Ch. 201 The New Chapel

Chapter 201: The New Chapel

At breakfast, Mary and the Castellan arrived with the city plan.

They waited until we had finished feeding the twins.

This was unusual enough that I looked at both of them with suspicion.

“What is wrong with the culvert?”

“Nothing,” Mary said.

“The road?”

“The first section is ready to be marked.”

“Then why are you both waiting?”

“We have a question,” the Castellan said.

He unfolded the plan across the far end of the table.

A broad space had been left near the proposed well.

I recognized it from the smaller copy Mary had given me for my birthday.

“What goes there?”

“That is what we wish to ask you,” Mary said.

“The chapel cannot hold everyone who wants to learn there,” she said. “Ilyen has already moved one lesson into the hall. If the new district is built as planned, more people will be living beyond the lower wall.”

“You want another room for lessons?”

“A much larger chapel,” the Castellan said.

Mary touched the blank space on the map.

“With a room for teaching, a place where travelers can receive care, storage for supplies, and access from the new road. It could serve the people already living here as well as those who come later.”

I looked at the space.

It was larger than the first plots for houses.

“That is a great deal of land.”

“It is,” Mary said.

“Who owns it?”

“Three families. We have not approached them about this use.”

Aurelia entered carrying Carol’s book.

Evelyn made room for her at the table.

The Castellan explained the proposal.

Aurelia listened, then studied the plan.

“Why call it a chapel?”

Mary looked at her.

“Because that is what people call the place where Evelyn teaches.”

“Some do,” Evelyn said. “Liora calls it the treatment room.”

“Liora calls any room with a clean table a treatment room,” I said.

“That has advantages,” my wife replied.

Aurelia smiled, but her eyes remained on the map.

“I don’t want someone brought there to think they must pray before they can be treated.”

“Then we design it so that is clear,” Mary said.

“And ask the people who will use it,” Evelyn added.

We sent for Ilyen and Liora.

Ilyen wanted enough water close at hand to wash properly without carrying buckets across the building.

Liora wanted a second door.

“For what?” I asked.

“For getting a feverish patient out without walking through a room full of students.”

The Castellan marked it.

Ressa, who was leaving that afternoon, came to see the plan as well.

“If healers travel here from the villages, they’ll need somewhere to stay,” she said.

“There is an inn,” Mary replied.

“Not everyone can pay for several nights.”

Mary added another note.

I looked over her shoulder.

“That room is getting larger.”

“The plan is getting more accurate,” she said.

Nathaniel joined us when he heard we were discussing the road.

He had slept, though he still looked worn.

“Place the entrance where someone coming on foot can find it before the well,” he said.

“Why?”

“People who have been traveling in pain follow signs badly. They follow a door that is plainly open.”

Nara looked at the proposed hearth.

“You’ll need a place to warm those who arrive wet.”

“There is one,” the Castellan said.

“It faces the teaching room. Move it nearer the treatment room.”

He considered the plan and moved his mark.

Neither of them asked whether the building would carry Aurelia’s name.

I wondered if they were waiting to be told.

Aurelia did not tell them.

She asked what else they thought we had missed.

We took the plan to the families who held the land.

Mary did most of the talking.

One family grew beans on part of the proposed site. Another used a shed there through winter. The third had expected to build a house for their daughter.

“We can move the building,” I said.

Mary put a finger on the plan.

“There is room to move it toward the old road. We would need to adjust the drainage.”

The Castellan calculated the change.

“It is possible.”

The daughter examined the revised line.

“That leaves space for our house?”

“Yes,” Mary said. “And the shed.”

The first family asked whether the well would still be public.

“Yes.”

They wanted that written in the agreement.

Mary wrote it.

We left with a plan to bring back after Eleanor checked the ground.

No land changed hands that day.

On our return, Eliza had arranged a watch exercise along the new road markers.

The volunteers were learning how to send a message from the rise to the lower gate. They had been given wooden tokens representing people who needed escort.

Melody held one.

“Where am I taking this?”

“You’re meant to find out,” Eliza said.

“Then I object to being given a person with no name.”

“Ask him.”

Melody turned the token over.

“There’s nothing on the back.”

“That is why the first question matters.”

I walked beside them for part of the route.

The new district was still a field of stakes.

Eliza had already found two places where a person could approach unseen behind the planned workshops. Mary moved one proposed wall on her map when she heard.

