Tallow copied the clause by lamplight at the gatehouse table, with the counterpart propped on its frame beside him and the Crown’s copy closed at his elbow, because he would not let the Crown’s copy be opened on the same table as the one he was writing from.
The Lessaran column ran down the counterpart’s second side, beside the Foundation’s own tongue, as all leases of the old March had been drawn. It was an older Lessaran than the one the Chancery spoke now. The vowels were broader and the consonants were softer, and some of the words had gone out of use in the Lessary cities a century ago, but a clerk who had been trained in the Foundation’s wage-hall could read them without much trouble. Tallow had learned the old tongue in his first year from the same cheap grammar Harrow used for the Lessaran levy-lists, and he had been surprised, then, by how many of its words had been invented for the business of rent.
He copied the clause letter for letter. He did not paraphrase. He did not give a number. He set his pen to the page at the head of the sheet and wrote, in the Ink, a line that would be read by a marshal who had asked for it in writing and who would hold the paper up to his own lamp to check every stroke:
