The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  He folded up the paper again, and then looked into their faces.

  ‘So,’ said he, ‘you see that both you and I have well served the King. Lawyers may say, “Fiat Justitia, ruat coelum.” But it is better that these, whom blind Justice might have spared, should suffer, when by the example of such a dreadful severity, many more may be prevented from light doings.’

  They said, the two Yorkshire gentlemen, that it was better, and that the King was a most gracious, godly and wise Prince.

  February 26

  The Duke of Norfolk and the muster of gentlemen who had followed him from Richmond to Barnard Castle, and Barnard Castle to Carlisle, came down from the high, bleak moors to the gentle valley of the South Tyne. The sun was low, warm upon their backs, and flashing upon the pikes and halberd blades, when they came within sight of the town of Hexham, sheltered among its orchards. The great bulk of the Priory showed above the walls, piling itself up to the high-ridged roof and tower of the Church itself. From the Priory to-morrow the Canons would be put out, and the King’s receiver put in to assess the value of their stuff, and of the stuff in that Church, one of the most ancient in the realm, and for the North perhaps the holiest. So Aske, who rode ahead with those of the Duke’s gentlemen who were to prepare for his coming, would look everywhere in the golden green sunset valley, except at the Priory.

  After supper, because he did not care to listen to the talk of a parcel of young men who were boasting of the lesson that the saucy commons had received at the Duke’s hands, he went out, and wandered aimlessly about the town. It was growing dusk when he came to the place where the brook ran out under the wall of the Canons’ garden; the evening air was still and pure, with a deep blue dusk; a thrush sang in one of the taller trees; the stars were coming out and there was a tang of frost as well as the scent of wood smoke from the evening fires. He leaned on the rail of the little foot bridge, listening to the voice of the water with its sweet chucklings and whisperings.

  A bell began to ring, uncertainly at first, then steady and insistent. Someone in the Priory had not forgotten that it was time for Compline, even if it were the last time that Compline should be sung. Aske listened for a minute, then began in a great hurry to go round the wall towards the Church.

  He reached the Cloister as the bell jangled into silence. Three of the Canons were going into the Church by the door in the northeast corner. He made haste to come up with them, and when he reached the door, found that one of them was waiting who now laid his arm across the open door, barring the way.

  Aske stood still. He had come here in haste, because of great need, and for a moment he could find no words. He looked at the Canon, a man of about his own age, but long, lean and already grey. The Canon, bending forward in the gathering dusk, saw a man with one eye. ‘Who are you?’ he said sharply.

  Some obscure eddy of discarded habit put the answer into Aske’s mouth.

  ‘The Great Captain,’ he said, and then – ‘A man desperate.’

  ‘Come in, my son,’ the Canon answered him.

  In the silent and darkening Church Aske knelt down beside a pillar, leaning his shoulder and forehead against the stone. Far away in the choir the three Canons began their Vespers, their voices attenuated and deadened by the emptiness around, but answering steadily and promptly, one to another, in the familiar responses. The darkness grew deeper, so that the one candle that they had lit began to cast strong shadows, while the windows turned blank and black with the night outside. Once, when one of the Canons passed between the candle-flame and the wall of the choir, his shadow leapt up, monstrous, to the very clerestory.

  When Compline was over Aske heard their footsteps die away and the door into the Cloister clap to. It had seemed to him that one of the Canons lingered, as if expecting him to get up from his knees and come away, but he had not moved, being ashamed of the tears that ran down his face.

  At last he got up, stiff and dazed, and groped to the door. He had his hand stretched out to unlatch it when it swung inwards, and he saw, in the swimming light of a number of torches, a small company, and upon the very threshold of the doorway, one man alone. Aske stood still, his eye dazzled and his mind amazed, till he recognized in the gentleman who stood almost foot to foot with him the Duke of Norfolk.

  ‘My Lord!’ he said. ‘My Lord, you must hear me!’

  Norfolk had for a second stood staring, almost as startled as the man who had blundered at him out of the dark Church.

  Then he saw who it was; he saw the disorder of Aske’s face, and along with disgust and quickened dislike came the thought – ‘In this state that he is in he might speak more freely than he means.’

