Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (191 page)

‘Then I will swear she is more large.’

‘No; not one half so bounteous is her form,’ he answered, and moved across to the couch.

‘Then if you can bear her weight up you can bear mine,’ she said, and moved away from him.

‘Nay,’ he answered. ‘She would help me on,’ and he fumbled in the shadows for her hand. She drew herself together into a small space.

‘You affect her more than me,’ she said, with a swift motion simulating jealousy.

‘By the breasts of Venus, no!’ he answered.

‘Oh, once more use such words,’ she murmured, and surrendered to him her soft hand. He rubbed it between both of his cold ones and uttered:

‘By the Paphian Queen: by her teams of doves and sparrows! By the bower of Phyllis and the girdle of Egypt’s self! I love thee!’

She gurgled ‘oh’s’ of pleasure.

‘But this Margot Poins is tirewoman to the Lady Katharine Howard.’

‘I am tirewoman to mine own self alone,’ she said. ‘Therefore you love her better.’

‘Nay, oh nay,’ he said gently. ‘But this Lady Katharine Howard is mistress to the King’s self.’

‘And I have been mistress to no married man save my husbands,’ she answered. ‘Therefore you love this Margot Poins better.’

He fingered her soft palm and rubbed it across his own neck.

‘Nay, nay,’ he said. ‘But I must wed with Margot Poins.’

‘Why with her more than with me or any other of your score and seven?’ she said softly.

‘Since the Lady Katharine will be Queen,’ he answered, and once again he was close against her side. She sighed softly.

‘Thus if you wed with me you will never be Chancellor,’ she said.

‘I would not anger the Queen,’ he answered. She nestled bountifully and warmly against him.

‘Swear even again that you like me more than the fair, large wench in London town,’ she whispered against his ear.

‘Even as Jove prized Danaë above the Queen of Heaven, even as Narcissus prized his shadow above all the nymphs, even as Hercules placed Omphale above his strength, or even as David the King of the Jews Bathsheba above....’

She murmured ‘Oh, oh,’ and placed her arms around his shoulders.

‘How I love thy brave words!’

‘And being Chancellor,’ he swore, ‘I will come back to thee, oh woman of the sweet smiles, honey of Hymettus, Cypriote wine....’

She moved herself a little from him in the darkness.

‘And if you do not wed with Margot Poins....’

‘I pray a plague may fall upon her, but I must wed with her,’ he answered. ‘Come now; come now!’

‘Else the Lady Katharine shall be displeased with your magistership?’

He sought to draw her to him, but she stiffened herself a little.

‘And this Lady Katharine is mistress to the King of England’s realm?’

His hands moved tremblingly towards her in the darkness.

‘And this Lady Katharine shall be Queen?’

A hiss of exasperation came upon his lips, for she had slipped from beneath his hands into the darkness.

‘Why, then, I will not stay your climbing,’ she said. ‘Good-night,’ and in the darkness he heard her sob.

The couch fell backwards as he swore and sprang towards her voice.

‘Magister!’ she said. ‘Hands off! Unwed thou shalt not have me, for I have sworn it.’

‘I have sworn to wed seven and twenty women,’ he said, ‘and have wedded with none.’

‘Nay, nay,’ she sobbed. ‘Hands off. Henceforth I will make no vows — but no one but thee shall wed me.’

‘Then wed me, in God’s name!’ he cried, and, screaming:

‘
Ho là! Apportez le prestre!
’ she softened herself in his arms.

The magister confronted the lights, the leering scullions and the grinning maids with their great mantles; his brown, woodpecker-like face was alike crestfallen and thirsty with desire. A lean Dominican, with his brown cowl back and spectacles of horn, gabbled over his missal and took a crown’s fee — then asked another by way of penitence for the sin with the maid locked up in another house. When they brought the bride favours of pink to pin into her gorget she said:

‘I long had loved thee for thy great words, husband. Therefore all these I had in readiness.’

