Chapter 4: The Magistrate's Hall

I did not cry on the step, because there was no time.

By eight o'clock I was at the Customs House on the quay with my hood up and my father's keys in my hand.

Every weight my father owned was stamped each quarter by the King's assay officer, and every stamp was written in the Customs book.

The clerk on the desk knew me, because I had carried his wife's fever tea to him three winters running.

"They have taken Mr. Tindall?" he said.

"On a false oath."

He opened the great book without another word and copied out the last four quarters on a clean sheet.

He signed it, sealed it, and said, "Tell them I will stand up in court if they ask."

Then I went home and took down the second ledger from my father's study.

It was the thin grey one he kept for the house on Barrington Street, the one he had never shown me.

Every loan he had made to Roland was in it, with Roland's own signature beside each sum.

I counted it standing up.

Four thousand two hundred pounds, in four years, and not a shilling paid back.

At noon I walked into the magistrate's hall with the sheet and the ledger under my arm.

It was a long room with benches, and it was full.

News of the supper had spread across Wexmoor by breakfast, and half the people on the benches had come to watch the Barrington scandal.

Roland stood at the front in a good black coat with his clerks behind him.

Cordelia sat on the first bench in grey silk, with her hands folded.

She turned and gave me a small, sad smile, and I did not smile back.

My father stood in the dock with his hands in front of him.

He saw me come in and nodded once.

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