Time and Tide (2 page)

Hew suppressed a smile, which old Professor Groat, with his rheumy, washed-out eyes, was quick enough to see. ‘I understand you well. You do not think that I could ever be a child; or else this fledging plane tree harks back to the ark.'

‘Ah, no, not at all,' protested Hew, who had indeed been thinking something of the sort. How old, after all, was Bartholomew Groat? Sixty years? Eighty? Or, as Giles asserted, nearer fifty-three, of phlegmatic disposition, prone to windy gout.

The professor blew his nose. ‘Tis true enough, that when I was a boy this maple was a novelty, which now is thought a scourge, and counted as a weed.'

He did not give up the seed, but wrapped it in his handkerchief to put it in his pocket; whether to preserve the ghost of little Bartie Groat, giddy as the wind, or to prevent its spread, Hew could not be sure. ‘The winds were wild last night,' he remarked more diplomatically.

This observation had a sobering effect. ‘Foul spirits stir up tempests,' Groat imparted gloomily. ‘The milk kine startled in the fields, the storm has soured the milk. The priory trees are torn up by their roots; the shore mill lade is flooded. Tis providential, Hew.'

‘Stuff and superstition,' Hew retorted. ‘I do not believe in it.'

Bartie cast his eyes to heaven, sending up a prayer. ‘The young are always quick to scorn. And yet the wind has one effect that cannot fail to move you. I heard there was a ship wrecked in the bay. All the crew were lost.'

‘Dear God, rest them!' whispered Hew. ‘Were the poor men Scots?'

‘Zeelanders or Flemish, judging from the load. I wonder that you did not see it, on your way to town,' murmured Bartie Groat.

Hew shook his head. ‘I lay at the West Port last night,' he explained. ‘My horse does not care for the wind.' Dun Scottis cared for little that upset his regimen. He baulked at wind and water, with perfect equilibrium.

‘You ought to take up lodgings, as I've said before. I confess myself perplexed that you will not consider it,' Bartie answered peevishly.

It was a well-worn argument, and one to which Hew struggled to respond. He had declined the rooms that came with his election, preferring to remain at home at Kenly Green. The house stood four miles south, an hour on foot upon a winter's day, and a little less in summer, on his sluggish horse. Returning to the college for a second year, he already felt the cloisters closing in, the hallowed kirk and walkways a conspiracy of spires. It was not a feeling he could share with Bartie Groat, who took his dinners daily at the college mess, and brightened when the cook doled out a second slop of neaps. Hew did not care to end his days
collegialiter
. He changed the subject quickly. ‘I see the doors have closed. So we are all assembled, and ready to begin.'

One by one, the names were called, and the students swore allegiance to the university. The youngest scholar stumbled at the stand. In awe at the proceedings, he clean forgot his oath. Hew Cullan winked at him, and saw the boy's astonishment collapse into a grin. A regent hurried forward and retreated with his charge, who, to Hew's amusement, was named as
George Buchanan
. He saw nothing in the boy that stuck him as remarkable. It seemed unlikely that their paths would cross again.

Bartie had withdrawn, like a tortoise to his shell, where for the last half hour he had appeared to be asleep. When Hew was least expecting it, he blinked, thrusting out: ‘It is not like our principal to miss matriculation.'

Hew answered stiffly, ‘Indeed, not.' He cursed both God and
Bartie Groat. In a few more minutes' time, enrolment would be done, and he could take his worries out into the street. For now, he must stay resolute, civil and in place. He did his best to look discouraging.

‘Perhaps he has been called out to a patient,' Bartie droned, relentlessly. Giles was a physician, as well as an anatomist, with a thriving practice in the town.

‘Aye, perhaps.'

‘Or on business of the Crown.'

‘Tis very likely,' Hew agreed.

‘Though on business of the Crown, you also are most frequently invoked. Therefore it may be inferred, since you are here, and he is not, it is not business of the Crown.'

Groat was penetrating, gazing once again with his colourless, damp eyes, no less clear and piercing through the film of age. Hew saw no escape. The ceremony drawing to a close, the boys were ushered out, to lecture rooms and lodging houses. Hew was left behind with Professor Groat. He did not dislike the man. Groat was a fine astronomer, and lyrical upon the motions of the spheres. But he remained inclined to gloom, his prognostics seldom ending happily. On this subject, at this time, Hew had no wish to talk to him.

