The parchment rolls smelled of damp cellar vaults and sulfur-tallow when Jon spread them across the kitchen table.
Morning light filtered through the small horn panes of the east window, gray and watery with the river mist that lingered over Harth. Upstairs, Nell was singing a counting rhyme while she straightened the wool blankets in the guest garret. The rhythm of her small boots against the ceiling boards was steady, ordinary, and fragile.
Elin sat opposite him on the bench, an iron stylus held between ink-stained fingers. Beside her elbow sat the brass candlestick that had belonged to Jon’s father, its square base pitted from twenty winters of river salt. Between them lay the parchment roll from forty-eight, listing forty-six rate-paying freeholders of the lower quarter: the weavers, the salters, the cordwainers, and the smiths along South Lane.
“Read the coopers,” Jon said. He kept his voice low, cautious of the taproom door where the morning carters would soon gather for small beer.
Elin drew the tip of the stylus down the faded column of brown ink. “Marris of the North Quay, three barrels and a vat hoop. Orren the elder, deceased in fifty-one. Gurn Varn, five tuns and twelve firkins. That is all of them, Jon. There are no other coopers on the roll for forty-eight.”
