The Tide Mill

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The Tide Mill Page 18

by Richard Herley


  Imogen interposed herself between the sun and the dial. The gnomon’s shadow disappeared.

  “I’m not going to be a saint, then,” she said. “That’s a relief.”

  Eloise, on prompting, demonstrated what she already knew: that she also was not to be canonized. They speculated as to who in the village might be put to the test, giggling as each suggested more and more ludicrous candidates. From the pond they returned to the terrace and, without pausing in their conversation, sat down at the big outdoor table.

  “Does he sign it himself?” Imogen said.

  “O yes.”

  “Will it have a seal and everything?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “How exciting! And without it you can’t get married at all?”

  “Not to anyone above a baron, or anyone who will inherit a greater title.”

  Yesterday her father had told Eloise about the royal sanction. Mr Tysoe was drawing up the petition to the King. Next week, once the contract for the mill had been signed, the petition would be sent to the Clerk Royal. Her father had already written to the Dean of Westminster, and had heard that the Abbey would be made available on a Saturday in the next October but one: the fifteenth. That was to be her wedding-day.

  The banns would be put up at Westminster and here in Mape, for three Sundays before the sanction was signed. After signature, only the King could terminate the betrothal, provided he had the agreement of both families. A royal sanction was revocable only on the death of one of the betrothed or the failure of the bride’s family to pay the dowry. Deriving from the King’s divinity, the sanction was itself divine. Violation was treasonable.

  “So you’ll be a duchess?” Imogen said. “The Duchess of Kent?”

  “Yes, it’s likely, in time.”

  “Can I be a bridesmaid?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m sure not. That’s all protocol. You know. It’s not like an ordinary wedding.”

  “Will the King be there? And the Queen?”

  “I expect so. The Kents are their friends.”

  “So is your father the Baron. And the Baroness.”

  “Yes, they’re friendly with my parents too.”

  Imogen remained silent for a while. “I don’t think I’d like all that pomp,” she said. “Westminster Abbey. I’d rather be married here.”

  “So would I. Then you could be a bridesmaid.”

  “Who else would you have?”

  “As a bridesmaid? From the village? Oh, Isolda, perhaps.” This was the eldest daughter of her father’s prime tenant.

  “Have you heard that Bernard says he wants to marry me?”

  “Really?” Eloise’s recollection of Isolda’s nineteen-year-old brother fitted ill with the idea of him on one knee.

  “I could never accept. His arms are hairy.”

  Eloise laughed. “Everyone’s arms are hairy. Yours are. So are mine.” She held out her left forearm to demonstrate.

  Imogen’s fingers brushed the skin; she held out her own forearm and briefly laid it alongside for comparison. “Look. Ours are nice. His are – they’re obvious.”

  “Is it just his arms you don’t like?”

  “No.”

  “What else, then?”

  “I don’t love him,” Imogen said, simply, as if this were all that mattered.

  “They’re a respectable family. He’d be a good provider.”

  “I’d rather be on my own.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen. From what I hear, all the boys are in love with you.”

  Imogen wrinkled her nose.

  “Isn’t there anybody you like?”

  “Well, there is someone.”

  “Who?”

  “You won’t tell him?”

  “I won’t,” Eloise said, her smile disappearing. Imogen was in earnest.

  “Promise? Promise on your rosary?”

  “I promise.”

  “Promise on all the holy saints?”

  “I promise on all the saints.”

  “And the Bible?”

  “That too.”

  “It’s Godric.”

  Eloise could not have been more amazed.

  “I know he’s not handsome,” Imogen explained. “Not in the ordinary way. And I know he’s going to be a priest, but I love him just the same. He’s so kind. He’s funny, and brainy too. I always feel comfortable with Godric. Best of all I like his eyes. He understands things without being told.”

  “That he does,” Eloise said, perceiving, as she considered the matter further, that Imogen, were it not for Leckbourne, could have made a worse choice; and that she would be the perfect cure for her brother’s seriousness and black moods. Yes, they were a couple: a couple in some ideal world, the world of her dreams. “How long have you felt like this?”

  “Years.” She looked at Eloise. “It’s stupid, I know.”

  “I don’t think it’s stupid.” The sympathy Eloise felt was so intense, so quickly aroused, so near, that she began to see just how badly she herself was afflicted. Could Imogen really be in the same case? Was that why they had so quickly become friends?

  “Is there any chance he won’t be a priest?”

  Eloise put out a hand: Imogen automatically clutched it. “I’m sorry. The Church is his whole life.”

  “Do you think he likes me?”

  “You might be a bit young yet,” Eloise said, softly, not reminding Imogen that Godric had called her the prettiest girl in the county; nor yet telling her that he had meant it only to give his sister pain.

  “I’m sixteen,” Imogen said.

  “I know that.”

  “Bernard’s older than him.”

  “Ah, but he’s got hairy arms.”

  Now they both laughed.

  “What about Sir Robert? Has he got hairy arms?”

  “I’ve never seen them.”

  “O Eloise, you might be making the most dreadful mistake.”

