The Sacrist explained her problem, more than once. She asked each one, except Christabel, what her advice would be, and got nothing very clear from them. The Chambress hesitated, the Cellaress weighed one advantage against the other.
‘What do you think?’ said the Cellaress, craning her big dark face round Dame Anne, so that she could speak to Christabel. ‘Why,’ – Christabel was always prompt and always confident – ‘it’s a fair piece of stuff. Let’s have one cope that’ll be fine and seemly and rich. Not two that are worn in patches like a scabbed sheep.’
She knew directly she had said it that the matter was decided. The Sacrist would cut her velvet as thriftily as she knew how, and the rubbed parts would be an eye-sore to all who liked things trim and neat, for many years to come.
When the unpleasantness which followed had been somehow smoothed over by the Chambress, the Ladies went away leaving Dame Anne and the seamstress standing over the velvet with the shears.
‘A cope and a chasuble,’ Dame Anne said, before they had gone out of hearing.
1521
May 11
The primroses in the wood above Marrick Priory were almost over, and the bluebells well begun, but the skies were heavy, and a bitter wind blew off the fells. The young leaves shivered in it and cuckoo was dumb. ‘Miserere!’ said the Nuns, as they splashed their hands in the cold water of the laver, ‘Christmas was more kindly than this.’
The Prioress and the new Cellaress had gone up the hill to Marrick Manor, because Sir Rafe Bulmer and his bride, who had been Anne Aske, were come home there. The Prioress rode the little mule because it had the easiest pace; the Nuns called it Francis. The new Cellaress walked, and of the two servants one led the mule and the other carried the Priory gifts – an embroidered cushion, cut from what had been left over from Sir William Aske’s gown, after the tawny velvet cope and chasuble had been made, and, in a little pannier, a pot of the Ladies’ rose-leaf conserve.
It was much colder in the village, for here there was no shelter from the wind. The Prioress was very glad when they got inside the Manor House; she always had a bad cough in winter-time, and this winter weather had brought it on again.
But the parlour was gratefully warm, and from the fireside old Dame Felicia Aske, Sir William’s widow, got up to welcome her. They knew each other from a great many years back, and were soon deep in recollections and inquiry, while the Cellaress stood with one foot on the edge of the raised hearth, listening for the approach of Sir Rafe and his wife.
‘For,’ said the old lady, ‘there they are, both of them, outside in the stable, as though she were no gentlewoman but a lad. Alas! I know not what’s come to the girls of this day. Ever since she could walk it hath been horses, horses – nothing but horses.’
The two came in just then, both of them wind-blown, Sir Rafe with muddy boots, and the girl with mud round the hem of her draggled gown, and wispy, light-brown hair blown out from under her hood. Sir Rafe was a big man, like all the Bulmers, but thinner than most of them, with a big craggy nose. Dame Nan’s face was still childishly round and soft, for she was only fifteen, but she had bones in it that would make her handsome when puppy thinned out to hound.
They stayed just long enough for courtesy, and then went back to the stable-yard, for Sir Rafe was buying a horse, sired by the Jervaulx breed, which is the best in the North Country. The new Cellaress went with them; she did not ask leave of the Prioress, but simply went. The two old ladies were pleased to be left alone; the waiting gentlewoman who sat apart did not count as company unless the mistress chose.
Dame Felicia asked after Clemence; Clemence had been the name of the old Cellaress.
‘Ah!’ cried the Prioress, “Deus misereatur animae suae.” She died at Christmastide, suddenly, like an elm bough falling. I thought always it should have been I to go first.’ She wiped her pale eyes, and her lips shook a little. Dame Felicia murmured something of sympathy, and then asked who was now Cellaress at the Priory.
‘That gentlewoman.’ The Prioress nodded towards the door by which Christabel had gone out.
‘She’s young.’
‘It’s a grey head though the shoulders be green. And for the last two years she did much for Clemence. Clemence needed help; she must have been ill and we knew it not, for when she died Christabel found out how the bailiff had wronged us at Downholm, and at Topcliffe too, taking our rents – Oh! I can’t tell you what we lost by him.
‘What is her name?’