  So, leaving the others to begin the business of the inventory of the stuff in the Church, he turned back, and into the Warming House. One of the servants stuck a torch into a bracket and tried to stir up the fire, but the ashes were dead, so he went away, shutting the door upon the Duke and Robert Aske.

  The Duke sat down. ‘Well, what must I hear of you?’ After a minute, restraining his impatience, he said in a mild tone, ‘Come, Mr. Aske.’

  Be did not, however, learn much, or not much to the purpose. At first Mr. Aske clamoured, in a manner almost distraught, that the Duke should have mercy upon the poor ignorant commons, closing the King’s banner, and pardoning such as had not suffered. When he began to grow calmer the Duke put certain questions to him, about Lord Darcy, Sir Robert Constable and others. But then he would speak only in their favour, stoutly maintaining that there never had been any acquaintance between my Lord Darcy and himself before he came to Pomfret, and that nor the old Lord, nor Constable, nor he had intended treason, but lawfully to petition the King.

  Yet – as the Duke remarked afterwards to Mr. Appleyard – such tenderness towards those taken in treason argued little loyalty to the King’s Grace, and that great faithfulness and kindness that was manifest between Lord Darcy and this man Aske – he being but a gentleman of no great House – might in itself be held as worthy of suspicion.

  The Duke stopped there, and regarded Mr. Appleyard closely, though covertly, wondering, ‘Will he report to the King my faithful carefulness in His Grace’s service?’

  March 4

  July said, standing beside Mistress Holland at the Vintner’s door: ‘Hear me while I say it again. Is this right?

  ‘Take new cheese and grind it fair

  In mortar with eggs without disware.

  Put powder thereto of sugar I say,

  Colour it with saffron full well thou may.

  Put it in coffins that be fair,

  And bare it forth, I thee pray!’

  ‘Thou hast it, sweet,’ cried Mistress Holland, patting July’s shoulder. ‘That is how I make my flawnes.’

  ‘But,’ said July, stepping down into the street, where already Laurence’s prentice boy was waiting to see her home, ‘it’s the pie-crust for the coffins that I cannot make as you make it, so crumbly and light.’

  ‘Lord!’ Mistress Holland waved her hand over July’s head to a neighbour going by. ‘Lord! there are who can make pie-crust, and who cannot. But chiefly ye must keep it ever dry. Your wet crust is your hard sad crust.’

  ‘Well, I must e’en try,’ said July, and sighed.

  ‘There!’ Mistress Holland leaned down from the step and kissed her, then whispered in the shelter of July’s big white kerchief, ‘Never fear for thy pie-crust, sweet, to please thy husband. Tell him what thou hast told me. That’s how best to please him.’

  So July went off, with the boy close behind her. She said to herself – ‘Friday dinner, herrings and flawnes, and ling in that green sauce.’ She sighed again. She was not averse to pleasing Laurence, since he was always so kind, but she would have preferred to have pleased him by making light, crisp, crumbly flawnes than in that way which had caused Mistress Holland such delight to hear of. She did not want a child, yet it seemed that she carried one now.’ She felt as she had felt when Mistress Holland had told her – a little s
cared, and much more perturbed, but most of all as if she had suddenly become a different person, or two persons – July, whom she had always known, and, as well, this stranger that housed a stranger. Yet, though perturbing, the situation was not, she decided, without its advantages, since she felt herself vastly more important than she had ever been. Looked upon in that light the event should, she thought, be celebrated. She stopped therefore and bought some caraway comfits which she and the boy enjoyed on the way home. July treated him fair; each drew out one at a time and ate till all were gone.

  March 6

  The Prioress of Marrick, making use of the privilege of a guest and the pretext of an aching tooth to abstain from Terce, went up instead to the Prioress’s Chamber in the Priory of St. Helen’s, Bishopgate Street, in London. Not for the first time since she came here a fortnight ago, she was struck, as she stood looking round the spacious room, vaulted and painted above, wainscoted and painted below, with the opulence of its design, and the poverty of its garnishings. On the tall carved livery cupboard there was nothing of silver, but wooden bowls and horn cups only; there were no cushions to give ease upon the settle by the hearth; the Prioress’s bed stood bare, with naked tester and sparver; when the Prioress of Marrick sat down on it, instead of sinking into the softness of feathers, she heard the harsh rustle of straw.

