the Duke ‘because the man said that we are evil reported on to him, for the sake of her visions’ even the most tender-hearted were impressed.

  ‘And there,’ said Dame Anne, ‘is our Prioress given over to the malice of evil men, and some of us think of mad Malle!’

  So they ceased to think of her, and returned to their questions about the Prioress.

  ‘Tell us again,’ said one, ‘what were her last words before she went away.’

  ‘We left her alone for a while,’ began Dame Bess, ‘as she commanded us.’

  ‘Did she pray when you left her?’

  ‘We could not see. She bade us wait at the foot of the stairs.’

  ‘And then?’ they prompted.

  ‘She called us up again and said, “Tell the Ladies I have that shall stand me, and the House, and all of us in good stead.”’

  They questioned among themselves what she had meant.

  ‘Surely it was God’s help she spoke of,’ Dame Margery Conyers said, and flushed to the edge of her coif, while her eyes filled with tears.

  They all exclaimed that truly it must be so. But some of them would have felt more confidence had they known that the Prioress spoke of the precious little pyx and the bag of gold that had lain hidden in the secret recess, and which she had taken out during those few minutes when she was left alone.

  For a long time that evening the Ladies sat around the dying fire in the warming house, discussing the case of the Prioress, and their own case, while the candles guttered and flared unnoticed. At first they were inclined to be hopeful, but as the night deepened round them their spirits sank, and they began to fear not only for the Lady’s life, but also the onset of every imaginable enemy, whether of rats in the ceiling, or rough men from the upper dale, or soldiers sent to fetch them after the Prioress, or those ghosts and ghouls that wake when hearts beat weakest. Though at another time they would have revelled in this long, late, garrulous sitting, to-night they would havebeen only too glad to hear the Prioress’s voice, chiding them off to the beds they longed for but did not dare to seek for the perils that thronged on every side of their way upstairs.

  February 16

  The castle and town of Richmond were crammed with men and horses, and more coming in every hour, for the Duke of Norfolk had called on the gentlemen of Yorkshire to go with him to put down the poor commons in Cumberland, who had risen, and were besieging Carlisle.

  This was a sore business for the Duke, who feared to be blamed for it, as he feared to be blamed for anything that went wrong in the North, now he was the King’s Lieuten
ant in those parts. So his temper was frayed and his patience short as he sat by a sea-coal fire in a room that led off the great old Norman Hall in the Castle, conning lists of victuals and fodder for beasts, of pikes, of guns, of barrels of arrows, while a couple of clerks wrote busily, a group of gentlemen conversed quietly by one of the windows, and men came and went incessantly with messages and questions and the Duke’s orders. Far below the Castle the Swale ran full over its ledges of rock, making in its falls a great noise, which came up to the Duke’s ears as a hush, like the sound of wind sifting through dry autumn leaves.

  Now and again, when the door into the Great Hall was opened, the noise of men talking there quite drowned the sound of the river. At one time indeed, even with the door shut, the voices outside rose so angrily that the Duke, frowning, sent one of the gentlemen to order the disputants to observe more propriety.

  ‘Who,’ the Duke snapped, ‘was brawling?’

  ‘Master Aske,’ said he who had gone out.

  Norfolk looked up sharply, then down. ‘Ah?’ he said, ‘and of what did he dispute?’

  ‘He maintained that these commons of Cumberland rise not against the King, but to defend their goods and wives against Clifford’s horsemen, who, says he, are all strong thieves of the Westlands, and themselves fitter to stretch halters than the poor men of Kirby.’

  ‘It might have been thought,’ said Norfolk acidly, ‘that one so lately and so deeply dipped in treason would have held his tongue in such a matter as this.’

  ‘Yea! Yea!’ said they all with great fervour, most of them having been among the Pilgrims of Grace last year, and not liking the memory of it.

  But Norfolk, stooping again over his papers, felt the thought of Aske as unwelcome in his mind as a stone would have been in his shoe. He fairly hated the man, so sure of himself, so glorious even yet as to boast that he would know if there were any stirring in the North and would warn my Lord of it.

  And now he spoke openly the truth about this business at Carlisle and Kirby as he had spoken it privily to the Duke himself. ‘Yet,’ the Duke answered his own conscience or else it was his pride which pricked him – ‘Yet I myself wrote much the same to the King’s Grace,’ and he plumed himself on that for a minute, and then regretted it when he remembered, with a jolt and a sudden qualm, the King’s hard, bullying look one day when he had said how men whispered that for favour my Lord of Norfolk had forborne to fight the North Countrymen at Doncaster. That made the Duke glad to remember another letter he had written, this one to Sir Christopher Dacres, ordering him to set on the commons before Carlisle – ‘and spare not,’ he had written, ‘to slay plenty of these false rebels.’ He had the copy of that letter, and could, if there were need, produce it.

  *

  That evening when all preparations were completed, the Duke, having a little leisure before bedtime, consented to see this Prioress of Marrick for whom he had sent, and who, since her coming, had given the officers no rest, importuning them always that she should be brought to my Lord.

  When she was brought to him, between two pikemen, he frowned upon her blackly, and then, the more to awe her, said nothing, but looked down at the papers in his hand, or spoke to his clerk, or to one or other of those gentlemen who were with him. But his intention miscarried, for he gave her what she needed – an opportunity to study his face, just as old Andrew had used to study a new buyer of his wool. In her mind she summed him up quickly: he was proud, that of course, since he was first and greatest of the old noble blood; and he was subtle, she knew it by the underlook of his lowered eyes; but was he so sure of himself, or of his footing, as his dignity pretended? ‘We’ll see,’ she thought.