‘Christabel Cowper,’ said the Prioress. ‘And her father’s a worthy Wool-man of Richmond. At least—’ She began to tell Dame Felicia something of the gossip about Andrew Cowper’s doings that had filtered through from Richmond.
May 19
My Lord Darcy sat in the little closet beyond the Chequer Chamber at Templehurst. It was here that were kept all his evidences, the old, butter-yellow parchments, sealed by kings long dead, which had granted lands or offices, rights of warren or fishing or wood, to Darcy’s forefathers; and there were other writings, newer, larger, and more floridly written in the present style of the Chancery, for lands and offices which had been granted to himself
He sat wrapped in a long, fur-lined gown, for there was no fire in the room, making up a list of stuff that his steward should buy in London and have sent up here. He had put down already—
‘Three bonnets. One choice butt of Malmsey of the best that can be chosen. 60 of the greatest Spanish onions, the whitest and greatest that can be found.’
He stopped to nibble at the end of the quill, and stare out through the little barred window. Then he looked down again at the list, and added, ‘John Trumpet and Roye my brewer’s wife can help therein.’
He stopped again, drew inky patterns on the table and wiped them out with his thumb.
‘And 2s. in nutmegs,’ he scrawled, ‘and 12d. in citron.’
He stopped there and called out ‘Come in!’ because someone had knocked at the door.
A man came in whose face was pinched by cold and weariness. He had on Darcy’s green livery with the Buck’s Head, and his leather hosen were splashed with mud. He shut the door, and stood against it.
‘Well?’ Darcy said, and when the man made no answer, ‘It is done?’
‘I saw it done.’
Darcy looked harder at him, because of something in the tone of the man’s voice.
‘You mean you saw him tried?’
‘No. I saw the execution of the sentence.’
‘God’s Death!’ Darcy muttered, and crossed himself, ‘What was the sentence?’
‘He died by the axe.’
After a silence Darcy said, ‘Well, go away and get them to give you to eat and drink. You shall tell me more after.’
When the man had gone he sat there thinking of the Duke of Buckingham whose head had fallen by the axe. ‘This,’ said Darcy to himself, ‘is because he was of the blood royal.’ He himself had half expected it, since he had heard that the Duke was brought to trial, yet it was strange to him to think of so great a nobleman, and so confident and imperious a man, thus quickly and easily brought down.
‘This House of Tudor,’ he thought to himself, ‘will be masters, by guile or by plain force. They will be kings indeed.’ He was not too sure if this new way pleased him. Here in the North many men had liked their Lancastrian kings, between whom and the nobility a hard bargain had been struck, and who had been sworn to rule by Law.
Well! The Duke was dead. The King lived, and the Cardinal. Not that Darcy was of those who believed that the King went hither and thither as the Cardinal’s hand guided him.
He returned to the papers before him, and wrote down instructions as to how the stuff should be sent – ‘by an honest sure carrier, and the wine with an honest man by sea’.
But as he wrote it the thought of the Duke hung over his mind. He remembered a bastard daughter. ‘I’ll wager Thomas Fitzgerald will never wed her now.’ But that was nothing to him. He only remembered the girl – her name
was Margaret – because she was very well favoured, a lovely young creature.
September 30
The Cellaress, Christabel Cowper (and now she was Treasuress too), sat in her office, which looked out on the Great Court, and, across the Great Court and the stone-slatted roofs of the stables and dove-house, to Calva, the hill that was like a great beast crouching, red russet now in the morning light, with heath and bracken turning for the autumn.
She sat on the bench-stool with carved ends, on which her predecessors had sat for the past fifty years, and the account roll of the Priory was laid out upon the desk which they had used. In the corner of the room by the door there was another bench, heavier, larger, and plainer. On it the Priory tenants sat when they waited to pay their rents. The only other furniture in the little low room was a great iron-bound chest with three locks; the Prioress, the Cellaress and the Chambress had the keys for these locks, and inside the chest were all the evidences of the Priory, from the Foundation Charter, a strip of parchment yellow now as honey and with a dark green seal dangling, to the Injunctions which the Bishop had written to the House after the last Visitation.