  She no longer thought so. Her marriage was inevitable. Just as her older brothers were expected to don armour in defence of the Crown, just as her sister Adela had already sacrificed herself, so she had to yield her maidenhead and her body. Compared with the suffering and hardship a war would bring, what did her happiness amount to? It was a little thing, of no importance. She had already enjoyed far more comfort and privilege than all but a handful of people in England. And perhaps her father was right. Perhaps she would grow to love Robert Ingram. If not him, there would be children.

  “You won’t tell Godric what I said?”

  “I promise.”

  “I do love him, really. Ralf worships him, you know. He’d do anything for Godric.”

  “Yes.” Eloise felt herself becoming wary. “Godric thinks the world of Ralf. He always has.”

  “Poor Ralf.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He can’t be in Rushton any more.”

  “What’s in Rushton?”

  “Some girl. He’s in love. He’s so moony it’s pitiful. He’s wasting away. They met in the spring, I’m sure, but he refuses to say anything about her. Except that she’s very pretty.”

  Eloise thought yet again of the harrier, and of their time alone on the dike.

  There was pathos as well as absurdity in her daydreams. They belonged to childhood. In the adult world there was no room for them. It was harsh, governed by hatred and self interest. Her father wrestled with it every day. That was why he was building the mill, and that was why she had to marry Robert Ingram. Ralf was just a boy about whom she knew nothing. What could be more expected than that he should fall in love? She wished she had never met him. Then she would have been spared this sense of loss, this vacancy: this isolation.

  Eloise managed to keep her voice level as she said, “He’ll get over it.”

  “I hope so. But it seems to be worse than ever. I say she’s in Rushton, but I don’t really know. She might be here.”

  “In Mape?”

  “I can’t think of
anybody who arrived last spring. Can you?”

  “I thought he liked Mary Ibbott.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I remember seeing them together, at Lady Day. When we had the recital.”

  “It’s not her. I can vouch for that. She got him a black eye.”

  “Did she?”

  “Everyone was talking about it. Ralf wouldn’t say, but I think it was that brute, Aholiab Peake. He’s Mary’s latest. Or was. She’s got John Hollins on a string now. But this doesn’t solve our mystery. I’m dying to know who she is. He’s a dark one, Ralf. Men are like that,” Imogen added, authoritatively. “They never tell you what you want to hear.”

  6

  Ralf’s father had received a letter from Josiah Parfett providing answers to his technical questions. This had given them a basic knowledge, but nothing could replace inspection of working mills.

  Linsell was fully occupied with the plans and the tender document, dealing with a maze of imponderables in the supply of timber, ashlar, fixings and mortar, and with sub-contractors who would, for a reasonable price, install the modest screen of piling needed. Iron railings and ladders, steel hooks, chains, hinges and pawls, the layshaft, spindle and bearings: all had to be fabricated somewhere, by someone, and delivered in sequence and on time.

  The number of days remaining before the end of the month was diminishing with alarming speed, and still they had not finished the specification; still they did not know exactly how much the mill would cost. If they underestimated, Linsell would have to bear the loss. If they overestimated, the Baron might baulk at the expense and change his mind.

  Linsell had spent one week in Rushton and another in Alincester, dealing with suppliers, and was due to return to Alincester soon. Otherwise he remained at Mape, working eighteen hours a day, while Ralf was delegated, spared, to undertake these excursions with the Steward and find out everything he could about the process of grinding corn.

  Grain was ground between a pair of flat, round stones, or molae, each with a hole in the centre and about four feet in diameter. The upper stone, the runner, or catillus, was attached to its drive-shaft or spindle by an inset metal crosspiece called a mace or rind. The runner rotated just above the fixed lower stone, the bedstone, or meta, also called the ligger.

  Above the stones was the hopper, or infundibulum, which fed grain into the eye of the runner through a wooden chute, or slipper, called by some millers a shoe. The hopper was fed from a bin on the floor above by a closable cloth tube, the sock.

  The stones were usually made of some form of quartzite. Derbyshire gritstone was cheap and easily available, but wore down quickly and left too much stone-dust in the flour. The material recommended by Mr Parfett was French burr, which was quarried only at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, near Châlons-sur-Marne. Even when relations between England and France had been easier, burrstone had been expensive. Now the price had gone up even more. Ready-made stones, in various patterns and diameters, were available from yards on the Continent.

  Making the stones was a skilled process. The quarried burr came in small and irregular lumps, a number of which were required to make a single stone. The lumps were trimmed, bound with plaster of Paris, and locked in place with a cooling iron hoop. A finished stone could weigh upwards of a ton.

  The stones came in matched pairs. The working surfaces were chased into sections called “harps”, each comprising a pattern of raised faces, or lands, and grooves, or furrows. The furrows were cut radially, with further, tangential, furrows.

  As the grain trickled from the shoe, it was fed by the central region of the furrows to the lands. The design of the harp was critical to regular distribution, and the gap between the stones had to be adjusted to tolerances which would have tested even Master Brocq. In this parchment-thin space, varying outward from the centre, the grinding took place.

  The centrifugal motion of the runner drove the flour along the furrows to the circumference, where it showered into a circular chute, and thence into the open sack.

