Helping Fiona back down the levels, lifting her fully in his arms, he felt her amazing warmth and lightness. She laughed and her breathing quickened and she pressed herself closer still. Leaning the whole soft pressure of her body against him as they swayed together on the main millstone floor, she planted a long, hot kiss on his lips.
The mill was entirely at rest again when they stumbled outside, but Nathan’s head was spinning.
“It’s almost a shame to be back here in England.” Fiona sighed, fanning her neck as she pushed back her hair. “I hate London, with its traffic and fog and smell. But here, here—being here. You know, I’d almost forgotten. But I feel so at home here in Lincolnshire. And you and I, Nathan, we really could be partners, equals. Let me show you.…”
Reaching into the pocket of her skirt, she took out something small and round. A coin, a bead, or perhaps merely a pebble. But it had a black aether-glow. Crouching down, she tossed it like a dice onto the brittle brown grass, and the blackness spread. Nathan was reminded of the tumble of the wind-seller’s sack of storms, but this was different again, and far more powerful. Grids of fire leapt across the blackness. Dimming even the blaze of the sun, they threw sparks in Fiona’s hair. When she looked up at him, that same fire was in her eyes.
“This,” she said, “is a map, a plan. It goes far farther than you can see from even this hill. Here are the great cities, the ports and towns and industries, of all of England. See, Nathan, see how they blaze! Even you, up here, must use fire. But think what fire really means. Fire means power. The same power you feel when your body grows hot as you move those arms to work all those clever winches, but magnified, multiplied, almost beyond measure. Then imagine all that power, that heat, controlled.” The brightness amid the dark mirror that lay spread before them increased. It spilled and moved and pulsed along quivering veins. Nathan felt like God himself looking down on this different world, for he saw every movement and detail as close and intricate as the fine auburn down on Fiona’s bared neck as she leaned beside him. There were shimmers of steam, furnace mouths, endless sliding arms of metal. He tasted coal and smoke.
“The world is changing, Nathan, and you and I—we—must change with it. Forget about the old ways, the old songs, the old spells. Already, see here, the arm of the railway is reaching as far as Spalding. Soon it will be here, and here, and here, as well.” Fire dripped from her fingers, spilling and spreading between the embers of the towns. “The engines, the rails, will draw everything closer together. People—their trades, their lives.”
Nathan blinked. He saw the tiny machines made larger, and enormously powerful, through clever intricacies of iron. But why was she telling him this? He strained to understand.
“I’ve already had the land down there around Stagsby Hall surveyed. The road itself can easily be widened, and the lake will provide all the water we could ever need—at least, it will when there’s a decent drop of rain. And did you know Nottinghamshire’s made of nothing but coal? Transportation shouldn’t be an obstacle even before we can get a railhead at Stagsby. Right now, the engineers are drawing up the plans for the enginehouse. But they’re just experts, Nathan, people who work at desks with pens. I need someone who really understands the local markets, and probably knows more than anyone else in this whole county about the grinding of grain. I need someone who has the whole business in his blood.”
“You’re saying—”
“I’m saying we could work together, down there. We’re living at the start of a new age. Forget about the guilds and all the old restrictions, we can make ourselves its kings and queens. As soon as the money is released, straight after the marriage—before, if I get my way—I’ll give the order to start digging the steam mill’s foundations.”
For all that Nathan Westover was a man of business, the conversation was taking a surprising turn. “But what about here, what about this mill?”
“I know, I know, it’s a wonderful creation. Of course, it will be months before we can get the steam mill fully commissioned. Even after that, I’m not suggesting that we shut this windmill down immediately. Far from it—I’m sure we’ll need it for years to take up the slack and deal with the seasonal rush. But this isn’t some dream, Nathan. This isn’t about sentiment or imagination. My fiancée’s a senior master of the Savants’ Guild. He has shares in almost all the major rail companies, and they’re developing the latest most powerful magics of steam and iron. Of course, he’s old, but he still—”
“What do you mean? You’re saying you’re engaged?”
