Time and Tide

by Shirley McKay

  Giles said oddly, ‘When was this?’

  ‘Twas as I said, on Monday night. I ken, sir, what you want to say,’ the miller’s son said miserably, ‘yet if I may go on?’

  Giles nodded, ‘Aye, go on.’

  ‘The meeting was to be on Tuesday afternoon. And so my father set out for the town, on Tuesday morn. But he did not return. And all the day on Wednesday, I searched along the shore, for fear that he had fallen in his cups, yet found no sight nor sound of him. My mother sent me back into the town, to see if he had lodged with Robert Wood. Which, sir, he had not. But Robert Wood was pleased to hint, that he might lose the prospect of the mill, if he should prove a man that could not be relied upon. And so I came at last to visit Henry Cairns. And there I found . . .’

  ‘What did you find?’ demanded Hew, while Giles asserted gravely, ‘I know what you found.’

  Sandy looked back at them both, and answered in despair, ‘That Henry Cairns is sick abed, and has been for the past few days. He had not seen my faither, and he did not seek to meet him, nor could he have been thought to, when he could not lift his head.’

  Giles nodded. ‘That I can confirm. For Henry Cairns has been my patient, at death’s door since Sunday last. Though I am pleased to say, he makes a slow recovery. Whoever sent that message, it could not be him.’

  ‘Nor yet his sons or pickmen,’ the miller’s son said wretchedly, ‘who have had their hands full at the mill.’

  ‘Then who did send the message?’ wondered Hew.

  ‘That I cannot find,’ the miller’s son replied. ‘Nor did my father tell me, where they were to meet.’

  ‘I suppose you did not think to look inside the windmill?’ questioned Hew. He fought against the notion, that was foremost in his mind, that he had somehow sent the miller to his death.

  ‘Strange enough, I did,’ the miller’s son replied. ‘For that it was so dear to him. But I found nothing there.’

  ‘I think that it is likely,’ Hew considered, ‘that whoever sent the message, knew that Henry Cairns was sick.’

  ‘That is more than likely,’ Giles agreed. ‘And yet it does not help us much, for that is almost all the town.’

  ‘It cannot be,’ objected Hew. ‘For I was not aware of it, and nor was Sandy Kintor, nor Alasdair, his son.’

  ‘And that, Hew, is my point,’ Giles replied emphatically. ‘That you were unaware of it, because you were at service at the chapel of St Leonard’s, and Henry Cairns was taken ill, on Sunday morning last, in the kirk of Holy Trinity. His vomiting and flux were really quite spectacular. The Reverend Traill was lost for words, for quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Dear God!’ started Hew. ‘Then everybody knew?’

  ‘Save you and Sandy Kintor? As it would appear.’ Giles fished into his sleeve and found a pocket handkerchief, which he bestowed benignly upon the miller’s son. ‘Have courage,’ he advised him, ‘your father will show up.’

  And so he did, that Friday afternoon, when Henry Cairns felt well enough to struggle out of bed.

  Chapter 11

  A Dry Drowning

  Henry Cairns was fearful as he languished in his bed. He feared that he would fail in his bid to have the windmill, and he would lose his place among the millers in the town. He feared too that his bid might be accepted, and the windmill might blow over in a gust of wind, because he had no notion how to make her work. He feared that the baxters would make good their claim, and make him sell his birthright for the common good. He feared that the Lawmill would encroach upon his business while he lay sick in bed, and that his wife Effie would take off in a huff, refusing to empty the chamber pot. He fretted that he had not fixed the padlock on the granary, and someone might have broken in, stealing all the grain. But most of all, he feared that he had forfeited the sacrament, for his offence of boking in the kirk communion cup, the only vessel he had had to hand. The Reverend Geoffrey Traill had failed to reassure him on that point, for his promise of God’s pardon had been notably lukewarm.

  Henry discharged bitterly into the foaming pot, and took the foul black purgative the doctor recommended, however ill-conceived a remedy for flux. He was thankful enough when he could swallow some thin gruel, and venture weakly out into the brittle sunshine of an autumn afternoon. To his great joy and relief, he found that the world was much as he had left it, the sweeter for the days that he had suffered in the sickroom. The fallen leaves were crisp, and the air smelt pleasantly of mushrooms, wood and smoke. The mills at the both the shore and priory ground on in his absence, worked by the pickmen and his elder sons. The winds were brisk and fresh, the lade was running clear, and with a gladdened heart, he went to check the granary. The corn had not been turned for several weeks, and Henry felt the need for a little light exertion, to ease him back from indolence to a severer health.

