Angmer had disclosed that the King was to visit him for hawking on the eighth or ninth of September, and stay one or two nights.
The date approached. Gervase was left wondering whether Henry would act on his whim and inspect the mill. Finally, on the third, a note came from Westminster. In a week’s time, the King would spend an hour at Mape.
He arrived at midday, attended by Lord Angmer and their retainers. Having taken refreshments in the Hall, the party mounted up again and rode out for the mill.
Gervase had kept news of the visit to his own household. Early this morning he had let Master Grigg in on the secret, and had asked him and Ralf to be sure they were at the site from noon onwards, since it was likely that the King would want to discuss the structure with its builders. He had also told Pegg not to open the penstock. Two or three shifts of grain had already been ground; the mill was in its final stages of testing and refinement.
Luckily the tides today were more or less right, and the weather could hardly have been better, warm and calm, with no more than a sheen of high cloud. The mood of the King was just as sunny. To judge by Angmer’s disguised air of glum resignation, it seemed that his sovereign had become the new owner of Asug.
The visitors, accompanied by the astonished obeisance and following stares of everyone they passed, left the village and started down the staith-track. The party comprised seventeen horses, nine in the brilliant silks of the royal livery. Rarely had so many Arab stallions been seen together at Mape, snorting, now and then exuding dung, their trappings clinking and glittering as the train passed in and out of shade. Crossing the bridge, the disharmony of hoof-falls became loud and hollow, and dull again as the riders turned into the broad chalk-track across the two-hundred-acre field.
As host, Gervase was riding beside Henry, at the head of the column. The talk so far had been trivial, but now the King’s manner became more businesslike. “Our ambassador in Paris is close to an agreement,” he said. “Your stratagem may have had an effect. It certainly did no harm.”
Gervase expressed his genuine pleasure that war looked like being averted, with Gascony remaining in English hands.
As the topic changed, he was left to reflect on Eloise. From a political viewpoint, her union with Sir Robert might no longer be necessary, but it was in every other way desirable. Her father had done as well as he could by his two daughters: one a countess, the other soon to be a duchess. Five weeks hence, to the very minute, in the solemn, echoing splendour of Westminster Abbey, witnessed and approved by the flower of England’s nobility, the ceremony would be taking place.
“We hear you have made a covenant with your serfs,” said Henry, as the mill came into plain view.
“That is so, liege. We needed their help with the works. If you remember, the storm —”
“Why didn’t you borrow more?”
“I … it was not —”
“The higher serfs too?”
“Yes, Your Grace. All classes.”
“They are not your property. What right did you have to make such an agreement with them, still less promise them free milling?”
The manor belonged to the King. Its lord was nothing more than his tenant. Gervase tried to explain his reasoning, that the mill could be regarded in the same way as the fishermen’s boats, the communal buildings, or the fields themselves.
“That’s enough,” Henry told him, interrupting. “You have exceeded your authority, Lord de Maepe. We are displeased.” The workshed, the cart-ramp, and the black elevations of the mill, topped with thatch, were drawing near. “However, on this occasion we shall overlook your mistake.”
“Thank you, liege.”
“In the unlikely event of a change in tenancy, we trust the serfs of Mape won’t regard your pact as anything other than worthless.”
* * *
Ralf watched the King disappear into the mill, together with the Baron and Mr Pegg. He felt the need to pinch himself. His work, his father’s work, their joint effort, was now being inspected by the most powerful man in England; one of the most powerful men on earth.
Like his father and Mr Pegg, Ralf had been presented to the royal party. He was too stunned to remember precisely what had been said, mere formalities, very brief and succinct.
Ralf reminded himself that there was no longer a need to stand quite so stiffly upright. He looked at his father, who gave him a little smile.
Yes, as far as his family knew, there was nothing left to worry about. Eventually they might even begin, outwardly at least, to recover from their grief. In three weeks’ time they would be going back to Alincester. With their savings, and Ralf’s, there was enough to rent a small house and yard and begin again. They had offered to buy Jacob’s freedom and take him to the city, just as, it seemed, they had repeatedly offered before, but he insisted that he wanted to live out his days in Mape.
That was the plan, and Ralf had not demurred. How could he tell them there was yet more grief in store?
Eloise’s wedding would take place on the fifteenth of October. By the sixteenth her husband would have discovered the truth about his bride. Soon after that, very soon, the Justiciar would come for Ralf.
The penstock opened and the wheel began to turn. Ralf pictured the scene in the dusty, sunlit stone-room: Mr Pegg operating the machinery, the Baron explaining, the King looking on as flour showered from the furrows of the runner and bedstone. The odour of new meal had now become mixed with that of the pale, planed wood of the walls and ceiling and floor, with the dry, mineralized smell of the millstones themselves. The room’s rhythmic noise, underlaid by the bass roar of the culvert and the dulled splashing of the wheel, operated on the senses like a sleeping-draught. After a while one became lost in thought, or half-thought, a dream of contemplation in which the hours dissolved. Ralf understood the appeal of a miller’s life, the satisfaction of taking in raw grain and sending out bulging sacks of perfect flour. The flow of wagons to and from the place would be another form of tide: a stream of human labour saved, of time released for better things than kneeling at the quern.
