The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

Aske sat on a long time in the Hall, very weary, stupidly eating and staring at the rushlight, and as stupidly forgetting to eat. At last he pushed his plate away, took up the rushlight and started to go upstairs.

  Outside the door of the room which he was sharing with Kit and young Hob he blew out the light and stood in the blank dark, hearing the night noises of the old house – a faint sigh, a creak, a tiny but sharp crack. It had not seemed to him that he was thinking while he sat alone below. But now two things were clear, which, till now, had been clouded; or perhaps it was that they were isolated by the general dullness of his mind, and so seemed clear as the little flame of the rushlight had seemed bright in the dark and empty Hall. The first he could put into words.

  ‘If I move,’ he said in his mind, ‘I do wrong. If I move not wrong is done.’

  The other, which was a dumb thing, was fear – the fear lest he should stand alone, a man disowned by kin and friends; there in the dark he knew in a foretaste the weight and desolation of that loneliness. His hand, groping, found the latch of the door; as it opened he heard Kit cry sleepily, ‘Who’s there?’

  He answered, ‘Robin.’

  October 1

  Lord Darcy sat in the garden at Templehurst. In this sheltered place, under the lee of the house and the chapel, it was warm as summer, and the dogs lay flat on the stones, twitching when the flies teased them. Below, in a little strip of orchard, a gardener and his boy were gathering apples.

  In front of Lord Darcy a fat man with a broad brown face sat on a small stool; he wore my Lord’s green coat, and the Buck’s Head on his breast and back.

  Darcy said, ‘This man who told you was truly what he said – a servant of the King’s Commissioners?’

  The fat man could only say that he’d never doubted him. Darcy nodded; it was enough; the fat man, for all his pudding face, was no fool.

  ‘He was riding in haste. He did but bait at York. He’d sleep at Howden maybe, or even Lincoln.’

  ‘And he told you that the Austin Canons of Hexham have resisted the Commissioners?’

  ‘Aye. He said that when his masters came to Hexham there was a pretty crowd in the streets, with bows, bills and leather jackets, he said. And the town rang the common bell, and they in the Priory rang the great bell there; it was tang-tang-bom-bom-bom, he said, like as it might be a day when the Scots are into England, he said. And when the Commissioners came nigh the Priory there were the gates shut against them, and one of the Canons came up on the leads, harnessed he was too with a steel cap on his head. He hollers down to the Commissioners saying that there were twenty brothers with him in the House would die or they should have it. So he showed them a writing, with the King’s broad seal dangling, saying it was writing for writing and seal for seal against that which the Commissioners had. And then he says, shouting between his two hands that all the town should hear, ‘We think it not to the King’s honour to give forth one seal contrary to another. And afore any of our lands, goods, or house be taken from us we shall all die, and there is our full answer!’

  ‘Hah!’ said Darcy, and nothing else for some time, till he asked, ‘Did this man tell you of any stirring in the North, other than these Canons of Hexham?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ask him?’

  The fat man looked down for a moment, the comic parody of a coy girl. ‘I said to him, “Though Northumberland’s ever unruly, yet I’ll think it strange if there be no more troubles here in the North with this suppressing of Abbeys?” And he said, “Well, there’s none stirring yet.”’

  Darcy nodded and sent him away to draw his livery of bread, beer, and mutton at the buttery and pantry. But my Lord sat long after the servant had gone, letting his mind range back through dangerous old times, and forward through times that might be as dangerous; but then he did not think danger a very evil thing. While his narrowed eyes glanced about the sunny bit of garden, or followed the cruising bees, he was calculating chances. What would this man do if – and that man if instead—? Would Exeter make up his slow mind, or the Poles swallow their scruples? And if they should once move, would the Emperor—? He did not think so – not now – whatever it might have been three years ago – And then—

  He broke it all off. There was nothing stirring in the North parts but only these Canons of Hexham.

  He took up again that book of Lydgate’s that he had been reading when the fat man came lightly along the path to him. But once he sighed.

  October 4

  Robert Aske drank the last of his ale, wiped his knife on a piece of bread and slipped it into its case.

  All those at breakfast in the parlour at Ellerker looked at him as he stood up.