“Where else do you think I’m getting the money to finance this project?”
Nathan stood up. For all the sun’s blaze, the darkness of the map seemed to have spread. Then he started to laugh, taking in great, wracking gulps of air. “And you thought—you thought that I would give this up? My whole life? Come to work down there.…” He raised a trembling hand.
“But what did you think, Nathan?” She was standing beside him again now, and far too close. He had to turn away.
“All these years. All these bloody years. I’ve hoped.…”
“Hoped what, Nathan?” There was a pause. The light gathered. He sensed a change in her breath. “I wish, I do wish, that life could be different. But that isn’t how it works, Nathan, and even if it did.… Even if it did, can you imagine how much money the sort of project I’m talking about needs? It’s more than you could ever dream of, wealthy though I’m sure you think you are. My husband will get my name and what little of my companionship he still needs when I’m in the city, and I’ll get his money and the freedom to live here. It’s a fair enough exchange. But as for the rest. As for the rest. It doesn’t mean.… I like you, Nathan, I truly do, and I felt what we both felt inside the mill. And if we were together, if we were business partners, and you were the manager of my mill, who knows.…” Her hand was upon his shoulder, kneading the flesh, moving toward his neck, “Who knows—?”
He spun around in a blurring rage. “And you imagined that you could have me as your employee—working on some infernal machine! You might as well expect me to go to Hell.”
“Hell, is it?” Stumbling back, she stooped to snatch up the stone. Its spell swirled around her in a dark vortex of flame in the moment before the map faded. “You think that would be Hell?” She grabbed her mare’s reins, mounted, and drew the creature about in a wild and angry lunge. It reared, baring its teeth around the bridle. “There’s only one infernal machine, Nathan Westover,” she shouted, “and we’re both on it, and so’s everyone else in this world!”
With a dig of her heels, Grandmistress Fiona Smith galloped off down Burlish Hill.
The heat finally relented in peals of thunder. Huge skies hurried over Lincolnshire, and what grain there was that year, poor stuff, flattened and wettened, was finally borne up Burlish Hill’s puddled track for grinding. If the miller up there seemed even brisker and grumpier in his dealings than he had before, it got little mention, for all the talk was of what was happening down at the big hall. When storms finally blew themselves out, there came a last day of surprising warmth; the last echo of summer cast across the stark horizons of autumn. Sheer luck, although the villagers agreed that the wedding breakfast to which they’d all been invited could scarcely have been bettered. From the few glimpses they’d had of the bride with her flaming hair and pearl-beaded dress, everyone agreed that she made the finest imaginable sight as well. Pity the same couldn’t be said of the groom, who looked dried up and old enough to make you shudder at the very thought of him and her.… Not that much of that was likely, it was agreed, as the wine and the beer flowed, still less a child. Lights were lit as dusk unfurled. A great machine with a greedy furnace and tooting pipes was set chuffing in the middle of the lawns. It gave out steam and smoke and music, and soon everyone began to dance. Amid all these distractions, few would have bothered to look toward Burlish Hill. Still fewer would have noticed that the sails of the mill still turned.
That winter w
as a hard one. The land whitened and froze, then rang with the iron wheels of the many carts that headed through the gates of Stagsby Hall to scrawl their marks across the ruined lawns. With the thaw came much work as villagers bent their backs to the digging of what seemed like an endlessly complex trench. Sconces and braziers burned as the work continued long into the nights, and the grandmistress herself was often present, offering the sort of smiles and encouragements for which the men were greedy, although few yet comprehended exactly what the work was for. Still, they agreed as they sat afterward in the snug and drank their way though the extra money, it might help put Stagsby on the map. It would never have occurred to them that Stagsby had proclaimed itself across all Lincolnshire for centuries by windmill-topped Burlish Hill.
