Time and Tide (15 page)

‘That it is a sickness,' Meg concluded.

‘My thoughts, precisely.' Giles looked at his notes. ‘The symptoms are distinct, and of two sorts. The one is madness plain, frantic and
delusional. The other is a putrefaction, gangrene in the limbs. The one afflicts the body, and the other one the mind.'

‘Jacob suffered both,' Hew pointed out.

‘So it seems he did. Yet he was not deluded when he wrote the letter. The frensie came on quickly, and the rot was slow. Jacob's mind was sound, until the last. I do not think that Jacob's madness was the same as theirs. What causes such illusions, as Jacob has described? If we discount the devil, and the occult arts?' mused Giles.

‘Something in their food or drink?' suggested Meg.

Giles nodded. ‘As I think most likely.' He read out from his notes:
he said the casks were full of blood . . . he told me that red gillyflowers had blossomed in his heart.
I had a patient once, who thought his breast contained a flight of birds, and felt their flutter in his ribs, the scrapple of their beaks against his throat.'

‘What happened to him?' Hew inquired.

‘Unhappily, he died. We traced it, in the end, to a surfeit of nutmeg, of which he was inordinately fond. The only man I ever knew, who died of honeyed milk.'

‘Yet dying of a posset often is the way,' said Hew.

‘At someone else's hand,' his friend agreed.

‘Then could it have been nutmeg?' wondered Meg.

‘I do not think it likely,' Giles demurred. ‘For he was most uncommon, and took it to extremes; he bought nutmeg by the pound. Among so large a crew, I cannot think a surfeit is to blame. Poison seems most likely, as it did it before, yet I can only hazard at the source.'

‘You have seen these things before?' concluded Hew.

The doctor nodded. ‘Once before, in France. The symptoms were delirium, and creeping of the flesh, sweeping through a village, like a flame. The cause was counted magic in that case, and the sickness known as
ignis sacer
, holy fire.

They passed the letters on to Andrew Wood, who was not pleased to find they had been read. ‘These letters must at all costs be kept
secret from the town; the terrors they report would put the fear of God into an honest man,' he swore, ‘and scare the wits and water from a wrong one. You are quite sure the sickness here is spent?'

‘I have no doubt,' the doctor said, ‘it died out on the ship. The sickness was a dry pernicious gangrene, known as holy fire, and I begin to have a notion of the cause.'

‘It would oblige us greatly if you found that out.'

‘I will explore my theory, and write to Adam Lonicer.'

‘Write to whom you will,' said Andrew Wood impatiently, ‘As long as you do not spread rumour through the town. You are quite sure,' he asked again, ‘there is no present risk?'

‘Quite sure,' answered Giles.

‘Nor taint upon the windmill, where the man was found?'

‘As I have implied,' said Giles, who rarely would commit himself to matter more direct.

‘And you would stake your life on it?'

‘My reputation, certainly,' the doctor answered huffily.

‘Then that must suffice. Since Jacob was the owner of the mill, and he and all the other men are dead, I think we may declare the ship as wrack,' the coroner declared. ‘The letters will be put before the admiral.'

‘Not yet returned to Beatrix, who may still have a claim?' asked Hew.

‘They may, in due course, be returned. I doubt she will pursue it from a convent house in Ghent. For myself, I had far rather burn them, for they bring nought but consternation, dread and fear. Yet keep the matter close. The brightness of the windmill is a clear, beguiling lure, and the people will forget the manner of its coming, at the prospect of its staying in the town,' decided Andrew Wood.

And so, indeed, they might have done, Hew soon came to reflect, had it not been for the death of Gavan Lang.

