Hew told him the story of the Flemish miller’s gift. ‘Maude Benet spoke the truth,’ he verified at last, ‘when she reported he was not himself. For though she saw it slanted, though a dark perspective glass, she saw into his heart, reflecting back, distorted, the words of Jacob’s prayer. For he was Jacob Adams, a Scot, St Andrews born. His circle ended just, and as the windmill turns, it brought him to his close, where he had first begun.’
‘And so,’ the coroner summed up, ‘the windmill, all along, was meant for us?’
‘It was,’ acknowledged Hew. ‘Nor was there ever ill intent. For those attendant horrors we have witnessed through the town we brought upon ourselves, by force of our own greed.
‘The baxters and the millers, and your brother, Robert Wood, are locked into a chain of close and common bondage that circumscribes the town, where every link is fragile, taut and strained. The balance of their power became so delicately strung, one puff of wind unsettled it. Whoever had the windmill, had power over the land, power over the elements, and power over the town. He could turn the town itself, in the blowing of the wind. Which promise was enough to persuade a man to kill for it.’
‘The question is,’ said Andrew Wood, ‘which man?’
‘As I suspect, the baxters. Who else should profit quite so much from power over the mill? Who else would force famine, sullying the grain, forcing up the prices of the bread? Who knew the grain store lock was broken, and that Gavan Lang had planned to catch the fish?’
‘There are no secrets at a mill,’ reflected Andrew Wood. ‘And what is known to one is known to all. The baxters hide behind the banner of their gild, and keep their knowledge hidden in a multitude of locks. I cannot hang them all, else we shall have no bread. No matter, as I hope, you will flush them out, and they will start to feel the close heat of their fires. Nor shall they hope to profit from their sins. The windmill will be put to common good, and held in common interest for the town, and known as Jacob’s windmill, the Flemish miller’s gift. The millers of the town shall work it each in turn, and no man shall make profit, more than his own share. Though I suppose there is a chance that Jacob’s father, Jacob Adams, will appear to press his claim, his kinship to the miller will be hard to prove.’
‘I do not count that likely,’ answered Hew. ‘For I can find no trace of Jacob, or James, or of any man called Adams, who is living in the town, who is of an age to have been Jacob’s father. I have spoken with the man from the kirk of Holy Trinity, and he thinks it most likely that the family moved away, avoiding the scandal of a bastard birth. His parish records do not stretch so far, and he himself has only been here for the past six years.’
‘You are forward, sir, in making these inquiries,’ the coroner observed, ‘before you came to put the case to me.’
‘I wanted to be able to submit a full report,’ Hew acknowledged quickly.
‘Indeed. Then may I trust, that you hold nothing back?’
‘You have my word,’ said Hew, ‘that you have seen into my heart, as I, I do believe, have seen a glimpse of yours.’
‘Perhaps,’ allowed the coroner. ‘Yet no more than a glimpse.’ He allowed himself to smile, briefly and elusively. ‘Our paths will cross again. And you will know me better, as I think.’
The news spread quickly through the town that the windmill had been promised for the common good. And so it had appeared to Hew, until a few days later, he bumped into Bartie Groat. The old professor greeted him, expressing his delight, effusively and fluidly, through his pocket handkerchiefs. ‘Hew! My dearest man! How very glad I am to see you safe restored from Ghent. I hope you will please me, by stepping in at suppertime, for I have long been longing to listen to your tales.’
‘You do not mean tonight? The pity is . . .’ Hew floundered, while he thought up an excuse, but Bartie Groat outwitted him. ‘I know you do not care to take your dinners in the hall, and so I have arranged for something in my rooms, and you can have no notion, Hew, how much I have looked forward to it, for I was born in Flanders, as you know, and I have not been back there since I was a boy. According to Giles Locke, you met the Prince of Orange. The Prince of Orange, no less! Then will you not indulge an old man’s whim?’
‘Aye, very well,’ sighed Hew.
‘Splendid! Come at nine, when the students are in bed, and we shall have canary sack, and we shall have a pudding, and a trotter pie,’ Bartie Groat enthused.
