The track led nowhere but to the works. As far as Ralf was aware, Eloise had never inspected them. Why should she wish to do so now, today? Or was she simply accompanying her aunt, accommodating her wishes?
In growing disquiet, he descended to the brazier and opened the lid of the tar-barrel. He ladled more into the bucket, set it on the grid, and went back to his ladder. He took his time over the repositioning, pretending to change his mind, double-checking the pegs and stays. The charade could not be stretched out indefinitely, but he wanted to be on the ladder when they arrived. The aunt would expect Linsell to show them round. If Ralf were tarring when the moment came, he might not have to join them. He could wave, call down a collective greeting to his sister and the two women from the Hall, and that might be enough.
With infrequent glances to the right, he watched them reach the workshed, which had been set below the dike, just west of the place where the bund started. His father had already seen them and gone forward. The women dismounted.
Ralf resumed his work with even greater attention, brushing under the eaves so that he could look upwards. Feminine voices, becoming louder, reached his ears. He could feel himself being watched, noticed, by Eloise.
“Hullo, Ralf!” his sister cried.
He affected surprise. “Hullo, Im!”
“Good morning!” said Lady Béatrice; Eloise merely smiled.
“Good morning, mesdames! Forgive me, I’m covered in tar.”
Ralf went on brushing.
From the western side of the mill, Linsell showed the women the screen and explained its purpose. He walked with them nearer to the bund. A minute later, he could be seen pointing across to the further dike.
The fourth rider had come close enough to be identified: John Ryle, the earthworks engineer.
“Oh, no,” Ralf muttered. What was more, he had run out of untreated wood. He came down to the ground, busied himself with the pegs and stays, and began to reposition the ladder. But it was no use. He could hear them approaching.
“Ralf,” his father said, once Ralf had made his bows. “Mr Ryle’s here. Our visitors have graciously insisted I mustn’t keep him waiting. Would you finish showing the ladies the site?”
Taking a rag from his pocket and wiping his palms, Ralf again begged forgiveness for his appearance. Eloise was avoiding his eye. Under her fur hat, her cheeks were glowing, perhaps from the northerly breeze. Her buff-coloured riding-habit, in a close woollen cloth lined with fur, did not quite conceal her figure; and her pigskin gloves concealed not at all the slender make of her hands.
“What is you’re doing up there?” said Lady Béatrice.
“It’s tar, madam, to preserve and waterproof the wood.”
“I thought as much.”
“You’ve got some on the end of your nose,” Imogen told him.
Ralf sheepishly stood still while she, having rejected his rag as disgusting, rubbed at the spot with a clean handkerchief, first dry, and then with a little of her saliva.
“All gone.”
For the first time ever, Ralf saw a twinkle in the eyes of Lady Béatrice. Like her niece, she was dark and lissom. She might in her youth have been attractive. Ralf thought her features pinched, disappointed, even disagreeable, though she was not as intimidating as Aunt Matilde. He had always admired her style. Her hat, jauntily set, matched her winter riding-habit. Her gloves she was holding in one hand and resting in the other. All were in a soft, dark-grey cloth, lined with pale fur. Her braided riding-crop, held with her gloves, was finished in grey leather, like her boots. Even with his nostrils full of fumes, Ralf could detect her scent. If her niece had not been standing beside her, taller and incomparably lovely, she might have seemed even more expensive and elegant.
“May we see inside?” she said.
With warnings about wet tar and objects underfoot, Ralf showed them up the two steps to the open west door, through the porch and into the spacious room set aside for the lathe.
Their boots sounded on the boards of the floor and echoed from the vacant wooden walls and ceiling. It was strange to have such exotic and decorative creatures standing there, looking round at this mundane and unfinished artefact produced by mere men. Their presence overfilled the room: especially the presence of Eloise, who was being careful to place the others between herself and Ralf.
