While the last bronze echo of the sixth bell was still fading over the willow trees along the river, Jon Hale walked back up the cobbled lane from the lower meadows and pushed open the courtyard gate of the River Lantern.
Before going into the kitchen or the taproom, he followed the habit of three hundred and sixty-five mornings: he walked across the flagstones to the stone cellar head, lifted the oak latch—which had needed neither padlock nor iron bar since the day the Charter was signed—and walked down the fourteen limestone steps that Alden Bram’s apprentices had rebuilt the previous summer.
The cellar was cool, dry, and smelled pleasantly of pitched oak beer-casks, apples stored in oat-straw, and cured ham.
At the far end of the room, the low timber bulkhead that sealed off the old subterranean shaft stood whitewashed and solid, vented only by a grated terra-cotta drainpipe that carried river seepage harmlessly out to the tailrace. And in the center of the floor, rising two feet above the stone curb of the dry sump, stood the ancient iron Foundation Nail.
Jon walked over to the curb and laid his scarred right palm flat against the split iron head.
