The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  June 8

  This Sunday, the next after the Queen’s coronation, almost everybody went to Court, and Lord Darcy one of them. As he paused on the landing of a stairway, Master Cromwell came out from a door which he locked carefully behind him. He seemed greatly pleased to see Darcy, and urged him to ‘Come up, my Lord, come up,’ as though he spoke for the King. They went on up the stairs together, and Darcy saw that Cromwell had a little crimson velvet casket in his hand, a pretty thing with gilt hinges and a tiny gilt key.

  ‘A jewel for Her Grace,’ said Cromwell. ‘The King sent for it, and it came but yesterday.’ He stopped at the next window, and opened the box in the sunshine. Darcy bent his head and saw a great emerald flash back the light and hold it in depths of under-sea green that glowed as if with fire. There were three pearls hanging from it, large and elongated, the shape of plovers’ eggs.

  ‘Hm!’ he said, though not much interested, ‘pretty.’

  ‘And of great price.’ Cromwell prodded it with a forefinger. He had fat hands, with dimples at the knuckle joints, yet they looked strong too. ‘It was the Princess Dowager’s. She brought it from Spain. It was a jewel, perhaps, of those Kings of the Indies. Now His Grace will give it to Queen Anne.’

  He shut the box, and they went on together. Darcy guessed that Cromwell expected him to say something, either to approve or deplore, or discreetly to turn the conversation. He did none of these, being too honest to approve, too wary to deplore, and at once too practised and too bold to fear a silence.

  He had thought that when they reached the Presence Chamber Cromwell would leave him, but instead the Master of the Jewels laid a hand lightly on his arm, and twinkling at him with the smile that Darcy could not dislike, said that he would he were of the number of my Lord’s friends, few men of these days being so stout and honest. ‘And,’ said he, ‘as I would earn your love I will essay a small thing thereto. I will bring you, without pain of waiting, at once to His Grace.’ And he began to push his way, not roughly yet with determination, between the wide puffed shoulders of the men, and the spreading stiff gowns of the women, crowded into the long room and all looking towards the far end, where hung the cloth of estate above the King’s chair. Darcy followed him, but not now liking either him or the times in which such an upstart could lead a nobleman to his Prince’s presence.

  When they reached it the chair of estate was empty, and Cromwell, catching the eye of a gentleman in silver and green who stood on guard at a closed door, led Darcy there, knocked, and went in.

  The room was small, hot with sunshine, and fragrant with strewn flowers and perfumes of musk, ambergris, and orris. There were two small chairs, covered with purple velvet and fringed with silver, set below one of the windows, and the King’s Grace and the Queen sat on them. The King’s hand with its rings was laid on hers or touching or toying with her all the time, whether he greeted Darcy or spoke to the French Ambassador or argued with her father about the voice of one of the singing boys of the Children of the King’s Chapel.

  Cromwell knelt, and presented the jewel to the Queen. ‘It is,’ said he, ‘a gift from His Grace.’

  ‘For me,’ she cried, and turning her head tipped up her face to the King who hung over her. Darcy thought, ‘She knows what will prick a man to desire.’

  The King lifted the jewel out of the box. He leaned closer and set the chain about her neck. Then he must settle the jewel so that the midmost pearl hung plump above the cleft between her breasts, which showed where the jewelled edge of her gown ended. His fingers lingered on her flesh; she let herself droop towards him.

  ‘A born harlot!’ Darcy thought, and guessed that Cromwell thought no other, though the Master of the Jewels kissed her hand and took leave with due humility.

  But he had to acknowledge that she had wit, for she began to talk about her coronation in the Abbey of Westminster, and had them all laughing because she so pricked through the splendours and solemnities that she pierced to the folk behind them, and as she talked these were no more reverend than a rout of villagers at a May Game.

  When she finished, ‘...And so we came away to dinner,’ the King wiped his eyes, though his bulk still shook with diminishing gusts of laughter. He flung his arm across her shoulders and bade her tell them more. ‘What of the dinner?’ he pressed her.

  She let herself be pulled towards him, then put both hands on his breast and pushed him away.

  ‘No, but I’ll tell you what I saw at the Abbey. But you’ll be angry.’

