Gareth’s round arch is a handsome half-wheel on the plaster. You copy it because older is a kind of weather, and you are standing in it.

The new piers, measured yesterday, do not match. The round curve wants more width than the bay owns, or less height than the clerestory needs, or both. The string looks embarrassed.

“It will sit if we make it sit,” Gareth says, which is a sentence that has broken more than one job.

Maud’s shadow fills the door. “A template is a letter to the quarry and the banker. If you lie on plaster, the stone believes you. Then the vault does not. Scrape it and square the bay, or send that lie to the yard and spend a week learning what a week costs.”

Kit’s hands are already on the template board, hopeful.

The compass waits. The 3-4-5 is still a thing you can choose.

Templates are thin boards, the curve cut true, a handle for a banker to chase with a chisel. A wrong template is a rumor that eats limestone. Kit’s hope is not a measurement. Gareth’s loyalty to the nave is not a measurement. The compass sits where you left it, innocent.