The Man On a Donkey Read online

  ‘Death of God!’ Sir Robert Constable stamped his foot; ‘Again!’ His shaft had scudded off to the left.

  ‘It was prettily shot, Sir,’ said one of the archers soothingly, ‘well knocked and well loosed. But you feared to draw the shaft through the bow, and so you looked at the shaft and not at the mark.’

  Sir Robert groaned. The archer glanced at him with a twinkle, ‘We’ve a saying, Sir, – “Shoot like a gentleman, fair and far off.”’

  They saw my Lord then, coming to them, and the archers drew away, and moved off towards the butts, while the captains went to meet Darcy. He came quickly, with a very red face, but they saw at once that he was not only hot but very angry.

  ‘This King!’ said he, – and wished a pox on him, and on all Spaniards. He did it so loud that any might have heard; the archers must have heard, but that did not matter since they were English, and at this hour of the day there were no Spaniards about and awake except a few ragged children watching the shooting.

  It was a little time before they got from him, so angry was he, the cause of his anger. When they had it they were angry too, for the news that the Duke of Alva had brought from King Ferdinand was that he had made peace with the infidels, so that having come they might now go away again.

  Lord Darcy was thinking of that day, and the time that followed it, as he lay in his bed at Templehurst, ill and in pain, more than two years later, while the October gale swept the rain past the windows with the last of the leaves. He was angry still; if it had not been for King Ferdinand’s yea and nay ways this rupture that he had got fighting at Thérouanne last summer against Christian Frenchmen might have come on him in war against the infidel. Then, if he had died of it, God would have looked gently on his sins; and if he had lived, as he was now likely to live, it would have been easier to endure a life crippled by a hurt taken in God’s service. He turned over in bed carefully, and groaned, not for the pain, but because he would have to live and move with care.

  This morning Sir Robert Constable and two other gentlemen had been with him; in fact they had not been long gone. Sir Robert had grumbled fiercely at the rain. ‘It’ll beat in our faces the whole way,’ he said, and to Darcy, when they left, ‘Lie you snug there, my Lord, and think of us as wet as drowned rats.’ Darcy thought of them now, but he was not glad to be snug.

  ‘I must,’ he said to himself, ‘learn how to live as an old man,’ and he knew that it would be hard to do so, although he was now past fifty.

  Yet even an old man, if he have a stout heart and a busy, working head, may play a part, and next summer Lord Darcy was again Captain of Berwick, and going about the ramparts of the castle with Tom Strangways, the master porter, or walking along the river strand to see what the catch of salmon had been, though now, wherever he went it was with a cross-handled stick to lean on. He must not ride, except at a soft pace and for a little while, but must go in a litter; yet that did not mean that he had forgotten how to pick a good man-at-arms when he saw him, nor how to command the men whom he had chosen. And when Parliament was called, in the late autumn, my Lord went to it, travelling by easy stages, and took the same house at Stepney that he had hired before, and sat with his peers to give counsel to the King.

  In these days Master Thomas Wolsey, who had been the King’s Chaplain when Darcy first knew him, then Dean of Windsor, then Bishop of Lincoln, then this, then that, was become more things than a man could easily remember, and Cardinal into the bargain. Six years after Darcy had got his rupture, that is, in July 1518, the Papal Legate landed at Sandwich, and came by way of Canterbury to London. My Lord was with the other lords in the great cloth-of-gold pavilion that was pitched in a meadow beside the road from Blackheath, to welcome the Legate. Though July, it was a chilly, gusty morning, and the cloth of gold flapped and bellied out in the wind, and by the time the Legate arrived, the Lords, in their efforts to keep out the cold, had well drunken of the wine that was to regale him. So when the cry rose that he was coming there was some scurrying to have the gilt cups swilled out and set again on the rere-table in the pavilion, and some covert laughter among the Lords, though the welcome they gave him was as stately as it should be.

  With the rest my Lord Darcy came into London at the head of the great procession, and by that time the sun was out and the day fair, so that the gold and silver crosses of the clergy, friars, and monks, who welcomed them beyond London Bridge, and the copes of cloth of gold that they wore, made a most brave show.

