The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  But it took more than a tone of voice to shoulder Dame Anne off from the subject of a wedding.

  ‘A bonny, bouncing lass, that one of Chris Blackburne’s, but I’ll warrant that when she goes to bed with a man this eve it won’t be for the first time.’

  The Prioress did no more than raise her eyebrows at that, and Dame Anne went on, with story and supposition, things seen by this or that one of the servants on summer nights or at winter ales. The Prioress of St. Bernard sat with her eyes cast down in a dangerous stillness, which Dame Anne missed but the Prioress did not.

  ‘Well, there was that fool peeking and peering in.’ Dame Anne stood half crouching, her hands on her bent knees, and swung her head from side to side with goggling eyes and mouth open. ‘Like that,’ said she, and laughed.

  ‘So I called to her, to have her away – wasting her time, the idle slut! She came to me, but then she caught my sleeve in her dirty hands, crying out, “He’s there within.” “And who?” says I, very short with her, and, “Get you back to Marrick at once,” says I.

  ‘But she had me by the arm dragging me towards the gate and I could not but go. “Look,” quod she, “here they come again to the well to draw water for the wine.” “Fie,” quod I, “Goodman Blackburne won’t have wine at the wedding, even with water in it. Wine’s for gentles.”

  ‘But she says, not listening to me but staring in at the window, and speaking very quiet, “I can’t hear His voice for all that din they make. They are so merry to have among them the King of Heaven. But when He comes out we shall see Him.”

  ‘“The King of Heaven,” quod I, and I boxed her ears soundly and bade her not be a fool, and she cried and whimpered a deal, but I said, “Off with you to the mill, and bring those goslings back to the Priory,” for the miller’s wife had told me they were ready for the fetching. “And if you linger,” says I, “you’ll be beaten.”’

  ‘Madame,’ said Dame Euphemia to the Prioress of Marrick, ignoring Dame Anne as completely as she ignored a bluebottle which swung about the room, ‘Madame, will you suffer such idle talk? It were strange that such a one as a serving woman—’ she paused, and added, ‘of your House’ – meaning clearly ‘of any House but mine’ ‘should see such holy things.’

  The Prioress of Marrick did not even look in her direction.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said to Dame Anne, ‘did she see a light, hear heavenly music, fall into a trance?’

  Dame Anne stared. ‘Lord,’ she cried, ‘it cannot be that you believe—? Why, she’s mad as a goose. I asked her why she should think to see Our Blessed Lord at Grinton, and in Chris Blackburne’s house. Quod she, “He went to a wedding. And I saw the light shine.”’

  The Prioress bent her head, crossed herself, and said, ‘Benedicite.’

  That brought Dame Euphemia to her feet.

  ‘What! Should Our Saviour come to the house of a plain yeoman, nor no good sober man neither, but a lousy, upstart, swilling fellow—’

  ‘We read that He went about,’ said the Prioress with smooth satisfaction, ‘among common folk.’

  Dame Euphemia gulped. It was true. Yet she was sure that if those had been common folk they had been so in a different way from the people of the Dale. That impropriety however was not the worst of it. She could have borne that a vision should have been seen in the Blackburnes’ house if only it had not been a Marrick serving-wench that had seen it. For a moment the outrage held her dumb, and into the silence Dame Anne let forth another of her high trilling laughs.

  ‘“Light?” quod I. “What light? Why,” quod I, “what you saw was the sun dazzle on a pewter plate on a shelf within.”’

  The Prioress of Marrick rose.

  ‘It may be so,’ she said, very stately and judicial. ‘I shall look into this. I shall question this woman. If God in His Grace hath favoured our poor House with a very holy thing, the world shall know that it is no feigned vision, no trumped-up relic that we claim to have received.’

  Dame Euphemia stood up; her white cheeks were patched with red. That matter of the horse harness, or the belt of St. Maura, whichever it might have been, lay years behind; it should have been by this time forgotten. Now she knew it would never be forgotten.

  She moved to the door. The Prioress opened it for her. The two religious Ladies kissed, cheek laid not very near to cheek, and lips sucked in to make a noise like young chickens cheeping.

