The Tide Mill Read online

  All this would have been strange enough on its own, but there was more. Godric was the son of Lord de Maepe, inheritor and ruler of this manor. The Baron controlled his serfs in the same way that he controlled his fields and boats. He had controlled Ralf’s mother, too, until the moment when he had chosen, on a whim, to let the manor part with her.

  Ralf had been born free, but from necessity was almost becoming a serf himself. “We depend on the Seigneur,” his mother had told him, and it was so. Hauling up crab-pots, Ralf was as much a serf as his grandfather.

  In the flux of the city, rank might be less rigidly observed than was considered proper. Sometimes the guildsmen at his father’s yard had called each other by their unadorned forenames, instead of “Brother This” or “Brother That”; sometimes, while working, when accidental touch had been made of his father’s hand or arm, no apology to the master had been made or even expected; and sometimes, when his father had passed, not every man had stood aside and lowered his head. It had been the same in the street, and in the houses of Ralf’s schoolfriends. He had heard the loss of distinction deplored, denounced as an indecent and sorry sign of the times.

  In the country, though, nothing had changed, which made it all the harder to understand why Godric’s father permitted his son such licence. Ralf could ascribe it only to the former status of his own father. The Baron addressed him as “Master”, even though his licence was in abeyance; and he had addressed Ralf not as “Grigg”, but by his Christian name. Godric’s mother, it was true, treated Ralf in the expected way. So did his sister. Surely she had been offended by the form of Godric’s introduction on Sunday. Her scorn had followed Mr Grigg along the shingle path; had rested, for a moment, upon him again today. How clownish he must have seemed, crouching there, pondering over gate-hinges!

  “Take no notice of her.” Sound advice from one who knew, from one inside her family, impervious to her dark-eyed snares.

  The biscuits were eaten, and the cheese. They ate the plums, and vied with each other to see who could spit the farthest stone. Godric won.

  He took a drink of water and said, “I don’t suppose I’ll ever come here again.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Once I’m at Leckbourne, that’ll be the end of it.”

  The Abbey was at least twenty miles away. Godric was due there in November, on his fourteenth birthday. He would be allowed home for four days a month, and for two weeks at both Christmas and Easter. Ralf had clung to the idea of these visits and tried not to think of the truth of the matter. As Godric grew older, his studies and contemplation would become more and more demanding. When he was twenty-one he would be absorbed into the Church and might be sent anywhere, even to Rome.

  Godric pulled a face, expressing wistfulness, resignation. For the first time since that grey, windy evening in the saltings, Ralf felt sorry for him.

  “Don’t you want to go?”

  At first he did not answer, or even look at Ralf, but stared out to sea. Nothing could be heard but the wind and the distant surf.

  “I know you don’t want me to talk about it,” he began, “but I must say this. When we first met … when I got stuck, I was so frightened I can’t tell you. I prayed and pleaded. But, however much I begged God, the water kept on rising. When it reached my chest I knew I was going to die. I tried to prepare. I tried to abandon this life and give myself to him. Even though he hadn’t done what I’d asked.” He plucked a blade of marram and twisted it in his fingers. “Suddenly I thought of Christ on the cross, when he shouted out, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ I couldn’t help myself. It only lasted a second. Then I begged God’s forgiveness. I promised him anything if he’d forgive me. I didn’t mind dying, as long as he didn’t send me to hell.” He glanced at Ralf. “I’d stopped praying for my life. It no longer seemed to matter. I’d left it behind. Then you arrived.”

  Ralf remembered his rigid arms and distracted, mask-like face, and his own certainty that Godric was going to drown.

  “I already belonged to God, but you went and pulled me out anyway.”

  “Would you rather I’d left you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve got no right to be alive. The hardest thing is how sweet it is. Every moment now. It’s quite different.”

  “You think you’ve cheated God?”

  “Yes. But not just that. Once you’ve had that thought, about being forsaken, really had it, I mean, it never goes away.”