  ‘Not with you, Sweetheart.’

  ‘Faith! but you will. You’ll say, “To the Tower with her.”’

  ‘Madcap!’ The King looked about at them all, and then again at the Queen’s father, a mass of slashed green velvet and cloth of gold, set upon a pair of thin legs.

  ‘This daughter of yours!’ he cried dotingly, and then to her, ‘Well, you little rebel? I shall not be angry. Or you shall have a pardon.’

  ‘Shall I? But you will be angry. See. I will wager you a prince to a collar of rubies that you are angry.’

  ‘A prince? How will you pay with a prince?’

  ‘The prince I bear in my belly.’

  ‘Ho!’ the King laughed. ‘You’ll pay with him at your time, will you, nill you?’

  ‘And isn’t he enough to wager against a collar of rubies?’

  The King swore by St. Edward that he would be enough, and then asked again, ‘Sweet, what did you see? Tell us now.’

  ‘I saw jewels.’

  ‘God’s Body! so you should. Here have I been writing orders to Master Cromwell for this, that and t’other for you. And now to-day I have given you the emerald. My Lord,’ said the King to Darcy, in high good humour, ‘should these not be enough?’

  ‘Sir,’ Darcy answered, ‘if women be as insatiate as the sea, it is that they know our weakness, and their own worth,’ and on the last he bowed to the Queen. She inclined her head but he had seen her eye snap at his guarded courtliness.

  The King however was growing impatient.

  ‘Jewels?’ he urged. ‘Are there not some few on the crown and the sceptre?’

  She pouted her lips, and blew all those away with scorn.

  ‘Jewels! Not those. But the jewels on the shrine. Jewels in the Lord Abbot’s mitre. Jewels in his staff. And there was a great ruby in the cross on the altar. I saw none in the crown nor in sceptre like to these.’

  The King had withdrawn his arm from her neck.

  ‘I think, Madame,’ he said, ‘that you forget.’

  She flashed a look at Darcy that said, ‘You would be glad to hear me rebuked,’ and then turned her eyes, sparkling and reckless, upon the King.

  ‘You owe me a ruby collar, for indeed you are angry.’

  ‘The Devil I do!’ The King got up quickly, but she did not move. He turned back. ‘One day, Madame, you’ll go too far.’

  ‘And then,’ she smiled at him, ‘you will send to Ampthill and bring Dame Katherine back.’

  The King had been angry, but now it was as if he had been hit with a stone between the eyes. He looked at her, but if he hoped to beat down her glance he failed. Darcy thought, ‘She can stare like any cat.’ And it was with the same bland sweetness of malice.

  The King went back to his chair.

  ‘I believe you would not fear the devil.’

  ‘Not if he wore a beard. And shall I have my rubies?’

  ‘Ask the Keeper of the Jewels.’

  ‘Not the Abbot of Westminster?’

  The Queen’s father cried, in an agony, ‘Peace, girl! Madame, I pray you, peace!’ but the Queen did not so much as look at him.

  ‘You’ll get none of my Lord Abbot.’ The King’s tone was gruff.

  ‘These monks,’ the Queen murmured softly, ‘have all, and give nought. And the King can’t take. Yet the Cardinal took.’

  ‘Body of God!’ The King turned on her. ‘The Cardinal took only a few little Priories, some of an ill name. But to speak of Westminster! By the Blood of H
ales!’ he cried, ‘I won’t have this talk.’ He got up and went out of the room with his arrogant walk, swinging his wide, white satin shoulders.

  When Darcy stood waiting for his litter and looking at all the coming and going in the Great Courtyard between the Palace and Master Holbein’s new gallery and gate, he found Cromwell at his elbow, and thought as he greeted him, ‘How the man sticks!’

  ‘How sweet is the sunshine,’ Cromwell said, as though in idlest talk. ‘Truly I think this fair summer shows that God’s favour is upon this marriage. That, and already so blessed a hope of issue.’

  ‘Already,’ Darcy repeated drily.

  ‘Ah! my Lord, how I love the bluntness of you men of the North Country. But at least,’ he murmured, ‘at least, even you, my Lord, will confess we have a Queen now, young, witty, beautiful, and, let us hope, fruitful.’

