Time and Tide (7 page)

‘We are not come to drink,' said Patrick Honeyman.

‘I think you do mistake us, then. This is an inn,' Maude pointed out.

‘Do not be obstructive. Ye ken why we are here. Tis business of the council,' asserted Patrick Honeyman.

‘Then pursue it at the tolbuith. This is not the council hall.'

‘A brief word with yon mariner will see us on our way.
If
it is convenient,' Honeyman said heavily. Maude tried to stand her ground. ‘It is not convenient. And he is asleep.'

‘How now, asleep, still asleep?' said James Edie with a smile. James was one to watch, thought Maude, for he was not so easily put off. To prove the point, he added, ‘Tis no matter, we can wait. The beauty of the baxters, Maude, is that we bake by night, which leaves us free to barter in the day.'

‘Ye'll find no bargains here,' retorted Maude. ‘We're closed.'

‘But
not to us
,' said Honeyman. There was a touch of menace in his voice that Maude could not ignore. They were the burgh council after all. She conceded, ‘Please yoursel', though it may little profit ye, who do not ken the Dutch. For he has not a word of Scots.'

‘Then you have spoken with him, and he is awake,' James Edie said
astutely. As always, he was sharp, and once again, too quick for her, thought Maude. He tempted her with friendship, breaking through her guard. And still, of all the baxters, she trusted him the most.
I will look out for you, Maude
. And he had, had he not, in his way?

‘He was awake a while,' Maude admitted grudgingly, ‘and now has gone to sleep again. He isna feeling well.'

‘And
whit
is
wrang
with him?'

The baxter bully boys had somehow found their way into the common hall, more by insinuation than by force. Elspet was mopping down the trestles and the floor, while Lilias sat playing with the dice and knucklebones, kept in little boxes underneath the bar. The morning air had not yet cleared the chamber of its fug, the weary aftertaste of sour ale, sweat and soot.

‘In truth, I cannot say,' shrugged Maude. ‘Perhaps it is the plague.' It was a clever after shot, that scored a pleasing hit on bailie Honeyman, for all his bluff and bluster a coward through and through. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ!' he swore. The rumour gathered force with Christie Boyd, who pointed out, ‘There were no other bodies there, and that would seem to fit. For so the grievous sick are set adrift in ships, with neither port nor quarter, till the plague is spent.'

His brother echoed grimly, ‘It is a ship of ghosts.'

James Edie quashed the rumour with a grin. ‘Maude is sporting wi' us. She does not for a moment think it is the plague, or she would not have him in her bed. She'd turn away a man, wi' colick or the cauld, for fear of him infecting Lilias.'

‘Lilias is prone to maladies of chokes,' Maude replied defensively. She had fallen, for a second time, into the baxter's trap. There was a little truth in what James Edie said, and Maude found herself surprised that she had not considered it. Somehow, in her pity, she had left it overlooked: she must be growing soft. ‘I do not think,' she owned at last, ‘that Jacob has the plague, only that you must allow, it is a possibility.'

‘Jacob is it, now? Then you are quite close friends,' James Edie said, relentlessly.

She did not rise to it. ‘Yet I can assure you, sir, that he is sick and frail. His hands and face are black; he cannot sit or stand.'

James Edie turned to Honeyman. ‘I think it would be best,' he mused, ‘to have the doctor called, and free ourselves from all fear of infection.'

Honeyman conceded, ‘Aye, then, fair enough. The girl,' he waved at Elspet, ‘can go for Doctor Locke, and likewise find a man that kens the Flemish tongue. And you can bring us breakfast, Maude,' he added, generously.

‘And
you
can wait outside, and whistle for your breakfasts. This is not a cookshop. We are closed,' said Maude.

‘You
will
be closed, right enough, if you dinna mind the bailies,' Honeyman declared.

‘What do you mean? You cannot close us down!' Maude replied indignantly.

‘For sickness in the house? You can have no doubt of it.'

Maude knew when she was beaten. ‘You may sit up at the bar and sup a stoup of ale, and let that be your breakfast, for I offer nothing more.'

Elspet tugged her apron, anxious to set off. ‘Where do I find a man, that speaks the Flemish tongue?'

James Edie pressed a penny in her hand. ‘Try the customs master,' he advised. ‘And for the doctor, you must fetch Professor Locke. You will find him at the college or his house upon the Swallow Gait. Ask for him by name.'

