The Tide Mill Read online

  This morning, lingering again over the sketches of Godric’s bird, she thought she had discerned tenderness as well: but the prime allure, the insidious charm, of his work lay in his ability to expunge himself from it. Every painting she had seen hitherto, every sculpture, had been as much about the artist, or his patron, as its subject. These drawings told one nothing about Ralf Grigg; or everything.

  She was not too young to have felt the effect of his eyes, or to have observed how well he filled his clothes, and now, thinking back, she acknowledged that she had been noticing him every Sunday in church. That was why, yesterday, she had paused to watch him and Godric from her chamber window; and that was why, as they had crossed the box walk, she had drawn back in case they should look up and see.

  “More barley-water, Miss?” the maid said, with a certain insistence, and Eloise realized with a start that the question had just been put to her for the second time.

  * * *

  Ralf remained with the harvesters until they trudged back to the village. At the afternoon bell, instead of leaving, he had given up reaping and worked at gathering instead. Without mentioning it, Cebert, and those to whom Cebert owed Ralf’s quit, had apparently noted this willingness: Ralf was not sure how else to explain their change in behaviour towards him. Their antagonism had vanished.

  Puzzling about this while he raked, he recalled Eaton’s kindly intercession and puzzled even further, for at that time nothing had changed except his grandfather’s fitness to go on. Had Eaton, had the rest of them, pitied Ralf’s tears? But then why did Eaton, even before then, take such pains to get Jacob excused? Until today Ralf had known Eaton only as a disagreeable neighbour whose relations with Jacob had been far from cordial.

  Whatever the reason, Ralf was surprised to find how glad, and how grateful, he felt to be welcomed back into the village fold. Two of the boys who had recently become hostile, John Hollins and Aholiab Peake, shared a joke with him at the final water-break and, despite his anxiety about Jacob, Ralf even found himself laughing aloud.

  When he got home, his grandfather was resting upstairs. He felt much better, Anna said, and had slept. She told Ralf that it was nothing serious, and he was not to worry.

  “He shouldn’t be working in the fields,” she said. “He’s not used to it. And neither are you. You especially shouldn’t be in the fields.”

  Ralf was sitting at the kitchen table while his mother served his meal. Imogen, having already eaten, had gone out to play.

  He was still perplexed by the conversation between Eaton and Cebert. He began to ask his mother what it had meant. As he described what had happened, she seemed to forget what she was doing and sat down heavily, staring across the table at him in horror.

  “Is that what he said? ‘As a favour’?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Eaton said ‘as a favour’? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “O Ralf!”

  “What is it?”

  She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and put her face in her hands. He heard an intake of breath and she began to weep, quietly at first, and then, as he rose to his feet, uncontrollably.

  “Mother, what is it?”

  “Ralf, Ralf!” she cried, accepting his embrace, holding him close. Her softness, her smell, her warmth, transported him back to his helpless days, to the time of Alincester, of his fearful beginning at the school, and in his anguish he began to cry too. “You weren’t to know,” she sobbed. “O God I hate this village! O dear God!”

  “What have I done?”

  “Nothing. You’ve done nothing. Except living here. Except being born under Bishop William. O Sweet Jesus! I can’t bear it!”

  She disengaged herself and with her apron dabbed at her swollen eyes. “I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry.”

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “You’ve put us under obligation to the Rendells.”

  “But —”

  “Ralf, your father is a freeman. So are you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They’re bordars. Nothing. Less than nothing.”

  “But Grandfather —”

  “Grandfather is a regardant. He’d never accept favour from the Rendells. Never. Not unless he set the terms.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “You can’t understand it, Ralf. I don’t want you to understand it. You weren’t born a serf. And for that, and that alone, I thank God.” She sniffed and tried to put her face to rights, brushing back the hair from her forehead.

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. Yet. We’ll have to live it down. Then I’ll take something to Eaton’s wife. Fish. Dressed crab. Something. She’ll sneer, but she’ll have to accept.”

