Chapter 35 — Water and Barley

Chapter 35: Chapter 35 — Water and Barley

Chapter 35 — Water and Barley

Robert Miller made Christopher carry the measuring rod.

"If you want a mill, my lord, we should first learn where one can stand," the older man said.

They followed the old watercourse south of Dragonwatch with Owen, Wilfred, two apprentices and six workers. The branch cleared weeks earlier still drained the upper fields. Grass had grown along its edges, and water ran no deeper than Christopher’s boot.

"Is that enough water to turn a wheel?" he asked.

"It isn’t enough yet, my lord. We must see what remains after the spring runoff," Robert said.

Farther downstream, the old channel vanished beneath thorn bushes and a fallen wall. Workers cut a narrow path rather than clearing everything. Christopher suggested opening the full width.

"Not until we know where it goes, my lord," Robert said. "Water follows mistakes as easily as good work."

Beyond the wall they found a stone-lined drop. One side had collapsed, but squared foundations remained beneath the brush. Two round holes in the lower stones had once held an axle.

"A mill," Christopher said. Robert pointed to the empty channel and corrected him. "The place where one stood, my lord. The wheel, shaft, gears and millstones are gone."

Owen struck the foundation with his hammer. "The lower wall is sound, my lord, but that corner has moved."

Christopher pictured a wooden wheel turning beside the channel. He understood the idea well enough: falling water turned the wheel, the wheel turned a shaft, and the shaft moved the stone. The details between those steps were less clear.

"Could we build a new mill on these foundations?"

"Yes, my lord, but not tomorrow," Robert said after Christopher waited for more. "A foundation is the smallest part of what we need."

Robert marked the drop between the upper channel and the old foundation with a water trough, cord and measuring rod. The bank leaked, the control gate was gone and the old sluice had rotted away. Owen also found loose stones around the worst crack.

"We remove those first," Owen said. "A clay patch will fail if the wall behind it moves."

Nicholas Tanner drew the channel from above until Robert turned the board sideways.

"I need the fall, not only the length," Robert said. "Draw what the water does."

Christopher remembered better surveying tools from school, but he had never built a mill. Robert handed him the rod and continued measuring.

"Can Wat build the wheel?" Christopher asked.

"With my help, my lord," Robert said. "Barlow makes the fittings, Owen repairs the race, and other workers prepare the timber and millstones."

"How long would all of that take?"

"Several months, my lord, even if the water remains strong."

Christopher studied the broken foundation again. "Then tell me what can be done this week."

Robert pointed upstream. "We clear the branch, repair the worst leak and measure the water, my lord. If the flow remains strong after the dry days, we choose timber."

Christopher said that the work sounded slow. Robert answered, "It is safer than building a wheel that does not turn, my lord."

The answer was months, not days. Timber and iron were already needed for roofs, tools and defenses. They settled on six workers clearing the mill branch while Owen repaired the worst leak. Robert would measure the water through early summer before they committed more.

On the return walk, they passed women turning hand mills beneath an awning. Each stone ground only a little grain at a time. The work was slow, but the barley harvest had not begun, and current stores did not require a full mill.

"That changes after harvest," Robert said.

Christopher considered the green fields. "If there is a harvest." Robert nodded. "There should be grain, my lord. We don’t yet know how much."

Women were already turning the hand stones beneath the awning as Christopher looked again toward the green fields. A working watermill would save hours of that labor after harvest.

Farther along the stream, two fishermen were lifting holding baskets from a sheltered bend. A shallow hollow beside the water still held a muddy pool left by the spring floods.

"Could fish be kept there?" Christopher asked. "Longer than they remain in baskets?"

The older fisherman studied the hollow. "With screens at both ends, my lord. A flood takes them otherwise."

Christopher suggested deepening the middle for winter. The fisherman nodded slowly. "Digging may help if the bank holds, my lord. The stream must still have a way through."

Robert glanced at the six workers already assigned to the mill branch. "After harvest."

Christopher marked the hollow with a stake. The fishermen returned their baskets to the water and promised to watch how quickly the pool fell during dry weather.

Jack Fisher marked the flood line and a place for an overflow channel. If the bank held after harvest, they could deepen the pool and test it with a few fish from the stream.

