Read Online Time and Tide by Shirley McKay - Free Book Online

daughter was the daftie, Maude? Tis we that have been cursed, with a witless shiftless villain of a wench! Away with you! Be gone!’
    James Edie said, more reasonably, ‘Elspet, you are young, andyou have not worked here long, yet you must surely ken, that the minister is
never
wanted in this house.’ Maude Benet glared and glowered at them, but chose to hold her tongue, pouring out the ale as Elspet scurried off. The baxters settled warily on stools around the bar, to wait for her return. Only James Edie appeared at his ease. When Maude slipped to the back room to attend her cooking pots he took the chance to follow her, begging for some bread. Maude resisted with a scowl. ‘We have none. Since ye all are baxters, go and bake your ain,’ she told him crossly.
    â€˜Ah, sweet Maude!’ he pottered round her kitchen, peering into pans. ‘Has anybody telt ye that your pottages are rank?’
    â€˜Feel free to take your leave of them, at any time you like,’ Maude sniffed.
    â€˜If I had not been marrit, Maude, I swear . . .’
    â€˜What do you swear, James Edie? Aye, then, what?’ She rounded on him.
    Laughing, the baxter held up his hands. ‘Peace, little bear, for I do not come to bait thee. Tell me why you do it, Maude?
    â€˜Why do I do what?’
    â€˜Go out of your way to flyt with Patrick Honeyman, when you know he has the power to shut you down? Why do you walk the hardest path, when you could take the gentle one?’
    â€˜I do not ken, James. Why do you? And why are you intent on coming to my kitchen? Are you not afeared of plague?’ she answered scornfully.
    James Edie shook his head. ‘I do not for a moment think it is the plague. Confess it, Maude, he is not sick. Why won’t you let us see him?’
    â€˜Because he is not well,’ insisted Maude, ‘and because . . . I ken that you will cheat him, James, and fleece him like a lamb. I could not bear to see him bullied by the bailies into giving up his mill. Tis like shining torchlight at the bandage of the blind, or like my wee lass Lilias, baffled by the kirk. There is an innocence, a tenderness in him.’
    â€˜Do you think that he has lost his wits?’ James Edie pondered seriously.
    â€˜Not lost his wits. But he is somehow . . .
lost
,’ said Maude. ‘He is so very far from home.’
    James Edie smiled at her. ‘You are like a crab, Maude, soft and sweet inside, and on the outside . . .
crabbit
! You must know that we do not mean to put him to the test. We hope to have his windmill, that is all. And if he will not give it, so be it. Come,’ he held out his hand to her. ‘You know me, Maude. Though I am keen, I am not cruel. Then let us go and wait upon the doctor, whose proper care and counsel shall set your mind at rest.’
    Maude nodded, and went back with him, leaving Jacob safely to his rest. She made a show of polishing the wood, and counting out for Lilias the bone and wooden dice; she did not trust the baxters, when her back was turned. Once or twice she opened up the door, but saw no sign of Elspet coming down the hill. The baxters were implacable, and seemed to her quite stubbornly entrenched, when a strange sound from the kitchen stopped them in their cups. It began as a low keening, rising to a howl that set Maude’s teeth on edge. Lilias gave a little shriek, and dropped her knucklebones.
    Jacob understood that men would come for him. He knew, when Maude had left him, that the time was near. He was not surprised. Tobias, Joachim and the rest had not died quietly, and would not lie quiet at the bottom of the sea. He took some consolation in the things around him, visible reflections of the commonplace: the stale scent of cooking fat, the scraping of the barrels in the cellar down below, whistling on the stairs. From the small shuttered window, he could see the sun, and told himself the time, as he had once been taught. He heard the pot boy