Greyfen’s square is already a forest of trestles. Guild marks hang like small flags: weavers, bakers, smiths. A boy younger than you carries a goose that has opinions. Michaelmas is rent-day and goose-day, Father Tomas says, which means the calendar is a farm with saints painted on it.

Dame Keld, weaver-guild warden, stands at the weavers’ stall as if the stall were a keep and she were the steward of wool. Her fingers know fleece the way Hew’s know grit in a stone.

“Miller’s apprentice,” she says. “You do not sell cloth here unless you are a weaver, and you are not a weaver.” She flicks her guild mark, a stamp that means the cloth will not fall apart in rain. “We train. We mark quality. We throw out the cheat. That is how a town stays a town.”

You ask about salt.

Keld’s mouth thins. She does not lecture; she prices. “No barge, no salt. No salt, smoked meat becomes a rumor. Wool is England’s gold with feet, but gold does not pickle a ham. If Piers is late, prices will scream. If someone is calling him outlaw to skip a toll, I will have words that are not poems.”

A baker across the way is shouting about loaf weight. Keld flicks a glance that way, then back to you.