With that knot fast upon him, the magister, clasping his gown upon his shins, looked askance at the floor. Whilst they made ready the bride, with great lights and laughter, she said:

‘I was minded to have a comfortable husband. And a comfortable husband is a husband much absent. What more comfortable than me in Paris town and thee in London city? I keep my inn here, thou mindest thy book there. Thou shalt here find a goodly capon upon occasion, and when thou hast a better house in London I will come share it.’

‘Trapped! Trapped!’ the magister muttered to himself. ‘Even as was Sir Launcelot!’

He considered of the fair and resentful Margot Poins whom it was incumbent indeed that he should wed: that Katharine Howard loved her well and was in these matters strait-laced. When his eyes measured his wife he licked his lips; when his eyes were on the floor his jaw fell. At best the new Mistress Udal would be in Paris. He looked at the rope tied round the thin middle of the brown priest, and suddenly he leered and cast off his cloak.

‘Let me remember to keep an equal mind in these hard matters,’ he quoted, and fell to laughing.

For he remembered that in England no marriage by a friar or monk held good in those years. Therefore he was the winner. And the long, square room, with the cave bed behind its shutter in the hollow of the wall, the light-coloured, square beams, and the foaming basin of bride-ale that a fat-armed girl in a blue kerseymere gown served out to scullion after scullion; the open windows from which a little knave was casting bride-pennies to some screaming beggars and women in the street; the blind hornman whose unseeing eyes glanced along the reed of his bassoon that he played before the open door; the two saucy maids striving to wrest the bride’s stockings one from the other — all these things appeared friendly and jovial in his eyes. So that, when one of the maids, wresting the stocking, fell hard against him, he clasped her in his arms and kissed her till she struggled from him to drink a mug of bride-ale.

‘
Hodie mihi: mihi atque cras!
’ he said. For it was in his mind a goodly thing to pay a usuress with base coins.

I
I

It was three days later, in the morning, that his captress said to the Magister Udal:

‘Husband, it is time that I gave thee the bridal gift.’

The magister, happy with a bellyful of carp, bread and breakfast ale, muttered ‘Anan?’ from above his copy of Lucretius. He sat in the window-seat of the great stone kitchen. Upon one long iron spit before the fire fourteen trussed capons turned in unison; the wooden shoes of the basting-maid clattered industriously; and from the chimney came the clank of the invisible smoke-vanes and the be-sooted chains. The magister, who loved above all things warmth, a full stomach, a comfortable woman and a good book, had all these things; he was well minded to stay in Paris town for fourteen days, when they were to slay a brown pig from the Ardennes, against whose death he had written an elegy in Sapphics.

‘For,’ said his better half, standing before him with a great loaf clasped to her bosom, ‘if you turn a horse from the stable between full and half full, like as not he will return of fair will to the crib.’

‘Oh Venus and Hebe in one body,’ the magister said, ‘I am minded to end here my scholarly days.’

‘I am minded that ye shall travel far erstwhile,’ she answered.

He laid down his book upon a clean chopping-board.

‘I know a good harbourage,’ he said.

She sat down beside him in the window and fingered the fur on his long gown, saying that, in this light, it showed ill-favouredly worm-eaten; and he answered that he never had wishes nor money for gowning himself, who cultivated the muses upon short commons. She turned rightway to the front the medal upon his chest, and folded her arms.

‘Whilst ye have no better house to harbour us,’ she said, ‘this shall serve. Let us talk of the to-come.’

He groaned a little.

‘Let us love to-day that’s here,’ he said. ‘I will read thee a verse from Lucretius, and you shall tell me the history of that fourth capon’ — he pointed to a browned carcase that, upon the spit, whirled its elbows a full third longer than any of the line.

‘That is the master roasting-piece,’ she said, ‘so he browns there not too far, nor too close, for the envoy’s own eating.’

He considered the chicken with his head to one side.

‘It is the place of a wife to be subject to her lord,’ he said.

‘It is the place of a husband that he fendeth for ‘s wife,’ she answered him. She tapped her fingers determinedly upon her elbows.

‘So it is,’ she continued. ‘To-morrow you shall set out for London city to make road towards becoming Sir Chancellor.’ Whilst he groaned she laid down for him her law. He was to go to England, he was to strive for great posts: if he gained, she would come share them; if he failed, he might at odd moments come back to her fireside. ‘Have done with groaning now,’ she said, stilling his lamentations.’ ‘Keep them even for the next wench that you shall sue to — of me you have had all you asked.’

