The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  Dame Margery made haste to go down, but it was as if the stone stairs had turned soft as feather pillows under her feet, and the flags of the Cloister like quaking marsh land. These Visitors, sent about to every Monastery in the country, were here to pry, to pick on faults, to question. And at the end of it their meaning was to turn out the Ladies from Marrick. She was sure of it. Houses in the South Country had been served so; now it would be their turn.

  The Prioress was busy counting tallies in the little office half-way along the passage between the Cloister and the Great Court when Dame Margery found her. ‘Nell?’ she asked, without looking round, and the light slivers of wood clicked as she counted, ‘Four boon days; five; six,’ and then again, ‘Well?’

  “Madame,’ cried Dame Margery, and tears of excitement rushed to her eyes. ‘They are coming – from Coverham. They are at the ford.’ She listened, for by now they must be past the ford. Her right hand, clenched among the folds of her gown, was lacking, though she herself did not know it, the hilt of the sword that her father, and his fathers before him, had carried. ‘Can we bar the gate and keep them out?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘By the Rood! that we cannot,’ the Prioress said. She laid down the tallies on the Convent chest. For a moment she considered; then she told the Chambress what to do, precisely and in detail; cut her short with, ‘Silence! On your obedience!’ and turned again to her counting.

  Dame Margery, crimson and smudging tears hastily from her face, went back into the Cloister, and found that the news had come there already. All the Ladies stood close, gabbling together like so many ducks, but much shriller. They cried out to her, and she to them, and the noise grew; most of them were sure as she was of the worst: a few were doubtful; only old Dame Joan Barningham was confident that Our Blessed Lady would protect Her daughters.

  Dame Margery pushed through them, answering questions as she went. ‘Have you seen them?’ ‘Yea.’ ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To the kitchen.’ ‘What for? Does the Lady know? What does she say?’ There was a silence when that was asked.

  Dame Margery had her hand on the door of the Buttery passage. She gave them the answer loudly.

  ‘She says, “Make ready a breakfast for them.” She says, “Have herbs strewn in the guest-house. Have the maids light a fire, and see they well blow it up before they leave it. Get out the silver spoons.” She says, “Set before them the wild boar pasty.”’

  She had opened the kitchen door, and now slammed it behind her. The Ladies were left to make what they could of the Prioress’s orders. They found many interpretations of them; Dame Bess Dalton even suggested tentatively that the Prioress intended to put poison in the pasty. Dame Anne Ladyman came nearest to the truth when she said, rolling her great black eyes, that, Mother of God! all men were alike. Feed them well and they’d be kind.

  That would not have ended the debate, but the sound of voices, and of knocking at the gate, cut it short. The Ladies, hushing each other loudly and urgently, made with one accord for the Buttery, which had a window on the Great Court.

  July and Dame Eleanor Maxwell were left alone in the Cloister. Dame Eleanor sat still on her bench; she had at first hoped to learn what it was that had so excited the other Ladies. She had plucked at a sleeve here, a gown there, but if any had tried by shouting in her ear to make her understand, the hubbub had been too great for their words to penetrate her deafness.

  So the old woman had given up her attempts, slipping back into the prison of her body, which had windows, but in which no sound, except the most muffled and indistinct, was ever heard. She sighed and trembled a little, frightened by a turmoil which had for her no meaning except that it must mean ill. Uncomprehending almost as a baby, but far more patient, she sat very still, her hands crossed upon her big belly, her lips moving in prayers that were just audible.

  Behind her, and keeping out of her sight, July stood stiff as a clothes peg, looking down at the grass in the Cloister Garth, where frost had laid such jewellery upon every blade, dead leaf, and common stone, as none of the King’s goldsmiths could by any means have equalled. Her eyes saw, but her mind did not perceive, that exquisite transient craftsmanship, being filled with a dismay too deep yet for any feeling. They would all be put forth from Marrick; she was far more sure of that than the most despairing of the Ladies, because she had known always that disaster was the order of the world.

