The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  ‘He would not resist His enemies. That I know. But for us it is different. Shall we stand by and see – and not—’

  But, though he waited, Malle made no answer.

  He moved at last and went from her down the length of the room to the window that looked up the Dale. For a moment he stayed there, looking out to where, above the humped back of Calva, the moon hung in the sky, pale and round as a white cheese. When he came back Malle was gone and Strangways stood at the top of the ladder, staring down after her. Darcy went by him restlessly to the other window, as if there he might learn something that he needed to know; as if what was not to be found in the dim west might be written upon the brightening east. And upon this side the dawn had come. Harsh thin flame had lit all the small clouds, and, even as he looked out, the light changed, grew warmer and softer, till the cold fire had turned to rose colour against a heavenly blue.

  ‘Tom!’ cried Darcy. ‘If all honest men were to hold their hands would not knaves rule all?’ He knew he had said that before, and then knew that he had said it to his wife, and the remembrance cut him, and joined with this woman’s silence to condemn him. But he cried, ‘Surely God would not have us stand by while His enemies work their will?’

  ‘Surely not,’ Strangways said confidently; but then the weight of the decision did not fall upon his shoulders.

  And Darcy said never a word more of using the woman’s vision to hearten men to resist the King’s doings.

  June 15

  The sun was shining into the upstairs room in which Master William Ibgrave, the old embroiderer, sat with his three workmen. It was from the hands of these cunning craftsmen that those sumptuous garments came that the King and his Queens – one or another – wore at high feasts of the Church or on other solemn occasions. Round about the walls hung doublets and kirtles, mantles and petticoats, and among them, hardly more glorious, was stuff for the King’s Chapel – copes, orfreys, chasubles and frontals.

  Master William had, laid across his knees, a doublet of white and green satin of Bruges, with the pattern faintly traced upon it, which was to be embroidered for the King; and now one of the men brought to him a little locked coffer from the carved chest by the window. Master William took the key from his pouch, unlocked the coffer and lifted from it two packages of soft leather. He unrolled them upon the bench beside him; in one there were eighteen emeralds set in gold; in the other twenty-nine little things like brooches, but without the pin, of pearls set in gold in the shape of the letter I, for the initial of the new Queen Jane’s name. Master William and his men were to stitch them upon the green and white satin doublet, the pearl letters on the green, the emeralds upon the white, and all in an intricate mesh of embroidery in silks and gold thread.

  Of the three other men who sat in the sunny room one was stitching small pearls upon a pair of crimson sleeves; another was busy with gold thread upon a black damask girdle; and the third, who had brought the coffer to his master, and who was to help with the green and white doublet, sat with his hands on his knees and his eyes cast down; he was a mournful man of Lutheran belief, tormented by fears of damnation, but he was the best workman that Master William had.

  He who was sewing at the crimson sleeves paused to let his needle hang twirling at the end of the thread till the twisted silk ran sweetly again. But then, instead of stooping once more to his work, he lifted his head.

  ‘Surely it is that they come,’ he said, and nodded towards the window. There had been a good deal of noise in the street all morning, of voices, footsteps, and the tread of horses. But now a sound of shouting was growing in the distance, and flowing nearer.

  ‘Tcha!’ said the Lutheran, as his two fellows got up and hurried to the window, to hang out, straining to see furthest. Master William however only shook his head gently. Though he disapproved of such interruptions, being himself tirelessly industrious, he did not rebuke his men, for he was of a very patient and pacific humour, and willing to suffer the infirmity of more frivolous minds. So he went on, delicately tacking the emeralds and the pearl and gold letters upon the doublet while the road below filled with a moving flood of velvet and satin, jewels, steel and feathers, as noblemen, bishops, ladies, knights and gentlemen, and the King and Queen went by to the Corpus Christi Day Mass at Westminster.

