The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  ‘Dear heart,’ said Meg from the bed, ‘let me be your servant to tie your points,’ and she held out her arms.

  ‘No,’ Aske told her. He managed to knot one pair of points, then, in tugging at it, broke it.

  ‘I’ll call Mother Judde,’ Meg said.

  ‘No.’ Aske hated Mother Judde as much as anyone in the whole business. He finished dressing somehow, and then stood hesitating.

  Meg held out her arms again, and he looked at her once and turned his head away, yet he went unwillingly to the bed, and let her take his hand.

  ‘Kiss good-bye,’ she murmured, trying to draw him towards her. ‘No, nor it’s not good-bye, for do not fear but I’ll send again when I may, Robin. But not a whetstone this time. What shall it be?’

  She was playing with his fingers, and now lifted his hand towards her lips. He snatched it away.

  ‘Nothing. You shall not send, for I will not come.’

  When Mother Judde came back from letting him out by way of the brew-house door she found Meg in tears.

  ‘Nay, nay,’ she tried to pat Meg’s shoulder. ‘What a pair of true lovers. Here’s one crying her eyes out, and the other gone off like a man to his hanging, as glum as a death’s head. But heart up! There’ll be other times.’

  Meg lifted her face. ‘No. He says no. And I love him. He doesn’t know how I love him.’

  ‘Tchk! Tchk!’ Mother Judde sat down on the bed and began to expound the ways of men, about which she knew a great deal. She promised Meg that the sweet gentleman should come again. She herself would be sorry if he did not, for Meg had paid her well, and Aske had crammed a gold piece into her hand as he went off.

  March 29

  In the afternoon, which was the afternoon of Good Friday, many of the Marrick people came, by custom, into the Nuns’ Church. On that day the door in the screen between it and the Parish Church was set open, so that all who chose should come in with their baskets and bunches of wild violets and primroses, to straw on the Easter Sepulchre. So there was quite a crowd there to watch the Nuns’ little brisk, round priest, as he washed the Rood from the Rood Screen in wine and water, wrapped it in a pall of green silk, and laid it, together with the Host in its gilt Pyx, in the Easter Sepulchre. The Nuns’ Priest moved about nimbly, bowing and prostrating himself very properly, but, every now and then, as he came near to the place where the Prioress sat, he spoke to her, though in a low voice, for he was a very cheerful and garrulous man.

  Gib came to the door in the screen and watched for a while; the Marrick smith was with him, who, like Gib, was one who called himself one of the ‘known men’.

  ‘Ha! See!’ said the smith, speaking behind his hand, when the Nuns’ Priest laid the Pyx beside the hidden crucifix, ‘there goes little Jack into the box.’

  Gib smiled at the joke, but sternly. Here in the Dale, where folk were so ignorant and superstitious, he was fortunate, and knew it, to find even one who had seen the light of the New Learning. Yet the smith’s bludgeoning wit did not please him, nor did it please him that the fellow, because he could slowly spell out the English Scriptures – at least if they were fairly printed – thought himself sufficient to debate points of doctrine with Gib.

  The women and children were now about the Sepulchre, casting on their flowers. Among them was the Priory servant Malle. She had a round basket full of violets, white and blue, and now she was throwing great handfuls among the rest, jumping up and down on her feet and laughing, with squawks like a hen.

  ‘Tchah!’ said Gib, and turned back into the Parish Church; but the smith stayed, and began to call out to one or other of the crowd in the Nuns’ Church, jesting with them, since the Prioress had gone away now, and the priest was never one to spoil other folks’ enjoyment.

  April 12

  Dame Anne Ladyman came back from a visit to her brother’s house, where his youngest girl had been married. Her brother lived beyond York, so she had spent some hours in the city, and came back therefore not only with news, but laden with stuff from the York shops.

  This she produced first in the Parlour for all to see: a little frail of figs, some spices, a jar of green ginger, three bobbins of silver thread to work the new black satin cover for the Gospel Book, half a pound of pins, and a fine large new book of paper for the Cellaress’s accounts.

