The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  Christabel looked round at her, and murmured that these things used to be in the parlour when she was a little girl.

  ‘Ah!’ said Dame Elizabeth, feeling sure that sympathetic regret was her cue. ‘To see things you remember brings old time again.’

  ‘Yes,’ Christabel answered her vaguely. ‘Yes, it is so.’ Her mind was concentrated on the problem as to whether her brother could possibly have held back anything which was due to her by her father’s will. ‘If he did,’ she thought, ‘mother would stand by him. But there are the others. He couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t tell me.’

  She decided with relief, and at the same time with a feeling of disappointment, that it would have been too risky a thing for him to try. Then a new idea struck her. Supposing Andrew’s will had said only, ‘the hangings of my parlour’. Would Will have substituted these old hangings for the new fine Arras cloth ones? Did he think that she did not know of the others?

  She said to Dame Elizabeth, ‘There are new hangings in the parlour now.’

  ‘Ah! But your father knew it was the old that you would best like to have.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Christabel. It was not a reply to Dame Elizabeth, but the expression of her own thoughts.

  *

  Last evening, under a glum sky that brought the dusk early, Lord Darcy and his household had come to Temple Newsam. Templehurst, which was the house he liked best, would be empty for a month or so, of any but servants and a steward to see that they scrubbed and swept the house, cleansed the privies and made all ready for my Lord to return and keep his Christmas there.

  This morning, because it was a saint’s day, and he at leisure, and his thoughts turning that way, he went to Mass as soon as he got up. There was a little old chapel, dark and rather damp, so that the painted frescoes had stains on them and in some places the plaster had flaked away. But the vessels on the altar were of gold, and the candles lit sparkles in the jewels of the great cross, and the priest wore a magnificent cope of blood-red damask; blood-red because this was the Feast of St. Edmund, the king whom the heathen Danes had made a martyr.

  ‘A brave man,’ Lord Darcy thought, as the priest moved here and there, ‘and now in bliss.’ He thought, ‘I’d die for the faith!’ It was true; he had been ready to die for it in Spain. And yet he thought again, ‘I’m a worldly man. To die would not make me a saint,’ and he began to feel shame and to wonder, ‘What would God have of us then?’ but his eye caught sight of a painted hawk sitting on the fist of one of the three Kings, upon the wall, and his thoughts went off to his falconer here at Temple Newsam, and though he kept calling them back he missed the meaning of most of the rest of the Office.

  1523

  July 15

  Four of the Ladies and the singing man from Richmond were in the orchard; the Ladies sat on cushions on the grass with the music spread upon their knees; the singing man stood in the midst beating time and sometimes singing with them. When he did so the deep voice, that came so strangely from such a thin shrimp of a man, made beautiful and solemn harmony with the fluting notes of the women.

  They were singing antiphons and responses, practising them over and over with great earnestness. The idea that they should do so, and the more daring idea that they should have a teacher, had been Dame Christabel’s. The Prioress had not been difficult to persuade; it was an attractive prospect – to have such singing in choir that St. Bernard’s Ladies down the river, White Nuns, neighbours and therefore perpetual rivals, should fall into the sin of envy at the thought of it. The idea that the lesson should take place in the orchard and not in the Church was Christabel’s too, but she did not take that to the Prioress; she thought it enough to persuade away the faint objections of Bess Dalton, Margaret Lovechild and Bessy Singleton.

  And then, when they had perfected their chants, it was Dame Christabel who asked the singing man, ‘What songs are they singing nowadays?’ So he sang a song about the mutability of fortune – very moral, and with a most cunning melody; and then he paused, and looked at them and cleared his throat, and gave them two pretty, merry love-songs. When he had done Dame Christabel cried, ‘O! those we must learn! Jesu! what sweet airs.’

  So they did learn them, taking no notice of the expression of disapproval on the faces of two of the older Nuns who looked out of the window of one of the upper rooms. The bell for Compline began to ring before they had fully mastered both songs. They went on till after it had finished, and only then, with a good deal of smothered laughter, smuggled the singing man through the Cloister into the kitchen, and afterwards, composing their faces, tiptoed to their places in Church.

