Tallow wrote the lodgers’ line for Piers Hadley on the fiftieth night, at the Gatehouse slant-board, with the lamp turned to the page and the grey calf cover of the ledger lying open under his left hand. He wrote it in the Ink. He wrote it slowly, because the Charter required a line and the Hold required the line to be exact, and an exact line was the only kind of lodging that could survive a Chamber’s temper for a season.
He wrote: Hadley, Piers, wool-factor of Coldharbour; lodger; in the masons’ spare Form at Thornwick, for one season, by his own yes, given at the Turn in his own voice. Tithe paid by the Hold.
He read it aloud, twice, under his breath. The second reading snagged on the last four words. Tithe paid by the Hold. It sounded, in the Ink’s flat voice, very like a boast, the sort of thing a clerk writes when he has been pleased with his own accounts. He sat looking at it for some time, with his pen lifted and his ears burning. Then he dipped the nib, and very carefully struck through the last four words, and wrote in their place: Tithe paid by the Hold, which the Hold does not boast of. He considered that for a moment. Then he struck that out too, and wrote only Tithe paid by the Hold, which was true, and which had no boast in it at all, because a boast was a thing…