‘Then will I fetch the minister, from the kirk of Holy Trinity?' Elspet wondered eagerly, warming to her task.

James Edie frowned. ‘The minister? Why him?'

‘For he can say a prayer,' the girl explained. ‘Because the ship is cursed.'

‘Dear God!' erupted Honeyman. ‘I thought it was your daughter was the daftie, Maude? Tis we that have been cursed, with a witless shiftless villain of a wench! Away with you! Be gone!'

James Edie said, more reasonably, ‘Elspet, you are young, and
you have not worked here long, yet you must surely ken, that the minister is
never
wanted in this house.' Maude Benet glared and glowered at them, but chose to hold her tongue, pouring out the ale as Elspet scurried off. The baxters settled warily on stools around the bar, to wait for her return. Only James Edie appeared at his ease. When Maude slipped to the back room to attend her cooking pots he took the chance to follow her, begging for some bread. Maude resisted with a scowl. ‘We have none. Since ye all are baxters, go and bake your ain,' she told him crossly.

‘Ah, sweet Maude!' he pottered round her kitchen, peering into pans. ‘Has anybody telt ye that your pottages are rank?'

‘Feel free to take your leave of them, at any time you like,' Maude sniffed.

‘If I had not been marrit, Maude, I swear . . .'

‘What do you swear, James Edie? Aye, then, what?' She rounded on him.

Laughing, the baxter held up his hands. ‘Peace, little bear, for I do not come to bait thee. Tell me why you do it, Maude?

‘Why do I do what?'

‘Go out of your way to flyt with Patrick Honeyman, when you know he has the power to shut you down? Why do you walk the hardest path, when you could take the gentle one?'

‘I do not ken, James. Why do you? And why are you intent on coming to my kitchen? Are you not afeared of plague?' she answered scornfully.

James Edie shook his head. ‘I do not for a moment think it is the plague. Confess it, Maude, he is not sick. Why won't you let us see him?'

‘Because he is not well,' insisted Maude, ‘and because . . . I ken that you will cheat him, James, and fleece him like a lamb. I could not bear to see him bullied by the bailies into giving up his mill. Tis like shining torchlight at the bandage of the blind, or like my wee lass Lilias, baffled by the kirk. There is an innocence, a tenderness in him.'

‘Do you think that he has lost his wits?' James Edie pondered seriously.

‘Not lost his wits. But he is somehow . . .
lost
,' said Maude. ‘He is so very far from home.'

James Edie smiled at her. ‘You are like a crab, Maude, soft and sweet inside, and on the outside . . .
crabbit
! You must know that we do not mean to put him to the test. We hope to have his windmill, that is all. And if he will not give it, so be it. Come,' he held out his hand to her. ‘You know me, Maude. Though I am keen, I am not cruel. Then let us go and wait upon the doctor, whose proper care and counsel shall set your mind at rest.'

Maude nodded, and went back with him, leaving Jacob safely to his rest. She made a show of polishing the wood, and counting out for Lilias the bone and wooden dice; she did not trust the baxters, when her back was turned. Once or twice she opened up the door, but saw no sign of Elspet coming down the hill. The baxters were implacable, and seemed to her quite stubbornly entrenched, when a strange sound from the kitchen stopped them in their cups. It began as a low keening, rising to a howl that set Maude's teeth on edge. Lilias gave a little shriek, and dropped her knucklebones.

Jacob understood that men would come for him. He knew, when Maude had left him, that the time was near. He was not surprised. Tobias, Joachim and the rest had not died quietly, and would not lie quiet at the bottom of the sea. He took some consolation in the things around him, visible reflections of the commonplace: the stale scent of cooking fat, the scraping of the barrels in the cellar down below, whistling on the stairs. From the small shuttered window, he could see the sun, and told himself the time, as he had once been taught. He heard the pot boy clatter in the yard outside, a long, seamless pissing, streaming in the pail. He watched the ginger tomcat, arching from the window ledge, insinuate itself around the corners of the room, and settle on a patch of sunlight, filtered through the slats. The cat had greenish-yellow eyes, like the liquid centre of a wound. Although the room was stifling hot, he knew
that he was lucid still. He listened to Maude talking to the man outside, and understood their purpose, though he did not know the words. He was aware they were not speaking Dutch. Yet all of these sensations were recovered thick and curved, as though he saw and heard them in a glass. They did not dull the pricking in his skin, the creeping of his flesh that began to spread, insidious, throughout. A dry fire had consumed him. His belly could not calm the swell of sops and ale, and Jacob vomited. Joachim and Tobias swam like fishes through his dreams, reflected in the water pot; Jacob heard a howling, and the tomcat's hackles rose.

