There were other puzzles, none of which he could explain. Why had the Diocese not used the church courts, where its chances of success would have been so much greater? It was representing its grievance as an infraction of existing law, which self evidently was nonsense.
The case had developed its own momentum, baffling judge after judge, becoming ever more expensive. How was it managing to rise so rapidly through the court system? The claims and counter-claims should have taken years to get this far. Whose hand lay behind that?
Gervase could not help feeling apprehensive. Even had he wanted or been able to back down, it was now too late. The costs were already greater than he could comfortably afford. His own were bad enough, but Alincester was stinting nothing in its campaign.
By the end of June, the mill itself was nearing completion. Thanks to the eager participation of the serfs, the earthworks had been finished and the pen made watertight. The house, sea-gates and culvert were finished. The wheel had been fitted. Master Grigg and his son, advised by Josiah Parfett, were installing the machinery.
In his life, Gervase had found that there was always something to spoil anticipated pleasure. He should have relished visiting his new mill, admiring its elevations, talking it over with the builders, finding out how it was to work. He should have looked forward to its testing, its inauguration, its first commercial run. He was paying for all these enjoyments, but they were being denied to him. He even caught himself trying not to think about the mill at all.
This afternoon, deeply troubled, he had again ridden from his house in the Wooleries to Turnley Row and the sign of the unicorn.
He discovered that Chevalley had now persuaded himself that none of the lower judges, all of whom were clerics, would risk finding against the Church. That meant the case would inevitably arrive at the curia regis, the royal court, and be heard by the King himself. “These proceedings,” Chevalley said, “can be perceived as a contest between the Church and the baronage, which means the Church and Crown. That might be one reason why they are being so keenly prosecuted. On the face of it, the Pope —”
“The Pope?”
“His Holiness himself will be aware of the case.”
“Why? It’s so trivial.”
“To an outsider, that is how it would look. But if one accords the dispute symbolic properties, one can begin to understand what is going on. It’s a question of power. I’m beginning to think you’re being caught up in something we did not foresee.”
This was the first defensive remark Chevalley had ever made in his hearing. Gervase suddenly saw that there was a danger of losing. The ultimate ambition of the Church, which might take centuries to realize, was nothing less than the restoration of its empire. The Vatican worked continuously to undermine and supplant the monarchy, in England and right across Europe. Only by acknowledging this could one untangle the Byzantine complexity of its policies. He said, “If you’re so sure the King is going try it, should I speak to him?”
“When?”
“Soon. As soon as possible.”
“May I ask what Your Lordship proposes to say?”
Gervase was not sure. The idea had occurred to him of a private meeting rather than an audience, an informal discussion between two men who had known each other for thirty-five years. Beyond that he had not thought. He had considered neither his lifetime’s service to the Crown nor the loyalty the King owed him in return. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure. I’d just … I don’t know.”
Chevalley gave what Gervase could only interpret as a cynical smile. “It is a good plan, my lord, provided you say the right things. May I talk plainly?” At Gervase’s sign of acquiescence, Chevalley seemed to become easier in his seat. “The law has two faces. The public face is all very well, but it is the other that matters.”
Gervase said nothing. He knew what the other face comprised: undue influence, political pressure, extortion.
From outside, from the street, through the shut window, the muffled sounds of a summer afternoon were intruding on the room. The rumble of a barrow briefly drowned out the carefree, feminine conversation of two passers-by. Their hats and clothing showed for a moment as a blur of colourful movement across the glass.
Gervase found himself wishing he were outdoors. He wished he could just get up from this seat and leave. Only a step away, he could watch the Thames, feel the heat of the sun, breathe fresh air. He could stroll along the embankment to the pleasure garden and sit in the shade; perhaps meet an acquaintance or two before deciding to go back to his house. Or better, far better, back to Sussex: to the simple seaside life, to his fields and hawks and dogs, to the salt and purity of the shore.
But Chevalley was still talking. “I’ve heard you are one of the barons opposing war in Gascony.”
“I am.”
“Is it true that His Grace would need the help of your faction to win such a war?”
“He could proceed very well without us.”
“But your support would make victory more likely?”
“War with the French over Gascony would be a disaster.”
“I am aware of that, my lord. I’m not suggesting that you compromise yourself or endanger the country. Far from it.”
“What are you suggesting, then?”
“I’ll come to that in a minute.” Chevalley’s nose, Gervase now noticed, was rather too long for his face. Earlier he had been talking to Fitz Peter, extending his loan yet again. If Fitz Peter resembled a swine, then Chevalley might have something in common with a rodent. A large and cunning rodent, none too clean, sullied by the refuse among which it busied itself. “I hear the King’s ambassador in Paris is trying to negotiate a treaty.”
“Who told you that?”
“Is it so?”
“The French are setting impossible terms. They know their own strength. We’re afraid of what’ll happen when the negotiations fail.”
“Enmity between kings is not something His Holiness would discourage.”
“Go on,” Gervase said, making himself concentrate, beginning to perceive Chevalley’s drift.
