Stepping directly out of the bright midday glare of the stable courtyard across the River Lantern’s back threshold, Jon Hale held the heavy oak door open for Sir Cael Ardent and felt the immediate, ten-degree drop in temperature inside the stone-flagged passage.
The ground-floor chamber behind the taproom—ordinarily reserved for traveling wool-factors who wanted a quiet room away from the evening fiddle—had been stripped down to its bare structural bones before the household carried the trestle table out to the market cross. Elin had taken down the worsted bed-curtains so they could not catch a stray spark, scrubbed the wide pine floorboards with strong lye-water, and barred the outer oak shutters tight against the lane. Two brass whale-oil lamps burned on high iron wall-brackets, casting a steady, shadowless light over the narrow corded cot in the center of the room and the heavy, three-legged oak side table beside it.
On the side table sat the deep pewter basin lined with dressed river-soapstone that Jon had used during the first bedside loosening in the ninth life, filled halfway to the brim with cold well-water drawn fresh from the deepest spring shaft under the scullery. Next to the basin lay Elin’s boiled linen rolls, a stoneware jar of steeped willow-bark infusion, and Alden Bram’s newly forged, three-ribbed iron ring-clamp (#12 design), still smelling faintly of Garrick Holt’s slack-tub and coal smoke.
