Other thoughts obsessed him too: of Mary and the darkness, his first glimpse of what women meant. So distant was Eloise, so impossible, that in the extremity of his suffering he had caught himself wondering what it would be like to kiss her instead, to hold her close while she held him, to hear her breathe his name. Such torture could not be endured.
Concluding that, by now, she would already be nearing home and that another six days must be got through, Ralf repositioned the tiller in his bench clamp and set to work with his plain one-inch firmer. The tenon needed to be tapered to fit the corresponding mortise in the rudder-stem, which he had finished before the holiday.
A hesitation in the firmer told him it needed sharpening. He set his boxed whetstone in the vice, dribbled on a few drops of whale oil, and honed the chisel’s blade enough to raise a perceptible burr on the other side, which he now removed with four or five strokes on the stone. Half a minute with the leather strop completed the process: when he held the firmer up and looked at it endways on, the edge of its blade had become invisible.
The tiller was to protrude an inch and a half beyond the rudder-stem and be drilled vertically to accept an ashwood cotter, round in cross-section, which he had made himself. If he pared away too much wood, if he got the tenon wrong, he would have to make another tiller, for this rudder-stem, at least. The boat, one of three for Lord Angmer’s manor, was nearly finished and was due to be collected on Friday. Ralf could not afford a mistake.
Forcing himself to pay attention, he monitored his progress with frequent applications of his jaw-gauge. He repeatedly offered up the rudder-stem to the tenon, took it away, went on, offered for the last time, finished each of the four planes with strokes of the sharkskin: and the joint fitted. With his marking-knife he scribed the position of the sternward edge of the stem.
He removed the stem and replaced his chisel in the rack. Taking up the cotter, he checked its diameter against the wings of the centre-bit which he now locked into his brace. Holding the brace vertically, as he had been taught, he drilled the hole through the tenon. Finally he smoothed away the swarf. The cotter needed no more than a firm push. After one more check the assembly was complete, and with its completion came a moment of pleasure.
He loved the precision of which he found himself daily more capable. Working in three dimensions was better than working in two, better even than the joy of getting a drawing right.
The tiller had been easy. He preferred the intense mental and physical absorption of a really difficult job, like chining boards with a jack-plane, or helping the craftsmen with a keel and ribbing. He revelled in his growing skill, his technical knowledge, even his youth, and when he walked across the flagstone floor of the shop he felt his shoulders square.
This morning he had earned his pay by creating an object which yesterday had not existed. Not only was it new, and, having been made to the master’s specifications, the best and most modern of its kind, but it was also good to look at, was capable of many years’ hard and safe service, and might help to bring in, over its lifetime, hundreds of tons of food. More than all this, he had taken another step towards working with his father in their own venture.
The moment was subsumed: his mind and feelings were back on the Alincester road.
The next job was the rudder-blade. Ralf had already passed into the sunshine and was making his way to the woodyard. His father was there, choosing larch. The business with Aholiab Peake had indeed, apparently, been forgotten. All that remained was Ralf’s black eye, the subject of comment and speculation that now, like the aching in his bruised abdomen, had thankfully subsided.
The day was warm. At Linsell’s suggestion, Ralf took his food and beer outside when the noon break came and joined him, together with several others, sitting by the slipway on the building-mould of a cog. The ship, looming behind them, broad in the beam and round-bottomed, was nearly finished: only the decking and the superstructure remained to be assembled.
Ralf took a bite of cheese. Spring haze filmed the sky, investing the air with an oddly forward perspective. Half in reverie and taking no part in the talk, he looked across two hundred yards of brown water, to an unladen lighter heading out to one of the vessels at anchor. Beyond it, on the far side of the channel, stood the wool warehouse, where even now carts were arriving from the downs. Slate-roofed, with tall doors and its own quay, this was the largest building in Rushton. From there a ninety-foot bark, the Ooievaar, bound for Rotterdam, had earlier been poled and rowed into the channel. The pilot’s office, behind the warehouse, could not be seen from here, nor the harbourmaster’s.