Jacob knew that he would have to die. He had not known that it would hurt so much.

The baxters stood outside the door. They had gathered at the first unearthly note, but none of them had wanted to go in. The cry had pierced the stillness in the bar, and Christie Boyd had spilled his drink over the minute book, blotting out the record of the previous day. It was not a human sound. Now they stood and listened to the keening, perspiring in the close heat of the kitchen fire. It was Maude, in the end, who pushed open the door, James Edie the first man behind her.

‘Oh!' called out Maude, ‘it is only Gib Hunter, the cat!'

Gib Hunter backed against the kitchen wall, each white-lipped orange hair shaft startled to its tip, like a ginger porcupine. Lilias gave a giggle, ‘Scaredy! Scaredy cat!'

‘Aye, it was the cat. And yet we must be wary of the devils he has seen. What is he afeared of?' James Edie answered quietly. There was a low hush to his voice, as though he came across shy creatures in the fields, and did not want to startle them to flight. It made Maude think of night owls, fixed on little mice, their heartbeats in the darkness tiny pricks of fear. What fright had moved Gib Hunter, to his wild and frantic howls? James was staring straight at Jacob, holding up the candle he had taken from the wall, so that Jacob's eyes were captured in the flame. Jacob was sitting bolt upright, a
terror tale of torment frozen on his face. His black lips blabbered wordlessly, his black hands clutched and fumbled, helpless at the air.

‘Whisht, what is it?' Maude came soft and soothing, holding off the ghosts. Though doubtless, there were devils in the room, she felt only pity, and was not afraid. Jacob pointed wildly and began to sob.

‘Hush, now, hush, for there is nothing there.' She took him in her arms and rocked him like a bairn. She felt his fear aflutter, through his solid chest, like the little mouse, or like the tiny fish heart, beating in her palm, from the writhing haddock she had cooked for Hew. ‘Hush, you are safe now,' she whispered.

‘De duivel,' Jacob moaned.

‘There are no devils here.'

‘
Ahhh
.' The wind had found its way at last, both through and out of him, as Jacob sighed. Maude felt him tense and slacken in her arms. She touched her fingers, briefly, to his lips.

‘Tis well that you have calmed him,' Honeyman came blustering, as if the air from Jacob's lungs had blasted into him. ‘I cannot thole they frenzied fits, that foreign folks are prone to. What do you think it was wrang wi him?'

Maude stared at him, aghast. ‘Do you not see, you futless slump? You useless, feckless, hopeless, lourden of a limmar of a man, that he is dead?'

The bailie buckled at the torrent of her words. ‘
Deid
?' he replied at last. ‘In which case, since you are distressed, we are prepared to overlook . . . we will go back precipitate, and look out for the doctor,' he concluded lamely. The brothers Boyd were quick to follow, leaving James alone with Maude and Lilias.

Maude whispered, ‘Go, my petal, find Gib Hunter. He has had a fright.'

Lilias ran gaily, calling for the cat. Maude looked helplessly at James. ‘He was well enough before, I swear it, James, in spite of what I said.'

James Edie answered sceptically, ‘Perhaps.' He eased the dead
man from Maude's arms, and let the body drop back on the bed. ‘The corpus is decayed,' he pointed out.

‘Tis what I said before. I swear to you, he spoke to me. He ate and drank.'

‘So it would seem.' James was sniffing at the piss pot, looking at the tray. He picked up a piece of bannock. ‘Someone here has breakfasted on bread.'

‘So I did not give him baxter's bread. What can that matter now?'

‘It will matter still, if Honeyman should come to hear of it. He will not let a death deflect him from the rules. It will mean a fine.' James Edie shook his head.

‘James . . .' Maude pleaded.

‘Do not fear.' He threw the crust into the embers of the fire, ‘We will not tell him. Let us clear the tray, and the piss pot too, and tell them that he did not eat or drink. Then we will go and wait.'