The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  ‘Is that,’ he asked, ‘why you spoke privily to Robin just before he got to saddle?’

  She flushed a little.

  ‘He first spoke to me of her. He meant nothing but kindness. He thinks of her still as a child.’

  ‘And did you—’

  ‘I said nothing of what I’d seen. But I told him the girl’s a liar in grain, and that’s a thing he hates worse than any other. “And,” said I, “after all, she’s Meg Cheyne’s sister.” He said, “I know that.” He was angry but perhaps he’ll think of it.’

  ‘Well—’ Sir Rafe had been going to say, ‘It’s none of our business,’ but changed it hastily to, ‘Well, let Meg Bulmer take her sister away.’

  ‘When will they go?’

  ‘God knows!’ said Sir Rafe.

  *

  That evening Meg’s woman Bet had the colic, so Dame Nan sent July to help her sister to bed. Meg did not talk about anything in particular while July undressed her and brushed out her hair, except to make fun of Dame Nan, and a little also of Sir Rafe, though she admitted he was a fine figure of a man. ‘Not so like a well-stuffed sausage as my blossom,’ she said, and made a face at the curtains of the bed as if Sir John lay there already.

  When she was between the sheets she began to talk about Sir John, saying things that would have sent Bet into squeals of delight. July heard them all right, but said nothing, and moved about the room, doing what was necessary, with her black scowling look. At last, as she passed the bed, Meg flung out an arm and caught the skirt of her gown, and then sat up, dragging her nearer, and shaking her a little, angry, but still laughing.

  ‘And you need not behave like a nun now, Mistress,’ she cried. ‘For if I can I’ll have you married before the month’s out, and you’ll learn such things for yourself, though I doubt your husband will not be so hungry for you as mine is for me.’

  She felt July stiffen in her hand, and smiled into her face, a malicious, pointed smile.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I stay here?’ said July.

  ‘Because Dame Nan is sick of you, and will have me take you away. And it is by good fortune that I hear of a bridegroom for you in London, so you shall ride there with Sir John when he goes thither two days hence, on his affairs.’ When July said nothing Meg asked – did she not want to know her bridegroom’s name.

  ‘It does not matter,’ said July.

  ‘Fie!’ cried Meg, ‘and that and a scowl is all the thanks I get for trouble enough. Here am I, doing a sister’s part, with Sir John grudging all the time to lift his hand from your dowry.’ Then she laughed and said, ‘It’s as well you don’t care to know his name, for by the Mass! I’ve forgotten it. But he’s a man of substance – a widower. It is his dead wife’s brother that has writ to me so timely, asking could I help his brother-in-law to a good sober wife. He says he remembers me well, but I can call neither of them to mind, though he says he is one of William Cheyne’s friends.’

  ‘Oh!’ cried July.

  ‘Well, you must be content. I’d have done better for you if I could. Aye, and you know not what, nor how well I would have done. Far above your deservings I’d have set you, with one I myself might have matched with had he not been a younger son with little gold in the kist. If it does not matter who it shall be, will you know who it should have been, only that he would not take you?’

  July did not speak, but Meg told her, ‘Robin Aske! There! And now will you thank me for that, though, for no fault of mine, he would not.’ When July stood silent Meg flung her away with a push. ‘There’s gratitude for you,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ said July, ‘why he would not.’

  Meg gave her a sharp look and then began to laugh very much.

  ‘God’s Mother, that you do not.’

  ‘By God!’ July said, and for once the proud Stafford spoke in her, ‘I do. It is because I am your sister.’

  Meg was silent, staring at her.

  ‘Who told you then? Did he? No, for he said he never had nor would tell any. Mother Judde? Did she tell you he came to me one night when Sir John was away?’

  ‘I’ll not believe it.’

  At the shrinking horror in July’s face Meg stared again.

  ‘How then? You did not know. Then what did you mean when you said he would not because you’re my sister?’

  She saw how July shook, and began to nod her head and to laugh. ‘Lord! You thought that it was because your sister’s a wicked wanton he’d have none of you. But, you see, you’re wrong, for I was good enough for him. Good enough? I was his bliss and his heaven.’

