Time and Tide (6 page)

They sat in silence for a while, gazing at the fire, until the serving girl appeared with supper on a tray, and brought a busy brightness to the room, laying out the plate and pewter cups. She set a chafing dish of onions, leeks and cheese to toast upon the coals, with a wheaten loaf for dipping into it. The dish was closely followed by the tart of pulped green apples spiked with cloves, by white and claret wines, and a rose and almond cream.

Hew broke off a piece of bread. The loaf was fine white manchet, and bore the baxter's signature, a gathered sheaf of corn. ‘Where do we buy our bread?' he asked the serving lass.

‘This bread, sir? The manchet? The boy brings it from town.'

‘Aye, but from which baxter?'

‘From the bailie, James Edie, that bakes the best bread. That is his mark. Is it not to your liking, sir?' the girl returned, confused.

‘I like it well enough,' he answered, buttering the crust and handing it to Nicholas. ‘Does all the bread here come from James Edie?'

‘Not all of it. The manchet is for you and Master Nicholas, when you are at home.'

‘And when I'm not at home?'

‘Then he makes do wi' bannock, same as a' the rest of us!' the girl became exasperated. ‘I do not understand you, sir! Is anything the matter with the bread?'

‘No, nothing,' Hew assured her, as she bustled out.

Nicholas advised, ‘I think they will not thank you, if you meddle with the bread. The order was approved by your sister, Meg.'

‘God help me, for I did not know they fed you bannocks,' Hew confessed.

Nicholas responded with a smile. ‘And wherefore should they not? For I have eaten bannocks all my life. The grain is from your land, and ground here at the mill, more wholesome than the finest wheaten flour, that often has been coloured white with lead. I do prefer, it, Hew. Was James Edie among those brave baxters you met?'

‘It seems he was the best of them, on more than one account,' considered Hew. ‘The finer in his manners as the purer is his bread. I cannot say I took to his friend, bailie Honeyman. The Honeymans are bannocks of a coarser grain.' He dipped a chunk of bread into the melted cheese, and they sat in close companionship, mellowed by the warmth of food and drink. At last, when they had finished off the apple tart and cream, Hew judged the time was right to give voice to a plan which had been brewing gently since that afternoon. ‘I have resolved to move into the college, for a while.'

‘But you were set against it!' Nicholas exclaimed.

‘Tis only for a week or two, until Meg's child is born,' his friend explained, ‘For Giles is quite disordered and distraught. It will relieve his burden, in some little sense, if I can take his place. The students want a clearer jurisdiction, as it seems.'

Nicholas said wryly, ‘I had not set you down to be their scourge.'

‘God knows, I do not want to be,' said Hew. The notion was abhorrent to him. ‘Do you think they are much worse, than we were at St Leonard's?'

‘Worse in what way?' asked Nicholas.

‘Drinking, brawling, and the rest. Irksome to the town,' expanded Hew.

‘For myself, I never drank in taverns,' Nicholas reflected. ‘I could not afford to. I did not jangle in the street. As for the rest, I kept quite clean and chaste. I cannot speak for you.'

‘Of course you can! We lived and worked together. There was nothing much between us,' Hew objected.

‘There was everything between us,' Nicholas demurred, ‘because you were a gentleman, and I was not.'

Hew chose to ignore this. ‘I never knew a woman, till I went to France.'

‘Where you were led astray.'

‘Where I had instruction, in the
gentle
arts,' corrected Hew. ‘The students are unruly now, and more so than we ever were, even under Gilchrist's lewd and errant sway. We did not dare to riot under George Buchanan.'

‘Everything grows worse with time,' Nicholas proposed.

‘Or else grows better, Giles would say,' smiled Hew. ‘I have not told him yet. I mean to use his rooms. To lodge with Bartie Groat would be a step too far.'

Nicholas looked sceptical. ‘I should prefer his sniffs to Giles' strange collections. The flesher in his killing-cloths, against a room of rheums. It is an invidious choice.'

‘Come with me,' Hew said suddenly. ‘You understand the way a college works, far better than I ever will.'

His friend shook his head. ‘Do not ask it, Hew.'

‘What once was held against you has been long forgotten. You did nothing wrong,' insisted Hew, a sudden rush of pity showing in his face.

