The forty days ended at the second candle of the fortieth morning, and Hesper Quill was in the Gatehouse to see them end.
She had asked for the Gatehouse. She had asked for it in writing, through the Bench’s runner, in four plain lines that she had drafted and struck through and drafted again until they said only what she meant. The Hold had sent back a reply in three words, under the Regent’s own name. The Gatehouse is open. She had read the reply twice and found nothing in it that a correct woman could object to, and so she had come up the slope on foot, with two clerks and her son’s hand in hers, to stand under the nail.
The nail was still there. It was in the gate’s oak at the height of her shoulder, driven through the corner of the Bench’s folded Writ, and the Writ had gone grey and soft with a month of weather. The nail-head had darkened. It was not bright any longer, as it had been on the first morning. It was the colour of old iron, like everything else in the Hold, and she found that she did not like looking at it, since it reminded her of how much had been written in the wood by a single blow.
