The Court of the King’s Bench was not a tiered arena of plush velvet cushions and perfumed fire bowls. It was an ancient, vaulted hall of cold Caen limestone, built two hundred years before the first guildhouse was chartered. Its high, narrow lancet windows admitted only a bleak, gray northern light, lighting up the black oak bench where the twelve Chief Justices sat beneath the carved wooden canopy of the Sovereign Realm.
The room smelled of damp stone, horsehair wigs, lavender water used to ward off jail fever, and hundreds of years of decaying parchment rolls stored in iron chests along the walls. The acoustics were severe. Every scrape of a boot on the flat stone slabs echoed like a chisel striking flint against the massive limestone pillars.
Senior Chief Justice Aldous Vance sat at the center of the dais. He was seventy-four years old, his body shrunken within the heavy scarlet wool robes of his office, his face like an ancient walnut shell, all dry ridges and deep shadows. But behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes were as clear and merciless as winter river ice.
Before him, at the petitioner’s bar, stood Hester Quill. Her black cape was sodden at the hem. Her gray hair was plastered to her forehead by the rain. But her hands were steady as she held the stamped thick parchment caveat. Beside her, resting on the green baize table, was the approved roll of one thousand names. It was tied with tarred manila hemp.
