The oldest stable hand, Tomas, set the foot of the pine ladder against the third pillar, a heavy rawhide mallet tucked into his apron string and two fresh iron spikes held in his mitten. Yet when he reached the top rung and looked across the beam at Ysabet, he did not lift the mallet.
Most of the men who worked the winter roost were hill-farmers’ sons hired after the barley harvest. They cleaned the dung troughs, sold the six-copper straw spaces, and swept up the fallen wing-scales that peddlers bought in paper twists. None of them had ever mounted the high rafters with a tallow lamp.
“He told us the iron goes through the dead horn along the front rim,” Tomas said roughly, looking past Ysabet’s shoulder at the old female moth’s trembling forewing. “Same as shoeing an ox hoof. He said if you don’t tack a torn wing flat in November, they beat themselves against the masonry whenever a draft blows through the louvers and rip the skin right off their backs.”
“Come here and look at the horn,” Ysabet said. She did not raise her voice or reach for a knife. She shifted aside on the narrow plank to leave him room on the beam and held her tallow dip close to the female’s left shoulder.