  ‘God’s Passion!’ she cried softly to herself, throwing up her clenched hands, and bringing them down upon her knees. It was a relief to be alone, and able to express the impatience that bore hard on her. This waiting of hers upon the pleasure of Lord Privy Seal was made no easier for her by the punctuality and assiduity with which these Ladies of St. Helen’s kept their Hours, and she began to move restlessly about the room, remembering how near Privy Seal’s house was, almost next door, in Throgmorton Street, yet she had not succeeded in finding a means of coming to his presence. And then she began to reckon what money had been spent already, and what yet remained to spend in the buckskin bag, and to try to fathom the bailiff’s report of his efforts to obtain Lord Privy Seal’s ear. ‘Is he cheating me?’ she thought, or perhaps it was rather, ‘How much doth he cheat me?’

  In her impatient wanderings she came again to the foot of the Prioress’s bed. A big hutch stood there, an old-fashioned but very handsome piece of furniture, carved with foliated circles, and arches traceried like church windows.

  To divert her thoughts from trouble the Prioress of Marrick jerked it open, and looked inside; it was full to the top. She laid back the lid upon the bed, and began to go through the stuff there, turning it up carefully at one corner so as to make no disturbance.

  There were silk embroidered coverlets, and curtains of fine needlework for the bed; under these she came upon cushions, tasselled, fringed, and worked with roses, butterflies, birds; there were carpets for the cupboard and table, and at the bottom, wrapped separately in soft leather, such silver cups that at the sight Christabel Cowper’s eyes widened, and colour came up to her cheekbones as she remembered how she had led the conversation round about till she could boast about her own great cup Edward; but Edward was a poor thing compared with the least of these. There were also, among the silver things, two pairs of very gay shoes, one of red leather, the other of green.

  ‘Mass!’ said the Prioress to herself, and, ‘Why?’ Then she laughed aloud. It must be that these things were laid by because it was Lent; such might well be the fashion among these dutiful daughters of St. Benedict. She made all neat again, and shut the lid, lingering only for a second as she considered whether to take out and use one of the cushions. But though the Prioress of St. Helen’s was a vague, elderly dame, and timid (Christabel thought) as a sheep, and though Christabel might be on occasion peremptory, contradictory or scornful with her, yet there was that in her (perhaps it came to her by birth and blood) which made the Prioress of Marrick unwilling to take such a liberty as this. So, shutting the hutch with a little slam, she went again restlessly about the room.

  There were three arched windows along one side of the room; that side looked out upon the church, which, tall, new and stately, took all the sun, except for a short time at noon. On the other side, and at the end furthest from the hearth, was another window, but it was shuttered, and she had never seen it open. This morning, because the Prioress of St. Helen’s and the Ladies were so devout, and because, since it was Lent, she must, forsooth, sit without cushions, and because she was sure the bailiff was cheating her, and because she was by no means sure that her long journey here would not end in failure – because of all these vexations, she laid hands on the shutters, unbarred and swung them inwards.

  With them came, like a wave pouring into the room, all the noise, stir and colour of a busy street, that was also full of sunshine. ‘By St. Eustace!’ the Prioress murmured, and leaned out, smiling, partly in derision at those who so regarded Lent, and partly from pure pleasure in the lively light, and the moving crowd.

  A little way along Bishopgate Street a gentleman and his servants were coming out of the yard of a big hostelry, where was the sign of the Bull hung out over the archway. They came past just below the Prioress, so that she caught the winking flash of the jewel in the gentleman’s ear, and got an excellent view of the strong curling black hairs of his clipped beard, and of the gold chain over his shoulder; so fine he was, in scarlet velvet and white hosen, that she must suppose he was on his way to Court; as he went out of sight her heart went with him there.

