Pell was not impressed by lanterns. She had never been impressed by them. A lantern was a flame in a box, and a flame in a box was a fire that had been taught to behave, and she had watched too many Kitchens go up in too many honest fires to think much of anything that had to be locked away to keep from burning. But the Assembly’s fair had been putting up lanterns along the causeway for a week in honour of the Feast, and on the eve of the Feast there were more than a hundred of them strung along the rail on their wires, glass globes as big as a child’s head, waiting for the dusk, and the cooks had been baking all afternoon in the toll-house yard, and Pell had come down from the Kitchen to see what they had made.
She had come down with the bread-cart again. She had told herself it was because the paid models needed their loaves for the Feast. That was true. She had also told herself she would not stay past the candle-clock, which was not true at all, and which she had known when she said it.
The Assembly’s cooks had made a sweet bread with honey from the marsh-towns, and it was very good. It was dark and close in the crumb, with a sticky crust that had been brushed with something that smelled of crushed nuts and the peel of a dried marsh-fruit, and a glaze…
