The Round Tower makes you quieter as you climb. You sign, you locker, you surrender your pen and keep your hands where everyone can see them. Pencils only. Paper on cradles. Pages turned like you mean it.
I lodged the call slips I'd drafted by the kettle and pretended not to watch the desk. The first box arrived with the calm inevitability of a tide. I breathed once, then opened it.
Not treasure. Procedure.
I worked the window I needed — mid-1837 to early 1839 — looking for three things: the equerry's first appearance; the constitution of the Household in the weeks after the accession; any mention — however bland — that would let me anchor a date against the framer's invoice and the carrier's run.
Findings came the way they usually do here — sideways. A list of attendances put the equerry in the Queen's rooms on two days in late June 1837 and again the following week. Presence. Half the proof.
An editorial headnote for the period framed the hinge the way I'd been warned it would: Household arranged; complexion understood. No footnotes, no drift. Just the map.
And then the Beatrice copies, running from 1837 to the end. Smooth where reality would have snagged. “About my household…” and on to the next line. Enough for a catalogue footnote, not enough to warm your hands.
By mid-afternoon I had what I needed for the National Gallery and nothing more. The paper trail in this place is courteous, not candid. The method survives; the friction doesn't.
I signed the returns and stepped into air that tasted of rain. Ashcombe had warned me in fewer words: what cuts deepest doesn't get boxed. If the twelve leaves lived, they hadn't lived here.