The huge new contrivance itself, part machine and part factory, looked wholly alien as it squatted amid the spring mud at the brown edges of the filthy lake. The opening of it was cause for yet another party at the hall. People were getting blasé about these occasions by now. They commented on the varieties of cake and beer with the air of connoisseurs, and were cheerfully unsurprised when the first turning of the great camwheel failed to occur. Nevertheless, the grandmistress gave a speech up on a podium, and both she and it were more than pretty enough.
Looking down from Burlish Hill through that long winter and into the spring that followed, Nathan absorbed tales and rumors along with the scent of coalsmoke that now drifted on the air. Lights shone now often from the windows of Stagsby Hall, but they were nothing compared to the fume and blaze that glowed beside it. On still days, he heard shouts in odd accents, the toots of whistles, the grumpy huff and turn of a huge and awkward machine, the call of strange spells. The first summer of this new competition, though, went well. Nathan aimed to be as reliable and competitive as ever—in fact, more so. He cut into his savings, reduced his rates, and the crop that year was as good as the previous one had been bad. There was more than enough grist to keep him working night and day, and the winds mostly came when he needed them. Meanwhile, all the machine down in the valley seemed capable of delivering was broken deadlines. If the local farmers took a little of their trade to the new grandmistress, it was more out of curiosity to see the great steambeast at work, and because of her looks, rather than because of the quality of the service she offered. Knowing something of farmers and their nature, Nathan didn’t doubt that the novelty would fade. And he was a miller, and there had always been a mill up on Burlish Hill. He was prepared to trust the winds, and the seasons, and be patient.
Nathan was also sanguine about the other changes he noticed in the world. He’d understood long before Grandmistress Smith had laid it out before him on that clever map that one of the main reasons for his success as a miller was the improvement in haulage and communication that the spread of the new steam railways had brought. When a line finally reached as far as the Lincolnshire coast, he was happy to use it to visit his mother at Donna Nook; it saved several hours, and meant he no longer sacrificed an entire day’s work. On summer’s mornings, the cramped, chattering carriages drawn by those odd new machines were filled with families from the big cities heading for a day out at new resorts. He sometimes even stopped off himself for a stroll along the promenade, although to him the Lincolnshire coast remained essentially a wintry place. This, he thought on a freezing, blustery day when the gaudy new buildings were shuttered and sand gritted the streets, is real weather, brisk and cold and sharp.
The tracks now also ran to the town markets, where the steam and the screech of whistles added to the traditional stink and chaos of the cattle pens, the clamoring baskets of geese and chickens, the shouting and the pipesmoke. There were new animals now, as well. Horses that were too broad and strong and stupid to be called horses, and frighteningly fancy ducks and hens. In this new age of new magic, there were also strange new trades. Still, the tall rooms in which the auctions of grain took place remained places of golden, if bustling, calm. The mass of grain itself was stored in barns or warehouses. All that was here were wicker baskets containing samples, which you could thumbnail the husks off to taste the soft white meat inside. Nathan relished the whole day, and the entire process. He would, he sometimes reflected, have come to these auctions even if he didn’t trade himself. He even enjoyed the conversations, which were invariably about the air, the earth, and the crops.
Market day that September in Louth was busy as ever, and the roar of voices and the jostle of shoulders was entirely familiar. Standing toward the back, Nathan was tall enough to see over the caps and heads of the factors and farmers, and still had a voice that the older millers who clustered at the front had lost. Then, as the bidding commenced, he noticed a shift in the usual ebb and flow. There was a surprising swirl of attention near to the auctioneer’s desk, and it was centered around a solitary head of flaming red hair.
It was the same at the next auction, and the one after that. Against all tradition, Grandmistress Fiona Smith—a woman, and no member of any of the recognized agricultural guilds—was bidding on her own behalf. Not only that, but she was far better at getting the auctioneer’s attention than anyone else in the room. Worst still, the masculine reserve of these country guildsmen meant that they withdrew from bidding against her at prices that were far too low. Essentially, she was getting her grain on the cheap because of how she looked.
