Chapter 3: The Names in the Book

Edda lowered the knotted rope from the north ledge before the lamps had gone out in the lower town. It touched the water. She marked the wet knot with her thumb, drew the rope up, and measured again.

The second measure matched the first. She wrote the knot in the small slate she carried, then rubbed the figure away with her sleeve. Below her, the quarry water held the last stars without moving. The pump stood on its stone bed, its handle dark against the pale rim.

Edda coiled the rope. Usually she went back to the sheds. That morning she carried the coil down the old steps instead. At the pump she put one hand on the handle. Warmth reached her palm through the wood and climbed under her sleeve to the elbow. She leaned close and heard a soft knock from inside the casing.

She took her hand away. Water stood inside the cylinder, visible through a narrow seam below its rim. Edda wiped the seam with a rag and held it to the lamp. The rag was wet, but there was no trail across the stone and no bucket nearby. She set the rag on the pump’s base and went back up without calling anyone.

Loak watched from between the cutting sheds. He had been there before the first bell, though he had not come behind her along the path. When Edda crossed the yard, he slipped inside and knelt beside a broken trough. Under a loose board lay three black stones. He moved them farther back beneath a stack of chips. Their weight pulled his sleeves down when he lifted them. He left them hidden and said nothing.

The cart-man from the valley arrived at the ropewalk after the noon bell. He had a crack in one palm and dust on his coat. The stone he had bought from Loak sat on Widow Carrow’s table. A pale split ran through its middle. The cart-man turned it over, then pried the halves apart with his thumbnail. Its heart was dry and dull, like the inside of a hearth stone.

“Who else has brought you such a thing?” he asked Carrow.

She closed her book before answering. The cart-man pushed the halves toward Carrow. She did not touch them. She asked which road he would take back, and whether his cart would pass the lower bridge before dusk. He watched her for a moment, then asked again if she knew of other stones. She sent him away with no name.

When the door shut, Carrow reopened the book. The page held lengths of rope in one column. She drew a fresh line beside them and wrote a heading. Then she began a list of names. She wrote Edda Vell first, paused, and added Loak beneath her. The nib scratched through the paper at the end of his name.

A council clerk came to the ropewalk before the afternoon bell. He carried a measure and a strip of parchment bearing the council seal. The order called for enough rope to mark the whole quarry rim. Carrow read it once and smiled. She ran a finger along the new column in her book, then asked the clerk to say the names of the men who had approved the order.

He did not know them all. Carrow waited. He gave her four. She turned her chair and kept the page angled against her body. The clerk waited while her pen moved, but he could not see what she wrote.

At night, three blows sounded from the quarry floor. They were spaced far apart. The first passed through the town as a dull thud. The second brought dogs barking from the lower lanes. At the third, the dogs fell silent for an instant, then howled together. Lamps appeared in windows. No one came down the quarry road.

Sol had held the top of the road since morning, where the stones gave way to the steep track. A heel of bread lay near his paws. He did not touch it. The children had called him from the wall above, but he kept his head turned toward the quarry and held his ground.

At the waterline, Loak stood with a shuttered lamp. The light showed only when he opened the shutter to check the stones he had carried there. He had brought none of the three hidden in the shed. He had found another black piece near the lower steps and cupped it in both hands. The quarry water lapped against the stone below his boots. He lowered the lamp’s flame and watched the water until the pump gave its last knock.

He put the new piece in his pocket and climbed back without looking toward the sheds. Sol saw him pass but did not follow. The dog stayed at the road’s crown until the night thinned.

At first light Edda came to the ledge again. She measured once, marked the knot, and rolled the slate in her palm. The council clerk waited above the steps with two laborers and a coil of rope. Behind him, Carrow stood with her book tucked under one arm. She had brought the names page open to the morning air.

Edda looked at the rope, then at the water. She gave the clerk the slate with no figures on it. He asked if she had measured. She said she had. Carrow wrote something in her book.

Together the laborers carried the rope to the rim. Edda took one end and fixed it around an iron peg. The other end ran over the pale stone and down toward the steps. Carrow held the coil steady. The clerk stood aside while they pulled it taut.

Below, the pump rested in its dark ring of stone. A bead of water gathered beneath the cylinder and fell onto the base. It left a small black mark. In the new morning, the rope crossed the quarry rim like a fine line drawn around a bowl, and Sol’s empty bread lay in the dust at the road’s top.

attribution

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plate

An etching in black ink on paper, showing the quarry rim in three-quarter view at first light. Edda and Carrow stand beside a laborer drawing a rope around an iron peg, while the clerk holds back from the edge; below them, the pump sits on its stone bed with one bead of water under the cylinder. Sol is a small shape at the crown of the road beside untouched bread. No faces carry an expression. The pale sky and the wet line of the rope hold the light; the quarry water and the cutting below remain dark.