  ‘And bold,’ said Darcy. ‘She wants the King to do with the Abbey of Westminster what the Cardinal did with the Priories.’

  ‘She said that, did she?’ Cromwell remarked, in a tone almost innocent of meaning, and yet something in Darcy’s brain pricked an ear, and he thought, ‘It’s not the first time that same has been said, nor was she the first to say it.’ He was just thinking that this man was perhaps more dangerous, though not greater, than the Cardinal, when Cromwell spoke again.

  ‘But, my Lord, there’s a thing I’d ask of you. That young gentleman in Candlewick Street the other day, did you see his face?’

  When Darcy did not answer he went on. ‘I thought I had heard his voice before. I’m sure I have heard it.’ He rapped with his knuckles on his forehead, and then bit at them angrily. ‘It was a voice that one should remember, and I cannot.’

  He waited, and then ran on again, begging pardon for keeping my Lord when his litter waited, ‘But it would be well I should know of any young gentleman so quick, bold, forward, as that one seemed to be. It was a young gentleman, you said?’

  ‘You said,’ Darcy corrected him; and then with a sharp smile, – ‘Master Cromwell, if I tell you, shall I have the reward they proclaimed for those who informed against any that speak evil of this marriage?’ He looked at Cromwell, and laughed; the Keeper of the Jewels was not often out of countenance, but now he was quite taken aback. He began to justify himself; it was necessary, he said, that quiet should be kept. ‘Therefore I keep watch. People murmur at this marriage. Her Grace was displeased that so few caps came off, and there was so little shouting when she passed through the city. And there’s a nun in Kent sees visions – foretells the King’s death.’ He paused and seemed to recollect himself, and laughed. ‘So perhaps I make too much of the idle jest of a saucy young man.’

  Darcy said, ‘Perhaps,’ in a tone that made Cromwell glance at him sharply, and then they parted. As Darcy looked back from below the new Gateway arch, he stood there, still sunning himself on the steps, a sober, quiet figure, in his grey silk and black fur. Darcy thought he was like one of those floating spots which trouble a distempered vision, and which the eye can neither quite catch, nor yet be rid of.

  June 30

  The Nuns’ shepherd had come down from Owlands for goose grease, or butter, or swine’s grease to mix with pitch and tar for sores upon his beasts, but before he went back to the lonely hut on the fells he turned into the kitchen where the cook and his man and the maids all greeted him well. The cook sent off at once to draw ale for him, and he sat down on the bench with a great heap of lettuces on the floor between his feet, and his dog at his heels.

  Beside him on the bench were two strangers: one grey-haired, with a weather-beaten pleasant face; the other younger and clearly of less importance. The elder of the two was stirring a white treacly mess in a pail beside him; at intervals he tipped down his throat deep draughts of Priory ale.

  For a long time Shepherd said nothing, for his way of life had made him more ready to listen than to talk. But at last, in a pause in the talk, he nudged the strange man, and pointed at the stuff in the pail. ‘What’s yon, goodman?’

  The stranger turned his broad, red face.

  ‘Yon’s lime, and a heel of old, poor cheese.’

  Shepherd looked at the stuff in the pail, and from one to another in the kitchen. ‘What beasts,’ he asked in his slow way, ‘will you feed or physic with such?’

  They all laughed at that, but the stranger answered seriously. ‘It’s for no beast, seeing I’m a Master Carpenter; but ’tis to glue wainscoting. For there’s no glue like lime and cheese and spring water to hold wood together. It’ll last you from now till Doomsday morrow.’

  ‘Lord!’ said Shepherd, and stared at it long before he asked, ‘And is it in Frater or Cloister, or maybe in Church, that y’re setting up wainscoting?’

  The cook answered that, telling him that it was for the Lady’s own chamber. ‘Painted hangings nor yet arras aren’t good enough for her.’ He stood up and scratched himself inside his doublet. ‘Time to get dinner,’ said he, and sweeping the flies from a piece of meat on the table, began to pare off a long dark red sliver, that flopped back over the fingers of his left hand as the knife moved. A boy came into the kitchen and squatted down on the floor in the corner with a basket of peas between his heels; he shelled them into a wooden bowl; pop went the pods and the peas rattled against the sides of the bowl.

