He found the quarry easily. Four people were working there: an older man who was evidently in charge and therefore must be Gab, two others who might have been his sons, and a boy who was either a late addition to the family or a slave. The quarry rang with the sound of hammers, punctuated at intervals by a dry cough that came from Gab. There was a timber house, presumably their home, and a woman standing in the doorway watching the sun go down. Stone dust hung in the air like a mist, the specks glittering golden in the rays of the evening light.

Another customer was ahead of Edgar. A sturdy four-wheeled cart stood in the middle of the clearing. Two men were carefully loading it with cut stones, while two oxen—presumably there to pull the cart—grazed nearby, their tails flicking at flies.

The boy was sweeping up stone chips, probably to be sold as gravel. He approached Edgar and spoke with a foreign accent, which made Edgar think he was a slave. “Have you come to buy stone?”

“Yes. I need enough for a brewhouse. But there’s no rush.”

Edgar sat on a flat stone, observed Gab for a few minutes, and quickly understood how he worked. He would insert an oak wedge into a small crack in the rock, then hammer the wedge in, widening the crack until it turned into a split and a section of rock fell away. Failing the convenience of a naturally formed crack, Gab would make one with his iron chisel. Edgar guessed that a quarryman would have learned from experience how to locate the weaknesses in the rock that would make the work easier.

Gab split the larger stones into two or sometimes three pieces, just to make them easier to transport.

Edgar turned his attention to the purchasers. They put ten stones on their cart then stopped. That was probably as much weight as the oxen could pull. They began to put the beasts into the shafts, ready to leave.

Gab finished what he was doing, coughed, looked at the sky, and appeared to decide it was time to stop work. He went to the oxcart and conferred with the two buyers for a few moments, then one of the men handed over money.

Then they cracked a whip over the oxen and left.

Edgar went to Gab. The quarryman had picked up a trimmed branch from a pile and was carefully marking it with a neat row of notches. This was how craftsmen and traders kept records: they could not afford parchment, and if they had any they would not know how to write on it. Edgar guessed that Gab had to pay taxes to the lord of the manor, perhaps the price of one stone in five, and so needed a record of how many he had sold.

Edgar said: “I’m Edgar from Dreng’s Ferry. Ten years ago you sold us stones for the repair of the church.”