Lune walked the grain-road on the morning after the motion, because the Chamber had asked for a figure and the figure had not yet been measured. The Chamber had been arguing about the cost of carrying the Crown’s grain for a week without once knowing how far a cart would have to go to carry it, and Lune had found that intolerable, as a surveyor finds any argument intolerable that has no distance in it.
She took the rod, the rod-book, a sheet of Tallow’s paper folded into a square, and a small hand-spade from the Survey bench, which Harrow had said was too small for a proper sample and which Lune had said was exactly the right size for a sample of marsh. She went out by the lower gate at first light, and past the lane where the lodgers were already drawing water, and down the Lessary Road toward the ford, counting aloud.
The grain-road ran from the Ford’s inside-reach granary to the Hold’s gate. It was not a road so much as a causeway’s spur, a grey track of dry-laid stone that the Hold’s own masons had built in the spring to carry the Kitchen’s stores and that had been trodden flat by a year of carts. It curved gently to the north, round the edge of the marsh-reeds, and it was wet in the low places, and the wet had got into the stone.
