The witness bench in the Great Hall was a plain oak form set at an angle to the Chamber’s table, so that anyone sitting on it had to turn their head to see the Hands and could not, without turning further, see the Chancery’s clerk. Benedek Sly had sat on it once before, for a quarter of an hour, when the Lantern Players had asked the Chamber for a licence to perform in the stables. He had quoted himself throughout. He had been asked, at the end, to stop. He had not stopped, and the licence had been granted on condition that he never again performed the Duke of the Barge in the presence of the Hold’s Chamberlain.
He sat on the bench now with the green-bound script on his knees and both hands flat on its cover. He had not quoted anybody since the infirmary. It had been very hard.
The Great Hall was full. He could feel it at his back, as a stage can be felt by the actor who has his face to the wings. The lodgers were in the gallery, which was not a gallery but a long ledge along the north wall where the Hold’s oldest visitors had once sat to watch the Chamber’s votes. The Chancery’s commission had named the lodgers as witnesses, and so the commission had let them in. The Hold’s own law did not yet let them speak on its floor. They stood at the lodgers’ rail below the ledge…