There was no nobler profession than engineering. With all his heart, Ralf wanted to pursue it. He wanted to find out what extraordinary service it could render to the world of men. But he never would, for he had last autumn treasoned the tall, neat-bearded, and extremely arrogant figure who had just reappeared on the dike.
The King was talking animatedly to the Baron. They came nearer, passed by Lord Angmer and the line of retainers, and stopped in front of Ralf and his father.
“We congratulate you, Master Grigg. Your mill is a remarkable achievement.”
Linsell made a second bow. “Your Grace, much of it is due to my son.”
The King’s gaze was concentrated for a second time on Ralf. “So Lord de Maepe has been saying.” He turned to the Baron. “You say the design of the paddles is particularly fascinating, do you not? Will you show us, young man?”
During their examination of the wheel, Ralf began to forget a little of his awe, though he was careful not to show it. In his enthusiasm for mechanical things, the King was just a man, after all, and in that respect not unlike Ralf himself. He appeared to understand the value of science and mathematics, and to be excited by their potential for practical application. His many questions, searching and to the point, revealed that he was far more knowledgeable in those fields than anyone might have thought.
“Arab irrigation machines?” he said. “Where did you learn about those?”
“I have a friend at Leckbourne, Your Grace. He came across some drawings in the library there.”
Ralf had just explained that a half-cylindrical paddle reduced turbulence in the culvert and minimized energy lost through deflection. Because it presented a far greater surface-area than a simple plane, such a paddle was not only more efficient, but placed less mechanical stress on the supporting structure of the wheel. The only difficulty was in fabricating the curved shape, and he and Linsell had solved that by making ea
ch paddle from a half a dozen overlapping boards.
“And you say a semicircle gives the best profile?”
“We don’t know that for a fact, but it seems obvious.”
“Are there no calculations you could have done?”
“No, Your Grace. Not that we’re aware of.”
“Portsea would know,” the King said, but did not elucidate, and Ralf dared not ask who Portsey might be. “Have you read Leonardo of Pisa? Fibonacci?”
“Neither, Your Grace.”
“They’re two names for the same man. A mathematician. You ought to study him.”
The consultation came to an abrupt end, as though it had suddenly struck the King that he had stayed longer than planned. Leaving Ralf feeling dazed as well as deflated, the royal party returned to the horses and, setting out along the access-track, soon dwindled into the liquid shimmer of half-ploughed stubble and the variegated, serf-dotted strips of the two-hundred-acre field.
* * *
For the next few days, Ralf tried and failed to reconcile his memory of that meeting with his vision of the monarch as the remote authority who would soon be signing a warrant for his death.
On the second Thursday following, an official packet arrived at the Hall, from London via Alincester, addressed to Ralf. Hubert brought it over.
When Ralf saw the mark of the Clerk Royal, he felt his heart stop. He could not understand why the warrant had been sent already, and to him, before his arrest. His parents were not in the room: that was one relief.
He broke the seal. The wording was in Latin. By command of Henry, by the grace of God king of the English … Mr Ralf Grigg, freeman, was invited to bear this document to the Round Fort at Portsmouth, and there present it to the Officer of the Guard, who would conduct him to the Under-Comptroller of the King’s Ships, with a view …
Ralf twice read the letter before he had understood the irony it represented. He was to be conveyed initially not to the Tower of London but to the Round Fort, the headquarters of the under-controller of the Navy. Instead of torture and death, he was to face assessment by the under-controller’s staff. If they concluded that he was suitable, he would be offered a place in the Portsea school of naval architecture at the Royal Dockyards.
Ralf had not known that such a school even existed, though now it was plain that it must. Ship-design in the English Navy was the most modern and dynamic imaginable, driven by the race for superiority with the French. Its ravenous demands had ever to kept supplied with new men and ideas.
The letter said nothing about fees. There would presumably be none, unless paid by the Crown. And how long would the schooling last?
It did not matter. Even assuming he passed their tests and got in, he would not be there for more than a week or two.
The irony grew as he detected the Baron’s influence in all this. What had he been saying about Ralf, inside the mill, to the King?
Whenever he thought about the Baron, Ralf felt guilty. Compared with the guilt he felt over Imogen, this was nothing, but still it was hard to bear. Ralf’s betrayal of the Baron had been intimate and unforgivable. His guilt was made the more acute when he reflected on the Baron’s past kindness towards him and his family.
Holding the King’s parchment in his hand, Ralf saw the Baron as a model of God and Mape as a model of the world. Just as the King, in his rule, derived his authority from the divine, so did the Baron hold feudal sway within his manor. He supervised its workings, and within its ambit he allowed his people free will. On that November night when Eloise had come out to the mill, Ralf had been free to prevent matters going further. He could have prevented Imogen’s death. But he hadn’t.
Eloise was committed by birth to the marriage her father had contracted. It was part of her duty to him, and to the country. By failing to exercise his free will as his conscience had directed, Ralf had betrayed her even more thoroughly than he had betrayed his own sister.