  ‘Come on, Hob. Come, John,’ he said to his nephews, ‘or we’ll miss the tide and the ferry.’

  The boys got up. Will Ellerker, John’s father, half rose, then sat down again. One of the servants brought water and a towel, and Aske dipped and wiped his fingers and tossed the towel to Hob.

  ‘You’re set to go?’ said Jack Aske.

  ‘Since Rafe can’t hunt, but must be about taking this cursed subsidy.’

  ‘Fie!’ cried Kit. ‘That’s no word for the King’s will.’

  ‘By the Rood!’ Robert answered in the cheerfully impudent tone that always enraged his brother, ‘I use no worse word than that Rafe used.’

  Rafe Ellerker, Will’s eldest brother, should have been with them these last few days for the hunting, but because he had been appointed one of the gentlemen to collect the subsidy he could not come. So yesterday Robert Aske had declared that next morning, and not the day after, he would set out for London, and that the two boys, John and Hob, who were both to begin their studies at law, must be ready to ride with him. ‘Because,’ he had said, ‘we shall ride the more easily with another day to spare before term begins.’

  But now Jack Aske said, ‘You’ll not wait to know if it was true what that Summoner out of Lincolnshire said? “The commons all up about Louth,” he said.’

  ‘I don’t go by Louth,’ Robert said obstinately.

  ‘Mass, let him go. For he will go,’ cried Kit.

  ‘I shall go,’ Robert answered him with a hard, hostile look, and then was sorry. It was not good to part from a brother in ill will. ‘The boys need not go,’ he said.

  But John and Hob were not to be stopped. ‘What’s a rabble of poor tradesmen and husbandmen?’ cried John confidently. ‘Should we not have heard, Sir—?’ Hob began to ask his uncle more soberly, but Robert Aske was already at the door and went out without looking back.

  They were nearly half-way to North Ferriby when he said to the boys, ‘There’s a word I must say to your Uncle Kit.’ He turned his horse about. ‘I’ll be with you in time for the ferry,’ and he went back, riding hard.

  He came again, only just in time. The servants and horses were all on board, and the boatmen waiting with the sweeps ready. Hob and John however stood on the staithes; they caught Robert’s bridle as he swung out of the saddle.

  ‘Sir,’ said Hob, and laid his hand on his uncle’s arm as he was for stepping into the boat.

  ‘Tide’s turning, Master!’ the boatman cried, ‘I can’t wait no longer.’

  Robert Aske said, ‘Come on,’ and went into the boat.

  So they got his horse in, and pulled the gangway after them. When that was done, and the boatmen poling the big barge offshore, Aske left the boys and went forward. There was a coil of rope in the bows; he sat down on it as the boat swung slowly into the river. The men settled down to their oars and now they met the wind from off the sea, which, running against the first turn of the tide, cast up little waves that slapped and gurgled against the bows, and ran alongside hissing.

  Aske sat with his chin on his fist and a dark look on his face. The nephews, watching him, could guess well enough that whatever word it was that he had ridden back to speak to Uncle Kit he wished now that it had been left unspoken. ‘But,’ said Hob, and squared his shoulders, ‘I shall tell him what they s
ay. He might think we should turn back.’

  He came and stood near his uncle.

  ‘Well?’ said Aske shortly, without looking up.

  ‘Sir, the boatmen say that all Lincolnshire is in a floughter, and ringing their bells awkward. As well as Louth, Caister is up, and Horncastle they think. The commons are taking any gentlemen they can and swearing them to an oath. And they’ve killed the Bishop’s Chancellor – dragged him from his horse and beat him to death with staves, and killed others too, they say.’

  When his uncle neither answered nor looked up Hob touched him on the shoulder.

  ‘Do you hear, Sir?’

  ‘Yes. There’s no ferry back till to-morrow morning.’

  ‘Would you go back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The ferrymen would not go about.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Unless you should persuade them.’

  ‘You can try if you will.’

  Completely puzzled Hob went off. He spoke a while with John Ellerker, then with the master boatman. At last he came back to the bows.

  ‘No. They will not.’

