The Man On a Donkey

by H. F. M. Prescott

  *

  But she could not tell Gib, because he had run away, for the last time, and would not come back again, and that very hour rode out of London beside one of the Bishop of Worcester’s servants, going towards the West.

  It was a cheerless evening, and the sun set forlornly in a haze of chill yet tarnished light. Gib hung his head down as he went, and would neither speak nor look up, so beaten to the ground was he by shame, while his soul chawed upon something compared with the bitterness of which the salt smart of penitence would have been sweet as honey.

  For now he knew that though God might save every other man, Gib Dawe He could not save. Once he had seen his sin as a thing that clung close as his shadow clung to his heels; now he knew that it was the very stuff of his soul. Never could he, a leaking bucket not to be mended, retain God’s saving Grace, however freely outpoured. Never could he, that heavy lump of sin, do any other than sink, and sink again, however often Christ, walking on the waves, should stretch His hand to lift and bring him safe.

  He did not know that though the bucket be leaky it matters not at all when it is deep in the deep sea, and the water both without it and within. He did not know, because he was too proud to know, that a man must endure to sink, and sink again, but always crying upon God, never for shame ceasing to cry, until the day when he shall find himself lifted by the bland swell of that power, inward, secret, as little to be known as to be doubted, the power of omnipotent grace in tranquil irresistible operation.

  As they passed Paul’s great church it stood up to the south, between them and the drab ending of the day. But the light that smudged the sunset sky so mournfully glowed warm rose through the clear grisaille of the clerestory, and blazed fire-red in the west window, as though a feast were prepared within, with lights in plenty and flame leaping from the hearth, for the celebration of some high holy day; as if a great King held carousal there, with all his joyful people around Him, with all His children brought safe home.

  But because Gib fled, and because he was ashamed that he fled, he did not look up, and he did not see.

  The Chronicle of Sir Gilbert Dawe, Priest, ends here.

  The End and The Beginning

  Though Gib did not come back to the chantry, no one else came to turn the two women out, so they stayed where they were. A week before Christmas a priest knocked at the door. He was a little old man, who had a face like a mouse, wistful and eager, with very bright yet soft eyes; a tall lad behind him, in the livery of some gentleman, carried a bundle in which the sharp corners of books showed among the softer contours.

  Malle came to the door, her arms white with flour, for she was baking, and the old priest told her that his name was Thomas Barker. He seemed to think it natural that he should come in, and the boy came in too and put down the big bundle on the floor. When the priest had given him a groat he went away, but the old man sat down by the hearth where the dough was plumping up and smelling most sweetly.

  Malle had retreated into the farthest corner, where Gib’s birch-rod stood, and was watching him from there. He did not seem dangerous. He looked round the room once, and smiled at her. Then he drew some plain beads from the folds of his gown, and sat with his eyes shut, letting them slide ticking through his fingers. Malle stole from her corner at last, and lifted the cloth from the dough which was ready for baking. He did not glance at her but when she came near again with the loaves he made the holy sign over them, and said something softly which she knew was a blessing on the bread, before she slid them into the bake-oven.

  In a little while old Kat came back from the tavern, swaying and quarrelsome. She did not leave him to sit there without questioning, and soon found out that he was the new chantry priest. When she heard that she turned from truculent to maudlin, and flopped down on a stool whimpering that, ‘aye, she had always known it, so might she and the poor fool now go packing.’

  ‘If you go,’ said he, ‘who’ll look after the helpless silly old man?’

  For quite a time after that Malle expected that another old man, who was helpless and silly, would come to the chantry, but he never came. Only the old priest was there. He slipped as easily into their life as oil into a rusty lock.

  Once a big black-bearded gentleman visited him, who seemed, in his high white leather riding boots, and wide-skirted green fustian coat, to fill the room, so that Malle was frightened, especially as he had two dogs with him. But the old priest talked to him with very familiar cheerfulness, calling him Jack, and even Jackanapes, while the large gentleman called him nothing but ‘Sir’, and ‘my Father’.

  At supper that night the old man told them that this had been Sir John Uvedale, ‘whom,’ said he, ‘I taught whatsoever latinity could be driven into his thick skull. No scholar – Oh, no, no, no – yet a good lad. Surely a very good lad.’ He went on, in that way he had, nodding and murmuring to himself. At last he looked across at Malle and Kat with bright, gentle eyes:

  ‘I cannot think it right, my daughters, that they pull down the Abbeys, and he is among them that do it. But if it is sin in him, then I pray God to set against it his goodness to me.’ He seemed to forget his supper then, because he shut his eyes, and they saw his lips move.

  In the spring old Kat died. She fell suddenly to the floor one evening, and lay there twitching and groaning. They got her to bed, but she could neither speak nor move, and her face was puckered horribly as if she snarled at them. In a week she was dead, but Malle stayed on with the old priest, cooking and doing for him in her muddled way. She was not frightened of him now, for he was never angry, and would sit and read, or tell his beads, with his feet under the bench and the skirts of his gown drawn close, while the worst of household disorders weltered around him. Malle talked to him while she worked, chattering as she had used to do with Wat, garrulous as a sparrow, but never about Gib or Wat or anything that was in the past. Sometimes, though not often, he would check her, saying gently, ‘Peace, good wench. There are times for silence.’ Then she would clap her hand over her mouth, and tiptoe about her work, breathing heavily, and overturning or dropping more things than ever in her efforts to be quiet.

