Time and Tide

by Shirley McKay

  Lilias whimpered, ‘Master Hew!’

  ‘The bairn will not be settled, till you have your dinner too,’ her mother pointed out. ‘I pray you, sir, sit down!’

  Hew gave in reluctantly, caught between the two, as Maude produced a haddock from a pail. ‘Here he is, fresh from this morning’s boat. You shall have him fried in butter, for he will not keep till fish day.’ She slapped down the fish and slit it with a knife, spilling paunch and pudding on the wooden slab. ‘See how fresh he is! His heart is beating still!’ The sliver sat, still pulsing, in the circle of her palm.

  Lilias looked up, ‘I want his beating heart,’ she mumbled, through a mouth of crumbs. Elspet gave a shudder of disgust.

  Maude Benet frowned. ‘Why would you want his heart, my pet?’

  ‘For Gib.’

  ‘I have telt you, poppet, that your must not feed the cat. For what use is Gib Hunter, if he will not make his dinner on the mice?’ her mother told her fondly.

  Lilias set her lip. ‘He likes the fish heart better.’

  ‘Then he has no business to.’ Maude scraped out the innards of the fish, and scooped the debris up into the pottage pot. Elspet pulled a face. ‘And you need not girn like that,’ her mistress scolded. ‘When were you so proud? Take out the wine and pottage for the baxters.’ Hew felt his stomach lurch as Elspet poked the fish eye to the bottom of a bowl.

  ‘Your pardon, sir,’ she asked him, passing with the tray, ‘But what are civil laws? Do you teach the lads their manners?’

  He smiled at her. ‘Not quite.’

  ‘A pity, for they want them,’ she retorted.

  ‘It is the law of persons, not the kirk. But do the students come down here?’ asked Hew.

  Maude Benet answered tartly, ‘Aye, it has been known. For they are not so delicate as you.’ She poured oil and butter in a pan, and placed it on the flame. ‘We shall leave it there until it smokes, and you shall have a cup of wine to wash it down. You will not make a better banquet, anywhere in town.’

  The pan began to sizzle and the scent of melted butter filled the room. Maude had carved the haddock into four white gleaming fillets, when the kitchen door flew open, and an anxious voice demanded, ‘Is it true, what Elspet said?’

  Maude continued with her cooking, unperturbed. ‘James Edie, you are come into our kitchen, not the common drinking room. I doubt you missed your way. If you want the quiet house, then go out in the yard.’

  James Edie growled, ‘Why must ye be so hindersome? Ye ken what I’m about. Elspet said the lass ran off, and came back with a man of law? Is it true, sir?’ he appealed to Hew, as to a man, of better sense.

  ‘You need not answer,’ countered Maude. ‘It is not his business.’

  James Edie’s beard and hands were neat and trim, suggesting some clean trade. He wore well-fitting workday clothes, of decent, woollen cloth, in shades of russet, grey and blue that matched his woollen cap, and on his cap a little pin, a wheat sheaf wrought of yellow gold, suggested he did well from it. A baxter, Hew inferred. He put the baxter’s age at forty-three or four, older than Maude Benet by a year or two at most, though more kindly treated by the passing of the years. The little grey that flecked his hair and beard, the few light lines that creased his eyes, had mellowed and improved his looks, and lifted him above the commonplace.

  Hew answered, civilly. ‘I am professor at the college, in the civil law. I found Lilias lost, outside the doctor’s house, and brought her home, at his request. My interest in this matter starts and ends there, sir.’

  ‘Then I am grateful to you.’ James Edie looked relieved. ‘Maude kens well enough, that it is my business, though I wish it were not, if she allows her daughter to run riot through the streets. The kirk will not condone it, for they cannot thole such wantonness.’

  ‘The bairn does not run wanton in the streets,’ contradicted Maude. ‘No more do I allow her to. She slipped away, this once. You ken yourself what rare events have happened here today.’

  ‘I grant it, that the day is quite extraordinary. Yet you will admit it happened once before. And if it should again . . .’

  ‘I swear that it will not,’ said Maude.

  ‘God keep you to your promise then.’ James Edie glanced about the room, and found another cause for discontent. ‘This bannock is not baxters’ bread,’ he noticed, picking up a loaf.

  ‘That bannock is for private use,’ said Maude. ‘We do not sell it.’

