The Tide Mill

by Richard Herley

  Ralf recalled the reluctance with which Father Pickard had let him read the Vulgate, and as he did so a favourite verse from St Matthew came again to his mind. “You have heard that it has been said, an eye for an eye.” This referred to words in the Old Testament, in the Book of Leviticus, but immediately after it Jesus had said, “On the contrary, I tell you not to resist evil.” On the contrary. Autem. The word could mean “however”, or even “moreover”, but there, used repeatedly in that staggering lesson on the Mount, what else had it indicated but contradiction?

  With his autem Christ had separated himself from Moses, the New Testament from the Old.

  The Bible was inconsistent. If the Old Testament had been superseded by the New, why was it still taught and quoted? Or if the Old Testament was valid, then the gospel was not. If Christ had taken the world’s sins on himself, if he had been crucified so that we might live, why should we continue to eat of his body; and why, east of Eden, should the cherubim and flaming sword still bar the way?

  This was a doubt Ralf had had, in various forms, many times. It was plainly wrong, but today’s sermon had brought it back. Was bread really a curse, to be eaten in sorrow? Would God disapprove of a mill as lessening his commandment? Did he love his children or not?

  While Father Pickard went on preaching, Ralf thought about the stones at Priorsbourne, the saw, the differential, Brother Nicholas and his billspikes. The Church saw nothing wrong with all that. Why, then, should he?

  “Let us give thanks to Almighty God.”

  The congregation began to stir.

  In the safety of that moment Ralf’s gaze again turned. Her robe this morning was pure white, cut square at the neck. He was enslaved by the modest and elegant way she stood, walked, moved, carried herself. He ordered himself to look away, but could not. A white barbette and fillet covered her head. Her veil was of the thinnest gauze.

  He sensed that she might turn in his direction and averted his eyes.

  He could not define the change in her demeanour. It was as subtle as her veil. He had not spoken to her for nearly six weeks, since midsummer’s day, when they had all sat with the Baron in his garden. He had been no nearer to her than a dozen yards; and yet, since Godric’s last visit, something had unmistakably happened.

  He supposed it had to do with her wedding. From Imogen he had heard details of the betrothal and the planned ceremony. She would be here another fourteen months, longer than he had expected: here to see the finished mill. He had imagined Imogen to be drawing her closer, but he had been mistaken. She was lost to him, more remote than she had ever been. Soon, in the autumn of next year, she would be immured in her high castle by the sea. She might as well have been there already, married, a wife, a mother-to-be.

  It was not the Lammas loaf, but that girl in white, who was the fount of all his pain.

  “Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum.”

  As the priest recited the familiar words, Ralf bowed his head and shut his eyes. Instead of the prayer, he could think only of her.

  “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem: sed libera nos a malo. Amen.”

  “Amen,” came the murmur, including Ralf’s.

  Father Pickard made the sign of the cross over the loaf. “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.” He genuflected, crossed himself, dismissed the congregation, and proceeded to the west door, where he would stand, smiling and saying a word here and there, while everyone, once the Baron and his daughter had departed, filed past.

  * * *

  The tender document had been finished and submitted to Mr Caffyn on Thursday. He had been given two identical copies, one for the client, the other for the contractor. Fifteen large plans were accompanied by thirty-two pages of detailed specifications for the mill.

  Given the start date, the second of August, work had been scheduled to accommodate the winter months. Digging for the bund would start at once and continue as the weather allowed. The pen did not in any case need to be finished till next summer.

  What did need to be finished as soon as possible was the screen: a curved wall of wooden piling to be erected in front of the site for the mill-house and sea-gates. To begin with, the screen would be made waterproof and joined at either side to the dike. Excavation of the dike could then start. On the western side, foundations for the mill-house would be laid. Just east of the mill-house would be the culvert, in ashlar, and the wheel. East of that, for a run of twenty-seven feet, the dike would be replaced with an ashlar wall, fenestrated in two places to receive the paired sea-gates.

