‘Two pounds,’ thought the Treasuress, ‘for a mermaid!’ She did not think that Dame Margery was one to have obtained at such a price a very mermaid. That would have cost far more, so the two pounds were sheer loss.
‘Where,’ cried Dame Anne Ladyman, ‘shall we put her?’
‘In the big fish-pond,’ someone suggested.
‘But she’ll eat all the fish,’ young Grace Rutherford piped up, forgetting in her excitement that it was no novice’s place to speak aloud among the Ladies, still less so when there were men about.
‘Little fool!’ Dame Margery chid her, but not for the fault of speaking. ‘It’s pike, not mermaids, that eat fish.’
‘Mass!’ cried Dame Joan Barningham, with triumph in her voice. ‘What will the Ladies of St. Bernard say when they know that we have a mermaid in our House?’
Dame Christabel was now, by dint of shoving and some determined elbowing, in the thick of the group, though she still could not see what the Ladies in the midst were staring at, for their great veils flapped and flew up in the wind, and thrashed like washing on a line.
That remark of Dame Joan’s came to her just as she had her hands on the shoulders of two of the hinds, meaning to thrust them apart. It made her pause.
Could this thing be true? Could this be the very mermaid that Dame Margery claimed? Then what a triumph for the Chambress, though doubtless also a triumph for the whole House, as regards the Ladies of St. Bernard.
Christabel’s mind – usually so prompt at a decision – for an instant wavered. Suppose the Chambress had somehow transported in a tub of water, balanced against the Nuns’ bales of cloth across Black Thomas’s pack saddle, a mermaid, even now lazily combing her hair over naked shoulders with a golden comb, while in the depths of the tub her tail moved with the easy grace of a fish keeping itself head on to the quietly running waters of Swale. If so, the triumph of the Chambress was complete. If, on the other hand, it were some creature, human in shape, which the Chambress’s enthusiastic imagination had taken for a mermaid, would it be possible to rig it up somehow to impress the Ladies of St. Bernard, and yet within the House of St. Andrew make it clear that the Chambress had been soundly taken in. Certainly a fair, young girl, dimly seen in a tub in the Warming House, and reputed a mermaid, would cause the Ladies of St. Bernard to grow green with jealousy.
Dame Christabel pushed the hinds asunder with a tart, ‘Make way, fellows!’ and, ‘Where’s your plough to-day?’ The Ladies saw her then, and made way too, and at last she came to the space in the midst of the group.
She stood there a moment, looking down at the creature sitting on the grass. Then she laughed.
‘A mermaid!’ she said, ‘And why should you think that is a mermaid?’ The creature, a woman with a broad, flat face, pale blue eyes and a mouth half open, raised her head, and shrank away. ‘Because – the Skinner’s wife was assured of it. She had her of a ship master of Bridlington, who took her at sea, swimming in a storm.’
Dame Christabel had however infected with doubt some of the Ladies. Dame Joan, leaning forward over the creature, adjured her to say whether she was truly a mermaid and lived in the sea.
She got no answer, except that the mermaid shrank still more into herself.
‘There,’ said Dame Margery, as if the proof lay before them. ‘She can no English.’
‘Ask,’ someone suggested, ‘if she cometh from the middle of the sea or from near the edge of England, for then she might understand something like English – perhaps French or Low German.’
No one knew any Low German, but old Dame Euphemia Tempest remembered that she knew the motto of the King’s Lady Mother, and that it was in French. She did not know what it meant, but perhaps the mermaid would.
‘Souvent me souvient,’ Dame Euphemia repeated several times, but without any response.
They tried Latin next, reciting the Paternoster to her, several of them at once, which cannot have made it easier to understand. At all events she gave no sign that she had ever heard it before.
‘There!’ said Dame Margery again, ‘you see.’
‘And what,’ Christabel challenged her, ‘do we see, but that the creature’s a heathen? There are many such in Muscovy, or the parts that lie beyond the Emperor’s lands.’
