The four clerks of the King’s Bench took twenty minutes to clear the center of the great oak table. It pushed aside the stacks of legal folios, the animal fat candle trays. The bundles of quill pens to make room for what was coming. Across the well of the court, the twelve Chief Justices watched in silence, their furred sleeves resting upon the polished dark wood bench, while in the gallery above, five hundred spectators leaned over the brass railings without making a sound.
Tomas Reed unbuckled the heavy hemp straps of his ash-wood pack frame and lowered it to the floor beside the petitioner’s bar. His shoulders were stiff from carrying the frame through the crowded streets from Printer’s Alley. But his movements were measured and unrushed. He reached down to his right hip and unclasped the lead-lined leather courier satchel that had traveled with him across five hundred leagues of mountain roads, silt causeways, and canal towpaths. His left forearm throbbed beneath its calfskin brace, the scarred tissue aching with the persistent cold of the hall. But he kept his left hand steady. He used his thumb to support the base of the satchel while his sound right hand reached inside.