From here they passed through the meal-room, where the flour would be collected, and into the gear-room, where the mainshaft would enter the house. Lady Béatrice posed two dry questions about the timber-framing which Ralf answered as succinctly as he could. From the east wall, outside, he could hear the scraping of his companion’s tar-brush.
Back in the meal-room, Lady Béatrice said, “So the millstones will be on the next floor up,” and indicated the hole left in the ceiling for the spout.
“Yes, madam.”
“I suppose that ladder gives access?”
“Yes, but it’s only temporary. We’re having an iron one made. Would you like to go up?”
“I think not. I’m not one for ladders. What about you girls?”
“I’m game,” said Imogen. “You’ll come, won’t you, Eloise?”
Eloise hesitated.
“You really should look,” her aunt said, “as long as we’re here.”
Ralf could not read Eloise’s expression. “There’s a good view of the marshes,” he said. “You can see all the way to Angmer church.”
Her eyes, in meeting his, transmitted a scintilla of ambivalent meaning, coded for him alone. He was able to divine only that the understanding between them yet continued; but this was enough. He felt as if he had never loved her till now. What had gone before was just a sketch, an idea, an outline for the cathedral.
She said, “Are you sure you won’t you come with us, Aunt?”
“No, I’ll wait down here.”
To preserve decorum, Ralf climbed first. He was disappointed that Imogen happened to come next; disappointed that it was only his sister’s gloved hand that met his when he helped her from the ladder. Eloise was helped by Imogen.
On this floor not even the partition wall had been built. It was just a cavernous space, resounding to their feet and voices.
“You only get the view from the top floor,” Ralf said, once he had explained the purpose of the room, and they all three climbed again. This time Eloise came before Imogen, and as her face drew level with Ralf’s, as his hand grasped hers, she again met his eyes with a subtle, unfathomable smile.
“Why, thank you, Ralf,” she said.
He had no time to react: Imogen’s head and shoulders were already rising through the hatch.
Once Eloise had helped her off the ladder, Ralf, feeling as if, from thirty feet, he had fallen off his own, said, “This is called the granary floor.” Each with her mouth slightly, charmingly, open, the two young women looked at the rafters and the plastered underside of the thatch. Despite his reluctance to reach the inevitable end of this moment, he said, “The sacks of grain will come up here from the wagons.”
Eloise’s plaits had been coiled into an abundant chignon, contained by a coarse-meshed net in black silk. No: not black, but the darkest possible brown, just like the hair underneath. He noticed a small silver stud in her earlobe, the selfsame earlobe he had once nibbled. Her ears were as neat and well formed as her white teeth, as her breasts, her hips, as everything about her.
Distracted further by the luxuriant contrast between her neck and the fur at her collar, he unfastened the outer door and swung it towards him, revealing the dike far below. It stretched straight ahead towards the village, the retreating tide on the left. “Don’t get too close,” he said, and continued his talk. “See that beam up there? It’ll have a pulley attached, for a sack-hoist. The floor’s designed to take ten tons. Fifteen, really, but the miller will be told to store no more than ten. His assistant will empty the sacks into a bin, about there. We haven’t cut the hole for it yet, but the chute will go down between the joists.”
&n
bsp; “To the sock,” she said, as if to prove that she had been listening earlier. She was maintaining an expression of seamless interest, but was taking none of it seriously.
“That’s right,” Ralf said, looking at her askance, tempted to smile a gentle acknowledgement. “To the sock.”
He decided the matter then, just as he had decided to drag Godric from the mud. Whatever it took, whatever happened, he was going to make her his wife.
“Look, Im,” she said. “You can see the staith. Do you know how far away the village is, Ralf?”
“Two miles, nearly.”
When they had seen their fill, he shut the door.
“What a sweet little room!” Imogen said, as he showed them into what would be the millers’ dormitory. Both girls went to the window and looked out over the lagoons, and to the right, towards Angmer.
