Dacket remained motionless for several seconds, then spoke slowly. “I believe your argument may serve,” he said.
“If you desire,” I said, “I will undertake the defense myself, under your supervision.”
“Before Judge Travers?” Dacket waved a hand thoughtfully, a paper still in it. “I think not. To put such an argument before Travers requires more tact than I have yet observed in you.”
I put on my dutiful-apprentice face and bowed. “As ever,” I said, “I defer to your wisdom.”
Dacket nodded. “You may have the day for Mutton Island,” he said. “But tomorrow, you will apply yourself to your pen.” He added the paper to a pile, then put the pile on a black, ancient desk already covered with documents. “Tomorrow, you will not leave this office until you have copied every item on this desk.”
I nodded. “Of course, Master.”
Dacket opened a narrow drawer and produced a sealed paper. “Your writ, signed by Justice Darcy. Do not lose it: I would not vex the justice on the eve of the court by asking for another.” He raised a hand. “And don’t get pear juice on it!”
I bowed. “I shall in all such matters obey.”
“Then be off,” said Dacket. “And if you are rent by a pack of dogs, you will have only yourself to blame.”
* * *
“So, what is this case about?” asked Kevin Spellman.
“Theft,” said I. “The theft of a body of water.”
“One can steal a lake?” Kevin asked. “I hadn’t ever considered the matter.”
Kevin was a sturdy, fair-haired youth, a friend of mine from our days at the grammar school. He was dressed in brilliant blues and yellows, and gems winked from his fingers. He wore a broad hat with the brim pinned up by a silver medallion, and an ostrich-feather plume. Even at leisure, even on his boat, he wore the splendid clothing that befit his status, as the son and heir to a Warden and present Dean of the Honorable Companie of Mercers.
The Mercers traded up and down the coast, and often abroad, delivering the wealth of Ethlebight and the River Ostra to the rest of Duisland and to the world. Ethlebight’s bricks and glass made up much of their profit, but by far the most valuable cargo was wool.
The flatlands of the Ostra were ideal grazing country, and the river’s headwaters ran through mountains where sheep browsed in high meadows throughout the summer. Thanks to arrangements made in antiquity between the craft guilds, the wool was bought from the shearers at a fixed price by the Worshipfull Sodality of Washers, who washed the raw wool in the waters of the river. The Washers sold their product to the Honorable Companie of Carders and Combers at a price arranged centuries ago, and the Carders and Combers sold to the Benevolent Sorority of the Distaff, a guild composed entirely of women, who spun the yarn in their homes, after which the wool found its way to the Dyers, the Clothmakers, the Fullers, Scourers and Stretchers, the Nappers, the Burlers, the Drapers, and the Taylors, and so on—but unless the product was sold locally, it all made its way to the Mercer, who—unlike all the others—sold it for whatever the market would bear, provided they sold it to another Mercer.
Kevin’s father, Gregory Spellman, was the owner or part owner of eleven companies or corporations, which in turn owned barges, ships, warehouses, and the piers at which the ships and barges moored. And thanks to the profits of wool, the elder Spellman lived in one of the most brilliant houses on Scarcroft Square, and was able to keep his son in the brightest, most fashionable clothing, a walking advertisement for his wares.
“Water is a commodity like any other,” I said. “It may be hoarded, sold, lent, and of course stolen.”
“And Sir Stanley Mattingly is alleged to have stolen—a lake?”
“A river. And there is no ‘alleged’ about the matter; he did steal it, though there exists a bare possibility he may have stolen it legally.”
With practiced tread, Kevin and I avoided wash-water hurled from an upper floor, then turned onto Princess Street, where we danced around the barrow of a gingerbread-monger. We passed, and then Kevin, enticed by the odor of the gingerbread, returned to buy a loaf.
While the transaction went on, I eyed the street for men in Greyson livery, and continued my exposition. “Sir Stanley Mattingly,” I said, “sold a piece of grazing to a gentleman named Morton Trew. The transfer was in livery of seisin—seisin in law, yes?—wherein the two parties went to the land together, and Sir Stanley performed the rite of turf and twig in sight of two witnesses.”
Kevin paid for the gingerbread and turned down the street. “Sir Stanley actually gave the man a stick and a clod of dirt?”
“He did.”
Kevin looked dubious. “I’ve never heard of anything like that, and I’ve been present at any number of transfers of property.”
“These rites are not common in the city,” I said. “But in the country, folk hold with old traditions in transferring a freehold.”
“And in the country, apparently they steal rivers.”
“They do. Or at any rate, Sir Stanley does—because when Mister Trew came later to his field, he found that his land no longer had the river that had originally flowed through it. Sir Stanley had dammed the river and turned the water into a leat to power his new stone-cutting mill. As grazing land is worth little without a source of water, Mister Trew desires to take Sir Stanley to court to overturn the sale.”
Kevin was thoughtful. “The river was dammed after the rite of rock-and-hard-place, or whatever it’s called.”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t see how Sir Stanley can possibly defend his action.”
“Ah.” I made an airy gesture and put on my pompous-magistrate face. “That is where you fail to perceive the supreme suppleness and flexibility for which the common law of Duisland is justly famed.”
Sniffing the gingerbread. “Apparently, I do not.”
“Sir Stanley maintains, first, that the deed does not mention the river or any other water source—”
“And does it?”
“Alas,” said I, “the river is not mentioned. And furthermore, Sir Stanley maintains that it was perfectly clear he never intended to sell Mister Trew rights over the water, as is proved by the fact that at the sale he did not perform the rite of water and porringer, where—”
“Where he would have given his poor victim a porringer of river water,” said Kevin, “to go along with his lump and his branch.”
“Just so.”
“I say it’s fraud,” said Kevin, “and to hell with the porringer.”
“And Judge Travers at the Assizes is likely to agree with you, which is why Sir Stanley is careful to avoid his summons. As Judge Travers is retiring, the next quarter’s judge is likely to be Blakely, who is some kind of cousin to Sir Stanley’s wife, and who bears a reputation for sharp practice of his own, and who therefore may appreciate the ingenuity of Sir Stanley’s argument.”
“One fraudster to another.”
“Just so.”
Indignation lifted Kevin’s chin. “I shall tell my father to avoid any dealings with Sir Stanley. If anyone in the Mercers’ Guild behaved in such a fashion, he’d be disciplined or expelled.”
“Alas,” said I, “there is no Worshipfull Guild of Landowners to enforce honest behavior.”
A large, old house loomed on our left, the first floor of plain Ethlebight brick, the upper storeys carved wood that projected over the street, with a thatch roof that projected farther still. My heart warmed at the sight of my home, a friendly welcoming sanctuary after my cold night on the rooftops. I turned inside and was followed by my friend.