Vale came to the Great Hall on the morning after the Form went home, without his leather case and without a single member of his retinue. He had left the case in the Gatehouse with Tallow, on the Register table, with its brass clasps shut and its contents still inside it: the census, the Union’s draft, a fair copy of his letter to the Assembly of Seats, and a folded paper on which, in his own hand, he had written the name of every household in the Thornwick parishes in alphabetical order, with the child’s age beside each where it was known. He had not wanted to carry any of it into the room. He had wanted to speak with empty hands.
He walked to the lodgers’ rail and stood at it, and the rail was cold under his palms, and the Hall was quiet, because it was the Turn, and the Turn was always quiet at the beginning.
“I have no further claim on the Form,” said Vale.
He said it in one plain sentence, in his parlour voice, and he kept his eyes off the Chamber’s table as he said it. He looked at the rail beneath his hands, at the grain of the old oak, which had been worn smooth in places by the Hold’s lodgers for two years. The Form was on the Lessary Road that morning, on a Thornwick cart, with a wool-factor walking at its wheel and a Thornwick girl beside him with a…