He considered for five seconds, his elbow upon his crossed knees and his wrist supporting his lean brown face.

‘It is in the essence of it a good bargain,’ he said. ‘You put against the chance of being, you a chancellor’s madam, mine of having for certain a capon in Paris town.’

He tapped his long nose. ‘Nevertheless, for your stake you have cast down a very little: three nights of bed and board against the chaining me up.’

‘Husband,’ she answered. ‘More than that you shall have.’

He wriggled a little beneath his furs.

‘Husband is an ill name,’he commented. ‘It smarts.’

‘But it fills the belly.’

‘Aye,’he said. ‘Therefore I am minded to bide here and take with the sourness the sweet of it.’

She laughed a little, and, with a great knife, cut a large manchet from the loaf between them.

‘Nay,’ she said, ‘to-morrow my army with their spits and forks shall drive thee from the door.’

He grinned with his lips. She was fair and fat beneath her hood, but she was resolute. ‘I have it in me greatly to advance you,’ she said.

A boy brought her a trencher filled with chopped things, and a man in a blue jerkin came to her side bearing a middling pig, seared to a pale clear pinkness. The boy held the slit stomach carefully apart, and she lined it with slices of bread, dropping into the hollow chives, nutmegs, lumps of salt, the buds of bergamot, and marigold seeds with their acrid perfume, and balls of honied suet. She bound round it a fair linen cloth that she stitched with a great bone needle.

‘Oh ingenuous countenance,’ the magister mused above the pig’s mild face. ‘Is it not even the spit of the Cleves envoy’s? And the Cleves envoy shall eat this adorable monster. Oh, cruel anthropophagist!’

She resigned her burden to the spit and gave the loaf to the boy, wiped her fingers upon her apron, and said:

‘That pig shall help thee far upon thy road.’

‘Goes it into my wallet?’ he asked joyfully.

She answered: ‘Nay; into the Cleves envoy’s weam.’

‘You speak in hard riddles,’ he uttered.

‘Nay,’ she laughed, ‘a baby could unriddle it.’ She looked at him for a moment to enjoy her triumph of mystery. ‘Husband mine, a pig thus stuffed is good eating for Cleves men. I have not kept a hostel for twelve years for envoys and secretaries without learning what each eats with pleasure. And long have I thought that if I wed a man it should be such a man as could thrive by learning of envoys’ secrets.’

He leaned towards her earnestly.

‘You know wherefore the man from Cleves is come?’

‘You are, even as I have heard it said, a spy of Thomas Cromwell?’ she asked in return.

He looked suddenly abashed, but she held to her question.

‘I pass for Privy Seal’s man,’ he answered at last.

‘But you have played him false,’ she said. He grew pale, glanced over his shoulder, and put his finger on his lips.

‘I’ll wager it was for a woman,’ she accused him. She wiped her lips with her apron and dropped her hands upon her lap.

‘Why, keep troth to Cromwell if you can,’ she said.

‘I do think his sun sets,’ he whispered.

‘Why, I am sorry for it,’ she answered. ‘I have always loved him for a brewer’s son. My father was a brewer.’

‘Cromwell was begotten even by the devil,’ Udal answered. ‘He made me write a comedy in the vulgar tongue.’

‘Be it as you will,’ she answered. ‘You shall know on which side to bite your cake better than I.’

He was still a little shaken at the thought of Privy Seal.

‘If you know wherefore cometh Cleves’ envoy, much it shall help me to share the knowledge,’ he said at last, ‘for by that I may know whether Cromwell or we do rise or fall.’

‘If you have made a pact with a woman, have very great cares,’ she answered dispassionately. ‘Doubtless you know how the dog wags its tail; but you are always a fool with a woman.’

‘This woman shall be Queen if Cromwell fall,’ the magister said, ‘and I shall rise with her.’

‘But is no woman from Cleves’ Queen there now?’ she asked.

