“His Lordship’s coming himself. And the Steward and Reeve and Doorward. That’ll make fourteen of us. More, if the Baron can persuade them.”
Squinting against the rain, Linsell involuntarily looked up, towards the south and east, just as if the sun, or even brightness, could be seen.
“It’s still early,” Ralf said. “We’ve got the whole day. Till dark.”
“That’s high water itself.”
To Ralf’s surprise, Jacob said, “Jabbering won’t mend the blessed dike. Let’s get on with it.”
It was as if he had drawn authority from the storm, or from the sea itself, his place of work. In his quaint, quiet fashion, Jacob had always drummed into Ralf the need to beware the sea, to fear and respect it as a most dangerous foe. With the same underlying modesty he deferred to Linsell’s education, intelligence, and rank. Expert as he was in the ways of the sea, Jacob did not forget his place. He was a serf, the son of serfs. But out here, this morning, far from the village and the Hall, in this emergency at the very edge of the land, Ralf suddenly saw his grandfather in a new light.
Ralf felt himself swelling with admiration as Jacob turned to Godric and his two brothers, to their uncle and the two house-guests. “You sirs. See that shed yonder? You’ll find barrows in there like this one, with mud-tyres. Pray get one each, fill it with small ragstone from that pile, and hurry along back here.” To Linsell he said, “Ralf and me’ll start bringing mortar.”
4
This morning’s high tide had turned at four o’clock. This evening’s was due at twenty past four, which would put low water at about ten thirty.
The height of the coming tide had been predicted at sixteen feet three, twenty-five inches above the average. When the sea was calm, its level would reach no nearer than four feet from the top. In a storm, however, overspill was to be expected.
The dike had been built with such tides in mind. Its minimum height was eleven feet six. Ralf had heard Mr Caffyn estimating that it would take the sea about three and a quarter hours after low tide to reach the base of the dike. Because of the shallow angle of approach, the rise till then would appear quite rapid. Thereafter the water would cover the slope of the dike at a rate of ten or eleven inches an hour.
By midday, or thereabouts, Ralf began to fear they were not making enough progress. No serfs had appeared, though the Baron had brought many of his male servants and had managed to recruit six men from the families of the senior tenants. The work was slow and hazardous. The rain and wind had moderated, but the top of the dike had become slippery from the passage and repassage of so many boots and wheels.
The larger rocks were too heavy and awkward for a barrow. They had to be carried between two or four men, using the pen-builders’ stretchers. There were not enough pairs of gauntlets for everybody. Ralf’s hands, and those of his father, were by now bleeding and covered in mud and grit. Mr Caffyn would not trust anyone but himself, Linsell, Ralf, Mr Kenway, and Mr Hodson, his bailiff, to set the stone.
The distinction between master and man had been inverted. The tenants and noblemen were acting as mere beasts of burden. For a curious few minutes Ralf had reflected on the buried, unspoken, long-nursed resentments of the serfs. Two centuries had passed since the advent of the Conqueror. What now was Ralf himself? And Eloise? There were no longer such creatures here as Normans or Saxons: only the English. Both alike spoke of the French, all the French, as the enemy.
Lord de Maepe was working as hard as anyone. He had barely paused for breath since reaching the site.
Ralf’s astonishment at seeing the Baron thus employed had long since dulled. As much as the heavy, mindless, and repetitive exertion, the weather had rendered him numb. So much water had trickled down his neck that his clothes had become saturated, and so feverishly was he working that he, like most of the others, had become over-warm. Ralf’s rainproofs were near the bottom of a heap of others on the landward side of the dike. His leggings and quilted tunic, his shirt and breeches, glistened and oozed with almost every motion of his body.
His dreading thoughts of Imogen and what she might say, of Eloise, of the consequences for his father if the dike did not hold: these mental wanderings had receded and become blurred and distant, as though belonging to somebody else. His only reality now was the advancing edge of the tide. Every so often he felt drawn to waste a glance, first at the mudflats and then at the pebbly foreshore. Each time he did, unreasonably more territory had been claimed by the swollen, rain-pocked surface of the brine.