The six workers began clearing the branch the following morning. Bram carried cut brush in bundles after Godfrey reminded him not to pull until the other man on the rope was ready. The Black Iron prisoner remained inside Dragonwatch; Godfrey would not send him into open country for a water channel.

By midday the crew exposed twenty paces of stone lining. One section had collapsed into the channel. Owen stopped the digging and braced the bank before anyone entered beneath it.

Christopher arrived after training and found the work halted.

"Why has the work stopped again?"

"The channel wall is unstable, my lord," Owen said.

Workers braced the bank, removed loose stones and rebuilt the lining. The repair consumed most of the day.

Robert placed a marked stick near the foundation and ordered readings after dry days and rain. Nicholas tried measuring with his fingers until Robert gave him a cord. The water fell during three dry days, partly because the field crews had changed the upstream flow. Cedric agreed to report future changes. The grain would receive water before the mill.

Robert built a hand-sized wheel from scrap. It slowed in dry weather and weeds caught its paddles, but it kept turning. Owen found another weak bank and repaired it from above with four workers while the other two returned to the main channel.

Christopher had wanted the sound of a mill turning beside Dragonwatch. What he had was a cleared branch, one repaired leak and a stick standing in shallow water.

"If the flow holds, what do we need?" Christopher asked.

"Seasoned oak, boards, iron straps, pins, gearing, two millstones, a roof and enough workers to build it, my lord."

"So not tomorrow," Christopher said. Robert agreed.

Perrin marked two straight oaks for a future wheel, but Owen kept them standing. Roofs and the gate platform came first. Robert continued measuring the channel until summer could prove whether it deserved the timber.

On the way back, he helped one woman turn a hand stone for several minutes. His shoulders began burning before she told him to stop.

"That’s why we want the mill, my lord," she said.

For the first time, the labor saved by a waterwheel felt more important than the wheel itself.

Christopher wrote three words beside the mill on his board: Wait for summer.

Joan Carter no longer woke to strangers breathing around her.

The repaired house had two small rooms. Rain entered near the chimney if the wind came from the west, and the door scraped against the floor, but Joan, Meg and Elsie no longer slept in a barracks crowded with families.

She rose before the girls and crossed the outer yard to Christopher’s temporary house. Six weeks earlier she had checked every corner before allowing Meg near him, and she still watched — a nobleman’s interest in a beggar girl did not become harmless merely because he spoke gently.

Christopher was already outside. Wooden swords struck in the training yard.

Godfrey knocked him backward, corrected his feet and made him begin again. Bram walked around the yard carrying two buckets half filled with water. His task was not to spill them or crush the handles. Walter waited nearby for Meg.

Joan returned home and found her daughter already tying her boots.

"Eat your breakfast before you go."

"Walter told us to be in the yard at sunrise."

"Walter does not wash your clothes when you fall in mud."

Meg ate standing until Joan made her sit. Elsie copied her and spilled porridge on the table.

Afterward, Meg joined Walter beside two chalk lines. She still trained without a sword. She stepped, turned and bent her knees while he pushed lightly against her shoulders. At first she had fallen every third attempt. Now she usually caught herself.

"Again," Walter said.

Meg returned to the mark.

There was less laughter than during the first week. Training had become work. Some mornings Meg complained of sore legs. She still arrived.

The alarm group met after her session. Twenty-four older children and teenagers practiced shelter routes, buckets and messages. Meg ran messages with three other children.

When the clapper sounded, Meg ran toward the western stair. Another runner went to the fields. Two boys carried empty buckets toward the kitchen. Walter blocked one passage with a cart and forced them to change routes.

Joan watched long enough to see Meg return, then went to work.

Dragonwatch had changed without becoming comfortable. More chimneys smoked along the old street. Families occupied houses whose roofs had been patched with mismatched timber. The gate closed every evening, although workers still cleared gravel from beneath it. Fish dried beside Bertram’s smoking shed, and chickens scratched inside a repaired pen.

The western breach remained obvious. Stone and rubble narrowed it, but Joan could see daylight between the temporary defenses. Men stood watch above it from the repaired stair. She preferred the sight of guards to the open gap they watched.

