Time and Tide by Shirley McKay Page A

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.’
    â€˜Do we know him by the ring, or better by his clothes?’ considered Giles.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Then with his death,’ conceded Hew, ‘let us now begin.’
    The doctor nodded. ‘Why could the gudwives not remove the ring?’ he asked.
    â€˜Because it was too tight.’
    And why was it too tight?’
    â€˜Because it was not made for him,’ suggested Hew.
    â€˜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?’
    Hew swallowed down his squeamishness. ‘I see it,’ he confirmed.
    â€˜This is a dead finger,’ said Giles. ‘By which I do not mean it is a dead man’s finger, but that the finger died before the man. Before that, it was swollen. The ring became too tight as the finger came distended. What then, was the cause?’
    â€˜Could not the cause have been the ring itself?’ argued Hew. ‘Because it was too tight, it cut the finger off?’
    â€˜Your thoughts are once again, drawn to the living man. And that is only natural,’ said Giles. ‘But concentrate on this. This was not the only finger blackened and distended, though it was the only one that bore a ring. Maude told us that his face was dark and blotted too.’
    â€˜They took him for a Spaniard,’ Hew recalled. ‘A black and swarthy creature, as the baxters said.’
    â€˜Swollen, blotched and putrid,’ Giles summed up. ‘So that the surgeon took him for long dead, which in a sense, he was. He suffered from a gangrene, of a dry pernicious kind.’
    â€˜Sweet lord!’ whispered Hew. ‘What was the cause?’
    â€˜I cannot tell you that. And yet I do suppose it died out on the ship. Dearly, I would love to know what happened to the crew.’
    â€˜Maude said,’ Hew remarked, ‘that Jacob called to demons as he died.’
    â€˜As I confess, that vexes me,’ the doctor said, ‘For Maude is not a woman given to wild tales.’
    â€˜That we must count as madness, or else something worse.’
    â€˜What had you in mind?’
    â€˜You said there was an occult glass,’ said Hew, ‘wherein a man might see another man, an image not his own. And Maude said, he reported, he was
not himself
. Do you think it likely Jacob was bewitched?’
    â€˜It is a possibility,’ the doctor answered carefully. Plainly, he had thought of this, ‘That I do not discount. Though, I prefer to be pragmatical . . .’
    â€˜You prefer to be equivocal,’ interrupted Hew.
    Giles went on regardless, impervious to the jibe. ‘. . . I count itless than likely, though I cannot say for sure. When a man dies seeing demons, I am more inclined to ask, what he last had to eat and drink. Your theory is provocative. I had you for a doubter, of the occult