  The granary lay north-east of the abbey mill, close to the old holy well. It stood three storeys high, and broke the north-east wind, so that the new inn guest house stood shadowed in its lea, allowing royal visitors a quiet resting place. In latter days, it had become a grain store for the town, with sacks of flour and seed corn stored in bins. The surplus corn was banked against the failure of the crop. Kept clean and dry and cool, the grain stores lasted years, and saved the town from famine when the harvest failed. The corn was spread out thinly on the ground and sifted through and turned, once or twice a week, to free it from the chaff. And as it dried and cooled, it was shovelled into heaps, to depths of several feet, over months and years. The more frequent the turning, the longer it would last.

  The corn upon the upper floor was more than six foot deep, and it required considerable exertion, to turn it to the sides from the centre of the room. A funnel in the centre channelled grains of barley to the floor below, where they were placed in sacks and carried to the mill. The oldest and the driest corn, according to the baxters’ lore, produced the finest flour. The granary itself was raised and watertight, protected from the mice by its distance from the ground, and from weevils by the turning and a clean flow of dry air. The padlock at the door was rusted at the hinge, and Henry had intended to replace it. It no longer held the bolt intact, and swung open to the touch without call for the key, which had caused him, in his sickness, several sleepless nights. He was relieved to find the padlock still in place, and to all appearances safely closed and locked. The sacks of meal and flour, and the bins for seed, were ordered and untouched, just as he had left them the week before. The baxters kept a store of fine imported wheat, a lure to any thief, which Henry saw at once was safely stacked and sealed. He liked the smell of corn, and the crispness of the husks, the clean and welcome coolness of the oats and barleycorn. Today there was a new, more pungent scent, which Henry had not noticed there before. He realised that his stomach still felt sour and raw, and climbed the ladder quickly, to settle it with exercise.

  The taste and stench of sourness filled his belly and his mouth, and he suppressed it firmly. This was not the place. For a moment, on the upper floor, the pungency was worse, and Henry felt a sudden wave of sickness, dizzy at the summit of the steps. Yet he would not give in to it; he knew that it would pass, and taking up the shovel from its hook upon the wall, he begin to turn the corn, methodically and vigorously, working up a sweat. And soon he had convinced himself he was not sick at all, turning close and rhythmically, churning up the corn. Until at last his shovel, shearing through the grain, landed with a thud, and out fell Sandy Kintor, tumbling from the chaff, his mouth a gaping grimace sliced by Henry’s spade. And Henry realised that he was not well at all, and fell into the chasm that had once been Sandy’s face.

  The corpse was taken out, and laid upon the green, beside the cowering form of Henry Cairns. His son had come to look for him, and found the broken padlock swinging on its hinge, and the front door opened wide upon the granary. Inside, he found his father, lifeless and prostrate. It had taken Giles some time to sort the living from the dead, while Henry Cairns was limp and ashen-faced. He was brought ro
und in the end, by the sheriff, Andrew Wood, whose attentions were more pertinent, and harder to ignore. Henry now knelt quivering, at the sharp end of a sword.

  ‘He must hang precipitate, for was caught redhand,’ insisted Andrew Wood.

  ‘Dear, oh dear,’ sighed Giles. ‘When will you cease this foolishness? Henry Cairns is innocent of any part in this.’

  Henry could not calm his belly from its swell; from terror and revulsion, he could barely speak. They forced him to look down on Sandy Kintor’s corpse, the frozen, grinning rictus he had carved into his face. Giles dipped his handkerchief into the miller’s mouth, scooping out a pocketful of grain. A crowd had gathered, fronted by the baxters, who had been in council with Sir Andrew Wood. The siting of the windmill was the matter for discussion.

  James Edie asked in horror, ‘What has happened to his face?’

  ‘Henry struck it with his spade. Yet it was not his fault,’ Giles replied succinctly.

