Time and Tide (36 page)

Beyond the high walls of the convent still, a dozen windmills turned. Hew heard no other sound from the little house. He walked a little further, coming to the church, stripped bare of its idolatry and artefacts of Christ, where doubtless, God would hear him, sending up a prayer. He felt a deeper quiet in that place. Outside upon the green, the sheets and linens flapped and furled, like sails of bobbing boats. The children were released from morning school, and flexing their taut fingers, squinted at the sun, where for a while, at least, they knew no other cares. Hew knelt upon the stone and was kneeling still, when the voice of Sister Ursula awoke him from his prayers.

‘There you are, mon fils; now what has brought you here?' she asked, so full of warmth and sadness that he longed to have her blessing. He rose quickly to his feet.

‘You are not a Catholic, as I think,' she went on shrewdly, ‘yet you have found God here, in our broken church. Or, am I wrong?'

‘I found something here,' admitted Hew, ‘and if not God, then something deeper.'

‘Foolishness, my child. What can be deeper, after all, than God?'

‘
Patience
,' Hew said, simply.

‘Patience? Ah, we have that here. I fear that it was something Jacob lacked.

‘Beatrix will talk to you now,' she brushed past him, without touching, and he felt her calm composure, the cool swish of her skirts. ‘She has many questions. And the worst has past. She will be looked after here.'

‘And Lotte?' questioned Hew.

Ursula nodded. ‘Lotte is in the garden, with Paulina and Sister Agnietje. Agnietje, bless her heart, is not good at looking after little ones. She does not see them if they eat laburnum seeds, or fall into the well. But Paulina is watchful, and quick on her feet, and Agnietje is careful and kind, and has a soft lap, and a low crooning song, that will lull a cross child to her sleep. Together, they make up a careful nurse, and so it is in the begijnhof, for what we lack in parts, we make up as a whole. A child can play at will, yet never go unwatched. There are many places worse to bring up a little girl. Still, Lotte knows her mother, and her mother wants her child. It is how things should be. I shall take her home. Go on to Beatrix, talk to her, and tell her I shall come again, with Lotte, in a little while.'

Hew was startled. ‘Am I to go alone?'

‘Go, and have courage, my child. For is that not why you have come here?' She took him by the hands, ‘God sees your heart, and knows your will is good. Know that she will hear you, now the worst is done.'

Beatrix was composed, though pale as linen flax. Her eyes were deep and wet with unshed tears. She did not wear the habit or the white hood of the faith, but a simple linen cap and light blue linen dress, and Hew supposed that she was not a true begijnte, perhaps she never had been one, for it did not seem to matter to the nuns.
‘You may not wish to have it now, but Jacob left you this,' he told her, bringing out the creed. ‘For fear of it offending her, I did not wish to offer it before the holy mother. But I thought that you might wish to have it, since it brought your husband comfort in the hours before he died.'

Beatrix forced a smile, reaching out her hand to take the book. ‘His faith was not the same as mine, and yet it did not come between us. And I would wish to have it, for it is a part of him. And you are right in thinking that it would not please my aunt. We call her the  grande dame – the groot juffer, and not la mère, though you are correct if you suppose that she is mother to us all, and most of all, to me. I have been thinking,' she said suddenly, ‘about the little boy Joachim, and whether someone ought to tell his mother.'

Hew's spirits sank. The thought had not occurred to him, and now he saw at once that he must seek her out, and break the dreadful news.

‘I see her every week,' said Beatrix, ‘in the Friday market, selling herbs and flowers. She is so very proud of him, and tells the world that he has gone abroad, to seek his fortune overseas.'

Hew nodded miserably.

‘She has no expectation,' Beatrix went on quietly, ‘of his ever coming back. Then do you think it is so very wrong, to leave her with her dreams?'

Hew swallowed. ‘I do not think it is so very wrong,' he answered hoarsely.

‘Nor do I,' said Beatrix. ‘But I must ask my aunt. She tells me Jacob did not die alone. Was that the truth, monsieur? Or was it meant as kindness? For I do not count it kindness, if I am not told the truth.'

‘I think that you must know,' said Hew, ‘that she would not tell lies to you.'

‘I know that she would not. That is not what I ask.'

‘It is the truth,' said Hew.'

‘Then it is a comfort, and I thank you for it. Where did Jacob die?'

‘In a clean, warm feather bed, in the comfort of the inn.'

‘Though that is good to know, it is not what I meant. I mean, what was the place? What city, street or town?'

