The council met three days after Bramwell rode out, and it began badly, because Victoria began it.
"Before Alaric speaks," she said, standing, which she rarely did. "There's something the council should know, and I'd rather it came from me than reached anyone sideways." She did not look at Thomas. "Lord Bramwell knows the account that went to Bruges came from this town. He told me so himself, the morning he left. His creditors sent him a copy of it, with questions, within a month of receiving their own."
The room went quiet.
"He knows," said Diccon slowly. "He's known for -- how long?"
"Years."
"And he came here anyway. Sat at your table. Ate your bread." Diccon's face was reddening. "And you didn't think to tell us until now?"
"He told me three days ago. I am telling you now." Victoria's voice did not change. "I've spent those three days deciding whether it changes anything. I don't think it does. He would have done the same in our place. He said so. I believe him."
"You believe him."
"I believe he meant it when he said it," said Victoria. "That is not the same as trusting him, and I don't."
There was more -- Diccon wanted to know what else had been said, and Victoria told him that the rest had been between her and a man who would not say it again, and that it was hers to judge, and Diccon did not like that and said so, and Cecily had to put a hand on his arm. Thomas sat through it and said nothing, because he knew what else had been said, and he knew why she was keeping it, and he knew that she was right to.
When it was done, Alaric stood up.
He had read the Whitcombe judgment for the fifth time in his life that week. He looked older than he had in years.
"He is right," he said.
Nobody spoke.
"I want to be exact, because exactness is the whole of this." He laid the copy on the bench. "When Corbin sat at Whitcombe, he ruled that Argenton's tenure was lawfully settled and that the Bishop's chancellor's ratification cured the defect in the original grant. That is what the judgment says. That is all it says."
"That's what we needed it to say," said Cecily.
"It is what we needed it to say then, when the question was whether this town had a right to exist on this ground." Alaric's finger rested on the page. "It is not a ruling about revenue. It is not a ruling about aids, tallages, tolls, or a lord's rights in a chartered borough within his fee. Those questions were not before the court, because at the time nobody had thought to ask them, because in those days this town had a thousand people and a water wheel and was not worth the asking."
"And the charter itself?"
"The charter is stronger, and it is where our case lives, and it is also --" Alaric stopped, and made himself say it. "It is also a document drafted when this town was a village, by Hamo, Victoria, and myself, to solve the problem we had at the time, which was a Baron who wished to burn us. It is beautifully made for that purpose. It exempts Argenton from the ordinary aids and tallages of the fee. It says nothing whatever about extraordinary ones, because we assumed -- we assumed, and I remember the conversation -- that a lord who tried to levy extraordinary aids again and again would be stopped by the Crown."
"Which is what happened with the first one," Victoria said slowly. "Not because it was unlawful. Because it was politically costly."
"Because we made it costly. Yes." Alaric sat back. "We have spent twenty years believing we were protected by law. We have in fact been protected by law on the narrow question of whether we exist, and by reputation on everything else. Bramwell has understood that, and he has seen, correctly, that reputation is a defence which works until it is attacked by someone with nothing left to lose."
The silence went on for some time.
"How bad is it?" Thomas asked.
"If he brings a properly built claim for extraordinary aid against a chartered borough in his fee, before a court, on grounds of necessity -- and necessity is a real doctrine, and he has real, documented necessity --" Alaric spread his hands. "I would put our chances at a little better than even. Not because the law favours us. Because twenty years of spotless conduct and a dozen holdings who liked Victoria's accounts will weigh with a justiciar. That is not a legal position. That is a political one, and I have spent my whole career telling people not to rely on those."
"Can we strengthen it?"
"Yes. And this is the part I have been dreading." Alaric looked straight at Thomas. "We can seek a fresh confirmation from the present Crown. A new charter, or a confirmation of the old one in modern terms that closes the gaps we left at Whitcombe. If we get it, Bramwell is finished. There is no case he can bring."
"And the cost?"
"Heavy, in money. Worse in exposure." Alaric's voice was flat. "A confirmation is not granted on request. It is granted after review. The Crown will send commissioners, and those commissioners will examine this town far more closely than Fenn or Bramwell ever have, and they will ask questions this council has spent two decades not being asked."
He let it sit.
