Tallow went down to the Undercroft press alone, with the lamp and the slate and a pot of the Clerk’s ink, because the Chamber was set to sit on the counterpart in two days’ time and he wanted to know the state of the paper before the Chamber saw it.
He had not been in the press since the autumn. He had been meaning to go down every day since the Writ came, and each day something had intervened: the granary, the Bonds, the reeve’s death, the Smith’s arm, the Chamber’s endless sittings at every candle-clock. He had told himself that the paper would keep. He had known, all along, that he was afraid of it, and that the fear had made him reasonable about the delay, which was the Clerk’s oldest vice.
He went down the stair carefully. He skipped the fourth step, which was still roped and still cracked, and he counted the other eight under his breath, and each one held. The Undercroft’s cold came up to meet him like the damp of an old cellar that had been shut too long, and under it, faint and sweet, was the smell of the Keystone, which was not a smell at all, but a warmth that his nose had learned to read as a kind of scent. He set the lamp on the bench by the press door. Then he stood for a moment in the cold, listening.