‘Fie!’ cried some, and, ‘That’s true,’ said others; but there was no time for them to debate it at length, because the bell in the tower just behind them began to ring, and it was time to go in to Lady Mass. Afterwards there would be Chapter, and there they would fight it out.
By Compline that night the blustering wind of the morning had dropped, and the evening was very still, though gloomy and overcast. The storm which had raged among the Ladies had also spent itself: Dame Margery had been defeated: Dame Christabel had won; and most of the Ladies were ready to laugh, though rather regretfully, over the absurd idea of calling the creature from York a mermaid.
Yet their incredulity had not spread beyond the walls of the House, and all that day little knots of people kept coming to the gate, some with fowls to sell, some with nuts, some with gifts of warden apples, or a piece of home-spun – anything that would get them past the gate-house, and give them the chance of seeing the marvel.
At Vespers the old parish priest came hobbling down from the parsonage. It was not often now that he troubled the parish church with his mumbled and garbled Latin. But to-night he went right through the service, as loud as he could, so that the Ladies, singing their own Vespers beyond the great screen, should hear him. When both they and he had finished he went round to the gate-house, and, after a word with Jankin, into the Great Court. Along the line of windows the lights were already pricking out, so heavy were the clouds. From the kitchen came the clatter of wooden bowls and plates; the servants were fetching away supper from the kitchen to the various Messes. Then Jankin, who had gone up to the Prioress’s chamber, beckoned to him and he went up.
He was not glad to see that it was Dame Christabel Cowper who to-night supped with the Prioress, because she always made him feel what he was indeed – an illiterate and doddering old man. As he blessed them both, hurriedly, and stumbling over the words, his eyes were on the Prioress. He and she had known each other for many years; there had been disagreements between them, and disapproval on the Prioress’s side; but in the presence of Dame Christabel they felt that there was an alliance between them. Neither of them was very bold, but together they were just a little bolder against her than either would have been alone.
And then the door opened and the Ladies’ servants brought in bowls of pottage from which a scented steam wreathed up. The old man’s nose told him, ‘Hare!’ as he sat down, and for a little time he forgot what had brought him down to Vespers.
It was the Prioress who, with an apprehensive eye upon Dame Christabel, told him that, ‘Dame Margery to-day brought back a creature from York who, ’twas said there, was a mermaid. But now she hath legs.’
‘Christ’s Cross!’ said the old man. He had heard enough from Jankin as he passed to know that he must go warily. Yet he very greatly desired to see the creature. Even if she were no mermaid, even though, as the Prioress seemed to imply, she had grown legs between York and Marrick, yet still there was something marvellous in one who had been thought to be a mermaid. But his slow wits could hit on no way of asking to see her that would not draw upon him the scorn and anger of Dame Christabel.
It was Christabel herself who gave him his excuse, for she spoke to him, though she looked at an apple that she was peeling. ‘She’s a heathen. She does not know the Paternoster.’
‘God’s Bread!’ The old man took a bite out of his apple.
‘It’s for you, since our priest is away at York,’ said Christabel, ‘to make her a Christian soul.’
‘God’s Bread!’ he mumbled again, and then hastily swallowing the mouthful, ‘Then I must see her. I must be sure she is not christened already.’
‘You shall.’ Dame Christabel’s eyes glinted with a smile at h
is simplicity. ‘You shall see this marvel.’
So the creature was sent for, and came. She stood with her back to the door, where the servant had pushed her, and hung her head. The priest’s hopes dwindled and died, but he began, though unwillingly because of the presence of Dame Christabel, to question the woman. ‘Are you christened, daughter? Can you say your Credo?’ and so on. To all of it she gave no answer, only watched him through her matted hair.
‘She can no English,’ he said at last.
‘Or is an idiot.’
Even a worm will turn. The old man was afraid of Dame Christabel, but her scorn of him was so manifest that it pricked him into a moment’s courage.
‘She’s no idiot,’ he told her quite firmly. Indeed the poor thing’s eyes, though vague, had not the untenanted look of the idiot’s. ‘But if she’s a Christian soul she’ll know this,’ and he crossed himself, which none of them had thought to do.
