The Tide Mill Page 5

  “I can leave them for him, if you think … if you think he really wants to …”

  “I’m sure he does,” Godric said. “He wouldn’t have asked you, otherwise.”

  Eloise heard herself saying, “May I look?”

  “By all means.” The boy untied three of the ribbon bows and proffered the folder. She laid her frame aside to take it. With that, Godric sat down next to her. The boy remained respectfully standing.

  “That’s the well-head on the green,” Godric said, as she examined the uppermost sheet.

  “Yes, I can see,” she said. The drawing, in intensely black ink, perhaps coprinus, had been most deftly done. The following few pages, some bearing only one image, others covered in studies in various stages of completion, depicted a medley of equally mundane objects. What a curious taste he had for the trivial! An axe from three angles, another stuck in a log; an outhouse; a ploughshare; a mallet; an oar; a reed-cutter’s punt.

  “Good, aren’t they?” Godric said.

  “Do you never draw people?” she asked, looking up.

  He was unable to reply before Godric said, while reaching over to turn the page, “Look, he’s drawn my bird.”

  This sheet Eloise picked up and studied. The other drawings had been lifeless, mere exercises in technique, but the animation in these was striking. In one the hobby sat on a sketchy gauntlet; in another it skimmed the reeds with winnowing wingbeats; in others, across the top of the page, it made a series of tiny silhouettes, each different, each capturing its character in the sky; and, larger now, having brought forward a clutched dragonfly, it bent its head to nibble in mid air.

  “He did all those from memory.”

  She set the page face-down. The next showed a bird’s webbed foot, open, half open, and closed.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “A wigeon’s foot,” Godric said.

  “What’s a wigeon? A duck?”

  “Yes,” he said. “There are lots of them on the marsh in winter.” He turned his head again and pointed at the drawing. “See, this shows you how it works. When a wigeon pushes the water, his toes open and spread the skin. When he pulls back to make another stroke, the toes come together and save effort. Moorhens can’t do that. Their feet aren’t webbed. That’s why moorhens can’t swim as fast as ducks.”

  The remaining drawings showed more evidence of this strange boy’s way of seeing. As she leafed through them, she began to understand. He was fascinated by utility. Where a courtly artist might profess to find beauty, he saw none. For him, beauty lay in function. She almost felt amused, but his manner was so solemn and his obsession with detail so remarkable that she did not dare to risk a flippant remark. Instead, having herself tied the ribbons in neater bows than they had had before, she merely gave the folder back.

  “I’m sure my father would like to see your drawings,” she said. “They’re very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I mean it,” she said. He was talented, in the way that the cathedral-men were talented, though as yet undeveloped; and she saw that he must take after his father in that way too, just as Godric, in his complaisance and imperturbability, took after his own.

  Since no subject for conversation remained, the two boys departed, and Eloise, having watched them go, and feeling oddly unsettled, turned to pick up her frame.

  5

  The next day, Ralf and his grandfather joined Edwin and most of the other villagers in the fields. On Saturday also they had left the boat beached: this was harvest-time, and Jacob wished to quit, or repay, the debt he owed to Cebert, Edwin’s son.

  Like his father, like Jacob, like all the fishermen, Cebert was a villein regardant, tied only to the manor. Below him were the villeins in gross, belonging body and soul to the lord. The lowliest of these, bordars, laboured merely in lieu of rent. Above them were the cottars, whose families worked no more than a few acres of land.

  Cebert’s acres had been harvested on Saturday. Now the harvesters had moved on, and were cutting demesne as well as villein corn. Here Cebert was discharging his obligations to his neighbours, and to the lord. Jacob had already paid him in coin for much of his contribution in the past year. By working today, with Ralf’s help, Jacob’s quit would be fully made.

  The village arable consisted of a dozen large fields, some as much as two hundred acres in extent. Each was divided into narrow strips, measured according to the pole, five and a half yards long: the Steward kept the manor’s standard pole at the Hall.

