Time and Tide (10 page)

They were standing in Maude's bedchamber, adjacent to the kitchen. All trace of Jacob had been cleared away. The closet shared
a chimney, and a fireplace, with the room next door, and the air was thick and claggy with the smell of frying fat. A recess in the wall looked out onto the yard, facing back upon the jakes, away from the direction of the sea. A blue flannel blanket lay folded on the bed, turned upon the sheets.

‘Are those the sheets he died in?' questioned Giles.

Maude shook her head. ‘The linen was cut up, to mak' his shroud.'

‘What happened to his clothes?'

The clothes had gone too. Yet Maude recounted clearly, every hook and thread. She remembered his long coat, of dun-coloured wool, that the sea had matted, turning into felt, his white linen shirt, with lace around the cuffs, where a careful hand had stitched, his darned black breeks and salt-scuffed shoes. His hat, she supposed, had been lost in the storm.

‘Then he was not a mariner?' persisted Hew.

Maude agreed that Jacob had not been a mariner. Sailors wore short coats, with wide, baggy breeks, and shoes soled with rope, for gripping to the decks. Sailors dressed like banderoles, in red and white and blue.

‘Did he eat or drink, vomit, use the jakes?'

He had drunk and eaten, ale and bannock sops, and he had pissed and vomited, both into the water pot. The residue had gone into the jakes, the jakes a metal pail that emptied to the sink, the sink a narrow gutter-pipe that ran into the sea. The leakage had been washed away, with no trace left behind.

‘You say he spoke to you. What were his words?'

He had said his name was Jacob, but that he was not himself. He spoke the words in Flemish; she had understood them. ‘I am not my, he said, and I am not myself. In Flemish, Eek neet mine, Ik neet van Myzelf.'

What had she understood by that?

‘I am not myself.'

What had she understood by
that
?

She had not understood.

‘I am not myself,' Hew repeated carefully. He sounded out the Dutch, and wrote it down.

‘And when he died, you say you heard a noise?'

‘It was the cat, Gib Hunter.'

The cat was in the room with them. It wound its legs round Hew's, quivering its tail.

‘He came in from the yard, and could not escape.'

Gib Hunter gave the lie to this, by leaping up on the window ledge and out into the yard, the way he had come in.

‘Did Jacob speak again?'

He spoke out to a woman, Beatrix was her name. And he called to the devil, just before he died. She meant to say, before he died again. For he was dead already, and he brought the devil in his dreams.

‘Tell us, how that works,' persisted Giles.

‘The surgeon came and wrote it,' Maude reported stubbornly. ‘It was death by drowning.'

‘Is it possible, at all?' murmured Hew to Giles, ‘That drowning was delayed? That water had collected in his lungs?'

‘Possible, indeed,' Giles answered unequivocally. Hew had not expected him to answer straight and plain. ‘And yet I do not think,' he added, true to form, ‘that that was how he died. Besides which, if I understand you, Jacob was a corpse, some time before he drowned. He drowned not once, but twice. Is that not correct?'

Maude agreed unhappily. ‘When I hear you say it now, it does not make much sense. But had you seen him when they brocht him from the sea, so swollen, blue and black, you might understand it, sir. The surgeon said that Jacob had been dead for days.'

‘Yet you were not afraid, Maude,' Hew remarked astutely. ‘A dead man in your closet sat and drank and talked with you, pissing in your water pot. You had him close at hand there, when you prepared my fish.' This was an unpleasant thought, he wished had not occurred to him. Yet he had proved his point. Maude had sheltered Jacob, and she had felt no fear.

‘Tis true,' admitted Maude, herself surprised by this. ‘I never was
afeared at him. I cannot tell you why. Yet I had quite forgotten, sir,' she broke in suddenly, ‘that there is something here, that I have kept to show you, that will make it plain.'

‘Something left behind?' asked Hew.

Maude Benet answered oddly, ‘Aye, sir, something left behind. It will help you understand. Tis what the surgeon saw.' She reached up for the little box, high up on the shelf, and handed it to Giles. ‘Jacob wore a ring,' she said. ‘And when the women came to dress the corpus, they fell to squabbling over it. They picked at him like crows, and found it firmly fixed. I took it from their grasp, and thought to keep it safe. It was the only part of him not given to the sea.'