  ‘We’ll hear of this in Chapter,’ Dame Christabel whispered behind her hand to Bess Dalton. Bess looked startled and apprehensive at that, as though she regretted what they had done; but Christabel met Dame Anne Ladyman’s accusing eye across the choir with a faint but sufficient hint of a smile.

  November 3

  Lord Darcy and his eldest son, Sir George, came out of the parlour on their way to the stables, and found one of the old women servants and Mistress Bess Constable – Bess Darcy before her marriage, and my Lord’s only child by his second wife – kneeling in front of an open coffer, out of which trailed old gowns, and testers, and hangings, and unmade lengths of stuff: purple velvet, tawny velvet, crimson damask, black satin.

  Bess was holding up a gown of yellow velvet; it was old-fashioned, but for that reason easier to cut up into a gown such as ladies were wearing at present. Bess waved it at her father; ‘See what I’ve found.’

  Lord Darcy did not take it from her, but he laid his hand on the soft, crushed pile, and looked at it, and not at Bess, and she saw that his face was serious. Then he smiled.

  ‘Well, if fine feathers’ll make a fine bird—’ he said, and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand and then went on with Sir George.

  They had gone down the steps before either of them spoke.

  ‘It was my mother’s gown,’ said Sir George.

  ‘I know.’ Darcy turned and looked at him, but saw only George’s severely handsome profile, and thin mouth as always set hard. ‘You remember it?’

  ‘My lady my mother wore it one Christmas – the year the Lord of Misrule got his coat set on fire.’

  Darcy smiled. ‘By the Rood! Yes. How he skipped. And they put him out with the ale they were drinking.’ He looked at George again sharply, but again could learn nothing from his face.

  ‘Your mother,’ he said, with some hesitation. ‘Do you think on her often?’

  ‘I paid for “de Profundis” daily for a year. And every year ten gallons of oil for the lamps before Our Lady.’ Sir George faced his father for the first time. ‘But I do not see, Sir, why Bess should help herself to what she will of my mother’s gowns. There is Doll too.’ Doll was his wife.

  1524

  April 12

  The Cellaress came down from the Prioress’s chamber with her lips pursed up and her cheeks pink. She hurried into the Cloister, shut the door behind her, and began to laugh. All the Ladies sitting there in the pleasant sunshine looked up. ‘What is it?’ they cried. ‘Tell us what it is.’

  She told them. ‘Here’s the Sacrist from St. Cross,’ – that was the little Priory of St. Bernard’s Ladies down the river – ‘and she says they have a precious relic, the girdle of St. Maura. They found it in the Church – just like the Holy Lance, she says. For that fat old thing their Cellaress dreamt of it, and then they found it.’

  ‘But what is it?’ The Ladies were querulous. They did not want the Nuns of St. Bernard to have a holy relic, and if they all disbelieved in it perhaps it would work no miracles. But if someone had dreamt of it and then it had been found—! Things looked bad. Could it be that it was indeed the girdle of St. Maura? ‘What is it? It can’t be,’ they cried again.

  ‘A bit of old horse harness!’ Christabel began to laugh again. ‘The buckle’s on it still.’

  They all began to giggle then, relieved of their anx
iety, and enjoying the gullibility of the Nuns of St. Bernard.

  ‘What will they do with it?’ they asked her.

  ‘There is a girdle of the holy Saint Maura at Paris, and another at Worms. And the Sacrist says that both these are a most sovereign help to all women in childbirth.’

  ‘And how useful that will be then to the Ladies of St. Bernard!’ cried someone shrilly, and they all laughed again till their sides ached.

  September 28

  The Cellaress was getting ready to ride to Richmond. It was yet early, and the morning sharply cold since the sun had not yet risen above the top of the fells.

  She came down into the Cloister holding tight the fringed purse in which was money for those things which she must buy. The list was in it too, written on a scrap of paper torn from the bottom of a letter:

  ‘A rundle for the roller towel.

