Pell had come up from the Kitchen with the prince’s evening bread in a cloth, the way she came up most evenings, because the prince forgot to eat when the Chamber sat late and the Chamber had sat late every evening that week. She had meant to leave the loaf on the Gatehouse board and go straight back down the stair to her pots. But the Gatehouse door was open, and the lamp was lit on the table, and the Writ of the Great Hall was lying open on the wood under it, with its margins full of Tallow’s tidy Ink and the lodgers’ hundred and twelve names down the side in a barrel-maker’s capitals, and the prince was standing over it with the Register’s red wax in his fingers and an expression on his face that she had never seen before.
She stayed to watch him sign. She did not pretend it was anything else.
“Boy,” said Pell, from the doorway, “you will eat this before you do anything clever.”
“Pell.” He kept his head down. “I am about to seal a Writ.”
“Then seal it with your mouth full. It will taste better and cost less. I have never yet known a Writ that was worth a crust.”