  The news she kept back, at least most and the best of it, till she and the Prioress sat down to supper together with the priest. Then Dame Anne had much to say of the wedding, of this one’s surly husband who beat her, or that one’s unfaithful husband who kept his whore in the house, or that other’s undutiful son who wasted his money on harlots. She had, in a short time, acquired an amazing knowledge of such happenings. The little priest crowed with laughter, or clucked with the correct amount of horror, at her tales. The Prioress list-ened with half an ear. Nowadays, since this kind of thing had ceased in any way to interest her, it had ceased also to shock her. She let Dame Anne have her head; they two understood each other now.

  By the time they sat round the fire, eating walnuts kept fresh all winter in salt under damp hay, Dame Anne had disposed of scandals among her acquaintances, and was touching on the King’s affairs. For at her brother’s house had been a man of the Bishop of Durham, a very courteous gentleman but of a free tongue. ‘Oh! Jesu Mercy!’ Dame Anne threw up her hands, ‘I would I could tell you some of the words he said. But I could not for shame. I promise you I chid him more than once. “For remember I’m a Religious,” I told him, and he said—’ She whispered what he had said, which did not amount, the Prioress thought, to very much, unless it had a meaning which she could not be bothered to seek out.

  ‘But I would tell you,’ Dame Anne ran on, ‘how he spoke against this lady of the King’s, calling her no better than a common stewed whore. “Fie, Sir,” says I, “not in my hearing!” But he would have it she was a common stewed whore that ruled the King, and made all the spiritualty to be beggared, and the temporalty too. “But,” says he, “when the great wind shall rise in the west we shall have news afterwards.”’

  ‘What news?’ the priest asked, but Dame Anne did not know, and now clapped her hands together and said: ‘And should I forget to tell you what that same servant of the Bishop told me?’ The Prioress yawned discreetly behind her hand. Dame Anne, she thought, was sometimes hardly to be borne. She began to wonder why she did indeed bear with her so frequently.

  Then she found herself listening. For among all his gallantries the Bishop of Durham’s gentleman had spoken at least one piece of sense. He had told Dame Anne that if any in England be converted from any erroneous faith and misbelief to the Christian and Catholic faith, then will the King pay yearly, for and towards his or her relief and finding, during her life natural, three half-pence every day. So Dame Anne reported the Bishop’s gentleman, and the Prioress had no doubt but that those were the very words he had used, for she knew Dame Anne to be possessed of a most remarkably accurate memory.

  ‘Malle!’ said the Prioress, and Dame Anne nodded, – ‘Malle!’

  The Prioress stood up, shaking the walnut shells from her lap into the fire where they crackled sharply.

  ‘Let us write now to the King’s Grace,’ she said.

  The priest sighed and drank up his wine hastily. He knew that he would have to write the letter, for the Prioress’s penmanship was crabbed. So the servants were sent for to clear the table, and Malle was sent for to tell what her name was before she was christened, since the Bishop’s gentleman had instructed Dame Anne that it would be necessary to write this in the letter.

  Yet when they had questioned Malle, bidding her repeat her old name over and over, and had at last sent her away, the priest hesitated with the pen in his hand.

  ‘It is no name at all,’ he objected. ‘I cannot write it.’

  ‘Do as well as you may,’ the Prioress urged.

  He wrote, scored it out, wrote, altered it, and shoved the paper over.

  ‘I cannot say it,’ the Prioress confe
ssed, after she had tried once or twice. ‘It is, as you say, no name at all, yet it has a most heathenish look,’ and she passed the paper back to the priest.

  ‘I never thought,’ she said softly to Dame Anne as he bent over his writing, ‘that the Priory should be the better for the creature Malle.’

  May 20

  M. de Montfalconnet, the Emperor’s messenger, was brought through the base-court, where some hens were picking, to a little inner court, and so into the house, which was small and dark, having been built in the old days when windows were few because all houses must be defensible.

