The roof-beams went up in the late afternoon, when the light came across the marsh low and gold and made the stacked timber look like something that had been hung out to dry. The children chalked the last names on as the beams were lifted. Each beam was swung up on the ropes by six lodgers and held while Harrow set it in the wall-plates and tapped it home. Each beam had a name. Piet called them out as they went up, in the high, carrying voice of a boy who had been waiting all week to be allowed to shout on a roof.
“Oda!”
“Ansa’s Mother!”
“Tam Lowe, who is nine!”
Harrow answered each one. He answered them with a tap of the mallet, and a count, and then the name, which he said quietly, in the Mason’s voice, so that the lodgers on the rope could hear it and nod. It was the first time he had ever said the names aloud on a roof, Lune thought, and it was the first roof on the Hold’s ground that had been built with the names of the people who lived under it written in plain sight, above the rafters, where every person who came in through the door would have to look up to see the ceiling.
