The boy blinked, still bent over with both hands braced on his knees. “Aye, mistress.”
“I thought it might be,” she said. “I looked at the channel ledger two days ago, and the gate’s been running shallow on the south side since August.”
Thomas turned his head.
“What? Walter told me all about mills.” She looked back at him with a calm that suggested she had not just explained his own mill to him before dawn.
“The channel ledger,” he repeated.
She waved a hand in the air. “It’s in the mill room. Right of the door. Small leather thing with the red tie.”
He was quite certain he’d never looked at anything in the mill room to the right of the door. He had, apparently, been trusting in the ancient masculine hope that mills worked because men with flour on their beards said they did.
“Come, then,” he said.
Amelia lifted both brows. “Was that an invitation or an order?”
“A summons.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It’s more efficient.”
“It’s certainly bossier.”
“It’s barely dawn,” Thomas said. “My supply of grace is low.”
“Your supply of grace has never been what one would call abundant.”
Cygnet snorted.
Amelia pointed at the horse. “See? She agrees with me.”
“She’s hungry.”
“That is how most rebellions begin.”
Despite himself, Thomas almost smiled.
Then the miller’s boy groaned softly and reminded them all that the lower meadow was flooding.
They set out at once. The mill sat at the bend of the Avon a quarter-mile south of the village, where the river curved close beneath a stand of willows and the current ran quick and cold over the stones. The building itself was sound, with low stone walls, a patched but sturdy thatch roof, flour dust in the cracks of the door, and the great wheel hunched at its side like an old beast settling in for winter. Fog sat low in the valley, pale and stubborn, softening the fields until the hedgerows became dark smudges and the river appeared and vanished by turns.
The sluice was worse than reported.
Thomas crouched by the gate and looked. The timber had split along a joint, subtly enough that the first glance missed it. A thread of separation followed the grain, barely wider than a knife cut. Under repeated pressure, it had worked open until the gate couldn’t seal. Simple. Fixable. Three hours of work with dry timber, proper wedges, and patience.
Patience was unfortunate. Thomas had spent his in the night and had yet to find where it had gone.
“I can hold the far post if you wedge from this side,” Amelia said.
“You do not need to.”
“You need two sets of hands.”
She was already kneeling beside the channel, cloak tucked up out of the worst of the mud with brisk practicality, her brown wool gown dark at the hem. The morning mist clung to the little wisps of hair at her temple. A sensible woman would have stayed in the hall where it was warm.
“It’s dirty work,” he said.