‘The transgressions I have made are in my heart, and I have not forgotten them. You do not understand me, if you think I am afraid to die, or live my life, alone. Do not confound me with yourself, and imagine that I share your discontent,' Nicholas said quietly.

‘What say you, I am discontented?' questioned Hew.

‘Tis clear enough you are. This life does not yet satisfy you; you are not happy here, and you will not be happy there. You will not be content, until you have a cause to fight.'

‘Am I so transparent?' Hew felt reluctant to own to the truth of the matter; he wanted still a purpose in the world.

Nicholas smiled sadly. ‘As water in the burn. You must not mistake me, Hew. Our hopes and dreams can never be the same.'

‘But once they were,' Hew argued. ‘Once, when we boys, you had the keenest mind.'

‘We never were the same. You will be careful, won't you?' Nicholas said suddenly. ‘And not just on the cliffs?'

‘You know me, and my horse, who is averse to risks,' Hew smiled.

‘I'm serious, Hew. Yet promise me, that you will take great care.'

‘You have my word,' said Hew, ‘whatever that is worth.'

There was nothing more to say. Hew's mind was fixed upon the college and the town, his thoughts and prayers with Giles and Meg. And Nicholas, he knew, would end his days in solitude, fading out in quietness, alone among the books at Kenly Green. There was little, after all, that Hew could have to offer him. He rose before the dawn and saddled up his horse, setting out at daybreak for the town.

Maude preferred the quiet hours, before the town was properly awake. She opened up the windows, allowing pink-streaked sunlight to warm the polished wood, and sweeping the stale rushes out into the street. The wind, fresh and light, gave no hint of storm. The
fishing boats had already put to sea at the first pale trace of dawn, and the cobles still remaining in the dock were beached; the tide had reached its lowest point, and turned, creeping back to lick against the pier. Across the bay, Maude could see an early party setting out to secure the windmill, horses, carts and ropes trawled across the sands, trailing slow and blearily into the morning light. She returned to the house and began to make her bread, baked upon a skillet on the tap room fire. The serving girl, Elspet, appeared, sleepy-eyed and fumbling with her cap. She shared a bed with Lilias, in the lassies' sleeping loft, accessed by a ladder in the common drinking hall.

‘A braw fine day,' her mistress said, ‘for scrubbing of the floors.'

‘Aye?' the girl replied, distracted. She had wandered to the door, absorbed in the commotion.

‘Come away,' scolded Maude.

‘They're fetchin' aff the windmill. It looks unco heavy.'

‘And so it will be. Come away. When the men are finished, they will have a thirst on them.'

Maude removed the bannock from the flames, breaking off a piece of it. She set the morsel on a tray, with a pat of yellow butter and a foaming cup of ale. ‘Take this to our guest.'

‘I will not,' said the girl, with unexpected spirit.

Maude glowered at her. ‘What do you mean, you will not? You will do as you are telt.'

‘I cannot!' and, to Maude's astonishment, the lass began to cry. ‘There's sickness in that room,' she sobbed, ‘and more, for Mary says the ship has had a curse on it.'

‘Then Mary is a lurdan,' Maude informed her grimly. ‘And you are not much better, if you gie her heed.'

‘Ye manna mak me do it,' Elspet wept.

Maude sighed, ‘Aye, very well. Look to Lilias.'

Her daughter had appeared, bare shod in a linen shift, pink like a bairn in the flush of sleep. She giggled as her mother kissed her. ‘Bide awhile wi' Elspet! Do not let her stray,' Maude advised the
serving girl, ‘or else . . .' The threat died away. Maude was never cruel, for all her cross complaints. She had been a victim far too long herself, for conscience to permit her to resort to that. A lassie should not have to live in fear.

Maude took up the tray and went back through the house. Her guests were lodged upon the second floor, accessed by a turnpike at the rear. There were two spare rooms, the larger of which slept as many men as it could hold, and was let for sixpence, without bed or board. A pallet, sheets and blankets could be had at extra cost. The small and dearer room was furnished with a standing bed and graced from time to time by a stout and sweaty kirkman from Dundee, who for a while had rented Mary too, till Maude had put a stop to it. Maude had bought the bed after her man had died, burning the old mattress in a bonfire in the yard, a conflagration visible for miles. She had thrown on Ranald's clothes and his possessions, one by one. Her husband's shoes had been the last to burn, the molten leather curling like a sneer.