  ‘I thought not,’ said his uncle, and no more. When Hob had gone away he sat still, his eye upon the widening rift of palest blue above the dove-coloured water, which showed where, far down the broadening river, the sea lay. Now he could not turn back.

  They rode up from the ferry staithes towards Barton village, keeping pretty close; the boys and the servants were spying about them all the time, as though the dykes might be full of ambushed men. In the village itself, just as a touch of sun flooded over the flat land, they came on the first sign of trouble. Two men stepped out from the door of one of the tofts; they saw the riders, and went in again; one of them had a bow slung at his back and a long woodman’s knife at his belt. The other carried a pike.

  At the duck-pond where, from the straight road to Lincoln, a little narrow lane branched off between a barn and an orchard, Robert Aske wheeled to the right. ‘We’ll make for Sawcliffe,’ he told them over his shoulder. The others had been expecting that, since the ferrymen had told them that they’d never make Lincoln by the high road. At Sawcliffe lived Sir Thomas Portington, who had married Robert Aske’s eldest sister Julian, and never married again since she died.

  Aske had been riding always a little ahead; now the distance increased; when they came to Barton Windmill, whose sails were turning briskly with a whirring noise while the shadows of the sails raced upon the road with an endless quick flickering, they could see him a hundred yards ahead. But when they were quite clear of the village, and riding in the open with the wide river on their right, flashing now in sunshine, he was so far that even in that flat land they kept losing sight of him, as they had altogether lost sight of Will Wall and the Ellerker servant behind.

  It was quite suddenly that they came up with their uncle again in the street of South Ferriby. He was in the midst of a small crowd of men: one, with a black coat and grey beard, on horseback; the others, close on a score of them, on foot, but armed. As Hob and John Ellerker came round the corner into the village they saw one of these shorten his pike and move in till the point of it was close to Aske’s breastbone.

  ‘Mass!’ cried Hob, and spurred, then pulled in his horse.

  Their uncle’s voice came clearly to them.

  ‘Friend,’ said he, ‘that spit of yours is too long for a small fowl like me,’ and he put the blade aside with his arm, and, taking one foot from the stirrup, gave the fellow a gentle shove in the chest, so that he went backwards. The boys heard some of the men laugh; and one of them cried that here was a little cock but it crowed gamely.

  ‘But,’ said the grey-bearded man, ‘you shall take the oath or not pass undamaged.’

  ‘The oath, or you shall die,’ they began to shout, and then someone said, ‘What of these others?’ and pointed back along the road.

  Aske turned and saw the boys. He lifted his hand and they thought he meant to wave them back, but he must have changed his mind for he called them to come on.

  ‘Well,’ said he, as if now they were all friends together, ‘and what is your oath?’

  ‘To be true to God, the King, and the Commonwealth.’

  ‘There is no treason in that,’ said Aske, ‘but it stands well with that oath I took before.’

  ‘The easier then,’ said they, ‘for you to take it. Nor shall you pass otherwise.’

  So he took it, laying his hand upon the book they had. But when they would have had the lads take it he would not, but began to argue with them, till Hob pulled him by the sleeve.

  ‘Sir, I’ll take it so that we may pass.’

  ‘You shall not,’ he told him angrily. ‘You are minors at law. Come on. No, no! They shall not.’

  He put his horse forward at the group of men, and they must use force to keep him, or let him go through them. They let him go, and the boys followed after him a little way behind, until they heard him say, but without looking round, ‘Range up on either side of me.’

  When they had done that he said, ‘Lean down, Hob, as if you looked at your gelding’s feet, and tell me do they follow us.’

  ‘No,’ said Hob; only a woman with a pitcher of water and a child at her skirts was watching them.

  ‘Well,’ Aske said, ‘that’s well.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘There it is. And it is done.’

  After that he did not ride forward alone, but went with them and talked a lot, merrily and learnedly, and sometimes listened to what they said.

  When they came to Sawcliffe the big gates were shut. From within the Court they could hear oxen lowing and the bleating of sheep, as if market were being held there.

