Osric’s hut sits at the south end of Lynford like a lid on a box of rope.

You are the way-warden’s helper. That means your day begins with river-smell and the creak of the packhorse bridge, which should hum like a steady cart and this morning hums like a cart with a pebble in its shoe. Osric is in bed with a fever that makes his words come out in the wrong order. He still finds the right ones for you.

“Cutwater,” he says. “Middle. Sound it. Don’t guess. Saint Elswith in two days. They’ll walk whether the Lynne agrees or not.”

West bank: village, church, the Hospice of Saint Julian filling with pilgrims like a net with fish. East bank, over the narrow bridge: the Painted Staff inn, then the ridge road that lists itself toward Holmewell—Thatcham, Crow’s Oak, the well.

North, the ford pretends it is shallows. It is spring and the Lynne is brown. South a mile, Bram’s ferry-rope is a straight thought over moving water.

You can hear Sister Pernell’s voice, not loud, already counting beds.

Saint Elswith, in Lynford’s telling, found a spring on a ridge when a pack-train was lost, or when she was lost, or both; the stories stack like pilgrims. The feast makes a road out of a ridge. Osric’s fever makes a child out of a way-warden. You take the pole from its nail. It is taller than you and more respected.

Osric’s hut floor is packed earth with a river-stain that never leaves. You know the hooks: pole, paint-pot, a spare lashing, tar-sticky, village-owned. Two days is not a lot of days. It is enough if you do not spend them on stories about outlaws in green hoods. There are no outlaws in this problem. There is water.