The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  The gawky pages yelled, the gentlemen smiled, and the servingmen’s brown faces split with grins from ear to ear. Darcy smiled too, leaning back in the litter. It was good to be coming home, whatever was lost and whatever time had swallowed up.

  Darcy remembered the little ale-house from the first time that he had come riding with his father to London, when he was ten years old. Since that day he had never stopped at it, for it was a poor place. But to-day, because they came home after so long a time, and because that once he had halted there – to-day they should stop and drink.

  The servants riding ahead turned off the road; the rest followed along the bank of a little brook where half a dozen children, naked as fishes, were wading and wallowing; these stood to stare at the riders, then turned their attention again to the minnows and the rat-holes.

  In front of the ale-house there were three horse-chestnut trees, and a little green. Darcy sat down on the ale-bench, stretched his long legs, and looked up into the young leaves, through which the sun thrust swimming shafts of white light. The serving-men had gone away to the kitchen door; the pages had flung themselves down on the grass like puppies, and now like puppies began to fight and scramble together; the gentlemen stood about, their riding hats pushed off and dangling down their backs by the laces; several of them had peeled off hoods too, so warm the morning was for April.

  The inn-keeper came out with his wife and a man carrying horn cups and one pewter pot, ‘For my Lord Darcy,’ says he.

  ‘You know me.’ Darcy was pleased.

  ‘I’ve known the Buck’s Head since I’ve known aught,’ and the fellow began to talk about what his father had told him of my Lord’s father.

  ‘Draw for yourself,’ said Darcy, when he had come to an end, and, ‘Thank ye,’ said the man, curt and rough in good North Country fashion, and went off. Darcy smiled up into the deep, lit green of the big tree; such as this man would not be easily bent to new ways. ‘By God’s Passion,’ he said to himself, ‘the King doth not know the Northern parts nor the men that here bide. Yet one day, maybe, he’ll learn that heart and stomach they are of.’

  When my Lord was in his litter and on the road again Tom Strangways the steward came up alongside. He had all the news of the North from the ale-house keeper, and he retailed it as they went along, including that story of a deal that the Abbot of Jervaulx had carried through with the Earl of Northumberland over some horses; they both chuckled over it, then Strangways grew grave, and seemed to Darcy to be casting at him looks that were curious and probing. ‘Well, Tom,’ said he, ‘out with it,’ and laughed to see Strangways start.

  ‘It is,’ he said after a slight hesitation, ‘more of that same tale I told you a while ago. There’s talk again of the serving-woman of Marrick in Swaledale.’

  ‘Serving-woman? At Marrick?’ Darcy could remember nothing about it.

  ‘Of whom they say that she hath seen visions.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ said Darcy, as something of it came back to him, and he remarked that doubtless the Priory had made a pretty profit of such a woman.

  ‘Not in these days,’ Strangways reminded him, with anger in his voice. ‘It’s said the Prioress will not suffer the woman to speak of what she sees, lest it embroil the Priory in greater troubles than those that are laid upon all by this late Act.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Darcy, softly and slowly. ‘Is it so?’ After a moment he said, still speaking low, though the trampling hoofs and creak of harness drowned their voices, ‘Then in these visions the King’s proceedings are in some manner condemned?’

  ‘Jesu!’ Strangways snorted, ‘and it would be strange if they were not, unless it be that Heaven is deaf.’

  ‘But what do they say of her visions?’

  ‘That she saw Our Saviour bodily as when He rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.’

  ‘Laus Deo!’ Darcy muttered, crossing himself. As he leaned back in the litter, easing himself into the best position to endure the joggle of it, he was thinking that one day, if the times did not mend, this woman and her visions might be of value. Things were now at such a pass that he and others must even use whatever lay to their hands. No hope now to be too finicking. But not yet, he thought, not yet. It might be that this new love of the King’s would bring him back to the old ways, though Darcy himself had little hope of it. And anyway, just now there was no help to be looked for from the Emperor, who, by all seeming, would have a war with France upon his hands before autumn, and who, besides, was not like readily to mell himself in English matters now, with Queen Katherine dead, when he had so long refrained while she was alive.