  Every hour at the Abbey, from lauds to compline, Godric would have to make proof of his faith. Only faith would see him through the religious and lay studies whose extent and complexity Ralf had glimpsed at the cathedral school. Only faith would sustain him each night, alone in his bed and far from home. Only faith would convince him of his vows, reward him for his abstinence and crown his ordination. Without faith he would be lost.

  Ralf’s recollection of the saltmarsh was the clearest of his life. He said, “When I first tried to pull you out I couldn’t. Do you remember?”

  “O yes, I remember.”

  “Then I prayed for strength.”

  “You did?”

  “I did,” Ralf wanted say: but to tell only half of it would be a terrible lie. As best he could, he described what he had felt.

  “So you don’t really believe,” Godric said, when he had finished. “Except in your own god.”

  “The two are the same. Yours and mine. The one up there and the one down here. If he created the world, they must be the same. He’s everywhere, in everything. If you’ve got doubts,” Ralf went on, hoping that this also applied to him, “if you’re not sure, then that’s his doing too.”

  “Do you believe in the Resurrection?”

  “All I’m saying is that, if you got out of the mud, which you did, it must have been God’s will. If he hadn’t wanted you to, you wouldn’t have lived. There’s no need for you to feel guilty.” He remembered then how he had first noticed Godric’s head, and told him about the way the heron had risen from the borrowdike. “I’d never have seen you, otherwise. Why else did he fly into the wind?”

  “You’re saying God gave you a sign?”

  “If you like. That’s one way to put it.”

  “What’s the other way?”

  “He’s in the heron. He is the heron.”

  Godric expelled his breath.

  “Whether or not I hold every article of faith, I believe in God. I pulled you out, but I couldn’t have done it without him.”

  “He made you his instrument?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “He made me.”

  * * *

  On the way back to the village, for the sake of easy walking, they retraced their footprints in the strip of sand.

  The tide had turned. Its diagonal swash was stretching further and further up the beach: with almost every collapse, every fumbled retreat, the drag of froth and gravel gained half an inch from the flood behind. The wind, backing north-west, had grown stronger, the sea rougher, with white horses. The cloud had thickened. Now and then the sun went in. It was beginning to look like rain: as if the harvest might be disrupted.

  They talked of boyish, inconsequential things, but a division had appeared between them. Ralf had sensed it in the dunes. He could not regret what he had said, only the effect it had produced. He had spoken truthfully, brutally so, but for Godric’s sake, and to give him comfort. In that, at least, he thought he had succeeded.

  Ralf was very tired. Twice he asked if they might sit and rest. While they did so, Godric searched about them for unusual stones, or threw round ones, at intervals, into the waves.

  “This one’s like a sheep,” he said, holding it out for Ralf’s inspection. “That’s the head.”

  Ralf conceded the likeness, as he had with others.

  Without ado the sheep was discarded; Godric uncovered a piece of basalt, smoothed almost to a sphere. Instead of
showing or throwing it, he kept the pebble to himself and, between his palms, continued the work of the sea.

  The silence grew. Ralf watched him. “What’s wrong?”

  Godric shrugged.

  “You’re angry.”

  “I’m not angry.” He paused. “But you shouldn’t have said that about the heron. About its being God. That’s blasphemy. And what you said afterwards. It’s like saying you yourself are God. As if there’s no need for the Church.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know. I know what you meant.” He turned to look into Ralf’s face. “Aren’t you afraid of what’ll happen to your immortal soul?”

  Ralf thought of all his resolutions to become devout. He thought of his inability to stand in church without regretting the loss of time; of his wandering attention during the lesson; and even of his suppressed smirk as the Baron’s singing led the rest. His impiety was incorrigible and deep-seated. He had always felt the same.

  “These ideas are wicked, Ralf,” Godric said. “I hope you haven’t spoken of them to anyone else.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Good.”

  “I want to ask you,” Ralf said. “What should I do?”