Nathan was shocked to discover that seemingly sensible men could act like such fools. If a batch of corn or oats was selling at a price he knew to be ridiculous, he made sure he made a better bid. Sometimes, he pushed things too high, and the red head that absorbed so much of the hall’s attention would give a negative shake. Still, grain was grain, and he had the stuff stored at his own expense until he found the time and the energy to have it delivered and ground. He’d always thought of himself as hardworking, but in that season and the ones that followed, he surprised even himself. The mill turned as it had never turned, and there was always something more that needed to be done, and even a decent wind wasn’t always enough for him. On days when there was a moderate easterly, or a keen breeze from the north, Nathan still found himself looking up in frustration at the slow turn of his mill’s sails. Finding a wind hanging hooked in his lean-to that made a close enough match to the one that was already blowing was an entirely new skill, although it was one he did his best to learn. Sometimes, on the right days, the whole mill spun and thrummed with a speed and a vigor that he’d never witnessed. It was thrilling, and the needs of the many mechanisms dragged the songs from his throat until he was exhausted and hoarse. On other days, though, the winds fought angrily, and the mill’s beams creaked and its bearings strained and its sails gave aching moans. Such strains inevitably increased the wear on the mill’s components, and the costs and demands of its maintenance soared.
On cold winter nights, when there was now still grain in need of grinding, or flour that somehow had to be dried off before it could be sold, he dragged himself to the desk with its books of spells and accounts at which his father and many other generations of Westovers had sat. But the nib trembled, his lungs hurt, and the red and green figures could no longer be persuaded to add up. He’d once never have thought of leaving any job half-completed, but now he staggered off to snatch the few hours’ sleep with the colored inks still warring. Then he dreamed of storms of figures, or that the mill was storm itself, and that the air would never stir again across all of Lincolnshire if he didn’t work its sails.
Nathan had got little enough in reply on the rare occasions when he’d mentioned the wind-seller to his fellow millers. Did the man come to them on those same still, hot days on which he always seemed to visit Nathan? That hardly seemed possible. Was there just one wind-seller, or were there several of their species or guild? And where exactly did he come from—and what essential substance was it, after all, from which his winds were made?
A flat, hot day. The mill groaning and creaking, and Nathan’s bones filled with an ache for the time—it seemed only moments
ago—when there was always too much grain, and never enough hours in the day to grind it. This summer, though, he’d had to rein in his bidding in order to keep up his repayments to the bank, whilst the carts had borne their grain less regularly, and in smaller amounts, up Burlish Hill. The farmers never looked Nathan directly in the eye or told him what they were doing, but the evidence was down there in the valley, in a pounding haze of noise and heat. Could people really work in such conditions, when the day itself was already like a furnace? Nathan wiped his face. He hawked and coughed and spat, and worked the bloody phlegm into the dry ground of Burlish Hill with the heel of his boot. Just last week in Gainsborough, he’d been having a bite of lunch at one of the inns beside the market before taking the train that now reached Burwell, only five miles out of Stagsby itself. His bread roll had tasted gritty and sulfurous. He’d spat it out.
A distant engine chuffed across the landscape, trailing its scarf of steam. Somewhere, a whistle blew. Nathan coughed. No grist in need of grinding, but he still had half a mind to unlock the lean-to and take out whatever winds he had left in there, just for the ease they brought to his breathing, and the cool feel of them twisting in his arms.…
A gray shimmer was emerging from the valley, and it was too stooped and solitary a figure for his heart to begin to race. Nathan remembered his fear and excitement back in the times when his father had been master of this mill, and every spell had been new, every wind fresh and young. Still, it was good to think that some things didn’t change, and he almost smiled at the wind-seller; almost wished him a cheery good day.
The man flapped his old cloak. He seemed to give a shiver as he studied the hot, dry horizons. “The hardest of all seasons, eh?”
Nathan shrugged. Almost every farmer said something similar to him when they came up here. It was usually a prelude to their explaining how they couldn’t afford his normal rate, and it was scarcely in his interest to agree with them. But Nathan found himself nodding. This really was the hardest of all seasons.
Everywhere: Volume I of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod Page 25