Inside Christopher’s house, she swept, carried water and mended a torn curtain. His room held fewer comforts than the merchant household where she had once worked. Maps covered one wall. Boards listing grain, repairs and patrols covered another. Edmund Drake’s sword rested beside his bed.

Bennet arrived with notices for the forge, field crews and gate watch. Joan could read enough to recognize names and numbers, though not his cramped hand.

"Leave the field notice," she said. "His lordship will ask for it before supper."

"How do you know where he will look for it?"

"He asks every evening and forgets where you put the answer."

Joan kept the household linen, lamp oil and cleaning supplies under one set of keys.

Two girls from the newer families helped her in the mornings. Joan showed them how to mark household cloth with colored thread and how to count sheets before sending them to the wash. One girl tried to place a torn blanket back on the clean shelf.

"That goes to the work basket," Joan said. "If the tear grows, someone wakes with half a blanket."

The girl moved it. "Can I mend it after the washing?"

"Yes. Use the brown thread. White thread is for the infirmary cloth."

By the end of the morning, the shelves were in order and three torn blankets waited beside the stove.

That morning she found two blankets folded on the wrong shelf. One belonged to the temporary infirmary and still carried Mabel’s blue thread at the corner. Joan returned it and told the girl helping with washing to keep marked linen separate. Fever bedding went into boiling water; ordinary dirt did not require wasting that much firewood.

The girl listened the first time. Joan preferred that to managing servants in Griffin City who smiled, agreed and did as they pleased once she turned away.

It was better than washing merchant sheets in Griffin City. It also tied her family more closely to a lord she still did not completely understand.

At midday Martha called Joan to help prepare the merchant’s new pot. The dent did not affect cooking. Martha filled it with fish, turnips from old stores, the first cut greens from the warm-wall bed and enough barley to thicken the broth.

"The pot was worth the coin," Martha said.

"Yesterday you called the merchant a thief."

"He charged too much, but the pot cooks evenly. I can complain about one and admit the other."

The salt purchased from him remained locked in the storehouse and issued by measure. The new nails had already disappeared into roofs and wall platforms. One shovel had become a source of arguments between the field and channel crews.

Martha poured the first pot of broth into bowls for the workers returning to the wall. The new vessel held enough that she did not have to start a second batch before the late meal. That saved firewood as well as time, which she mentioned twice to anyone who had questioned the purchase.

Joan saw the new nails vanish into a roof before the merchant’s wheel marks faded from the road.

After the meal, Joan carried food to the injured quarry worker. His leg had healed straight enough for him to walk with a stick. Mabel still forbade heavy work. He now sorted pegs and repaired light baskets while his household received its ordinary food allotment.

"I can stand," he told Joan.

"Then stand when Mabel tells you that your leg is ready."

"She has been saying another week since I left the bed."

"Because you ask her every day and try to carry something heavy whenever she looks away."

Outside, Bram brought another load of brush from the mill branch. He waited until the second worker released the rope before putting it down. Weeks earlier he would have pulled without looking. Godfrey noticed and said nothing, which Joan suspected was praise.

Bram returned for water and found Meg carrying a bucket from the well. He reached for it, but she moved it behind her.

"I can carry it," she said.

"It is heavy."

"Walter said I need stronger arms."

Bram considered this, then lifted the second bucket instead. They crossed the yard together, Meg taking twice as many steps while pretending not to notice.

The old watercourse had become a cleared channel, not yet a mill. Robert checked a marked stick every few days and became annoyed whenever anyone called the cleared channel a millrace. The women still turned hand stones when grain needed grinding.

Joan took laundry to the river in the afternoon. Southern serf women worked beside Wilfred’s free tenants. They spoke about children, weather and sore hands, but not about why one family could leave Dragonwatch and another required permission.

One free woman mentioned building her own shed before autumn. A serf woman answered that House Drake would decide where her household lived. Neither spoke angrily, but both fell quiet.

The free woman wrung out a sheet. The serf woman took the other end without being asked, and they carried it to the line together.

On the return path, Joan found Cedric Palmer standing in the barley. He held a green stalk between two fingers. Christopher and Wilfred stood beside him.

"Is something wrong?" Joan asked.

Cedric opened the top of the stalk. A small forming head lay inside.

