The acolytes came in at the first bell with their censers, and they laid them in a ring on the Great Hall’s floor, and Venn walked the ring twice with her handbell in her hand, and asked each Hand by name to sit in its seat and let the bell take it down.
Tallow sat at the minutes with the book open on his knee and the Ink-pot squared beside his elbow. He had asked the Chamber for the right to keep the record of the rite, and the Chamber had granted it, by its usual method, which was that nobody had objected except Gaunt, who had objected to the rite and was therefore, by the Chamber’s reckoning, a Hand who had consented to the minute. He wrote the time at the top of the page. He wrote the number of the censers, which was eleven, and the number of the acolytes, which he counted twice and got as nine on the first count and ten on the second, and he wrote both figures, with a range of one between them, because he had been trained to write what he saw and not what he expected to see.
Pell sat down first.