  The shell of the mill-house itself would be built first. This would enable interior work to proceed during the winter; and, though a nearby workshed would be erected straight away, the house would also provide Linsell with a site office.

  Another shed was required here in the village, for storage and for somewhere to build those components, like the wheel, which were to be fabricated in sections and carted out to the site.

  The Steward had offered the use of a flint byre, at present empty but for rubbish. This would need fitting out as a workshop. When Linsell’s tools, still in their packing-case from Rushton, were taken over there; when the packing-case was opened, when the crowbar raised the first splinter, then the project would truly have begun.

  It was the manor’s responsibility to build the access track. Work on this was urgent. Linsell had accepted a penalty clause for lateness, but he had also insisted on one from the manor for the track.

  Once the mill and its pen were finished, the waterproofing could be removed from the screen, though the piling itself would be retained as protection from heavy seas. As presently scheduled, the screen would be opened in the second half of June. Well before the thirty-first of July, completion day, the tide mill would, if all went to plan, be working in time to grind next year’s harvest.

  Yesterday, Saturday, Mr Caffyn had come to the cottage to tell Linsell that the tender document was acceptable to the manor, and to return the contractor’s copy. The two men had sat at the kitchen table, initialling each page of the other’s document. Ralf had watched the procedure with growing excitement, scarcely able to believe that, after so much work, the pact between his father and the Baron was becoming ratified, formalized: sanctioned with the full weight and permanence of the law.

  The contracts could have been signed yesterday too, but the Baron, apparently amused by the coincidence, had wanted to sign on Lammas Day itself. Linsell was due at the Hall this afternoon.

  Towards the end of the midday meal, the Doorward’s boy knocked at the open front door. Ralf rose to greet him, since his seat at the table was the nearest.

  “Hullo, Hubert,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Message from His Lordship,” Hubert said, abruptly, his greenish eyes fixed on Ralf’s chest. “His Lordship requests the pleasure of seeing Master Grigg at the none-bell.”

  “Yes, he knows already.”

  “Also Mistress Grigg, Mr Grigg, Miss Grigg and Mr Farlow.”

  “Are you sure of it, Hubert? He said all that?”

  Ralf was joined by his mother.

  “Yes, Mr Grigg. His Lordship requests the pleasure of seeing Master Grigg at the none-bell. Also Mistress Grigg, Mr Grigg, Miss Grigg and Mr Farlow.”

  Still staring at Ralf’s chest, Hubert stood awaiting the reply. Ralf gave his mother a questioning look: she returned it with one of her own. “Please thank His Lordship,” she said, “and tell him we’ll be delighted to come.”

  “Yes, Mrs Grigg.” With that he hurried along the path and, reaching the gap in the hedge, turned right.

  Hubert never got a message wrong. There could be no doubt about it. The whole family had been invited to the Hall, perhaps merely to witness the signing, but, more likely, to get involved in some sort of celebration, not just with the Baron but his family, too.

  Ralf’s immediate and overwhelming reaction was that he did not want to go. In answer to his mother’s question, he could not tell he
r why. She told him that he had to attend. Besides, she had already accepted the invitation.

  Jacob, however, refused every attempt at persuasion. In his threescore years and ten he had never once sat down with the Seigneur, and he was not about to start now. Anna may have accepted on his behalf, but she should have consulted him first. She could make whatever excuses she wanted. He and Edwin and Cebert had been out night-fishing, and he intended to spend his Sunday afternoon far more profitably, and precisely as planned: fast asleep.

  * * *

  Eloise had tried to excuse herself, but her father’s expression had made her relent.

  She had never seen him so excited or pleased. He was like a child with a new toy. The tender document was rarely out of his sight. His hand would steal to it, take it up, and he would again leaf through the pages, opening out the plans, turning them sideways if necessary to admire his mill. At first it would be equipped only to grind flour; then, when the profits started to accrue, other apparatus would be installed.