  They resumed walking. Ralf listened to Godric’s earnest suggestions about prayer and paying closer heed to Father Pickard, and knew at heart that he would never follow any of them. The lecture made Godric feel better. Ralf’s submission to it seemed a small price to pay. Yet his acquiescence was also a form of deceit. It made between them a division of another kind, one of which Godric was unaware.

  When at long last they reached the stock-gate by the church and closed it after them, Ralf saw how unreasonable he had been in expecting blind unanimity. There was more to friendship than that. If he were to respect Godric, he had also to respect his differences.

  The sky had completely greyed, and the sticky churchyard limes, heavy now with summer, were again in motion, turning their mass of foliage to show pale undersides; and were even, Ralf noticed, shedding a few premature leaves.

  “Rain’s coming,” he said. “For sure.”

  “So’s the autumn. You can feel it.”

  Once more they paused by the other gate, under the venerable yew whose fissured bole long predated the church itself. For no reason that he understood, Ralf put out his hand. “I’m probably working tomorrow,” he said.

  “Don’t get too wet.”

  Later, as the first drops pattered against the shutter, Ralf knew why he had wanted to shake Godric’s hand on parting. The reason was simple.

  If the previous day had been the most miserable he had ever known, then this might well have been the happiest.

  8

  “No, the meaning is subtler than that,” Father Pickard said, peering at Ralf, who was seated beside him at the table. “The adjective comes from the verb ‘beo’, I bless or make fortunate. That in turn is connected with ‘bonus’. Horace has this phrase: ‘agricolae prisci, fortes parvoque beati’.” The priest inclined his head and gave that patient smile which meant Ralf was supposed to translate.

  This was the second Saturday following Ralf’s visit to the Point. Almost as soon as he had returned from the staith, he had crossed the green to Father Pickard’s house.

  “Priscus?” Ralf said.

  “Ancient, of old.”

  “Ancient farmers were strong and blessed with little? A little? Brave and blessed?”

  “No, Ralf.”

  “Agricola. That’s a farmer. Masculine. ‘Beati’ agrees. Is ‘parvo’ in the ablative?”

  “Yes, it is, but there is no understood verb. Agricolae prisci, fortes parvoque beati. ‘Farmers of old, strong and blessed with little’. They were happy with little means: not just content, but blessed. Favoured.” He looked again at the parchment Ralf had brought him, a fair copy and translation of the beatitudes. At his elbow, duly lying open at St Matthew, Chapter Five, was the copy of the New Testament that he had just recruited in his weekly attempts to improve Ralf’s Latin.

  The text had been chosen at Ralf’s request, prompted by what Godric had said on the way out to the beach. At first, Father Pickard had resisted. It was his role to read and interpret Scripture, and the congregation’s to listen. Latin, and hence much of the Mass, was unintelligible to all except the educated few. Here in Mape the Bible was read by, at most, four other people. It was all very well to help Ralf with his schoolboy Latin, but another matter entirely to make his the sixth pair of eyes capable of reading holy writ. Ralf had been taken aback by the vehemence of his refusal. Then Father Pickard had asked which part of the gospel he wished to study, and at the words “Sermon on the Mount” had softened immediately. He had told Ralf that this was his favourite passage, not just in the New Testament, but in the whole Bible. And so, last week, he had let Ralf look at, if not actually touch, the precious book.

  “I do like your script,” Father Pickard told him, not realizing, perhaps, that he had said this many times before. Ralf automatically thanked him for the compliment, but appeared not to have been heard.

  Except for Mrs Creech, who came in once a day to clean and to prepare his main meal, the priest lived alone. His cottage was scarcely better than those of most of his flock, though this downstairs room had a flagstone floor, two brass lamps, and a newish oak dresser which might not have looked out of place in the Hall.

  To Ralf, Father Pickard seemed old. If pressed, he might have said that he was older than his father and younger than Jacob: Ralf just thought him old. He had lost much of his hair. His beard was grizzled, he breathed heavily, and his coarse serge habit smelled of some indefinable condiment, like garlic. He knew Latin better than any of the masters at the school. Though Ralf thought he liked Father Pickard, he was still a little afraid of him.