Giles opened up the box, whooping with delight, ‘Sweet, subtle Maude, you are an angel, Maude! Look at this, Hew! Is this not rare?'

‘What is it? Oh, sweet Jesus Christ, what is that? Whatever did possess you to keep such a relic?' Hew cried in disgust. For Maude had kept the ring as it had come from Jacob's body, with the blackened stub of finger still attached.

‘I did not have the heart,' she answered helplessly, ‘to throw the remnant out.'

Giles marvelled, ‘Look close at this putrefaction, Hew!'

‘I have it in my scent. It must be two days old,' protested Hew.

The doctor countered, ‘Ah, that is the point; it is far more than that. This ripeness and contusion makes the matter plain.'

‘The ripeness of the matter is beyond dispute, the meaning far from plain. I wish you would explain.'

‘So shall I, in due course. This ring was fast upon the poor man's finger, Maude?' pressed Giles.

Maude answered, ‘Aye. In truth, the ring was buried in his flesh, his fingers were so black and puffed the first that I had seen it there, was when the fisher wifies pu'ed it off. You ken, sir, that I had no thought to have it to mysel?' she appealed to Hew.

He nodded. ‘Aye, we know it, Maude. You keep an honest house.'

‘Just so. What will you dae wi it, now?' wondered Maude.

‘
Experiments
,' said Giles. ‘In hope the ring will tell us, who its
owner was, while from this ragged finger, we may learn how he died. I see now, why the surgeon has mistook the time of death. For Jacob was alive still, when this finger died.'

‘What ever does that mean?' demanded Hew.

Giles beamed at him. ‘I cannot say as yet.' He patted round his clothes. It seems that I have come without a pocket to my coat. Wrap it in your handkerchief, and slip it into yours.'

‘Let in a little light,' instructed Giles, ‘and we shall see, what we shall see.' He threw the shutters wide and allowed the day to force its way into the turret tower. The morning mists had cleared, and a cold shaft of sunshine settled on the astrolabe. Hew stood shivering in his shirt. He had barely been asleep, when Giles came with the dawn to start on their dissections.

‘You are precipitate,' Hew groaned.

‘And you are a slugabed. I rose up with the lark. Or to be precise, with the young Matthew Locke, whose piping woke the household,' Giles admitted cheerfully. ‘There is something to be said for a separate set of chambers. Are you not yet dressed?'

‘In a moment, by your leave.' Hew fumbled with his points. Giles rummaged through the bookshelves. ‘Have you had my pinchingtenals?' he inquired.

‘What would I with your pincers?' snorted Hew. The forceps, tongs and tweezers that informed his friend's anatomy surpassed the barber surgeon's, and their very mention left him feeling faint. He buttoned up his coat and felt round for his purse, in which the finger had been safely settled for the night.

‘They have a multitude of uses,' Giles persisted peevishly. ‘And you have left the chamber in a sad state of array.'

Hew did not deign to flatter with reply. The students' weapons had been cleared into the buttery, and now that Hew was up and dressed he made no other mark upon the cluttered room.

‘Remind me how we lived together, in the Rue des Fosses?' the doctor asked, self-righteously.

‘I wonder that myself.'

‘Now, this is what I mean,' said Giles, pouncing on a book. ‘You have left your Latin primer where I keep my cupping glass! Have you been teaching schoolboys while my back is turned? Or are you numbing them with gerunds, while you let their blood?'

‘Neither,' Hew retrieved the grammar with a groan. ‘It was left here for a student, and I fear I had forgotten it. I promised to his sister I would pass it on.'

‘A sister? Ah! What sort of a sister?' Giles began to quiz. Hew replied repressively, ‘The
married
sort. Your pincers are right there, behind the astrolabe,' he pointed out.

‘Ah, yes, I do recall . . . there was a little matter of the rule, that wanted some adjusting. Yet I fear, tis broken now.'

‘Perhaps it was the wind?' said Hew.

Giles coughed and cleared his throat. ‘Go to, where is the finger? Set it in the light, and on the flesher's block. It will not be affected, by the taint of blood. You may move the foot.'

‘
You
may move the foot,' corrected Hew.

Giles spread out a square of gauze upon the blank dissecting board, setting out his instruments. The sunlight dipped and flickered, bouncing off the blades. ‘Make haste now, or the sun will damage it,' he warned.

