Tallow opened the second book on the morning the first posterngate list was due, because the Charter was specific about the day, and because he had found that a new ledger begun on a day of obligation was less likely to be disputed by the Mason, who believed such days to be lucky for walls and unlucky for anyone who ruled lines in the wrong colour.
He had bought the book from the Chancery’s carter in the spring, at a fair price that he suspected had been unfair to the carter. It had a plain grey board and forty leaves of thick paper that took the ink without bleeding, and he had ruled the first leaf himself, at the gatehouse table, with a steel rule and a stub of lead. He had ruled four columns. The first was for the name. The second was for the hearth. The third was for the count of persons under the hearth, and the fourth, which he had hesitated over for most of a morning, was for the word-of-mouth of the person named, which was to say, whether they had asked for their name to be kept off any other list in the Hold.