He loved Eloise. He would love her as long as he drew breath. He should have mastered himself and left her in peace. Now, for his sake, she faced execution.
The lesson was hard, and it had been learned too late. The god of the Bible was supposed to be capable of forgiveness. Through Christ’s atonement on the cross, that god held out the promise of redemption. His earthly counterparts, like the pagan god of the marshes who had seized a frightened and vulnerable boy, did not.
Ralf would go to Portsmouth, and afterwards perhaps even to Portsea, but only as a means of bodily removing himself from his parents. He had already, at length, worried about the distress they would be caused when the Justiciar’s men appeared at their door. He had given them suffering enough.
“What have you got there, Ralf?” his mother said brightly, as, with a trug of late beans and Michaelmas daisies, she came in from Jacob’s garden.
12
To reach Portsmouth, Ralf walked to Rushton and caught a coastal cog which put him off at the civilian West Jetty. There he asked directions and within a few minutes found himself at the Round Fort, straight across the harbour channel from the grim groynes and blockhouses of the Haslar emplacements.
The interviews lasted for nearly two days. He was shown over the school at Portsea, which stood a little inland from the Fort. Though each student was made a naval officer, the school was small and informal, and subsequent service in the Navy, while hoped for, was not required. Unknown names were mentioned, of shipmakers and engineers who had learned their craft at Portsea and gone on to eminence in civil life.
The teaching was free, and a salary would be paid. He was told he could expect to be there for three years; and was finally offered a place, which he accepted on the spot. He would start within the fortnight.
On the return trip, Ralf arrived in Rushton in the early evening, too late to contemplate the walk. Having secured a room at one of the cheaper inns, he strolled down to Master Brocq’s yard and reacquainted himself with the people there. It was good to see them again. Diccon, in particular, wanted to hear about the tide mill, and he invited Ralf to take supper with his family.
That had been last night. For a time, in their tiny and convivial house, Ralf had been able to forget about the Justiciar. But later, at the inn, lying in his damp, prickly and lumpen bed, listening to the muffled oaths and guffaws rising from the pot-room, he had pursued a lonely meditation that had lasted the best part of the night. He had decided to make his peace with Father Pickard – with Joseph – and subsequently confess. When the arrest came, he would at least be in a state of grace.
Ralf’s meditation had continued this morning, on the familiar seven-mile walk along the road to Mape.
As far as personal ambition was concerned, Portsea was all he could ever have dreamt of. For that he knew he had to thank the Baron.
Were it not for the fact that his future now was irrelevant, Ralf’s impulse would have been to decline the offer. Imogen’s death had concentrated his thoughts on the importance of family. He would not have wanted to be separated, for three years, from his parents. He would have preferred to join them in Alincester as planned. But this did not take into account their selfless love for him. Their reaction to the King’s letter had been one of unalloyed pleasure. They would have been disappointed if their son had insisted on going with them to Alincester.
On the Sunday of his visit, Ralf had been shown the slipways and dry-docks, the forges and sheds where the King’s galleys were made. The scale and professionalism of the works dwarfed the imagination. They most forcefully articulated the threat from France. Until then Ralf had not understood the marriage Eloise was about to make, nor the reality behind it. Perhaps the Baron was indeed, after all, a father very much like his own.
The morning was cool, autumnal and grey. As he passed between the untidy mounds of gorse that here enclosed the coast road, Ralf realized he might be seeing them for the last time. He would never sleep in Rushton again, or talk to Diccon, or look out across the harbour from Brocq’s Yard, or glimpse, miles away acro
ss the Solent, the misty outline of Bembridge and the Isle of Wight. He would never live through another August, or rise at dawn to work on the mill, or sit with legs over the edge of the dike while he and the other fellows ate their lunch and talked; while he, with one ear, listened out for the greenshanks’ cries.
From Eloise, his thoughts turned to Godric. Intense memories of their childhood illuminated his mind: the hobby, their exploration of the manor. He remembered their day on the Point. Onward from that confessional hour in the dunes, Godric had been his brother.
Something made Ralf look up from the rutted mud of the road. Sooner than he might have expected, he had reached the outskirts of the village. Ahead, just beyond the white-railed bridge, as if condensed from the ether of his thoughts, he saw their subject approaching him.
Ralf wondered what Godric was doing at home. And what was he doing on foot, walking away from the Hall? Why was he dressed in travelling clothes, and why was there a bundle on a staff over his shoulder?
The bridge spanned an arm of the village pond which, beyond the road, dwindled into the marsh. They stepped on the boards at the almost same instant, and met near the middle.
“Hullo, Godric. Where are you off to? You look like a pilgrim.”
His manner, his whole mien, had undergone a profound change. Ralf noticed the coarse weave of his cloak and the heaviness of his boots. He had never before seen Godric, or any member of the Baron’s family, in such lowly attire.
“Smile for me,” Godric said, observing Ralf’s expression. “I’m happy at last.”
“What are you talking about?”
He indicated the landward rail. Side by side, they half sat, half leaned against it.
“I’ve left the Abbey,” Godric said.
The Tide Mill Page 38