The man who buried my mother broke bread at my table, and I poured him ale like a dutiful daughter. Every kind word he gave my crust cost me a little more nerve. Why would a magister come himself, on the eve of the bell, to a baker's kitchen?
"Good crumb," Vey said, turning the loaf in his hands before he cut it. "Open, even, a little sour at the back. A loaf like that is a kindness to a hungry parish."
On his right hand he wore a signet ring cut with a lantern throwing three rays. It clicked against the knife as he sawed. Sergeant Ede stood against my door with his arms folded, and Bastian stood by the hearth with the lantern at his hip and his eyes on nothing.
"I was a captain that autumn," Vey said. "I counted the dead. Six in this parish had my hand on their burials, and I remember each, because I always do. A sad season. I am sorry for it."
"Are you lodged at the Hart?" I said, knowing the Hart was ash.
"The reeve's front room. Ede and I, and two of mine, Fenn and Albright, who keep our cart in the square." He ate. "I like to be near my people."
"Mott's good company?"
"Reeves are all alike, Miss Rook. They like to be useful." He smiled at me over the crust, and I understood I had learned nothing and been thanked for it.
My kitchen lamp stood dark. I reached for a taper and he lifted a hand.
"Allow me. No need to waste a taper."
Ede brought forward a small glass lantern, and Vey opened its door and touched a spill to the flame, then my wick to the spill. The lamp caught with a smell of hot brass instead of tallow. Fire from his own glass, now sitting in my mother's kitchen, and I had thanked him before I could stop myself.
"My boy Crowe tells me you've been patient with him," he said, rising. "He has a soft heart. I have tried for years to cure it."
"Magister," said Bastian.
"You'll walk me back, boy."
They went. I stood with the lamp burning, and the bread he'd praised lay in neat slices, and I could not make myself eat one.
"Pip."
He came down the loft ladder with straw in his hair and his starter crock under one arm, because he never went anywhere without checking it had not died. I took the cap off his head.
"Tam, that's my good cap."
"It's white. White shows." I hung it on the peg. "The reeve's house. Stand in the brewhouse shadow, see who goes in and out, and come home. Keep away from windows."
"Honest, I'll be a post with ears, and if anyone asks I'll say I'm looking for the cat."
"We have no cat."
"Then I lost one."
He went. I scrubbed the table twice over, and the back door banged, and he fell in breathless and bareheaded.
"Mott went in. Not an hour ago, with something under his coat, flat, like a book or a board, and he came out lighter, Tam, rubbing his hands like he'd sold a pig, and he was whistling."
I sat down on the bench.
So the threat had fired already. Mott had gone to the magister before his own deadline, and Vey had sat at my table and broken my bread and said nothing. Had he not wanted to say it where Bastian could hear? Or had he wanted to see how long I would keep smiling?
"Go back," I said. "Once more. Same shadow, same rules. I want to know when he comes out."
I said it. I would have to remember that I said it.
It was Bastian who came for me, an hour later, with his collar up and his face shut.
"Ede found your boy under the magister's window. He says he was looking for a cat."
I don't remember crossing the square. I remember the cart: an iron-barred box on wheels, a lantern on a pole at each corner, and Fenn and Albright either side of it, eating chestnuts.
"Mistress?" His voice came through the slats, small. "I only went to the window, honest. I only went the once."
I put my hand on the bar. It was cold and wet. "I know."
The reeve's front room was warm, with a fire built for a guest. Vey sat beside it with his hands folded.
"Take me instead," I said. "He's twelve. He has a crock and a loft and nothing else."
"Miss Rook."
"I'll bake for your guards, for your whole Order, for a year, for nothing."
"A boy who spies for a baker," Vey said, gently, the way you speak to a child who has dropped a plate. "What else does he do for her?"
I had no answer that was not a rope.
"Magister," said Bastian from the door. "He's a baker's boy. Release him to me, on my word."
"Captain."
One word. Bastian's jaw worked, and then he looked at the floor and said nothing more, and I heard what that cost him.
"He rides to Carrow at dawn on Monday," Vey told me. "Two days. He'll be fed."
In the loft his blanket was still creased where he had lain. The crock sat on the shelf with its cloth squared, and I could not look at it.
I thought about two guards with lanterns on poles, eating chestnuts like men with all night to wait.
Sleep cakes, then. Barley and honey, and the worked part, the part that costs. Hours of dead sleep for whoever swallowed one, and I would carry them out myself, warm, with a smile.
The bakehouse oven stood eleven paces from the bakehouse door, and twenty from the kitchen. Bastian's glass saw every working within twelve. In the yard, I was caught. In the kitchen, the lantern at his elbow, I was clear.
"Sit in the kitchen," I told him. "Sunday orders are heavy. I'll bake through."
He looked at me a long time. Then he went in and sat, and set the lantern on the table by his hand.
I shut the bakehouse door and put both hands in the dough. Across the dark yard the kitchen window glowed yellow, and the cold began to climb my arms.