The Cellaress had her eyes on the Priory roll; but when she heard the door shut she knew that Jake Cowton had gone out. She looked up and found that the bailiff was still in front of her; he was an elderly man with a watery eye and thin grey hair; his pursed lips made him look a fool, but the Cellaress knew that he was no fool.
‘The man can’t pay more,’ he said, ‘and he’s a good tenant. He’s held that yard-land for twenty years.’
‘He’ll have to pay more if he wants to hold it again. All landlords are taking bigger gressums when the leases fall in.’
‘We’ll lose him. He’ll go elsewhere. And maybe we’ll get worse in his room.’ He waited between each remark for the Cellaress to answer but she listened in a silence which disconcerted him. ‘We all know Jake’s a good tenant,’ he said.
‘We all know he’s your cousin.’ The Cellaress let the roll run itself up with a rattling sound. She tied it with the little strip of parchment. The bailiff realized that she had said the last word.
‘I’ll speak again with Jake,’ he said.
‘He must make up his mind quick. He’s had three months to think of it; and now it’s past Michaelmas.’
The bailiff went out. The Cellaress tossed the big sheepskin roll on to the top of the chest, and went out after him, locking the door behind her.
1522
March 24
From the Round Tower to the Piper and Gascoigne Towers, thence by the stables, bake-house, kitchens, and Hall, with its cellars, then on by Queen’s Tower, King’s Tower, and so, back by the gate towers to the great Round Tower again – that was how my Lord Darcy went about Pomfret Castle, taking view of the defences, and of munitions and stores, as the King’s Constable for the Castle and Honour.
He stopped quite a while on top of the Queen’s Tower so that the two sergeants who went with him could count the quilted leather jacks and the pikes stored in the room below, while the clerk, who followed after, wrote all down in his roll. As Darcy waited, with the fresh wind whipping the long skirts of his gown and the clouds racing by overhead, he looked about him, estimating, with a satisfied eye, the great strength of this castle of the King’s Grace. From the Piper Tower round to the King’s Tower (that is, a full half-circle from west to east through north) walls and towers were built on the crest of a deep and steep fall, naked rock in places and perpendicular as the walls themselves, in other places a sharp slope of broken sandstone jutting out of the tough clay. To the south where the slope was gentler a barbican guarded the gate, and on the west, below the huge Round Tower which was the old keep, the Norman builders had carved out a deep and wide moat. Not that the Round Tower looked to need much strengthening, because the sandstone bluff on which the castle was built rose highest here, and if part of the keep were built of ashlar, part was the rock itself.
‘Blood of God!’ Darcy muttered to himself, thinking of the builders of such a hold. ‘They found a right place for their castle.’ For though the western windows of the Round Tower looked up a long wide street to Pomfret town high above it, yet the castle stood apart, secure and orgulous, upon that huge isolated outcrop of rock.
‘Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two – no – the shaft’s sprung – fifty-one; cast it aside, Sim.’ The elder sergeant was counting the pikes; the shafts rattled together and the blades clashed. Lord Darcy stamped his feet because the morning was early yet, and chill. Far below, on low ground, through which a brook went rambling, stood the Abbey of St. John. As he looked the bell in the tower of the Monks’ Church began to ring, and he could see how from the out-buildings and orchard, from garden and from offices, the Brothers came, like hens at feeding time, all making for the Cloister and the Church door. For a moment the knowledge that they would soon be singing Mass made a quiet in his mind.
‘One hundred and thirty-four,’ said the sergeant in the room just below.
‘The full tally?’ asked the clerk.
‘Aye, the full tally.’
Darcy turned and went down the stairs. ‘Bows and arrow sheaves in King’s Tower, you said?’
‘Aye, my Lord.’
They went on towards the King’s Tower.
October 30
Dame Christabel, the Cellaress, was making a new little garden where before there had been only a tangle of rose bushes, no one knew how old. The best of them she kept, and in the spring they would be cut back and trimmed. But when the others had been grubbed up there was room to plant the gooseberry bushes that Sir Rafe Bulmer had given her, and raspberry canes from her brother at Richmond. She stood watching the gardener now. It was a perfect day for setting, for the rain fell, steady, mild and gentle, steeping air and earth. The gardener’s leather coat was dark with wet, and, as he stooped over the gooseberry bush that he was planting, heavy drops fell from the edge of the hood above his eyes. Christabel went near to him.