For twenty yards the top of the dike had subsided, here by a few inches, there by three or four feet. At the Steward’s direction, the party had as yet made no attempt to fill in. The job could be tackled last. If there were no time even for that, the spillage would be nothing compared to the devastation caused by wholesale collapse of the dike. What mattered was reproofing the outer face, starting at the bottom and working upwards.
Of the original granite in the damaged section, the sea had carried away at least half. Many of the boulders had been dragged, by as much as a furlong, out into the estuary. Most of the smaller stones had simply vanished. The men had salvaged as much of the remainder as they could. The rest was being supplied by the Kentish ragstone intended for the bund.
Ralf was conscious that this was the worst day of his life. The future surely held a day worse yet, but it could not be more crushing than this. He had been exhausted yesterday. Last night he had not slept. This morning, in mud-clogged boots and rainproofs, he had run the two miles along the dike to the village. He had marched out here twice, once with his father and again with Godric and the rest. Since then he had not stopped at all.
He let go of his trowel and looked up acceptingly. Bernard, the senior tenant’s son, threw down another head-sized lump of ragstone. It landed nearby with a hollow thud and rolled a few inches. Before it had come to rest, Ralf grabbed it and tried to fit this piece among its new neighbours, but even in that simple endeavour his mind was slowing.
The Baron appeared with another barrow filled with leather buckets of mortar. Ralf heard his father, to his right, calling something up at him, but his words were flung away on the wind and the Baron did not hear them. “What did you say?”
Linsell shouted again. “No more of that, sir! Not after this! It won’t have time to set!”
The mortar was a riddle which had been troubling Ralf for a long time past. Lime mortar would not set in this rain, but Mr Caffyn had concurred with Linsell in insisting that they use it as far up the slope as possible. Ralf supposed that, sheltered by the rocks, some of it at least could be expected to harden. That which didn’t would be washed down to a lower level. The mix they were using, stiff as it was, would need a couple of hours for the surface to set sufficiently to resist even calm seawater.
His father’s instruction had come earlier than Ralf had expected. He looked over his shoulder again. The slopping water had almost reached the base of the dike.
They were not going to do it in time.
“Another!” he was about to say, but Bernard was looking elsewhere, towards the village, towards the rapid approach of a stocky, middle-aged man whom it took Ralf a moment to recognize as Father Pickard. His pointed cap, concealing his characteristic pate, made him look different, younger, despite his beard; but the skirts of his rainproof did not quite hide the hem of his habit, soaked now and just as muddy as his impractical, everyday, boots.
His arrival gave Ralf the wild hope that he had at mass sermoned the serfs on their duty to the manor, and was coming to announce that the whole workforce was on its way. The same idea had obviously seized the Baron, who was already helping to close the few yards remaining between himself and the priest.
Ralf gained the top of the dike and joined the huddle of men too late to hear the beginning of the talk, but he understood at once that no serfs were going to appear. It seemed that Father Pickard had merely come to help in person.
“No,” the Baron said. “I can’t allow it
.”
For some reason, Father Pickard, noticing Ralf, turned in his direction. “Ralf, tell him not to be so pig-headed.”
Ralf was taken aback. He had never seen the Father like this before. His composure had deserted him. He was not so much a priest as a plain man determined to act: exasperated, perhaps even enraged, by the serfs. Ralf stammered, dimly aware of the Bishop, of the Diocesan Panel and Molarius, of the whole grandiose apparatus of opposition embodied by the Church. “Father – it wouldn’t be right. Besides, it’s dangerous out here. Too dangerous for you.”
“Damn it, Ralf,” said Father Pickard, glancing at the Baron. “This man is my friend.”
“Joseph,” said the Baron. “Go back to the village and ring the tocsin. Tell them – tell them every man who comes will get sixpence. A shilling. We must have more people.”