The city was changing before the first house stood.

That evening, Maelin came to find Aurelia.

Thesra and Caldris followed her into the council room. Nathaniel and Nara waited at the door.

I had been reading the new chapel plan with Evelyn. Mary closed her book.

“We have been talking,” Maelin said.

“That generally leads here,” Mary replied.

Maelin accepted the observation.

“Nathaniel knew of others considering departure. Othellos has become almost tyrannical lately. He did not tell them where he meant to go, but they may learn.”

“How many?” Eliza asked.

“Three that he knows by name,” Nathaniel said. “There may be more.”

Nara stood with her hands clasped tightly together.

“I came because I knew Aurelia had stayed when Othellos wanted her silent. Others will come for the same reason.”

“Then we need to decide how to receive them,” Eliza said.

“We have rooms,” I said.

“We have some rooms.”

We discussed where visitors could stay, who would meet them at the gate, and how to examine any working they carried before allowing them inside.

The Castellan asked for time to prepare a place near the western approach where those conversations could happen under shelter.

“A roof,” Aldren said when he joined us. “You want a roof and walls with room for the guards to stand.”

“Yes.”

“Say that first. I can build it.”

Perrin offered to draw it.

Eleanor told him to begin with measurements.

Mary recorded their names beside the work.

Through it all, Nathaniel and Nara remained at the table. We asked them what arriving gods might need, and what they might be afraid to say at the gate.

It was Nara who thought to ask whether they could leave again.

“Yes,” Eliza told her.

Nara nodded.

“I needed to hear that yesterday.”

The twins were asleep when Evelyn and I returned to our rooms.

Carol’s cloth book lay on the chair.

My stone was on the shelf.

I checked both cradles before I undressed.

Evelyn watched me.

“They’re here.”

“I know.”

“You checked twice.”

“Three times.”

She came beside me.

Garrick slept with one hand open beside his face. Carol had rolled onto her side.

“They’ll learn things we can’t teach them to forget,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know how to keep ahead of it.”

“We may not.”

I looked at her.

“We can still be their parents while they learn,” she said.

Carol made a small sound in her sleep.

Evelyn waited until she settled.

Then we went quietly into the next room.

In the morning, the Castellan sent someone to ask whether I would come to the western wall.

I found him with Nathaniel beside the old stair.

Nathaniel had asked to see the place he remembered.

He stood before the sealed authority passage without touching it.

“I came here to witness a crossing,” he said. “Someone had petitioned to leave the high court’s keeping.”

“Who?” I asked.

“I cannot remember.”

The Castellan opened the panel far enough to show him the severed lines.

Nathaniel’s expression changed.

“They were meant to pass through this?”

“Yes,” the Castellan said.

Nathaniel shook his head.

“I waited outside. I was told they had changed their mind.”

“By whom?”

He closed his eyes.

“I remember a seal. I don’t remember the hand that held it.”

We did not force an answer.

The Castellan showed Nathaniel the copy of the inscription we had made before altering the passage.

Nathaniel took his time with it.

“There should be a record of the petition,” he said.

“There may be,” Mary replied from behind us. She had brought her book as usual. “We know where to look now.”

Nathaniel handed back the page.

“Will I be allowed to help?”

“Yes,” I said.

The Castellan looked at me, then at Nathaniel.

“We will begin with the records I retain.”

Nathaniel nodded.

Outside, someone struck a hammer in the lower yard. Another answered farther away.

The shelter by the western gate had begun.

At midday, I visited the chapel.

Evelyn had moved the students’ table to make space for Liora’s lesson. Nara was helping keep a basin warm. Aurelia listened while Ilyen described what she had seen in a patient the day before.

There was no room for everyone to stand comfortably.

Evelyn saw me looking.

“Mary showed me the revised plan,” she said.

“Is it large enough?”

“For the people we have today.”

“And later?”

“We’ll leave room to add to it.”

“That sounds like Mary.”

“It sounds like someone who has watched this room fill.”

Liora called Evelyn over to check a bandage.

She went.

I stayed beside the door, holding it open for a student carrying clean water.

Beyond the chapel, the road to the new district was marked in stakes. Farther west, Aldren and Perrin were measuring the ground beside the gate.

For the moment, Greykeep had room for the people who had arrived.

We had begun making room for those still on the road.