  ‘God,’ said Dame Euphemia over her shoulder, ‘God grant this holy vision may be for your comfort. Yet remember, if you mell in such matters, that the Nun of Kent is sent for to be questioned of treason.’

  St. Bernard’s Lady went out; she was defeated, but a scorpion’s sting is in its tail. The Prioress of Marrick might give no sign. She might not even know that she had been touched. But soon she would know.

  For a while after the visitor and Dame Anne had left her, Dame Christabel leaned at the window, her hands on the warmed stone of the sill, and looked out, not up the drowsy, blue-misted Dale, but at things closer at hand. That patch of new slate in the stable roof; it had cost what she could ill spare. A man led in two horses from the field and brought them to the trough in the Court below; he leaned against the rough quarter of one of them as they drank with long breathings and gurgling noises. She herself had bought that near horse at a great price; he was from Jervaulx where the Monks breed the best horses of the North; but good beasts are costly.

  If only the House might become a place where men came to pay honour to God, for the sake of its particular holiness, then, she thought – but her thought was no more than the clear sight, in her mind, of the last page in the Priory accounts.

  Her eye was caught by someone moving slowly through the fields from the direction of Grinton. It was Malle, driving the young geese before her with a long lissom willow switch.

  ‘Now,’ said Christabel Cowper to herself, ‘I must have her in, and question her.’

  But even as she thought that she shut the window and turned away, knowing that she would not question the woman, for least said about this matter of visions, soonest mended. She sat in her chair by the hearth, and bit her fingers. It seemed to her most unjust that when this hope of prosperity and honour was offered to the House, for caution’s sake it must be allowed to go by. Better safe than sorry, but the necessity galled her soul; the more so because she felt, though illogically, that it was Dame Euphemia who stood between Marrick and the pleasant prospect of gainful holiness.

  October 10

  At breakfast Sir John Bulmer swore at the mutton pie for being mutton pie again, and then sat eating it savagely, leaning his head on his hand so that he should not see his wife’s face, because her mouth, with the black moustache along the upper lip, was shaking, and now and again jerked down at the corners before she could steady it. That Dame Anne looked ridiculous in her grief, as fifteen stone and forty-five years old must look ridiculous, made Sir John yet more angry.

  He had a right to be angry, he thought, stabbing a bit of the pie with his knife so fiercely that the point grated on the pewter plate. For while the eldest son had been at home Sir John had not ridden to Pinchinthorpe for more than a couple of nights at a time – or only when the boy was away at Settrington, hunting with his mother’s nephews, the Bigods. But now that the lad had gone to London to keep his first term at Gray’s Inn, why should not his father stay awhile at his own Manor of Pinchinthorpe? Must not a man see to his lands and farms? And what right had a man’s wife to suppose that he was tiring of his bawd, just because he was too nicely considerate of his eldest son to linger with her when the lad was at home? And again what right had she, when after so long he went once more to his bawd, to snivel over her buttered eggs at breakfast-time?

  To show that he was at ease in his conscience he told young Rafe Bigod, his wife’s younger nephew, who was staying with them, a very merry story that had been going round the taverns of London last spring. He himself laughed at it loudly, and Rafe laughed feebly, crimson to his ears, and never r
aising his eyes from his plate. ‘Tchah!’ thought Sir John. ‘Mincing young fool!’ and included Rafe in his anger. ‘If he dared,’ he thought, ‘he’d chide me for his aunt’s sake, but he daren’t, and so he chafes and frets.’

  He finished his ale and a dish of fried eggs, and then stood up in the midst of a company grown suddenly silent.

  ‘Tell them to bring the horses. I’ll ride the Blackbird to-day,’ he said to the servants.

  He made himself look at his wife. She had both hands laid flat on the table, and bent forward with her head lowered like someone who is preparing to speak. But she was silent.

  ‘I’m riding to Whitby,’ he said, more loudly than he meant. ‘D’you want aught?’

  She jerked up her head. ‘No. Yes. Oh, Sir! the herrings,’ and began to cry openly.

  ‘God rot the herrings!’ He stamped out.

