The grain passage was nine clauses long, and Tallow had read all nine twice before Aske’s clerk had finished his first cup of cider.
He sat at the treaty table in the Great Hall with the clauses spread out in front of him in two columns, the Lessaran draft on the left and the Hold’s amendments on the right, and a stick of chalk beside each line to mark the places where the two texts disagreed. There were eleven such places. Tallow had counted them three times and got eleven each time, which he felt was a fair sign of an honest document.
The Crown’s carts might cross the Sallow Ford to the Lantern Ford market, carrying grain bound for the Coldharbour merchants. The Hold would keep the passage toll. The toll would be paid in shares, since the Hold had no silver it was willing to be seen spending, and the shares would be recorded by the Ink in the Register’s back leaves, under the Hold’s own heading, so that nobody in Sallowmere could later say the Hold had sold its grain for coin.
The clerk, whose name was Marle and who had a cold that he refused to acknowledge, had changed one verb in the fourth clause. He had made it shall where the original Chancery text said may.
