Osk carried the petition to the Great Hall himself, in the inside pocket of his best coat, because it was the only paper in the Hold he trusted to a coat that had been buttoned all the way up.
It had come out of the marsh in a sealed bag on the carter’s cart, and it had been written on the reed-scroll that the marsh-women used for their own counts, a long brown strip of pressed stalk with the names written down it in ink that had run in the damp. Osk had read it on the Lowgate road, under a lantern, with his feet going numb in the frost. He had read it three times. He had not been able to decide, on the third reading, whether the girl who had written it knew how to spell Dwelling or had decided to spell it the way the Chancery did, to make the Chamber’s clerk look twice. He had decided that it did not matter. The sense of it was the same in either spelling, and the sense was plain.
I ask to be counted in the Hold, under the Charter of my marsh, as one who keeps the sluice-key of the Reed-Houses and will keep it for the Hold while there is a Hold. I ask for a Dwelling on the Kitchen side of the gate, and for my name in the Register in my own hand. Wren of the Reed-Houses. Lodger One.
