AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER 1
I’m waiting for the moon.
All other ground-level windows in the neighborhood are shuttered for the night as I lean out of ours to look. A breeze whisks up the deserted street, carrying the scent of rain and the distant rumble of thunder from the west. The city of Collis covers a large hill rising from the flat plains, but my view of the approaching storm is blocked by angled roofs. If I balance on my hips and crane my neck as far as it will go, the rose window and towers of the Holy Sanctum to the east are just visible through a gap between houses. Even without moonlight, the white facade glows against the ebony blanket of sky, washing out all the stars.
Not high enough yet.
I sigh and lever myself back inside as Magister Thomas comes down the stairs into the workroom behind me. The architect pauses when he sees me, his eyebrows so high they disappear in the chestnut hair peeking out from under his cap. “Catrin?” he says. “I thought you went to bed hours ago.”
“No, Magister.” I remove the angled support and lower the shutter, sliding the bolts into the frame before turning to face my employer’s frown.
“If I didn’t know better,” he observes, “I’d say you’re dressed for climbing.”
After dinner I’d traded my calf-length working skirt for a much shorter one over a man’s breeches and bound and pinned my dark curls into submission. “I am,” I admit. “I wanted to check on a bowed crossbeam I noticed this morning on the southern scaffolds.”
The master architect’s frown deepens, creasing his forehead. “Why didn’t you do it earlier?”
“Well…” I count the reasons on my fingers. “Between showing the Comte de Montcuir around the work site all morning, verifying the alignment of the drainage system, writing up the stone orders for you to sign, and visiting the market in search of fresh rosemary for Mistress la Fontaine, I ran out of time.” I drop my hands and shrug. “Besides, it’s easier to inspect when the scaffolds aren’t crawling with workers.”
“Hmmph.” The architect eyes my belt, which doesn’t hold the small hammer I usually carry. “And no wandering hands to smash. How many this week?” he asks severely.
His ire isn’t directed at me, so I smile. “Only three or four.”
If the apprentices—and some of the older craftsmen—would just keep their hands to themselves, they wouldn’t have to worry about their fingers. I don’t hit hard enough to break bones the first time, and once is usually enough.
“Show me where your concern is, then.” Magister Thomas nods to the scale replica of Collis’s Sanctum which dominates the room. The model is as old as the Sanctum itself, started decades ago.
I walk around to the far end of the table, and the architect joins me from the opposite side. Really, to call this representation a “model” doesn’t do it justice. Every stone, window, and shingle of the structure is perfectly and proportionally rendered,from the two square towers at the western entrance and down its long nave, to the arms extending north and south from the altar at the center—or rather, what will be the center once the holy building is finished. Our expansion project now underway will lengthen the building far beyond its current T shape. The transept wings mark the beginning of the work area, all of which is also portrayed and updated with our progress, including the scaffolding.
“Right here.” I point to a scarlet thread I’ve tied as my own reminder of the location, then back away so he can see. It’s in a support section as complicated as a spider’s web, tucked within the shadow of the high tower at the end of the southern transept.
As Magister Thomas leans closer to look, the parchment nailed to the wall behind him flutters. The light is too dim for me to read the names written on it, but I know them all by heart: fourteen fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons lost in the collapse of scaffolding and wall five years ago. Above the list rests the gold-plated hammer used in setting the markers of the latest construction project as it was blessed by the high altum.
The placement of those two items is significant: The master architect will never look at the symbol of his greatest achievement without also seeing an account of his greatest failure.
To prevent such a thing from ever happening again, the scaffolds must be as safe and reliable as the limestone walls themselves, and the only way to ensure that is to have someone climbing around them regularly, checking for cracks and warps.
That someone is me. It’s a job I take very seriously.
Magister Thomas is still studying the model, measuring distances with his fingers, when the gentle toll of the Sanctum’s bells drifts through the cracks in the shutters. It’s nearly midnight, which is when a full moon peaks, meaning its light will finally be where I need it to be to see by. While I wasn’t trying tohide my plan to go out tonight, now I feel like I need to wait for permission, but with the storm coming I can’t afford to waste time.
“Do you ever wonder why the brethren even bother going to bed before their last devotions?” I ask, mostly to call the magister’s attention to the hour. The holy men who make up the religious order attached to the Sanctum have probably only slept two hours before being wakened for midnight liturgy.
“Seeing as they’re up again at dawn for the next series of chants, I imagine they catch sleep whenever they can,” is his absentminded reply. He tilts his head to look at the indicated beam from several angles. Though the architect is two years past forty—old enough to be my father—two white streaks running back from his temples are the only obvious signs of his age. The one on the left appeared after the accident five years ago, but the other is more than a decade old according to the housekeeper. Given the tragedy associated with the more recent one, I’ve never had the courage to ask what caused the first.
Magister Thomas shakes his head. “I can see how a problem there could have gone unnoticed, but it’s going to be a difficult spot to reach, even for you.”
The scaffold supports are set at unusual angles due to the carved statues that stick out from the walls. Gargoyles are part of the drainage system, which makes them necessary, but working around them is likely the reason a problem has developed. Itishigh, and I’m not quite sure how I’ll reach it yet, but I’ve been climbing trees and scaling the sides of buildings for nearly all of my seventeen years.
“I’m not worried,” I say.
“You never are.” He stands straight to look at me again. “Maybe I should go along. I can hold the lantern.”
I doubt I’ll need his help—or the light—but a sharp pounding on the door in the kitchen interrupts us. That’s odd. Who would call at this hour, and from the alley rather than the street?
Mistress la Fontaine shortly appears in the doorway to the kitchen. The housekeeper’s gray-white hair is halfway escaped from the bun at the top of her neck after a full day of baking bread and chopping vegetables, and she wears a sour, disapproving expression as she wipes weathered hands on her apron. “There’s someone here to see you, Magister.”
The architect’s jaw tightens as he narrows his gray eyes suspiciously. “Who is it?”