‘Leave space enough between for the strawberries.’
‘Aye, Lady.’ He did not look up, but went on treading in the wet soft earth round about the roots.
‘And send out one of the lads to-morrow to dig up roots from the wood. I saw plenty beside the steps where we felled that beech last year.’
‘Them’s no use.’ He had filled in the hole and made all fair and smooth, and now he turned away and picked up his spade. ‘The best always grow among thorns. I’ll get ’em myself. A lad don’t know how to choose and pick them.’
‘And see that you dung them well,’ said Christabel, and went out of the garden and through the Nuns’ Court, thinking of her rows of raspberries, gooseberries and strawberries, all in bearing next summer, and of the neat rows of pottles on the shelves of the still-room, when the conserves were all made and ranged in order.
‘Tell me to dung ’em well!’ said the gardener to the haft of his spade.
November 20
A month and a day ago Andrew Cowper had died; everyone at the Priory knew that it was drinking had killed him, but his Month’s Mind had been celebrated yesterday with great solemnity, so too had his burial been, for by his will he had been buried in the Church of St. Andrew of Marrick. The Nuns, and Christabel, passed the slab of stone under which he lay every time they went into the Church. There was to be a fine brass upon it later, bearing the figure of a merchant in a long furred gown, with a dagger hanging from one side of his belt, and a laced pouch at the other, and his children kneeling in two rows below, girls to the left, boys to the right. There was room upon the stone for a brass of his wife.
To-day those things which he had left by will to the Church, and to Christabel, had come up the dale by the pack-horse carrier. There was one small pannier for the Church, and a much bigger bundle for Christabel.
She had opened both, the little one in the presence of the Prioress and Sacrist and as many Ladies as could find excuses for not being in the Cloister at that moment. The pannier contained a pair
of silver-gilt candlesticks – ‘Not the best pair,’ Christabel said, preferring that the Ladies should think Andrew deficient in piety rather than in goods; then there was a yard or so of lace of gold of Venice, set with pearls. The Ladies said ‘Lord!’ and ‘Jesu! Mercy!’ at the sight of such a pretty gaud. The last thing in the pannier was a tiny silver flagon; Christabel remembered it well; she took out the stopper and sniffed, and remembered a dozen other things, and happenings, and feelings, that she had forgotten; or rather she did not remember them but they were present with her again at the faint scent of rose-water that still lingered in the little flagon.
Altogether, she thought, she need not feel ashamed of her father’s gifts to St. Andrew. He might have nigh ruined the fine inheritance of trade that his father had left him, but these relics of his extravagance were respectable enough. ‘And,’ thought Christabel, ‘Will will soon have the trade again.’ Will, even when she was a child at home, had been a close and saving young man, and very industrious.
The big bundle Christabel unpacked in the room which she shared with two others. She found that the great bulk of it consisted in a roll of hangings of painted cloth. As she spread them out they brought back as many memories as the scent of the rose-water, for these had hung around the parlour when she was a child. For the last two years, so her eldest sister had told her, there had been fine hangings of Arras in their place, but she had not seen them, and as she opened the roll she was back in the parlour at home. The dusty, dry, yet oily smell of the stuff was the same, and there was the place where a fool of a serving woman had scorched it; the scorched part had worn into a hole and been mended, so that a winged child standing by a fountain of water in a garden had no feet, but stood up to his ankles in a patch of green say. Besides the hangings there were Andrew’s mother’s beads of white jasper, and two pewter pots.
Christabel was standing in the midst of the room looking down at the painted cloth and the pewter pots at her feet, and swinging the beads from her hand, when Dame Elizabeth Close came in. She and Dame Bess Dalton were the other two Ladies of Christabel’s Mess. Dame Elizabeth looked down at the floor, and then at Christabel. She was excited to see the hangings – they would make the chamber look very well; but she felt it would be as unbecoming to rejoice as to allow it to appear that the death of Andrew Cowper was anything but a sad loss to his family.
The Man On a Donkey Page 8