Mott sat in the Gatehouse counting-room with the oilcloth open on the table and the cut stick lying on its folds, and for the first time in twenty-two years of trade she did not reach for a pen to begin a sum. She had a pen. It was in her inside pocket, where it had been since she left Coldharbour, and she could feel its barrel against her ribs through the coat. She left it there.
The paper knot lay at the end of the stick, the soft brown leaf wound round the wood and tied with its thin cord, and beside it, in the Ink of a clerk who had not wanted anything for himself, a line of writing that she had now read so many times she could have recited it in the dark. Ansard, cook. One wage. In token, paid. It was not the same line as the one in the wage-book. The wage-book had said to be paid. The knot said paid. Somewhere between the two, in a wage-house two hundred years ago, the thing had been finished, and nobody in Coldharbour had been told.
Tallow came in at the candle-clock with the Wage Line under his arm.
