The Man On a Donkey Read online

  The Cellaress heaved up her great bulk. ‘I think we should look,’ she declared.

  They all rose, the Prioress too, as if the Cellaress had pulled them up from their seats, and went out into the Cloister. The novices there, whose heads had been very close together, drew them quickly apart, and bent them studiously over their books.

  The Church was darker even than the Chapter House or Cloister, for the painted windows made the dull light outside little better than twilight, even though the Ladies left both doors standing open.

  The Sacrist had lifted up the lid of the big press, and was ferreting among gold fringes and silk fringes.

  ‘Moths!’ she says. ‘Show me the moths!’

  As though all had expected moths to rise in clouds when once the press was opened, the Ladies stood dumb till Christabel Cowper said that the vestments should be lifted out, one by one.

  Someone murmured then, ‘If they have got at the great white cope!’

  Even that faintly whispered suggestion was enough to harden the determination of the Ladies, for the cope, though very old – some said it was as old as the Priory itself – was the loveliest thing they had. It was of white velvet which had changed with age, as ivory changes and deepens in colour, but the wheat-ears which were worked all over it were still of a rich, lustrous gold.

  ‘We must look,’ said the Cellaress, and laid hold of one end of the topmost vestment – it was of blue velvet sprinkled with white stars, and had been given to the Priory two hundred years ago by one of the Askes. The Sacrist took the other end and they lifted it out. The Chambress puffed with her breath to clear the dust from the top of an old alms chest, and they spread it out over that.

  Under the blue velvet there was a dun and green silk, worked with true lovers’ knots, and under that a crimson banner powdered with harts and butterflies, and then a very old black sarcenet cope with roses and stars on it. And as they lifted it out the Cellaress dropped the edge she held, and began to clap her hands together in the air.

  ‘Oh!’ cried the Ladies. The Cellaress opened her hands and showed them on her palm a little smear of dulled silver-gold dust, and shattered wings. ‘Oh!’ they cried again.

  In the silence that followed, while they watched the Sacrist’s face grow red and begin to work, there came suddenly from outside the Church a sound as though someone had breathed a long, harsh sigh, and the rain began.

  *

  That evening when everything lay drenched and still, except that the gutters still ran and eaves dripped, Christabel was walking with Bess Dalton in the little garden.

  Bess said that the Prioress’s cushion was nigh done now, and very fine.

  ‘If I were the Prioress...’ Christabel began.

  They were just passing the Parlour door as she said it, and a shrill laugh came from within, which they knew for Dame Anne Ladyman’s, and next minute she came to the door with her embroidery frame in her hand, and the white damask trailing, which she was embroidering for a new banner.

  ‘Ah!’ said she, ‘it’s Dame Christabel who is to be Prioress, is it? God-a-mercy! and which of us does she think will want to make her so. D’you hear that?’ she cried to someone behind her in the room, and turned back. As the two girls passed on they heard her begin to retail the story, and heard Margery Conyers laugh.

  Christabel had grown red, but not so red as poor Bess.

  ‘Oh, Christie!’ Bess could not speak till they had reached the first of the beehives along the west wall. ‘That she should say such a thing! You did not mean that at all.’

  ‘No. I was going to say that if I were the Prioress I should have worked the buck’s horns in gold.’

  ‘How absurd to say you think to be Prioress.’

  ‘I do not think of it. I shall not be old enough when the Lady dies, for anyone can see she will last but a year or two longer.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ cried Bess.

  ‘Unless the Cellaress – but no. I do not think of it.’

  1520

  June 30

  Sir William Aske came rarely to the little Manor House at Marrick, partly because it was so little a house, and partly because he was so old a man. He had survived his only son Sir Roger, and when he died there would be two little girls to inherit all the lands that belonged to Askes of Aske.