  James Edie tutted. ‘Tell that to Patrick Honeyman, when he demands your penalty.’

  ‘I will not have to,’ Maude retorted. ‘He will never see it. It is for private use, and in our private kitchen. Out!’

  ‘Peace, for I am gone! And welcome to your bannock, and to her, for both are hard and coarse!’ James Edie turned to Hew. ‘Yet Maude mistakes my better nature, if she thinks I won’t tell Honeyman.’

  ‘Your better nature, James, and what is that?’ scoffed Maude. ‘I ken you will not tell him.’

  ‘Do not count on it. Take care, and keep her safe,’ the baxter warned.

  Maude softened. ‘Aye, I hear ye. I will keep her close. We all have been unsettled by the day’s events. She will not wander off again.’

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Hew, as Edie closed the door.

  ‘James Edie, the baxter.’

  ‘Aye, but what to Lilias?’

  ‘He is some distant cousin of her father,’ Maude explained, ‘my late husband, Ranald Begg. For which he seems to think he has the keeping of her. Some months ago, she strayed out on the street, and was had up by the kirk, for lewd and loose demeanour, as they like to cry it. Wherefore they found her wanting, as a silly bairn, they count the puir lass innocent of shame. James Edie claims they put her in his charge, that he must lock her up, as lunatic and furious, if she is caught again.’

  ‘Is he her closest agnate?’ questioned Hew.

  ‘Her closest what?’ gawped Maude.

  ‘Her nearest kinsman,’ Hew explained, ‘upon her father’s side.’

  ‘I suppose he is.’

  ‘Then I am afraid he spoke the truth,’ he told her seriously. ‘For it is his duty and his right to see her locked away, if the kirk requires it.’

  ‘Truly?’ wondered Maude. ‘I thocht it was a tale he put about, to fright us into thinking that he has some purpose here.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘No matter. It is like him. Yet, you say, he has the power to lock her up?’

  ‘More than that, he must, if she offends the kirk. Else he himself must bear the burden of her punishment.’

  ‘Then I have mebbe misjudged him.’ Maude reflected, ‘for I did not know it. I am in his debt.’

  ‘I should tell you, perhaps,’ Hew went on, ‘that when I saw your daughter on the beach, she was playing coup the lundie.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  Hew floundered for a moment, scuppered by the phrase he had repeated word for word, not knowing what it meant. He was rescued by Elspet, returning with the tray. ‘She was turning somersaults! Bad girl!’ she answered with a grin.

  ‘And who has taught her that? Elspet, was it you?’ demanded Maude.

  ‘Mary, more like.’ The girl said self-righteously.

  ‘I made the whirlijack,’ Lilias translated, scrambling from her cushion. ‘Shall I do it now?’

  All three of them cried, ‘No!’

  Maude suggested, ‘Go outside with Elspet, and pick parsley for the fish. I see, sir, I do see,’ she said quietly to Hew. ‘I must take better care of her.’ She dropped the fish into the smoking pan, and placed a slice of bannock on a wooden plate.

  ‘James Edie seems a decent man, at least,’ Hew observed.

  ‘A decent man,’ repeated Maude. ‘A baxter, and a bailie on the burgh council.’ She grinned, unexpectedly. ‘I’ll tell you a thing I have noticed about baxters: the cleaner their hands, the blacker their bread. James Edie is the exception. His bread is as white as his hands.’

  Hew co
uld not tell if she liked the man or not. He suspected, both.

  ‘Did you see the baxters huddled at the bar?’ Maude continued scornfully. ‘They are having one of their extraordinary meetings, as they cry them.’

  ‘What, all of them? There must be fifty, sixty, in the gild,’ objected Hew.

  Maude conceded, ‘So there are. They hold their convocations on the Gallows Hill. The four of them out there are keepers of the keys. Four locks, four keys; four keys, four men, that no man can unlock the baxters’ box without the cunning of the rest.’

  ‘And what is in the box?’ asked Hew, amused at this.

  ‘God knows, biscuit crumbs,’ Maude shrugged. ‘They four are come to batten on the wreck, without a thought for those puir sailors lost. Their eyes are fixed full on yon windmill.’

  ‘I cannot think they have much hope of having it,’ said Hew.

  ‘Then plainly, you have not had many dealings with the baxters. Whisht now, here is Lilias coming back with Elspet, who both have wagging tongues. What have you there, my flower?’