  Strips were four poles wide and twenty or forty poles long. A forty-pole strip covered an area of one acre. Its length, two hundred and twenty yards, made a furrow’s-length or furlong, and it was the ridges left by the ploughboard itself which divided one man’s strip from his neighbours’.

  Today they were harvesting the largest field in the manor, stretching all the way from the staith-track to the edge of the Severals. The Baron’s demesne strips were mixed in with his serfs’. Some of the strips lay fallow, and a few held other crops, but most had been sown with wheat. In inland manors, the heads of wheat alone were cut, with sickles, leaving the stalks to stand till the first frosts, when they became brittle and could be broken off and used as thatching straw. But here, as in other places yielding reeds, the stalks were cut as close as possible to the ground and, after threshing, used only as fodder. In this way, ploughing and a new sowing could proceed as soon as the stubble had been burnt.

  Nearly every serf, of every class, participated in the harvest. The men and older boys cut the corn; the women and children gathered the cut stalks and tied them into sheaves. Twelve sheaves, set on end and supporting each other, formed a shock. The shocks from each strip were assessed by the Steward and, while the weather remained fine, would be left where they stood. As soon as rain threatened, the shocks would be collected by cart and taken for threshing.

  Last year Ralf had done no more than help with the gathering, but this year, now he was twelve, he was expected to cut.

  The reapers started once the dew had dried. Ralf felt the muscles of his arms and shoulders, which had been aching since Saturday, becoming looser, freer. He soon picked up the swing again, and by the time the sun had burned off the freshness of the morning he was engrossed in the rhythm of the line.

  The Steward, on horseback, came down once. There was a short water-break at the mid-morning sequent, and then the cutting resumed.

  The blue above and behind, turning ever deeper and darker, sparkled with bits of straw, rising, drifting, settling. White dust rose from the ground. Ralf’s ears were filled with the swish of blades, his own the loudest. Those without scythes, raking, making sheaves and shocks, might have been dumb for all he knew.

  As he worked, his mind was wandering as if in a dream, coloured by yesterday’s visit to the Hall. He had seen the Baron’s hawks and hounds and horses. Godric had shown him the formal garden with its low, clipped hedges of yew and box, and plucked a leaf or two from the aromatic herbs in the physic garden where, he said, his mother the Baroness herself cultivated many of the plants. They had explored the house, the high, smoke-blackened hall, the buttery, kitchen and pantry, and Godric had taken him up the tower to see the view.

  The more time Ralf spent with Godric, the better he liked him. He had never had such a close friend before.

  Godric had been right about his sister, Eloise: he and she had nothing in common. Where he was open and enthusiastic, she was cool and withdrawn, standing upon ceremony. “Do you never draw people?” she had asked, a remark which had cut Ralf deeply, for it revealed the loneliness behind his drawing and the reason why he found it so soothing.

  He had sensed her opinion of his threadbare clothes and clumsy manners; and in the end, when she had handed the drawings back, her praise had been as sterile as it had been conventional. It would have been better if she had said nothing.

  Since yesterday he had wavered somewhat in his judgement of her. He wondered if he might have been influenced by her d
ark eyes and darker hair, by her trim figure, or the ladylike way she spoke and moved. Godric had told him about her elder sister, now a countess. That sister could hardly be more beautiful: so what would the younger become when, in due course, her father married her off?

  She was high born, destined for a higher place yet. He was destined for – nothing. Not even an apprenticeship. Perhaps, he thought, he had been too quick to take offence. Then he remembered the amusement in her eyes and slashed with renewed violence at the standing crop.

  The reapers on either hand were grown men, practised by years of harvest, and Ralf, as on Saturday, was finding it increasingly hard to keep up with them. For him it was punishing work, heavier than anything in the boat. For them it would be easier, and he suspected they were not driving themselves too hard. They would be cutting for at least ten days more.

  “Break,” the Reeve told him. He dropped back while another boy took his place, and joined those making sheaves. Then he was brought forward again.

  When at last the noon bell chimed and Ralf, straightening up with all the others, found he could legitimately stop work, he stood mopping his brow and staring without comprehension at the ground they had made. He tried to count the number of strips laid bare, but sweat ran into his eyes.

