The long tables in the Great Hall had been scrubbed the night before, and by the time the candle-clock struck noon they were full from the hearth to the east doors. Idrin had expected a crowd. He had not expected the crowd to be so quiet. Lowgate families sat shoulder to shoulder on the benches with their children on their knees. The Thornwick carters had come up the Lessary Road in their sheepskins and taken the seats nearest the fire, and they were eating as if the bread might be taken back. The Hands had their places at the head of the hall, all of them but one, and the empty place was not left empty; Pell had set a loaf there on a clean cloth, because she said that a seat with nobody in it still got hungry.
Idrin stood at the head of the table with the Writ in his right hand. He had written the draft himself in the small hours, three times, and burned two of the drafts in the Kitchen stove, and the fair copy lay on the board in front of him under a plate of heavy grey bread to keep it from curling. His left arm hung at his side. He had tucked it under his coat so that no one would see the sleeve, and he had found, that morning, that he could no longer feel the cloth against his fingers when he tried.