  One day, nearly two years after he had come to the chantry, she came back from buying pigs’ trotters and hocks for making brawn, to find him reading a letter, which, he told her, the carrier had brought him out of Yorkshire. It was from Sir John Uvedale, and he sent, the old priest said, to fetch him back to the North Country – ‘where I was born,’ said he. ‘For I was born a long way from here, at a place called Topcliffe on Swale.’

  Malle looked out of the window. In the street the rain was falling straight as rods. But she saw a fair early morning when she and Wat had driven Black Thomas, the Ladies’ mule, across the river, and he had rubbed the sack of rye off the saddle against a tree.

  ‘The Swale,’ said she, ‘was very cold that day and the little knave slipped when the stones rolled under his feet and nearly got a dousing.’

  ‘What!’ said the old man, ‘are you also of Topcliffe? No – for I should know if you came from any village in ten miles and more around.’

  She shook her head, and murmured, as if it were a word she had long forgotten, and must try again on her tongue to know how it sounded, ‘Marrick... Marrick.’

  ‘God ’a mercy!’ said he, ‘that’s stranger still. For Sir John will have me to be parson of Marrick, and if you will come you shall keep my house for me there.’

  She looked at him in her slow way, and then cried very eagerly –

  ‘Will He be there? Shall I find Him there?’

  He could not get from her the name of him whom she hoped to find at Marrick, but because she grew so wild, at last he took her hand and held it between his own.

  ‘Child,’ he said, ‘whomsoever we find there, God’s Christ we shall find, if we seek for Him.’

  ‘Ah!’ she said, with a long sigh. ‘When shall we go?’

  *

  They reached Marrick on the very day that the Ladies went away, and
Sir John Uvedale’s people at once became very busy setting things to rights against his coming in the evening. The old priest left them to it and went down to the river side, to walk up and down by the Swale in the sweet faint sunshine of November, telling his beads in quietness.

  But Malle hunted about both outside and inside the Priory – up to the little gate at the foot of the Nuns’ Steps, into the kitchen, the Prioress’s Chamber, the Guest Chamber; into the Cloister, where she picked up some of the bravely painted pages of the books which Uvedale’s man had torn and scattered there. Then, because two of them shouted at her, she bolted out of the Cloister and went across the Great Court to the dove-house and stable. But back she came after a little while to the church, still seeking and peering.

  At last, she came to the Frater, where, on the table, lay the litter of the Ladies’ last meal. Among the crumbled bread and empty egg shells there lay upon one dish what was left of a piece of broiled fish, and upon another half a honeycomb.

  She knew then that He had been there, and that they had given Him to eat of these things so short a time before that the comb still oozed into the dish transparent gold from its severed cells.

  She hurried away down the steep meadow to the banks of the Swale. The old priest stopped his pacing and smiled at her.

  ‘He is here,’ she said.

  He nodded to her, glad that she had found the one she had hoped to find, and then continued to walk up and down.

  Malle went and sat down where the grassy bank broke in a low sandy cliff, and set her feet upon the scoured, white, water-rounded stones left dry by the river, which though it was now November was still shrunken by a long autumn drought. One of these stones she laid carefully upon the painted pages which she had gathered up in the Cloister, so that they should not be blown away. Then she began to fold them, one by one, into the shape of tiny boats.

  The old priest drew near to see what she would be at. When he saw, it was in his mind to rebuke her for such a misuse of holy writings. But he did not, for, he thought, she is as innocent as ignorant. And then he thought, ‘Even so ignorantly, and almost as childishly, do we launch forth our prayers upon the silence and the dark. And to Him they come, and after to us return; but what went out from us as these little boats of paper, He sends again to us, an Argosy, deep-laden.’ So he only smiled at her when she looked up, and went back to his pacing and to his meditation, which had been of God’s love and His great work in the redemption of the world.

  For he had been thinking how God’s plan had, by sin, been horribly wrested from its high and sweet perfection. It was, he thought, as if number itself had rebelled, forsaking congruity and order, so that not only must the children’s sums go awry, but the whole fabric of reason split from crown to base, men’s minds founder, and the sun and stars cease to keep due course. ‘No less a thing,’ he thought, ‘no lighter, have we men done with our sins. No less a thing, to make right again of that most monstrous wrong, has God done. To right it God came, and was a man. God did not only send. He came.’

  He thought – ‘I must tell her. Even she must learn and know this thing.’

  Yet when he came close to her again he could find no words to tell her, so sure he was that no words could make her understand so high a matter.

