Time and Tide (14 page)

‘Aye, they are papists, as I understand it. Though they are not devout.'

‘It is, in truth, a way to manage women, when a surplus does abound,' put in Professor Groat, ‘A convent, or a coven, for the meaning is the same. Tis not, you understand, to serve the gentle class, but rather for disposal of the low and common kind.'

Giles returned Meg's grimace. ‘Professor Groat is antick in his ways.'

‘The
letters
, now,' said Hew.

‘Aye, tis pertinent you speak of papists, for he sends the child his creed,' Professor Groat resumed.

Hew nodded, handing him the text. ‘There was a book.'

Bartie Groat examined it. ‘This is the Heidelberg catechism, a tract of the Dutch reformed church. Then Jacob, it appears, was of a different faith. It is a proper missive, from a father to his child. Tis filled with hopes and prayers for her, that she should learn her letters, and live and love full well.'

‘He must have been a man of rank and means, that taught a little lass to read and write,' reflected Meg.

Her brother shook his head. ‘Not so, of necessity. The nuns will have a school. Tis common, in the low lands, for simple folk to read.'

‘Truly? Then I like that place. It seems that he foresaw a life for her, outside the nunnery. God bless him for a fit and loving father,' Meg approved.

‘He bids her well, commends her to her mother, and to God. Affecting, aye, but unremarkable. The letter to his mistress tells a darker tale.' Professor Groat looked up, his spectacles askew. ‘I think there is no optick glass could colour it more brightly, except it were the prism of his tears.'

This was said with such simplicity, and so sincerely meant, that Hew and Giles both glanced at once at Meg, who shook her head emphatically. ‘No matter, though, I want to hear.'

‘A moment,' Giles requested, ‘and a quill and paper. I will write it down.'

‘
Dearest, my own, my beloved Beatrix
,' Professor Groat began, once
Giles was settled at his writing slope, ‘and other such effusions of the sort.'

‘You need not read the tender parts,' said Hew. ‘The matter will suffice.'

‘There is nothing less than seemly here, though there is a poignancy,' Professor Groat went on. ‘He writes,
They all are gone; the captain, Henryk, young Joachim, that came with me from Ghent, so filled with spirit and with life. I close my eyes, and I can see his mother in the Vrijdagmarkt
– that is the Friday market –
selling flowers . . . scent of poppy heads and pinks; I hear the peal of bells, the wagons on the cobblestones, bright with copper pans. Tell Joachim's mother that
. . . – this last he has crossed out.'

‘Does he not say what happened to them?' interrupted Giles.

‘He comes to it; tis hard to make it out.
Fair stood the wind when we left Vlissingen.
Vlissingen, that is the place called Flushing, on the river Scheldt,' the professor glossed. ‘
I built my windmill on the upper deck, and painted her bright coat against the white-slopped blueness of a sailors' sky. The shipmaster was pleased, and took me on as timmerman. A windmill, strange to say, is very like a ship.
'

‘Then it was Jacob made the windmill,' Hew concluded thoughtfully.

‘So it would appear.
Then we came north to . . . to market where . . . the men had business, and took on fresh supplies. We sailed up coast to Rotterdam, for casks of Rhenish wine. The schippar and his friends ate well that night. The meat and bread were fresh, though shrivelled up and stale by the time they reached the crew. I made my small supper of biscuit and salt, counting that my debt to the shipmaster was spent. Then, with his death, the matter was discharged.
'

‘Tis pertinent,' said Giles, ‘he mentions what they ate. Yet meat and bread, I fear, are not specific.'

‘Do you wish for the receipt?' Bartie Groat inquired.

‘If he gives it, aye.'

‘
The wind stood fair
,' Professor Groat went on, ‘
and all was well,
and then the weather turned
. . . no, not the weather, something turned,
I know not what
. . .'

‘A moment,' muttered Giles, scratching with his pen, ‘You know not what, or Jacob knew not what?'

‘
I know not . . . know not
something, for the writing is ill writ,' muttered Bartie Groat.

‘That does not surprise me. Aye, go on.'

