Time and Tide (19 page)

‘You shall have one, nonetheless,' insisted Giles, ‘So shall we purge this black bile from your belly, and its terror from your soul.'

‘I thought you said the man was innocent,' objected Andrew Wood.

‘That does not mean these horrors will not keep him from his sleep.'

Sir Andrew turned to Hew. ‘I gather that you knew this man?'

Hew nodded shakily. ‘He is Sandy Kintor, tenant of the mill at Kenly Green.'

‘A miller, and your tenant?' Andrew Wood repeated. Foolishly, Hew blushed. ‘Aye, but lately . . .'

‘Lately? Aye, then,
lately
,' Andrew said ironically. ‘That is beyond dispute.'

‘I do not mean that he is dead. He recently gave up the mill, and took up work in town – he was to take up work – with your brother, Robert Wood,' retorted Hew.

‘With Robert?' said the coroner. Hew saw his face turn thoughtful, yet could not read his mood.

‘Aye, sir, with your brother,' Hew repeated boldly. ‘I do not see him here among the crowd.' And that was strange, he thought. For almost all the worthies of the town, and many of the worthless, had gathered at the granary to heed the hue and cry.

Sir Andrew rubbed his beard. ‘He attends to business, and is not in town,' he answered cryptically. ‘Now, you are telling me that two men have been killed, and both of them were millers, at my brother's mill? Then this no longer seems to be an accident.'

‘This man's death,' said Giles, rising from his feet, ‘was not an accident. He has been first felled, by a blow to the head.'

‘How came he to the grain store?' questioned Andrew Wood.

‘According to his son,' said Hew, ‘he came here to discourse with Henry Cairns. We know that for a subterfuge, for Henry has been sick, in no ways fit to make a tryst.'

‘This defence stands true?' Sir Andrew Wood demanded.

‘I can confirm it,' swore Giles.

‘Then you are excusit, for the while,' Sir Andrew said magnanimously, ‘and need not hang precipitate, without a chance of trial. We shall consider, in due course, the evidential facts.'

Henry thanked him humbly, if a little sceptically.

‘I do wish,' grumbled Giles, ‘that you would leave the man alone. For surely you can see, he isn't very well?'

‘It is the windmill,' a voice shouted out from the crowd. ‘Did I not tell you, the windmill was cursed? First the Flemish sailors, and now two millers drowned.'

‘Speak plain, and show yourself!' ordered Andrew Wood.

‘It is I, the baxter, Thomas Brooke,' the heckler countered bluntly. Hew recognised him as a most officious tyrant and an elder of the kirk. He had not made the inner council of his gild, no doubt because his piety had made him much disliked.

‘What is that you say? This man has not been drowned.'

‘It was a dry drowning, as the doctor said.' Thomas Brooke reminded them. A murmuring began to echo through the crowd. ‘And this man lying dead now, I saw last at the windmill. He was there with
him
.' He pointed straight at Hew.

‘You were at the windmill?' Andrew Wood demanded.

Hew acknowledged, ‘Aye, we were. I hoped that it might help me to make sense of Jacob's death, if I could understand the workings of his mind. The windmill had been close to him. I took the miller with me, to show me how it worked.'

‘I see,' said Andrew Wood. ‘And on whose authority, did you cut the rope?'

‘On yours,' admitted Hew. He thought he saw the quiver of a smile, but perhaps he had imagined it, for when he looked again, the ghost had disappeared, and Andrew stood implacable as stone.  ‘Who holds the key' he questioned, ‘that opens up the granary?'

‘I do,' whispered Henry Cairns. ‘For I am the keeper of it. The baxters have another, and have access to their stores.'

The baxter Bailie Honeyman interrupted hotly, ‘The baxters is it, Henry? You may take that plainly, for a miller's tale!'

Henry Cairns said sulkily, ‘What is a miller's tale, if I may dare to ask?'

‘You scarcely can need to,' Honeyman retorted, ‘For awbody kens, that millers are dishonest, as the day is long.' There came another rumble and low murmur from the crowd.

‘Though it is true enough,' James Edie said judiciously, ‘the baxters have a key, that key is safe sequestered inside the baxters' box. For any man to open it, he must turn four locks; that no one man may master, for four men hold the keys. If you accuse a baxter, you must accuse all four.'