  She had taken all the papers from under the stone, and now those which were not yet folded into boats lay in a bright litter at his feet; he looked down and read upon one the words:

  ‘It is true, that sin is cause of all this pain; but all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’

  On another was written:

  ‘See I am God: See I am in all things; See I do all things: See I never left my hands of my works, ne never shall without end: See I lead all things to the end that I ordain it to, from without beginning, by the same might, wisdom, and love, that I made it with. How should anything be amiss?’

  And on another:

  ‘What? wouldest thou wit thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Wit it well: love was his meaning. Who sheweth it thee? Love. Wherefore sheweth he it thee? For love. Hold thee therein, thou shalt wit more in the same. But thou shalt never wit therein other without end.’

  All those pages had initial letters of blue, or dusky blood-red, painted upon the paper, but there were two which were of parchment, smaller but much more glorious, with borders of twined flowers of all colours and golden letters, plumped up above gesso, and burnished by long rubbing with a bear’s tooth.

  On one of these was written:

  ‘Deum de Deo: lumen de lumine: Deum verum de Deo vero,’

  And on the other:

  ‘Homo factus est.’

  When Malle had made all the little ships ready to sail, she set them on the water, where it lapped, trembling and bright, close to her feet. They bobbed and curtseyed there, loitering a minute till the strength of the river caught them. Then they went dipping and dancing away towards the sea.

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  Plan of Marrick Priory

  Appendix I: Historical Note

  Appendix II: List of works consulted

  About H.F.M. Prescott

  About the Introducer

  Endpapers

  About the cover and endpapers

  More from Apollo

  About Apollo

  Plan of Marrick Priory

  1. The orcharde.

  2. Churchyarde.

  3. oxe house.

  4. gate house.

  5. straungers stable.

  6. sable for worke horsse.

  7. for fatt oxen.

  8. stable for my owne geldinges.

  9. the priores chamber.

  10. the quier of the founder.

  11. altare.

  12. Chancell.

  13. the Closett.

  14. vestereye.

  15. the bodye of the paryshe churche.

  16. the Nonnes quier.

  17. the bell house.

  18. stepell.

  19. stoore house.

  20. The olde dorter.

  21. wall doore.

  22. Cloistore doore.

  23. This littell Courte was the Cloisture.

  24. The grate Courte.

  25. dove house.

  26. dogge kenels.

  27. the entree betwene the hall and the kitchen.

  28. The hall.

  29. The parlor.

  30. brewe house.

  31. worke house.

  32. milk house hall.

  33. littell garden.

  34. The inner Courte.

  35. the hall doore.

  36. the gate of the inner courte.

  37. slawter house.

  38. Joks house.

  39. Joks chamber.

  40. garners.

  41. Still house.

  42. Still.

  43. milk house.

  44. bake house.

  Appendix I: Historical note

  A great many historical persons appear in this book, of whom Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, Princess Mary, Sir Thomas More and Archbishop Cranmer are the best known. Not all, but many of the episodes in which they appear are founded upon documentary evidence. To take a few examples: much of Foxe’s report to the Cardinal in 1528 is drawn from the letters of the English agents in Rome; what Queen Katherine said to Montfalconnet, to the nobles and clergy in 1536, and to Mountjoy was reported to the Emperor by his Ambassador; Anne Boleyn’s arrival at the Tower in 1536 and her conversation with Kingston were described by Kingston to the King.

  The description of Marrick Nunnery is founded upon the late sixteenth century plan, reproduced on pp. 718–9, as well as upon local knowledge. The names of the Prioress and her nuns are drawn from the (slightly longer)
list of those pensioned at the Dissolution. Owing to delays in publication caused by the war Archbishop Lee’s last Visitation of the Nunnery was not available for reference, but though there is little evidence for the character of the Prioress, that little is interesting, and, I think, suggestive of her personality.

  Much of Lord Darcy’s life is known from documents; these have been used in this reconstruction, and his rather puzzling character inferred from them. On the other hand Julian Savage and Gilbert Dawe are imagined and without any historical foundation. Of Robert Aske’s life before 1536 practically nothing is known except his connection with the Percys and his entrance into Gray’s Inn; his association with Margaret Cheyne is entirely fictitious. Margaret herself is, however, historical, though it is doubtful if she was in fact a daughter of Buckingham. The events of her life, again with the exception of her relations with Robert Aske, are taken from contemporary documents. From these I had already supposed her character when I found my supposition confirmed by the fact that up to the early years of the nineteenth century she was still remembered in Yorkshire under the name of Madge Wildfire.

  For the Pilgrimage of Grace, in which the historical theme of the book culminates, there is a mass of evidence, so that almost all the scenes connected with the rising are founded upon documents. To take some instances: Robert Aske’s report to the King gives an account of his own movements during the first few days of his connection with the Lincolnshire rising. Lancaster Herald described his mission to Pontefract in a long document, much of which has been used verbatim; the Duke of Norfolk’s dealings with the leaders of the Pilgrimage are revealed in his own letters and in such confessions as that of Creswell. Aske’s replies to examination in the Tower throw much light both on his character and on the motives of the Pilgrims, and I have made use of these, as well as of many other depositions, though unfortunately, again owing to the war, I could not, except in a very few instances, go behind the printed version to the original manuscript.