  ‘Can we not close his eyes?’ proposed Hew. He told himself that Sandy was long gone, and that seemed clear enough, the corpse bore scant resemblance now to any living thing. There was, he noticed, very little blood.

  ‘In a moment,’ Giles returned. The miller’s face turned upwards, yearning for the light, had drained of life and blood before it met with Henry’s spade. He had been struck upon the head, with a blunt and heavy force, before he had been buried in the grain. Yet even that, the doctor said, had not resulted in his death. His mouth and throat were choked, as hoppers in the mill. The miller had died gasping. He had drowned in corn.

  ‘These little pricks of blood,’ instructed Giles, ‘that leaked into his eyes, are proof of how he died. A dry drowning, we may call it.’ It was a choice of phrase he came later to regret. Giles closed the miller’s eyes in one swift, decisive movement, and rose a little stiffly to his feet. ‘The examination of the corpus is complete,’ he said to Andrew Wood. ‘Now you may take him to the kirk. And pray you, let this poor man back up from his knees, where the dampness of the grass can do him no great good.

  ‘I will prescribe a vomiter,’ he told Henry kindly.

  The coroner withdrew his guard, allowing Henry Cairns to struggle to his feet. ‘I pray you, sir, no womitar, I do not need a purge,’ the miller moaned.

  ‘You shall have one, nonetheless,’ insisted Giles, ‘So shall we purge this black bile from your belly, and its terror from your soul.’

  ‘I thought you said the man was innocent,’ objected Andrew Wood.

  ‘That does not mean these horrors will not keep him from his sleep.’

  Sir Andrew turned to Hew. ‘I gather that you knew this man?’

  Hew nodded shakily. ‘He is Sandy Kintor, tenant of the mill at Kenly Green.’

  ‘A miller, and your tenant?’ Andrew Wood repeated. Foolishly, Hew blushed. ‘Aye, but lately . . .’

  ‘Lately? Aye, then, lately,’ Andrew said ironically. ‘That is beyond dispute.’

  ‘I do not mean that he is dead. He recently gave up the mill, and took up work in town – he was to take up work – with your brother, Robert Wood,’ retorted Hew.

  ‘With Robert?’ said the coroner. Hew saw his face turn thoughtful, yet could not read his mood.

  ‘Aye, sir, with your brother,’ Hew repeated boldly. ‘I do not see him here among the crowd.’ And that was strange, he thought. For almost all the worthies of the town, and many of the worthless, had gathered at the granary to heed the hue and cry.

  Sir Andrew rubbed his beard. ‘He attends to business, and is not in town,’ he answered cryptically. ‘Now, you are telling me that two men have been killed, and both of them were millers, at my brother’s mill? Then this no longer seems to be an accident.’

  ‘This man’s death,’ said Giles, rising from his feet, ‘was not an accident. He has been first felled, by a blow to the head.’

  ‘How came he to the grain store?’ questioned Andrew Wood.

  ‘According to his son,’ said Hew, ‘he came here to discourse with Henry Cairns. We know that for a subterfuge, for Henry has been sick, in no ways fit to make a tryst.’

  ‘This defence stands true?’ Sir Andrew Wood demanded.

  ‘I can confirm it,’ swore Giles.

  ‘Then you are excusit, for the while,’ Sir Andrew said magnanimously, ‘and need not hang precipitate, without a chance of trial. We shall consider, in due course, the evidential facts.’

  Henry thanked him humbly, if a little sceptically.

  ‘I do wish,’ grumbled Giles, ‘that you would leave the man alone. For surely you can see, he isn’t very well?’

  ‘It is the windmill,’ a voice shouted out from the crowd. ‘Did I not tell you, the windmill was cursed? First the Flemish sailors, and now two millers drowned.’

  ‘Speak plain, and show yourself!’ ordered Andrew Wood.

  ‘It is I, the baxter, Thomas Brooke,’ the heckler countered bluntly. Hew recognised him as a most officious tyrant and an elder of the kirk. He had not made the inner council of his gild, no doubt because his piety had made him much disliked.

  ‘What is that you say? This man has not been drowned.’

  ‘It was a dry drowning, as the doctor said.’ Thomas Brooke reminded them. A murmuring began to echo through the crowd. ‘And this man lying dead now, I saw last at the windmill. He was there with him.’ He pointed straight at Hew.