“It’s true,” Mr Caffyn said. “We shan’t finish, otherwise.”
“I’ll tell them a sight more than that.”
As he returned to his work, Ralf wondered what Father Pickard had meant; what, exactly, he would say to the villagers that he had not urged on them already, at mass. He wondered whether he would, presumably for a second time, absolve them from breaking the holy feast; whether he would lecture them on the unfailing decency of the Baron and his steward; and whether he would mention brotherly love, or even, on this of all days, the name of Jesus Christ.
Even as this thought passed through Ralf’s overwrought mind, a shower of spray hit his back. The incoming tide had broken its first wave on the base of the dike.
* * *
The unstoppable fading of daylight and the unstoppable rise of the tide proceeded in tandem; as the dusk deepened the heaving water came ever closer to the top. Eager to surpass itself, the sea began casting speculative froth, wind-borne, over the boots and barrows of the men. Then, without warning, to shouts of dismay, an especially adventurous wave, a drenching pioneer, instantly filled the subsidence and left it seething.
Its following companions seemed daunted by this feat. Ten, fifteen, twenty more tried and failed to match it. Just when Ralf thought the tide must have turned, a second big wave proved him wrong. So much water poured over the path that the pile of rainproofs was scattered and carried halfway down the inland slope.
The party was working at a frantic rate. Only seventeen of the more mercenary serfs had heeded Father Pickard’s call, though it seemed that the whole village had assembled in answer to the warning bell. The extra men had enabled the Steward to complete the facing. Now, with full darkness coming on, barrow after barrow of ragstone was being tipped into the flooded subsidence.
The wind had backed further and was blowing from the worst possible direction: east-south-east, against the coastal current, straight into the harbour mouth and contrary to the outflow from the river, serving to heighten and prolong the tide.
Ralf did not know how much more he could take. As the wind turned it was becoming much colder. And now, with every fifth or sixth wave, a rush of freezing seawater overtopped the dike with such force that it was hard to remain upright.
“That’s it!” Mr Caffyn shouted. “Back to the village! Now! Forget the barrows! Leave them where they are!”
Ralf saw men descending the inland slope to sort through the haphazard debris of rainproofs, looking for their own. To south, east and north the sky was black. Only in the west, over the Great Marsh, did a rim of light remain. All had become grainy and misleading. Between waves, as the water withdrew and regrouped, Ralf tried and failed to see whether the new facing was being washed away.
“Hurry up, Ralf!” his father cried. “Get your things!”
Ralf, among half a dozen others, could not find his own coat. Someone else had taken it by mistake. On his father’s urgent instruction he picked up one that seemed about his size and, while cold water drained down the slope and around their ankles, put it on.
Quite distinctly, he heard Imogen say his name.
He knew then that he was hallucinating with fatigue. The sun had set on his sister’s oath. When he got home, she would speak, for he would not agree to her demand. He would never relinquish Eloise.
It was by now so dark that he could hardly see. Most of the men had mounted the dike and started along it. The first had got as far as the mill.
The ingress proceeded so quickly, was so sudden, so grotesquely appalling and, at heart, so unexpected, that Ralf did not initially understand that a charging mass of water was rushing towards them through the pen. Nor, over the wind and the noise of the sea, had he heard it coming.
“Quick!” Linsell screamed. “Get up the bank! It’s gone! It’s gone!”
Another man shouted, “Christ save us!”
Ralf was struggling to understand something so incomprehensible and unfair. The sea had got behind the dike. It had come in from somewhere else, somewhere nearer the village, carrying with and before it everything it had swept up in its passage: mud, stones, branches, hedge-bottom leaves, straw, froth, dung.
Just ahead of it, he scrambled up the slope and gained the path, beside his father and the other stragglers. The flood spewed over the top of the dike, meeting the unpolluted waves on the other side, slopped the other way, equilibrated, and rose and fell, now revealing, now concealing, the narrow strip of land which was all the safety the grudging deep would vouchsafe them.
