Six months after the venting of the subterranean shaft, on a crisp, clear morning in the middle of Frost Month, Elin Hale stood in the center of the River Lantern’s sunlit taproom with a carpenter’s chalk-line in her left hand and a mug of hot spiced cider in her right, watching four journeymen hoist the new twelve-by-twelve tie beam of cured mountain oak into the ceiling joists.
They were not tearing out the old south beam that had cracked during the loops when the trebuchet stones shook the river wall, nor were they removing the heavy baulk of squared ash timber that Alden Bram and the carpenters had wedged beneath it to shore the ceiling while the children slept in the cellar. Instead, by unanimous vote of the forty-eight shareholders of the Harth Civic Trust, the carpenters had cut a long, keyed scarf-joint into the side of the original timber, marriage-bolting the new cured oak directly alongside the old cracked wood and its vertical shore-post with three-quarter-inch iron rods forged by Master Smith Garrick Holt.
“Drive the centre oak trunnel home with the wooden beetle, lads, not the iron sledge!” Elin called up toward the scaffolding, squinting against the fine yellow shower of oak sawdust drifting down into the morning sunbeams. “If you split the cheek of that scarf-joint after the master carpenter spent three days planing the taper, Jon will make you drink small beer until New Year’s Day!”
