The Bench had answered the letter with a single word, and the Chamber spent the whole of the morning deciding what the word meant.
Tallow read it out from the minute-book, because the reply had come up the causeway in a Dovereach runner’s pouch and had been opened in front of the gate, as the custom required. He read the word without inflection, then he set the slip of paper flat on the table so that the Hall could see the ink. It was the Bench’s own seal, a small wave above a salt-cross, and under the seal the word was written in a quick, clean hand.
Noted.
“Noted,” said Korrin. “That is what a clerk says when he has put a thing in a drawer.”
“It is what a clerk says,” said Tallow, “when he has been asked a question he would prefer not to answer, and has decided that the question is no longer his. It is not a refusal. It is a silence with a pen in it. I should put the wait at one day to a week before the Bench writes again, and I should put the content at nothing, since it has already been written.”
