Where there is no Lady, terms are kept by households, by officers and by paper. A family does the thing every Whitsun; a ferrylord watches the drowned; a warden walks a boundary; and in Harrowgate and at Saint Winnow’s a roll records each arrangement, because an arrangement nobody has recorded is not lawful at all.
“They are not holy and they are not cursed. They are the house that does the thing. Half of them are poor, most of them are unremarkable, and one of them is the worst-tempered woman in the parish. The arrangement does not appear to mind.”
What Cannot Be Given
Standing: descent, long doing and living on the ground
Everything rests on standing, and standing cannot be given. It seems to come from descent, from doing the thing year after year, and from living on the ground. A person without it can perform the act exactly and nothing will happen. A person who renounces it loses it for ever. A term may be moved only from necessity, never from preference, and then only within the same household, at the same season, to the nearest act; offering something dearer breaks it.
Houses Bound by Blood
Pact families and the ferrylords who keep the crossings
A pact family is simply a house with an obligation that passes by blood, holding or surname. About one marcher parish in three has one, and some fen parishes four, and they are known by small exemptions nobody else enjoys. They fail by demography, not wickedness: an heir dies, moves, or refuses. When one fails the Concord makes a new term in somewhat better than one attempt in three, and four parishes are trying overlapping households so the duty never rests on one. The books call the system ending.
On the northern waters three ferrylord families, Gedney, Redham and Wiggenhall, hold the crossings. Their power is refusal, yet they must carry the parish, a priest, a midwife, a coffin, and anybody who rings the staithe bell. They sit one night with the drowned: a lamp at the feet, iron on the chest, and no prayer.
The Roll of Saint Winnow
The Concord, its wardens and its written terms
Perhaps sixty wardens, an order that exists only because of the amendment of 4189. Their Roll holds several thousand arrangements from 4194 onward, thin before 4498, and the chapter has never asked to see it. They attend renewals, witness them, ride circuits, look into lapses, and endorse bills of taking for capitulated essence, which is most of their income. In the north one warden may cover five deaneries and a call sent in March may be answered in August. They will not come twice, will not treat where no party remains, and will not work in London.
Walkers of the Quiet Ground
The Wardens, their circuits, and the money they never have
A lay body under the vigil of Saint Cuthbert, about a hundred and thirty strong across the High South, paid by parishes, by the Concord and by three houses. A circuit meant to be walked twice a year is walked once. In the north a warden belongs to a boundary, often by inheritance, and more than a third of the wardenships recorded a century ago are now empty or held in name only.
Stones, Springs and Bournes
The marks of the land, and what it means when their names fade
The boundary stones of the north stand waist-high with a cross on the parish face. They have names, the Hollow Stone, the Weeping Stone, the Two Sisters, and when the names thin into numbers a parish has about fifteen years to write the memory down before it is gone. Children are cuffed at each stone so that they remember it as witnesses. A moved stone is judged by its socket and put back without prosecution.
In Sarrum the pit pumps have struck four bournes; Combe Bourne has been dry since 4589, and the parish still keeps its four observances at the dry head. The spring in Black Stone, bought by the Guild Hall in 4488, gives a quart a head a day free under a twelve-man guard, and has no shrine at all.
Reading the Absences
How to trace a lapse back four to twelve years to its cause
The cause of a lapse usually lies four to twelve years back. Look for what is missing: from the bound book, the carriers’ ledgers, the grave book, the rate book, the wardens’ books. Two or three absences meeting on one year are as near proof as the trade gets. The surest sign of all is a run of savings: the lamp oil stops, then the candles, then the bell fee, then the watch money.
Sometimes ground lost to people is set in order by something else entirely. The books keep four such cases, the Ashfall Reclaim of Saint Merrow’s Fort, the Second Keeping of White Reed, the Black Fen Stair and Stillwater Orchard, and nobody agrees what any of them means.