Bartie’s quarters were above the dinner hall, and smelled of old mens’ undershirts, cough syrups and kale. The pie was cold and heavy, and the wine was thin. The evening drew on, inch by inch, in mournful reminiscences, as Bartie wondered whether such and such a street or house or tree stood still there in its place, each hint of deviation moving him to tears. When Hew could stand no more, he said, ‘The hour is late. I cannot keep you longer from your bed.’
Bartie blew his nose. ‘Dear, dear. I have been so immersed in these reflections on the past that I lose sight of my interest in the present news. Do I infer correctly, that the baxters are to have their windmill after all?’
‘You have not inferred correctly,’ Hew answered with a groan. ‘I hoped your taste for rumour and false gossip had been curbed. The windmill is sequestered to the common good, and whoever takes her turn, it will not be the baxters.’
‘Then I am misinformed,’ reported Bartie Groat, ‘for I heard it spoken in the mercat and the close, that the miller’s father was a man called Jacob Adams.’
‘And so he was,’ admitted Hew. ‘And yet there is no Jacob Adams living in the town, nor any man called Adams in the baxters’ gild.’
‘Except, of course, James Edie,’ Bartie Groat replied.
Hew gaped at him. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘My dear, it is self-evident. For Jacob is the same as James, as I am sure you know. And Edie is Adie, and Adie is Adamson, and Adamson is Adams, in the Dutch. The names are cognate, Hew. As any dull boy knows, who knows his roots,’ Bartie said complacently.
‘James Edie!’ Hew exclaimed. ‘And I had no idea!’
‘As I recall,’ reflected Bartie Groat, ‘he had a sister, Ruth, who went to live in Ghent. He told me of her once, in reverence for my fondness for the place; it was not common knowledge, as I think. He said he had not heard from her for many years, and he supposed her dead, yet he did sometimes wonder how she did. I think it more than likely that she changed her name, as is the common usage when we move abroad – as I have done myself – and Edie became Adams. When Jacob learned his father’s name, he learned it in the Dutch.’
‘Bartie!’ Hew declared, ‘you are beyond compare! Do you think James Edie is aware of this?’
Bartie blinked at him ‘I think he must be, do not you? For if he had a child, and gave it to his sister, he cannot have failed to notice it. Where are you going?’ he protested, as Hew made for the door.
‘To speak to Jacob Adams.’
‘But surely, at this hour . . .!’
‘That is the beauty of the baxters,’ Hew returned. ‘They bake their bread by night.’
But though the ovens were ablaze in Baxters’ Wynd, and the warmth of baking bread began to filter through the streets, Hew found no trace of Edie in the baxter’s shop. He had gone to take his supper at Maude Benet’s inn, in curious good humour, the prentice gave report, and had left no hope or promise of a quick return. Hew wandered to the shore, to find the tavern closed, and all the drinkers gone, the lantern in the doorway blown out for the night. The door was open, and Maude was still awake, sweeping out the rushes from the bar, the air behind her thick with soot and smoke.
Hew asked, ‘Have you seen James Edie?’’
‘He is in the windmill,’ answered Maude. Before Hew could reply, she had closed the door, and disappeared into the room beyond.
But then, of course, reflected Hew, for where else, after all, would the baxter choose to come, to gloat upon his fortune, but to Jacob’s mill? And as he looked across the gloom, he could see a trail of light, reflec
ted in the water in the harbour by the boats, coming from the windmill on the shore. He made his way by moonlight, feeling for the door. It opened to his touch. ‘James Edie?’ he said softly, but James did not reply, and the sound resounded hollow through the timbers of the mill. The lantern dipped and flickered on the wooden floor, and shone its gentle light upon the baxter’s face, curious, and intimate. James Edie’s right hand rested on the handle of a knife, which had somehow slipped inside him, buried in his coat, as though he had that moment meant to pull it out, when he was called away. Hew lifted up his hand, sliding out the blade, and found it came quite easily, in a sticky, viscous trail. A narrow stream of blood began to bubble in its wake, welled behind the blade like the water in a dam. It was the little knife that Maude had used to slit and gut Hew’s fish, when she cut out its beating heart and held it in her palm. Hew wiped the wet blade on the dead baxter’s sleeve.
