The timber platform before the check barn had become a public courtroom in the mud.
Tomas Reed stood behind the long oak table, lit up by the pale, cold light of midday. Arranged before him in three neat tiers were the thirty clay pot jars of Oakhaven carmine dye, the forty-two notice books recovered from Marrow’s safe. The eight sealed glass tubes containing the clean, untainted blood of the marsh wagon drivers.
Beside him sat Master Apothecary Marrow. He was bound to his chair with three-strand manila cart driver’s rope, his face sunken, his velvet cap gone, his starched smock stained with black ink and his own tears.
Six hundred marsh folk stood in an unbroken semicircle around the platform, their eyes fixed on Tomas as he held up a clear glass phial containing the thick, dark crimson spirit-extract taken from Marrow’s sleeve harness.
“Listen to me, men of the Delta!” Tomas shouted, his voice ringing across the levee to the high watchtowers above the gate. “For twenty-five years, this man told you that the Red Rot was an incurable poison that lives in your blood! He told you that when your blood touched his copper saucer, the red color proved you were unclean!”