  What little breeze there was, coming in off the harbour, was being blocked by the dike and the trees at its base. The sun was so strong that the harvesters walked over there to sprawl in the shade and take their meal.

  His mother and sister were at the far end of the group, among the other women and children, partly obscured by an outgrowth of holly and butcher’s-broom. Ralf sat down with his grandfather.

  The air smelled of seaweed. He could hear the piping of oystercatchers in the estuary behind him, and for a hopeless moment longed to be wandering the shore.

  In a haze of fatigue, his throat parched, Ralf ate his bread and mutton, munched a green apple, and took draughts of musty water, poured from leather bags. Saturday had been bad enough: he had been exhausted by this stage then, but somehow today was far worse. He was dreading the afternoon, the expanse of time before the evening bell. Compared with that, this morning had been nothing.

  Next to him, Jacob was already stretched at full length, a forearm across his eyes. His food remained untouched.

  “Grandfather?” Ralf said, feeling his first stab of alarm.

  Silence.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Don’t you want your dinner?”

  “Let me rest, Ralf.”

  “Shall I get Mr Kenway?”

  Jacob sat up. Even in the dim light under the trees, he looked awful. Until now Ralf had forgotten how old he was.

  “Please, Grandfather, I want you to go home. Your quit doesn’t matter. I’ll cut again tomorrow. Edwin will understand.”

  Eaton Rendell, just beyond Jacob, leaning on one elbow, was watching. About thirty, with red hair and beard, he lived in one of the adjoining cottages. “Jacob,” he said.

  “What do you want?”

  “Listen to the boy. You’re done up. Anyone can see that.”

  Ralf felt his heart swell with gratitude. He had never much liked Eaton; or Eaton had never much liked him. He was grumpy, and sometimes shouted at his wife and children.

  Jacob said, “Mind your own business, Eaton.”

  “Don’t be an arse.” Eaton got to his feet. “Ralf, see if you can make him drink some water.” With that he went to speak to the Reeve, who returned with him half a minute later.

  “Farlow,” Mr Kenway said, “you’re finished for today.” He looked over his shoulder and then down at Ralf. “Fetch your mother.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Ralf and Anna and Imogen arrived, Jacob was saying, “I tell you, I don’t want no fuss. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  Mr Kenway ignored him. To Ralf he said, “No fishing tomorrow. The day’s void for you and him. If he wants to launch on Wednesday, he must come and see me first. Maw can cut tomorrow. That’ll serve in your grandfather’s quit.” He dropped to his haunches. Anna, an arm round her father’s shoulders, had been trying to persuade him to return to the village. “You’ll have to go with her, Farlow. I won’t let you work any more today. Mrs Grigg, make sure he rests tomorrow as well.”

  “I will.”

  They retreated across the stubble. Ralf sat down again. He felt cold. Those three people, and his beloved father, were all he had in the world. If something happened to his grandfather, if he died, Ralf did not know what he would do. Jacob was sixty-five or sixty-six, one of the oldest people in Mape. Never before, to Ralf’s knowledge, had he missed a moment’s work. He sailed at all hours and in all but the worst weather. Yet he was mortal. Like his wife, he too would eventually make a forlorn mound in the churchyard.

  Ralf’s eyes had filled with tears.

  “Don’t you worry about old Jacob,” he heard Eaton say. “Strong as an ox, that one. The heat got him, that’s all. Could get any of us.”

  Ralf hurriedly wiped his eyes.

  “You want to watch it out there yourself,” Eaton continued. “Keep your hat on. It gets sweaty, I know, but you’ve got to keep your hat on all the same.”

  Despite himself, Ralf smiled.

  “That’s it, young ’un. Cheer up. If it gets too hard this afternoon, you stop and tell Mr Kenway. Who’s the quit for?”

  “Cebert.”

  “What, him?” Eaton turned his head. “Cebert! Hey!”

  “What d’you want?” Cebert shouted back.

  “A word!”

  “Please,” Ralf said. “I don’t mind. I’ll work the quit.”

