Fleece grades are a language you learn with your hands. Coarse for mattresses and the outsides of things. Middle for everyday. Fine for people who pay in more than eggs. You pull a staple. You look for tar. You respect the woman whose spindle is a blur.

Dame Keld, still at her stall, counts packs the way Hew counts grit. “England ships wool. Packhorses, then water whenever water will. Salt preserves the rest of life: fish, meat, butter if you’re lucky. A barge that is not at a proper post before market is not a ballad. It is a town-level problem.”

Spinsters talk without slowing. One was a tenant’s wife yesterday and a skilled hand today, which is not a promotion so much as the truth of how cloth happens.

The light slants. Dusk is a thief of errands. The millstone is still a wrong note at home. The river still wants a hull at a post, whether you have already seen one or not.

Keld ties a scrap of marked string around your wrist like a joke that is also a pass. “Guild saw you looking properly. That is not nothing.”