  ‘And it’s time you and I got back to work,’ the Master Carpenter said to his mate, ‘or the Lady will be wroth to find us idling.’ So they went away, back to the Prioress’s chamber, and not too soon, for she came in and found them there five minutes after.

  The furniture in the room had been moved into the middle of the floor and shrouded in sacking. Everywhere sawdust lay, soft to touch, and fresh smelling. But already except for one corner the wainscoting was in place upon the walls, clean pale golden wood, cunningly carved in the panels with softly flowing, scroll-like curves. Nor was that the whole of its beauty. All over the carved undulations of the pattern as well as over the firm uprights and horizontals of the panelling, the wood was alive with the living pattern of its own grain. Here swam, it seemed, a shoal of little fishes; there shining blotches floated like tiny clouds in the sunset; there you could trace wavering tongues like flames, or like the soft sleek trails of water weeds swayed by a slow river; and there the wood was dappled as if it were shallow running water. It was beautiful wood and beautiful work.

  That was what the Prioress thought of it when she came in, and having shut the door stood looking about at the strange and fine new clothing of the familiar walls.

  The carpenter, when he saw her, stopped whistling between his teeth, and laid down his T square and charcoal. He came forward with a sort of rough and breezy gallantry, not disrespectful, yet with a spice in it of laughter. He had had many dealings with women Religious, being known for an honest fellow and not given to too much drinking. He was wont to declare that there were but two kinds of such women; the fools he overawed by a frowning look, and talk that none but a carpenter could understand; the masterful women he courted in the same manner in which he now set himself to court the Prioress.

  Certainly it went well here, but then the two already had a respect for each other. He did good work, and she knew and acknowledged good work when she saw it. So now he moved confidently beside her, as she let her hand slide over the smooth, sleek curves, and cast a penetrating eye on the joints to see that all were close.

  As they went he talked, giving her news of folk in Richmond and the Dale; she heard him, raising her brows or faintly smiling, but never letting herself be distracted by his talking from her examination of the work.

  ‘And have you heard,’ said he, ‘of mighty great doings down at Easby?’

  ‘That peg stands too high. I can feel its head.’

  He moved his fingers over the surface. ‘You’ll not feel him when we’ve taken the oil and sand over all... I hear there’s them that say Master Oldbarrow won’t last the summer out.’

  ‘That joint,’ the Prioress said, ‘could be tighter,�
�� and then though they were alone in the room she brought her mouth close to the Master Carpenter’s ear. ‘Show me the hidden place you have made.’

  He showed her the panel low down in the darkest corner of the chamber, where there was a lock cunningly concealed by a fold of the carving. When you knew where to look for the lock you could see that there were also hinges, and a little door. He opened the door, and showed the small secret cupboard.

  ‘That is good,’ said the Prioress.

  July 11

  Lord Mountjoy, Queen Katherine’s Chamberlain, her Almoner, and others of the Household, paused with one consent at the door of her chamber. None looked at another, but each knew that his neighbour squared his shoulders, or took a deeper breath than usual, or clenched his teeth, before Lord Mountjoy lifted his hand and knocked, and they must go in to do a business that they hated.

  She lay on a bed in the vaulted room, which was a sombre place in the dull light of an overcast and stormy morning. A few days ago she had pricked her foot with a pin as she had got out of bed, and gone barefoot, in the middle of the night, to pray before the crucifix in her chamber; now the foot was inflamed so that she could not put on a shoe. When the gentlemen came in she cast the hem of her heavy skirts over it, and tried to pull herself up on the bed. Yet it did not need those small attempts at dignity to make them go down on their knees, as much in reverence of her sorrows, as of her birth and station. But for all the propriety of their behaviour, her ladies, drawn away together to the empty hearth, some of them clutching embroidery, book, or instrument with which they had been employed, gave angry and grudging looks to the gentlemen; in this pass to which their Queen was come, they, as women, stood by her, a woman wronged by men. So a fundamental and eternal cleavage split in two that unhappy household.