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Page 65
farm bailiffs, who dared not use those excuses, scratched their heads and blamed the varying weather of the coast for their inability to say how many bushels of grain were reaped. Oh, yes, last year it was so much, and the sticks were here, but the year before it was much lessor, perhaps, much moreThere was no need to keep tally sticks or remember such matters. It was "written in my lady's book."
Simon had become a competent penman and readeras any high-level servant of Henry II's had to be. The King was violently addicted to sending notes and receiving answers. If Simon had not learned how to read and write fluently himself, he would have been at the mercy of the clerks who served him. By the misinterpretation of a word or twoinnocently or deliberatelya man might come to grief. Simon had thought it better to make his own mistakes, and he had learned to read and write. He had learned, incidentally, that much pleasure might be had from books, but he was beginning to develop a strong aversion toward "my lady's book."
He was also developing strong suspicions about the clerk who kept that book and about his influence on Alinor and her vassals. Sir Andre, for example, seemed startlingly ignorant about "my lady's book." Of course, Sir Andre could not read or write, but such a loyal vassal should be more attentive, more wary. Clerks did not always take their religious vowsespecially that of povertyas seriously as they should. It was not unknown for a clerk to feather his own nest with purloined feathers. In fact, it was all too common, for a dishonest clerk had an out. Discovered in his crime, he could escape the just retribution of the lord he had cheated by fleeing to the arms of the Church where, by disgorging some of his ill-gotten gains, he could buy safety from civil prosecution.
It never occurred to Simon that Sir Andre's trusting indifference was owing to the fact that Alinor kept

 
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