‘He died in St Andrews. It is a town in Scotland, on the coast of Fife,' said Hew.

‘I know it,' Beatrix smiled. ‘Then I must be content, for Jacob died at home. He found the place that he was looking for. Then he was not a stranger at the last,' and she was smiling through the tears, for the tears had overflowed.

‘I do not understand,' Hew told her, when the tears were quelled at last. ‘According to the grande dame, his aunt came from Dundee.'

‘His aunt,' Beatrix explained, ‘was living at that place when Clays Hansen first met her. But her brother came from Sint Andreas, and that was the place where Jacob had been born. Or so Clays Hansen said.'

‘Then what,' asked Hew, ‘was Jacob's father's name?'

‘He was Jacob, too. Jacob Adams. And Jacob said, that he would change his name, once he had come to Scotland, to Jacob Jacobsen. I do not know, monsieur, what my aunt has said to you,' she put in suddenly, ‘But I should not like to think you thought that Jacob was a bad man. For he was not a bad man, I assure you.'

‘Why,' Hew asked her cautiously, ‘should your aunt have told me that he was a bad man?'

‘She should not. It was only that she did not think that he should go from Ghent. She thought he should be satisfied with what he had. Yet it cannot be wrong, I think, to hope to have a better life, and who can blame him, if the life he had was wrong, for he could not have known, he was not who he thought he was.'

‘Beatrix,' Hew said gently, ‘though I do not believe that Jacob was a bad man, there is something that I do not understand, and have to ask. He wrote in his letter that he thought the sea-captain suspected his intent, had somehow found him out. Do you know what Jacob meant?'

Beatrix sighed. ‘I do, monsieur, for he wrote to me from Vlissingen.
He had lied to the sea-captain, and that deception had weighed heavy on his mind, for Jacob is – was – an honest man, at heart. It was the only way he could persuade the sea-captain to take him up to St Andrews, and let him build his windmill on his ship. He met the man at Vlissingen, where he was looking for a carpenter, to take aboard his boat, and Jacob was the right man for the task. And so he had free passage, well assured, but the ship was going to Hull. So Jacob struck a bargain with the man; he had a venture to build windmills in the port of Vlissingen, importing them to Scotland, where such mills are scarce.

‘He would build a windmill, aboard the captain's ship, and take it to St Andrews as a sample of the wares, and then the two of them would start in business, all along the coast. Of course, it was a trick, for Jacob meant to keep his mill, and never to return, there were to be no profits, from the business back in Vlissingen.'

‘We have the mill,' said Hew. ‘It was salvaged from the ship. And if you wish to sell it, then the town will gladly pay.'

Beatrix shook her head. ‘I will not sell it, for he meant it as a gift.'

‘A gift?' repeated Hew.

‘A present to the town. For he was not quite sure how he would be received, or whether they would welcome back a long-forgotten son. And so he thought that he would bring a gift that they could not refuse. That when they saw the windmill, and understood its art, then they would welcome him with open arms. My aunt did not approve of it. She said that it was pride.'

Then the whole town had fought, for possession of a gift, and had tried to take by force, what was already theirs. And in the quiet convent, in the war-torn town of Ghent, Hew felt bitterly ashamed of the place that he called home.

‘You must keep it,' Beatrix said, ‘for it was meant for you.'

Before Hew left the beguinage, Beatrix brought two packages and pressed them in his hand. ‘This is Flemish lace. One is for the keeper of the haven inn, who took care of Jacob when he died, and the other is for you, to give to your wife.'

He smiled at her. ‘I thank you. These are exquisite, and Maude will be delighted with her gift. I do not have a wife. But if I may, I will give it to my sister, who has just had a child.'

Beatrix answered, ‘Wait,' returning to her press. ‘This is for your sister.' She brought out another piece. ‘For if you do not have a wife, then you will have one very soon. And all of us are sisters, are we not?'

‘This is too much,' protested Hew.

Beatrix answered through the tears. ‘I promise, you, monsieur, that it is not.'

She walked him through the square and past the green, where the daughters of the nunnery were playing on the grass, wild as little birds, and sheltered from the gaze of prying eyes. And as she left him at the gate, she took his hand and said, ‘My aunt will tell you Jacob changed, yet I do not believe that, monsieur. For in his heart, he stayed the same, and he was always true to me; it matters not to me, if he was Jacob Molenaar, or Hansen, or Jacobsen, or Adams; he was, and he will always be, my Copin.'