‘His young wife is with child, of course,' Bartie reached his pinnacle.

‘She is,' admitted Hew.

‘Pray pardon – I had quite forgotten – he is married to your sister, is he not? Who has the falling sickness?'

‘I commend you on your powers of recollection,' Hew returned abruptly.

Groat persisted, undeterred. ‘Doubtless, there are dangers there. Please tell Giles, they are in my prayers.'

‘Doubtless, he will thank you. I will tell him straight away.'

Professor Groat was right. It was unthinkable that Giles would miss matriculation, without a word of explanation or apology to
Hew. If he was not in college, then he must be at home, and if he was at home, that could only mean one thing. Hew abandoned Bartie at the door and hurried down the North Street towards the Fisher Gait.

The streets beyond the college were deserted, as though the wind had swept them clear, and left behind its footprints in a scattering of leaves. The fisherwives had dropped their cries of codlings and late crabs, their empty crates and buckets littering the steps. A bare-legged child stood watchman, rushing at the gulls. Hew called out in passing, ‘Are the markets done? The clock has just struck twelve.'

The child stopped to consider this, sucking on a thumb. It offered up at last, ‘All gaun, tae the wreck.'

‘And left you on your own? Good bairn,' Hew answered vaguely. He could not discern, from the whisper thick with thumb, whether he was talking to a girl or boy. He found himself unsettled by the queerness of the child, and by the empty thoroughfares that led to the cathedral, the town and markets suddenly bereft, upended by the storm. He hurried past the fishing quarter to the castle on its rock, towards the little house that overlooked the cliff. The wind had dropped back, the sea a sheet of glass, where a hazy sunshine skittered, bouncing back and lighting up the stones.

The house was battened fast against the wind and sunlight, doors and shutters closed. Hew's knock was answered by the servant, Paul. ‘I kent it was yersel',' he yawned, ‘by dint of a' the din. The master is asleep. I'll tell him that you called.'

‘How so, asleep? Has your mistress had her child?' demanded Hew.

‘She hasna' started with her labours yet. No doubt you will be telt, when her time is due.' The servant had retreated, pulling back the door. Hew stopped it with his foot. ‘I think you know me better, Paul,' he warned. ‘Since I am not the blacksmith, nor the barker with his bill, you do not close the door to me. It seems you have forgotten it.'

The reprimand struck home. Paul began to stutter and to blush.
‘Tis only that . . . your pardon, sir, but do not tell the doctor. He is fair forfochten.'

‘Do not tell him what?' a sleepy voice inquired, and Giles himself came rumbling through the hall, squinting at the light. ‘If that is Master Hew, then bid him wait until I'm dressed.'

‘By your leave,' muttered Hew to the servant, who allowed him to pass with a hiss. ‘Do not say, sir, that I did not prepare you.'

‘Prepare me for what?' Hew hissed back.

‘Why is it so dark in here?' Giles had opened up the shutters, letting in the air, and blinking as the sunlight filtered through the  room. ‘How comes the sun so bright?' he pondered paradoxically.

‘How comes it that your household is asleep?' retorted Hew.

‘I know not . . . What? What time is it?' Giles rubbed his eyes.

Paul answered, disingenuously, ‘Mebbe eight, or nine? I cannot rightly say, for I havna' heard the clock.'

‘It is a little after twelve,' corrected Hew. ‘And yet it is no matter, Giles.'

Giles looked baffled, like a man disturbed from walking in his sleep, to find out he has trodden on his spectacles. ‘Of course it matters!' He made sense of it at last. ‘I have missed matriculation.'

‘No matter, that,' said Hew. ‘Professor Groat and I have managed it between us. And save for my solicitude, and Bartie's speculation, we managed it quite well.'

‘I've no doubt that you
managed
it,' protested Giles. ‘That is not the point. The point is in the principle; that is, I am the principal. Did I not tell you to wake me?' he rounded on Paul. ‘Did I not tell you,
expressly
?'

The servant stood his ground. ‘I do not recall it, sir. Now, I was looking for your hat, when Master Hew came chappin' at the door; I'll go and find it now, and by your leave. I doubt you must have left it at the college.' He slunk off down the passage, with a backward glance at Hew, which plainly spoke, ‘
You
stirred it; now you settle it.'

