Coldrake

Coldrake is a parish of the Northern Marches best known beyond its own bounds as the seat of a religious house, the house of the Brethren whose whole stated office is to attend. Its rule, set down by Sub-Prior Hugh Malby in 4602, refuses to explain anything, on the reasoning that a house which began to make claims would soon be a house people came to for claims. When a place goes wrong, two brothers go to it, stay between one and four nights, sit with the trouble or the household or the grave, carry nothing away, and leave the ground quieter without saying how.

The parish itself keeps the ordinary marcher books: a vestry book, a grave book, the house's attendance book. Above the village lies ruined ground so bad that the parish bound cannot be walked through it; a man is sent as close as he can safely go and shouts, the party answers from the far side, and the shout goes into the book as a passage. The vestry pays for the house's work at the schedule that holds across the realm, eleven shillings to attend and two pounds four to suppress, and one of its clerks has recorded arguing the meaning of the word attendance nine times in a single year, always with honest men.

The parish books are frank about how ground slips. In 4618 the sexton, Robert Ludd, explained why Coldrake did not walk its bounds one wet spring after fever took four men, adding that he had been asked twice and the second time not kindly. A vestry clerk, Peter Ashby, confessed in 4617 that he had written the same sentence of postponement into the book eleven times and only lately understood what it meant. Brother Anselm Hoy of the house, after thirty years of calls, held that what holds ground is neither fond nor angry, and that most disasters begin with mistaking an old kindness for a promise.

A company with trouble on its hands will find the Brethren here courteous and unhelpful about reasons. The house has more calls than brothers, so expect a wait, and expect the vestry to argue the bill.