  Wooden spoons.

  A new meal shovel.

  Two dozen hoops for the swans’ necks – Spanish

  latten if it may be had.’

  She and Dame Margery Conyers, who was to ride with her, drank each a pot of mulled ale, standing in the Cloister, and chatting with Dame Bess Dalton. ‘Oh! that I were coming too!’ said Bess, who now found many things to wish for that she did not have. The lack of them was pulling down the corners of her mouth which had used to turn up in a pleasant silliness. Dame Margery made some effort to comfort her, but Christabel’s head was too busy with the thought of what she must see to in Richmond that day, and what she would not be able to see to in Marrick. Presently the bell began to ring for Terce. Bess said, ‘That bell!’ and went away from them. Christabel swilled the dregs of her ale about the bottom of the pot, as she watched the Ladies go into Church. She was glad not to be going in with them.

  Outside in the Great Court a servant was holding the horses, and another sat already in the saddle. As they rode out of the gate behind the two men they heard the sound of singing from the Church, and a great squawking as someone chased a hen out of the dairy.

  November 19

  The Court was at Greenwich, and Lord Darcy went there two days after he had come to London. He landed at the steps and stood with Sir Robert Constable waiting for their people to get ashore. A little further along half a dozen men were heaving and straining to lift into a barge a great erection of beams and painted cloths, battlemented, and with towers, made to represent a castle. Already the effigy of a unicorn stood in the barge, its brown paper side torn in places and fluttering in the wind, a forlorn sight, except that its painted horn was still gay and fresh. The staging and properties for the last jousts were being taken back to the Wardrobe in London.

  They found the King coming away from dinner, and when they had kissed his hand they followed him to the Queen’s apartments. There, not being noticed any more by His Grace, they withdrew to a window, and watched the group by the fire, where the King stood, his feet wide apart, swinging a big jewel which hung by a gold lace round his neck, and talking and laughing with a cluster of gentlemen and ladies.

  ‘His Grace,’ Darcy murmured in Constable’s ear, ‘is thickening,’ and Constable, looking at the round bulge of the King’s jowl above the fine shirt collar worked in gold with a pattern of roses and pomegranates, nodded his head.

  ‘Yet he rides, hunts and plays at tennis.’

  Darcy’s eyes had left the group at the fire, and looked beyond Constable’s head. He said, ‘Yea. Yea,’ but not as though he heard what was being said to him.

  Constable gave a little laugh under his breath, ‘And His Grace’s father was as lean and little as a smoked herring.’

  Darcy said, in a voice as low but with no laughter in it, ‘I can remember His Grace’s grandfather, King Edward. His Grace is a man much like to him.’

  ‘What are you looking at?’ said Constable, and turned, craning his neck to see what it was.

  Darcy told him, ‘Nothing. Nothing,’ and brought his eyes back to the group round the King. But he had been looking to the place where the Queen stood, pleasant and smiling, and with people about her. And yet he thought that she seemed ill at ease, as if she would have come where the King was, and yet, again, would not.

  ‘And the why she would not,’ thought Darcy to himself, ‘is that young maid in sanguine red,’ and he took a good look at the girl who stood up, slim and glowing in her velvet gown, with black hair falling loose over her shoulders. He could see that she had a marvellous pretty throat and neck, and thought that she knew it too, and, young though she was, knew how to show it, for she would let her head droop, now this way, now that, and then she would lift her chin till all the whiteness of her throat was displayed, and then would dip her head again, as graceful as a swan.

  Yet she was no languishing beauty who trusted only in her looks to bring down the game. When she turned herself about Darcy saw that her dark eyes were alive and alight with mockery, and her voice as well as her laughter sounded often and merrily. By and by indeed it was her voice and the King’s which answered one another, while the rest of those about spoke less and less, as though they found it more absorbingly interesting to listen.

