The thick parchment was three feet long and eight inches wide, cut from the prime back-hide of a northern yearling heifer. When Tomas unrolled it across the padded baize boards. He held the curling edges down with four lead weights wrapped in chamois leather, the surface gave a dry, papery creak that sounded like a winter sail taking the wind. The parchment had the creamy, yellow-amber tone of seasoned bone, speckled with tiny, hair-follicle pits that proved it had been scraped by hand with a lunellum blade rather than treated with modern heavy-duty acids.
Tomas leaned over the parchment, bringing the oil lamp closer. The dark oak-ink was dark purple-black, sitting high upon the grain of the hide in sharp, razor-thin gothic strokes. Two hundred and ten years of darkness had protected the pigment from the fading bleaching of daylight. But across the lower third of the membrane, a thin crust of crystal-clear salt had bloomed from the thick parchment’s natural connective tissue, partially obscuring the marginal notes.
Tomas closed his eyes for a three-beat count, steadying his breathing. He focused his awareness not upon the room or the cold stone ribs above, but upon the tactile contact between his rough right thumb and the lower margin of the skin. His class discipline, Read the Record, stirred behind his eyes like the turning of a dry sheepskin leaf.
