Time and Tide (3 page)

‘Well then, trust in her. She proves it can be done. And when your courage fails you, put your trust in God.'

‘Amen to that.' The doctor fumbled in his pockets, drawing out a string of beads. Awkwardly, Hew turned away, allowing Giles the quietness of prayer. He watched a young girl clamber over rocks, throwing pebbles on the beach below. The girl glanced up and caught his eye. Then, to his astonishment, she ran across the sand to turn a perfect cartwheel, white limbs whirling naked in the shadow of Kirk Hill.

‘Look there!' Hew exclaimed. ‘And you might find your thesis proved: the world turns upside down!'

Giles looked up and frowned. He slipped the rosary into his pocket. ‘That is Lilias Begg, who should not be out alone. She is an innocent; a natural fool. The louns unkindly cry her, daft quene of the shore. Come up, Lilias Begg!' he called out to the child, while Hew gave thanks to God for the distraction.

The girl smoothed down her dress, and climbed the steps carved in the cliff, her bare legs flecked with sand.

‘If she is seen as lewd and loose, the kirk will hold her mother to account,' Giles asserted anxiously.

Hew objected, ‘Surely, she is just a child!'

‘She is seventeen. Lilias Begg!' Giles called out again, ‘Where is your mother? Does she know you're gone?'

‘You do not need to shout,' said Lilias sweetly. ‘For, I am here.'

She turned a somersault. ‘I can coup the lundie,' she announced.

‘So I see,' Giles tutted. ‘Lilias Begg, this will not do.'

Lilias Begg had skin like milk, paler than a swaddling bairn's, that never saw the sun. She had brittle, flaxen hair, fairer than the smallest child's, and fey, elfin features, like a faun from faerie land. She stared at Hew with solemn eyes, and did not return his smile.

‘Where on earth has she come from?' Hew whispered to Giles.

‘She is the daughter of Maude Benet, that keeps the haven inn, and of Ranald Begg. A drunkard and a sot,' Giles declared contemptuously. ‘He drank himself into an early grave, and left the world a better place once he had gone to Hell. He beat Maude Benet senseless, when she was with child. For which he put a shilling in the poor box, and escaped a fortnight in the jougs.'

It was rare for Giles to speak so unequivocally, and rarer still to hear him damn a man. The damage to an unborn child had cut the doctor deep. Nonetheless, he qualified, ‘Or so I have been told.'

Lilias said suddenly, ‘I am the whirlijack.'

‘And what is that?' demanded Giles.

‘The
whirlijack
.' Lilias began to spin like a whirlwind, perilously close to the edge of the cliff.

The doctor caught her hands. ‘Be still; you will dance us all giddy! Whatever do you mean?'

‘I am the whirligig, that spins the world.'

‘The seed pods from the sycamore,' suggested Hew. ‘The leaves and fruits are blown all over town.'

‘Aye, but spins the world?' Giles fretted. Something had unsettled him, returning him to gloom. He was already looking back towards the house.

Lilias said helpfully, ‘It came here on a ship.'

‘Some trinket she has picked up at a fair,' Doctor Locke concluded. ‘A trick to catch the wind. This is Master Hew,' he turned again to Lilias, ‘who will take you home.'

Hew spluttered, ‘I will
what
?'

‘Tis plain enough,' insisted Giles. ‘She will not go alone.'

‘Ah, but surely, Paul . . .' said Hew.

‘Paul would prove no match for her,' Giles argued. ‘For all she is an innocent, she's cunning, in her way. She will lead a man a dance if he allows her to. Now she has come of age, it is her natural instinct. If Lilias is taken by a man, then it must be someone who can give a good account of himself.'

Lilias smiled knowingly. ‘I saw a man, in my Mammie's bed. I saw a man, and his hands were all black,' she confided.

‘Dear God!' muttered Hew. ‘I take your point,' he said to Giles, ‘though it is scarcely reassuring.'

The doctor hesitated. ‘I would go myself . . .'

‘Peace, I'm on my way. Lilias, take my hand!' Hew addressed the girl perhaps more brusquely than he had intended, for her lip began to quiver. ‘I want Mistress Meg.'

‘So that is it,' Giles sighed. ‘Meg has ay been kind to her, and gives her sugar suckets for the cough. I will have some suckets sent to you,' he promised, ‘but you cannot see her now. Mistress Meg is not well.'

Lilias asked brightly, ‘Will she die?'

Hew said, ‘Hush, for pity's sake!' as the girl began to sing, ‘Mistress Meg is dead and gone, poor dead sailors all are gone.'

Giles cleared his throat. ‘No one here is dead and gone. Yet I must leave you to it. In the temporal sense,' he excused himself to Hew, ‘I have been gone too long.'

‘Aye, for certain, go,' his friend assured him. ‘I will see her home.'

He turned to Lilias Begg. ‘
You
are trouble, as I think.'

Lilias smiled. ‘Come see!' She took his hand and ran, down Kirk Heugh and through the harbour, turning south along the shore, past the priory and the Sea Port, past the fishing boats and mill. The boatmen stared at Hew, in his scholar's drabs. ‘This is not the way,' he panted, ‘to your mother's house.'

Lilias giggled, stopping short. ‘Look! Look there!' She pointed to the rocks at the far side of the bay at Kinkell Braes, across the damp dark sands, flattened by the ebb and flowing of the sea. The
tide was coming in, and a thinly straggled crowd came scrambling up the beach, retreating from the wreck. Four horses were backed up from the bulkhead of the ship, straining at the water's edge. Lilias  stood pointing, laughing in delight, ‘Look! There it is, the
whirlijack
!'

