Geometric mandala fan with dotted drops

Above you the chapel vault spreads from a single pillar like the ribs of a fan opened to the sun. Each rib ends in a petal, and each petal is cut with a fine stippled hand, so the old mason could say he had left nothing bare. In the middle sits a little flower of stone, the boss that holds the whole thing together. Tobiah Crane carved it for Lady Maud the year her husband rode north and did not come home. She had no silver to pay him, the coffers were empty, so he asked for one thing only: that she let him carve the rain.

She thought him mad, but she agreed. He cut channels into every petal, so that when water came through the broken lead it would run along the ribs and gather at the tips, then drop from them in strings of teardrops and beaded swags that hung in the air like a necklace no thief could carry off. The roof leaked all that winter. Not one drop reached the altar, and the flagstones stayed dry where the Lady knelt each night, waiting for a rider who was never coming up the hill.

When the soldiers came up the road in spring, they found a castle with a dry chapel and a fan of stone holding up the sky, and they were too frightened of the place to bring fire into it. Crane's channels are still there. Watch the next drop as it gathers at the point. Count to seven before it falls. That is how long she waited, and the stone has never once hurried her.