The heavy oak bolt of Sister Merrow’s back kitchen door screeched as Eren Tal drew it back. The sound was echoing through the damp stone hall like an iron chisel biting into slate.
Outside in the passage, seven men and two women stood waiting in the grey gloom. Their breath forming was pale clouds in the cold air. They were cold, angry, and suspicious. Master Kett held his wooden cod-scoop like a club. Mistress Vane’s face was set in lines of bitter contempt. And the two draymasters from Orren’s stables had their heavy leather fists shoved deep into their pockets.
“Back for more promises, Rook?” Kett sneered, stepping into the room. “The tide has crested and gone. My salting floor is under six inches of warm bilge, and three barrels of split ling have soured on the sills. Are you going to bring your London witch out of her hole, or do we go to the Ward Constable?”
Pella stood behind the scrubbed beechwood table. She had washed her face with cold well-water. Her dark hair was combed back and tied securely with a strip of clean hemp twine. Her bottle-green apprentice tunic was brushed clean of wood shavings. On the table before her lay nine folded sheets of coarse rag paper, an ink horn, her brass seal-stamp, and a heavy wooden bowl holding fourteen silver coins and thirty-six copper pennies.