And there it was, the whirlijack, a perfect wooden windmill, braced against the foremast, high up on the deck. It was painted blue and white, and cross-sailed like the saltire on a summer's day. And flanking both its sides were ropes and stiff machinery. The town had summoned all its arts in salvaging this toy, bright above the wreckage in St Andrews Bay.

The crowds receding from the ship had settled in the harbour inn,  trailing sand and silt. Some took their dinner with them out onto the pier, which overlooked the wreck, to gossip over bowls of soup and sops. Others crammed round trestle tables in the common hall. The air was sweet with onions, melting into broth, and bitter with the fog of candle light. A tapster lassie flitted to and fro with tankers full of ale, batting back the banter of the drinkers at the bar. Lilias clung tightly to Hew's hand. ‘Mammie will gie us dennar, ben the hinner house,' she promised, tugging past the drinkers, through a narrow door.

They came out in the kitchen, where a girl of about fifteen stood squinting at the pottage in a vast iron pot, furrowing the surface with a wooden spoon. The boards were lined with rows of bannocks, yellow slabs of bacon fat and collops of salt beef. An offal pie stood centrepiece, spilling out its gizzards in a scattering of mace. The paunch and udder filling had acquired a greenish tinge.

The young pot stirrer started at the sight of Hew. ‘Where have you been, wee
lurdan
?' she confronted Lilias. ‘A'body's gang speiring for you.'

‘Where's my
Mammie
?' Lilias answered blithely.

‘Doun the ladder.' The girl retreated to a little hatch, open to the wine cellar. ‘Lillie is come hame,' she shouted through the floor.

‘Aye, I hear you, Elspet,' wafted from the vaults. ‘There is no sense in flyting with her, for she does not understand you.'

‘Likely,' muttered Elspet, ‘she will understand a skelp.'

‘I heard that too,' the cellar warned. ‘And you ken well enough what I will answer, if I hear you speak it once again. Send Archie down, to help me lug the cask, and gie the bairn her dinner.'

‘Archie isnae up here,' Elspet called back down.

‘Where is he, then? The louns will drink us dry. I cannot shift they barrels on my own.'

‘He has not come back,' Elspet replied. ‘But Lilias has fetched up with a paramour.'

Lilias gave an unexpected show of wit, in poking out her tongue at her. Hew removed his cap and gown, and set them neatly on a stool, before rolling up his sleeves.

‘God save us, sir, what are you doing?' Elspet shrieked.

He answered with a wink, ‘Helping with the cask.'

‘Take it!' cried the voice. The head and shoulders of a flask of wine emerged above the hatch. Hew knelt down to catch it, and dragged the flagon up onto the earthen floor.

Lilias announced, ‘Tis Mammie!' as Maude herself appeared, dusting down her skirts, to gaze at Hew appraisingly. ‘I thank you, sir, but who are you?'

‘He is Master Hew!' Lilias clapped her hands. ‘Come here for his dennar.'

‘I am Hew Cullan, master at St Salvator's. I brought your daughter home,' Hew explained. ‘I found her on the cliff beside my sister's house. My sister is married to Giles Locke.'

‘The doctor? Aye, they are good people,' Maude approved. ‘Your sister has been kind to her, and Lilias does not forget. She is like the little bird that comes back for its crumbs. Where she takes a liking, she is quickly tamed, and that is rare enough.'

Maude Benet had the look of Lilias, withering with age. Her lightness and fragility had fused to wiry strength, the froth of blonde hair grizzled and grown coarse, the pale skin weathered to a motley red. After years of flyting sailors from their drunken fights, there was little shy or subtle left in Maude. And yet she spoke more gently than the common tapster wife. She had an air of comeliness, and
simple commonsense. ‘I thank you for it, sir. She is a silly bairn, that has no understanding. I hope she has not caused you trouble?' she went on.

‘None at all,' said Hew. ‘She has been showing me the windmill.'

‘That is some sight, is it no!' marvelled Maude. ‘The whole town is astuned at it, and it was in the hubble that the lass gave us the slip. It will take something to shift it, right enough.'

Lilias tugged her skirt. ‘Mammie, we are come for
dennar
!' she repeated patiently.

Her mother smiled. ‘It is a thing when we must ken our manners from a silly child. Come sir, what will you eat?'

‘Madam, you are kind.' Hew shook his head emphatically, and moved a little downwind of the udder pie, gently warmed and pungent in the close heat of the fire.

‘I ken what you are thinking, sir,' intercepted Maude.

He muttered indistinctly, ‘Truly, I hope not.'

‘We will not keep you long,' Maude went on, oblivious. ‘What is that you do there at the university?'

‘I am a professor,' Hew admitted, ‘in the civil laws.'

‘You do not say?' She looked impressed. ‘Yet even a professor must have his dinner hour. Let go the gudeman's hand,' – this latter was to Lilias – ‘and he shall have a fish.'

‘I thank you mistress, but I must be gone.'

‘I do not hear you. Elspet, gie the bairn her broth,' instructed Maude.

Elspet ladled pottage in a bowl, and placed a piece of buttered bannock on the side. Lilias began to cram the bread into her mouth, broth and barley seeping down her chin, while Elspet rolled her eyes, reaching for a cloth.

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.