The Tide Mill - Envoy

Anno Domini 1321


On a frosty January afternoon, an elderly, distinguished-looking man dismounted from his warmly caparisoned horse and left it browsing near the lich-gate of the churchyard at Mape.

Entering the empty, sunlit church, he made the sign of the cross, approached the altar and, with great difficulty, knelt to pray before the rood. Then, having spent a minute examining the interior of the building and the image in its stained-glass window, he paused by the porch to drop ten gold coins into the poor-box, took one last look at the altar, and went outside.

It was hard to find the graves of his grandparents and sister, but find them he did.

Some of the lime-trees in the churchyard had been cut down and the others pollarded. The old yew was still there, one of its limbs supported on a crutch. A split in the trunk had been filled with mortar.

He latched the first gate behind him.

The middle of the path was of hard-frozen mud but, from the bruised footprints in the hoary grass to either side, he could see that people had traversed it today. He was hoping to have the dike to himself.

In keeping with the other improvements he had noticed, the stock-gate had been replaced with a better one and a new fence had been erected along the southern side of the churchyard. Other than that, he thought, the feel of the place was little changed. To his left lay exposed saltings and the harbour. Far ahead, at the end of the dike, rose the greyness of the beach. To his right spread the marsh, though the reedbeds were less extensive. More drainage ditches had been cut and the area of grazing enlarged.

The grinding pain in his chest had grown much worse. His journey here had not helped. Last night, at the inn, he had feared that he would be left with too little strength to cover the last few miles.

But he was here. After sixty years' absence, he had come back.

His progress along the dike was necessarily slow. He made frequent stops to catch his breath and to wait for the pain to subside.

During one of these stops he heard a distant roar of wings. To the west, against the extravagance of the sunset, the sky had blackened with a host of birds which he knew to be geese, wigeon, pintail, shoveler, teal, lapwings, golden plover, starlings, and whatever else had been put up by the appearance of a fox or peregrine, something big enough to flush the whole marsh. The swirling, chaotic flocks towered, trying to redistribute themselves. Some landed. Others, anxious not to be too soon, did not. A skein of seventy brent geese swept over the dike, directly above his head, so low that he could hear the rush of their pinions and their conversational calls. They continued out across the saltings and in the gathering gloom settled on the dark waters of the harbour channel.

He thought again, as he had while kneeling, of Godric, of whom, some thirty years before, they had been given word. He had died among the lepers of Padua.

The birds were quieter now. He had nearly reached the end of the dike. As the sun disappeared, a biting breeze got up, and as the breeze got up the reed-rustle increased: vitreous, chattering, the kind that sets in just after Christmas and stays unchanged till February.

Almost exhausted, he climbed the shingle bank in the afterglow. Subdued, calm, and devoid of colour, the sea was breaking in skewed crescents, far down the shore. He still knew how the currents ran.

He stiffly turned. No one could be seen on the dike. He descended past the strip of sand and struggled from his clothes.

The air, intensely cold on his skin, smelled and tasted salt, like the brine he now angrily wiped from his eyes. There was no longer cause for it. Having been four years without her, he had written his letters, left his instructions, and remade his will to help their son and three daughters, their grandchildren, and the others who in turn would come to bless the world. For the past year of his bereavement he had been given warning, in the growth of this pain, of how his body too would fail; warning, and with it grace.

Leaving his garments in a pile, he first sat and then reclined, shivering, arms wide, on the freezing shingle. He was wearing only his wedding-ring and a length of ribbon, wound round his right wrist. Once deep-red, it had faded and rotted now. To it he had attached a tiny silver crucifix.

As his warmth seeped away, as the replacing cold penetrated his substance ever more thoroughly, the shivering stopped. His hands and feet became numb. The cold crept along his arms and legs, proceeding towards his trunk, his heart.

The first stars of Leo had appeared. To the south-east, a slip of moon lay above the sea.

He closed his eyes. Just as he had wanted, just as he had planned, he could hear the incoming surge, and with the faintest, sweetest smile realized he had not even glanced towards the mill. Perhaps it was no longer even there.

The smile remaining, this Ralf Grigg slipped ever nearer to his end.

In the church, kneeling before the rood, his troubled request for forgiveness had been answered not with silence, but benign intimation -- of four souls still separate, four lives yet unfulfilled.

Gently, peacefully, leaving sorrow and the flesh behind, now at last it began, ascending, accelerating: the rapid, longed-for return, to Eloise, Godric, Imogen, and the light.













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THE TIDE MILL

Copyright (c) Richard Herley 2008

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

First published 2008

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.

http://www.richardherley.com



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