The woman was watching him but she did not move. It was almost conclusive. But yet he tried one thing more. On the beam across the chimney breast a little ivory crucifix hung. There was a touch of gold on the head of the cross where the monogram had been written, and red paint showed on the hands and feet. It was the work of a craftsman of old time, harsh and terrible, no King reigning, but a tortured man hanging on the tree. The old priest and the Ladies knew it too well to see it for what it was.
He came close to the woman and put it into her hand. She bent her head, peering at it, then suddenly she gave a cry, and threw it down among the rushes.
The two Ladies sprang up, and the old priest stepped back a pace. ‘Jesu Mercy!’ the Prioress cried, and began to cross herself.
‘Retro me Sathanas!’ said Dame Christabel. She had not much Latin, but if she ever used it, it was with effect.
‘Oh! why did she come here?’ the Prioress mourned. ‘What shall we do with her?’
For once it was the old priest who took charge. ‘I’ll christen her now,’ he said, ‘and so shall the devil be driven out of her.’
They christened her there and then, with water in Christabel’s great cup Edward, and with Christabel and Dame Margery, fetched in haste, as godmothers, and Jankin as her godfather. Dame Margery tried to have her christened Melusine, after the mermaid lady in the story, but her position was too weak; the creature had not only a devil, but legs. When therefore Christabel said that her name was Malle, so she was named. No one asked why she should be Malle, but Christabel was thinking of the sheep in Chaucer’s story, which belonged to the widow whose cock was called Chauntecleer and his wife Pertelote.
When she was a Christian woman they turned Malle out. She had no idea what had been done to her.
1530
January 15
My Lord of Norfolk’s long nose was still blue after his ride to Esher on the drab, raw January morning, but now the horn had blown to dinner, and he and the Cardinal went up together. All the way up the stairs and the length of the Great Chamber (which indeed was not so very great), the Cardinal was thanking the Duke for his good will, kind offices and merciful mind, in that, like the lion in his coat armour, he spared those he had pulled down. ‘For,’ said the Cardinal, ‘of all other noblemen, I have most cause to thank you for your noble and gentle heart, the which you have showed me behind my back, as my servant well hath reported unto me.’
The Duke heard it all in a courteous silence, and if he rejoiced at so great humility in a man lately of such haut and proud stomach, or if he found it tragic, he gave no sign either way.
Then Master Cavendish, one of the Cardinal’s gentlemen, came near with water warmed and perfumed for them to wash their hands. The Duke drew away, and though the Cardinal beckoned that he should come and dip his hands together with his, he would not, for, said he, it became him no more to presume to wash with my Lord Cardinal now than it did before.
‘Yes,’ said the Cardinal, ‘for my legateship is gone, wherein stood all my high honour.’
‘A straw for your legacy,’ cried my Lord, ‘I never esteemed your honour the higher for that,’ and he looked about as if he wished all present to take note that he had said it, so that perhaps one might carry it to the King, saying that ‘my Lord of Norfolk lightly regards the Pope and his Legate in this realm’. But certainly he would not wash with the Cardinal, declaring that ‘as Archbishop of York and Cardinal your honour surmounteth any Duke in this realm’.
Nor would he sit beside Wolsey at dinner, but on the less honourable side of the table, and there not opposite to him but a little beneath. And while they dined, all his talk, as he warmed and flushed with the wine they drank, was of how highly thought of were those servants of the Cardinal who were faithful to their master, and how those were blamed who had forsaken him.
Altogether, though the day was so dark that the candles were lit all along the board, and torches here and there down the Chamber, the Cardinal and the Duke dined very cheerfully, for the Cardinal, receiving such honour from the Duke, repaid by an eager, humble courtesy, bidding the gentlemen bring the Duke always the best, whether of fish or eggs, since it was Friday, or of the wine.
