Tallow wrote the morning’s minute, which was the first minute the Hold had ever kept under its own Articles, and he wrote it slowly, because a clerk who has waited a season for a page ought to be able to make every letter of it stand up straight.
He wrote the date by the candle-clock’s ring and the weather by the Mason’s report, which was that the wind was in the north and the rain had not yet come. He wrote the attendance, which was nine. He wrote the Chamber of Hands sitting under the Articles of the Hearth, in the Ink’s plain grammar, and under that he wrote the Articles themselves, in full. Articles II, IV, VII, IX, XIII and XXI, with the preamble above them in the captain’s name and the Lowgate’s and the cook’s, and Hanne Olley’s three lines with the Foundation’s mark beside them, and the Chamberlain’s name at the foot in the plainest hand in the room.
Then he came to the motion.
It was the motion on Naming, which Harrow and Pell had asked to put to the Chamber, and which the Warden had refused to decide. The Mason had asked that the Hall consider the Naming of Hands. The cook had asked the same, from the Kitchen door. Tallow had written both requests in the minute at the time, and he had written the Warden’s answer beneath them, the question stays open, in the Warden’s own plain letters, and he had not until…