Though the inn was in darkness, the door was unlocked. Hew felt his way inside, and back towards the kitchen, where he replaced the fish knife in its pocket on the wall. He made, and heard, no sound. The door to Jacob’s closet was ajar, and through it he observed a prick of light. Cautiously, he opened it. The shutters were half open to the moon, and Maude had left a candle burning by the bed, that cast a thoughtful shadow on her face. She sat silent by its side, with a pillow in her lap, and for a moment, Hew expected busy hands to twitch and throttle back and forth, like Beatrix at her pillow making lace, until he saw what Maude was looking at, and why she held the pillow softly in her lap, so still that not a single feather stirred. She was looking down at Lilias, in the shadow of the moon, where the moonlight spun to silk each separate, silvered strand of her daughter’s flaxen hair. And Lilias, sleeping, made no breath or sound. Gib Hunter lay beside her, curled into a ball.
Maude turned to look at Hew. ‘God help me, but I could not do it,’ she said.
Hew made still his voice, calming the flutter he felt in his heart. ‘It was because you loved her too much.’
‘You are wrong,’ she told him. ‘It is because I did not love her enough.’
He did not know, then, whether it was Lilias or whether it was Maude, who had slid the little knife into the baxter’s heart, as softly and as deftly as the scaling of a fish, and who had held the life force ebbing through her hands, and yet he knew that they must be apart. He took the pillow from Maude’s lap and placed it on the bed beside the sleeping cat. ‘Will you not come, now, and let the lass sleep?’ he murmured.
Maude nodded, ‘Aye, I will come.’
He took her by the hand, and she came meekly, like a child. They went into the bar. ‘What happened here tonight?’ he asked.
‘He showed to me the colour of his heart,’ said Maude. ‘And it was black, inside. And so I took my knife, and cut into his heart, into the place the blackness was, and cut the blackness out.’
‘Then do you understand that you have killed him, Maude?’ Hew asked her quietly.
‘I understand it, sir,’ said Maude, ‘And I am not ashamed of it.’ And for the reason and calm with which she spoke, he did not for a moment doubt her word.
‘Will you not call the watch, sir? I pray you, call the watch,’ Maude pleaded.
‘Will you not tell me why you did it?’ answered Hew.
‘Why did I kill James?’ She seemed to have withdrawn into a dream, and he wondered if she really understood it. ‘I killed him for he did not grieve. He did not grieve for Jacob,’ Maude explained, ‘for in his joy to have the windmill he forgot that he had lost as well as found a son, and he forgot to mourn for Jacob’s death.’
‘For Jacob was James Edie’s son?’ asked Hew.
‘For Jacob was his son,’ acknowledged Maude, ‘as much as he was mine.’
Chapter 24
A Beating Heart
Maude sat with her small hands folded in her lap. Her voice was light and low. He could not have imagined her, slipping in the knife that slid between the bones into Jacob Adams’ heart.
‘You do not understand,’ she said.
‘Then tell me,’ he encouraged her, ‘and I will speak for you.’
‘There is no purpose to it,’ she demurred. ‘For why would you do that?’
‘Because I am a lawyer, Maude. It is what I do.’ As he spoke he recognised the truth of it. Because he was an advocate, and there was no escaping it. The prospects were not good for Maude, and yet he would defend her, if he could.
‘But you cannot defend me, sir,’ she countered patiently. ‘You cannot speak for me before the court, and if you could, you could not plead my case to God. James Edie did not hurt me; he never was unkind to me, or used me with without gentleness, and for that I loved him. I love him still,’ she added poignantly.
‘You and he were lovers?’
‘Once,’ Maude confessed. ‘We never stooped to sin again, once I was wed to Ranald Begg. And yet the spark did not die out. But it was flint that was his heart. I took my knife to cut it out, and I would do the same again, for I am not afeared of it. My heart is heavy only, that I could not see to Lilias. I should have seen to Lilias. God help me, but I could not do it.
