The Great Nave of High-Fen Cathedral had never held such an assembly.
Eight hundred people from seven marsh parishes stood packed between the stone pillars. Peat-cutters, draymen, weavers, washerwomen, and ditchers, their wool caps held against their chests, their muddy boots quiet upon the granite flags. In the front pews sat forty-two elderly widows and sixty-eight direct descendants, their eyes fixed on the raised chancel rail.
On the communion table lay the three open wax firkins, Captain Brand’s field journal, and the one hundred and forty stamped brass tags.
Magistrate Valen sat on the high court bench beneath the carved stone crucifix, wearing his full ritual robes of scarlet wool and ermine. Flanking the courtroom doors stood Sile Rook and ten North Ward sentries, their rawhide shields resting against their shins.
Valen struck the sounder block once with his bone gavel. TOCK.
“Master Assessor Tomas Reed,” Valen commanded, his voice filling the cavernous hall. “Read the roll of the Fourth Fenland Levy into the permanent record of the King’s Bench.”
Tomas stood before the lectern, his ash staff resting against his hip, his scarred left arm held steady within his calfskin brace. He opened the regimental roster.
He began to read.
