Second Day — Arms, Wards & Reliquaries
Title in this port is not what a man can prove. It is what this office has stamped. I have stamped worse than anything on the second day's list, and I shall be at the back of the room, and I shall answer aloud.
— Doede Ramsvelt, Waterbailiff, endorsement upon the licence of this sale
Twenty-seven lots are called on the second day: the arms first, then the wards, then the reliquaries. The house has set the order so that no two reliquaries follow one another, and so that the three lots carrying the Waterbailiff's stamp are called before the noon bell, while he is in the room to be asked. The candle does not wait for a man who is reading ahead.
The fog stood in Rope Street from before eight and did not lift. The porters call it good light and mean it: nothing shines in it, and a file-stroke, a lifted ground, a solder seam and a proof mark can all be read on the presentation table without a lamp. The room smells of oil, whetstone water, wet hemp from the ropewalks, and, from the reliquary table in the gallery, of vinegar and cold wax.
The hundred and eighty seats were full by ten past, and thirty more stood along the back wall, which the house permits on this day only. Present: the wardens of the armourers, two masters of the coasting trade, the proctor of the Beguinage of St. Bavo with a letter nobody had asked him for, four dealers, the clerk of the Court of Wards at the pay table with the embargo book open, and the Waterbailiff at the back with two of his six. Both claimants attended. The house seated them at opposite ends of the fourth row, which is the whole of what the house did about it. A dealer of the Wolfsgat had the end seat of the third row, as on all four days, and did not raise a hand once.
The crier is instructed to name the claim from the rostrum before the candle is lit upon lots 31 and 42, and to answer nothing further upon either. Arms sell to men who came in for something else; a reliquary sells twice over, once for the silver by weight and once for the account of it, and only the first of the two is warranted by anybody.
Notice for the Second Day
Porters carry the arms in gloves and set them down edge away from the room. No edge is tried in the Long Room or in the gallery, and nothing on this day's list is loaded, primed, or struck in the hall.
Reliquaries are shown closed and are opened only at the clerk's hand, upon the table. Fittings that are part of a lot are wired to it and told over at the loading door: buyers of lot 33 are reminded that the four nails are the lot. Lots 36, 46 and 50 came ashore under seizure; the licence is lodged with the sale and the stamp is on the ticket.
29 · The Rietvelt Corselet
A breast of one plate, of this city's work, blued and worn through the blue along the medial ridge, 17 inches from the gorge to the point and 8 pounds 6 ounces with its straps. The armourer's punch, a hammer between two nails, is struck inside the right arm-hole; the city's proof mark is under the arm on the same side.
Three inches to the left of the ridge there is a hole of pistol bore, clean and bright at the lip, which does not go through. The ball is in the plate. The inner face over it is unbroken, and a rule laid across it finds no rise at all. Two further holes of the same kind stand beside the first, both stopped in the same manner.
- made by Volkert Rietvelt, armourer of the Wolfsgat, for a customer not entered in his book
- thence Geertruyt Kaltz, his widow, who kept the forge until 1630 and hung the breast over the bench as her proof piece, and would take a wager on it from any man with a pistol and his own ball
- thence the deceased
Condition: sound, the lining renewed in buff leather, one buckle modern and one strap end lost. It was cut for a man of about five feet eight.
[in red ink] The blue is not the maker's. It has been drawn a second time over scale that was never cleaned off, and you can read the old scale under it at the neck. The three holes were made with three different bores, one of them with a wheel-lock, which is not what a proof house uses and not what a widow's wager uses either. Rietvelt's punch is honest and the weight is what it was when I had this on my own bench in 1618. C.O.
The Rietvelt Corselet
Armor (breastplate), uncommon
Once per dawn, while you wear this armor and are hit by a ranged attack that would deal piercing damage, you can use your reaction to reduce that damage to 0. The shot is in the plate. It does not come out, the plate does not part, and nothing behind the plate is touched.
Each shot so stopped leaves a sunk hole with a bright lip, and no smith can raise it out, planish it flat, or fill it with anything that holds. Three are there already. It has never stopped a thrust, a bolt, or a stone.
30 · A Boarding Axe with a Notch for Every Ship
A boarding axe of the common sea pattern, the head 2 pounds 4 ounces with a spike opposite the edge, the haft ash and 26 inches overall, the lanyard hole burned through and not bored. At the throat, eleven notches are cut across the grain and stained dark with lamp-black in oil. Provenance: Pieter Tjaard, master, who lost the Nachtvogel and was eleven years afterwards in the coasting trade; thence the deceased, with the owner's own reading of the notches, printed below as it was given.
