Kit runs. The round-arch template goes to the yard like a rumor with a handle.

By afternoon a banker has cut a curve that will not sit on the new piers. Holbeck stone, which is money and time and a hill, lies in a shape for a different church. Gareth is silent in the way of a man who has been loyal to the wrong treaty. Maud does not shout. She scrapes the tracing floor herself, and the sound is worse than shouting.

The Translation of Saint Brice happens in the old nave, under round arches that did match their walls. The choir remains a hole with a lesson in it. You carry offcuts until your arms are grammar.

You are not thrown out of the lodge. You are kept, which is a harder kindness. The 3-4-5 is pegged again, in front of you, until your hands can do it in the dark.

No one fell. The waste is days and stone. That is enough antagonist for a cathedral.

You carry the wasted curve to a corner of the yard that Peverel calls education. It will become wall-core, maybe, or a step where nobody looks. Gareth helps you scrape plaster until his round arch is a ghost. He says, “Nave was a different span.” It is not an apology. It is a measurement arriving late.

THE END

What you learned: a tracing floor is a full-size drawing that stone will believe. A round arch’s height is chained to its span and its shove; copying it onto a different bay makes a template that lies.