The Singing Quarter

A yearling tallow-calf was worth three bushels of spelt and forty copper tokens at the city weigh-station, and Neeltje Houthuis had no intention of forfeiting either to the temple wardens. The grease-penned beast had slipped the latch while she was securing Klaas, trotting uphill toward the cooler air of the stonecutters' terraces with fresh straw clinging to its cloven hooves.

Neeltje tracked the wet dung-marks up the steep mud-brick stairs. Her ash crook struck each step with a dull, hollow thud, the iron-shod heel ringing against the baked clay. The noon heat pressed down from the mountain bluffs, carrying the sharp tang of slaked lime and crushed soapstone from the craft arcade above.

Normally, the Upper Terrace was the loudest corner of Braamkerk. Between dawn and dusk, forty mallets struck bronze chisels in overlapping, jagged rhythms, shaping funeral urns, hearth-stones, and ceremonial plinths for the Great House. The noise usually scraped across the ears like coarse sand in an ungreased axle.

Today, the arcade was silent.

Neeltje reached the top landing, resting her shoulder against a sun-warmed brick pillar. The air in the stonecutters' court did not smell of chalk alone. A humid, sweet draft drifted between the lintels, vibrating with a high, divided hum that set her front teeth on edge. It was the same hollow note that had tried to steer her oxen into the Lower Third Kiln an hour earlier.

She tightened her grip on the crook and stepped into the covered colonnade.

The runaway calf stood in the center of the courtyard. It was not grazing on the scatter of cabbage leaves beside the water trough. The animal stood stiff-legged on the flagstones, its flank twitching in three-quarter time, small dark muzzle tilted toward the rafters.

Around the beast, eight master stonecutters moved in a slow, seamless circle.

Their heavy mallets and gouges lay scattered on the dust like discarded bone. The men had linked their hands behind one another's belts, stepping in a synchronized wheel around a half-finished soapstone basin. Their chests rose and fell in identical measure. Through parted lips, they pushed a single, continuous chord into the vaulted roof—a smooth, triple-layered drone that rose without breath or break.

Every man wore a serene, upturned smile.

Neeltje stopped six paces back. The expression on the lead mason's face—a gray-bearded artisan named Gijs, whom she had seen curse carters for an hour over cracked flags—mirrored the slack, blissful grin she had beaten off Klaas's snout in the lower pens. His pale eyes stared unblinking at the pine ceiling timbers, pupils dilated into dark ink-wells despite the harsh midday sun.

"Gijs," she called out, keeping her voice rough and low. "Your courtyard stinks of tallow. Grab your mallet."

The circle did not break. The masons shifted their weight in unison, bare feet dragging across the lime grit without friction. The sound coming from their throats was not a guild shanty or a temple prayer. It possessed the cold, mechanical purity of a struck bell, vibrating through the stone tiles directly into the soles of Neeltje's boots.

The calf lowed once—a tiny, harmonized whine that locked directly into Gijs's middle note.

Neeltje spat onto the bricks. She knew how cattle behaved when the mountain wolves circled the brush: they bunched, they shoved, they fouled the dirt. This was something else. This was the quiet rot that turned living flesh into a bellows draft. If the temple patrol climbed the south stairs and found eight guild artisans singing to a yearling, the herd-house would lose its tallow license before sundown.

She needed to break the line before the drone pulled the rest of the quarter into the courtyard.

Neeltje stepped around the perimeter of the circling men, evaluating the room's geometry. In the eastern corner sat a thirty-gallon terracotta amphora, set high on an oak trestle above the stone wash-trench. The vessel was used to wet the grinding stones, full to the brim with creek water and grit.

She hooked the curved ash head of her staff under the amphora's lower wooden rung.

Bracing her boot against the masonry plinth, Neeltje threw her entire weight backward. The heavy ash wood groaned under the torque. The trestle leg slipped from its mortar notch, wobbled on the smooth flagstones, and tipped sideways.

The terracotta jar fell five feet onto the stone washing trough.

The crash hit the enclosed arcade like a dropped bronze ingot. Three hundred pounds of water and shattered earthenware exploded across the court, spraying cold slurry over the artisans' bare calves and flooding the dust with gray mud.

The smooth, three-part chord snapped instantly.

The silence that followed was heavy and flat, devoid of resonance. The yearling calf jumped sideways with a terrified grunt, its legs skittering on the wet bricks before Neeltje snagged its halter with her crook.

The eight stonecutters stopped dead. Their linked hands slipped loose.

Gijs stumbled backward, his knees buckling under him. He dropped onto all fours in the puddle of slurry, gasping for air as if he had just been dragged from the bottom of a cistern. Around him, the other masons collapsed onto the paving stones, blinking groggily at the broken pottery and clutching their ribs.

"What is this?" Gijs rasped, his voice cracked and raw. He stared at his empty hands, scraping his fingers across the wet limestone. "Where is the gouge? Who quenched the trough?"

"You dropped it," Neeltje said, dragging the calf firmly behind her hip. "You were dancing with my yearling, Master Gijs. And singing like temple virgins on solstice eve."

Gijs shook his head, wincing against the glare of the noon light. He reached up with a mud-caked palm to steady his temple, rubbing the groove behind his jawbone.

When his fingers pulled away, they were slick with red.

A thin, dark stream of blood was trickling from his left ear canal, running down the line of his neck and dripping into the collar of his linen tunic. Beside him on the flagstones, two other apprentices sat with red ribbons trailing down their necks, staining the white stone dust pink. None of them seemed to notice the warmth on their skin.

Neeltje pulled the calf's lead tight and backed out of the arcade toward the stairs.