It came fourteen months after the first, and Alaric read it standing up and did not sit down for the rest of the meeting.
His Lordship would be grateful for clarification, as a matter of routine administration, of the basis upon which the charter of Argenton exempts that town from the ordinary aids and tallages of this fee.
One sentence. No preamble beyond the courtesies, no request attached, no deadline.
"There it is," Alaric said.
"That's it?" Diccon looked at the page. "That's — Alaric, that's a clerk's question. That is the sort of thing a new administration asks about every holding in a fee. I'd expect it."
"You would expect it in the first month." Alaric set the letter down very precisely. "This is month fourteen. Lord Bramwell has held this March for over a year. He has reviewed, presumably, every other holding in it. He has had Fenn's return on his desk since before he took seat, and that return contains a full copy of our charter, and he has therefore known the answer to this question for a good deal longer than he has been our lord."
The room took that in.
"So why ask?"
"Because an answer creates a record." Alaric began, unconsciously, to pace, which he did perhaps twice a year. "Consider what he now has. He has a letter from this council, over Victoria's seal, stating the basis of our exemption — in our own words, chosen by us, committing us to a specific legal theory. That letter can be produced in a court in five years. If our theory is narrow, he will argue we conceded everything outside it. If it is broad, he will argue we overreached and invite a justiciar to find the true limit, which will be narrower than what we claimed."
"There's no good answer," Cecily said slowly.
"There is no answer at all that does not improve his position, which is why it is an excellent letter and why I have been expecting something like it for a year." Alaric stopped pacing. "The correct response is not to answer it."
"We've committed to being correct," Thomas said. "For years. That was your position and the whole council agreed."
"It was and they did, and I am not abandoning it." Alaric permitted himself the ghost of a smile. "We are going to be impeccably correct. We are going to reply within the fortnight, with warmth, and we are going to enclose a complete certified copy of the charter, the chancellor's ratification, and the Whitcombe judgment — all three, in full, at considerable expense, beautifully copied."
"And say what?"
"That we are delighted to assist and that the documents speak for themselves and that we would of course be glad to answer any specific question arising." Alaric spread his hands. "He asked for the basis of the exemption. We have given him the basis of the exemption. It is in his hands, in its own words, unsummarised and uncharacterised by us."
Victoria was already nodding.
"He'll ask again," she said. "Specifically, next time."
"He will, and a specific question can be specifically answered without theorising, and each specific answer is worth very much less to him than the general statement he has just failed to obtain." Alaric sat down at last. "We may be able to run this for four or five years. I want the council to understand that is all it is. It is not a defence. It is delay, and delay is worth having only if we are doing something with the time."
"What should we be doing with the time?" Diccon asked.
Nobody answered immediately.
"That," Alaric said, "is the question I would like this council to take away and sit with, because I have been turning it over for more than a year and I do not have a good answer, and I am beginning to suspect there may not be one that does not involve giving him something."
Thomas walked home and did not sleep well.
"You're quiet," Victoria said.
"I'm thinking about the last time." He was looking at the ceiling. "The Baron. Forty years ago. He came at us with a summons about the grant and we found a flaw in his flaw — a canon whose authority had lapsed, a chancellor who'd ratify. We won because Elias rode to Whitcombe and found a document."
"And?"
"And I've been sitting in that council assuming the same thing will happen. That Alaric will find the clever answer, or you will, or somebody will ride somewhere and come back with a piece of paper." He turned his head. "I've been waiting for the trick. And I think the trick may not exist this time, and I think I am forty-eight years old and still expecting one, and that's a habit I picked up from getting lucky in my thirties."
Victoria was quiet for a while.
"You may be right," she said. "I'd rather you were wrong. But you may be right, and I'd suggest you say that to the council in exactly those words, because at the moment four of us are waiting for you to produce something and you have never once told us that you might not."