By the second hour of the afternoon, the vast stone expanse of Cathedral Square was packed with fourteen thousand men, women, and children. They filled the great square from the high granite stone railing of Saint Jude’s down to the river bridge. It spread outward into Weaver’s Lane, Printer’s Alley, and the timber yards of the South Basin. People perched on stone window ledges, balanced upon chimney copings, and sat three-deep upon the tailboards of parked heavy cart wagons.
There was no shouting, no tavern singing, and no drunken disorder. A deep, watchful hush hung over the fourteen thousand listeners. Not a dramatic silence, but the deep, holding stillness of an entire city waiting for a verdict that would decide whether their children would grow up as free citizens or bonded tenants.
Tomas Reed walked out onto the raised stone railing at the head of the cathedral steps. He wore his plain, patched woolen cart driver’s smock. His heavy leather trousers were tucked into his hobnailed work boots. Across his broad chest hung the wide green rawhide baldric of the King’s Bench, from which dangled the heavy leaden seal-matrix of the Great Roll of the Realm. Beside him, resting upright upon the stone railing coping, was his ash-wood pack frame. Seasoned, notched, and bearing the dark sweat stains of nine hundred miles of mountain roads.