  After supper he was too tired to do anything but go to bed. Imogen was still downstairs, with her mother. Grandfather had joined them, and Ralf could hear the muffled tones of his voice. What were they talking about? The Rendells?

  Ralf had never been so miserable. All afternoon he had imagined that Eaton’s actions had sprung from kindness. Why else would he have been so quick to speak to Mr Kenway, if not actuated by selfless concern? Ralf now knew his real motive: to get Jacob out of the way.

  The thought was horrible. Ralf could not believe anyone capable of such nastiness. And Cebert, too, with whom Ralf had so many times worked in the boat! And all the others, all who had smiled on him: were they too no better than Eaton? Did they hate him because he was freeborn and they were not?

  He would never forgive what they had done to his mother.

  For some minutes a bar of the setting sun, admitted by the vertical gap at the edge of the shutter, had been traversing the rough brown surface of the wall, rising and changing shape as it passed across the things on Imogen’s shelves. It reached the corner and turned, moving towards her bed; and slowly, imperceptibly from moment to moment, grew fainter and more slender.

  If it got as far as the nearest bedpost, he told himself, then he would be wrong about them. But that also meant his mother would be wrong, and she had been born a serf.

  Part of his mind was still questioning Eaton’s motives for speaking to Mr Kenway. As it sought to explore further, it uncovered an older and even more disturbing wound. What if all this stemmed from his friendship with Godric? What if, yesterday in the churchyard, they had marked the way the Baron had singled him out?

  There were no secrets in Mape. They would know he had been to the Hall.

  The strip of light became a sliver, a trembling filament, straining to stay alive, still moving rightwards. Ralf watched its final, melancholy moment of waning, half an inch short of the top of the post.

  He had no friends. He did not belong here. He belonged in the city, with the craftsmen, the traders, the men of free birth.

  Only Godric. Godric was his friend. In the cottages there was nobody. Nor, but for Godric, at the Hall. The people there were worse than the serfs. Far from envying him, they looked down their nose.

  Ralf had his family, and, he thought, he hoped, he had Godric. He needed no one else. He would have nothing to do with Eaton and nothing to do with Cebert. He would rather die than weaken; and he would rather die than, ever again, be made to feel small by the likes of Eloise de Maepe.

  6

  After a fitful night, Ralf fell deeply asleep just before dawn. He awoke slowly, groggily, to the chirping of sparrows. When he became conscious of the strength of the daylight and saw his sister’s bed empty, he realized that he had overslept. For a few seconds more his merciful memory withheld the reason.

  He dressed and went downstairs. His mother and Jacob, with Imogen, were weeding carrots in the back garden. By the time Ralf had visited the privy and washed at the tub by the back door, his breakfast of oatmeal and hazels was ready. Imogen and his grandfather remained outside.

  “Ralf,” his mother said, spooning honey into his bowl, “why don’t you go out somewhere this morning? Get away from the
village. Go beachcombing.”

  “Yes. I might.” He felt drained, listless, but the idea had already occurred to him, not so much of beachcombing, but of putting as much distance as he could between himself and the Rendells’ cottage.

  He poured more goat’s-milk from the earthenware jug. His mother sat down opposite him, in her usual place, the one she had occupied yesterday evening. “Take some dinner. Make it a day. There’s nothing I need you to do.”

  He turned, aware of movement in the open front doorway: and was astonished by the sight of Godric hesitating there, with the portfolio. At once Ralf felt all the squalor and poverty of his home, and with this a twinge of fear that Jacob or even Imogen might come in and say or do something to show him up. His mother, wiping her hands on her apron, had already risen, and Ralf too now rose to his feet.

  “Please don’t get up, please,” Godric said, in evident pain. “Mrs Grigg, please. I’ve only come to bring Ralf’s drawings. I didn’t think I’d see you here, Ralf.”