  So my Lord reflected, but in silence, because Strangways, he knew, was impatient of policy, and loved things to be plain yea or nay, right or wrong. When he put his head out of the litter it was to say, ‘It might be well to seek the wench and question her.’

  This time Strangways said that he thought it would be well.

  May 2

  The Groom Porter went first down the stair in the White Tower, with the keys he carried lightly chiming one against the other. Then came Mr Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir William Kingston, and after him Queen Anne, with her ladies, scared and white, following close. But at the low round arch of the stair, that burrowed both up and down through the huge walls, the Queen seemed to stumble, and stayed, laying her hand upon the rough cold skin of the stone, while her ladies bunched together behind her.

  ‘Down?’ she cried.

  Sir William, already going down, said over his shoulder, ‘If you please, Madame.’

  But the Queen still stood, clutching at the wall, and looking down into the twilight of the stair.

  ‘Shall I go into a dungeon?’

  Sir William’s voice came hollowly from below them. ‘No, Madame. You shall go into the lodging you lay in at your coronation.’

  At that she let out a cry.

  ‘It is too good for me,’ she said, and began to go down, but weeping now, and trembling, and crying, ‘Jesu have mercy on me.’

  In the great chamber where she had lain before her coronation there were ashes of a dead fire on the hearth, and candles that had guttered low before they had been blown out. For a moment she thought, as she stood in the doorway, ‘They have not touched it since that night,’ and that the candles were those that had then made a glancing golden haze, and the cold ashes the ashes of the fire that had hissed and spurted out sweetness to the room from the spices that were cast on it. She moved on a few paces into the room and then could hold herself up no longer, but went down on her knees, crying again and again, ‘Jesu have mercy on me!’

  Sir William drove her women towards her. They took her hands and, after dealing with her a little, quieted her. He, at the door, was for turning his back and going away, since this was now no chamber of audience; but the Queen cried to him, begging him to move the King’s Highness to let her have the sacrament in the chamber with her. ‘That I may pray for mercy,’ said she, still shaking so that he could see her flesh tremble. ‘For I am clear from the company of man, as for sin, as I am clear from you, and am the King’s true wedded wife.’

  Then she put aside the women, and came close to him, catching his wrist and peering into his face. ‘Mr. Kingston, do you know why I am here?’

  ‘No,’ said he, lying.

  She began to ask him of the King, of her father and of her brother, and Kingston did what he could to keep to the letter of truth and yet hide from her, what he knew well, that her brother, Lord Rochford, was already in the Tower. And, lest she should ask more, he tried to loosen her hand from his arm and begone, but she would not let him go.

  ‘For,’ said she, ‘I hear say I shall be accused with three men. And I can say no more but nay. Without I shall open my body,’ and at that she tore at the breast of her gown, and, as she met his eyes, huddled it together again, turning her head aside and crying, ‘Oh! Norris, hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower with me, and thou and I shall die together,’ and then, all in a jumble, spoke of M
ark Smeton the spinet player, and my Lady of Worcester, and of the child that had never seen the light.

  ‘Mr. Kingston,’ she cried at last, ‘shall I have justice?’

  ‘The poorest subject the King hath,’ he told her, ‘hath justice.’

  At that she threw up her arms and began to laugh, so that he thought it best to leave her, with however little courtesy, When he had shut the door behind him he could not hear the voices of her women, trying to compose her, but her laughter only.

  May 16

  Robert Aske knocked at the door of Master Snow’s room at Gray’s Inn. His finger was on the latch when he heard Snow’s voice cry sharply from inside, ‘Who’s that?’ and then, in a different tone, ‘Come in! Come in!’ So he went in, and found not only Snow but Clifton and Hatfield and another gentleman whom he knew by sight for a man of Lincoln’s Inn.

  ‘Come in,’ said Snow again to Aske, with great cordiality, and to the other gentleman, ‘You may speak before him.’