“There it is, Ralf,” his father said. “There’s your answer.”
The answer to what? Eloise? Could his father read his thoughts?
Linsell was gesturing with his bread at the scummy surface of the slipway below them. Slopping against the cobbles, the tide was leaving behind, as it ebbed, its usual coating of refuse and slime. “The answer to the mill tithe,” he said. “Or whatever you said it’s called.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Use the tide to drive your wheel.”
They had set off for Rushton this morning as usual, long before first light. Crossing the white-railed bridge by the pond, Ralf had recalled his walk with Godric and their conversation about the ruined mill. For the next few hundred yards he had told his father what Godric had said; leaving out, however, Godric’s words about the latest assessment of the manor’s profits.
His father had known no more than that milling was controlled by the Diocese. The subject seemed not to have interested him, and their talk had quickly moved on. But now it seemed that, after all, he had been listening.
“Trap the flood with a bund,” he continued. “Towards low water, open a sluice. Should give you hours of milling, twice each day.” He took another mouthful. “Couldn’t be simpler. Mape’s the ideal place for it. No licence, no tithe.”
For a few seconds, as he fully understood, Ralf’s incredulous smile prevented him from speaking.
“Mind you,” Linsell said, “someone’s bound to have thought of it already. There’s got to be a law.”
“Why?”
“It’s such an obvious thing.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Brother Diccon,” Linsell said, to the man sitting next to him. “Have you ever heard of it?”
“Heard of what?”
“A mill driven by the tide.”
“I can’t say I have, Brother Linsell.” Diccon leaned forward and addressed the whole group, which included some of the most experienced marine woodsmiths on the coast: none had ever encountered such a mill. Mills on rivers they had seen aplenty, but never on the sea. The idea was new, completely new, so new that perhaps not even the Church and all its lawyers had foreseen it.
Ralf’s admiration of his father’s inventiveness gave way to the thought that such a mill might really work. It really might be practical. And if it were practical, if it were built, it would save the Baron money. At a distance, Ralf liked the Baron. He was grateful for his kindnesses, and he liked him also for his laconic remarks, his generosity, his indulgence of Godric.
It was only then that Ralf again connected the Baron with his youngest child. Here was a way, if not to impress her, then to bring himself to her notice, her favourable notice. He thought no further ahead than that. To earn a smile, that was all he wanted.
“We’ve got to tell the Baron,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. It’ll work, I know it will.”
“And who is to build it?”
With this there opened another vista, more exciting even than the first.
“Who is to build it?” Ralf said. “We are, of course.”
* * *
Tuesday evening came at last and with it the appointed hour. No more time remained for Eloise’s mother or Aunt Béatrice to change their minds. For a week now they had been undecided. By Wednesday the bliaut had been settled as th
e cloth of gold, with a plunging neckline to reveal the shirt of pale yellow silk, all beneath a gauzy Persian surcoat edged with pearls and clasped at the waist with a golden cross. There had been increasing uncertainty about the barbette, fillet, coif and veil, leading, on Thursday morning, to panic and the necessity of a journey the next day to Alincester, where her mother’s own cutter had travelled from London to work long into Saturday night on a new and even more extravagant gown: a bliaut in silk crepe and samite, black, droop-sleeved, laced and pleated to emphasize the figure, over a white silk shirt with ogee neck. The silk surcoat, also black, had been embroidered with stylized silver flowers like those on the new fillet. Even the shoes, black silk trimmed with silver, were new. Then, this morning, all that had been rejected. They had gone back to the gold.
There was now to be no headdress. Her plaits had been coiled into a chignon held by her grandmother’s crespine, a caul of fine gold wire studded with jewels where the wires intersected.
Her hands, her wrists, the nape of her neck, her perfume, even her bath: all had been supervised, and now no time remained.