  “You sound like your grandpa.” He tossed his head at Cebert, who, having stepped over a number of legs and bodies to reach them, now squatted on the ground.

  “What is it you want?”

  “A favour. You saw old Jacob go.”

  “I did.”

  “Your dad’s not fishing his day tomorrow.”

  “I know that. He’s to give it to me.”

  “Ralf here still owes you this afternoon.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Look at him. He’s broke.”

  Examining Ralf, Cebert stroked his beard. His eyes swivelled craftily back to Eaton. “He looks all right to me.”

  “I don’t mind working,” Ralf insisted, but he had already been excluded from the conversation. He did not understand what was passing between these two men.

  The subtle system of obligation and quits was central to the way the village worked. It was the basic currency of the serfs. They might sell their free produce at market, or to the dealers who came; some might even have a hidden hoard of coins, and be reckoned rich; but all had to give part of their week to the manor. Unless voided by the Steward or his reeve, a fief-day had to be worked, no matter what. The same applied to the quits arranged among themselves. If ever a man was so foolish as to renege on his obligation to another, he would immediately find his life impossible. No one would ever help him again.

  “Let him stop at the afternoon bell,” Eaton said. “He’s my neighbour. And yours, you stingy goat.” He jerked a thumb towards the place where Edwin was sitting. “If you don’t know it yourself, ask your old man how Ralf works in that tub.”

  Cebert grunted. “His mother and sister have walked off, too.”

  “How long have I known you, Cebert?”

  “Always.”

  “Do I ever work short?”

  Ralf wanted to protest again, but in truth he did not even know whether he would be able to scythe as far as mid afternoon, never mind the evening. He saw Cebert’s expression change.

  “The afternoon bell, you say?”

  “As a favour to me.”

  “All right.” To Ralf he said, “Work till then, Ralf, and we’ll call it quits.”

  * * *

  Having taken their constitutional walk, Eloise, her mother, and Aunt Matilde returned to the Hall and th
e dayroom, to be served with barley-water and almond biscuits by the pantry maid. Though they had all worn broad-brimmed hats and had not walked far – just to the church and a little way along the dike – the sky over the marshes was so glaring and the wind so hot that Aunt Matilde, in particular, had soon felt faint and much in need of refreshment.

  As the maid filled her cup, Matilde noticed the portfolio, left by her brother-in-law on a low oak table under the window.

  “What is that, Margaret?” she asked Eloise’s mother.

  “Some drawings, by a village boy. Gervase wanted to see them.”

  “Drawings? By a serf?”

  “His mother was a serf, but his father is freeborn. The shipwright. You know.”

  “Do I?”

  “Grigg.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “It seems the son was in the cathedral school. For a time.”

  “Really?” Matilde looked again at the portfolio. “Did the drawings please him?”

  “Whom?”

  “Gervase.”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Eloise, would you mind?” said Matilde, beckoning at the portfolio, indicating that she wished to see it. Chin raised, lips pursed, she turned the first few pages, but soon gave it back. “Have you seen them?”

  “Yesterday, Aunt.”

  “What do you think?”

  “He shows skill, as Father Pickard told Papa.”

  “What sort of boy is he?”

  “Godric’s new friend,” the Baroness interjected. “Godric has these crazes. I expect he’ll be forgotten next week.”

  The conversation moved on. Eloise, having, for the third time, tied the ribbons, slid the portfolio back on the table, where, unmoving and silent, it gradually became so reproachful that she consciously turned away. She had not informed her mother, as she ought, that Godric’s friend was not some new craze. She had not said, as she ought, that Godric spoke of him with warmth and admiration; and she had not said, as she ought, that she had examined his drawings again this morning, on her own, at length, and found in them something wonderful.

  As far as she could tell from the limited extent of her education in such matters, his technical skill was not yet especially great. His powers of composition seemed instinctive, a matter of taste rather than learning. But his focus, which at first she had found so eccentric, was of a piece with the clarity of his vision. Each subject for his pen was equally valid, or precious, or interesting, and his curiosity inquired into things which most people never even saw.