  But now, at the end of June, word had come to the bailiff at Marrick to set all things ready for Sir William’s coming, and there had been a great business of scouring and cleaning and strawing, and fetching in of beasts and cheeses, of flour and spices from York: there had also been much to-ing and fro-ing between the Priory and the Manor, for the bailiff, being taken by surprise, had borrowed soap and scrubbing brushes and goose-wings for dusting, and the Prioress, who remembered Sir William when he was a young man and she a little girl, sent up her best coverlet – the one with the white hart standing on a green hill between lilies – and two great candlesticks. She knew that Sir William would bring all necessary household stuff with him, but these would help to furbish up the old, deserted house for an old and lonely man.

  To-night Sir William had to come down to sup with the Prioress, and, as it was Christabel Cowper’s week to eat and sleep in the Prioress’s lodging, she came to supper with them. The Prioress had tried to hint that perhaps it would be fitting for the Cellaress or another of the older Ladies to sup with Sir William instead of Christabel, but Christabel had not taken the hint.

  Old Sir William, very lean and bent, sat in the Prioress’s own chair, and his big knotty hands were laid upon the arms of the chair which ended each in the carved head of an angel. The heads were worn smooth as silk and pale as straw by the hands of Prioress after Prioress, since the chair had been carved very long ago in the third King Henry’s time.

  The Lady’s servant came in with a dish of veal, served in a sauce of mulberry juice and eggs and spices. She set it down on the table, and stood back a moment looking proudly at it, because it was a special dish at the Priory; no one else round about knew how to make it, and it was only made on very great occasions. It was called ‘Red Murrey’ or sometimes ‘King’s Murrey’, because thirty years ago or so a cook of King Richard’s kitchen had told the Nuns’ cook of those days how to make it. The King’s cook was all for King Richard, though it was that Richard who was nicknamed Crouchback and had such an evil reputation. But when the old man who had been his cook had drunk too much ale he would tell tales to show what a good master Crouchback had been, and call him Duke Dick, because he had been in his household long before Richard murdered his nephews and made himself king. Duke Dick had once given the cook a ring for making this very same ‘Red Murrey’; he showed it to the Nuns’ cook – a dark ground sapphire set loose in gold claws, so loose that you could turn it about, but safe as the world hung in the midst of all the turning stars; it was, the cook said, a ring that had been made in Italy.

  So the Lady’s servant set down the dish and looked at it proudly.

  She was very hot with helping in the kitchen, and she wiped her face with the loose end of the kerchief that covered her head, bobbed her curtsey and began to serve forth.

  Christabel sat eating, and taking no part in the talk, which was all of old days, and old people, of whom she had heard sometimes barely the names and sometimes nothing at all. She was so discreetly silent that they seemed to forget her, and Sir William spoke of his dead son Roger, and the Prioress cried a little, and then the old man spoke of his own death – ‘which won’t be long,’ said he – and of Masses to be sung for him in the Founder’s Chapel in the Church, and wax for lights on the Roodloft. The Founder’s Chapel, or the Aske Chapel, was part of the parish church, which lay to the east of the Nuns’ Church, all under one roof, but separated by a wall taller than a man, and, above the wall, a wrought-iron grille twined in curves like a briar. There was one door only in the wall, and the Prioress had the key of it, and the Priest.

  All this did not interest Christabel much, but when Sir William said he’d found a husband for l
ittle Nan she pricked up her ears, because she knew that little Nan was Mistress Anne Aske, his grandchild, and, with her sister Elizabeth, heir to all the Aske lands. ‘It’s Nan,’ said Sir William, ‘shall have Marrick and all that goes with it. Oh – a good enough match,’ he told the Prioress, who asked who was to be the groom, ‘Rafe Bulmer, Will Bulmer’s second son.’ The Prioress only knew the Bulmers by name – a family with lands in Cleveland and further north in Durham. What age was Sir Rafe? Sir William told her and then went on to tell her of the bargain he had struck with Rafe’s father. ‘Oh, yes, a towardly young gentleman enough,’ he said, when she pressed him for more. But he dearly cared little what sort of man the young man was, and soon went back to the question of his own death, and how he would provide at Aske for a Chantry Priest. ‘My Lord Darcy,’ he said, ‘showed me a while ago the book of his foundation. He had builded a hospital and free school, where Masses shall be sung for ever for him.’

