Chapter 11: Three Papers

At midnight Calista came down to the kitchen and found two women sitting at her table with a lamp between them.

Ottilie had her hands flat on the wood.

Elowen sat opposite, with her satchel on her knees and her braid half undone.

They had both been crying, and neither of them was now.

"Sit down, Cal," said Elowen.

It was the first time she had used the short name.

Calista stood in the doorway in her wrapper, with the chalk still in her fist from the afternoon.

She had been about to go over the flour accounts.

"What's happened?"

"We found something," Ottilie said. "Or we found out that we've been found. I haven't decided."

"I do not understand."

"Sit," said Ottilie, "and bring yours."

Calista went very still.

"Bring what?"

"The paper you've been carrying in your pocket for four days. The one with my name on it."

Calista stared at her.

Ottilie did not smile.

She reached into her bodice and drew out a small folded square, creased to cloth at the edges, and laid it on the table.

"Mine has yours," she said.

For a long moment nobody spoke.

Calista crossed the floor and sat.

She took the petition from her pocket and laid it beside Ottilie's.

Elowen opened her folder and laid hers beside both.

Three sheets of paper lay side by side in the lamplight.

Calista read her own first, the one that put away the barren wife.

Then Ottilie's, the one that asked the Marquis to close the Swan.

Then Elowen's, which begged him to marry her off to an old man.

They were all in the same neat italic.

The same long tail on the capital letters, the same loop in every g, the same careful space between every word.

They were not three papers by three hands.

They were one hand, writing three lies in an afternoon.

"It's a clerk's copy," said Calista, slowly. "Some secretary at the Hall."

"Some secretary," Ottilie said, "who signed three women's names perfectly. Look at the tail on my D."

"It's very good."

"It is magnificent. I'd hire the man."

"Where did you get yours?" Elowen asked.

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