He ambled down the crowded bakery hall to a side room, which he opened with a heavy iron key. Within lay shelves of stacked tablets, a writing table and chair, and a large money chest bolted to the floor. He poked through the tablets, pulled one out, and shoved it in front of the questioners. "There, yon's the mark for Pibben, and this for rye, and this for the amount. If 'twere bad, I'd have marked it other."
Sulun, hoping to find a literate accounting, was disappointed to see more tally marks cut in the wax. "Do you recall," he asked, "when the flour arrived? Or when it was baked? Or where you sold it?"
"Oh, aye." The baker pointed his thick finger at further marks on the tablet. "See here: that means it came two days agone. I couldn't say when 'twas baked or sold, but it must've been right soon after. I—I bought it to bake for your work gang, m'lord wizard. . . ." Tygg wilted a little. "They like the rye bread, they do, and the price is . . . well, quite fair, sir."
"Buy cheap and sell dear, I know." Wotheng grinned, making his moustache bristle. "I've no complaint with honest profit."
"Nor I," said Sulun, seeing where this led. In truth, grain prices here were astonishingly low compared to what he remembered in Sabis. "I only ask, did you send any other bread to my work gang these four or five days past?"
"Oh, no, m'lord wizard." Tygg waved his big hands in denial. "I bake and send to them but once a seven-night. My wagon man'd be too busy else for my other work. I send all around the vale, y'know, m'lord."
"So this was the load that was . . . tainted, and no other?" Eloti asked, stepping forward.
"M'lady, I'll swear on a dozen gods the flour was good!" Tygg wailed, almost tiptoeing a step back from her. "I looked when I bought it, and 'twas clean!"
"And how long between the time you bought it, and inspected it, and when you baked it?' Sulun asked, looking for the sequence, the timing.
"No more nor a day, I'll swear." Tygg rubbed his sweating forehead, then automatically wiped his hand on his apron. "I bought the flour specially because 'twas time to bake for the work gang again. One can't be late with food for that lot, y'know."
"I know." Eloti smiled, considering the uproar a gang of hungry workmen would make if their bread didn't arrive. "You bake for them once a seven-night, then, and send it out how soon after?"
"Wh-why, soon's 'tis out of the oven. It must go soon, d'ye see, for it's got to last seven days, and for all that rye bread stales but slow, in seven days 'twill be a bit stiff, so the sooner 'tis delivered, the better." The baker shrugged eloquently.
"Sir Baker," Eloti purred, well knowing the answer, "is there any means by which the ergot could have entered the bread after it was baked?"
Tygg struggled mightily with his fear and conscience, finally had to admit, "Nay, couldna," in a defeated voice. "If it struck then, 'twould only dot the crust with black spots, easily seen and cut off."
"So the ergot entered the flour sometime between the hour when you inspected it and when you baked it?"
"Aye," Tygg almost whispered, "while 'twas here, in my storeroom . . ." Then he brightened, seeing a possibility. "'Twas there almost a day. Anyone could have come in and traded it for bad flour while I wasn't looking."
"But wouldn't you have noticed the change when you went to bake it?" Wotheng cut in. "Surely you'd have seen, or smelled, if something were wrong when you went to measure it out."
"But—but—" Tygg bounced on his wide feet in agitation. "I confess, I didn't bake that load! I've so much to bake, y'know, m'lord, I can't do all at once. 'Twas only common rye bread, if all be told, and I'd the more dainty breads an cakes to do, as I can't trust to 'prentices, y'know." He waved a dusty hand toward the bake shop, where easily half a dozen assistants were measuring flour, rolling dough, and tending the ovens. "I left the rye bread baking to . . . gods, who was it? Ey, 'twere Meep and Higgle!" he stomped to the door and bellowed, "Meep! Higgle! Get your lumbering feet in here, and be quick!"
A fat boy and a stout woman jumped as if they'd been stabbed, pulled their hands out of huge basins of flour, and came hurrying in.
"Aye, Master, what's the matter?" the woman asked, shifting from foot to foot as if her arches pained her.
"I'm hurrying with the barley bread," the boy whined. "Gods' truth, I'm hurrying, Master Tygg, it's just that—"
"Never mind you that," Tygg snapped. "Which of you baked the rye bread that went out yesterday morn?"
The two bakers assistants looked at each other, Meep woeful, Higgle smirking. "'Twere he done it." Higgle pointed triumphantly to the cringing fat youth. "I lost the toss, so's I had to haul the wood and light it off and sweep out the oven and tend the fire and such—while he made the bread."
"Aw, Master," Meep whined. "I ain't never made rye bread before. The loaves looked right when they came out t'oven, crusts dark like she said. Hows I t'know they weren't right?"
Tygg heaved a mountainous sigh—of relief? Exasperation? "And what was wrong with them?" he asked.
Meep's jaw dropped, flapped a bit, quivered. "I—I don't know, Master. Did I make the dough too heavy? Not baked long enough? Ye said t'leave 'em a bit moist, as they was t'last awhile. . . ."
Tygg was trying to say something, probably explosive, but Eloti touched his arm and he jigged away in silence. "Listen, boy," she crooned hypnotically at the young lout, "you know who we are, do you not?"
"Y-yes, m'lady. Ye're one of the new wizards as serve Deese." His plump cheeks quivered as he tried to edge away, but Eloti caught his face neatly between her hands.
"Think, boy," she murmured, fixing his eyes with her own. "Remember well, from the beginning. When did you come to work that day?"
"T-two hours afore dawn, like always," Meep whimpered, staring.
"Where you first in the shop?"
"I came in . . . after Higgle. She'd the key."
"And what next?"
"She said t'make the rye bread, and I said—"
"Never mind what was said. What did you do?"
"I—we argued, and then we tossed a copper, and she lost . . . so she went t'get the firewood and I went t'get the rye flour, and—"
"How did you know which was the rye flour?"
"'Twas in the barrel Master Tygg showed me the day afore, the one with the half-moon scratched in the wax."
Eloti shot a quick glance at Sulun, who nodded. "You went to get the flour," she said. "So you opened the barrel?"
"Nay, m'lady. 'Twas already open."
"You mean, the lid was loosened or the lid was off?"
"'Twas off. I thought Higgle'd been there first. I took up the scoop and filled the big measure—"
"I'll fetch't," said Tygg, hurrying off.
"And did you notice anything different about the flour?" Eloti went on.
"N-no m'lady. How would I? I'd never made the rye bread afore." Meep wrung his hands in unconscious imitation of his master.
"So you took up the measure full of flour. What did you then?"
"I brought it back t' the shop room and poured it into yonder big mixin' pot, and put in the sweetenin' and the leavenin' and then the butter and eggs, and last the milk, and then I stirred it with the big paddle, and then I let it sit and rise."
Tygg came back in, holding a measure cup the size of a half barrel. "This be the big measure, m'lady," he said, then halted as he saw the odd interrogation wasn't finished.
"And what did you do while the bread rose?" Eloti asked.
"Ate some buns. They were left over from the day afore, would've gone t'waste, else . . ."