  That afternoon he was among those who waited upon Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal of York, to announce the Legate’s arrival, and wait they did indeed. He and some other lords sat in a window, and played cards for an hour and more before the door of the chamber was opened and they were bidden through seven other rooms, each one hung with tapestry of Arras, to the chamber where Wolsey was. And even then they had little of his attention, for he was busy with the choir-master of his Chapel, choosing the music that should be sung at next morning’s solemn Mass.

  So they went away more than a little chafed, and in a mood to carp at everything. One of them said, as they looked across the street from the Cardinal’s gate, ‘All this mighty show, but look you there at that!’ and he pointed at where a handful of hay hung out over the door of a house; they all knew what that meant – the Sweating Sickness, and most likely death, were in the house that showed that sign, and they crossed themselves and held up a lap of their coats before their mouths, and went on quickly.

  ‘And what,’ said another, ‘of this Crusade?’ The Legate had come to get the King’s promise for a great Crusade against the Turk.

  “Mass!’ said Darcy, in a loud reckless voice. ‘I think the Soldan must laugh to hear of it. For the Cardinal will spend on painted pictures from Flanders, and clocks – such as are most cunningly and artificially made – and tapestries, so that they may hang a fresh set every week in every one of those great chambers of his. And the King will spend on jousts and revels. But if they will spend money on men-at-arms, and shipping for them to go against the Turk, then... then I’ll... I’ll eat my hat!’

  ‘Say you’ll eat my Lord Cardinal’s,’ one of the others cried; and they all laughed, thinking of the great scarlet hat with its hanging cords and tassels.

  ‘Aye, so I will, and his scarlet satin gown, and his tippet of sables,’ Darcy declared. At one time he and Thomas Wolsey, the King’s Chaplain, had been familiar together, when they shared a room and a bed in the Palace of Westminster; but now the Cardinal of York only gave my Lord Darcy his ring to kiss; so my Lord was free to make game of him with his fellows if he chose.

  1520

  July 2

  On this morning Thomas, Lord Darcy, prepared himself to accompany the gentlemen who were the French King’s envoys on a visit to Princess Mary, King Harry’s only heir, four and a half years old this month, and betrothed since last year to the little French Dauphin. She was at Richmond just now, and they would go there by river after they had dined – early because of the tide – with the Lord Mayor.

  My Lord Darcy was in his bed-chamber at the house at Stepney; one of the young gentlemen of his household was with him, and a servant, and the servant’s head was inside a great standing press where my Lord’s best gowns hung on perches. He was searching for a black silk doublet with cloth-of-gold sleeves, while my Lord stood in the middle of the room in his shirt, breeches and hosen. The young gentleman knelt beside him, tying up the points that held his hosen to his short breeches.

  My Lord looked every bit of his fifty-five years, but he looked, too, a remarkably handsome man. Very tall, very lean, he had curling hair which might have been as easily silver as gold. With that hair went a fair complexion, and blue eyes, that had a keen, or laughing, or blazing look in them, but which were never dull.

  ‘Then,’ said he, ‘if it’s not there, Will, give me the cloth of silver!’ He laughed. ‘It’ll do no harm if it makes the Frenchmen think that all is as loving between their master and King Harry as it was when I wore
it at Guisnes!’

  At Guisnes the two kings had met in the great splendour which had got that little valley and small decayed town the name of ‘The Field of the Cloth of Gold’.

  Darcy, wandering over to the window while the servant ferreted still in the press, thought of that day four weeks ago, when he and all the King’s company had ridden from Calais to Guisnes, reaching there just before sunset. Guisnes castle and town took the low light, but it was not that half-ruinous keep, nor the moat, grown thick with weeds, at which they stared and marvelled. Beyond the moat, upon the castle green, a palace had been built of carpenter’s work, larger than the King’s great house at Eltham. When Darcy and the other nobles passed inside the embattled gate of this mushroom palace there were fresh marvels, for the roofs of the galleries under which they went were covered with white silk, fluted and adorned with gold, and all the hangings were tapestry of silk or gold, while the red Tudor rose was set on every ceiling upon a ground of fine gold.