‘By your leave, I try to. Tis very black and crabbed.
It began with Frans Hanssen, the wine merchant, who suffered flux and creeping of the flesh, and burning in his limbs. He loosened all the stoppers from the wine, saying that the casks were full of blood. It ran like rivers through the hold, spoiling Eyman's cloth, who told me that red gillyflowers had blossomed in his heart, the day before he died
. Now that is quite extraordinary!' Bartie Groat exclaimed. ‘I have not mistaken it. Tis plain poor Copin was quite mad.'

‘Is it, though? Let me see!' demanded Hew.

‘What is it, now you ken the Flemish tongue?' Groat retorted crossly.

‘I would see the hand.'

‘You are an expert, too, in pothooks, I presume?'

Hew had seized the letters back from Bartie Groat and set them side by side, squinting in the candlelight.

‘Your young subordinate is sudden and intemperate,' Groat complained to Giles. ‘It is a fault in him I have observed before.'

Giles conceded cheerfully. ‘It is his finest virtue, and his worst. I find it better, on the whole, to allow him his head. Are you done, Hew? Shall we now proceed?'

‘I am done. Look here.' Hew drew the lantern close, so that the sullen lamplight fell across the page. ‘Do you observe a difference in the hand?'

‘No, none at all. Both are thick and crabbed. Which given what we know about poor Jacob's hands, is not to be remarked on,' Giles reasoned.

‘Aye, but both the same,' reiterated Hew. ‘And to the same degree then, the affliction, would ye say?'

‘I should say so, aye,' his friend agreed.

‘Then written at one time. And yet the letter to his child, by your own account,' Hew turned to Bartie Groat, ‘is proper and right reasoned. Wherefore we may suppose the other is a clear account, of events that made no sense to him. It was not want of wit, that baffled understanding.'

‘Ingenious,' admitted Giles. ‘Now what more does he say?'

Groat took up the letters with a sideways jab at Hew, ‘If I may, without fear of distraction?
The schippar was a stranger . . . was most strange, he suffered from the grips. He flew into a rage and beat the cook so savagely he had to be restrained. Henryk did not recover from the fright. The schippar was mistrusting, and his manner changed to us. I feared he had suspected me, and found out my intent
– what was that, I wonder? –
but in his franticness he came to hate us all, accusing all alike. His eyes and nose streamed black, like molten lead. All the venturers and more than half the crew were phrensied, mad or sick. Some died shrieking in their beds. Eyman thought he was on fire, and leapt into the sea; the rest we tethered in the hold, and daily flushed them out, the dying from the dead. Our one hope was the steersman, who had kept his wits. He set our course westwards, for Kingston on Hull.

‘
We tried to put ashore, those men who were sick, yet could we find no haven; they feared us like the plague
. . .' Groat faltered. ‘This is very bad.'

‘He says like the plague, he does not say the plague,' insisted Hew. ‘Go on.'

‘. . .
and saw us off with cannon shot. Tobias was persuaded to steer us further north. His hands were pale and mottled, and he could not peg the traverse board, yet I hoped that we might come to Scotland as I planned . . . Lucas and Tobias, myself, and young Joachim; Joachim was the strongest in heart and in limb. And in the hold we held a dozen raging men. We took them one by one. God forgive us what we did; the furies took the devil at his rest. God forgive us, but they would not let us land.
'

‘What was it that they did?' Meg whispered fearfully.

Her brother shook his head. ‘Who knows? They let the sick men die . . . or worse, perhaps. No port would give them harbour, that is clear. And Jacob had a conscience to the last.'

‘Tis clear enough his fellows were possessed,' Bartie Groat affirmed. ‘And Jacob was well rid of them.'

‘
Nothing
yet is clear,' insisted Giles. ‘Are we at the end?'

‘The end is most affecting.' Bartie blew his nose.

‘
Lucas and Tobias both are gone, and Joachim, too; the fury came upon him at the last. Tobias met a stranger fate; I dare not say a quiet one.

‘
The wind has dropped, the water now is still, and there is nothing but the sea and sky. I put my trust in God, yet find no answer in the wilderness of grey, as if the world is empty, disappeared. The stillness is a curse, but I am not afraid to die. I close my eyes and look upon your face, and I hear Lotte's laughter in my dreams.

‘
I fear you will not know me, for I cannot send your ring, as fixed upon my finger as your likeness on my heart. Sometimes, it grows hot, and burns me like a fire, and yet I will not mind it; tis a part of you. I do confess, it troubles me that I do not return it. How are you to know me, if I do not send the ring? But I remember then, that this will never reach you, unless the wind that took away my world takes pity on my soul and moves to seek you out.