  ‘You were at the windmill?’ Andrew Wood demanded.

  Hew acknowledged, ‘Aye, we were. I hoped that it might help me to make sense of Jacob’s death, if I could understand the workings of his mind. The windmill had been close to him. I took the miller with me, to show me how it worked.’

  ‘I see,’ said Andrew Wood. ‘And on whose authority, did you cut the rope?’

  ‘On yours,’ admitted Hew. He thought he saw the quiver of a smile, but perhaps he had imagined it, for when he looked again, the ghost had disappeared, and Andrew stood implacable as stone. ‘Who holds the key’ he questioned, ‘that opens up the granary?’

  ‘I do,’ whispered Henry Cairns. ‘For I am the keeper of it. The baxters have another, and have access to their stores.’

  The baxter Bailie Honeyman interrupted hotly, ‘The baxters is it, Henry? You may take that plainly, for a miller’s tale!’

  Henry Cairns said sulkily, ‘What is a miller’s tale, if I may dare to ask?’

  ‘You scarcely can need to,’ Honeyman retorted, ‘For awbody kens, that millers are dishonest, as the day is long.’ There came another rumble and low murmur from the crowd.

  ‘Though it is true enough,’ James Edie said judiciously, ‘the baxters have a key, that key is safe sequestered inside the baxters’ box. For any man to open it, he must turn four locks; that no one man may master, for four men hold the keys. If you accuse a baxter, you must accuse all four.’

  ‘But I do not accuse ye,’ Henry Cairns said miserably, ‘For though I said the baxters held the other key – and that was not a lie,’ he appealed to Andrew Wood. ‘I did not say the key was used to turn the lock. The grainstore lock is broken, sir, and anyone might broach her.’

  ‘Then anyone might broach her, aye,’ repeated Patrick Honeyman. ‘And whose fault is that?’

  Cairns let out a groan. ‘What madman,’ he returned, ‘would drop a body in the corn? I ask you, sirs? What profit, that? What profit, sirs?’ His voice rose to a shriek, and dropped again. ‘What profit, sirs?’ he whispered.

  ‘I see no answers to be had,’ Sir Andrew sighed impatiently, ‘from this wretched little man, who has told us what he knows. Then you had better purge him, and pack him off to bed.’

  ‘Is that not what I told you, an hour ago?’ asked Giles.

  ‘Do it, then,’ the coroner commanded. ‘Let the crowd be cleared. And you and I,’ he turned to Hew, ‘will speak of this again.’

  ‘Though I am loath to mention it, there is a little truth in what the baxter said,’ said Hew to Giles, as they departed from the green. ‘Two millers dead; both drowned.’

/>   ‘It it a sad coincidence,’ insisted Giles. ‘Sandy Kintor’s death was not an accident; and truly, I do now regret suggesting that he drowned. Yet let us rather say, he was smothered in the grain. No matter how he died, he was killed unlawfully. The same cannot be said for Gavan Lang.’

  ‘And yet,’ reflected Hew, ‘this second miller’s death provokes a second glance at the death of Gavan Lang. For how can we be sure that Gavan drowned by accident?’

  ‘There was no mark upon the corpus that suggested otherwise. He went into the pond in an attempt to catch the fish. And everybody knew he meant to catch the fish,’ objected Giles.

  ‘That is my point,’ said Hew. ‘That everybody knew.’

  ‘Even so,’ said Giles, ‘he could not have been persuaded to go deep into the water. Unless it were by witchcraft,’ he concluded.

  ‘Unless it were by witchcraft,’ Hew agreed. ‘Two millers drowned, and three, if you count Jacob; that cannot be coincidence.’

  Giles corrected patiently, ‘One miller drowned; one hit upon the head and buried in the corn; and one that died of sickness, known as holy fire. One died of natural causes in a tavern bed; one was killed unlawfully; the other died by accident. Death is random, Hew. It does not fall in patterns, as you seem to think. It comes as soon to millers, as to all the rest.’

  ‘Everybody knew, he meant to catch the fish,’ Hew had wandered off, on another train of thought. ‘And everybody knew that Henry Cairns was sick. What made Henry sick?’