  Aske shook his head at the stool that Snow shoved towards him with his foot. ‘I come but a-borrowing,’ and named a Year Book he needed.

  ‘You shall have it. But sit down now.’

  ‘Not craving company, I’ll come again for the book.’

  He was going out when Clifton called to him, ‘Robin! Robin! come back.’

  Aske came back. ‘Well?’

  Snow said, ‘Shut the door,’ and Aske, after a sharp, hard look at him, shut it, frowning.

  ‘Master Stonor,’ said Clifton then, waving a hand towards the stranger, ‘is telling us of this trial of the Queen,’ and again Snow pushed forward the stool. Aske did not take it; instead he set his shoulders against the door, and shoved his hands through his belt, and so listened, while Master Stonor told all he knew, and that was much and on good testimony, for he had it of a Sergeant-at-Law of Clifford’s Inn, who had been present at the trial of the Queen and her brother in the Tower.

  When he had finished not one of them spoke or moved till Hal got up from the bed with a sort of laugh.

  ‘And meanwhile,’ he said, going over to the door, ‘they say that the King goes junketing on the river all these sweet, fair evenings, with minstrels playing, as if he rejoiced to be a cuckold. And you should rejoice too at her fall,’ he said, looking down into Aske’s face, which was grim. ‘You have been always set against this Queen.’ And then, ‘Let me out, Robin,’ he said, because Aske had not budged.

  ‘You said,’ Aske spoke to Stonar as though he had not heard Hal, ‘you said there were no witnesses called?’

  ‘Never a one.’

  ‘And that though the Queen and Lord Rochford both denied the charges?’

  Stonor bowed his head.

  ‘It is done so in the King’s Courts?’ Aske looked round at them all, and Clifton grumbled, ‘By the Rood! No!’ but Hal cried out, ‘Let be! Let be!’ putting his hand on Aske’s shoulder again, to let him pass out.

  This time Aske opened the door for him, and when it was shut again said, as if there had been no interruption, ‘And of all these accusations, save that great one of co-habitation with those three men, there is naught but what would make men laugh in a Twelfth-tide play. God’s Death! She and Rochford made mock of the King and his clothes! She showed openly she loved His Grace no longer. They two laughed at the King’s ballads. Well then, bundle up all those charges together with that which you cannot prove, hand a man a written accusation, forbidding him to read it aloud, frown heavily on the jury – and then, by God’s Passion, law and justice being fairly kept, pass sentence of death.’

  Clifton growled, ‘You’ve said it,’ and Stonor tightened his mouth and nodded his head, but Snow got up and began to fidget about the room, protesting that it was unmeet to say such things.

  ‘For why?’ said Aske.

  ‘For that—’

  Aske caught him up. ‘For that they are not true?’ and Snow began to say, ‘No, but—’

  ‘I’ll tell you for why,’ Aske interrupted. ‘For that it’s come to this, that not one of us dares lay his hand on the latch to lift it and cry aloud, for any man to hear, that in this trial neither law nor justice is done, but only the King’s will, and Cromwell’s.’

  He looked round at them again, and they were silent.

  ‘Each of us,’ he said, ‘knows that it is so. But none knows to what pass we shall be brought before the end.’

  He opened the door then and went away, with Wat Clifton following close behind.

  May 18

  The Ladies had sung Lauds and gone back to bed some time before, and all the House had fallen silent again for the short hours till dawn. But my Lord Darcy was waking in the Guest Chamber that was above the gate-house; he lay on his side with his face towards the westward window, through which looked in an orange moon with two large stars beside it, standing clear in the ashen sky of this hour before dawn.

  The first cock crew, but sleepily; and faintly out of the distance another answered it.

  ‘Tom,’ said my Lord, ‘Tom!’ and Thomas Strangways sat up on his pallet rubbing sleep from his eyes. ‘The servants will be stirring soon,’ said my Lord, and Strangways, groaning and yawning, got out of bed, dressed himself, and then helped his master to dress.

  By the time that was done there were footsteps and voices below; a latch lifted, a door banged, the dogs barked, and there came the jingle of harness and stamping of horses led out to plough.

