“Every week.”
“And if the keeper is dreadful—”
“I shall say so twice.”
Kitty laughed and then coughed and waved away concern before it formed.
She stepped out into the chill. Mr Gardiner assisted her into the carriage and followed behind her, then closed the door.
Kitty stood upon the step, handkerchief already in motion. Mary remained at the threshold, straight-backed, as though departure were a matter of principle.
Elizabeth leaned toward the window as the carriage began to move. “I shall write!”
“Twice!” Kitty answered.
The house receded. The corner turned. London closed around itself again. Elizabeth settled against the seat and drew her gloves more firmly into place.
Robson,theblacksmith,turnedthe brass collar in both hands, tilting it toward the grey light that came through the gallery panes. His thumbs moved along the inner seam with the patience of a man accustomed to finding fractures by touch alone. The forge smoke that clung to his clothing sharpened the air of the lantern chamber, mingling with the faint bitterness of unburnt oil.
The keeper stood at the worktable, laying out the wick assembly in the order he had kept for five years. Collar. Ring. Vent cap. Draft plate. Each piece cleaned, inspected, and set upon the cloth with a precision the smith would recognise as kin to his own.
Clark, themason, had found nothing. The stone was true, the mortar sound, the iron braces seated as they had been since the tower was raised. He had said so plainly and departed before noon, leaving behind only the grit of his boots upon the stair.
Robson would find nothing, either.
“She’s not warped.” The smith held the collar to the light once more, squinting along its edge. “I’ll not tell ye she is, for she’s not.”
“No.”
Robson set the collar down and drew his hand along the vent ring. His tools lay open upon a square of leather—fine files, a small awl, a hammer that had plainly never struck anything delicate until this afternoon. “If there’s fault, it’s not in what I can work. The brass is clean. The iron’s clean. The seating’s as good as any I’ve measured.”
The keeper did not answer at once. He lifted the draft plate and turned it over, examining the aperture where air fed the flame. No scoring. No salt deposit. No imperceptible warp that might redirect the draw even a fraction of a degree. He had checked it himself—twice—before sending for Robson.
There was a flaw. There had to be. It simply had not yielded to examination yet.
He set the draft plate down and picked up the collar again, turning it slowly. The interior bore was smooth—Robson was right about that—but smoothness was not the same as precision. A collar milled by a village forge, however competent, was not a collar milled to the tolerances demanded by a coastal lantern apparatus. The original had come from a London foundry. He had seen the stamp.
“The bore,” he said.
Robson looked up.
“Hold it against the housing.”
The smith obliged, fitting the collar into place and pressing it firmly against the brass seat. He turned it a quarter revolution, then back. His brow drew together.
“There,” the keeper said. “You can feel it.”
“Aye...” Robson turned it again, slower. “She rides a hair loose on the southern quarter. But that’s nothing, Wickie. That’s wear. She’d do that in any season.”
“In any season, I would agree. But if the bore has opened by even a thousandth of an inch, the flame draws unevenly. The wick heats along one side. It chars before the oil feeds properly, and the light thins.”
Robson pulled the collar free and held it up, frowning at the inner surface as though it hadinsulted him. “I could file her true.”
“You could close the gap. But the original tolerances were finer than what a hand file can restore. The collar must seat within the housing without play. None.”
The smith turned this over. He was not a man who took lightly to the suggestion that his tools were insufficient, but neither was he a fool. He ran his thumb along the bore once more, testing. “You’d want a new one made.”
“I would want the original specification matched. A foundry collar, milled to the maker’s tolerances. There is a works in Newcastle that supplies Trinity House. They would have the pattern.”