Among all the voices Ralf heard the Steward’s, nearer the mill. “Back, everyone! Back! Back the other way! Slowly, now! Mind your footing!”
He, at least, was thinking clearly. The dike must have been holed further to the west. The route to the village had been interrupted. Therefore they had to move eastwards, following the line of the dike as it turned with the beach and eventually gave way to rising ground. From there they could push inland, uphill, and get back by means of the Angmer road.
“Ralf! Are you all right, Son?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Jacob?”
“He’s with the Steward. Behind us.”
The repairs they had made were holding. Ralf negotiated the subsidence, trying to keep his balance. He reached the far side, behind two or three others, ahead of Linsell, and found firmer ground underfoot.
He looked round. The workshed had disappeared under water, but the mill was still there, a silhouette against the west. Ralf thought of the currents sucking and swashing through the excavations for the culvert and sea-gates, loosening soil, eroding, weakening; he thought of the timbers, the foundations, the screen and its sandbags; and he knew that, by daylight, the building would no longer be there. At some unpredictable instant in the darkness the critical point would be reached. The supports would no longer bear the weight of the roof and walls, the floors and internal fittings, the solid members of the frame. Twisting, perhaps, or with a sideways lurch, the building, and with it the whole of his father’s life, would collapse.
The family was ruined. They had gambled everything on the mill. His father would be a journeyman till he died. So would Ralf himself. His mother’s drudgery would be everlasting. Imogen would have to marry the first man of means who asked her. They would have to leave Mape. And he would never be with Eloise again.
* * *
As soon as they reached dry ground, the Baron gathered the men and made doubly sure that no one had been lost. After that, they made their way home.
Jacob pushed open the front door. Linsell came behind him. He had scarcely spoken. He knew as well as Ralf what was going to happen in the night.
“Anna?”
She was not in the house, even though two rush-lamps, long since lit, were burning in the kitchen.
“Im? Im?”
The women were elsewhere.
“Something to eat,” Ralf said.
“Not for me,” Linsell said.
Having shed their rainproofs, both he and Jacob dragged themselves upstairs. With filthy hands Ralf opened the bread-pot and pulled a piece from the loaf. Overhead, he heard his parents’ bed take the impact as Lin
sell fell back on it, utterly done in.
Ralf realized he was thirsty and clumsily drank two cups of water from the pitcher. He crossed the threshold into the parlour and, still wearing the strange coat, still wearing his wet clothes and boots, stretched himself at full length on his cot. He brought a chunk of bread to his mouth, but was unable to eat it. The ceiling, faintly seen in the incident light from the next room, had begun crazily to turn. The turning, the giddiness, continued when he shut his eyes. The bread was forgotten. His hand fell to the earthen floor. The fingers opened; the bread escaped. He was already asleep.
“Ralf! Ralf!”
His mother’s voice would not go away. Nor would they, whoever they were, stop shaking his shoulder.
“Ralf!”
He opened his eyes to see her kneeling beside him. She had brought a lamp into the room. He tried to focus on her face, but could not. Beyond her shoulder he saw the old table next to Imogen’s seat, and on it he saw a crumpled form which he recognized as her unfinished knitting, Jacob’s new boot-socks, or sock, for she had started only two nights ago.
“Where is she?” his mother said. “I’ve been all over the village.”
Ralf sat up. “What about the Hall?”
“She’s not there. They haven’t seen her.”
“Isolda’s?”
“No. Nowhere. She’s nowhere, Ralf.”
“The dike’s gone,” he said, unable to follow his mother’s talk any further.
“I know. The church dike broke. At high tide.”
“The church dike?”
“Then the other one. Near the staith.”
“The staith?”
She took him by the shoulders. “Ralf! Wake up!”
He tried to concentrate, for it had become plain to him that his mother was distracted with worry, a worry which had nothing to do with the dike, or the mill, or the ruin of his father. It had to do with Imogen.
“Ralf, where is she?”
5
The Tide Mill Page 31