She had to be ready. The word had come. He was waiting.
Holding up the folds of her surcoat and bliaut, Eloise followed her aunt downstairs. Outside the dayroom they paused.
“You look dazzling,” Aunt Béatrice whispered, surveying her own triumph. “You’ll enchant him.”
Eloise did not speak. Her dread was too great, her throat too dry.
Her aunt’s gesture said, “Shall we go in?”
He was already standing, perhaps too nervous himself to sit, and made his bow a little too soon and a little too deeply. Despite all her resolutions, Eloise coloured as her aunt spoke the words of introduction. She had not yet dared to look at his face.
They sat down. Just as if the answers were not already known, her aunt proceeded with the expected enquiries, in French, about his family and his journey here with his uncle. His replies were equally expected. The timbre of his voice was not displeasing. His French was poor, and Eloise guessed that he was rarely called upon to speak anything but English.
She raised her eyes to see what sort of man was to be her husband. Lowering them immediately, she struggled to contain her agitation. She had been led to believe that he was twenty-five, but he seemed older. Not that his age should count against him. Some of the candidates her father had considered had been thirty-five or even more. Nor could she take exception to his figure or face. He seemed an amiable, normal young man, if a little wan. There was nothing wrong with him. His single fault was known only to herself.
His name was Robert Ingram, and he was the eldest son of the Duke of Kent. The negotiations had been going on for the best part of two years. Eloise did not know the proposed size of the dowry, but it was obviously greater than her father could afford. Hence the delay. Nonetheless, a preliminary agreement must have been reached.
Eloise had no say in the matter. The politics of the match were not her concern. Her duty was to her father. She had to please this young man; and then her duty would be to him.
The Kents were among the most anglicized of the ducal families. They were immensely rich. Their commanding castle, above the cliffs at Dover, would be her home. She would eventually become its mistress, but most of the year she and this man would be at court, in London and elsewhere. She would be expected to produce sons. Such was her future.
Sir Robert showed no sign of the Norman blood that Eloise felt in herself. She was not a pure Norman: her forebears had intermarried with the Franks, but enough remained for her to know the pull of the sea and the mad-eyed honour of the north. The first Norman, the great-great-great grandfather of the Conqueror, had been a Viking named Rollo. He had sailed up the Seine to lay siege to Paris, and from its terrorized king had exacted lands in north-western France. With other Norsemen as fierce and ruthless as himself, Rollo had established his own kingdom. Its dynamism and rule by blood-feud had overcome the whole of France: and then, in 1066, England too.
The Viking gods and sagas still resonated in the Norman mind. Stories of demented bravery, long ships, epic voyages and Valhalla were still told, if only in the nursery. Below it all lay the mystic sea. The sea. Eloise could live nowhere but by the sea. That, at least, would continue.
She glanced again at Robert Ingram.
“Isn’t it so, Eloise?” said Aunt Béatrice, switching to English and finally bringing her into the conversation.
“Yes, Aunt,” Eloise said. “Riding is the most agreeable of all exercises.”
“My niece is an accomplished horsewoman,” Aunt Béatrice said. “She had her own palfrey at the age of ten.”
Robert Ingram’s eyes, meeting Eloise’s for the first time, betrayed that he had a sense of humour, but not a trace of irony appeared in the reply he made to her chaperone.
What would Eloise say about him to her mother? It hardly mattered. She could not object to his only fault, the inescapable fact that he was not somebody else.
The exchanges continued.
“We have very good hunting here,” Aunt Béatrice told him. “The King himself has honoured us with his presence.”
“The prowess of His Grace is everywhere known.”
“Indeed it is.”
He turned to Eloise. “May I ask, mademoiselle, if you think that gentlemen spend too much time in pursuit of game?”
“I have heard it complained of, sir. Some ladies, I understand, are not sorry for it.”