  As Ralf’s knowledge of mills and milling grew, he saw how an engineer could make nature, bountiful and uncomplaining, serve what once had been the sentence of mankind. Grinding corn was not just hard work, but time-consuming and unpleasant.

  Like nearly every serf, Jacob kept a quern in his cottage. This comprised two heavy discs of gritstone, about a cubit in diameter. They were shaped so that one sat upon the other, concave and convex. An off-centre hole in the top stone allowed a wooden handle to be inserted, and a central hole allowed grain to be fed in by hand.

  To save money, from necessity, Ralf’s mother had used the quern to grind the family’s flour. The scraping of the stones had been one of the most familiar sounds of his early years at Mape. Indivisible from that sound was the memory of his weary mother kneeling on the kitchen floor, turning, turning, pushing back her straggling hair, her face aglow, turning the crude wooden handle so that her children might eat; and bound up in that memory was all the injustice of their plight, for Ralf, Jacob, and even Imogen too had taken their turn. Taking your turn: the sweaty handle of the quern was where that expression had begun.

  And as Ralf’s knowledge of mills and milling grew, so did his knowledge of the ecclesiastical manors. Whether attached to a religious house or run by a steward, almost every one had its mill, a place where mathematics, brought to life, did so easily that which had drained so much of his mother’s strength and youth. The profits, flowing like new flour along the furrows of the Diocese, were collected by the Molarius for the Panel at Alincester. It seemed somehow to Ralf that it was not the masons but his own mother, and many others like her, kneeling at querns, year after year, who had raised the Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace. When he thought of all the mills that could have been built instead, Ralf became angry.

  At the small mill he and Mr Caffyn had visited this morning, the pistor, or flour-miller, had spoken barely any English, and even then had been so taciturn that they had learned little of value.

  “Let’s hope for better luck here,” Mr Caffyn said, once they had dismounted. “I don’t think I could take another Norwegian.”

  On their rides, during their long conversations, Ralf had come to like Mr Caffyn very much. Today they had climbed the downs and descended into the Weald. Early in the afternoon the sky had clouded over, and now warm drizzle was falling.

  The large and important mill at Priorsbourne stood where four roads met, wide roads churned by heavy wheels. Even now a wagon was being loaded, from the upper doorway, with freshly sawn, waney-edged boards. Two more wagons, ox-drawn, were waiting, one to deliver beech-trunks, the other to collect; the clang and whine of the circular saw had been audible long before the mill itself had appeared among the dense foliage of the surrounding alders.

  The house was a modern, tall, square building in the local ironstone, roofed with slate, and much larger and more complicated than the one planned for Mape. The enterprise here, besides timber cutting and flour milling, included a blast furnace, today lying idle. The machines were worked by lay brothers and serfs from the priory manor, supervised by the monks.

  Just below the priory itself, part of the Rother had been diverted into a leat a quarter of a mile long. The leat ran parallel to the river, but at a lesser gradient, for it had been channelled along a rising embankment. At its end, about fifteen feet above the parent river, a wall of water, sliding over a stone lip, dropped slightly forward of the top of a large, double-width, overshot wheel.

  The paddles of an overshot wheel were formed into compartments which contained the water as it fell. The weight of water made it far more efficient than an undershot wheel, whose paddles were merely submerged in the stream. The price to be paid was usually the construction of a raised leat. In some places, like Finmere, a natural waterfall could be exploited.

  The manor’s grain had been milled at Finmere for as long as anyone could remember. The monks there did the milling themselves, and were renowned for their ex
pertise, though the work here at Priorsbourne was meant to be as good.

  As he and Mr Caffyn walked towards the mill-house, Ralf made a study of the wheel. It had been built of oak, by the look of it, with eight spokes on each side, and made about ten revolutions a minute. The wheelshaft disappeared through a hole in the wall, behind which would be the frame supporting the gears. The gearing would take the speed up to a hundred and twenty at the rind or, for sawing, many times that. Below the wheel, spinning froth vanished into the brown waters of the tailrace, which rejoined the river some way down.

  “Ready, Ralf?”

  They climbed the stone steps to the open door and went inside. The smell of sawdust grew stronger. Ralf recognized the tang of hornbeam as well as beech.

  A middle-aged monk, tonsured, wearing a grubby black habit, sandals on his feet, was descending the steep stairway straight ahead. “Good day,” he said, over the noise of the saw. “Who might you be?”

  “My name is Walter Caffyn. This is my assistant.”

  The monk introduced himself as Brother Nicholas. As he did so, above and behind him, the saw could be heard ceasing to bite, speeding up as resistance was lost. Someone shouted an instruction and there was the flat report of a sawn slab being dropped. “How may I serve you?”

  The saw re-engaged, so loudly that Mr Caffyn started. “I am the steward of Lord de Maepe. His holding is on the coast. Mape.”

  “I don’t know it.” The monk frowned and gestured at a small room, a cubicle, beside the main door. “Let’s go in the office.”

  Once they were inside, Mr Caffyn gave his usual preamble. “My lord wishes to change his milling contract.”

 

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