‘But I do not accuse ye,' Henry Cairns said miserably, ‘For though I said the baxters held the other key – and that was not a lie,' he appealed to Andrew Wood. ‘I did not say the key was used to turn the lock. The grainstore lock is broken, sir, and anyone might broach her.'

‘Then anyone might broach her, aye,' repeated Patrick Honeyman. ‘And whose fault is that?'

Cairns let out a groan. ‘What madman,' he returned, ‘would drop a body in the corn? I ask you, sirs? What profit, that? What
profit
, sirs?' His voice rose to a shriek, and dropped again. ‘What profit, sirs?' he whispered.

‘I see no answers to be had,' Sir Andrew sighed impatiently, ‘from this wretched little man, who has told us what he knows. Then you had better purge him, and pack him off to bed.'

‘Is that not what I told you, an hour ago?' asked Giles.

‘
Do
it, then,' the coroner commanded. ‘Let the crowd be cleared. And you and I,' he turned to Hew, ‘will speak of this again.'

‘Though I am loath to mention it, there is a little truth in what the baxter said,' said Hew to Giles, as they departed from the green. ‘Two millers dead; both drowned.'

‘It it a sad coincidence,' insisted Giles. ‘Sandy Kintor's death was not an accident; and truly, I do now regret suggesting that he
drowned. Yet let us rather say, he was smothered in the grain. No matter how he died, he was killed unlawfully. The same cannot be said for Gavan Lang.'

‘And yet,' reflected Hew, ‘this second miller's death provokes a second glance at the death of Gavan Lang. For how can we be sure that Gavan drowned by accident?'

‘There was no mark upon the corpus that suggested otherwise. He went into the pond in an attempt to catch the fish. And everybody knew he meant to catch the fish,' objected Giles.

‘That is my point,' said Hew. ‘That everybody knew.'

‘Even so,' said Giles, ‘he could not have been persuaded to go deep into the water. Unless it were by witchcraft,' he concluded.

‘Unless it were by witchcraft,' Hew agreed. ‘Two millers drowned, and three, if you count Jacob; that cannot be coincidence.'

Giles corrected patiently, ‘One miller drowned; one hit upon the head and buried in the corn; and one that died of sickness, known as holy fire. One died of natural causes in a tavern bed; one was killed unlawfully; the other died by accident. Death is random, Hew. It does not fall in patterns, as you seem to think. It comes as soon to millers, as to all the rest.'

‘Everybody knew, he meant to catch the fish,' Hew had wandered off, on another train of thought. ‘And everybody knew that Henry Cairns was sick. What made Henry sick?'

‘Sickness,' Giles declared, a little tetchily, Hew thought. His capacity for diagnosing close had been exhausted, he supposed, upon the corpse. Giles preferred, at best, to be equivocal.

‘Then what caused the sickness?' Hew went on relentlessly.

‘As I am persuaded, something that he ate.'

‘Could he have been poisoned?'

Giles answered with a frown. ‘What is it you suggest?' he asked reluctantly.

‘That whoever lured the miller to his death made sure that Henry Cairns was indisposed. And since the sickness clears him from the crime, perhaps he did inflict it on himself.'

‘Henry was not well enough to lift his head, much less hit a man, and drive him to his death,' asserted Giles.

‘Then someone may have had in mind to kill him too. These matters are not random, Giles, there is a purpose to them, that I cannot think divine.'

‘You may be right,' Giles sighed. ‘Though I can see no purpose, in the death of Gavan Lang. As for Henry Cairns, I had the sense he knew what was the matter, and would not confess it.'

‘That gives weight to the suggestion, that he brought it on himself,' suggested Hew.

‘I think it likely that he did, though he had no intent to cause himself such harm. He ingested some foul substance, and found it disagreed with him. His wife and children all keep well, and none of them has been affected. His wife is cruel and cross to him, yet she is not a shrew, and so I am inclined to think, he brought it on himself. If he will not confide it, we may never know. For though I treat his body, yet I cannot cure his soul. These matters are perplexing, I admit,' said Giles. ‘Now let us to the Swallow Gait, to break this news to Meg. She loved your miller well, and she will find it vexing, as I think.'

They found Meg in the nether hall, with Lilias and Maude, ‘Come to see the babbie,' as Lilias explained to them, with a seraphic smile.

‘The bairn would not rest, till I brocht her to see him,' said Maude apologetically. ‘I have left Mary in charge and cannot be gone away long.'

‘Let her stay awhile,' suggested Meg. ‘And Hew will see her home. You will, Hew, will you not?'