  The Queen got up from among a few of her ladies, and came towards him. She had been at prayer half the night, and her eyes were red; never careful about dress, she now looked no finer than any citizen’s wife, and not so neat. Indeed she made a jest of her disarray at the sight of the Emperor’s messenger and said that he found them like busy house-wives at their sewing and spinning. But when she had laughed her lips shook because it was so seldom now that she saw a friend. M. de Montfalconnet, angry and sorry (and he did not know whether one more than the other), went down on both knees and kissed her hand.

  When she had sent the ladies away she asked him many questions about the Emperor, her nephew, for Monsieur was the Master of the Imperial Household. And then she sat smiling, her eyes distant, her hands idle in her lap and her mind far away in the past. Only after some time did either of them mention that which lay at the core of the unhappy present – namely the business of the King’s divorce. Then Monsieur listened while the Queen urged on him arguments, appeals and encouragements. If the Pope would only give sentence, she said, twisting her hands together, the matter would be settled, ‘and I do assure you that the sentence, whatever it is, will increase and re-establish the friendship between – my – between the King’s Grace and the Emperor’.

  Montfalconnet was silent. He could not think it, but he inclined his head, torn once more between anger and pity, and answered only that he would surely do all he could to explain her advice to the Emperor.

  But the Queen seemed hardly to hear him, so eagerly did she continue to pour out her arguments. ‘You see,’ she interrupted herself with a half apology, ‘I have so long time to think of all these matters. My nephew – the Emperor – has many other cares, but I have none but this. So I think I see clearest.’

  Yet with very little of all that she told him could Montfalconnet agree. She would have it that if once the sentence were given the King would obey. (‘Not now. Not now, whatever might have been once,’ he thought.)

  ‘The Pope,’ she said, lifting her chin, and showing him for an instant the face of an indomitable woman, ‘the Pope does very wrong so long to delay. And if the decision goes against me I’ll bear it for the honour of God, for, Monsieur, I have not deserved it.’

  After she had sat brooding for a while she began to say: ‘If I could but speak once to the King, if—’ but on that she had to get up from her chair and go to the window so that he could not see her face. ‘If I could speak to him,’ she said, with her back to Montfalconnet, ‘all that has happened would be as nought – because he is so – good.’ Montfalconnet turned away at the sound of her voice. She said, with difficulty, ‘He would be kinder to me than ever. But they will not let me see him.’ Montfalconnet would have been glad to get himself out of the room at once, and in silence, but ceremony forbade it. He could only go down on his knee and keep his eyes strictly upon the cap in his hand till she came back to her chair and he could take his leave.

  June 20

  Gib found the door of the Marrick Church standing open.

  ‘God’s Body!’ he muttered, thinking that as likely as not he would find the sheep in the sanctuary, dropping their dung everywhere. But when he went in there was no scurry and stampede of small hoofs; only a sudden quiet, after the living air outside, and a twilight that kept him standing for a moment till his eyes were used to it.

  The Parish Church at Marrick had been painted round about the walls at the same time as the Nuns’ Church, that is to say nearly two hundred years ago. But whereas the pictures in the Nuns’ Church were all of the life of St. Benedict on the one side, and on the other the Prophets, here, for the instruction of the people, were shown the Precursors of Christ, two on the North and two on the South wall, on either side of the iron grille which divided the two parts of the Church, and from these, coming east towards the Chancel, were pictures of the birth, life and death of Christ, and of His rising from the dead. Of the Precursors, Isaac unfortunately was almost swallowed up now with creeping stains of damp; only his father’s curved, menacing knife showed above the fringes of the mould, and in the corner a very large ram in a very small thornbush. David too had suffered, though not so much as his neighbour, but his fine kingly blue mantle had deadened to pale grey, because the damp of the wall had caught the lime with which the paint had been laid on.

  The two Precursors on the South wall were however both of them in good fettle. There was Joseph, as Master of the Household to the King of Egypt, neat as a grasshopper in a green surcoat of the old fashion, with a heavy jewelled belt round his hips, and his yellow hair rolled up in a curl on each side of his face. And next to him stood Solomon, with the Temple on a hill behind him, but it was very like the Friar’s Church at Richmond. Solomon was bearded and handsome in a purple robe sewn with golden bees.