  Young Rafe Bigod leaned at the door of the Hall when Sir John had ridden away, and the household was busy about its ordinary tasks. The autumn sunshine fell pleasantly on his face, but Rafe’s look was black. He wriggled his shoulders in his over fine green hunting coat, and knew that he was a gawky lad, with a fair skin that flushed as easily as a girl’s. He knew too that he did not dare rebuke Sir John for his own aunt’s sake, and that he had not dared even rebuke him for a bawdy story, by silence, and a stern, unsmiling face.

  He turned to find Dame Anne beside him. She did not look at him as she spoke, but her voice and her lips were quite steady.

  ‘Rafe,’ said she, ‘I go to Pinchinthorpe. Will you go with me?’

  He gaped at her. ‘Pinchinthorpe? For why?’

  ‘I must,’ she said, ‘look on her.’ She added quickly, before he could speak, ‘And I need a – a kinsman with me.’

  That made him feel a man. ‘I’ll come,’ he said grandly; and awkwardly, but with honest feeling, he caught and kissed her hand.

  Pinchinthorpe was a very different place from the empty and deserted house to which Sir John had brought Margaret in the autumn. The little green Court was shorn and neat; the brambles had been grubbed up, and by the Hall door Meg’s hawk sat on a perch in the sun. Inside there was change too. There were painted hangings all round the wall, and in the parlour two new chairs with cushions. The little elm cupboard now held a salt of silver, two silver cups, a couple of bowls and three silver spoons. On top of it sat Meg’s regals, and underneath it her lute.

  It was all very trim, and on a morning like this with the sun shining in, a pleasant place, but the house in which Margaret Cheyne lived was like a house without doors and windows, through which a high wind blew. The wind could be warm, or shrewdly biting, but it was never still.

  This morning the wind blew fair. Meg had ridden out before breakfast, and come back glowing; after breakfast she played in the yard with a litter of pups, was in and out of the kitchens and dairy pretending to be a good housewife, pulled out all her gowns from the presses saying she would make ready against the time when Sir John would take her to York and she would want to go gay. She had soon tired of that, and now July, in the old orchard, could hear her singing about the house.

  The old orchard was still waiting to be tidied up, and remained a pleasant wilderness, and a refuge for July, who withdrew here when she wanted to be quiet and to feel safe. It lay tucked under the wall of the house, so close that she could hear if she was called and hurry in, but so well screened by trailing clumps of bramble and the crowded old apple-trees, that she was out of sight, and, with luck might thus be out of mind.

  To-day the late apples, high up and already warmed in the sun, smelt sweet, and the brambles were colouring, scarlet, yellow, and purple red; they and the grass alike were soaked in a foggy dew, for the sun had not yet reached them, so that the grass looked as grey as if hoar frost had touched it.

  July picked up a windfall apple and went down the little twisting path that led to the gate; there had been a moat all round the house at one time, but this side was dry, and planks had been laid across so that people coming from Pinchinthorpe village might take this short cut instead of going round by the road.

  July stood on the second bar of the gate, clutched the top with her elbows, and began to eat her apple. From here she could see one of the big fields of the village, pale where the stubble yet stood, but with brown ridges of ploughed land spreading over it. Four of the eight ox teams were working there now; one was so near that she could hear the creak of the yokes as the oxen plodded by. Gulls, swinging in the sunshine and dropping lower, settled on the new furrows, followed by crowds of smaller birds; above, the blue sky was stately with white clouds sailing.

  Then from beyond the sandy bank below the pines, round which the road ran, two riders came – a man and a woman. That was all that July could tell at first, but as they drew nearer she could see that the woman was huge; a vast bulk in a flowing plum-coloured cloak; the man was not so much a man as a boy, thin and angular, with straight fair hair and a cheek of as pretty a colour almost as Meg’s own. July stared, wondering who they were, and where were their servants, for they were not the kind of people who should have been riding unattended.

  She was so lost in the security of her solitude, that she was still hanging over the gate when they drew abreast. Only, for shyness, she dropped her eyes, and bit deep into the apple. Then she looked up because they had halted.

  ‘That’s no Pinchinthorpe lass,’ said the lady.

  ‘But she’s no more than a child,’ said the boy.

  The lady pushed her big brown horse close to the gate. July, looking up at her, thought that she had never seen anyone so bulky; she wished she had run away before they had come near.

