Tallow left the bakehouse bench at the second bell of the night, when the lamp had gone down to a finger’s width and the Warden’s sister had gone out into the court and turned toward the Great Hall without looking back. He did not follow her. He went up the stair to the Hall by the back way, past the buttery and the cold kitchen, because he had decided that a copy would be made that night, whatever else happened in the morning, and he would rather not be interrupted by a Chamber that would then want to know why.
The Great Hall was dark except for the lamp on the Chamber table and the faint red shine of the ring through the high shutters. The air smelled of smoke and tallow and the sweet oil that had come up the marsh on the wind. Somebody had left the shutters open a crack, and a thin stream of smoke was coming through the gap and lying along the ceiling in a long grey shelf.
He set his own lamp down beside the Census ledger and sat. The ledger lay open under its cover, where the auditor had left it, and the note in her hand lay on top of the cover, face up, where she had meant it to be found. He did not read the note again. He had read it. He turned the cover back very carefully, the way one turns the leaves of a book that has…