  ‘Marigolds. And parsley, for Master Hew his fish, because he is my friend,’ Lilias said insistently.

  Her mother smiled at her. ‘I do believe he is. Now he shall have his haddock.’

  Maude lifted out the fish, a translucent, steaming white, and set the fillets on their sops in a foaming butter sauce, freckled with the parsley and a sprinkling of verjuice.

  By the time Hew returned to the bar, most of the drinkers were gone. The reclamation had been halted by the tides, and the rest of the town had drifted back to work. The baxters, though, were still entrenched, locked in weary battle lines, of empty stoups and cups. James Edie stumbled, bleary-eyed, to catch him as he passed. ‘Your pardon, and your patience, sir. I hope my business with Maude Benet caused you no offence?’

  ‘None at all,’ Hew assured him, attempting to inch closer to the door.

  ‘I have no liking for my charge,’ persisted James. ‘Yet I have been advised it is the law.’

  Hew nodded. ‘I explained as much to Maude. I think she understands it.’

  ‘Then I am obliged to you. Will you have a drink with us?’

  ‘No. I thank you,’ Hew said firmly. ‘I would not interfere in matters of the gild.’ The baxters had a look of long drawn out campaign, which he was not prepared to join.

  ‘The baxters’ work is done. We are now convened on business of the town, and would welcome an opinion from the university.’ The man was not so easily repelled. Before Hew could extract himself, he introduced his friends. ‘Our spokesman, Patrick Honeyman, is deacon of the gild, and like myself, a bailie; this is Christie Boyd, town clerk and baxters’ scribe, and this, his brother John.’

  Christie had a minute book, in which he scribbled endlessly, scraping with his pen. His brother John was sullen, dour and taciturn. Hew knew the bailie Honeyman by sight, a fleshly man with beetle eyes, burrowed in his cheeks like currants in a bun. His flabby face and hands were scorched from constant close exposure to the fire. The bailies were town councillors, which made James Edie’s offer harder to refuse. There was no love lost between them and the university; the council thought the colleges aloof and supercilious and the colleges in turn found them rude and superficial. Each resented bitterly the interests of the other.

  ‘I am absent from my college, and in academic dress. I cannot stay to drink,’ Hew hurried to excuse himself. As he had anticipated, refusal caused offence.

  ‘What is it, then? Too proud?’ bridled Patrick Honeyman. ‘We are not fit for converse, with the un-i-var-sitt-ee!’

  The Honeymans were baxters, born and bred. When Hew had first enrolled as a student in St Leonard’s, it had been a Honeyman who baked the college loaves; some elder, poorer cousin to the deacon of the gild. At laureation feasts, or when fights broke out in hall, there was no surer weapon than the Honeyman bread roll. The order had been cancelled when a student lost an eye, and St Leonard’s opted for a lighter bake. It helped explain, perhaps, the baxter’s animosity.

  ‘It is not pride, bur propriety dictates,’ defended Hew. ‘I must set an example to the students in my charge.’ There was a little truth in his excuse.

  The clerk, Christie Boyd, looked up from his notebook, at which he had been scratching all the while. ‘They will not see you, sir,’ he promised confidentially. ‘For all of them are fled, save one who is sequestered in the lassies’ sleeping loft, and dares not show his face till you are gone.’

  ‘I thank you for the notice, though I wish I had not heard it,’ Hew answered with a groan.

  ‘Your students are a pestilence, a plague upon the town. I charge you, sir, to flesh him out, that we may see him whipped.’ Honeyman revealed a cheerful prurience, which served to further strengthen Hew’s resolve. ‘His discipline is not my place. Yet I take note of your concern,’ he replied dismissively.

  The deacon stared at him. ‘Not your place? Then what, sir, is your purpose here? I ken you, Master Cullan. You are assistant to Giles Locke, who is our town recorder of unnatural deaths. Are you come at Doctor Locke’s request?’

  Hew admitted, ‘No . . . and yes . . . I came at his request, but not on business of the town.’

  ‘I see that you prevaricate. Then let me ask you bluntly, what is your interest in the wreck?’ demanded Honeyman.

  ‘I have no interest in the wreck, saving for the common one, of pity at the loss of life, and vulgar curiosity,’ asserted Hew.