  When all had passed the two men came back to their work, and were perhaps the brisker at it for the interlude. Now, as they sat stitching, they told Master Ibgrave how very fairly the embroidery of the Queen’s kirtle had showed; they all knew that kirtle by heart, for between them they had embroidered the grey satin with gold, and among the gold had set on no less than 1562 pearls which, in to-day’s sunshine, had given the whole a sort of milky radiance. They commented, too, upon the new Queen’s fair face and gentle demeanour, comparing her favourably with her predecessor. The Lutheran, on the other hand, defended Queen Anne, declaring her to have been a great favourer of the Gospel, and, in his mind, to have been done to death, innocent, by those who were enemies of the true light. Master William through it all sat contentedly stitching with his knotted deft fingers, and on the eaves of the roof above the windows the swallows, with the sun on their breasts, kept up a tuneless, ecstatic twittering.

  *

  Much later on this same day, so late indeed that all in the house at Hunsdon were asleep except herself, the Princess Mary sat leaning her elbow on the table and her head on her hand. Her head ached with a great knocking throb, because she had cried for so long. The room was close and airless, which made the ache worse, but if the shutters were set open on the warm summer air the moths would come in and blunder into the candles, so that she must stop writing till they had staggered out again, maimed and helpless, to spin themselves to death upon the table.

  Yet she was not writing; and now because her fingers were clammy with heat she laid down the pen and wiped them on her gown, and afterwards sat looking at the pen, and not looking at the piece of paper beside which it lay. All she had to do – but she had sat here for hours, and it was yet undone – was to sign her name three times upon that piece of paper. If she did that she would declare the King her father to be the Head of Christ’s Church, his laws good and just, and herself to be born of a marriage ‘by God’s law and man’s incestuous and unlawful’.

  ‘Oh!’ she whispered, ‘I shall be sick. I shall be sick,’ and then crammed her knuckles against her mouth to stifle the word that had come to her lips. She could not cry ‘Mother!’ because she knew that she was going to sign the paper.

  And she must do it quickly, before the heavy hammers began to beat again in her head, hammering out arguments, for and against, as they had hammered them out for days. It was wrong. The Emperor’s Ambassador said it was right. They would kill her. Then she would be a martyr. It was right to obey a father. It was horribly wrong to deny the truth.

  She snatched up the pen and set her name to each of the three Articles, then folded and sealed the paper, but clumsily and spilling the wax because of the trembling of her fingers.

  When it was done and the thing lay there, signed and sealed, she sat looking at it. It was done, and for a few moments her mind was quite empty except for a dull and heavy sense of relief. She did not remember the dwindling hope of the last week, the growing fears, the letters she had written, submitting, praying for pardon always more abjectly, yet always stopping short of that which now she had done. She did not remember how a couple of days ago she had sat in this chair while two of the King’s Privy Council, the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Sussex, had stood over her shouting that if she had been the daughter of either of them her head should have been beaten against the wall till it was soft as a rotten apple. She remembered and thought of nothing now except that now the thing was done.

  She stood up clinging to the chair for a minute to keep herself steady, and then went crookedly towards the door. Behind her, upon the table between the two candles, lay the sealed paper. She did not turn her head to see it, but it filled her mind, because
that small square of white, with the clumsy botched seal on it, was that by which she had cut herself off from her mother, from the Church Catholic, from God. Even now she might have gone back to the table and set the paper to one of the candle flames; but she did not.

  When she came to the door her fingers fumbled for the latch. She was muttering to herself.

  ‘So it’s done. I can sleep now. I must sleep.’

  June 29

  The rain caught them again as they were approaching the Priory, so Dame Nan Bulmer sent the two menservants on to the Manor, and herself, with little Doll and her younger waiting gentlewoman, who was Julian Savage, and the servant behind whom July rode, turned into the Priory gate. Dame Nan and Mistress Doll were brought up to the Prioress’s Chamber, and at once there was calling for wine and wafers, strawberries, and a dish of cherries. The servant went off to the kitchen where he greatly enlivened a dull and disagreeable morning for the Cook, his boy, and as many of the wenches who could find excuse to pretend business in that direction. July slipped away to the Cloister, and, finding that empty, to the Parlour.