  She grabbed July again, and peered at her closely. ‘Jealous, sister?’ she whispered.

  July was not jealous, because what Meg had had from Robert Aske she knew nor thought anything of. But she saw the candle flames reflected, bright and trembling, in Meg’s eyes; she could smell her bare, warm flesh, and the perfume of orris that she used, and she shut her own eyes because she felt sick.

  Meg smiled at her blind face and shook her gently to and fro.

  ‘Nay,’ said she, ‘but I think I know indeed why he would not have you. He said to me it was because it would be incest, after he had had me. But I think the truth is that he would not because he wants me still, and fears he could not command himself were he too often near me. Poor Robin! Poor fool!’ she purred, and smiled and sighed.

  July opened her eyes.

  ‘He hates you,’ she said. Watching him as she did, and having by heart every expression of his face and tone of his voice, she knew that.

  ‘Hate lies close to love, they say,’ said Meg lightly.

  July said, ‘I know it doth not.’

  Then Meg began to shake her, crying, ‘Take your eyes from me, little black-faced witch that you are.’

  Outside the door July lingered a few moments on the dark stair before she went to serve Dame Nan, for her knees were shaking.

  It was no wonder, she thought, that he hated Meg. But he did not need to hate so perfectly, with such a deadly killing hate as July. If Meg had not caught him in that way that July had seen her catch other men – and yet she, July, did not know how – ‘If Meg had not caught him,’ she thought, ‘he might have taken me. He might.’

  It was a while later that she remembered she was to marry one of Master Cheyne’s friends.

  September 10

  When Gib drew near the churchyard he paused. In the woods the highest branches of the trees swung in the wind, but below they hung still and heavy, burdened with rain; and there was quiet, except for the sound of fat drops falling. But from ahead there came the noise of shouting and hallooing, with barking of dogs; it might have been that the last of the corn was being cut, and the boys and dogs setting on after rabbits, had the day been one of harvest weather.

  Yet when he reached the stile to the churchyard and looked in he saw that it was indeed some of the reapers who shouted and laughed – strangers these were who came from over the hills to work for hire, and who were keeping about the Priory now, waiting for the weather to clear so that they could finish the barley.

  They and their dogs were after game too, though the game was not rabbits but the woman Malle, who stood in the angle of a buttress, threshing about her with a rake to keep the curs off, while the men threw sticks and small stones at her, shouting, ‘Hue! Hue! Run, wench, run!’

  A few of the Marrick hinds had been watching it all from the shelter of the wall. They came out as Gib climbed the stile, looking at once surly and sheepish. The Lady, they said, had bid the bailiff turn off Malle, and when she would not go the bailiff had set the strangers and their dogs on her.

  As they spoke Gib’s eye was drawn, by a slight movement there, to the window of the Prioress’s chamber which looked out this way. Dame Anne Ladyman, scared and truly shocked, had peeped out and as quickly withdrawn. But Gib thought that the Lady was looking out upon her handiwork – though furtively – and the obliquity and tyranny of women, running together in his mind, were not to be endured.

&
nbsp; ‘God’s Passion! The Lady!’ he cried. Here was rule. Here was power. Here was one of the worldly rulers of the darkness of this world. Then her he would defy. Against her he would wrestle manfully.

  He ran forward shouting. One man he caught with a buffet on the ear; the other he tripped up, more by chance than design, as the fellow backed away. No more than that was needed. Gib was left alone with Malle; behind him the Marrick hinds saw the reapers off; they were glad to have the poor wench ridded, though they had not liked to risk the Lady’s anger by doing it themselves.

  ‘Now,’ said Gib, well pleased with himself, ‘you may go safe.’

  But she did not move.

  ‘Go,’ he said again, and waved his hand towards the gate.

  ‘Whither?’ she asked him, as if he could tell her.

  Half Gib’s mind remembered the shifts and discomforts that there had been at the parsonage since the old woman, his mother, had died; the other half chewed triumphant upon the rich iniquity of Prioresses, who drove out poor wretches to starve.