  ‘Hah!’ he said at last, as if he had only now realized her presence – ‘Another of these naughty papist Religious. And I hear that you were instant to be brought to me. I wonder, Madame, that you do not tremble, seeing that I bear the King’s sword here for justice on all papists and traitors.’

  The Prioress went down on her knees, but she kept her chin high. She said in her clear voice that she was no papist, and that she did not tremble since the King’s loyal subjects had nothing to fear from His Grace’s Lieutenant.

  ‘Nothing to fear?’ he scoffed at her, and began to rail upon monks and nuns.

  But the Prioress, watching him, saw that hotly as he spoke, as if from the heart, yet he kept on looking now at the clerks, now at the gentlemen by the window, with a sort of calculation in his glance, that ill suited the freedom of his words. So she said to herself, ‘All this for show!’

  ‘I’ve a mind,’ cried the Duke, ‘to send you and your wench to London, to answer before the King’s Grace and his honourable Privy Council – you for your treasons, and she for these pretenced visions. For it may be,’ said he, with a very piercing look, ‘that as in time past sundry great persons were, with traitorous intent, confederate with that Nun of Kent against the King’s person and health, so now once more. And what will ye answer to that?’ But he looked triumphantly towards the gentlemen, and not at the Prioress.

  ‘Sir,’ said she, ‘that I will go right gladly, and at my own charges.’

  ‘What?’ he said, and now stared at her, quite taken aback. So serene was her face that he could only think she spoke the truth, as indeed she did.

  ‘Give me licence, my Lord,’ said she, ‘to go to London, where I may plead the cause of our poor House, taking with me our poor fool—’

  ‘Fool?’ Norfolk was sharp, for this was a new idea. He would look the fool if he sent a poor want-wit all the way to London with a charge founded upon idle tittle-tattle.

  The Prioress read him. ‘The wench,’ she said, ‘is a poor thing, but she has this strange manner visions. If there be evil persons who think to use her, of whom I know not, that matter should be bolted out.’

  She dropped her eyes humbly, but within herself she smiled. If – and she would have wagered Marrick’s best crucifix that it was so – if the Duke feared to be ill reported of to the King, and to Lord Privy Seal, now he would hesitate to keep this matter in his own hand.

  He crossed one knee over the other, and drummed with his fingers on the arm of the settle on which he sat. She looked no higher than his foot, and saw that fidget and swing. Neatly and quietly she drove in her last nail. ‘I have,’ said she, ‘already sent a letter to my Lord Privy Seal in this matter, seeing that he is so good Lord to us, and as it were our second founder, asking his licence to come to him.’

  There was no more then to be said. Norfolk dismissed the Prioress, informing her, with a rigid and impressive dignity, that he would take order in her case to send her to the King. Yet though his dignity might appear to be unimpaired he was conscious that this woman had gone beyond him. Yet he took comfort. He would waste no money over her, since she would go at her own charges. And if she went hardly at all as a prisoner, his own part in it would be, if necessary, the easier to disavow.

  He got up at last, yawned, and called for his gentlemen to bring wine and candles. ‘To-morrow,’ said he, ‘we must set out betimes. There’s bad roads between us and Cumberland.’

  February 24

  After the trial of the seventy-four rebels of the commons in the Hall of Carlisle Castle the Duke of Norfolk walked awhile on the walls with Sir Rafe Ellerker and Master Robert Bowes. The trial, though briskly conducted, had been, necessarily, because of the number of the accused, a longish business, and the Hall uncomfortably hot, for these last days had been more like early May than February.

  Now therefore it was pleasant to walk in the fresh air, and the Duke spoke cheerfully, though with a proper sobriety, of the work they had together been engaged in, Sir Rafe having been Marshall in the late trial, and Master Bowes Attorney for the King.

  ‘Truly,’ said the Duke, ‘had I proceeded by jury, rather than by martial law with the King’s banner displayed, I think not the fifth man of them would have been condemned.’

  He looked at Bowes, and Bowes nodded. Knowing him for a silent m
an the Duke found that enough, and went on:

  ‘For you heard how the poor caitiffs said, “I came out for fear of my life, or for fear of burning of my houses, and destroying of my wife and children.” And here, in these parts, a small excuse would have been well believed by a jury, where much pity and affection of neighbours doth reign.’ The Duke looked at each of them again, thinking, ‘They shall know that I do not fear to speak my mind,’ and thinking, ‘There’s no disloyalty in that.’

  They stood for a moment at the turn, feeling the light breeze that touched their faces pleasantly. From within the Castle came sounds of voices and a busy stir, but outside, though knots of men stood about the streets, the town lay strangely quiet; they could hear someone chop wood, and a woman chide a crying child, but otherwise it might have seemed that those who went about walked in their sleep.

  The three turned and began to go back again.

  ‘So I hope that His Grace will be content with our doings,’ said the Duke, ‘for though the number be nothing so great as their deserts did require to have suffered, seeing that of six thousand I reserved only seventy-four for punishment, yet I think the like number hath not been heard of put to execution at one time.’

  And again he looked from one to another, and rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Come,’ said he, ‘you must be glad to have so well discharged your duty to your Prince.’

  They said then, Sir Rafe leading, that they were glad.

  ‘And that you shall surely know you have done what shall please His Grace,’ Norfolk said, ‘I shall read you a letter.’ He took it out from his pouch, and spread it out upon the coping of the wall, and ran his finger along the lines to find his place.

  ‘“Our pleasure,”’ he read, ‘“is that before ye shall close up our Banner again, you shall in any wise cause such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of the inhabitants of every town, village and hamlet, that have offended in this rebellion, as well by hanging of them up in trees, as by quartering of them, and setting up their heads and quarters in every town great and small, and in all such other places as they may be a perfect spectacle.”’

 

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