The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  She sat down in her chair, and they side by side upon the bench. Dame Anne twiddled her fingers together, Dame Margery had her hands tight locked; the Prioress saw them sit like that and then turned her eyes to the window; Calva lay there sharp-edged and dark against the last of the dying light.

  Margery Conyers suddenly wrenched one hand from the other and beat it on the bench beside her.

  ‘Shall they do it? Will not men rise to forbid them? Oh! Shame! Then let’s bar the gate. Let them take us like a besieged city if they dare.’

  She burst into tears then, and the Prioress told her that such a thing could not be, to hold the House against the King’s will. But she did not speak sharply, and patted Dame Margery on the shoulder, bidding her take heart. Margery was a fool, but she loved the Priory, and Dame Christabel felt kindly towards her.

  ‘Jesu!’ Dame Anne said, ‘if there are to be any of such doings let me forth first,’ and she laughed. She had given up twisting her fingers together, and now she pinched her veil on this side and on that, and drew a little further from under it a curl of dark hair which showed upon her forehead, where it should not, by the Rule, have showed at all.

  ‘Well!’ said she, giving herself a little shake like a bird that has just preened its feathers, ‘if they choose to put us forth what can we do but seek husbands. Fie on such a need! God’s Mother! I shall die of shame to feel a man’s hand on me.’

  The Prioress turned and looked at her, and under the look Dame Anne grew red and giggled. Then the Prioress turned her eyes away. It seemed to her now that there had never been a time when she had not detested Dame Anne. ‘At her age!’ she thought. ‘Her head’s like a brothel!’ And she was filled with a fury of scorn and disgust.

  But when the two had left her, and the warming fury had died, then the Prioress knew the blank of final defeat. All the Abbeys must go – all the little Abbeys, that is – and she had got out of Jake the Pedlar that proof which should try and depart great from little. She bit at her knuckles, and at her nails. It was useless to unlock the chest and to go through the Priory accounts. Never, she knew, could she make Marrick even appear to possess revenue of £200 a year. Yet she could not but try. Soon she sat at her desk with rolls and books spread out, reckoning up, and reckoning up again. It was as hopeless as she had known it would be. At last she allowed the rolls to slip away and rattle to the floor at her feet. She set her elbows on the desk, and her forehead fell into her hands.

  March 28

  They were winnowing in the big garner – the last of the wheat, which the Prioress looked to sell at a good price at Grinton. Because of the dust it was very thirsty work, and long before noon the bailiff winked his eye to one of the men, and walked away towards the kitchen. The rest of them followed soon, keeping close to the wall and out of sight of the windows, in case the Prioress was looking out. Malle trailed after them, last of all.

  Cook already had his face behind a can of ale, and a man they did not know sat with him, black, shaggy-haired, in patched leather hosen; a man of not much more than thirty by his look, but with lines bitten into his face by hunger, or sorrow, or by some stress beyond the common lot. Yet when those who came in from the winnowing grew merry over their ale, he was laughing with them, and more than once it was a shrewd saying of his, or a homely salty story, that had set them laughing. Certainly, for all the raggedness and wretchedness of his look, he was one of those that have a way with them; even the bailiff listened when he spoke, and Cook, a man of uneasy temper, treated him with unusual sweetness, so that the drinking time in the kitchen lasted longer than anyone had thought for. But at last they must go back to their work, so by ones and twos they drifted away.

  Malle had not come into the kitchen. She had stood all the time at the door, gaping in. Now they had to shoulder past her, so stupid she was, and so taken up with staring goggle-eyed at the stranger. Only when all had gone except Cook and him, and he got up, and came towards the door, she skipped back out of the way, standing aside in the shadowed passage till he had bidden ‘God be with you!’ to the Cook, and gone out. Then she followed him.

  There was no one in the Great Court to bid mad Malle back to work, but the Prioress herself saw her, for she stood at her window with Dame Anne Ladyman. First they saw the stranger come out. ‘There goes an ugly vagabond knave!’ said the Prioress. ‘Whence is he?’ Dame Anne agreed that surely he was a rough one to look at. She supposed he might be Sir Rafe’s new shepherd’s man from over towards Lunesdale, where folk are very poor and wild.

