The argument about the eating-rate had begun in the Gatehouse one grey morning, had moved to the Chamber two days later, and had come, as Tallow had known it would, to the Kitchen table, where the bread was. Tallow had brought the slate. Pell had brought the loaf. Between them on the scrubbed boards lay a pile of Kitchen tallies and a stub of chalk, and a small silent girl at the sink with her back to the room who was not supposed to be listening and was, Tallow was fairly sure, listening to every word.
“A sack feeds one living person for thirty days,” said Tallow. He had the figure in the minute-book, under the Ink, with a clean line drawn beneath it. “That is the Hold’s rule. It is not a rule the Chamber made, Mistress Pell. It is a rule the Hold worked out for itself in the first spring, with a great deal of shouting, and it has been kept ever since. Article Nine, read with the spring tallies.”
“Article Nine is about tithe, love. It’s not about porridge.”
“Article Nine is about shares, and shares are the only tithe the Hold recognises. The Kitchen’s sacks are the Hold’s shares, paid out in grain. One sack equals thirty days of one mouth. I have checked it against the Lowgate counts every quarter since the Charter of Shares.”