“King Louis no doubt has his spies in our court.”
“Just as, no doubt, we have our spies in his.”
“If your faction were seen – ostensibly – to relent, would it not make our ambassador’s work easier?”
Gervase suppressed a cynical smile of his own. He had not realized before quite what a scoundrel he had hired. No wonder he was so expensive. “You have missed your vocation, Mr Chevalley.”
“I am merely pointing out, my lord, that you are not powerless in this matter. Your approach to His Grace should reflect that. When you seek your audience, do so in order to discuss the merits of the strategy I have just outlined. Bring in, if you can, the Pope’s campaign in Sicily. Peace between England and France would discomfit Rome. Then, when the King’s mood is right, mention your case in passing, as it were. He needs the treaty far more than he needs Bishop William.”
* * *
Ralf was working in the gloom of the wheel-pit, trying to fit the wallower to the mainshaft. This had to be done from below.
The main cogwheel, six feet in diameter, parallel to the waterwheel and driven directly by its axle, was called the pitwheel. Its ninety cogs engaged with the thirty-one of a much smaller, horizontal wheel, the wallower, from which rose the mainshaft. The spurwheel, twice the size of the wallower, was attached to the mainshaft higher up. Its cogs engaged a pinion which turned a horizontal layshaft. At the end of the layshaft was the cogged, vertical drivewheel: this turned the stone nut, which was connected to another shaft, the stone-spindle, which would drive the runner or upper millstone. Between the stone-nut drivewheel and the pinion, the layshaft also turned a plain vertical drivewheel. To this would be attached a canvas belt, to provide power for the sack-hoists and the lathe.
The gears were made of hornbeam, the traditional material. The wood was hard, resistant to wear, and could be worked to fine tolerances.
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br /> Ralf and Linsell had spent much time on the cogs. Provided they did not jam, the more closely they could be made to fit, the longer they would last and the more quietly and efficiently the mill would run.
“How’s it going down there, Ralf?” said his father, from the gear-room above, where he was adjusting the tension of the drive.
“Nearly on.”
“Don’t force it. We can trim it again.”
“We won’t have to.” Delicately offering the wallower up, Ralf began tapping around the inner part of its socket. With each subtle blow of his mallet he was rewarded by the silky feel of the wallower at last sliding into place. “Done it!” he cried.
“Good work!”
Ralf reached into his pocket for a split brass cotter-pin. This he pushed into a hole in the side of the wallower socket, and on through a corresponding hole in the mainshaft. Once it was in place, he inserted a blunt knife between the emergent wings of the pin and levered them very slightly apart.
The gears were now complete. Once their tension was correct, if Ralf or his father were to unfasten the lock and turn the wheel by hand, the stone-spindle should rotate.
It had taken the best part of a day to get this right; and the best part of two weeks to decide on the best method of attaching the various cogwheels to their shafts. For reasons of strength, Mr Parfett had favoured permanent fixture, but Mr Caffyn, and Linsell himself, wanted the whole mill to be easily maintained. If one component failed, a replacement would need to be fitted quickly, so that as little turning-time as possible should be lost. This meant that the shafts and sockets had to be thicker than usual, since they were to be drilled to take brass cotters. Brass had been chosen to minimize corrosion.
Mr Parfett had come round to Linsell’s way of thinking. Not only did he now concede the speed and economy of a knock-down drive-train, but he proposed to advise future clients to adopt the same scheme.
Ralf climbed out of the pit. The sun struck hot on his face. A cool breeze was blowing from the north-east. As his eyes readjusted to the brilliance of the afternoon, he stood for a few seconds facing out across the harbour.
Each morning he woke surprised that he was still at liberty. He had not been alone with Eloise since the day of Imogen’s funeral, six months before. Perhaps she would say nothing till her wedding-night. October the fifteenth. A hundred and nine days away.
The suicide pact was on his mind. Eventually, one way or another, they would be together. He would be dead by next Christmas, at the latest. He might have to wait sixty years before she could join him.
“Eloise,” he whispered, looking across the mud and water to the Point. Even if he lived, he would never love anyone else. They had sat here together, just over a year ago, on midsummer’s eve. The view then had been different. The dunes had changed.
He turned, passed behind the house, and stepped up into the porch.
The mill was keeping him sane. When he and his father were wrestling with some new technical problem, Ralf became so deeply absorbed that he could temporarily forget Eloise. He could not forget his guilt and his grief for Imogen, but even they seemed to become more bearable while he was engrossed in his calculations or working at the bench.
This new mill really was going to outdo the first. Externally, the house looked just the same. Internally, they had made innumerable improvements, especially to the drive. Because salt water was so corrosive, Ralf had redesigned the wheel’s bearing-sleeves so that they could be sealed and packed with tallow. This alone would let the mill run for longer between services.
Mr Parfett had paid four visits to the site, the latest only yesterday. Many of the cleverest ideas were his, taken or adapted from the design of fluvial mills.
The paddle calculations had in the end proved too hard. He had been unable to help, though he had conceded that curved paddles might well provide more thrust. Ralf had not really been surprised when Godric had written to say that the librarian at the Abbey had refused him access.
