The packhorse bridge is not a pride of parapets.

It is narrow on purpose. The walls at the sides sit low so a horse with panniers can pass without scraping its baskets off into the Lynne. Four arches. Three cutwaters in the stream, sharp upstream, splitting the current so the piers are not punched in the face all day.

You lie on your belly on the low parapet, which would be a poor place to hide from an army and a good place to not knock a pack into the river. The middle cutwater has a hole at the foot, a dark mouth where stone has gone. Water talks in it.

Col the wool packman is already on the west approach with two horses and opinions. “I’ll not pay pontage to cross a wounded bridge. I’ll take the ford.”

The ford is north. It looks like a shortcut in the way green water always does.

Cutwaters are called starlings in some mouths, beaks in others. They point upstream, divide the punch of water, keep piers from being bullied. The middle one’s foot is a cave now. Low parapets would look unfinished to a castle-builder. To a pack-train they look like kindness. You can hear the hospice bell, small, west of the green.

Four arches: two near west, two near east, the wounded starling under the middle of the stream. Count them every time so the map in your head stays honest. A cart would argue with this deck. A packhorse would say thank you, if horses said that.