The Lantern Players had been paid for their testimony in shares, which Sly had decided to call applause, and which the Chancery’s clerk had written down as a fee. The shares had come up the Lessary Road in a leather pouch, sealed with the Gatehouse wax, and had been counted into the Lantern Players’ hands at the Gatehouse table by Tallow himself, who had insisted on reading the amount aloud twice and had then looked at each actor in turn over the top of his spectacles as though he expected one of them to try to argue about the arithmetic. Corby had tried. Tallow had given him a range, and Corby had gone away quite satisfied, and had spent the whole of his share on a pair of new boots for the lord’s footman, which were still too big.
Sly did not spend his. He put it in a tin box under the bench in the carriage-house, beside the green-bound script, and he did not open the box again for three days.
On the fourth morning he took the script out.
It lay across his knees on the same bench where he had left it after the Inquest, with its cover curled at the corners and its last leaf still marked in red. He had not read it since he gave it to the Chancery’s clerk. He had not wanted to. He had been afraid, for the whole of the week, that if he opened it he would find the…