The sailor had been put to rest in Maude's own feather bed, in a closet off the kitchen that stank of kale and slops. Though on this night there were no other guests, he had been too sick to climb the stairs. The closet room was dark and cramped, the only other furniture a stool and pissing pot, with a peg upon the door for hanging clothes. There was one small window, opening to the back. It looked over empty barrels and a rusted metal can, which served as the latrine, behind a wooden pale. Maude gave the door a warning tap, for fear her guest made water or was kneeling at his prayers, before she pushed it open with her foot. The man lay still in bed, and did not sit up. Elspet had been right, there was sickness in the room; not the usual sourness she was used to in the bar but a thickly sweet decay that made her stomach turn. Maude set down the tray and opened up the shutters, letting in the light and the savour of the sink-hole in the yard. She turned to see the stranger gazing back at her.

‘Oh! You are waking, are you? You were sleeping like the dead.
Half a day and a night you have slept. Look there! They are lifting out your windmill. You will have to pay a fee to have it back,' she greeted him.

The stranger answered, ‘
Beatrix
.'

‘Not Beatrix, Maude.' Maude picked up the tray again and approached the bed. ‘I have brought you breakfast, though you must not expect it. As soon as you are well enough, then you will have to speir for it, and shift up to the lodging house. The board and beer costs tuppence, and a sixpence for the bed, with a penalty of fourpence, if we have to wash the sheets.' This was wishful thinking, right enough, for Maude had little hope of being paid. The stranger, she could see, followed her intently. She also was aware that he had barely understood. Yet this did not deter her; she was used to Lilias, and knew that comfort could be had from kindness in a voice.

‘Ik niet mijn,' the stranger pleaded.

Maude had learned some Flemish from the sailors at the bar, bad words, in the main. She tried hard to make sense of this. ‘That will not do. I do not understand you.
I am not my
. . . You are not your what?' She made her voice sound firm, for that was commonsense. Maude was seldom daunted by a foreign tongue.

‘Ik niet mijn eigen ben.'

Maude puzzled at this, trying, ‘You are not your
eyes
?'

Perhaps it was his eyes, for now the stranger closed them, whispering, ‘Niet mijn.'

‘
Not my
,' repeated Maude. ‘Then do you mean that you are not yourself? Eek neet myself?' she guessed.

‘Niet van mijzelf, mijn ben.'

‘Who are you, then?' protested Maude, ‘if you are not yourself?'

‘
Beatrix
.'

‘For sure, you are not Beatrix,' Maude replied indignantly. ‘Beatrix is a lassie's name.' She pointed to herself. ‘Naam. My naam is Maude. What is your naam?'

‘Jacob . . . Ik ben
. . .
Jacob.'

‘Yacob? That is a good name. It is the same as James,' Maude approved. She set the tray beside him on the bed. ‘Eat.'

She could tell the man was famished. Yet he had trouble with his hands, and could not lift the cup. In the end, she had to feed him. She crumbled up the bread, and soaked it in the ale for him. He took it gratefully.

She judged him in his early twenties, not much older than her bairn, and strong enough, at least, to have survived the storm. The men who had brought him from the shore had stripped him to his shirt; his other clothes were draped upon the stool, still sopping wet, while Maude had lit a fire for fear he'd catch his death. The smoky embers filled the sunlit room. He was not a sailor, for he did not have the breeks. Nor was he a merchant, for his coat was plain and workmanlike. Maude sensed that he had once been clean and tidy, before he had been ravaged by the sea. Most alarming were his hands. His limbs were bruised and black, and he could not flex his fingers, his body like a drowned man's Maude had once seen on the beach, sluiced and puffed and blackened by the sea. To her dismay, Maude saw that he was crying; a rush of silent tears that soaked and streaked his face. She wiped them with her apron skirt. ‘You manna greet,' she told him. ‘You maun be a man.' Since Jacob did not answer her, she left him to his prayers.

The baxters were like gulls, returning with the fishermen to scavenge for the catch, and Maude was not surprised to hear them chapping at her door. The windmill had been taken off the strand and trundled, inch by inch, towards the customs house, while the baxters trailed behind like birds around a boat. All fetched up together, at the harbour inn. Maude said, ‘We are closed.'