  She also had looked at the document. She had studied Ralf’s drawings, detailed, complex and imaginative, marked with tiny ciphers she could not understand. Nor could she understand his script. Its neatness exuded the same impersonal charm as his sketches. More than ever, she wished she could read.

  By the time the Griggs arrived, Eloise felt ill with worry. She could no longer trust herself to sit or stand close by him, or to engage him in polite conversation. Her need had become such that she knew she would give herself away. In church this morning, as last week, she had seen him watching her. Facing forward, from behind her veil she had seen him, and confirmed, as if that were necessary, everything Godric had said. During today’s paternoster, when her eyes should have been closed and fully downcast, she had also watched. She had seen the unhappy tension in his face, corresponding exactly to her own; and from his tousled, blond, and downturned head she had divined that her hopeless prayer and his were just the same.

  The contracts had been set out on a table in the hall. Her father was given to whimsy such as this. Beside each contract lay a clean swan’s-quill, ready for the central horn of ink. The men would sign standing up.

  The two families gathered to watch. Eloise stood between Imogen and Mrs Grigg. Ralf was on her left, at the end, next to Henry and her mother.

  Master Grigg took up his quill and dipped it. With cursive strokes he wrote his name while her father made his own signature: fluent, open, unfussy and generous, just like himself. The creaking of the two nibs made her think of ropes, of some heavy strain being taken. The creaking stopped. With the ink still wet, the two men exchanged copies to counter-sign.

  She watched her father’s fingers as the creaking began again. He produced, she supposed, his forename, the possessive, and the word Maepe. At that instant the other nib became still, was lifted from the page. The ropes had reached their limit. The drawbridge had been raised. The loudness of the silence, its effect in her heart, was like the clang of a portcullis. As surely as if the King himself had done it, her wedding licence had just been signed.

  “Splendid!” her father cried, and warmly shook Master Grigg’s hand. “Next year’s corn will be ground by the sea!”

  The afternoon was sunny. A white cloth had been clipped to the big round table on the terrace. The canvas canopy over the doorway had been opened, and in its shade the table was now being spread with dishes and trays of sweetmeats, dainties, and summer fruits. Flagons of mead and cider were placed among them. Eight chairs surrounded the table, pulled back to await the guests. One setting had been removed: Ralf’s grandfather was indisposed.

  As her father ushered everyone outside, Eloise tried to contrive that she should be seated neither next to nor directly opposite Ralf. From each family there were father and mother, daughter and son. The sexes should have alternated, the parents on one side of the table, the young people on the other, making a congruence like two gearwheels, but Eloise, even more than the carelessness of the others in taking their seats, disturbed the pattern. She ended up with her back to the lawn, her father on her left and her mother on her right, beyond whom was Ralf. Next to Ralf sat Henry; next to him, facing Eloise, and with her back to the house, was Imogen, beside her father. Mrs Grigg had taken the final place, next to her husband.

  Drinks were poured, toasts proposed. Eloise smiled, making herself look at Ralf without seeing him. She picked a tiny pastry from the nearest dish, but could not taste it.

  The table slowly fragmented. Her father addressed himself mainly to Master Grigg and his wife, talking about the mill and the workshop to be made of the byre. In their part of the table, Imogen and Henry were talking. Their conversation included Ralf, though he said little.

  Henry made infrequent visits home. Since he was the second son, he would remain in the army and make his fortune there. He was a fine, tall young man, twenty-three, dark, broad-shouldered, and much better looking than Godric, or even Gervase, the eldest, who was also a knight in the King’s service. As she watched him, Eloise saw his eyes lingering a little too often on Imogen, to whom he had only just been introduced. He was being unusually attentive and amusing. Eloise thought of Godric, who on Monday had gone back to the Abbey, and guessed what was passing through Imogen’s mind. Seen from here, across this table covered with good things, in the soothing shade of the canopy, Imogen outwent mere prettiness. Without trying, without wanting to, she was making another conquest: this knight may already have been vanquished.