  “I’ve got a void.”

  “Not harvesting, then?”

  Ralf shook his head.

  Anna said, “Won’t you come in, sir?”

  “No, I won’t, Mrs Grigg, thank you all the same.”

  “Are you busy?” Ralf asked.

  “No. Not really. I expect I’ll go for a ride later.”

  “I thought I might walk out to the Point.”

  Godric nodded his approbation. “I’ve never been. Not right to the end.”

  “Nor me. Well, we’ve landed there a few times, in the spring.”

  “For the gulls’ eggs?”

  “Yes. But I’ve never done the walk.”

  “It’s a long way.”

  “Are you up to it?”

  “Me? What, now?”

  “Why not?”

  Ralf could see him considering: and then he had agreed, and come inside, into the kitchen, and was sitting at the table while Ralf’s mother busied herself with the supplies they must take to sustain themselves on such an expedition. Ralf and Godric exchanged a glance replete with tolerance of their respective mothers, and of mothers everywhere; and Ralf, half turning, answered such questions as she fired at him. His shoulder-bag became packed with cloth-wrapped bread, cheese, and two slices of gammon – which he knew had been meant for supper tonight; she added six plums, a stoppered jug of this morning’s water, and some biscuits which, like the gammon, Ralf knew could not really be spared. It was more than enough for both of them, more than enough to requite Godric for the small-beer and sweetmeats Ralf had tasted on Sunday.

  Ralf’s listlessness was forgotten. Nothing untoward took place when Imogen and her grandfather were drawn into the kitchen by the sound of an unfamiliar voice and, by the time the two boys set out for the Hall, Ralf felt ashamed of ever having doubted them.

  It was decided that the deerhounds should be left behind. The hobby, which both knew would dislike the beach, was not even mooted. Godric went inside to inform his mother and change his clothes, leaving Ralf sitting on the bench by the west door.

  No one came in or out. The village was unnaturally quiet. Nearly everybody was at the harvest. Ralf savoured the satisfaction of having been noticed in Godric’s company by Mrs Ibbott and Mrs Creech, who, left in charge of the harvesters’ smaller children, had gathered them for games on the green. What Mrs Creech knew in the morning, the whole of Mape knew by eventide.

  Leaving his shoulder-bag on the bench, he got up and crossed the few yards to the gateway, where he had noticed the rusty tholes from which the fortified gates had once been hung. The pins were at least three times the size of any he had ever seen. Horizontal grooves showed where the iron eyelets had worn them away. The bracket section was fluted, either to give it greater rigidity or to allow it to be driven more easily into the oak of the post. Or, he thought, perhaps that shape would make it more stable, reduce its tendency to twist. He now wondered whether the bracket had been hammered in at all: whether an exact mortise had been cut, using a gouge specially shaped for the job. Surely such a simple profile could not support the tremendous weight of the gates, still less withstand a battering-ram. The outer side of the post gave no clue. He went to the other post and palpated the wood opposite the middle thole. Despite its great age and the weathering that had taken place, that surface also seemed perfectly flat. He squatted to examine the bottom one.

  Behind him and to the side, he now heard an imperious female voice. “Have you lost something, young man?”

  He turned to see four women; no: three women and a girl: the Baroness, her daughter Eloise, and two of Godric’s many aunts. They had emerged from the open doorway in silence. For all he knew, they had been standing there watching him.

  It was the Baroness who had spoken. Ralf stammered an explanation in which she evinced no interest. He had been introduced to her on Sunday, but she gave no sign of remembering him. At mention of Godric’s name she appeared to place him, to connect him with the outing she had obviously just sanctioned for her son.

  “Very well,” she said, vaguely, as if giving him permission to be alive.

  The women proceeded through the gateway. Ralf, standing aside, bent his head as they passed, but could not resist looking up when he deemed it safe: and for an instant met the eye of the daughter, who, on the left of an aunt, and walking behind her mother, happened to be closest. Before she turned away he was certain he had seen her features forming into a supercilious smile. She addressed some unheard remark to her companion, no doubt at his expense, and the four of them disappeared in the direction of the green.