Giles looked hopelessly at Hew. ‘Much good my hat will do
me now! I must be severe with him, for he has gone too far. He always goes too far. Does he? Has he? Has he gone too far?' he flustered.

‘He does, and has, and always goes too far,' acknowledged Hew. ‘And yet, on this occasion, he must be commended, for clearly he holds your best interests at heart.'

The doctor groaned. ‘Then he is above himself, and ought to be dismissed!'

‘I cannot think that that will help. What is the matter, Giles? This is not like you,' said Hew.

‘I am not quite myself,' admitted Giles. ‘My world stands on its end. It is the helter-skelter of a dizzy heart.'

‘Indeed, that does sound serious,' Hew answered with a smile.

‘It is serious. The matter is your sister Meg. She spent last night in thrall to the falling sickness.'

‘I feared it,' Hew exclaimed, ‘though am loath to hear it. How does she now?'

‘Sleeping like a child. The worst of it has passed; the nurse has come to sit with her. I closed my eyes a moment . . .'

‘Then Paul is right and I am to be blamed for waking you,' Hew declared emphatically. ‘The crisis point is over, rest assured.'

‘
Rest assured
?' Giles cried. ‘If I could rest assured . . .! I am helpless to help her, Hew.
Helpless
.'

It was the closest he had come to frank despair, and Hew felt at a loss. ‘You are too much in the dark,' he tried at last, ‘and want a little sun, to show this prospect in a fairer light. Come, then, walk with me. The air will do you good.'

The doctor shook his head. ‘I cannot leave the house.'

‘And yet, a moment past, you were all for setting out, to see the boys matriculate,' Hew reminded him. ‘You are disordered, Giles, and have lost your balance. Come, I insist. We'll keep the house in sight.'

They settled on the path above the castle beach, and walked along the cliff top to the summit of Kirk Hill, that led down to the harbour and the shore.

‘I am right sorry,' ventured Hew at last, ‘to hear that Meg has taken fits again, at this close stage of her confinement. I cannot comprehend it, for I thought the sickness well controlled.'

‘For that,' Giles returned, ‘you had not reckoned with the wind.'

‘What has the wind to do with it? You sound like Bartie Groat!' objected Hew.

Giles looked small and cowed in the shadow of the cliffs, his towering bulk diminished by the water and the sky. ‘Do you not see it?' he urged.

Hew resisted stubbornly. ‘I do not see at all.'

‘Then I shall explain it,' Giles answered with a sigh. ‘You are my dearest friend, and know me well enough to know I do not sink to superstition, like Professor Groat.'

‘I thank God for that,' snorted Hew.

‘And yet it is a fact that the wind effects disturbances,' the doctor went on earnestly. ‘It sets the world on edge. The master at the lector-schule remarks it in his bairns, running wild and shrieking when the gusts blow high. It has no less effect upon your sister Meg, and one well fraught with danger, in agitating sickness, and precipitating fits. I can no more control it than the raging seas.

‘The sailors with their quadrants cannot make the compass of the ocean's toss and turn, where chance clouds overlap the constant flux of tides. We draw the moon and oceans, the heavens and the stars, and shape their folds of darkness to our little worlds, yet for all our charts, we cannot map the surface of one fragment of the whole. We think ourselves ay at the centre, at its very heart, that somehow we have harnessed nature, bending wind and water to our will, yet all the while we are as nothing, specks and motes caught in the breeze, that nature taunts and tosses like the frigate in a storm.'

‘I know you do not think that,' remonstrated Hew, ‘who own the finest sets of instruments that I have ever seen.'

‘They are but trinkets, toys. I thought to make a horoscope!' Giles contested bitterly, ‘But think of that! I thought to mark his
coming on a
chart
. And would that smooth his passage, do you think? Would such calculations help the bairn?'

‘Well, I do confess, I have never made much sense of your prognostications; I make a poor astronomer,' reflected Hew. ‘Yet I will affirm your measure over nature, your medicine and your physic over its disease. As I have seen Meg, with her potions and simples, mop out corruptions and clear up the cough.'

‘Meg is a special case,' conceded Giles. ‘She turns nature in upon itself, and bends it to her will. Then nature is become an art, and sickness makes the cure.'