  There the Ladies were, all but Dame Anne Ladyman who was with the Prioress, and Dame Joan Barningham who was now so old that for the most part she kept her bed.

  ‘Lord!’ they cried, ‘it’s July!’ and shook Dame Eleanor Maxwell by the shoulder to rouse her, shouting in her ear that it was July, and pointing to where the girl stood by the door in a grey gown with a red petticoat. It was a moment before the old lady recognized her in this guise, but then she lumbered up, very slowly, while all the rest were crowding round July, crying out that she’s grown and was now quite a woman, asking her why she had never yet been to see them till this day, bidding her tell them if she’d rather be at the Manor or here, and then never listening to a word she said, but pouring out all that had happened at the Priory since she left. Dame Margaret’s little dog was dead, and Dame Bet’s brother promised her one of those talking popinjay birds but it never came, and Dame Joan had had all her teeth out, and had a very great cough even though it was summer.

  Then they made way for Dame Eleanor, who, leaning heavily on her stick, leaned also on July’s shoulder as she bent and kissed her, saying in her flat toneless voice that it was good to see her. July, who did not like to be kissed or touched, stood stiff, and then, looking into Dame Eleanor’s face, forgot everything but the change she saw there; in these weeks Dame Eleanor’s firm freshly coloured fat had sagged and paled; her eyes which had been cheerful, now seemed to be bleared with tears, and her big mouth trembled.

  So, all the time July sat with the Ladies and they talked and showed her their new embroidery works and plied her with cherries and strawberries (‘but we can’t give you wine for the Lady hath the keys’), she kept stealing a look at Dame Eleanor. When Dame Bet Singleton would have her come upstairs to look at a murrey cloth gown that had been left to her in a sister’s will, and they were alone together, July began to say, ‘Dame Eleanor—’ and then did not know how to go on.

  But Dame Bet understood.

  ‘Alas! You saw? Even we who are with her can see how she’s changed.’

  Dame Bet laid her hand on the lid of the coffer, where the murrey gown lay, but did not open it. Instead she sighed, ‘I do think that when – that if – they turn us out from Marrick, that day will be her death.’

  July could make no sound in answer, and Dame Bet said in a different tone, ‘Ah well ! You are gone forth into the world. It cannot be the same to you as to us.’ Then she opened the coffer, and in displaying the gown became more cheerful.

  But when they sat together on the top of the coffer with the gown across their knees, Dame Bet seemed to remember that all this time she had learnt nothing of how July was getting on at the Manor, and began to question her. Was it merry among all those folk? Wasn’t Mistress Doll a sweet little maid? Was Dame Nan kind? July said, ‘Yes,’ to all, because that was safest, but she spoke with so little spirit that perhaps Dame Bet guessed how often the truth would have been, ‘No,’ for she heaved a sigh and said inconsequently, ‘Alas! now we may prove in ourselves the mutability of things temporal,’ and from that went on to tell July that the Prioress, being of so stout a heart as she was, maintained that all would yet be well with the Priory, though Monks and Nuns in the South were even now turned out. ‘But the rest of us are sore afraid. Only one—’ she obviously had difficulty in swallowing back the name – ‘one would not be unwilling to be put forth, I do think. She has a gown of carnation colour in her coffer and she embroiders a pair of grey sleeves as if she were a maid preparing for a bridal.’ Dame Bet looked down on the murrey-coloured cloth that she was stroking with one hand and added as if it needed some explanation, ‘This is of a sad colour, and, besides, will be only for a petticoat, and the gown over it open but a little way.’

  July, whose eyes had wandered to the window, got up hastily.

  ‘The rain has stopped. I shall be chidden. I must go.’

  They were indeed calling for her below, and she got sharp words from Dame Nan when she came. What made it worse was that the rain began again before they had gone far, and Doll began to cry, and Sir Rafe, hearing her grizzling as they came into the Manor, rebuked his wife for not having more care of the child. All this, July knew, would like curses come home to roost with her. And then she thought of Dame Eleanor Maxwell, shrinking and dwindling to a helpless, wretched old woman, and all the Ladies, except the Prioress and Dame Anne Ladyman, dreading the day when they would be put out of the Priory, leaving behind them the kind, quiet life, to live as July had come to live, in some crowded house in which they had no place.

