The Great Hall of the King’s Bench was one of the stone-built wonders of the kingdom. A giant stone nave two hundred feet long, sixty feet wide, and eighty feet high, framed with an ancient hammer-beam ceiling of blackened English oak carved with angels holding scales and swords. Beneath the huge stained-glass window of the south cross-hall sat the Great Dais. There, the Twelve Chief Justices of the Realm were assembled in full ritual majesty, wearing their scarlet broadcloth robes trimmed in white ermine, their white powdered wigs framing grim, uncompromising faces.
The floor of the hall was packed with two thousand spectators. Guild wardens, foreign ambassadors, merchant aldermen, and common working people who stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the aisles. In the center of the hall, enclosed within the carved oak bar of the court, stood Tomas Reed, Hester Quill, and Scribe Olla. On the velvet-draped evidence stone base lay the unrolled Founding Charter of Anno 242, its forty-eight green wax seals gleaming under the light of two hundred tall beeswax candles, beside Aaron Coram’s diary and the seized registry of The Golden Swan.
Across the bar, standing in the prisoner’s dock flanked by four tipstaves with silver maces, stood High Chancellor Lord Malvern the Younger and High Archivist Orson Pell. The High judge’s high-born arrogance had entirely dissolved. His face was gray as lead. His lips shook, his hands clutching the iron railing as Hester Quill finished her four-hour careful closing argument.
