Spring arrived late that year, but when it came, it came suddenly — an overnight shift in the air from the north that brought green shoots up through the cobblestones of the village lanes and the first wood pigeons back to the belfry of St. Crispin's Hall.
Samuel's eyesight had declined through the winter at the pace the specialist had predicted — measurably but gradually, the way a well-regulated clock loses a few seconds per week. He had adapted the workshop layout in three further ways since the relay-loupe discovery: a mounted magnifying glass on a gooseneck arm for reading the fine print on movement specifications, a set of tactile reference marks — small raised brass dots he had fitted to the workshop shelves to identify each tool rack by position, and a habit of narrating his own work aloud, which served as both a memory aid and a check against the small errors that peripheral-only vision could sometimes miss.
The narration habit had led to a curious development. Copper had begun to respond to specific repeated phrases. When Samuel said "hand me the oil brush," the dog would look at the oil brush rack. When he said "check the pendulum," Copper would turn his gaze toward whatever clock movement was currently under service.
This was not trained behaviour in any formal sense. The dog had simply spent enough time in the workshop, attending to Samuel's routines with sufficient focus, that the repeated phrases had acquired meaning.
The spring service schedule was a full one. Six longcase movements, three bracket clocks, an unusual French carriage clock with a platform escapement, and the tower — which Samuel now visited every six weeks as a precaution, though the movement continued to perform within spec without adjustment.
On the second Tuesday of April, he climbed the tower for the spring service with Copper at his side, carrying his oil case and the relay-loupe setup in the canvas shoulder bag he had modified for one-handed carrying.
The movement chamber was cold still, the stone walls holding the winter chill. But the mechanism was running with the steady, clear tick he had come to think of as the tower clock's particular voice — deeper than a bracket clock, lighter than a longcase, with the slight reverberation of a bell-frame above it.
He checked every pivot, measured the arc, read the beat.
All within specification.
He made one small oil application to the great-wheel arbor pivot and replaced the oil stone over the cam in the striking train.
Then he sat on the old wooden stool in the corner and listened to the mechanism run for a few minutes, with Copper sitting beside his knee.
Outside the small east window, the village square was green with the first suggestion of leaves on the horse-chestnut trees. The south clock face read twenty minutes past ten.
Accurate. Running. Restored.
He had not been fixed. He knew this clearly and without sentiment. But he had found his workaround, and the workaround worked, and the clock above him was telling the right time.
He patted Copper's head and stood up.
"Come on, then," he said.
They descended the hundred and forty stairs together, at the same careful pace, one step at a time.
The wood pigeon had returned to the belfry by April, and Samuel found it sitting on the bell frame when he made his spring service visit, regarding him and Copper with the particular unimpressed composure of an animal that considered the tower its own territory and human presence an administrative inconvenience. He made his checks, made his single small oil application, and descended the stairs.
The pigeon remained. He supposed it was entitled.
The tower had been here considerably longer than he had.
The spring service schedule was completed over six weeks, one movement per week, with the tower visit at the midpoint of the season. He found a rhythm in it that suited the narrowing of his world — fewer movements than he had taken in his busiest years, but each one attended to with care that left no loose ends.
He wrote careful service records. He documented the methods he had developed.
He was building something for whoever came next, in the same way that Thomas Hart with his setter Biscuit had left notes that Samuel had found useful a century later.
He found the pigeon on the west ledge the following month as well, in the same spot, untroubled.
He descended in good order. The square was quiet. The clock kept its time.