For a long moment Sir Josiah Garrow did not move. Then he turned in his chair, not toward Tennant but toward the door, and looked for the first time at his son. Edmund met his eyes. He did not know afterward what his own face had shown. He knew what his father's showed: exhaustion, and grief, and something underneath both that was almost, horribly, pride.
Sir Josiah held out his hand behind him without looking. Pruett unbuckled the satchel and laid in his palm a calf-bound ledger wrapped in oilskin.
His father stood up. He was a heavy man, and he rose slowly, with one hand on the table. He walked the length of the room to where Edmund stood, past the seven commissioners, past the parchment and the wax and the brass seal, and held the ledger out to him.
"This is yours, I think," he said. "It was taken from your lodgings this morning on my instruction. I return it to you before this Board." His voice was quite steady. "You'll find all forty-one pages. Pruett wouldn't let me burn it. He said it didn't come out even."
Edmund took the ledger. His hands were shaking. His father's were not.
Sir Josiah turned to the table.
"Sir Ralph. Gentlemen. I withdraw my tender for the Channel Fleet contract." There was a stir down the table, quickly hushed. "I'll answer to whatever inquiry this Board sees fit to make, when the Board calls me and not before, and I'll answer with counsel at my side, as any Englishman is entitled to. I'll say nothing further this morning." He bowed, a short, square, tradesman's bow. "Good day to you."
Out over the river, from St Mary-le-Strand and then from St Clement Danes and then, more distantly, from St Paul's, the bells began to strike noon.
XII
The courtyard of Somerset House was full of sun and people. Ladies came down the Academy steps arguing about Mr. Turner. A Russian colonel was trying to buy an orange from a girl who spoke no Russian. In the middle of it all, drawn up by the Strand gate, stood the black chariot with its four horses. Its blinds were up now, and the red leather inside showed as plain as a wound.
Edmund caught up with his father beside it. Sophia was a few paces behind him, and Toller and Pruett behind her. Across the courtyard Lord Thornbury straightened from a pillar and did not come closer.