Soon afterwards, though, Godric had discovered there a treatise on Arab irrigation machines. The drawings were clumsy and possibly inaccurate, but some of them depicted paddles with a semicircular profile. He had made a copy of one for Ralf.
It had immediately been obvious that this was the solution for a tidal wheel. As the tide rose, its lower section would be progressively submerged. A semicircular paddle would maximize the effect of the jet, and it would minimize drag as the array of paddles rotated through the surrounding water.
The width of the wheel was known. The radius of the paddle curve, ten inches, had been dictated by the height of the penstock outlet. This in turn was a function of the volume of the pen and the period, about five hours, it would take to empty its nine hundred thousand gallons into the sea.
The penstock had also undergone radical change. By means of a geared turnscrew, its sliding gate was now operated from the hurst, so that the miller could adjust the flow, and hence the speed of the runner, without leaving his stones unattended. The penstock inlet was bigger than the outlet, increasing the force of the jet; and the lip of the outlet had been extended with an extra course of ashlar, to reduce turbulence and deliver the water closer to the paddles.
Beyond the wheel was a fan-shaped chute, the tailrace. The design of this too had been improved, broadened, and longitudinal ribbing had been incorporated in the stonework, to carry the exhaust away more quickly.
“Tension’s about right,” Linsell said, when Ralf came into the gear-room. “Do you want to risk it?”
“A test?”
“What else?”
So much effort had been poured into the drive, and so close was the promised completion date, that Ralf was hesitant, even nervous.
Seven other men were working on the site, two carpenters upstairs and five serfs from the village, who were busily scrubbing the granary floorboards. At Linsell’s invitation they all crowded into the hurst room with his son, while he himself climbed down the iron inspection-ladder into the culvert.
“Get ready!” he shouted.
The steel shaft of the stone-spindle was as yet unfinished by the cross-shaped rind which would support the upper millstone. It emerged from a neat hole in the flour-chute.
Ralf imagined his father releasing the lock and putting his shoulder to the waterwheel. By means of six precision-cut cogwheels, by means of the bearings and the layshaft, its axle was now linked to the spindle. When the wheel turned, so should the spindle. If it didn’t, or if the wheel wouldn’t budge, then there would be something amiss: perhaps something minor, such as an oversized cog. Or it might be something major, such as a catastrophic oversight in the whole design.
Ralf’s throat was dry. What had he been thinking of, last spring but one, when he had blithely assumed they could build an engine as advanced and complicated as a full-sized mill?
His father must have tried pushing the wheel by now. Ralf’s gaze had not left the spindle. In the suspended silence of the sun-warmed hurst room, the tiny imperfections in the metal remained obstinately still, unmoving, stationary. Only one thing was being transmitted from below: failure.
Then there came an intricate, multiplying creak of hornbeam on hornbeam. Before his eyes, with all the inevitability of mathematics, counter-sunwise, and exactly fifteen times faster than the wheel, the stone-spindle began to revolve.
* * *
On the afternoon of Friday, the first of July, Gervase was granted his request to see the King in private. They met at Westminster Palace, in the Tapestry Room, where the luxuriant hangings covered every wall. The shutters of the three windows, looking out on the Queen’s Pleasance, were rarely opened more than a little, for fear of damage by sunlight.
Though the room was intended as a gallery where the King’s most treasured tapestries could be displayed, he also liked to use it from time to time as a dayroom. Half a dozen comfortable seats surrounded a low, circular and highly polished table upon which a lavish arrangement of flowers had been placed. G
ervase identified the curious foliage of spurge, making an apt background for the pink and white blooms. The scent of the flowers, together with the dim light of the room and the King’s quiet, measured conversation, were almost conspiring to make him forget how important, how pivotal to his family’s future, this meeting might prove.
One fragrance in particular, clove-like, drowsily seductive, was doing its best to distract him. His knowledge of gardening, unlike Margaret’s, was scant, but even he knew the gillyflower, frothy pink, with greyish stems and leaves. “Sops-in-wine”, as many called it, was used to flavour drinks, and could usually be found in ale-house gardens. He recognized two or three of the others: alison, he thought, and Solomon’s seal, but the name of one especially tall and showy variety had escaped his mind.
The King fingered his beard, a half smile remaining on his face. Gervase had just put forward Chevalley’s scheme, at which his eyes had briefly lit up, with surprise, or scepticism, or relish at the intrigue. He was now, at his leisure, scrutinizing his guest. He might reply; he might not; but as yet his silence had not become dangerous.
Henry would be fifty-two in October. He was four years younger than Gervase, and remarkably well preserved, considering he had occupied the throne for most of his days. Perhaps through his love of hunting, he had retained his figure and a youthful posture. Gervase had never known him to over-eat or let himself become fuddled, unlike his father John. His wits, if anything, had become even sharper as the years had passed.
“Will you allow yourself to be seen with Lord de Braux?” he asked at last, though this was not a question, but a command.
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