  So now Darcy and Constable could catch most of what was being said by the fire. Just what it was about they could not tell, but the girl was certainly asking His Grace for something, now imperious, now wheedling, now saucily feigning a timorous humility.

  ‘Well then,’ said the King at last, ‘you shall have it. And if wives are more importunate than maids, God help me!’

  ‘Oh! Sir, Your Grace is the noblest Prince in Christendom. I humbly thank Your Grace,’ and she gave him a very low curtsey, and caught his hand and kissed it; Darcy was not the only one who could see how the King seemed to wish to prevent her lips touching his hand. ‘And when?’ said she, standing before him again, palm laid to palm under her chin – ‘And when?’

  The King swore then, by God’s Blood, that she was the most insolent beggar of them all, and when she only laughed at him, he swore again, and walked a few paces from her, but came back, and stood close to her. ‘Some day,’ he said, ‘some day.’

  ‘Lord!’ she cried, ‘what a promise! As they say in France – “Faictes moi une chandelel quand je suis morte.” For I fear the fashion may have changed by then.’

  His Grace still stood very close to her, looking down at her laughing face. But he was not laughing.

  ‘Some day. And it may not be as long time hence as you think.’

  He turned from her then and went away down the room. The group at the fire broke up, and several passed close to the window where Darcy and Constable stood. Darcy called to one of them, ‘Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas Wyatt!’

  The tall bearded man would have gone by if Darcy had not caught him by the arm. He paused then unwillingly, while his eyes followed the girl in the blood-red gown. Only when he saw her join those about the Queen he shrugged his shoulders, and seemed content to linger.

  They talked for a while about the Duke of Suffolk, and last year’s campaign in France, and Sir Thomas was very caustically witty at the Duke’s expense. Then Darcy asked him – ‘Who was that merry, free-spoken maiden?’

  Wyatt looked at him sharply. ‘She that was asking the King to give her a husband?’

  ‘A husband?’ said Darcy with his eyebrows up, and Sir Robert Constable muttered something about a whipping.

  ‘Yes. Mistress Anne’s a mad lass. She says she wants to have one of those billements of pearls, those new things that women are wearing. And since maids must wear their hair loose, so that without a husband she cannot have a billement, she says forsooth that she will have both.’

  Sir Thomas Wyatt shook his head, smiling indulgently, and Darcy had to remind him that he had not told them who the young gentlewoman was.

  ‘Why!’ said he, ‘she is Mistress Anne Boleyn.’

  Darcy whistled. ‘Sister to her that is now Lady Carew and that was the King’s minion a year or two—’

  Wyatt interrupted him. ‘You North Country men talk
too free.’

  ‘Well,’ said Darcy, very much the nobleman, yet with a spice of mockery in his voice, ‘perhaps you’ll give me leave to say, Sir Thomas, that the King seems to like well that family. But how is your good lady and your bairns?’

  Sir Thomas seemed to care for that subject as little as the other. He muttered a hasty answer and moved away. The two watched him pushing through the crowd till he stood beside Mistress Anne Boleyn.

  ‘That manner lass,’ said Constable, ‘is born to make trouble among men.’

  Darcy agreed, and suggested that such should be drowned, like kittens, when young.

  It was dusk when Lord Darcy parted from Sir Robert Constable near Saint Laurence Pountney, and went on towards the Pope’s Head Tavern where he was staying. His way took him past the long wall of the house which had been the Duke of Buckingham’s and was called the Red Rose. The gates were shut now, and no smoke rose from the chimneys behind the mean tenements that bordered the road on either side of the gate-house. But though the great house was deserted the tenements swarmed. Men were sitting on the doorsteps, and within, by the light of the fires, women were cooking supper. Children ran out and in and screamed and laughed at their play in the road.

  Just as he came abreast of the gate itself it opened a little and carefully. A man in a sober plain gown of good cloth came out, and after him an old woman in a red kerchief, and a very lovely young girl. She was so lovely that Darcy could not but stare at her. Between them squeezed out also a little maid of perhaps four years old, who stumped across the road and began to ferret about among the rubbish that lay there.