and rough sacking and, in a far corner, a cask of ale and a half dozen wooden cups. The air was cloudy with stone dust, and chips of limestone littered the floor.
Two men were at work on the central benches, a horn lantern with a thick tallow candle set alongside to bolster the daylight coming through the casements. Both men were about the same age, some thirty-five to forty years, and clad in heavy leather aprons and caps. One of them was tapping a mallet made of hickory onto the end of a straight chisel as he put the finishing touches to an oblong piece of stone about five feet long, glancing at a wooden template lying on the bench as he did so. On the end of the stone facing Bascot, the stonecutter had engraved his personal mark. This would identify him as the worker who had dressed the stone and, once the piece had been assessed and deemed acceptable, entitle the cutter to payment for his labour. The details of the work were exacting and the hewer was using a pair of dividers to check the measurements of the stone against the template. It was obvious that excellent eyesight would be one of the prerequisites for those who laboured with the unyielding blocks and so it was not to be wondered at that Cerlo’s diminishing vision would cause loss of his employment.
The other man was working on a larger stone block of approximately the same size and shape, but the surface of this one was still rough. The cutter was using a lump hammer—a heavy round piece of dense wood capped on one end with a thick sheet of iron—to drive the broad base of a tool called a pitcher over the stone and bring it to smoothness.
As Bascot walked in, the cutter smoothing the unfinished block cursed as his tool slipped and made a deep gouge. “If I find the cowson that took my hammer,” he said, “I’ll swing for him. I swear I will.” He threw down the hammer he was using and, picking up one of the lanterns, strode over to the bench and began to root among the tools.
“There’s no one would take it, you fool,” the other cutter said. “Why would they? There’s plenty more in that there pile.”
“I’ve had that same hammer since I was an apprentice,” returned the other in an aggrieved tone. “My old da gave it to me and ’tis the only one that feels right in my hand. Everyone knows it’s mine for my mark is on the handle, but someone has borrowed it anyway and not returned it. . . .”
His voice trailed off as he found the elusive hammer and pulled it from the heap. As he turned back to his work, he saw Bascot standing at the door. The other cutter noticed the knight at the same time and both men pulled off the leather caps they were wearing and touched a finger to their brows.
Bascot told them why he had come. “Master Alexander tells me both of you were at work here on the fourth day before Christ’s Mass. It is almost certain that Peter Brand, the clerk found dead in the quarry, was murdered on that day. I have come to ask if either of you saw anyone in the precincts of the quarry at that time, or perhaps on the road that leads to the Minster, someone you might not have expected to be here.”
The men looked at each other, puzzlement warring with excited interest as they pondered the question. Finally, the one who had been looking for his hammer said, “I don’t recall anyone, lord.” The other cutter shook his head in agreement. “The sky was overcast that day—heavy with the snow that fell later—and the light was so bad we left early and went back to our lodgings in the town.”
Bascot nodded, but repeated his question to ensure they had given it enough thought. “You are quite certain you saw no one, not even someone you knew?”
Both men again shook their heads. “No, lord. But ’twas hardly surprising since anyone with any sense would have done the same as we did, sought out a place where it was warm and stayed there. You could smell there was snow in the air. ’Twas not a night for any ’cept homeless beggars to be out, lord.”
A rational statement, Bascot thought, but also one that dashed any hope of helpful information from the