  *

  As the Ladies sat down to their Mixtum, very late, and most of them with the doors set a little ajar, they could hear now and then men’s voices, and footsteps heavy and strange. Listening, they knew by the sounds just how the King’s Visitors were going about their business; the door that clapped to so noisily was the door of the Frater; a board in the floor of the warming-house creaked; the loose handle on the Parlour door rattled, and they thought of their embroidery turned over, perhaps trampled upon by these terrible persons. When the Chapter Bell rang they came down circumspectly, as if wolves waited below, and sure enough in the Chapter House there were two men, one standing by the lectern, the other sitting in the Prioress’s chair. This one was heavy and bulky, with a broad face that had purple veins like tiny worms upon his cheeks. The other, who flipped over the pages of the Rule as if he disdained it, was much longer and thinner; he was younger too, and dressed in fine red cloth and crimson velvet; he had a haughty look, and his jaw thrust out dangerously like the jaw of a pike.

  When the bulky man, who was Dr. Layton, had read the Commission of the Visitation, the Prioress knelt and kissed the seal that dangled from it. It was only a little seal, being Master Cromwell’s and not the Great Seal of England; for it was not the King but the Chief Secretary who had sent out these men. Then Dr. Layton told them that the King had heard of the corruptions and wickednesses which had defiled the small Houses of Religion. They looked at each other and were silent; last year the Bishop had visited them, but, though severe, he had not seemed to think their faults very black, so perhaps all might yet be well.

  ‘Therefore,’ Dr. Layton concluded, ‘we shall speak with each of you severally, to learn in what state this House stands. We shall begin, as is the custom, with the youngest of you.’

  That was July, because the youngest Novice had gone home for a christening. So they left her, standing in her place looking down at her clenched hands. She did not see Dr. Layton crook his finger to her, but when he ordered her to ‘Come – come near,’ she gave a start, and went and stood before him, but would look no higher than his boots, which were of light brown leather, rubbed dark and shiny where the stirrup irons had worn them.

  The other man, who was Dr. Legh, came near, and the two of them spoke together, but not to her. ‘Too young to know much...’

  ‘But ex ore parvulorum...’

  ‘Well, well, ask her. Little pitchers have long ears.’

  In the end it was Dr. Legh who began by asking her whether the divine service was fully and meetly kept.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said July, and they both laughed, Dr. Legh with a thin high whinneying laugh that she much disliked.

  ‘Too fully and meetly,’ he tittered. ‘You’re not very devout, Mistress.And now as to fasting...?’

  Dr. Layton interrupted after a little. He said it was no use ‘putting such questions as you put to this child. She cannot know how the officers of the House layout the revenues.’

  Dr. Legh asked, ‘Why not? Put them all through it. Truth comes out by little and little, like whey from the press.’

  But Dr. Layton overrode him, and July thought for a moment that he was the more bearable of the two, while he asked her how old she was, and when she was to be professed.

  She told him fifteen first, then sixteen. Then she said ‘Yea, sixteen, and I shall take the vows at Easter.’

  ‘God’s Blood! Sixteen!’ cried Dr. Layton. ‘That’s how scandals grow. My young gentlewoman, in another ten years we’ll have you kicking against the vows, and maybe committing fornication with some pretty wanton priest.’

&nb
sp; He laughed, low and richly, and July thought him worse than Dr. Legh.

  ‘Or if not with Master Priest,’ he ran on, ‘then with some fine gentleman who comes and goes, in and out of the house. For I hear from certain of the servants—’ he spoke over his shoulder to Legh – ‘You heard it too – that your Prioress will let men speak with the Nuns in the Cloister and the Parlour. Now can you say who entertained these men, and whether any sent or received love-letters or tokens, pretty trifles such as ribbon knots, or rings with posies? Or did any man haunt the Church alone after dusk? Jesu! things can be done in the Church after dusk that you wouldn’t think for.’ He laughed again, and asked Dr. Legh didn’t they know it by now, both of Monks and Nuns? Legh smiled, but sourly and as it were with disdain.

  ‘Now,’ Layton said, and laid his warm fingers on July’s hands, clasped in front of her. ‘Now can you remember of any gentlemen who came into the Cloister – yea, even though you saw nothing amiss done?’

  July unclasped her hands and put them behind her back.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘None.’

  ‘None? You’re sure?’

  ‘None,’ she told him again, and he caught her look and in it read hate. He could not know what she hated him for, nor that when he spoke of men it meant for her nothing but one man, and when he spoke of wantonness it was as if his soft pawing hands were feeling towards the name of Master Aske, to soil it with their touch.

