The Roll was opened for the first time that season in the Great Hall, and Tallow lifted its back leaves from their clasp with both hands, as the wage-clerks of the old hall had been taught to lift a ledger that had been left out in the rain.
The leaves came up stiffly. They had been folded under the clasp since midwinter, and the paper had taken the cold of the Undercroft into its fibres and held it there, so that they lay on the lectern with a faint crackle, like ice breaking on a pond. He laid them flat. He set the lead weights at their corners, one, two, three, four, where Gaunt had cast them, and he stood back and looked at the Roll as the Chamber would see it: forty-two lines in the Ink, numbered down the first column in his own square hand, each with its name and its trade and its wage, every wage marked as paid.
Below the forty-second line, the rules ran grey and clean to the foot of the leaf. Forty-three was ruled. It was empty.
The Chamber was seated. Tallow had counted the seats from the corridor before he came in, and found nine, and had counted them again from the lectern, and found nine again, which was the first time that season the figure had come out the same both ways. Harrow sat on the bench nearest the Roll, with his count-cord across his knees and the rain of the…