  When Malle went by following after him it was Dame Anne who said with a titter, ‘See the fool running after him!’ The Prioress ‘tushed’, impatient of Dame Anne’s meaning, and for that reason would not open the window to send the woman back to the winnowing. Also her thought was more taken up by the man.

  ‘Fie!’ said she. ‘If Sir Rafe hath brought that one into the Dale he hath brought a very stout rogue. See how he goes.’ He passed just then under the lintel of the gate-house, and something in the way he carried himself made it seem, though it was amply high, too low and mean for him to pass beneath.

  ‘Fie!’ she said again, feeling herself strangely and strongly moved against the fellow. ‘I warrant this is one of those whose humour it is to grudge at rich men, and would pull down all to be as wretched as they.’

  When the Man came out from the Priory gate there was Wat, Gib Dawe’s brat, sitting by the Nuns’ duck-pond, hugging his knees. He got up at once, and came slinking down to the lane-way, as the Man went past the church-yard towards the Nuns’ Steps; he came alongside Malle, and gave her a quick glinting look, a strange look, but neither frightened, nor wary, nor wicked; his face was slobbered with tears, but that did not matter, for she was crying too. They smiled at each other, and when she held out her hand he took it. So they went both together after the Man.

  By now He had come nearly to the gate in the wall that divided the Priory land just here from the Bulmers’. He went slowly, with His head bent, as though He marked the young grass growing, for it was a very fair bright day, and for the first time the grass smelt of spring. After Him, but some way behind, came Malle and Wat. The brown ducks that had been preening and scratching and shaking themselves with much fuss and flutter on the edge of the pond went now in line, following Him towards the gate, and a few of the Priory sheep, which the shepherd had brought down from Owlands, moved that way too, slowly, with little pauses and starts.

  When the Man had gone through the gate, letting the weight swing it to after Him, He turned for a moment and looked at them all. They stood still, nor did any of those creatures move again until He went on, more quickly now, up the Nuns’ Steps and into the wood.

  Only then they came to the gate, and Malle and Wat stood looking over it and watching Him as He went. The ducks gathered about their feet, and the sheep too in a little crowd, and looked between the pales. The sun, not yet very high, struck right in among the bare trees, finding out the bright watery green of the trunks, and unlocking all the distances. The wind, moving strongly through the wood, filled it with sliding shadows, as if the air bore light upon its back as a running river bears ripples. So He went up and out of sight, under the great branches that bowed and swung, while the little twigs seemed to clap themselves together for joy.

  A cloud covered the sun. He had gone, and Malle and Wat came back to the bare hillside among the boulders, where now the wind brought only chill. But for Malle it was golden harvest weather; the ears of corn were full, wrought four-square, firm as a rope, exact as goldsmiths’ work; like rope ends they struck her thighs as she moved through them, loaded with goodness.

  She plumped down on the ground, and caught Wat by his knees so that he tumbled against her. Then they sat together, rocking to and fro, and Malle kept on babbling, ‘We shall brast, Wat, we shall brast,’ while Wat made shocking faces and groaned in his throat; it hurt them so, the joy that was far too big for them, and the dread. For God, that was too great to be holden even o
f everywhere and forever, had bound Himself into the narrow room of here and now. He that was in all things had, for pity, prisoned Himself in flesh and in simple bread. He that thought winds, waters and stars, had made of Himself a dying man.

  But at last, as if it were a great head of water that had poured itself with noise, and splashing, and white foam leaping into a pool, and now, rising higher, covered its own inflow, and so ran silent, though no less strong – now they were lifted up and borne lightly as a fisherman’s floats, and as stilly.

  They crouched on the hillside, looking towards God, feeling God under their spread palms on the grass, and through the soles of their feet. Beyond, beyond, beyond, and beyond again, yet always that which went still beyond – God. And here, with only a low wooden gate between, that thing which man could never of himself have thought, and would never come to the depth of for all his thinking, here that thing impossible was true as daylight, here was God in man, here All in a point.

  April 3

  Robert Aske went shopping that morning, before the Courts were open. It was chilly in the streets, though the sky was bright above, so he and Will walked smartly along Distaff Lane stopping only to buy a new lute string at the sign of the Cock and Hen, and at the Mermaid a sugar loaf, and a pot of treacle, because in the last letter from home Jack had one of his great colds, and there was no treacle to be had in York. Nell, Jack’s wife, wrote also to know the cost of all sorts of spices, because she thought the York shopman cheated her. Robert stopped at the corner of Friday Street, in the swimming warm sunlight, to read again – ‘Pepper, cloves, mace, ginger, almonds, rice, saffron—!’ He groaned – ‘Mass! We must ask the price of all those, and yet buy none.’ When they came to the sign – ‘Do you go in!’ he said to Will. But Will made way. ‘After you, Master.’ They came out not only with the prices all neatly written, but also with some oranges and a jar of green ginger, ‘Because we are two great cowards,’ said Aske. ‘It’s only women can so brave shopmen,’ said Will.

  After that they went back up Friday Street and into the Cheap, to buy stuff for a new coat for Aske. The street was wide here, so that they came suddenly out into sunshine. All the gilding and painting along the front of Goldsmiths’ Row caught the light, and already the busy chinking of the craftsmen’s hammers could be heard from within, as well as the voices and laughter of the prentice boys and maids standing about the conduit with their pitchers and pails, waiting to draw water.

  ‘There, Master,’ Will said, plucking Aske’s sleeve and pointing across the road to a shop where the wife, in a red gown and fine white kerchief, was setting out bales of cloth, with a brave scarlet on top.

  ‘Not scarlet, Will.’

  ‘No. But the murrey.’

  They crossed the road. The woman smiled at them; she had grey hair and only two teeth in front, but her look was kind and her eyes merry. Aske leaned against the front of the booth, pushed his cap back on his head and prepared for pleasantry.

  ‘Fie, Sir!’ the woman cried, after they had talked of the fair day, and the Dame’s good cloth, and Aske’s need – so he said – of a new coat to go wooing in – ‘Fie on the smooth tongue you have! It’s God’s mercy I’m not a young maid, or you’d have the heart out of me following at your heels.’

  ‘Will,’ says Aske, ‘take me home, or I’ll be plighted to this fair gentlewoman before I know it.’

  At that she pretended to fetch him a box on the ear, and vowed she’d call her husband.

  ‘Don’t vex the good man. Let’s speak of the murrey cloth. What’s it an ell?’

  They settled to a brisk haggle; the price went down from eight shillings to five, and then stuck.

  ‘Four and a kiss,’ Aske offered.

  ‘God bless the man! Is he always so saucy?’ she asked Will, but he glowered at her, and turned his back. He did not like his master to be so familiar with the common people.

  In the end Aske paid five shillings an ell for fifteen ells. ‘And it’s good width, two ells and a half,’ said she, as she rolled it out with soft heavy bumps, while the cloth billowed like the waves of the sea. ‘You can call the meter to measure it. Will you so, or trust me?’

  Aske did not call the meter, but when the cloth was cut and folded gave it to Will to carry back with the rest of the stuff, while he himself made for Westminster.

  At the corner of the street he turned to wave his hand and kiss his fingers to the cloth merchant’s wife; she threw up both hands and laughed at him, and went inside to give her husband the money and to tell him about the merry gentleman – ‘a lawyer by his filed tongue and inked fingers,’ – and what he had said to her and she to him.

  ‘And I said – “Call the meter if you will.” And he says, “Not I!” says he, “I know who’ll cheat me, and who I can trust,” says he. And I says, “Well, you can trust me,” I says, and he says, “I can well see that,” and he laughs at me out of his one bright eye. Our Lady! It was bright too, and gamesome. And he says, “I know who I can trust,” says he.’

  Her husband ran his finger down the pages of his ledger. ‘If he thinks he knows that he’s a fool,’ he murmured.

  ‘Fie!’ she told him. ‘Fie! And he’s no fool.’

  He did not argue the matter.

  April 7

  It was early, the sun not yet up over the opposite side of the Dale, but already Gib sat reading, close to the window, and tilting his book to get all the light. It was safer to read thus early the book that he was reading, when no one was likely to come in and ask questions. Only the old mother was about, muttering as she moved to and fro in the house, and out to the cow-shed to the milking. She was telling herself, and Gib, if he cared to listen, what a hiding she would give that useless idle brat, that had slipped out the devil knew where, when there was fire to light, and beasts to tend, and water to fetch.

  Gib was reading, with great satisfaction and a cordial anger, ‘The Epistle of Paul to the Colossians’.

  Beware lest any man come and spoyl you thorowe philosophy and disceitful vanitie, thorow the traditions of men and ordinations after the world and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead.

  He turned the page and by accident dropped the book, and as he stooped for it heard his mother screeching outside once more for ‘Wat! Wat!’ She – passed the window next moment, her mouth working with anger, the yoke across her shoulders and the empty buckets swinging.

  Gib opened the book again at random and his eye, running down the page, caught here and there a phrase—

  And he came to Nazareth where he was nursed...

  and then—

  To preach the gospel to the poor he hath sent me. And to heal them which are troubled in their hearts. To preach deliverance to the captive. And sight to the blind. And freely to set at liberty them that are bruised. And to preach the acceptable year of the lord.

  After that he did not turn on to find Colossians again, but instead sat thinking, with the book on his knee and triumph mounting in his brain, because this very year surely was the acceptable year of the Lord. The power of the Pope was minished in England; soon it might be done quite away and the pure truth of the Gospel preached. The King was as valiant for truth as King David (a good similitude, for Gib felt a qualm when he thought of the King’s love. But even so had David lusted after a fair woman, and yet David was God’s servant).

  Gib got up. There were wheels that went turning in his head like the interlocking wheels of a mill, but instead of soft, white, silent flour, they ground out arguments. He had begun to write them down two days ago; now the mood was hot in him again. First he would put away the English Gospels, but because of his impatience the old hiding-place must serve. So he went to the corner where was the loose flag-stone, and knelt to prise it up with his knife and lay the book again in its hiding-place.

  It was then that Wat came in, most untimely for both. Gib beat him, both for coming in at that moment, and for not coming earlier; only after Wat had run out again whimper
ing did Gib remember that the knave could not speak, and therefore could hardly betray.

  But one beating more or less did not much signify. Spare the rod, spoil the child. He put the book away and swept the dust and scanty rushes over the stone again with his hand, got his ink and pen from the shelf and the last sheet of his paper, and sat down to write till it was time to go to the Church.

  The wheels in his brain worked, spinning this way and that. Some would have said that what came out of it was confusion, but Gib knew better. There was something higher and more terrible than ordinary reason, and the cold logic of the schools. His pen spluttered and squeaked as he drove it fast along the page. He dealt with the Pope and turned his attention to the Bishops.

  And that a subject can hold no land by no righteousness of God under the sun, but it be measured and meted by the King’s standard right of God’s law above the sun. The King knoweth not his own right of his head office; he hath given his head right to his subjects, which by his own laws hath robbed his kingly image by his sufferance to their wills; hath given it away from him to the Spiritualty, holden contrary to God’s laws.

  He stopped there, looked out of the window to see how the light had grown, and realized that time had run on while he wrote, so that now he must go at once to Church. Besides, he was at the bottom of his last page. He scrawled hastily, ‘Here I made an end for lack of paper,’ bundled the sheets together and hid them away.

  Though he had made an end of writing his thoughts did not break off, but, as he went he was full of excitement and triumph. ‘To preach the Gospel to the poor he hath sent me... the acceptable year of the Lord.’ He was an instrument in a mighty hand. He walked so fast that his breath came short, and he took great gulps of the clean morning air. Had the prophet Elisha, he asked the trees of the wood, spared the forty and two ribald children who mocked him? And – No – he muttered in defiance.