‘That seems a vain precaution,' Hew remarked, ‘when this remnant is already so decayed.'

He untied the pouch and shook out the blackened contents. ‘Here is a pocket that I will not want to fill again.'

‘Do not stop to fret about the puddle in your handkerchief. Twill come out in the wash.'

‘Twill come out in the furnace,' answered Hew.

‘You are too meticulous,' his friend complained. ‘Patience, if you will, and we will make this finger back into the man.'

‘As in a puff of smoke.'

‘We are philosophers, not conjurers,' Giles replied severely. ‘I think you are not suited to the task.'

‘I commend it, I assure you. Tis only that I find it rather grim,' admitted Hew.

‘Then you shall turn your wits, to finding out the ring, and leave the rest to me.'

Giles held the putrid finger closely, teasing out the metal from the bone. He wiped the ring clean on his shirt sleeve, handing it to Hew. ‘You want a
glass perspective
. Back there, on the shelf,' he gestured indistinctly, returning to his prize. ‘This putrefaction came on by degrees,' he commented, ‘and by degrees, in turn, gives up to us its secrets, that we may hope to learn from them.'

Hew searched among the book shelves that lined the turret tower, through almanacs and pickle jars, bones and broken clocks, until at last he found the hidden box of spectacles. He picked up a crystal, cut into a prism shape, and held it to the sun, captured in the colours he saw dancing in the glass.

The doctor grumbled mildly, ‘Let the colours lie, Hew! Feckless as a bairn! We want a cunning optic glass, that shows the world writ large.'

‘I am a bairn, distracted by the sunlight in the glass,' Hew admitted openly. He took the lenses from the box, and tried them one by one. ‘I have not met with optics such as these.'

‘They are of the most common kind,' said Giles dismissively. ‘There are more special glasses I have not acquired and several others yet, that I never seen.'

‘Such as what?' asked Hew.

‘Hhm?' Giles was scraping at the relic on the gauze. ‘There is a glass magicians use,' he mentioned thoughtfully, ‘wherein a man may look and see an image not his own. That is the sort of looking glass that I have never seen, much as I would like to. I fear our optics here are of the simple kind. You want the glass that shows the world writ large. It is the plainest, at the back.'

‘I see it,' Hew confirmed. He held the ring up to the light to scrutinise it through the glass. ‘This is a costly piece, for a man in workday clothes, and something rich and rare. It is an Antwerp diamond, fashioned like a flower, they call the rose, or Holland cut.
Tis wrought of yellow gold, a little scratched and worn, which signifies a metal of the purest kind.'

Giles set down his scalpel in astonishment. ‘In truth, I did not count your taste in diamonds so refined, that you might ken the setting from the stone,' he commented.

Hew said, a little poignantly, ‘It is no great passion of mine. But when I was apprenticed to the bar with Richard Cunningham, I came to know a little of the goldsmith's craft, for Richard had a fondness for fine rings. His diamonds were reset to suit the king.'

Giles, from tact, said, ‘Ah,' and refrained from further comment as his friend went on, ‘And this is such a ring as Richard used to wear, his kid gloves finger-slashed, to show the diamonds off. Tis called the Antwerp rose, because it was invented there. Yet we must pause to ask ourselves, how Jacob came to have a ring, that sits a little oddly, among his modest clothes. This is a costly piece.'

‘Do we know him by the ring, or better by his clothes?' considered Giles.

‘That must be our question, as I think. He told us, Maude reported, he was
not himself.
Then we must look for subterfuge,' said Hew. ‘Better then to know him by his hands. For there, at least, he cannot tell a lie.' He gave the glass to Giles.

‘Now you expect too much. For since we do not have his hands, we must know him by his finger,' Giles objected. ‘I hope to chance to hazard how he died; I cannot hope to tell you how he lived.'

‘Then with his death,' conceded Hew, ‘let us now begin.'

The doctor nodded. ‘Why could the gudwives not remove the ring?' he asked.

‘Because it was too tight.'

And why was it too tight?'

‘Because it was not made for him,' suggested Hew.

‘That is more than likely. Yet that remains another question, and concerns his life, when we are now turned to his death,' reminded Giles. ‘So set that thought aside, and look to the discolouration. Do you see it, Hew?'