  At the feet of Solomon knelt Malle, the serving woman. She crossed herself many times, and then held out her clasped hands, and bent her head before the picture.

  Gib went down the aisle towards her. She did not notice him till he was quite near and then she jumped up and backed away a little, because she could see that he was angry.

  ‘What,’ he said, ‘is this idolatry?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I pray to this Saint,’ she told him.

  That made him angrier, but now he was not angry with her but with the Prioress, the Ladies, and their priest – with all those who wore warm, fine clothing, and lived delicately, who were proud, who despised the poor, who worshipped the painted images of Saints, who left this christened soul so deep in ignorance that she worshipped King Solomon.

  ‘Did they not teach you the Faith?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh! yes,’ she said, ‘they did indeed. The priest, the old man, brought me in here and told me. He told me of those—’ and she pointed up the Church to the Rood Screen. The Screen and the paintings on it were much newer than the pictures on the walls, having been set there not much more than thirty years ago by old Sir Roger Aske. The colours were much fresher, and, as they were painted with oil and resin in the paints, more deep and glorious than the frescoes, and besides that picked out with much gold leaf, so that the burnished haloes of the Apostles, who stood in rank along the Screen, shone darkly, even in the dim light of the Church; and their robes were scarlet, green, azure, purple and rose colour.

  Gib looked at them and snorted. ‘You shall not make to you gods of silver, neither shall you make to you gods of gold,’ he said, but Malle had left him, and was moving towards the Screen. She stopped before the picture of St. Philip, who stood against a background of scarlet patterned with gold. His prettily tousled hair showed up in curls against his halo; his cloak was green as new beech leaves, and under it was a sumptuous gown of brocade, the colour of ripe corn, with the pattern of a huge vine growing all over it, curved and notched stock, leaves, tendrils, heavy grape bunches and all.

  ‘These,’ said Malle, as Gib came up behind her, ‘are the Holy Apostles, that sit on thrones in heaven.’ And she began to recite their names, but when she had pointed at St. James she faltered. ‘The priest was called to dinner and could not stay,’ she said, ‘so I do not know them all.’

  Gib looked at her. Her face was dirty, her kerchief torn, and her toes were coming through one of her shoes. He looked at the row of splendid and pompous figures that stretched across the Church, glowing with colour and go
ld. Then he raised his arm, and pointed to where the tortured Christ hung, half naked, between the blue, starred mantle of the Virgin and St. John’s crimson cloak.

  ‘He said, “How hard it is for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” And He said, “Woe be to you that are rich.” And again He said, “The rich man also died and was buried in Hell.”’ Gib was thinking of the Prioress and the Nuns’ Priest, the Bishops and great Abbots, and his voice grated. ‘For these,’ he told Malle, sweeping his hand along the length of the screen, ‘were fishermen, he, and he, and those two. And the Lord’ (he pointed again at the great Rood), ‘He was a carpenter’s son, and a carpenter.’

  She looked at him with her mouth open, foolish, but most intent.

  ‘God.’ He jabbed his finger towards the Christ. ‘A poor man, a carpenter!’ And warmed by his triumphant indignation against all the great and the rich, he seized her by the wrist and dragged her towards the font, where, painted on the wall, the angels told the news to the poor shepherds, first of all men.

  So he began to instruct her, going from picture to picture, and she listened with strained attention, for the sake of which he bore with her foolishness, though now and again he must chide her. For when he was telling her of the child in the manger she laid a finger on the brown dog, which sat, upright and very respectful, behind the youngest shepherd’s feet, calling him ‘Trusty’, which was the name of one of the convent’s sheep dogs. ‘Listen to what I tell you,’ he bade her sharply. Again, when they stood before the picture through which Christ rode, in the midst of a crowd of folk in mushroom-coloured hoods, upon a donkey not much bigger than a dog, she wanted to know whether that was the miller’s donkey. This time he was less patient, and struck her with the flat of his hand between the shoulder blades, and bade her hold her tongue.

  In the end they came again to the Rood Screen, and stood below the Rood. Gib had had enough, and was for leaving her, but she caught at his gown and he waited.