  ‘If you will,’ said he, ‘you shall come home with me. I need a servant to tend the house.’ He looked up towards the Lady’s window and shook his fist that way, then wished that he had used a gesture more suitable to an ecclesiastic. He nodded to Malle with a stern look and went into the Church. Let her wait for him or go otherwhere as she chose.

  While he said his Office he heard a sound at the door which was not one of the sounds of the rising wind outside. He turned to look over his shoulder, and frowned, seeing Malle come in and peer about. She came no nearer though. A little after this it struck him that he did not know why the Prioress had turned her away. If it was for thieving – well – he’d find that out from her; he would shelter no thieves, no, nor a loose woman, if that had been the trouble. So he went on with the Office, while the wind snored in the tower and whistled shrilly through a broken pane in the vestry; when he paused for a moment he could hear the turmoil of the beaten woods outside.

  He found Malle sitting by the door. She stood up and bobbed to him.

  ‘Now,’ he said, speaking sternly, ‘tell me this. Why are you turned out?’

  ‘For that which I saw.’

  ‘For that which you saw? What did you see?’ he asked her, though he knew well all the talk of her seeing Our Lord Himself riding the pedlar’s donkey over Grinton Bridge. He had sworn to himself that he would never speak to her of it, telling himself that if he heard her speak the words, presumptuous, blasphemous, he would come near to striking her down for her wicked folly. But the fact was he dared not take the risk of finding that so poor an ignorant creature as she had in truth seen this wonder. Now, suddenly, because of the pride of the Prioress, and because he had routed the fellows she had set on, he dared take the risk. And if the thing were true he would make it ring in all men’s ears; they should not silence him. They—

  ‘Come!’ he said.

  She was silent, standing with her hands hanging and head bent.

  ‘Come!’ he said more sharply, and brought his face close to hers, for it had grown very dark in the church.

  He drew back, blinking. It was not that there was any brightness in her face, seen dimly in the dusk. Rather it was as if, peering at her, he had looked into some shadowed secret place in the woods, and there found the scent of violets, or heard water running sweetly.

  Malle said:

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

  Gib found himself bumping against the sharp corner of the Founder’s tomb, and only then knew how he had turned from her and moved blindly away. He gripped the edge of the chiselled stone while his thoughts ran this way and that in confusion. He was hugely angry, and glad. He was angry because she had seen this thing; he was glad of the thing which she had seen. He was far more angry with the rich and great whom Christ in His righteousness had come to judge. ‘Now,’ he thought, ‘we shall see the day of wrath for those who turn their faces from the Gospel. Now the Lord comes once more, wearing a poor man’s coat, and poor men will follow Him.’

  He came back to Malle:

  ‘This means that the hour is come. In this vision God speaks through you to me. It is time I lay my hand to the plow. It is time I go out from the Dale to proclaim the day of the Lord. This was the meaning of that other showing.’

  He saw himself, gaunt and fierce as one of the ancient prophets, preaching and exhorting endlong and overthwart all England. ‘I shall be greater than Trudgeover,’ he thought. ‘I shall be a new Fore-runner. I shall tell them of the crowd of poor men that went along the road, jostling and thrutching, tearing down of branches, throwing down of coats, crying “Osanna”.’

  ‘That is the meaning of what you saw,’ he said to Malle again, and more urgently.

  ‘The day of the Lord. Osanna,’ he almost shouted at her. But Malle made no answer.

  He caught his hand to his breast like a man who has run on steel. ‘Osanna!’ he said again, but in a faint and shaken voice, and laying his finger on the door-latch, lifted it.

  At that the wind burst into the church, snatching the door from his hand and sending it clattering back against the wall. The flames of the lamps on the screen of the Founder’s Chapel rocked and streamed aside; even the light on the Rood-loft of the Nuns’ Church leapt up, so that the dimness was filled with the noise of wind and the pulsations of living light.