  She was at table now, and listening to all the chatter and shouting, laughter and bickering, she thought of the Priory as a place of peace. Those tiffs which from time to time divided the Ladies were no more than ripples on the placid surface of their life. Here – July looked along the table – here this lad was quarrelsome because a wench would not look at him, and there that wench was cock-ahoop and giggling because the lad she liked had handled her in a dark corner. From behind the shut doors of the summer parlour came the sound of Sir Rafe’s voice raised and harsh. You would never hear Dame Nan speak loud in anger, but July knew just how she would be answering, cold and bitter and cruel as she could be in the fewest words; July did not love Dame Nan, but she knew, without having thought about it all, that here was another who was unhappy, and whose security had been taken from her as it had been taken from July, and would be taken from the Ladies of Marrick Priory.

  Just before supper July was sent to the still-room to turn the green walnuts in their pickle. On her way back, instead of coming at once to the parlour, she slipped across the little yard and out into the dripping garden, for the rain had at last taken off after a drenching day, and now the clouds were parting and showing in the west a hint of the sun. She heard footsteps, and looking down at the road below the little stone terrace she saw Malle coming along carrying a bolt of homespun linen that one of the Marrick women had woven for the Priory.

  July let her pass, and then, in a great hurry, ran down the steps to the little gate; the key was in the lock; she pulled open the door. ‘Malle! Malle!’ she called.

  Malle, stopped, turned, and came back. July wished that she had not called her. ‘No matter,’ she began to say, and then remembered how much it did matter. If only the Ladies might have peace. If only for them there might be still that quiet island in the troubles of the world. Even though July herself must be buffeted on the high seas it would be comfort to know that there were some safe in a sheltered haven.

  ‘Malle,’ she said, ‘tell me. They say that the Saints show you what shall come to pass. Malle, what of the Ladies? Shall they be turned out?’

  Malle said nothing.

  ‘Oh, Malle, tell me. I’ll give you my brooch. They say that Our Saviour appeared to you, riding over Grinton bridge. Tell me what it meant.’ She was busy unfastening it, but it caught in a thread of her gown, and looking up s
he saw Malle’s face, and after that forgot about the brooch, and was pierced through by a sudden sharpness of hope.

  ‘Malle,’ she cried, ‘is it well? Is it? Oh! what did you see that you look so – so—?’

  Malle said:

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

  July flinched. She still had her hand on the latch of the gate, and her fingers grew cold on the cold iron, though she could feel warmth on her cheek from the sun which now shone through the scattering clouds, edging them with flame. She stood waiting, then glanced again at Malle’s face, and saw that there lingered on it still that shining that was not from the brightening west.

  ‘You say “pain” and you smile. What do you mean?’ July cried out, though Malle’s look was no smile either. Malle did not answer. She went slowly away along the wall of the garden, and July watched her till something moving on the road below the big gate of the Manor caught her eye. It was one of the hinds toiling up with an oak beam on his shoulder for mending the Hall roof; he was coming up from the saw-pit. Beyond him lay the depth of the Dale, now so brimmed with sunshine that it seemed to be full at once of drenched green air and fiery gold; it was as though July looked down into the deep sea, and saw there a great fire lit and burning below the green water, with flames at once glorious and fatal.

  ‘They hanged Him on the Cross,’ she thought, and in the furthest corner of her mind cringed away from sight and sound of the big round-headed iron nails biting through flesh as the hammer drove them. Malle’s look of light meant nothing. There was always, round about the whole world, an ocean of pain. It crept towards the Ladies of Marrick; it lapped to the feet of the one she could least bear to have suffer. ‘But he’s well, and in no danger,’ she assured herself. Then—

  ‘Oh!’ she cried, wringing her hands together. ‘You are a fool!’ she cried after Malle’s broad lumpish shoulders and bent head. ‘A fool!’