The corn mills marked the southern edges of the town, built along  the Kinness Burn, that split the leafy South Street from the mellow swathes of countryside beyond. Most of this land had belonged to the priory, now gradually reclaimed and squeezed into the coffers of the burgh or the Crown. Some was in the keeping of the  college of St Leonard, and other parts had fallen into private hands, to local lairds and landowners, one of whom was brother to the coroner of Fife. Robert Wood owned land and waters westward of the town, on which the Newmill stood. The mill itself was feued out to the miller, Gavan Lang. Gavan was a modest, unambitious man, who took a simple pleasure in the daily grind. He liked the slow monotony and steady pace of work. He liked the flow of water, under his control, close measured to the fineness or the coarseness of the grain, carefully assessed through skill and long experience. He liked the scent of barley, roasted in the kiln, and the soft rub of the flour dust falling through his fingertips. He liked to share, particularly, these pleasures with his son. His son had already begun to acquire the broad, flattered thumb that came from rubbing flour to test it for its fineness. He also had acquired the miller's cough, a dry and rasping husk that kept the boy awake at night. He was eight years old.

The boy caught the flour that ran down from the millstones, and swept it into sacks. He was too small to lift the sacks of grain. When the bell rang, to alert the miller that the hoppers had run dry, he was the quickest on his feet, nipping up the ladder to refill them. This was essential, for if the stones ground dry they would be
damaged, at the best, and at worst would spark a fire, that threatened to ignite the structure of the mill. The water drove the wheel, the wheel turned the stones, the hoppers fed the stones, and the stones ground the flour. Nothing pleased the miller more than to watch this happen smoothly, with Harry by his side.

The mill house was a meeting-place, where people stopped to chatter as they waited for their flour, as fine a place for tittle as the barber shop or kirk. In general, Gavan did not mind the thranging to and fro, and collected scraps of gossip to amuse his wife at suppertime, brightening up her day. He liked those moments, when the three of them were sitting round the fire and the rush of water on the paddles had been stilled, and she looked to him expectantly, for some snippet of a tale. But he liked better still the long hours at the mill, with no one but the boy, who watched him through a solid, concentrating frown, rolling up his sleeves and pulling out his shirt, rubbing with his thumbs, just as Gavan did.

On the day that Gavan died, his pleasure in his work was spoiled by Robert Wood, whose presence placed an obstacle between him and the boy. Robert had stood waiting for a customer to go – a baxter, who had quibbled over flour – before he gave expression to his thoughts. His close and silent scrutiny made Gavan feel uncomfortable. Finally, the baxter left, and Robert broke his silence to demand, ‘Have ye been to look at her?'

‘Aye,' admitted Gavan. He could not, in honesty, pretend he had not known what Robert meant. For Robert meant the windmill, and who in the whole town had not been down to peek at her? For certain, not one of the millers. Henry Cairns had had the measure of her, with his square and rule, and had made her picture, in a little book. Gavan Lang had never used a rule, though he could draw a pattern, from memory alone. He had a hand, and he knew by that hand the scale of anything, perfectly apportioned, from the fingers to the thumb. It could not be forgotten or misplaced. And if by some misfortune he should happen to be parted from it, as had happened to a wheelwright he had known, then he had a spare one,
up the other sleeve. When Harry was a little older, he would teach him too, how to take a measure by a rule of thumb. At present, he could take the boy's whole fist, and enclose it in his own strong hand, which served to remind the miller how tenuous and small, was this one clear intimation of a perfect world.

‘And?' Robert Wood was brusque, and Gavan Lang regretted this, knowing that his attitude would not be lost on Harry.

‘She is beautifully wrought, sir, by a skilled engineer and a craftsman, and all of her joints are made true. If she is taken apart, for to move her, she will slip back like a tongue into a groove, every piece of her slid smoothly, fitting to perfection. She was made with an exquisite skill, and more than that, with love. However, she is not complete. She is a post mill, but lacking her post. Whoever takes her will need to found her on a solid base; the best is from a living tree, cut down and sunk again into high ground. Near to the coast will serve well.'

‘I have land to the north of here,' Robert Wood said thoughtfully.

‘The good thing is you do not need so much space on the ground for her, as for a watermill. But you do want a hill, or else to raise a mound, as high as you can make her. And you must brace her post with quarter beams, that you box in, if you will, with stones, to hold her resolute. Her sails must be removed, and then must be reset, and threaded through with cloths. And she will want millstones, of course.'

‘We have land, and we have trees, and we have men to build her,' Robert Wood declared. ‘Under your direction, she will be ours. Then you shall have the working of her, Gavan, think of that! Not only those who are in thirlage to the mill, but all the town will come to you – to us. They will come when the mills are stopped by frost and drought, in summer and in winter time, and when the rivers run, then they will come from choice, because they are not bound to us.'

