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Years later, I stood in another crowded hall listening to another official speak his name.

This time, Guy Bisbane stood beside me.

And Edmund Fitzwalter was the man wearing irons.

It had taken five weeks to reach this point, and I discovered something nobody ever tells you about seeking justice.

Most of it involved waiting.

Waiting for clerks to examine documents. Waiting for messengers to return. Waiting for men who had never met my father to decide whether the evidence he'd died trying to protect was worth their attention.

The Exchequer produced the warrant rolls during the third week. Every one of the eleven warrant numbers my father had copied appeared in the Crown's records. The amounts matched exactly.

Two London banking houses were compelled to surrender their books, and the four accounts were there, just as my father had written.

All four had been opened within eleven days of one another during the second year of the war.

Two belonged to men who'd been sitting on the King's council when the investigation began.

I watched the clerk read their names aloud and wondered how many other people had known what was happening.

Then Osbert Crane arrived.

He came south on the ninth day, traveling in a litter because his chest was too weak for riding. His wife accompanied him and, according to the men escorting them, hadn't let go of his sleeve since they'd left Alnwick.

The commissioners placed him under protection in a house on Castle Gate, with four guards stationed outside.

I wasn't permitted to speak to him before his testimony.

Guy said that was proper procedure.

I told him exactly what I thought of proper procedure, particularly when it had taken six years for anyone to follow it.

He listened patiently.

Then he explained why allowing Crane to testify without speaking to me first would make his evidence harder for Fitzwalter's supporters to challenge.

Unfortunately, he was right.

He'd developed an irritating habit of being right lately.

Crane testified on Monday.

He stood before the commissioners and confirmed that the signature on the statement was his.

He'd written it freely inside my father's house, three weeks before the arrest.

He also testified that Fitzwalter had approached him that October and calmly explained what would happen to his wife if he ever spoke about the altered records.

One of the commissioners asked why he'd remained silent for so long.

Crane looked down at his hands. "Because I believed nobody would protect me, my lords." He raised his head. "And for all those many years, I was correct."

I thought about that answer for a long time. By Thursday, the Crown had reached its decision.

The commissioners entered the hall together and stood before reading it.

I didn't understand the significance until Oswin explained afterward that they were delivering the royal council's judgment rather than making a decision of their own.