  They asked her more questions after that, but she shut her lips and only shook her head or nodded for answer, so they rated her for an obstinate froward stubborn wench, and after a little, since they got no more out of her, sent her away to bring to them the eldest of the Novices.

  January 19

  Next morning, early, because they would leave Marrick at once after breakfast, the two Visitors sat in the guest-house chamber, drawing up their report on the Priory. There was a fire, but, in spite of much work with the bellows, a gusty wind was puffing smoke and more smoke down the chimney and into the room. Dr. Legh flapped it from his face with a long, impatient hand. ‘The devil’s in the fire,’ he said and coughed, and bade the clerk open the window, ‘for it’s better to freeze than stifle.’

  The clerk, who sat much nearer the window than he, thought otherwise, but did what he was bid in silence.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Layton asked. He sat the other side of the hearth from Legh; the Prioress’s red buckram bag lay on his knee, and from it he was pulling out bundles of old charters with cracked or crumbling seals dangling – seals of red wax, or heather-honey brown, or oily green.

  The clerk, having sat down again and tucked his left hand under his thigh to warm it, said that yea, he was ready. Layton began to dictate; this was all of the revenues of the Priory from meadows and closes, sheep walks and messuages that had been given in old time to the House – at Marske and Downholm, Richmond and Newton-le-Willows. He stopped once to flourish a small, very old charter.

  ‘Here’s a pretty thing! “Henry le Scrope 14th year of King Edward son of King Edward,” – that’ll be Edward II – “holds ten acres of Margaret, Prioress of Marrick, at a rent of a red rose in the time of roses for all services.” Was she then his minion? Were Nuns, think you, as loose then as now?’

  Legh said scornfully that such a rent was nothing uncommon, but Layton would not be deprived of his ancient scandal. ‘For look you,’ said he, ‘that same payment was after commuted to sixpence.’

  When all the spiritualities and temporalities of the House were written down, they came to the Nuns themselves, beginning with Christabel Cowper, Prioress and Treasurer.

  Dr. Legh said at once that there was little against her, except that it was said of her – that fat Nun Elizabeth Dalton said it – that she wore petticoats of brocade and gilt pins on her veil. ‘But I make little of that,’ said he, waving his hand against the smoke, and then holding it before him to look at a gold ring on his finger with one sapphire stone in it. He thought that Dr. Layton did not know that the Prioress had given him the ring.

  ‘What,’ asked Layton, ‘of those mistakes in the Account Roll?’

  Legh chuckled. ‘Jesus!’ said he. ‘No mistakes. They’re all on her side, and I think I know where the money went that was so subtly hidden in them. You’ve seen the Prioress’s chamber? Yea. Very fair. Very neat. Good wainscot work and made to last many a year. Indeed,’ he looked very superciliously at the clerk, and a little less so at Layton, ‘indeed, for my part, I think it a pity that this House should not continue, so I gave the Lady the best counsel that I might.’ He half closed his eyes to look again at the sapphire on his finger, and added, ‘Of course, she said the House was too poor to offer so great sum to the Chief Secretary for its continuance.’ He smiled to himself, making the same mistake with regard to Dr. Layton that the Prioress had made. But he had far less excuse than she, for by this time he should have known that Layton, for all that he was a man of one idea, was no fool.

  For a moment Layton said nothing, but scratched his thigh and savoured his keen dislike of his fellow Visitor. Then,—

  ‘What of that that was said of her as to being found with a boy in her bed one night?’

  ‘Tcha! And how many years ago? Even that black-eyed scandalmonger that told it could not say but that it was a matter of two children. And such as she’ – he looked at Layton with a look that said, ‘and such as you’ – ‘would find matter to traduce a saint.’

  ‘Well, well.’ Layton let it go.

  ‘Who next?’

  ‘Dame Margery Conyers.’

  ‘That bag of bones!’

  ‘Confederate with the Prioress, I think,’ Layton put in, but Legh disregarded this, which might have been a warning to him. So they went on through the Nuns. Nothing much could be objected against the House except that the Nuns were accustomed to go out from the Cloister to funerals and christenings, staying away an unconscionable time, and that it had been known for gentlemen to be entertained in the Cloister and the Parlour. One Nun, professed two years ago, at the age of twenty-three, must go forth; they both agreed to that, though their Commission only gave them power to send away any under twenty-two years of age who had taken the vows.

