Aldous Pays for the Glass

Aldous Penhallow had turned the sand-glass over twice by the kiln at Longmere, and still no bell came across the lake from the gate. The quicklime cracked and muttered in the slaking pit while he waited. Somewhere the Houses were all straining at the Veil and none of them had it, which happened, and which never made waiting shorter.

Wynn Treloar came down the scaffold path with the lodge purse held against her ribs as though it might bolt. The glazier at the far landing would hold the clerestory panes one link more, she said, then sell them to a buyer from Aurelhold who had not haggled. Passage was four and six-tenths of a drop a span now, near four times the dawn price. “We could wait for the morning boats,” she said. “We always wait.”

“We do,” said Aldous. He stirred the pit and watched the white skin break. “And the ferrymen live on a gift that halves before that window’s leaded. Somebody has to buy them oil, or there’ll be no boats the year the roof goes on.” He did not say it like a sermon. He said it like a man pricing mortar.

The bell came then, the Sun-House’s flat brass note, Delphine Copthorne’s lamps having finally torn the dark open. Wynn untied the purse and counted the dear passage out without being told twice. Aldous turned the sand-glass a third time and went back to his lime.