  Vibrant young men such as Henry, and Gervase, would be the first to die at French hands. Eloise had once seen a joust, a mock and ornamental affair. No one had been hurt, but the hauberks and plate armour, the fork-head lances, the shields and morningstars, had all been real. Real clods and tufts of turf had been thrown up by the pounding chargers, converging at a gallop in front of the King. She could well imagine the impact of an outstretched lance, a man unhorsed, weighed down by his armour, dispatched with a foreign sword.

  Knights would die on the other side, too, and not just knights, but footsoldiers in their thousands. In battle, in mud and filth, on castle walls and in sieges, men would be blinded, maimed, burnt, mutilated and starved. Mothers would be bereft of sons, wives of husbands, daughters of fathers. And for what? A treaty that might last a dozen years; or to pave the way to the loss of England.

  Eloise suddenly felt deep shame. As if in agreement with her, the sun momentarily went in.

  “Have you tried these?” her mother said, offering a plate of small puffs topped with cream and wild strawberries. “They’re delicious.”

  Eloise took one.

  “You’re very quiet today, Eloise.”

  “Am I, Mama? I don’t mean to be.”

  “Would you like to change places with me?”

  Before she could reply, Eloise heard Henry speak her name. “Did you hear, Eloise?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Imogen wants to put her brother to the test.”

  Eloise’s father, who had evidently been following the conversation, said, “It’s just as well Godric isn’t here. Superstitious nonsense, he calls it. Quite right, too.” He looked at her. “You know, the sundial thing.”

  “A story my mother used to tell,” said Eloise’s, and concisely explained the legend to Master and Mrs Grigg.

  “Go on, Ralf,” Imogen said. “We simply have to know.”

  “I say the man’s a saint,” said Henry, clapping him on the back.

  “There speaks the voice of inexperience,” said Master Grigg, at which even Ralf’s mother laughed. The general clamour now was that his presumed sainthood should be put to the proof. Ralf, embarrassed and awkward, finally agreed. He pushed back his chair.

  “Someone must adjudicate,” said Henry. “Eloise, you’re the nearest.”

  Henry could equally well have gone, but she saw that he wanted Imogen to himself. Imogen’s chair was hard by the open door to the house: she would have to squeeze past Henry or Master Grigg.

  “Do
go with him,” Eloise’s mother said, still smiling. “Show him where it is.”

  They descended the flight of stone steps, between the lichen-spotted dolphins, came to the lawn, and started walking towards the pond. Ralf was on her left.

  “I’m sorry about this,” he said.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I didn’t even want to come today.”

  She did not answer, nor did she choose to acknowledge to herself the admission implicit in these words. Her feeling of terror and suffocation had returned; was growing.

  “There were two Augustines, then,” he said.

  “Yes. Hundreds of years apart.”

  “Do you believe the legend?”

  “I want to. Do you?”

  “Believe it or want to?”

  “Either.”

  “Yes, I want to believe,” he said. “Though not just in that.”

  She was unsure of his meaning. They reached the corner at the western tip of the horseshoe-shaped pond. The sundial and its plinth were only moments away, but now the sun went in for the second time. Eloise looked up and saw a dark cloud, edged with brilliant light, drifting slowly east.

  By unspoken agreement they sat down on the bench: it would be half a minute before the sun reappeared.

  She heard him say, “I’ve been thinking about that marsh harrier.”

  Her heart was pounding. She risked a glance. He was staring at the plinth. With his next breath he would let slip something they would wish unsaid. Beyond the sundial, surrounding them, the stagnant water of the pond was covered with lily-pads and waxy white blooms. Above these darted fluorescent blue damsel-flies, settling, flying again, singly or locked in pairs; below, unseen, carp and tench nosed between the stems or stirred the softness of the mud. A vivid vision came to her of the battlefield: men slain, or not yet dead; smoke, ruin.

  “Eloise —”

  “Don’t say it, Ralf, I beg you.” As the sun reappeared, the shadow of the plinth, the column, and the sundial itself strengthened on the network of slabs. She looked up, towards the house, and saw the others round the table. “We’d better get back.”