The view from the milestone disc was three inches off the wet gravel, framed by withered wild tansy and the iron hoop of an abandoned wagon wheel.
Through that disc, Noll smelled the damp wool of thirty Crown foot-soldiers and the faint, sweet pungency of clean pine shavings. A carpenter in a grey leather apron was humming a hymn about harvest sheaves while driving six-inch ash pegs into the frozen turf with a hickory beetle.
Above him rose the tent.
It was not a command pavilion of oiled leather or dark field canvas such as armies pitched when preparing to throw iron shot against stone parapets. It was bleached white linen, stitched with double seams and bound with clean hemp rope that smelled fresh from the chandler’s shop. Above the front flap fluttered a long pennant of yellow silk bearing the scales and quill of the March Ledger.
Beside the tent door, two junior clerks worked with brass tacks and a small cobbler’s hammer, fixing a broadsheet to an oak signpost. The paper was heavy vellum, stamped with red wax at the bottom and headed with bold black lettering:
BY ORDER OF THE LORD AUDITOR OF THE NORTHERN MARCHES: SPECIAL QUARANTINE NOTICE CONCERNING CORE TAINT AND UNLICENSED RESONANCE IN THE PARISH OF MERE.
