The heavy oak door between the taproom bar and the back scullery swung shut with a muffled thud of felt weather-stripping, cutting off the warm yellow glow of the supper board and the polite murmur of Warden Brecht’s voice.
Here in the narrow stone-flagged scullery behind the kitchen chimney, only a single hooded tin stable-lantern burned on the salting-bench. Master mason Alden Bram stood waiting beside the back yard door with his heavy iron-shod ash measuring rod in one hand and four greased pine wedges tucked into the front pocket of his leather apron. Two paces from him, Lady Signe Lorr—who had slipped out through the parlor side-door thirty seconds after Jon left the bar—stood holding her sealed High Assize transcript of Dispatch Forty-Four inside a waterproof oilskin cylinder, while Elin Hale paused in the kitchen archway with a wooden tray of bread-pudding cups held against her hip to keep watch on the taproom latch.
Jon Hale set the empty stoneware jug down upon the salting-bench and held up his right hand in the dim lantern light so all three of them could see the pale silver ring around the base of his thumb.
“The silver spoon caught him twice across the board,” Jon whispered, his voice pitched below the simmer of the copper wash-boiler on the back hob. “When Brecht paid the silver crown at the start of supper, he paid fourteen copper pence—two for his bowl, six for the six horses, and six for the six straw ticks…