While her aunt looked on in consternation, he dissected her impudent reply with an amused nod. His question had been just as impudent: she had decided to return like with like, to see what he was made of. There were other ways to be brave than laying siege to Paris.
Although he now retreated to safer, platitudinous, ground, she saw that she had pleased him. His smile spoke of surprise as well as approval. Eloise, blushing again, smiled back and felt her heart sink. She was discharging her duty in exemplary fashion.
It would be worse later, at the dinner. She would need all her courage then. She must learn to detach her thoughts from their customary course. There could be no more comfort there. Not that there ever had been, nor even hope. She must give those habits up; and with them him.
The wound he had inflicted last week in the Long Barn was the natural prelude to this tęte-ŕ-tęte. She could not blame him. It was absurd to imagine that he had the least inkling of the way she felt: all her ingenuity had been expended in making sure that he had none.
The stratagem had started years ago, as soon as she had recognized him; as soon as she had understood what had happened to her. She had wished to shield herself, but more than that she had wished to shield him. His family’s troubles did not need to be made worse by her selfishness.
Even so, she feared she had come close to disaster. The prime source of information was guarded by a fearsome intelligence: in her hunger for every scrap of news she must have alerted Godric’s suspicions.
The second source was her own eyesight. She had watched him growing into the independence she had first seen five summers ago. He even eschewed the current fashion and kept his blond hair short.
She knew a Viking when she saw one. He, his father and sister, if not his mother, belonged to the same tall, beautiful and clean-limbed breed from which the house of Rollo had sprung.
Outward beauty meant little. His came from within. From the first she had noted his loving solicitude for his sister. Eloise wished she could befriend her, and not just to be closer to him. His resolute masculinity showed in the way he was prepared to work, first in the manor and now at the boatyard. When she had heard that he was to be going there, Eloise had pictured him not among crab-boats but galleys, exercising the old craft, the Nordic fusion with the sea. Once, from horseback, she had seen him at the helm, approaching the staith. At the instinctive moment, the sun on his face, he had dropped the sail and brought the vessel neatly in. He was not merely quick and capable, but he could read and write, which she could
not, and had gone on dauntlessly with his Latin. His drawings, some others of which she had managed to peruse, revealed a magic which could not be put into words. From what Godric had said, he cared little for them once they were finished, and was wont to throw them away. She would have given anything to have had just one of her own. Now and then when the house was quiet and when Godric was at Leckbourne, she would sit in his chamber and look through the eleven pages that comprised his collection.
On Godric’s account also she loved him. She had never been close enough to her brother to understand his pain. Whatever its source, it was coming back, but in a different and darker form. He hated his life.
Which of the two, brother or sister, was more unhappy? Which of the two would be quicker to renounce nobility and live in any other way? Freedom to love: that was all she wanted. She would give up Dover Castle without a moment’s thought.
“Yes, Aunt,” she said, rising. This part of the ordeal was coming to an end.
The next castellan, her keeper, bowed again, with chivalrous ease. He did not seem disappointed by his new acquisition. “Mademoiselle,” he said, and turned to Aunt Béatrice. “Madam. Until later.”
With that he returned to the parlour to find his uncle.
Eloise, behind her aunt, climbed the ornate stairway to face her mother.
11
Ralf had never before spoken so directly to Mr Caffyn, the Steward, the most senior of the Baron’s retainers, and had never before set foot in this, his sanctum. A large table occupied the centre of the room; cupboards and overloaded shelves lined three walls. A desk and block-seat for the Reeve stood by the door, and the single wide window, now with shutters fixed, and overlooking the stable yard, lit during the day the Steward’s writing slope where the ledgers were maintained. The manor could, did, run smoothly for weeks in the absence of its lord. From this office the Steward manipulated the workforce of serfs, balanced the flow of rents and quits and scutage, and exercised loose but constant control of every one of his master’s eleven thousand acres.
The Tide Mill Page 11