And how then should you know me, when I do not know myself?

The wind is still, and I am lost.

You will not hear.

Your Copin.

‘Dear, dear,' said Bartie Groat. He became a little agitated, fumbling through his clothes for a clutch of pocket handkerchiefs, on which he wiped his spectacles, his hands and eyes and nose. A line from one of George Buchanan's psalms came fleeting to Hew's mind:
mens fraudis expers. Et manus innocens
. Like Pontius Pilate, Bartie washed his hands, or rather, blew his nose, of knowledge and of sin. ‘Weak bairns and feckless wives would weep at such a tale,' said Bartie, and
blew his nose again. ‘Now the hour is late; the college gates will close. Tis time that this old man went homeward to his bed.'

Giles recovered quickly. ‘I will walk with you.'

‘Ah, no need, indeed,' the old man said. ‘For I shall take a turn, to contemplate the moon, before the watchman tolls. The stars are bright tonight; I sense a frost.'

‘Indeed, the air is cold. You must not stay out long. I will walk you home, I do insist,' said Giles. It was plain that Bartie was now anxious to be gone. Giles trailed him as he shuffled to the door and out into the night. The lanterns in the street were lit, the faintest flare of hornbeam from the castle gate and cookshop, a narrow yellow curvature beneath the quiet moon.

Inside the chamber, Matthew whimpered in his sleep. Meg scooped him up, and brushed her lips against his milkiness, breathing in the softness of his cheek. She brought the infant closer to the firelight, standing with her back to Hew. ‘You could send the letters, could you not?'

Her brother answered softly. ‘We could put them in a packet to Campvere, from where they might be taken to the beguinage in Ghent. Their passage there would not be safe assured, for the low lands are at war. And yet there is a chance; it could be done.' He pictured Beatrix, waiting, with her little daughter and wondered what a packet of this sort could mean to them, whether it were worse, or better, not to know.

‘I wonder how old Lotte is?' Meg's whisper was half buried in the blanket of her child.

Her brother answered, ‘
Don't
.'

‘Or you could send a letter with the ring, to say the ship was wrecked and all were lost, but Jacob died a gentle death, and peaceful in his bed,' Meg pleaded.

‘I could do that, indeed,' said Hew. ‘It is not so very different from the truth. But she would never know the words he wrote to her.' Hew imagined Jacob, scratching on the paper, the pained and slow progression of the blackened finger stubs, spurred on by
thoughts of Beatrix and her child. ‘If you were Beatrix, which you would prefer?' he asked.

‘Oh, do not ask me that!' cried Meg.

‘There is no crueller kindness than the truth,' said Hew. ‘Perhaps we may do both, and send the letters in his hand, together with assurances, that Jacob died at peace.'

‘That would be an answer,' Meg accepted tearfully. ‘Tis almost as if Jacob had two different deaths.'

‘It is,' allowed Hew, ‘exactly like that.'

They were disturbed by Giles returning, with a worried frown. ‘I fear we taxed an old man, more than he could spare,' he fretted. ‘I confess, it vexes me, for I had not expected it of Bartie Groat. He babbled on, of conjurers and ghosts, his logic disappearing in a cloud of smoke. Such terrors are contagious. Pray God he does not spread them.'

‘He has a small acquaintance,' Hew said reassuringly.

Giles was unconvinced. ‘His fellowship is serving men, laundresses and boys. He has repercussions of a most pernicious kind. I fear that we were reckless, when we set him the task. I had not bargained he would take such fright at it, bolting like Gib Hunter from the hounds of Hell. I have enjoined him, most soberly, to keep the matter secret. Let's hope he does not prattle it.' He broke off to remark, ‘You have been crying, Meg!'

Meg wiped her eyes. ‘My wits are turned to water since the bairn was born,' she excused herself.

‘It is not the bairn. It is this sad report, which does affect us all,' Giles answered soberly. ‘Yet you are the one person in the world I can rely upon, when the whole wide world is lurching, from dizzy lack of sense. You are not thrawn by fears, like Bartie Groat. So set aside your tears, and look upon the matter in the harsh light of the day; be cold, and analytical; and tell me plainly, what do you make of this madness?'