"The school's foundation. The Codex and how it is spread. Where the methods came from, on which this town's whole living rests." Alaric held Thomas's eyes. "And they will ask, as commissioners always ask, about the founder. Where he came from. What his family was. Why there is no record of Master Thomas of Argenton anywhere in this Kingdom before he walked into this valley."
Victoria had gone very still.
Above them, in the dusty gallery, something shifted very slightly, the way an old building shifts. Nobody looked up.
"I have kept that question away from you for twenty years," Alaric said quietly. "In a dozen documents. I have become rather good at it. I am telling this council now that I cannot keep it away in a Crown review, and that somebody should decide, on purpose and in advance, what the answer is going to be."
Nobody said anything.
"Thank you," Thomas said at last. "I'd like a day."
Alaric caught him in the passage afterward, when the others had gone. The old man was leaning on the wall with his stick, and he waited until the clerks had shut the scriptorium door before he spoke.
"I am going to ask you one question," he said. "I have never asked you anything about it in twenty years, and after this I never will again. You may refuse to answer."
Thomas waited.
"If a Crown commissioner learned the true answer," said Alaric, "would they hang you for it?"
Thomas looked at him for a while. He thought about the Archbishop's men, and a fire in a square, and four children in a house above the flume.
"Yes," he said. "Or burn me. And they'd look very hard at everyone who'd known."
Alaric nodded slowly, as though a figure had come out where he expected.
"Then that is all I need to know," he said. "I will build the case without it. I have been building around it for twenty years; I can build around it for twenty more." He straightened, with some effort, on the stick. "I served a man once who would have burned this town for less than whatever it is you are carrying. I chose the other side. I have not regretted it." He turned to go, and stopped. "Take your day. Then come back and tell us we will not seek the Crown. I expect that is what you will tell us. I would like it to sound as though you decided it, and not as though I did."
Thomas took the day.
He walked out past the works, past the flume, up the long slope to the burial ground on the hill where Wat lay under a stone he had cut himself, years before, and complained about the whole time. He sat down on the grass beside it. It was a warm afternoon and the town was spread out below him, the roofs and the lanes and the wheel turning, the schoolhouse yard with children in it, smoke going straight up in the still air.
He had built this. Not alone -- he had never done anything alone -- but he had started it, with a phone and a frightened blacksmith and a girl of twenty-one who did sums better than anyone he had ever met. And every piece of it rested, somewhere at the bottom, on a lie about where he came from.
He had never minded the lie. It had been the price of being alive. It had protected Victoria. It had protected the town.
Now it was the one thing that could break all of it.
He sat with Wat for most of the afternoon and did not decide anything. Wat would have told him he was being soft. Wat would have told him to load it and see where it cracked. Wat had never once in his life had to choose between a town and a family, and Thomas sat by the stone and envied him that, and then was ashamed of envying a dead man anything at all.
He came home at dusk and found Victoria sitting on the step outside the cottage with Hugh asleep against her shoulder.
"You've been to Wat's grave," she said.
"How did you know?"
"Because that's where you go when you can't ask anyone alive." She shifted the sleeping child. "What did you decide?"
"Nothing yet." Thomas sat down beside her. "If we do this, and they ask, and I answer badly, the risk isn't to me."
"I know what the risk is."
"There are four children in that house."
"I know," she said, "what the risk is." She was not looking at him. "I've known since the day you told me, when I was twenty-four and had no children and thought the danger was a thing in a story. I have thought about it every year since. And I want you to hear me say this once, so that you never have to wonder: I would sooner lose the revenue. I would sooner lose the school, and the charter, and every single thing we have built, than have one commissioner in a black gown start pulling at that thread with our children in the house."
Thomas sat with that for a while.
"That's the answer, then."
"That's an answer. It's the one I'd give at dusk holding a sleeping three-year-old." Victoria finally looked at him, and her eyes were clear. "Ask me again in the morning and I may say something braver. I'd suggest we let the council hear both."
"Alaric already knows which one he wants."
"Alaric always knows which one he wants." She leaned her head back against the doorframe. "That is why he will let us arrive at it ourselves. He is a much kinder man than he lets anyone see."
Hugh stirred, and muttered something, and went back to sleep. The lamps came on in the town below, one by one. Neither of them said anything more about it that night, and both of them lay awake a long time, and in the morning Victoria said the braver thing, and it was not very different from the first one after all.