Greyfen’s chapel is small and used, which is the best kind. Father Tomas has chalk on his sleeve from teaching letters, and a list in his head that is not only sins.

“Michaelmas,” he says, when you hover in the doorway with flour on you like a second soul. He taps the calendar board rather than climbing into a sermon: Ember days, harvest, the mill’s busy weeks, the week the mill must not fail. “Feast of Saint Michael, twenty-ninth of September. Rent-day. Goose-day. The year turns from harvest toward the dark. We count by saints and sowings, not by a number-wheel on a wall.”

Light comes through a window the size of a book.

“You read the first line of Hew’s letter. Good. Letters are tools. So is a goose, if you share it. So is showing up when the hallmoot calls. I will not preach at a child who is clearly on an errand. I will say: time is a church-and-farm clock. Miss the hour and the bread misses you.”

A horse stamps outside. A woman’s voice, tired and clear, thanks someone for holding a bridle.