On the threshold the four stopped to decide whether they would go in, and Tallow recorded the decision, because a clerk did not let a decision happen without its minute.
He had the slate under his arm, and the census roll tied with its grey cord under the other, and he set the roll down on the threshold stone with great care, because it was the only record of its kind he had ever touched and he did not want to be the one who dropped it. Then he took out the pencil. The slate was still wet from the stair. He had wrapped it in a square of oilcloth at the top of the tower, against the spray, and he unwrapped it now with fingers that had begun to lose their feeling, and the wet chalk-marks of the morning were running in long grey tracks across the surface. He wiped them away with his sleeve. The Ink would not stay on a wet slate for long, so he wrote in pencil first and promised himself that he would copy the minute in the Ink when he was dry.
There was no Chamber here. There was no long table, and no candle-clock on the wall, and no Warden in a chair with his hand flat on the wood. The Warden was outside on the quay with his coat folded on the shingle, and the nine seats were four seats, and the four seats were standing on a stone threshold with…