‘Cicely,’ he answered highly, ‘you know much of capons and beeves, but there are queens that are none and do not queen it, and queans that are no queens and queen it.’

‘And so ‘twill be whilst men are men,’ she retorted. ‘But neither my first nor my second had his doxies ruling within my house, do what they might beyond the door.’

He tried to impart to her some of the adoration he had for Katharine Howard — her learning, her faith, her tallness, her wit, and the deserved empiry that she had over King Henry VIII; but she only answered:

‘Why, kiss the wench all you will, but do not come to tell me how she smells!’ — and to his new protests: ‘Aye, you may well be right and she may well be Queen — for I know you will sacrifice your ease for no wench that shall not help you somewhere forwards.’

The magister held his hands above his head in shocked negation of this injustice — but there came from the street the thin wail of a trumpet; another joined it, and a third; the three sounds executed a triple convolution and died away one by one. Holding his thin hand out for silence and better hearing, he muttered:

‘Norfolk’s tucket! Then it is true that Norfolk comes to Paris.’

His wife slipped down from her seat.

‘Gave I you not the ostler’s gossip from Calais three days since?’ she said, and went towards her roastings.

‘But wherefore comes the yellow dog to Paris?’ Udal persisted.

‘That you may go seek,’ she answered. ‘But believe always what an innkeeper says of who are on the road.’

Udal too slipped down from the window-seat; he buttoned his gown down to his shins, pulled his hat over his ears and hurried through the galleried courtyard into the comfortless shadows of the street. There was no doubt that Norfolk was coming; round the tiny crack that, two houses away, served for all the space that the road had between the towering housefronts, two men in scarlet and yellow, with leopards and lions and fleurs-de-lis on their chests, walked between two in white, tabarded with the great lilies of France. They crushed round the corner, for there was scarce space for four men abreast; behind them squeezed men in purple with the Howard knot, bearing pikes, and men in mustard yellow with the eagle’s wing and ship badge of the Provost of Paris. In the broader space before the arch of Udal’s courtyard they stayed to wait for the horsemen to disentangle themselves from the alley; the Englishmen looked glumly at the tall housefronts; the French loosened the mouthplates of their helmets to breathe the air for a minute. Hostlers, packmen and pedlars began to fill the space behind Udal, and he heard his wife’s voice calling shrilly to a cook who had run across the yard.

The crowd a little shielded him from the draught which came through the arch, and he waited with more contentment. Undoubtedly there was Norfolk upon a great yellow horse, so high that it made his bonnet almost touch the overhanging storey of the third house; behind him the white and gold litter of the provost, who, having three weeks before broken his leg at tennis-play, was still unable to sit in a saddle. The duke rode as if implacably rigid, his yellow, long face set, listening as if with a sour deafness to something that the provost from below called to him with a great, laughing voice.

The provost’s litter, too, came up alongside the duke’s horse in the open space, then they all moved forward at the slow processional: three steps and a halt for the trumpets to blow a tucket; three more and another tucket; the great yellow horse stepping high and casting up his head, from which flew many flakes of white foam. With its slow, regularly interrupted gait, dominated by the impassive yellow face of Norfolk, the whole band had an air of performing a solemn dance, and Udal shivered for a long time, till amidst the train of mules bearing leathern sacks, cupboards, chests and commodes, he saw come riding a familiar figure in a scholar’s gown — the young pedagogue and companion of the Earl of Surrey. He was a fair, bearded youth with blue eyes, riding a restless colt that embroiled itself and plunged amongst the mules’ legs. The young man leaned forward in the saddle and craned to avoid a clothes chest.

The magister called to him:

‘Ho, Longstaffe!’ and having caught his pleased eyes:
‘Ecce quis sto in arce plenitatis. Veni atque bibe! Magister sum. Udal sum. Longstaffe ave.’

Longstaffe slipped from his horse, which he left to be rescued by whom it might from amongst the hard-angled cases.

‘Assuredly,’ he said, ‘there is no love between that beast and me as there was betwixt his lord and Bucephalus,’ and he followed Udal into the galleried courtyard, where their two gowned figures alone sought shelter from the March showers.