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looked up. We cannot afford to upset him.”
    William did not fidget or close his eyes or look away. He was listening, but it was plain he was not persuaded.
    “If Mr. Lowe does not want you in his dye house, you must respect his reasons. He doesn’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry knowing his professional secrets. That is his livelihood at stake.”
    “His crimsons aren’t up to much,” William grumbled. “In any case, it’s your land, your building, your mill.”
    “It’s traditional. Dyers have always been their own men. They have their own ways. And they are too important to lose. I won’t have Lowe going back to Stroud because you’ve upset him.”
    There was a pause in which William’s expression told him nothing was resolved. William opened his mouth to protest, but Paul raised a hand to stop him. “Give credit where it’s due, William. Mr. Lowe knows what he’s doing. If the crimsons are unstable, don’t go laying it at Mr. Lowe’s door. It’s the water makes them so.”
    William shook his head firmly. “So he told you that too. He’s lying. It’s nothing to do with the water.”
    “You have been here just short of a year, William. I am warning you, watch what you say.”
    “What he says about rain diluting the water is nonsense. He doesn’t use water from the river. He uses spring water. It’s consistent. Never changes.”
    Paul hesitated.
    “It’s not alchemy. He wants us to think it is, because it leaves him in the clear. He makes a good blue because he has the recipe; you’re going to keep him on till the end of his days for his blue, and he knows it. As for crimsons, what difference does it make to him how they come out? He can use old dye, chop and change the quantities at random, and when it comes out dull and brown, blame the water!”
    He embarked on a gesture of frustration, caught sight of his pile of cloth strips and stopped. “Look! Uncle Paul—”
    Paul pushed the fabric firmly away. “His blacks?”
    “He makes a good black because with the iron in the water round here you couldn’t fail.”
    Could that be true? Paul had to admit, it might be. The whole area was renowned for its blacks.
    William fidgeted with the cloth he had separated from the rest. He looked as if he was making up his mind to something.
    “His blue is good, Uncle. His black is good. The other colors are hit and miss because his dye cupboard is a shambles and he doesn’t keep proper records.”
    Paul put his head in his hands, and William started to look like a man who had said more than he should.
    “You have been into Mr. Lowe’s dye cupboard.”
    “Yes.”
    Paul felt weary to the core. He was more than willing to defend his nephew against his father, but he needed William to meet him halfway. The boy showed no remorse, though, and had no sense of the boundary he had transgressed.
    “You had help.” It wasn’t a question.
    William said nothing. A friend of a friend with a brother in the dye house, a few drinks in the Red Lion, money had changed hands. Subterfuge, distraction, the borrowing of a key.
    “I’d have done it another way, if there had been another way. Mr. Lowe gave me no choice.”
    “Mr. Lowe is very particular about the sanctity of his dye cupboard.”
    “And now I know why.”
    William said nothing, but he took a piece of cloth from the black leather inlay of the desk, and stroked it flat against his palm. It was bloodred, as fresh and clean as if a blade had just this second sliced his skin.
    “Go home, William.”
    “What? Now?”
    Paul nodded.
    “Am I to come back?”
    “Take a few days off. I need to think it over.”
    When he heard the door close behind him, Paul groaned.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    D ora turned out her son’s pockets to launder his clothes. Once it had been stones and pencils that made the holes in his pocket, now it was a penknife and other small tools that came in handy for freeing a tangle of yarn in the machinery or loosening a bolt. Today with his