  Gib stepped out, his head down against the wind. ‘Osanna,’ he had cried at Malle, and had remembered that that was the word by which the children greeted the Son of David in the Temple of God. All those children crying ‘Osanna’ in Jerusalem, and one child here, the dumb half-savage brat who was Gib’s son. Not for Gib to guide the plow or sow the seed for Christ’s harvest. It was not Gib’s voice which should sound through the King’s realm, nor his name that should be feared by the wicked and the great. He must stay in Marrick, shackled, like any grazing beast on the sykes, to the clog that kept it from straying. Wat was the clog, the child that Gib might not leave, and could not come anywhere near to loving.

  He looked over his shoulder. Malle followed slowly after him, unquestioning as any dog; the wind beat at her skirts and flapped her kerchief across her face.

  ‘She saw nothing!’ he told himself. ‘Nothing! Nothing!’

  But as his feet squelched on through the deep mire of the road it was to the tune of other words that repeated themselves in his mind against his will—

  ‘Depart from me! Depart from me! If any should offend against the least of these little ones—’

  September 14

  Kit Aske had come home to-day from the Earl of Cumberland’s Household, and directly after dinner he must go out and see how the new church tower was getting on. The tower was his tower; it had been his idea to rebuild it, and stone, timber, and work were being paid for by him. He was passionate for it, as if it were a living creature and his child.

  So he was all in a fidget to be off and see how it had grown, and wanted Jack to go with him. But Jack had a great cold, and Dame Nell would not let him out, so instead Robin must come. They went off together through the orchard and across the bridge over the moat. Kit, though he went nowadays a little bent and limping, was ahead all the way and kept on saying, ‘Come, Robin! Come on!’

  At the churchyard wall they stood back to get a good view, and to be clear of all the masons’ and carpenters’ stuff that lay about. It was a fine stalwart tower, not high but strong; broad based, with splayed buttresses at the corners. It looked as though it had strode out of the very verge of the marsh, and there stood, defying the waters.

  ‘Your tower’ll last, Kit,’ said Robert Aske. ‘We shall not see him come tumbling down in a gale.’ That had been the end, three years ago now, of the old tower.

  Kit was pleased.

  ‘And look,’ he pointed up, ‘my name in stone to tell who was the builder.’ High up on the wall there were shields of arms carved, and the words, ‘Christopher second fils Robert Aske Chevalier. Oublier n
e doy. Anno Domini 1536.’

  They went nearer, through the piled sand and lime and the stacks of clean planks, meaning to go about the church to look at the new work from the other side. But just under the tower they met the master mason, with a bit of oily rag in one hand and a chisel in the other. So they stayed talking to him with the wind whipping the skirts of their coats while the sun went behind heavier cloud, and a few driven spatters of rain flew by them.

  The master mason, who was a sad-looking little man with a rare smile that gave him, while it lasted, the look of an old and wise child, was very deferential to Kit, promising that the work should be finished in a few weeks now, and taking Kit’s chiding for the slowness of it with a chastened air. But just as the brothers were going on he looked to Robert and smiled.

  ‘And have you found your aske, Master, that you bade me carve you on a stone?’

  ‘I?’ said Robert. ‘Did I so?’

  ‘That you did. For you said if there was the name of one Aske carved up there, so should there be an aske out of the fen carved for to remember you by. So there I carved him for you,’ and he pointed behind them, where low down on the west wall of the tower an aske, as the fen-men called a newt, wriggled his tail across a stone.

  ‘Why,’ Robert cried, ‘so I did. I remember it now,’ and he began to laugh, and then, seeing Kit’s face, checked himself

  Kit was very angry. ‘God’s Death! To deface my tower with such foolishness!’ His passion startled the master mason, who stepped back before him. Kit even had his fist raised, but Robert stepped in between, hastily, so that his shoulder jogged Kit’s chest.

  ‘Easy, Kit,’ said he.

  ‘Easy!’ cried Kit in a high, furious voice.

  Robert heard the mason clicking his tongue soothingly in the background.

  ‘If there’s blame it’s mine,’ he said. ‘But indeed—’ he shrugged because really it was so small a thing, and one he had never intended, his words to the mason having been of the idlest.