  ‘Come on, Will, come on,’ he said, without turning, ‘give me the cloth of silver.’

  ‘My Lord, let me try the trussing coffer,’ said Will; so Darcy shrugged. He was not eager to show these Frenchmen more courtesy than was needful. He did not think he was meant to do so, though it was hard even for a clever man to read the purposes of the King and the Cardinal.

  His thoughts ran on to a night in his tent outside Guisnes, when the flaps were tied up to let in the cool air, which was refreshing after the long heat of the day. He and the Duke of Buckingham had sat together there, with candles lit, talking over their wine; laughing talk mostly of the day’s jousting. His Grace of Buckingham was a great talker, and a great mimic. He had aped one by one the knights that rode that day, French as well as English, and then he aped another whose name he did not mention, but Darcy knew well enough it was the French King himself, by the habit he had of tossing up his head sideways like a fidgety horse. He and Buckingham laughed, and heard the gentlemen, sitting a little apart from them in the tent, laugh too, and whisper together.

  And then the Duke leaned towards Darcy; a little man, he was as quick and graceful in his movements as a fish, and he murmured in Darcy’s ear,—

  ‘But we’ll taste the wines of Spain again after these light French wines, and I think we’ll be content thereof, every man of us.’

  Darcy, who was older than the Duke, and wiser, only nodded. He knew well enough what was meant. After all this show of friendship between France and England there was to be a meeting between King Harry and the sober young Emperor at Gravelines, and that meeting, though less splendid, might make a truer story than this fairy-tale of gilded palaces, and jewelled doublets, and burning cardboard dragons drawn through the air for a wonder and a show.

  ‘Perdy! and here it is!’ Will cried, and Darcy turned back into the room.

  Will drew out the black and gold doublet and held it up. The young gentleman took it from him, and put it on my Lord, while Will laid back the rest of the clothes that he had taken out of the coffer, and shut the lid, and set on it again the silver basin still full of warm soapy water from my Lord’s shaving.

  *

  After dinner the French gentlemen, and Lord Darcy and Lord Berners who were to conduct them to the Princess, went down to the Mayor’s barge, and so by river to Richmond. It was a grey afternoon, so that the silk awning of the barge was not needed, but as it was warm the motion and the air were pleasant. The gentlemen sat together under the awning, and if there was little conversation between them there was sufficient for courtesy, especially after so plentiful a dinner and on so warm an afternoon. The country people were cutting and carrying their hay in the meadows on either side of the river, so there was plenty to watch, and merry sounds to hear of shouting and laughter, or of some old man piping a tune to cheer on the workers. If, for a space, the wide reaches of the river were solitary, with no laden barges going up or down, and no one in sight in the meadows, there were always the long glassy ripples to watch, which the barge pushed out before it, spreading smoothly till they were caught by the churned water the oars tossed up, which, spreading in the wake, became smooth again and only lapped softly at the pale mud of the banks, just stirring the drooping comfrey and water-mints and small forget-me-nots there. The French gentlemen were so content that they shut their eyes, and one of them even made a little snoring noise through his nose.

  In the Presence Chamber at Richmond they were all wide awake again. The Countess of Salisbury was there, and the Duke of Norfolk’s daughters. And then the gentleman usher opened the door and the Princess came in, very solemn and flushed in cloth of gold with pearls in her hair. She stood while the French gentlemen and English lords knelt and bent down to kiss her little perfect dimpled hands. She said that they were ‘vewy welcome’, and then looked at the Countess.

  ‘Ask for the Dauphin’s Grace that is to be your husband.’

  ‘How does my husband?’ said the little girl.

  One of the Frenchmen, who had little girls of his own at home, told her that His Grace was well, ‘and playing merrily at ball when I saw him last’.