  Father Pickard continued reading. “Beati pacifici quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur … blessed are the peacemakers, because they shall be called … not ‘sons’, I should say, but ‘children’ of God. Or ‘the children’ of God. Women can be peacemakers too, you know.” Speaking more quietly now, to himself, he went on. “Beati estis cum maledixerint vobis … blessed are you, when they speak ill of you, and persecute you, and … on account of me … ‘propter me’, here, I think, is better translated by ‘for my sake’ … great is your reward in heaven, sic enim persecuti sunt prophetas qui fuerunt ante vos. Yes. Yes, quite so.” He had come to the end. “No mistakes. Good, Ralf. I do believe some of it’s sticking in that noddle of yours.”

  Ralf thanked him again.

  “And the beatitudes themselves. Are you trying to understand what lies behind?”

  “Yes, Father Pickard.”

  “Memorize them, and live in Christ. The latter, alas, is not quite so easy.”

  He now went through verses thirty-eight to forty-eight, explaining unknown words and constructions while his pupil scribbled notes on a slate. After that, the priest left Ralf alone to copy out the text.

  As before, he left space below each line for the English translation, which he would make at home, before presenting the whole to his teacher the Saturday following.

  Father Pickard had provided the parchment; Ralf had brought his own pens and pen-knife and a horn of ink. The ink he made himself, every autumn, from the strained and diluted remains of the shaggy-cap fungus. This grew commonly on roadsides, or in any grassy place, so the ink was free. Most of the other boys at Alincester, especially the poorer ones, had used the same recipe. The ink flowed so well and remained so black that Ralf preferred it to anything that could be bought.

  For his pens he used goose-quills. These also cost him nothing, and he could not have hoped for a better source than Mape Marsh, where thousands of geese spent the winter. Goose made a smoother and more durable nib than everything except swan. For drawing, it was superior, since it could be shaped into any tip from the finest to the most broad.

  Today the thumb and first two fingers on his right hand were again staining black. As he painstakingly co
pied the verses, he was conscious of the pleasure of forming his letters. The script he had been taught in Alincester formed no more than the basis of the one he used now. He was still experimenting with letter-shapes, strokes, sweeps, flourishes. The old-fashioned scribe who had filled these closely-packed parchment pages had employed a particularly handsome g which Ralf was trying to emulate.

  There were illuminated capitals at the head of each gospel. The book had little decoration other than this, and a much worn binding. It was the only book in Mape outside the Hall or here, in Father’s Pickard’s house. Father Pickard owned a copy of the Epistles of Horace, inscribed by himself, together with a pocket Bible and assorted extracts from Juvenal, Ovid and Statius. The Baron also had a Bible, Book One of The Aeneid and part of the Categories of Aristotle with commentaries by Boethius, which he had purchased for Godric.

  Ralf had no feeling for Latin, other than for its ruthless precision. The words fitted together like the parts of a machine.

  Latin was the language of learning and administration, essential to those destined for higher things. He was no longer sure why he continued to bother with it. The pretence pleased his parents, and especially his mother: and it pleased Father Pickard, who seemed fond of him. The lessons had been going on ever since he had come to Mape.

  When he got home, Ralf found his father there. As usual, he had walked the seven miles from Rushton. Once he had finished eating, he gave Ralf the disquieting news that he wished to talk to him and suggested that they went outside.

  The day was overcast, though dry. Beyond the hedge dividing Jacob’s front garden from the roadway, the village green rose towards a clump of three English oaks. Under the largest of these stood an old bench. The ground just in front of it, bare of grass, was littered with small twigs and a few husks and cups of acorns.

  “Ralf, how would you feel about working at Rushton?”

  He had been twice to the boatyard where his father was employed, ostensibly just to look, but also to be shown. Last winter Linsell had tried to secure him an apprenticeship.