  ‘Hammer on the gate, someone,’ said Aske, and Will, who had caught up with them by now, got down and beat on the doors with the handle of his knife. After a little while the shuttered window above the gate-house was opened, and Hal Portington and his younger brother Tom looked out. ‘Oh! It’s you!’ they cried, and seemed very glad of it. ‘The commons are up all about,’ they said.

  ‘We know that,’ Aske told them.

  ‘And they’ve taken my father,’ said Hal. ‘The girls fear lest—’

  ‘Well,’ said Aske, ‘let us in.’

  They were indeed very glad to have him in. Hal and Tom put such a face on it as if they could have done well enough without him, but Sir John Portington’s sister wept on his shoulder, and little Meg hung her arms about his knees and wept into the skirts of his coat. When he had comforted them with a grave face, and a twinkle in his eye to the lads over the lady’s head, he went away to the kitchen. They heard his voice rating the servants, they heard the sound of someone getting a drubbing, and then they heard his voice again, not angry now, but laughing. After a while he came back with a big dish of eggs and told them that he thought a wooden spoon was as good as a stick for beating a lad’s backside, ‘and better perhaps, for it covers more ground, and also the noise it makes is more ghastful.’

  Then the servants came in with the rest of a hastily prepared dinner, and when they sat down to it, they all felt more cheerful. ‘And,’ he told them, ‘there’s no need to fear harm to your father, who hath in nothing offended the commons. They’ll but have taken him, as they took me, and made him swear the oath. And if they keep him it is because he has land in Lincolnshire, and they need his counsel.’

  So the rest of the day was cheerful, if strange and disorganized, and they sang in the evening to Hob’s lute. When bedtime came Hal Portington took John Ellerker to sleep with him and Tom; Hob went off to Sir Thomas’s own bed with his uncle; it did not take him long to get to sleep, and if Robert Aske watched Hob did not know it.

  He did not know either what time it was when Aske wakened him. ‘When the boy sat up, mazed with sleep, he saw that his uncle was dressed and ready to ride. He sat down on the bed by Hob saying, ‘Wake up, sluggard. Now, listen.’ Then he said that he was going to try to cross over from Wintringham back into Yorkshire.

  ‘Back—?
’ Hob was confounded both by such a sudden change of purpose and by an uncertainty and haste in his uncle’s manner that was altogether strange.

  ‘God’s Death!’ cried Aske in a sudden flame of anger. Then he began to argue. For if, he said, the oath he had taken stood well with his first oath to the King, then so, semblable, did that oath stand with this, and in keeping of the first he could not but observe the second. ‘Therefore,’ he summed it all up at length, ‘I’ll get back if I may.’ He got up and stood biting his knuckles, then said, ‘Nor is this my country that I should take hand in this matter,’ and turned away to the door.

  Hob flung out of bed. ‘I’ll come with you.’ ‘No.’ ‘Then I’ll call Will.’ Aske turned on him, causelessly angry again. ‘But you shall help me saddle and lock the door on me,’ he said, and put his hand a moment on the boy’s shoulder.

  When he had gone Hob got back into bed and thought that, for listening to sounds, he would never sleep. And the next thing he knew was that a handful of pebbles was rattling against the shutters. He looked out and saw his uncle below.

  ‘Well,’ said Aske, when he was back again in the room, ‘here I am and here I’ll bide, as the cat said when she fell into the milkpail.’ His cheek was raw, and the knuckles of one hand, and his thumb was swelling prettily. He said that they had caught him even at the river-side, for their watch was good. ‘One of them,’ said he, ‘will have to bite apples with the side of his face, for his front teeth aren’t there where God planted them. But they got me down and sat on my head as though I were a horse. Then the fools let me get into the saddle again.’

  He stood listening, but there was no sound but that of the wind in the chimney, and the ticking of the cool embers on the hearth.

  ‘It must be close on midnight. Let’s sleep while we may,’ he said.

  October 5

  It was still dark when the family at Sawcliffe, half-dressed, cold and miserable, came together around the embers of the Hall fire. Robert Aske was not with them, nor Will Wall, because half an hour ago a big band of the commons had come knocking at the gate and calling for ‘Master Aske of Aughton. And you shall not deny him to us, for we know he’s here.’ He had spoken to them out of the gate-house window, and in the end had ridden away with them into the dark.