  Ralf was determined not to let her affect him.

  “I don’t think your sister likes me,” he said, when Godric had reappeared and heard about the meeting.

  “Take no notice of her,” Godric said.

  * * *

  Gervase leaned back in Walter Caffyn’s seat, which was now facing inwards, away from the writing slope, while the Steward himself sat down on Kenway’s. Stephen Tysoe, the Clerk, was still reading the letter.

  “There’s no mistake,” he told Gervase, looking up. “That’s what it says, all right.”

  The document had arrived this morning with others, by horse, from Alincester. Gervase, having waded through the long-winded, sanctimonious expressions of salutation and regard, had lost patience with the contorted Latin of the final paragraphs, those concealing the nub of the letter. He had given the thing to the Steward to decipher. Walter had then called upon the Clerk to confirm what he thought he had understood.

  “Is there no end to it?” Walter said.

  “No,” said Gervase. “Apparently not.”

  The letter, from the Molarius, or diocesan officer in charge of mills, outlined changes in the way grain was to be reckoned. Whereas previously it had been charged by volume, now it was to be charged by weight: a fairer system to all, the Molarius declared, having due regard to the new and harder strains of wheat which many of his esteemed customers were now producing by virtue of their most excellent management and ingenious husbandry, et cetera, as also having due regard to the advances in drying achieved by many of his esteemed customers, through their most excellent foresight and ingenious industry, and so on and so forth; in consequence of which, petitions from the slightly less ingenious and excellent of his esteemed customers, having been placed before his lord, the Right Reverend and Most Noble Willelmus Briousensis, by the grace of God bishop of Alincester, et cetera, et cetera, had moved His Lordship in his compassion to give ear to their pleas, and accordingly command his panel, and through that august body his humble servant, the undersigned Molarius, to attend to this injustice without delay, wherefore the new tariff was to be observed as from a. d. III Kal. Oct., Anno D. MCCLIII.

  All of which, translated, meant that, in one month’s time, at Michaelmas, the milling charge would again be going up.

  Last year, the charge had been one shilling and threepence a bushel. Now it was to be two and sevenpence a hundredweight.
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br />   The density of grain varied with the variety and the dryness, but a bushel, eight gallons, weighed about sixty-two pounds. There were a hundred and twelve pounds in a hundredweight. Sixty-two divided by a hundred and twelve, multiplied by two and sevenpence, made one and fivepence. The charge per bushel had therefore gone up to one and fivepence: an increase of twopence.

  “Yes,” said Stephen, having examined his arithmetic again. “Tuppence on the bushel. More if the wheat is dense.”

  Wheat was traded by the quarter, twenty-eight pounds. The latest price of unmilled wheat, at Alincester, was six shillings and eightpence-farthing a quarter. First grade flour fetched eight shillings a quarter, so the difference between the prices of grain and flour was one and threepence-threefarthings a quarter. Of that, the Church now wanted sevenpence-threefarthings – nearly half.

  “Eightpence, then,” Walter said. “That’s the best His Lordship will allow us.”

  “It’s hardly worth it,” Gervase said, because from the eightpence had to come the cost of carting the stuff to and from a mill, of sacking and certification for adulteration, dryness and weight. “We might as well use our own mill.”

  But the manor’s pushmill, worked by oxen or horses, was inefficient and kept breaking down. Moreover it took the animals, and their attendant, away from the ploughing where, in autumn, they were most needed.

  The pushmill was classed by the Diocese as a molendinium profanum, using neither wind nor water to drive its stones. If a baron wished to build a molendinium sacrum – a mill driven by the divine forces of wind or water – he would first need to obtain an annual licence from the Church. The cost of this began at three marks and increased steeply, according to the capacity of the mill.