  Then her ear was caught by a run of notes played upon a lute, and her eyes were drawn to a window which stood open almost opposite the window in which she stood. A plump, very comely young woman sat there, with half-shut eyes and a half smile, placid as a cat which sits purring in the sunshine. From beyond her shoulder leaned a young man’s face that looked hungrily on her, while a boy in the room behind them sang:—

  ‘Alone I live, alone,

  And sore I sigh for one.

  No wonder though I mourning make

  For grievous sighs that mine heart doth take,

  And all is for my lady’s sake.

  Alone I live, alone

  And sore I sigh...’

  The Prioress of Marrick could see how during the song the young man’s hand stole out and was laid upon the young woman’s honeycoloured satin lap; she saw too how the young woman took it up by the wrist, between two of her fingers, as though it were a thing she were loth to touch, and so removed it from her knee. The Prioress smiled, yet sighed; she liked the young woman’s action, which seemed to show a decision of character such as she must approve; yet she was grieved for the young man, whose face wore such a look of loving and longing. She was sorry when, as the song ended, the two of them went away from the window.

  But still there was plenty to watch; a funeral passed, with candles and torches pale in the sunshine, and many painted escutcheons, priests in plenty, and a long tail of mourners following like a black shadow. Then, in the midst of the street, for a moment empty, a young girl in grey woollen gown and white coif met a tall prentice lad. The girl put her hand on the lad’s shoulder, and lifted her face, fresh as a flower, to be kissed. The boy, more shy than she, stooped, a little awkwardly, and kissed her.

  The Prioress laughed at that, so pretty a thing it was, and so aptly redressing the balance tipped by the proud young woman in honeycoloured satin, against love and the spring-time. She heard the door of the room behind her open, and turned, still smiling.

  ‘When gorse is out of bloom,’ she said to the Prioress of St. Helen’s, hesitating behind her, ‘kissing’s out of season. Here have I been watching the prettiest shows as if I were at a masking.’

  The Prioress of St. Helen’s came closer; she was near-sighted, with a plain old, wrinkled face and indeterminate expression. She glanced out of the window, went away, came again, and said:

  ‘Madame – that window – we keep it shut nowadays.’ When the Prioress of Marrick made no reply other than to raise her eyebrows, the Lady of St. Helen’s stepped back, but aga
in returned, and with a very high colour and flustered air, reached past the guest, and pushed the shutters to.

  ‘Jesu!’ said the Prioress of Marrick, ‘this is indeed to keep Lent.’

  ‘Lent?’

  ‘Why, yes. Is not all this—’ Christabel Cowper waved her hand to the bare poles of the bed. ‘Is it not for Lent?’

  The older woman, flushed and confused, dropped her eyes, and muttered that, no, it was not for Lent, and then with a rush of words – ‘But it is for our sins, that we lived in religion so worldly for a long time, till God’s chastisement (I mean the fear we now live in) remembered us of our Rule. So now,’ she said, her hands picking at her gown, ‘so now, hoping that God may be merciful, and turn from us His anger, and save us – we – we—’

  ‘I should ha’ thought,’ the Prioress of Marrick broke in, ‘that a plump purse given to my Lord Privy Seal had been of more service in saving your House.’

  ‘Forsooth!’ said the other, with great simplicity, ‘that we have given already, or rather we have given him an annuity.’

  Christabel Cowper laughed. ‘Then why not sit on your cushions and look out on the sunshine and the street?’ said she, but the other did not answer, except by shaking her head with a troubled air, so that there was silence till the Prioress of St. Helen’s asked haltingly whether the Marrick bailiff had sped any better this day.

  ‘No better – yet it cost him four angels – so he says.’

  ‘Alas!’ The Prioress of St. Helen’s sighed and hung her head, then after some fidgeting and clearing of her throat, brought out a question.

  ‘And the poor woman you brought from the North, that the sheriff’s officers took away to prison in the Fleet – Is she...? Have you...? Do you hear of her? And the poor little knave that would not be parted from her?’

  The Prioress of Marrick turned. Was she to be questioned by this shrinking creature, and concerning Malle, the crazed fool that had helped to bring Marrick to this pass? She stared hardily into the other’s eyes, but this time she could not look them down.