  ‘But,’ the Prioress objected, wrinkling up her face, ‘he is not old.’ The Prioress’s mother had been a Tempest of the Dale, so she was connected with Lord Darcy, though distantly, through his first wife. Besides, there was little she did not know about the great families of Yorkshire.

  Sir William agreed with her that Tom Darcy was not old. Indeed to him to be fifty-five years old seemed to be young. ‘But you know that rupture he got at Thérouanne; it is for that reason he thinks of his soul.’ He stopped and sighed heavily, for it was of the same disease that his son Roger had died, suddenly and in great pain. ‘I told him that he need not fear to die, since many live long ruptured. He said he did not fear it, but would have all in order. So the hospital and chapel are built already, and his friends send to him singing-men and boys from all the North Country. I cannot do so much, but what I can I will, for Roger’s soul and for my own.’

  He sighed again and they sank into silence. The candles had been lit, and now the sky darkened outside the windows, and grew gloriously blue.

  Now the Chronicle is broken to speak of Thomas, Lord Darcy.

  Thomas, Lord Darcy

  This Lord Darcy, though, as Sir William said, a devout man, was also a great fighter, and as well used to Courts as to camps; a man too with as many friends as enemies, because, while he could use on occasion guile or violence, he stood by his given word, and by his friends and his men in all things.

  Nine years ago he had gone to Spain as a Crusader. The thought to do so had come to him when he was, by chance, in company with a Venetian merchant at the table of the King’s Chaplain, Master Thomas Wolsey. After supper talk turned somehow upon doctors, and the Venetian said that the Saracens were the best doctors he knew, and began to tell how, at the place where the Saracens bathed, there were those who would so stroke, rub, yea, and strongly pummel a man that he would get up cured. ‘I have seen,’ said he, ‘how they would wrench a man’s neck, till I thought he was dead; but dead he was not, and when he rose up, from being bent and in pain, he could instead go strongly and at ease.’

  ‘You have seen this?’ Darcy leaned to him across the man that sat between them. The Venetian nodded.

  ‘In Jerusalem.’

  ‘You have been to the Holy Places?’

  ‘It was when I was a lad. But I remember that Saracen, and how great a crack the man’s neck made.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Darcy, ‘of the Holy Sepulchre.’

  But the Venetian could not tell much, though by now those around were listening. Ten days only he had been in the Holy Land, for the galleys that brought the pilgrims from Italy would not stay longer for them than that. ‘So we ran from place to place,’ he said, and blew out his cheeks and fanned his face with his hand, ‘Oh! I was weary!’

  ‘But you saw Jerusalem? Bethlehem?’

  ‘Jerusalem. But Bethlehem, no. For to Bethlehem we went by night, when it was dark, and all I remember of it was the hard-boiled eggs and bread we ate sitting on some steps. But as for the Holy Sepulchre,’ – he pulled a ring off his finger – ‘my father laid that ring upon the Holy Sepulchre.’

  They stared at it. When Master Wolsey, from further along the table, asked what it was, Lord Darcy answered him, but without taking his eyes off the ring where it lay between the paring of a red-skinned apple and some crumbled bread.

  ‘A precious ring indeed,’ said Master Wolsey, and reached out his hand as if he expected that someone would take up the ring and give it to him. When no one did that he turned back to the French Ambassador who sat on the further side, and went on talking about the King of Spain.

  Those near the Venetian asked him questions, and he told them quite a lot about the oranges and grapes that the pilgrims had of the pedlars in the Church of Calvary, and how fine the two galleys were which brought them all from Venice, with their painted banners, and the trumpets, drums and fifes which played every time they set out from any port. Darcy listened but he spoke no more; only when the Venetian reached out his hand and took the ring again, he gave a start and a sigh, as if something had been taken away from him.

  That night in bed beside his wife, Lord Darcy told her of the Italian: how fine a dark sanguine silk his coat had been, and of the silver spoon and prongs of silver which he brought out from a little leather case, the colour of raspberries, which he carried at his belt; he had used those things at supper and afterwards had wiped them and put them back. And he talked about the way Italian faces seem to have been made with greater care and skill than English faces. By that time she began to snore, and he had told her nothing about the ring.