  ‘Is he as big as me?’ the Princess wished to know, and quite a lot of other things. When the Countess suggested that my Lady’s Grace should play upon the virginals, so that the gentlemen could tell the Dauphin how good and clever a girl she was, the Princess was not at all shy. One of the ladies set a cushion on the stool and lifted her up on it, and she played, very earnest, and biting the tip of her tongue over the trills and runs.

  After that the servants brought in a big silver-gilt platter of honeywafers and strawberries, and poured wine for all. The pages carried these round, and the Princess kept on calling to the page with the platter of strawberries to bring her more, until the Countess forbade it, ‘for we shall have you all out in spots if you do eat more’.

  Lord Berners laughed aloud at that, and at the way the Princess pouted, though she obeyed. But Lord Darcy turned to the French gentlemen and said now they had seen Her Grace – ‘not only how fitly taught in music and deportment, but how meek of spirit, as a maid should be to make a good wife’.

  ‘Sang de Dieu!’ they cried, ‘she will be a very worthy lady, worthy both for her noble parentage and for her own excellencies. Well may we pray that such a lady shall be Queen of France.’

  ‘And Queen of England too,’ said Darcy, a trifle acid.

  That, they said, was not to the matter in hand. They had heard their master say that if King Harry had ten children and all sons but this lady, King Francis would rather have her for his son’s wife than any other – ‘Yea, than the Princess of Portugal with all the spices that her father hath,’ they said.

  That remark had a shrewd point, for it was pretty well known to all there, except the little girl, that the Emperor was even now hesitating whether to ask for her hand, or for that of the Portuguese Princess. Darcy got up and went to the open window which looked out towards the river. When he came back he said that the tide had turned and was fair for their departure.

  December 6

  The tawny velvet gown that Sir William Aske had left to make a vestment to the Priory, when he died last August, had all been unpicked, and now lay spread out, yards and yards of it, on one of the long tables in the old Frater. Several of the Ladies had come in to look and talk about it, and advise Dame Anne Ladyman, the Sacrist, how best it should be cut up into a cope. The seamstress with the shears stood respectfully waiting for their decision.

  Dame Anne had asked them to come. She wanted advice; she had been scheming and planning, turning the stuff this way and that. There was so much of it, surely it would make more than one cope. Yet there were places in it worn and rubbed, and try as she would she could not devise how to avoid these, unless she cut wastefully and were content that it should make one cope and no more.

  So she had asked the Cellaress to come, and the Chambress, because they were the two Ladies most used to dealing with such practical matters. But she regretted that she had as
ked anyone when she saw Dame Christabel Cowper come in with the others. She remembered then what she ought to have remembered before – that the old Cellaress leaned much on Dame Christabel in these days.

  However, it was too late now to do anything more than put up her eyebrows in surprise when she caught Christabel’s glance.

  The Cellaress saw the lifted eyebrows, and she explained Christabel. ‘I brought her because she’s the best head for contriving of all of us.’ That did not improve matters, nor did the account the Cellaress gave, after she had sunk heavily down on the bench, of how Christabel had detected the trickery of the miller. They had all heard it before anyway; Dame Anne barely let the Cellaress finish before she began explaining to them the difficulty about the tawny velvet. While she did so she managed to edge in between Christabel and the others, and then, quite naturally, and as it might have been unconsciously, turning her face towards the older women she was able fairly to turn her back on Christabel.

  Christabel smiled, and made no effort to regain a place in the conclave. She put out her hand and stroked the smooth bloom of the velvet. What had been the lower edges of the gown and of the huge hanging sleeves were most cunningly dagged into a pattern or leaves in the fashion of half a generation ago. She stooped and sniffed at the stuff. The faintest scent still clung to it; a scent of musk; a rich, worldly, seductive scent, though now dwindled to a ghostly fragrance. She thought, ‘It’s known some brave doings at Court,’ – and she was right, for Sir William had worn it the year the dead Prince Arthur was born, this King Harry’s elder brother, and it had seen pageants and water-parties and masqueings, much gaiety and some gallantry.