  Honeyman said rudely, ‘I do not believe you, sir.’

  ‘Do you say I’m lying?’

  ‘I am a plain man. I speak in plain words.’

  Hew said, ‘Plainly. Then let me tell you plainly once again, I have no interest in your wreck; now I will take my leave, and you will let it rest. There is a man of law, will serve you at the marketplace. He charges by the hour.’

  ‘Ah, do not take offence, for we are not as sleekit in our words as you. We cannot all be orators,’ the baxter smiled unpleasantly.

  ‘Indeed,’ retorted Hew. ‘And yet we can be civil.’

  ‘Aye, and that’s the point,’ James Edie interjected. ‘Are you not professor of the civil laws?’

  ‘That is the nomination,’ Hew agreed.

  ‘Then you can give us counsel, on a civil matter.’

  ‘As willingly, I will, when you ask a civil question.’

  ‘It is a question,’ said James Edie, ‘of the common good, and concerns the windmill. Will you not sit, sir, and consider it? It is a point of law.’

  James Edie struck Hew as a decent man, although the same could not be said of Patrick Honeyman. By some secret notice, which had passed between the two, the deacon settled down and held his tongue.

  ‘Aye, then, what’s the matter?’ Hew accepted with a sigh. He saw no option but to stay and hear the baxters out. James Edie answered gratefully, ‘The matter here is this. As you must be aware, a windmill has been washed up in a broken ship. We four are come together here to help in her recovery.’

  ‘Which aid you offer,’ Hew suggested dryly, ‘from the comfort of the inn.’

  ‘We are convened, ye ken, in a consultative capacity,’ corrected Patrick Honeyman, ‘and call our privy council to oversee the rest. The mechanics of the task is as well left to the millers, for they have ingenuity, as well as the brute strength.’

  ‘The work is skilled and delicate,’ James Edie said, more tactfully, ‘and wants a careful hand. The mill itself is of great interest to the baxters, and if we could acquire it, would greatly serve the town. There are five watermills at present, grinding all the corn, to which the town is thirlit and bound to for their bread. The mill lade runs the course of the Kinness Burn, westwards from the shore to the Law Mill on the fringes of the town. The rents from the mills are split between the college and the ancient priory; though some are falling now to private hands. It has oftentimes been motioned, in our inner council, that if one or more of them were under our control, it would better serve the interests of the town.�
��

  ‘The interests of the town, or of the baxters?’ Hew inquired shrewdly.

  ‘Since I cannot think those interests are in conflict, they may coincide,’ admitted James.

  ‘As you yourself are not impartial in this matter. I’m told that you own land, on the Kenly Water, where there is a mill. In which case, ye will ken that your tenants must be bound to it, while you draw profit from the rents.’

  Hew sensed he had been well dissected, in his time with Maude. Doubtless he was written, with the details of the mill, black and double scored, in the baxters’ secret book. He had small impact, and less interest, in the land at Kenly Green, and left it to his factor to collect the rents.

  He was a landlord, nonetheless, in the eyes of Christie Boyd, who set aside his pen in a gesture of disgust. ‘Then his advice may not be worth a fart, for ye cannot expect him to uphold the common good. Most likely, he will want the windmill for himsel’,’ he commented.

  ‘That does not follow,’ answered Hew. ‘Yet you are free to judge it, as I hear your case. Is it that you want to have the mill?’

  ‘That is our intent, sir,’ James Edie said succinctly. ‘A mill in common ownership, and managed by the baxters, could only serve to benefit the town.’

  Hew had no quarrel with the common ownership. Yet he suspected that the baxters’ plan would drive their prices up, ensuring the monopoly.

  ‘We have these past few years,’ James Edie said, ‘been subject to long winters, of implacable severity, and when the mill lade freezes, all five mills are stopped. And likewise in the summertime, the burn is prone to drought, and oftentimes, for half the year, the waterwheels lie still. What the town lacks – what it has lacked for too long – is a windmill. For windmills are not common in these parts, and are hard to come by. The winds on our coasts are far too wild and forceful to make them worth investing in for common use. We lack the will to build them, and we lack the skills. A windmill in a storm, such as we saw yesterday, is of little use. And yet . . . and yet, as a supplement, through cold, still, winter months, it would profit greatly if one could be acquired. And so, when she appeared . . .’