De Vesci died in the winter, and the March passed, a few months later, to a man named Bramwell whom nobody in Argenton had ever heard of.
Alaric found out what there was to find out within a month, which was not much and was not encouraging.
"Third son of a northern family," he reported. "Made his money — and it is money rather than land — in the wool trade and by holding debt. He has purchased his way into this appointment, which is not unusual and not in itself sinister. He is forty-one. He has never governed anything larger than his own household." Alaric set down his notes. "And he arrives owing a considerable sum to two banking houses, which is the fact I would ask this council to hold onto."
"He'll need revenue," Victoria said.
"He will need revenue urgently, in quantity, and from sources that do not require his own capital to develop." Alaric looked around the table. "There is exactly one holding in this March that generates significant revenue, possesses no lord of its own, and is governed by people with no hereditary standing whatsoever. I would like to be wrong about this. I do not believe I am."
The first letter arrived in the spring — courteous, formal, unobjectionable. Lord Bramwell presented his compliments to the town of Argenton, noted with interest its prosperity, and looked forward to visiting in the summer to acquaint himself with the most notable holding within his fee.
The second letter arrived a fortnight later and requested, as a matter of routine administration, clarification of the basis on which Argenton's charter exempted it from the March's ordinary aids and tallages.
"There it is," Alaric said.
"That's a legitimate question," Cecily said. "Isn't it? He's new. He's establishing what he's entitled to."
"It is an entirely legitimate question and it has an conclusive answer, which is that the charter exempts Argenton because the Crown said so in writing and a King's justiciar confirmed it." Alaric's tone was patient. "The question is not the question, Cecily. The question is the asking. A lord who intended to accept the charter does not open his tenure by requesting its basis. He opens it by acknowledging it. Bramwell has, in his second letter, told this council exactly what he intends to spend the next several years doing."
Thomas, who had been quiet through most of it, spoke for the first time.
"Answer it," he said. "Fully, courteously, with copies of everything. Same as we did with Fenn."
"And when that doesn't satisfy him?"
"Then we'll know more than we know now, and we'll have a written record of having been entirely cooperative, which is worth a great deal when the thing eventually reaches a court." Thomas rubbed his eyes; Edmund had been up much of the night. "I want to say something and I'd like it minuted. This town has been through a Baron who tried to burn it, a plague, and a royal hearing. We have survived every one of them by being demonstrably, boringly in the right and by never once giving an opponent a legitimate grievance to work with. I do not intend to change that method because a man in debt has asked us an impertinent question."
"He will escalate," Alaric said.
"Almost certainly. And when he does, he'll be escalating against a town that has answered every letter within a fortnight and complied with every lawful request for four decades, and he'll find that rather harder than he expects." Thomas looked around the table. "Alaric — I'd like you to begin preparing. Not a response. A case. Everything a court would need, gathered now, while there's no pressure and no deadline. If we're going to end up in front of a justiciar again I'd rather arrive with ten years of documents than assemble them in a panic."
Alaric was already writing.
"That," he said, "is the correct instruction, and I confess I had intended to propose it myself and am mildly annoyed to have been beaten to it."
The summer visit was postponed twice and then quietly abandoned, and Lord Bramwell did not set foot in Argenton that year, or the next.
Alaric considered this the single most informative thing the man had done.
"A lord who visits can be charmed," he said. "A lord who stays away has decided in advance that he does not wish to like you. It is much easier to ruin a place one has never seen."