  ‘Are you,’ the lady asked, in a voice astonishingly high and harsh for one of her comfortable looks – ‘Are you Sir John’s strumpet?’

  July felt her face grow cold. She knew now who the lady was. ‘No,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Then who are you?’

  It had come to pass, that which July had dreaded. Here was Dame Anne Bulmer, who had for distant kinsman Robert Aske. And here, at Pinchinthorpe, were Meg, Sir John’s strumpet, and July, Meg’s sister.

  She said, ‘I am her sister,’ and felt the blood flow up into her cold cheeks until she burned visibly with her shame.

  There was a long silence which seemed to her worse than anything, and then Dame Anne said, ‘Poor child – You should not be in such a house. You – I have a mind to carry you—’ She stopped. July was staring at her. She hesitated and then said again, but as if she had intended other words, ‘No, indeed you should not be here.’ And then hastily to the young man, ‘Come, Rafe.’

  She rode on, but he lingered.

  ‘Is – she – within?’ he asked July, in a low voice, and July believed that he would have been glad to hear that Meg was not.

  It came to her suddenly that they must not go in to Meg.

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘No. She rode out. Do not go in.’

  The young man shook his head; clearly he wanted to believe her but could not. ‘We’ll do her no harm,’ he said loftily, and went on after the lady.

  July clung to the gate, watching them out of sight. ‘Harm?’ Those two gentle, good people – she knew that they were gentle and good, it was written all over them – those two, so kind and so defenceless, were going to see Meg. And Meg, impossible to bind as a fish or a flame, cold as the one and cruel as the other, Meg, who could stab with words, would be as cruel to them as she knew how.

  The nearest of the plough teams passed and re-passed twice before July moved from the gate. Something new had come into her mind, so new that time was needed to consider and accept it. Meg and she were separable. All her life till now July had counted them inseparable, but Dame Anne had separated them easily, with a few words. It was a great thought that made July feel free, as though she had passed over a threshold, and come out from a close room into open day.

  She went back at last up the little slope of the orchard, into the old postern, and along the pass
age that led to the yard. But she stopped before she came out into the sunshine. The young man and Dame Anne had not yet gone. He was just now heaving up the great bulk of the lady into the saddle. At the well-head some of the Pinchinthorpe servants stood and tittered, and July heard Meg’s laughter, musical and wild; she must be watching from the door of the Hall.

  For the first time in her life July was aware that she hated Meg.

  November 3

  Most of the ladies of Princess Mary’s Household were gathered about the big fire when she came in; they drew back, leaving place for her, but she only bowed her head in her shy, awkward way, and hurried through the room. But Mistress Mary Brown, who had followed her, told them that, ‘My Lady’s Grace has a letter from the Queen,’ which silenced their talking and laughing for a few minutes, and made more than one of them stare at the door which the Princess had shut behind her.

  It was dusk when the Countess of Salisbury came into the Princess’s chamber, for she had been out riding. She saw Mary stand, a dark shape at the narrow, deep-set window, for this was not the pleasant house at Beaulieu, but the Castle of Hertford; the King had given Beaulieu to Queen Anne’s brother, and had sent his daughter here.

  Mary turned, saw the Countess with a candle in her hand, and turned back to the window. But she spoke, jerking the words out as though she could manage only a few at a time.

  ‘A letter – from my mother – and a message for you. Read it.’ She stuck out a hand behind her, and the Countess took the letter from it and read.

  DAUGHTER,

  I hear such tidings to-day that I do perceive, if it be true, the time is come that Almighty God will prove you, and I am very glad of it.

  She read on, the delicate proud stillness of her face untroubled, though many would have wept at the courage and nobility and tenderness of the letter. She came near to the end before she found any message for herself.

  And now you shall begin, and by likelihood I shall follow. I set not a rush by it; for when they have done the uttermost they can, then I am sure of amendment. I pray you recommend me unto my good Lady of Salisbury, and pray her have a good heart, for we never come to the Kingdom of Heaven but by trouble. Daughter, wheresoever you be come, take no pains to send to me, for if I may I will send to you. By your loving Mother, Katherine the Queen.