Chapter 124

The Hearth sat on the first Thursday of December, in the old east hall, with sleet on the windows.

I had not been in that room since the summer of my inquiry. It had not changed. The long low ceiling, the fireplace at the end big enough to stable a pony in, the queue benches along both walls. The great carved chair with wolves climbing up its arms still stood against the side wall where I had had it pushed, my first February. In front of the fire, where it should have been, stood a plain kitchen chair with a rush seat.

Nobody had taken it away. The eldest sat in it now, with her staff across her knees.

The benches were full, and the doorway, and the passage beyond it. Most of the faces were not council faces. They were the faces that had stood in my queues: grooms and laundresses, the widow with the fence, a carter, three girls from the dairy with their sleeves still rolled. People who had come because the King of Vaelmoor was to stand at the Hearth, and nobody ali