A roar went up from the two hundred townspeople packed around the market cross—not the drilled cheer of soldiers saluting a banner, but the rough, chest-deep shout of masons, fish-curers, weavers, and barge-men who had just watched a royal debt-bailiff beaten on his own counting-house scale.
Jon Hale did not shout. He stood behind the oak trestle board with both palms pressed flat against the sun-warmed wood, feeling the fifty silver crowns on Corve Penner’s assize cloth and the fifty wet ink lines on Elin’s Shareholder Roll lock into the ancient grammar of the valley.
“Silence in the court for the sealing of the instrument!” Lady Signe Lorr called out, raising her carved bone stylus (#11) above the crowd as the shout echoed back from the slate roofs of the Guildhall and the stone piers of the bridge. “Under the Municipal Commons Statute, the redemption of the debt clears the encumbered freehold; the affixing of the fifty citizen seals incorporates the perpetual trust. Let the final subscribers press their marks before Notary Penner closes the assize register!”
One by one, the last ten subscribers stepped up to the trestle board while Elin held the vellum corners flat against the river wind and Sister Oda warmed the sealing wax over the tallow flame.