  ‘As for that novice,’ said Legh, meaning July, ‘she shall not take the vows this Easter.’

  ‘And it would be well,’ Layton added sourly, ‘if she took them not at all.’

  At last Legh stood up and stretched himself till his joints cracked. He said, well, that was an end, and now for the mulled ale the Prioress had ordered for them, and to saddle.

  The clerk began to shuffle his papers together, and then Layton spoke.

  ‘Have you forgot,’ said he, ‘this matter of the wench who sees visions?’

  ‘Visions?’ Legh was taken between wind and water.

  ‘Or have you not heard?’ Layton purred, knowing well Legh had heard. ‘I thought it,’ he said, ‘a grave matter.’

  Legh sat down again. In his mind he abandoned the cause of the Prioress, and with less compunction because the ring, though pretty, was of no great value, and he suspected that it was not her best. ‘Tell me,’ he said, as if this talk of visions was news to him.

  So Layton told him of the serving-woman, Malle, who, certain of the servants averred, saw visions of Our Saviour, of Our Lady, of saints and angels and devils too.

  ‘And doth she prophesy treasonably?’ Legh inquired, with the due amount of apprehension that a loyal subject should show.

  But Layton was satisfied; he had given the young man a lesson. He said that there were no prophecies that he could hear of, nor naught treasonable in the visions, but that it seemed the wench was but a poor, crazed, harmless creature. ‘Nevertheless,’ he concluded, ‘it were well that I should admonish the Prioress that such things are dangerous. Write it down so,’ he bade the clerk.

  Legh understood precisely why he said that ‘I’ and not ‘we should admonish the Prioress’. Nor, when they rode from Marrick, warmed by the mulled ale, did he need to inq
uire how Dr. Layton had come by a handsome brooch that he wore; it was a thing of a good deal more value than the sapphire ring on his own finger.

  January 29

  Sunshine was blown across the empty countryside like straws before the wind; in the great Church of the Abbey of Peterborough the coloured windows glowed and gloomed as the light filled them and was wiped away. As well as the changeable brightness of the day the strong tide of air found its way into the Church in little trickles and eddies and swayed the flames of many torches and tapers lit for the burial of Katherine, once Queen of England. Sometimes a stronger breath moved the drooping banners, upon which candlelight and sunlight chased each other, showing the arms of England, of the Emperor, of Spain, Aragon, and Sicily; there were also little pennons bearing devices such as the bundle of arrows, the pomegranate, the lion and the greyhound, which commemorated old alliances as far back as John of Gaunt, who had married a Spanish Princess. Besides all these banners there were four great golden standards on which were painted the Trinity, Our Lady, St. Katherine, and St. George, while round about the walls hung cloths painted with the dead woman’s chosen motto, ‘Humble et loyale’, in tall gold letters. All that was left in England of Katherine, Queen or Princess Dowager, lay in the midst of the lights and the banners in its leaden coffin, under a cloth of gold frieze with a great cross of crimson velvet.

  The mourners, of whom the King had chosen for chief his niece, Eleanor, daughter of the Dowager French Queen and the Duke of Suffolk, sat in black rows upon the benches, while Bishop Hilsey of Rochester preached to them against the power of the Pope, and against the incestuous marriage of Katherine, widow of Prince Arthur, to Henry, then Prince of Wales. Lady Eleanor sat, hearing, yet not hearing, with every appearance of decorous attention; her mind was running upon the delinquencies and impertinences of one of her waiting women, and on the piercing phrases of her next rebuke. But the ladies and gentlemen who had been of the dead woman’s Household heard and attended well enough to what he was saying. Many of the gentlemen scowled; those of the ladies who were not crying shuffled their feet upon the hassocks of rushes. The Imperial Ambassador, M. Eustace Chapuys, who was placed among the great mourners, neither scowled nor shuffled, but sat very stiff with a face empty of expression. Only when the Bishop, warming to his work, declared that the Princess in the hour of death had confessed that she had never rightly and lawfully been Queen of England, the Ambassador’s sanguine complexion deepened to crimson; he lifted his head and stared at the Bishop, in a look giving him the lie. But the Bishop would not catch his glance, keeping his eyes all the time on the words of his dissertation.