  Strangways said, ‘I’ll find and bring her to you,’ and went out.

  My Lord sat down on his bed, with his back to the old, round-headed window that looked eastward down the Dale. This Guest Room, which was the oldest part of the Priory, ran right across the upper floor of the gate-house, with a window at each end and an open hearth in the midst with a louvre above. It was still dark in the room, because of the smallness of the windows, so Strangways had lit two rushlights and set them on the bench. But outside the sky was paling slowly, as all but the greater stars withdrew before the coming day.

  Darcy sat absently fingering his beard and considering this venture on which he had set out. He could not be sure that the Prioress, that woman with the keen eyes and deep voice, believed that he and Strangways were, as they said, merchants going over into Wensleydale to buy horses. Yet even if she doubted, it was no matter, so long as she did not know, and did not discover, who indeed he was. And if she did know or discover – God’s Passion! he did not greatly care, now that he was once again in the North Country. Yet, he thought, in coming here he might prove to have been a fool for his pains. It was not probable that a serving wench of a small, poor House like Marrick should have anything to tell that would serve in so great a matter as that would be if it came to raising the realm against Cromwell and the King.

  Strangways came up the ladder into the room, saying over his shoulder to someone below, ‘Come up! Come up! None’ll hurt you. And you shall have a groat for your trouble for lighting of the fire. But my – my friend is of a humour that cannot suffer these cold mornings.’

  Then Malle came up into the room with her apron full of sticks and dried bracken for kindling, and having bobbed to my Lord upon the bed went down on her knees and began to blow upon the pale ashes of last night’s fire, and paused a moment sitting back on her heels to say that for all it was May it was shivering weather; then she crouched again, puffing noisily.

  While she was at it Darcy looked at her, and looked at Strangways. He lifted an eyebrow and shook his head, and Strangways shook his too. The woman had a patient, cheerful face, but she looked to have as much wit as the handle of my Lord’s walking staff.

  ‘Well,’ said Darcy, when she had done, and the flame licked up and the smoke swayed and crawled and curled along the hearth, ‘here’s for your labour,’ and he held out a groat.

  Malle came near and he put it into her hand, but she held it so slackly that it fell between them.

  ‘Are you she,’ he asked – because having come here he would at least put the question – ‘Ar
e you she of whom they say that you have seen in a vision or dream holy things?’

  He looked down quickly at the groat which she had dropped, and again at her face; then he got up quickly from the bed; the two rushlights were behind her; no gleam of their flames shone on her face, nor was it, when he looked again, any light at all that he saw there, only something which might be to light as man’s thought to his spoken word.

  ‘I pray you,’ Darcy urged, when she was silent, ‘to tell me what it is that you have seen.’

  Malle said: ‘There was a great wind of light blowing, and sore pain.’

  He waited for her to say more, not looking at her now, but turned towards the window beyond which the eastern sky showed pale, cold and strange, not coloured yet, but flecked with small dark cloud. He had to make an effort to recall what it was he had hoped to get from this woman; something that could be passed from mouth to mouth among common men and gentle too; something that showed it was God’s will they should resist the King’s proceedings in religion; something that promised the downfall of Master Cromwell, Chief Secretary.

  ‘But,’ he said, having fished all this up from the bottom of his mind, as if these were things long forgotten and now become unfamiliar and unreal, ‘was it told you that God is angry with them that have counselled the King against Holy Church? And that He will have them brought low?’ When she said nothing he persisted. ‘In these days there are deeds done – There are wicked men—’ He glanced at Strangways for help, but Strangways’ eyes were fixed on the woman.

  ‘In times past,’ Darcy urged, ‘when His birth-place and His sepulchre were in the hands of the heathen, He spoke by the mouths of Popes and Saints to call on men to take arms and guard His honour. Is it not so now? Is not this the meaning of what you saw?’

  He tried to see her face again, but she had turned aside, and the torn and crumpled kerchief she wore hid all but the tip of her blunt nose. He lifted his hand and beat with one clenched fist on the palm of the other.