  He spoke about it to no one else till next Christmas-time, and then only to the priest who houselled him. It was in the chapel in his house at Templehurst, and beyond the shut door they could hear voices, footsteps, and laughter, and sometimes the scratch and hiss of the boughs the servants were bringing in to deck the house for the feast.

  ‘And,’ said the priest, ‘you will go on pilgrimage to the Holy Places?’

  ‘No. On Crusade. Against the infidels in Spain. King Ferdinand has asked for fifteen hundred English archers, and will need some nobleman, besides captains, to lead them.’

  The priest sat silent, and Lord Darcy let his eyes rest upon the crucifix in his hands. It was a little thing of bone, old and smooth.

  ‘Since,’ he said, ‘there is peace in the realm in these days, and peace with the French—’ But he stopped there, because though there was restlessness in his mind, it was not that which was at the root of it. At last he pointed with his finger at the little bone crucifix. ‘Because I am a worldly man and a sinner I would be glad to strike a blow for God who was killed for me, and if He will have it, to be killed for Him.’

  The priest blessed him then, and after they had talked a little about how my Lord would raise men to go to Spain, Darcy went out. As he crossed the court he looked up at the blue sky, for it was a day like spring, and then about at the roofs of the house where the pigeons were sidling up and down. It was a great house, Templehurst, great and fair, and now he knew that it was most dear to him, and that it would be hard to leave it, if that meant that he must never come back. He was glad it was so, that Templehurst was a thing worthy to give to God, and his own life precious to him. That afternoon he wrote a letter to the King.

  Lord Darcy, and the gentlemen who were captains under him, and the English archers, landed at Cades on the first day of June in the next year. All that blazing afternoon they were at it, bringing ashore their gear and finding lodgings: the dust lay thick and blinding white, and there were flies everywhere. It was difficult to make anyone understand them when they spoke, but by the time that the sun was setting in a golden pomp beyond the infinite extent of sea the archers were housed in the town, and my Lord and his captains in an Abbey outside the walls.

  When Vespers were over Darcy and the others sat drinking the Abbot’s wine in a vine arbour in the Monastery garden. The garden was quiet, and cool in the failing light, but the town, where the archers were drinking, was not quiet at all.

&n
bsp; ‘There’ll be heads broken before night,’ said Sir Robert Constable, and laughed. He, like most of the other captains, was a Yorkshireman, a dozen years younger than Darcy, short, broad, red-haired, and with green eyes.

  The others laughed, and began to brag how the English archers would come off the best. Darcy thought so too, for he was proud of the men, but he took no part in the talk. Instead he drew back, drinking and saying nothing, but feeling to his very bones the strangeness of this strange country, where bread, wine, people, smells, and even the very sun itself seemed new. That strangeness had worked so strongly as to make these friends of his, and the big, ruddy, upstanding archers strange also; he could see them now as he had never seen them before, set over against the dark Spaniards; he saw Templehurst too, as clearly as if he were there, and yet as he had never seen it before, because he saw it from this warm, shadowed garden, where the dark trees stood up, straight as spears. When he tried to realize the purpose with which he had come here, it seemed to have become as unfamiliar as the rest, as if God had been left behind in England, or lost overboard upon the seas. He sighed sharply, and then straightened his shoulders. Thank God he need not think now, or only of the things about which a soldier must think in the way of his trade. But this time, when he fought he would fight for God, so that it did not matter that his mind was like a boat drifted from its moorings; thoughts did not matter now, since it was by acts that he would serve God.

  Three days later, in the hottest of the afternoon, he came to where his captains, sick of doing nothing, had rigged up some butts, and were shooting with the bow. They had a couple of the archers with them – ‘For to shoot against’em will keep us up to the mark,’ said one of the gentlemen. So it did, but the two big silent men, who seemed to draw the six-foot bow as easily as if it were a willow withy, and loose off the clothyard shaft with hardly a pause to take aim, were on the mark itself every time, and the gentlemen could not match them.