"Not wrong," he said.

Christopher leaned closer. "That means grain?"

"It means the plant has begun forming grain."

"Does that mean the crop will survive?"

Cedric considered the field before answering. "It may survive, my lord, if it has water, disease stays out, the wind does not flatten it and the birds leave us enough."

Wilfred opened another stalk from his comparison strip. Its head was slightly farther along. Cedric immediately said the soil differed there. Their argument resumed before Joan left.

By supper everyone knew. Children were warned not to enter the barley. Bennet asked Cedric when storage rooms should be cleaned. Martha began talking about harvest meals even after Cedric told her nothing would be cut for weeks.

Joan heard three different estimates before reaching the kitchen. One man expected enough grain to fill every empty room. Another claimed the birds would eat half of it. Cedric insisted on an inspection rather than a guess, but he told Bennet to clear and inspect the stores regardless, because waiting until the grain was cut would be too late to discover rats or a leaking roof.

The warm-wall bed supplied only small amounts, but its onions and early greens had survived. Mabel cut what the kitchen could use and left the rest growing. Two children checked the shutters each evening and opened them again after sunrise. The task had become ordinary enough that Walter no longer needed to remind them.

Godfrey told the field watch to report birds, animal tracks and strangers without turning the crops into a military camp. Aldwin suggested hanging cloth strips and carved scraps to frighten birds. Elsie volunteered to make a monster. Martha told her the birds had standards.

The news reached the wall crews before the evening meal. Men carrying rubble began arguing about how many sacks the fields might yield until Cedric told them to stop counting grain that was still green.

Christopher walked the edge of the field with Godfrey and looked back at Dragonwatch’s walls.

Joan heard part of their conversation as she passed.

"If those fields feed us," Christopher said, "we need to keep them and the people alive long enough to harvest."

Godfrey pointed toward the western side. "Then begin there."

Christopher called Owen before supper. The builder arrived with stone dust across his coat and listened while Godfrey described the open approach between the field and western breach.

"We can clear the broken sheds nearest the wall, my lord," Owen said. "That gives the watch a better view. The sound timber goes into the platform, and the dry rotten wood can be burned."

"How long?" Christopher asked.

"Three days for the sheds, my lord. The platform will take longer."

Godfrey pointed to a second place where the ground rose beside the barley. "Leave that clear. I want no stack or cart hiding the field from the wall."

Owen agreed and went to speak with the morning crew.

That evening Meg returned from Walter’s second short session with dirt on her knees.

"Did you fall?" Joan asked.

"Only once."

"Only once?" Elsie said.

Meg pushed her lightly. Elsie pushed back harder, and Joan separated them before the table tipped.

After supper, they stood outside their house. The gate closed in the distance. A horn sounded once from the wall as the watch changed. The kitchen, the forge and the occupied homes were all sending smoke into the evening air.

In the kitchen yard, two children lowered the shutters over the warm-wall bed. Joan reminded them to leave the narrow vent open.

The bed had begun producing more than a few leaves at a time. Onion tops stood in close rows, and the first hardy cabbages had opened near the stone. The soil remained warmer beside the wall after sunset. Joan pressed two fingers into it and found it damp but not cold.

"Mabel says not to pull the small onions," one child told her.

"Then leave them."

"Martha wants three."

Joan looked toward the kitchen. "Martha can have the larger ones. Show her which bed they came from."

The children chose carefully before closing the shutters.

The barley moved in the evening wind, still green and weeks from harvest.

Two field watchers followed the edge of the crop before climbing the western platform. They carried staffs for dogs and slings for birds, not weapons meant for war. Cedric had divided the watch so no farmer lost an entire day merely standing beside grain that still needed weeks to ripen.

Dragonwatch could feed them today. It might feed them through winter if the fields survived. It could also lose much of what had been built to one fire, one hard storm or one attack through the unfinished wall.

Joan put an arm around Elsie and called Meg inside.

Tomorrow there would be washing, training, repairs and another meal to stretch. The barley would grow whether anyone watched it or not.

Joan closed the scraping door and set a stool beneath the latch. Outside, the horn sounded the final gate check. Tonight, at least, it meant nothing was wrong.

She listened until the watch answered from the western wall, then put out the lamp.