The first Turn under the Writ of the Great Hall was the first Turn in the history of Ormhold at which a lord of Thornwick stood at the lodgers’ rail and was permitted to speak. Vale had been told this by Tallow, very precisely, in the Gatehouse two days before, when the minutes were read over to him for his signature. He had been told that as a visitor under lodging he had the right to be heard once, in his own name, for the length of one reading, and that the Chamber would decide afterward whether the reading was a visit or a claim. He had asked what the difference was. Tallow had given him a range.
He stood at the rail now with the clean ledger in both hands and his leather case on the floor beside his boots, and he did not begin with my people.
He had turned that over all morning, in the counting-house, with the frost going off the window in long pale slips. He had thought about the speeches he had made in the Thornwick parlours, about the Union, about the first citizen of the High Wells and the honour of the Thornwick tithe, and he had found that all of them began with a phrase that made the speaker sound as if he owned the room. He would not begin that way. He would begin with the only thing he was certain of, which was a number.
