Aldous Penhallow Slakes the Lime

“Two hundred and fifty coins, near enough, in one crossing,” said Wynn Treloar, the lodge treasurer, wiping road dust off his cuffs. “The Spider runner swore it at the toll. Third catch running for Ilse Thornmere, after thirty-eight minutes of nothing. Who sends that much on a night like this, if not a patron?”

Aldous Penhallow kept turning the lime with his long rake. The kiln at Limebrake had burned two days, and the quicklime lay in the pit white as old bone, waiting for water. The Cathedral-builders needed forty loads of mortar before frost, and they had coin for twenty.

“Whose was it?” Aldous asked.

“Nobody at the gate could say.”

“Then it’s somebody’s, and not ours.” He nodded at the water butt. Passage had doubled since morning, four drops a span and more, and the treasurer’s letters to the guild in Aurelhold had gone unanswered for a season. “I won’t wait on a chest that may be a merchant paying his own cousin. Twenty loads we slake tonight. Twenty we pray for in spring.”

Wynn opened his mouth, shut it, and fetched the bucket himself. The lime hissed and heaved when the water struck it, and steam rolled off the pit into the dark. Somewhere down the valley, a House Spider bell rang the next search begun. Aldous raked on, laying in mortar for a wall his grandson might see roofed.