Yes. She was for him, as he was for her. She was the reason he had been born. For the first time since Lady Day, he felt something like peace: if not peace itself, then certitude. The future as presently constituted was not to be thought of. Watching Eloise in three-quarter profile, as she stood beside the other girl he loved and pointed across the unfinished pen to the far-off tower of Angmer church, he refused even to consider it.
But, as she turned from the window, he saw that her expression had clouded. All trace of teasing, amusement, had gone. Before Imogen too had turned, she looked at him with such poignancy that when Imogen asked, “Is there anything else we should see?” he feared she would guess everything.
“I don’t think so.”
They returned to the ladder. Imogen went down first.
Having given Ralf her hand, Eloise stepped on the rungs. For a second or two, as Imogen withdrew further, he refused to release it. She tensed, close to panic.
Very quietly he whispered, before letting her go, “I’ll be here again tonight.”
The remaining minutes passed in a daze. Eloise refused to look him in the eye again, and he knew she would not be coming to the mill tonight, or on any other night. Even though he had given himself no choice but to do as he had said and keep vigil, he had erred again. She was not only beautiful and intelligent, but wise. Where he was hot-headed, she was prudent. Where he was thoughtless, she had depth.
The ladies departed. Ralf turned back to join his father and the earthworks engineer. Climbing the bund, he saw that it was possession of her character as much as her person that he craved. What could not be achieved with a woman like that at his side? And to have her company, every day and every night, her touch, her look, her smile: this might even be too much happiness for a mortal man.
He paused on the top of the bund and watched the horses carry her away.
* * *
To stamp his authority on the capital and on England, William the Conqueror had built the Tower of London. When in town, his descendant slept either there or at Westminster, which lay two miles outside the London wall.
Westminster still retained the structure of a village, centred on its hall and its church, the Abbey. But it was unlike any other village in the land. With its royal palace and lawcourts, treasury and government, its parliament, and the residences and apartments of courtiers and burgesses, it formed a unique enclave of privilege and influence.
Gervase’s small house there had been in his family for nearly a hundred years. It was near the Hall, the second from the left-hand end of a timber-framed row called the Wooleries, roofed with red tile and with every window glazed. The servants slept in the attic. There were three bedchambers on the second storey and two on the first. Besides the service rooms, the ground floor was divided into a comfortable parlour, a dining hall, and Gervase’s private office. This fronted the street, and was furnished with his grandfather’s things: an oak desk, two hard chairs with cushions, an oak-and-yew cabinet, tapestries. The rug he had purchased himself, in Ghent.
On this chilly Tuesday morning the leaded window remained shut. The street, the passers-by, and the occasional rider or wagon, like the Hall opposite, showed as distorted, sunlit shapes in the coloured lozenges of glass.
Gervase, behind his desk, was doing his best to hide his contempt. He turned his eyes from the window and back to the corpulent and richly clad personage in his visitor’s chair.
Some people produced in him the disturbing and irreligious idea that human beings were akin to swine. Hugh Fitz Peter was that contradiction in terms, a Christian moneylender. Usury, for Christians, was against the law. Since their heyday under Henry’s father, the Jews had been so mercilessly fined, tallaged and persecuted that most had gone abroad. One, at Bristol, of whom ten thousand marks had been demanded, had lost a molar tooth each day until he had paid up. The English Jewry had anyway been emasculated by Magna Carta. The remnants exercised their trade with much circumspection. The King borrowed his money directly from the continent, often from merchants in Flanders and Florence.
Men like Gervase had to look nearer home. The interest charged by those such as Fitz Peter bore various euphemistic names: fees, benefits, gratuities. He preferred “consideration”.