‘Beyond a doubt,' her brother sighed.

Maude accepted gratefully. ‘You are right kind. The lass is close confined, and feels it, desperately.'

Maude looked strained, thought Hew, as though the task of keeping Lilias confined began to take its toll. Her grey eyes settled briefly on Matthew in his crib. ‘You have been well blessed, with a fine fair boy,' she said, almost inaudibly.

‘Hold him, if you will,' offered Meg.

Maude put out her hand to touch the baby's cheek. ‘I will not disturb him at his rest.'

‘I will hold him,' Lilias said, reaching eager arms towards the sleeping babe.

‘You mauma, pet,' said Maude.

‘Let her, Maude,' protested Meg. ‘Show her how to hold him. It can do no harm.'

Maude Benet shook her head. ‘You cannot conceive of the harm that it can do. For she will want her own bairn, for herself. He is not a poppet,' she explained to Lilias. ‘And he is not a pet. You cannot plague and play with him, as you do Gib Hunter.'

‘He is not Gib Hunter,' Lilias returned, with an open clarity both fierce and unexpected. ‘Gib Hunter is a
cat
. And if you put a bonnet on him, he will bite and scratch.' She sucked her thumb reproachfully.

‘So much she has learned,' Maude sighed. ‘Twere better, after all, to take her home.'

‘Ah, let her stay,' insisted Meg. ‘There is no harm.'

Maude hesitated. ‘You will see her safe, sir?' she inquired of Hew.

‘I shall indeed,' he promised her.

‘Then I thank you all. Lilias, be good. And do as you are telt.'

‘She is troubled, I think,' Hew said, as she left.

‘It must vex her,' Giles reflected, ‘to see her daughter with the little child; that brings to mind what cannot, and what must not be, for Lilias.'

‘It is partly that,' accepted Meg. ‘She daily frets and fears for what the future holds; what hope is there for Lilias, what vestige of a life for her. And partly that . . .'

Lilias came tugging at Meg's sleeve. ‘I want to hold the babbie in my arms.'

‘And so you shall,' Meg promised her. She sat the girl down in a low-backed chair and settled Matthew in her lap. ‘Hold him
there
, and
there
.' Lilias gazed down at him, poking out her tongue
in a frown of concentration. ‘And will I sing my song to him?' she posed.

‘Aye, sing your song,' said Meg. ‘For he will like that very much.'

Lilias began to sing, clasping tight the swaddling bands. ‘Mixter maxter maks guid baxter.'

Matthew murmured in his sleep. ‘He likes your singing,' Meg approved.

‘What song is it you sing?' Hew wondered curiously. Lilias looked up at him. ‘It is a song of the baxters. We do not like the baxters, though. For that they are a trial to us. They break my Minnie's bread.'

‘Why would they do that?'

‘Maude's inn makes little profit, and tis hard to make ends meet,' Meg explained. ‘She falls fouls of the baxters, for baking her own bread, and fouler of her landlord, for grinding her own corn, what little she can scratch from her own bare patch of land. She does not break the rule from greed, but from necessity, when she cannot well afford to pay the baxters' price.'

‘I saw that,' Hew remembered. ‘Yet it seemed to me James Edie was indulgent of her crime.'

‘Tis no loss to him. James Edie sells white wheaten bread, and Maude is baking bannocks, that the law says she should buy from men like Patrick Honeyman. The baxters' gild, in short, is made of many men, and each man puts his interests first above the rest.'

Lilias, it seemed, grew bored, and thrust the baby back at Meg. ‘He does not speak or sport,' she complained.

‘He does not,' Meg agreed. She settled Matthew back into the safety of his crib. ‘Wait, and I will show you something you will like.' She disappeared into another room, returning with a wooden box, from which she took a small array of toys. They made a tiny village, carved in wood, with horses, cows and sheep, a farmer and his wife, with painted clothes and faces, a windmill and a watermill, with a wheel that turned. The figures and the mills had moving parts. Lilias clapped her hands. ‘A whirligig!' she cried out in delight.

‘A whirligig,' Meg promised, ‘of your very own.' Without hint or warning, she broke into tears.

‘Winds and waters,' whispered Giles, in confidence, to Hew. ‘It is the little miniature, that moves maternal instinct in the woman's womb. For so a mother's milk precipitates the floods, and turns her wits to wetness. It is not to be discouraged.'