‘They will not come to me, sir.' Gavan shook his head.

‘What say you, man? Of course they will! They know you for an honest man; an honest miller, too, and
that
is rare enough.' Robert Wood laughed mirthlessly.

‘I mean I dinna want her, sir, for I am happy here. The working of the windmill will go to Henry Cairns. You ken it will. He already has the biggest share of business in the town, and the running of three mills. He and his sons, besides, are
ingineers
.'

‘Henry Cairns is not the sheriff's brother,' Robert Wood declared. ‘Well, do as you will. If you will not comply, I must take more in rent.'

‘You canna do that, sir,' Gavan protested. ‘For I already give you more than we can afford. The sluice gate is rotting, and wanting repair. What little I can make back from the multure barely meets the cost.'

‘Then you know what to do,' Robert answered bluntly. ‘The trouble with you is that you lack ambition. Do not irk me with your grumbling and complaints. If you are poor, you know how to mend it. Think of your boy, here. Harry, is it not?' He let his hand rest a fraction above the boy's head, almost, but not quite, ruffling through his hair. The boy looked up and smiled at Robert Wood, easily and guilelessly. Harry had a smudge of flour across his nose, and Robert Wood dislodged it, with a careless, callous flicking of his thumb. Gavan stiffened, hating him. ‘What is it you are doing, Harry?' Robert asked.

‘Shifting out the fine flour for the baxter's riddel,' the boy answered, rubbing it. ‘The baxters then will sift it. Shifting for sifting.' He took a childish pleasure in the pattern of the words. And Gavan loved him then, even as he hated Robert Wood. Another cloud flew up, and settled in his hair, a scattering of dust. Robert said, ‘You are a clever boy.' Gavan willed him not to touch. ‘A boy like that,' Robert said, ‘could go to the grammar school. He could go on to the college, at the university.'

‘He is a miller's son,' Gavan Lang said simply. He imagined Harry, at the grammar school, and at the university, and at the pulpit,
thundering, the great book in his hand. He wondered if it could come true, and hated Robert Wood.

Robert answered, ‘Even so.' His interest had declined to milder irritation, as though he had grown bored. He no longer looked at Harry, though the boy was blinking up at him, anxious still to please. ‘Think about it,' he advised. Gavan knew that he was angry, though he had not lost control. At the door he paused, to take a parting shot, ‘Have you caught that fish?'

‘Not yet.'

‘I want her,' Robert warned.

‘Tonight,' the miller promised. ‘I have made new traps. Tonight, I shall have her, sir, I swear.'

‘See that you do.' Robert Wood let the door slam behind him. He did not stay to chatter with the customers outside, the baxters and the tenants who were gathered on the bank, to gossip and to wait for the wheel to make their turn.

The boy asked, ‘What's ambition, Dad?'

‘Ambition is a sin. It is vanity and pride.'

‘Oh.' The boy took a while to digest this information. He considered everything, always, and so carefully, that Gavan heard the questions turning in his mind. ‘Does the laird have ambition, then?' he ventured at last.

‘Aye. And he is not the laird,' Gavan answered shortly.

‘He is to us. He is our landlord. And he seems to do well from it,' Harry pointed out. Gavan saw the boy was disappointed in him. He saw it in the boy's eyes, pricking at his heart, and it was more than he could bear.

‘Robert Wood is cross,' he explained to Harry, ‘because he kens full well he cannot hae the windmill. She will go to Henry Cairns.'

‘But
you
could have it, if you would. Why to Henry Cairns?' the boy objected.

‘Because he is the better miller,' Gavan Lang confessed. It hurt his heart to say it. The boy was close to tears.

‘He
cannot
be.'

‘You see, son, that sometimes . . .'

The boy shook his head. He said fiercely, ‘He cannot be. Because I have telt them that you were the best. I telt them at the kirk, that you would have the windmill, that Robert Wood would have it, because you are the best, and his brother is Sir Andrew Wood the sheriff and the coroner.'

Gavan's heart was sick with dread. ‘Who did you tell it to, son?'