Hew discovered Robert Lachlan sprawled upon a bed in the best room of the house of the finest inn in Ghent, with an empty flagon at his side. ‘Had to start without you,' he explained. ‘You were gone too long. A' gone. Fetch another . . .'

‘You have had enough.'

‘Nor yet begun,' Robert contradicted him. ‘Lay down for a nap.'

‘How much have you had?'

The soldier shrugged. ‘It is on your reckoning, when you come to pay for it.'

‘Then far more than enough.'

‘What is that?' Robert sat up, and pointed to the package in Hew's hand.

‘Lace, from the begijnhof.'

‘Nun's lace?' the soldier whistled. ‘That's worth the finest whore in town.' He stretched out a hand.

‘Touch, and I will cut you to the bone,' Hew assured him icily, his hand already placed upon his sword.

Robert pulled back in astonishment. ‘Jesu, you are ticklish and pepper-nosed tonight. What devil has got into you?'

‘Desist from your profanities!' snapped Hew.

‘Jesus Christ!' swore Robert. ‘Tis the nun's curse has snared you, just as I predicted it, for so the evil spinsters weave their wicked webs!'

Hew abandoned Robert in disgust, retreating to the street outside for air. The inn was sited near the corn wharf, where the boatman's barge had docked, and walking further on, he found the marketplace, the wide, three-cornered square between the guild church of St Nicholas and the finest city houses of the guilds and trades. As the staple town in Flanders for French imported wheat, Ghent was home to the most furious and frank transactions Hew had ever seen, where a raging stream of wagons, carts and trucks rumbled past incessantly, and bartering went on, aggressively and noisily, in Flemish and in French. This commerce was reserved exclusively for men, and Hew felt dazed in the ferocity of masculine exchange. The heady chink of coin and loud and forceful bargaining pressed in on every side, and the speed and force with which the trade took place was frantic and bewildering. Dockers, bakers, packmen, shipmen battled forth at every turn, haggling over bolls of wheat and sacks of yellow corn. The furiousness reminded Hew of Patrick Honeyman, whom he imagined dwarfed and swept away, in this fierce flux of grain. And in his mind's eye, he saw once again the corpse of Sandy Kintor, lying by the granary, his last breath choked and stoppered by the flood of corn, overwhelmed and drowning, at the baxters' hands. For in his heart, he knew that it must be the baxters. For who would leave a corpse to rot inside a granary, and risk the precious grain supply, increasing the reliance on imported flour and forcing up the price of bread? And who, indeed, had access to the granary, and, since they held the key to it, had surely known about the broken lock? ‘Who profits now?' he heard the miller bleat, the fearful form
of Henry Cairns, brought weeping to his knees. It had been a baxter, beyond doubt. The baxters made their profit from the staff of life itself. They kept their secrets close behind the banner of their gild.

Overwhelmed by the noise and the thrang, Hew fled from the market to the narrow band of streets that intersected Ghent and lay between its waterways. In the lanes around the square were rows of little stalls, with bread and books and candles, liquor and hot pies, smoked and salted fish and slabs of roasted pork. Among them he noticed a spectacle shop, whose keeper called out in thick Flemish French, ‘Opticks, monsieur; perspectives, illusions, toys of all kinds.' Hew was enchanted. ‘Aye, why not?' The cabinets within would have captivated Giles, with prisms of rock crystals and pyramids of glass, each promising a new perspective on the world. Their maker wore a long grey beard and velvet doctor's cap, a magus from a magic book, philosopher and conjurer, combining art with trickery. ‘Come see, sir,' he beseeched, uncovering a snowstorm in the smallest speck of dust, discovering God's pattern in the torn wing of a fly. There were glasses and lenses of all sorts and shapes, hollowed and bevelled and convex and curved, pyramids, cylinders, coloured and clear. He showed to Hew a multiplying glass, that threw the object back upon the baffled eye, making one of many, fashioning a crowd. By geometric alchemy, he mingled mathematical and magic, mystic arts. And he had pictures, too, that tricked and teased the mind, that through a glass obliquely, showed secrets or told lies. Some were pleated, set in strips, to show a split perspective – wisdom, folly, health or sickness, human virtue, human fault – when viewed from left or right. One picture had a mirror that reflected back a death's head, from the painted canvas hidden underneath. It was the optick, realised Hew, that Giles must have alluded to, ‘in which a man might see an image not his own'. No art or magic in the glass, but the reflection of another angled picture, intended to alarm, to baffle or amuse.