Tallow opened the Wage Line in the Treasury at the fourth Turn under the Writ, in the Gatehouse, on the flat board where the Register’s wax was kept. He had drawn it up himself, on three sheets of Foundation paper, from the Hold’s own shorthand and the Chamber’s minutes and the back leaves of the wage-book, and he had ruled every column with a steel rule and a pencil until his hand ached. It was the first ledger the Hold had ever kept for people who were paid but could not vote. He had not known until he began it how many of them there were.
He did not start with the cook. He started with the Treasury, because a clerk who starts with the person he most wants to pay will always pay her the wrong way round.
The Treasury stood at four hundred and forty sacks of grain, a thousand six hundred marks of silver, and the shares that had been owed to the Hands since the Charter of Shares, written in the margin in his own small figures and never yet paid out. He read the figures aloud, very quietly, to the empty Gatehouse, the way he had read them to the Chamber at the Turn. Then he took up the pen and wrote, beneath them, in the Ink, the first entry of the new line.