‘Have pity, sir, and call the watch, before my Lilias wakes. I know that I must suffer for my sins. And yet the hours that pass must weaken my resolve, and I begin to fear for it. Have pity, sir, and send me to my fate.’
‘Aye, but in a while. Will you not tell me, Maude, what was it made you do it?’ Hew persisted. If he could defend her, make a case . . . for Maude did not deserve to die, he thought. For surely, there was more, and Maude did not deserve to die. Yet in his heart, he knew the rigours of the law.
‘It is a wretched tale,’ said Maude. ‘And you must judge me for it; do not look so kindly, sir, I beg you. I cannot thole the kindness, for it cuts me to the quick, when I deserve your scorn. The truth is, that I fell with child, when I was but a lass.’
‘And the child was James Edie’s?’ Hew questioned. The child was Jacob Molenaar, as he supposed. The windmill turned full circle, brought the miller back to the place where he begin. He shivered. Was there not a magic after all, a dark and deeper providence, in this?
Maude admitted, ‘Aye, it was. And James Edie set his mind to do the best for me, for all he could not marry me, for that he was not free.’
‘He had a wife already,’ Hew supposed.
‘His wife is Ann Honeyman.’ She lingered in the present tense, as though she took some comfort in the telling of his tale, that kept him close to life. ‘Ann is cousin to the present Patrick, deacon of the gild, and a plain and shrewish woman, like him in her way. James did not marry her for love, nor for her looks, but for her father, George.’
‘He married her for money, then?’ asked Hew.
‘For money, aye,’ acknowledged Maude. ‘He married her, though he loved me. And I was steeped in sin so deep I did not let his marriage bar the way.’
‘And neither, I infer, did he,’ Hew commented.
‘He was ensnared,’ Maude answered simply. ‘I was seventeen, and he was twenty three, and when I fell with his child. James did what he could. He had a cousin, Ranald Begg, who was in his debt, and James discharged the debt, in asking him to marry me. The world would ken the bairn as Ranald Begg’s, and Ranald Begg and I would have the haven inn, as recompense, he said. But Ranald was a sleutcher and a sot; to gie a drunk a tavern was the worst thing he could do. Twas on our wedding night that he first raised his fists to me, and cursed the day that he was bound to raise a bastard child. James Edie saw me black and bruised, and he was vexed and shamed, and sent his sister Ruth when I was close confined, and she was fine and kind with me, that I did not deserve.’
‘His sister, Ruth,’ repeated Hew.
‘Aye, sir. And the word means pity, does it not?’ Maude reflected sadly. ‘She was kind to me. She married late, and had no babbies of her own, and yet she held my hand, and nursed me through those desperate hours, when I came close to God. And when my James was born, I held him in my arms b
ut once, and fell into a sickness so intense I did not know myself for days. And when I came to life again, she told me that my little boy had died.’
‘Dear God!’ said Hew. ‘They told you that your child was dead!’
‘They telt me that, and worse, for the minister colluded in it – that was not the Reverend Traill, that we have now, but the man that came before him. For when I first fell with child, James Edie went to him, and wept, and he made bitter penance on the cauld flair of the kirk, and bought the Lord’s forgiveness wi’ the baxter’s purse. He repented privately, and was spared from public shame. My punishment was Ranald Begg. The minister told me that he had cast my infant in the common pit, without name or sacrament, as did befit the bastard, of a common whore. He telt me that God knew me, and all those women like me, that the devil sent them to lead good men astray. My boy had gone to Hell. And that was all the comfort that I had.’
She showed him no emotion in the telling of the tale. The devil and his kirk had wrung the tears from Maude.
‘He told you a lie; a most terrible wickedness, Maude,’ whispered Hew.
‘I doubt it broke my heart,’ she answered simply. ‘For I knew not what kind of God would send a child to Hell. But that was the minister’s ain wee special twist, and not James Edie’s fault, that I cannot blame him for. And I will not reproach him that he took the bairn away, for what sort of a life would it have had with Ranald Begg? He took him as a kindness to us all, or so he said, and very likely that was true.’
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