Fitz Peter was variously said to be worth ten, fifteen, or thirty thousand marks. His debtors included many of the grandest hypocrites of the court. On the strength of Gervase’s reputation, he had already lent him two hundred marks, to cover the wedding licence and the early payments to Master Grigg. Further loans had been agreed, to finish the mill. Because of the risks of detection and default, his charge for all these amounted to an annual interest rate of thirty-five per cent. Compared with the Jews, who normally charged forty-three and a third, but could ask as much as sixty-five, he was cheap. Or he had been.
“I wish I could be more helpful,” he said, “but my man has taken everything into account. So have I.”
Fitz Peter’s valuer had examined the Steward’s ledgers to estimate future earnings. The various figures, combined with his master’s rate of interest, produced a limit on the sum that Gervase dared to borrow. Above this, the principal could never be repaid. Compound interest, accruing for ever on the remainder, would eventually exceed the revenues of the manor. Unable to pay either his scutage to the Crown or his tithes to the Church, Gervase would be quickly be dispossessed of his title and lands. The lordship of the manor would revert to the King.
This morning, Fitz Peter had announced an increase in his rate for any future loans. Instead of thirty-five per cent, on these he wanted fifty.
“It’s a matter of risk,” he said. “My advisers fear a suit.”
“There will be no suit.”
“You know the archbishops are already talking to Rome?”
Fitz Peter’s network of bribes must have permeated William’s staff; or Rochester Castle, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The money had been wasted. Gervase was confident of his position. “That’s only to be expected,” he said. “They’ll naturally want to change the law. My mill, however, will remain exempt. The principle of retrospection will apply.”
“Assuming it falls outside the existing definitions.”
“It does. Rest assured, it does.”
There was something odious about Fitz Peter’s smile. It hinted at resentment, past slights, and detestation of the ruling class. He said, “The costs of such a suit would not be small. You might end up having to pay them. Where would that leave me?”
“There will be no suit,” Gervase said, as if explaining something to Hubert. “I have retained Edward Chevalley.”
Fitz Peter nodded, apparently impressed. Then he added, “As I say, fifty per cent. That’s your new rate.”
Even at fifty per cent, Gervase would have ample credit for the dowry and the cost of the wedding. But by that time his mill would be established and working, the so-called risk would have disappeared, and the rate would have returned to normal. The loans he had already arranged were unaffected.
As soon as he had got rid of Fitz Peter, he hastened to the Palace. The King had just left for the Tower. Gervase would follow.
> In the stone corridor behind the throne room, he encountered, among others, Lord de Braux, hobbling along on crutches. Last June he had broken his left ankle. Despite the ministrations of the best leeches in London, the break had not yet healed. A faint but nauseating smell emanated from the splints, the bandage and his black woollen hose. Although he inclined to Leicester’s part in the Gascon question, de Braux was a faithful servant of the King.
“You did well to miss him,” he said. “He’s in a vile mood.” He craned his neck and Gervase followed his gaze. At the end of the corridor, where it joined the Gallery, a party of clerics was sweeping past. Leading the way strode an elderly man in a cardinal’s red biretta and robes. His beaked nose and angular cheek-bones were familiar.
“Who’s that?” Gervase said.
“The papal ambassador,” said de Braux. “He doesn’t look happy, does he?”
“What does he want?”
“He saw His Grace earlier, in camera. After that he went to see the Lord Chancellor, about Sicily, so I hear.”
As far as Gervase knew, the tide of the Sicilian campaign was going in favour of the Pope. The King was paying for it, or was supposed to be. There should have been no difficulty; no need for a legate.
Gervase was struggling to recall the cardinal’s name. He had met him recently, somewhere or other.
“We heard raised voices,” said de Braux, “but I think the quarrel will be resolved. Whether the King will grant him another audience, I cannot say. ‘Parson Pellegrini’, he calls him now. To his face.”
12
Ralf had trouble making sense of the liquid call of a curlew, loud because nearby, and he began to understand that he was emerging from a dream. He must have failed himself and fallen asleep. And if he had failed in that way, might he also have left too little time to get back to the village undetected?
The Tide Mill Page 25