But that night, when Master Cavendish came to the Cardinal to make him ready for bed, he found him very shaken and uncertain in spirits, now up, now down, now declaring that the King’s mind towards him must be good, or never would such a true, plain-dealing nobleman as the Duke have spoken so honourably, giving him courage – yea – and hope that he should come again to the King’s good grace and be as well as ever he had been; and now silent, plucking at his underlip with hasty fingers, shaking his head and knotting his brows.
When Master Cavendish had put upon him his fine linen night – shirt, the Cardinal sat down so that he could draw off his hosen, and then as Cavendish knelt before him, the Cardinal gave a great sigh—
‘George,’ said he, ‘you know not why I am so sad.’
Cavendish did not know, but he could well guess that it was due to something which had passed between his master and Mr. Shelley, Judge of the Common Pleas, who had come to Esher even before the Duke had left, with yet another message from the King, who, when he asked the Duke to tarry and assist him in his message, the Duke denied, saying, ‘I have nothing to do with your message, in which I will not meddle.’
And so it was, as he guessed, for now the Cardinal, having broken silence, told him all; all that Mr. Shelley had said from the King, and all that he had himself replied. The King’s message was not very long but had a sharp sting. He sent to say that it was his pleasure to have my Lord Cardinal’s house, called York Place, or more commonly White Hall, near Westminster. And the judge said that all the judges and learned counsel of the realm had told the King that he had the right to it.
‘Fie!’ cried Cavendish roundly, ‘right he hath never to it.’
‘Ah, George,’ the Cardinal looked down at his bare feet upon the footcloth, curling and uncurling his toes much as he had done when they were new and he a baby on his mother’s lap, but now with no pleasure in his skill in making the ten little pigs move. ‘Ah, George, so said I too. Or rather I drew a distinction, for it may be law, yet it is not conscience, and so Mr. Shelley himself admitted, that I should give away that which is none of mine, from me and my successors.’
He fell silent again and motioned Cavendish away with his hand, who went about the room, laying by my Lord’s clothing and preparing for the night. It seemed that the Cardinal would say no more, but just as Cavendish slid the curtains back along the rail of the bed, his master spoke again.
‘So I said at the last, “Master Shelley, I charge your conscience to discharge mine. Shew His Highness from me that I most humbly desire His Majesty to call to his most gracious remembrance that there is both a heaven and a hell.”’
‘Aye!’ thought Cavendish, ‘and that there is!’ and he ground his teeth together, thinking of his master’s enemies.
When the curtains were drawn again, and all lights but the great Paris candle beside the bed put out, Master
Cavendish laid off his clothes and went to his trussing bed in the corner of the room. He could hear the Cardinal often stirring and turning in bed, and once he groaned and muttered, and once beat with his hand on the pillow.
Cavendish lay waking long too, watching the candle flame swing in the draught, for the wind had risen now and sang thinly round the chimneys of the house. He tried in his simple, faithful mind to resolve his master’s perplexities, and know those friends on whom he could rely; but where so much was treachery how could an honest man tell who was true? He could see that the Cardinal trusted now in the Duke of Norfolk. Sometimes Cavendish trusted in him too, and sometimes, as the wind grew more boisterous and began to move the hangings and the curtains of the Cardinal’s bed, he thought that there was no man in the world save himself that his master could trust.
February 2
Dame Christabel knelt in her stall. The old priest elevated the Host, and the Ladies bowed their heads.
‘And she,’ thought Dame Christabel, who had been reviewing in her mind the episode of Dame Margery Conyers and her mermaid of three months ago, ‘she would have liked to cut up the old green cope of St. James, because of the cockle shells on it, to make a gown for the creature.’ She turned her head, slowly and only slightly, so that none should notice, and looked through her fingers to where, among the servants, close to the lower door, Malle knelt. Malle was not decked out in the sea-green satin but in an old brown home-spun gown, a worn-out shift belonging to one of the Ladies, and a length of patched linen for a headkerchief. They had found her an old pair of shoes too; there was a hole in each sole, but Perkin the Carter had patched them.
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