The wool-loft smelled of lanolin and cold stone, and somebody had built a bench out of three bales and a plank, which Mott sat on with her cloak tucked under her and her contract on her knee. Across from her, on a second bale that had been turned on its end to serve as a chair, sat Piers Hadley, in a coat too thin for the autumn wind, with his left hand resting on his thigh and his right hand hidden in his lap. Between them, on an upturned crate, stood a lamp with a cracked chimney. Nobody had lit it yet. The light came in through the loft’s high door, grey and sideways, and fell across the bales like the edge of a cloth.
“Tell me the price,” said Piers.
“Four hundred marks of silver,” said Mott. “Paid on the day the Charter passes, in four chests, by the lord’s own clerk, at the Hold’s gate. One season. One Form. The mason’s Form, to be lent to the lord’s quarry at Thornwick.”
“And the buyer?”
“A lord who counts.”
Piers looked up at her with a faint, tired smile. “You have not named him.”
“A broker does not name the buyer until the clause is drafted,” said Mott, “because a named buyer is a price, and a price on the table before the clause is an insult to the clause. I am fond of clauses, Mr Hadley. I would not insult one for the world.” She tapped the contract…
