of a murderer, but this time his endeavours were in vain. At last the boy turned to his master with a doleful expression and shook his head, reluctantly admitting defeat. The Templar was disappointed, and knew the sheriff would be also, but was certain that if there were more valuables to be found, their search had ensured they were not hidden on Tasser’s property.
Clapping Gianni on the shoulder and assuring him that even if his efforts had not been fruitful, they had been worthwhile, he gave the boy two silver pennies from his scrip and told him to go and purchase a couple of meat pies from the nearest bake shop and a jug of ale from an alehouse farther up Mikelgate.
“There are only the silversmith’s records left for us to go through,” he said. “I doubt whether he was foolish enough to make a record of his illegal transactions, but we must be sure. The task will take some time and it is nearly midday. Once you return and we have eaten, we will begin.”
As Gianni hurried away, Bascot returned to the upper storey of the dwelling and back into the room Tasser used as an office. A chill was beginning to creep over the building now the forge had gone out, and the Templar pulled his cloak closer around him as he looked for, and found, a tinderbox to ignite the charcoal lying in a brazier. He also touched the flame to a couple of beeswax candles standing in handsome silver holders. While he waited for Gianni to return, he pulled some of the rolled sheets of parchments from the pigeonholes of a large open-face cupboard and looked at the dates appended on the outside. The ones he had taken out were from several years before so he searched until he found those that pertained to the last few months and placed them on the table alongside some blank sheets of parchment, an inkpot and a sheaf of quill pens.
After Gianni returned and they had eaten their makeshift meal, it had not taken long to determine that Tasser was a careful record keeper, even if his literacy seemed to be limited to an odd combination of words in Anglo-Norman, French and Latin. One of the items described in the lists, a silver saltcellar, was entered as a saler, which was an Anglo-Norman word derived from the Latin sal for salt, while the word used to describe the silver gilt overlaying the cellar was a French word, argent. Spoons were listed in French as cuiller while a paten made for the nearby church of St. Peter at Arches was described by the Latin word patina. Tasser’s writing was not scholarly, but it was legible, and the figures noting monetary amounts precisely limned. Most of the sheets seemed to be a recording of pieces made in the manufactory, with a list of purchasers down the left-hand side of the page, and a description of the item and date alongside. Every entry had three amounts arranged in columns on the right-hand side. The first number appeared to denote the cost of manufacturing the item, the second the amount for which it had been sold and the third the profit gained from the transaction. Bascot and Gianni went through each one, but could find nothing untoward.
They turned next to a pile of scrolls tied in a bundle with a silk ribbon. Most of these gave the delivery date and cost of supplies but a few were lists of items bought for resale. All of the latter were purchases from local citizens, the names of some of them familiar to Bascot, and recorded the customers’ placement of an item either as a deposit on the commission of a new piece or as a sale for cash money. There was no record of the jewellery Cotty had discovered, or of the pieces of stolen silver found in the manufactory the day before, but Bascot had not dared to hope there would be.
Only one list defied an understanding of its purpose. It merely had a column of single letters down the left-hand side of the page—a half dozen altogether—each letter different except for the appearance of L twice, and beside each letter was an amount. Two of the sums were considerable, but all of them above one hundred shillings. Gianni and Bascot pored over it for a time, but it seemed to bear no relation to any of the other records or have any obvious