The crypt beneath St. Jude’s Parish Church was a vast, underground forest of Norman pillars, fifty paces square, its ceiling vaulting supported by thirty squat limestone piers. For two hundred years, the crypt had been used to store flour sacks during river floods and to shelter homeless weavers during winter freezes. But on this Monday evening, the damp stone vault was packed to the doors with two hundred and forty men and women. The elected wardens, searchers, and elder trustees of the Forty-Eight Incorporated Mysteries of Crown-Reach.
They sat upon overturned beer casks, rough pine benches, and stacks of dry grain sacks, lit up by seventy animal fat candles set into iron sconces along the walls. The air smelled of damp wool, pipe tobacco, lye soap, and the sharp, coppery tang of dark oak-ink. At the center of the crypt, standing upon a low granite stone base that served as a speaker’s dais, stood Tomas Reed, Hester Quill, and Master Printer Tobias Caxton.
“The Chief Justice has frozen the accounts,” Hester Quill announced. Her voice carried through the low stone arches with crystal-clear clarity. “Twelve thousand gold sovereigns in principal and thirty-six thousand in delinquent dividends are now legally encumbered under the seal of the King’s Bench. But a frozen ledger doesn’t rebuild a burned roof. An injunction doesn’t feed a disabled cart driver’s orphan. The High court faction will stall. They will file demurrers, motions for rehearing, and jurisdictional objections. They hope that if they delay for six months…