The Notches, as Read to This House by the Owner
| Notch | Vessel | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hoope | 1594 |
| 2 | Sint Odulf | 1597 |
| 3 | Drie Zusters | 1599 |
| 4 | Meeuw | 1601 |
| 5 | Jonge Trijn | 1604 |
| 6 | Zeehond | 1606 |
| 7 | Groene Wimpel | 1609 |
| 8 | Barbara | 1612 |
| 9 | Sint Bavo | 1615 |
| 10 | Kolk | 1618 |
| 11 | no name given | none given |
The eleventh notch is deeper than the ten and is cut from the other side of the haft. No vessel answering to it stands in the register of this port, and the Watermen's Guild enters no loss against it. Condition: haft sound, the head lately ground and a little thin at the toe, the spike bent and straightened once.
31 · The Reliquary of the Beguinage
A house-shaped casket, silver-gilt over an oak core, 9 inches long, 5 deep and 5 to the ridge, 38 ounces by the stamped paper of the Sworn Weighers. The two slopes of the roof are chased with a row of nine standing figures under arcading, of which one is lost from the shoulders up. In the gable is a small door, 2 inches square, hung on a pin and shut with a wire hasp; behind it a compartment lined in red silk holding a fragment of bone 2 inches long, with a slip of vellum in a letter of the last century giving a name abbreviated to four characters.
It is reported of the casket that within a few paces of it, and only while the gable door stands open, no person loses the voice for fear. The mistress of the Beguinage carried it to deathbeds and to the sessions at which the sisters gave their evidence.
- of the Beguinage of St. Bavo, so described in the earlier list
- 1611 · Beatrix Boonk, mistress of that house, by whose hand it was carried
- thence Klaas Vantoc, pledge-broker of this city, in whose house it stood
- thence the deceased
Condition: the gilding rubbed through to the silver along the ridge and at the two nearer corners, as a thing is rubbed that has been carried against the body; the wire hasp modern; the red silk renewed and not old. The oak core has been out of the silver at some time, the pins being new and bright.
Claims in respect of this lot are entered by Ilsabet Vantoc, upon a folio of the pledge-book offered as lot 63 in this sale, and by Barbara Wett, of this city, in right of her great-grandmother. Both stand referred to the Court of Wards, which has heard them both and has laid no embargo. The lot is offered without prejudice to either claim.
[in red ink] The 1608 folio has this reliquary in the Beguinage in that year and nowhere else. Wend. fo. 41. She has moved it ten years to please a vendor, and the vendor is a name she prints and will not date. I saw it on Boonk's own table with the sisters' evidence beside it, and I say so who has held it. C.O. (Sprokkel 1637)
The Reliquary of the Beguinage
Wondrous item, rare
While the gable door stands open, no creature within 15 feet of the casket can be deprived of its voice. Such a creature can speak, call out, testify, and cast spells with verbal components even while frightened, and it has advantage on saving throws against any effect that would silence it or take its speech away. Magic that creates silence does not hold in that space, for anyone in it.
Nothing said in that space is quiet. A whisper is heard at the edge of the 15 feet at the strength it was spoken, through cloth, through a hand held up, and through the noise of a crowded room. The sisters of St. Bavo kept the door open at evidence and shut at prayer.
Shutting the door is an action and ends all of the above at once.
32 · Cranck's Sword of Justice, Edge Unturned
A two-hand sword of the executioner's form: no point, the blade 33 inches and 2¾ broad at the ricasso, squared at the end and pierced there with three holes in a line. The grip is horn over wood, 11 inches, with a collar and a pear pommel. On one flat, etched and once gilt, a wheel and a scaffold and a line of letters: THE SENTENCE IS NOT MINE.
The executioner's tally, kept in the margin of his own book and produced with the lot, gives sixty-one uses of this sword between 1591 and 1620. The edge has not been dressed in that time, and under a glass it shows no notch, no roll of the metal, and no dark line at the very edge. Provenance: Hendrick Cranck, executioner of this city, deceased; thence Trijn Lemmick, his daughter, who sold his goods at her own door over three days and kept no list; thence the deceased. Condition: bright and without a spot of rust; the horn cracked at both ends and bound with brass wire; the etching worn away where the hands go.
[in red ink] This blade was never on a stone in its life. It is scraped with a draw-file, and the strokes run across the edge and not along it, which is the practice of two houses that made these and of nobody else in the trade. Whoever writes that the edge is unturned should write that it has also never been dressed, since the second is the remarkable thing and the first follows from it. The horn of the grip is new work over the old wood. C.O.
Cranck's Sword of Justice
Weapon (greatsword), uncommon
The sword has no point and cannot be used to make a piercing attack. Its edge cannot be dulled, notched, rusted, bent, or blunted by any means, and it never needs dressing. A single stroke severs any nonmagical object of wood, bone, or flesh not more than 4 inches through.
When you hit a creature that is restrained, incapacitated, or unconscious, the attack deals an extra 2d6 damage of the weapon's type.
It will not cut a binding. Rope, cord, chain, strap, hinge, bar, and the leather of a manacle turn it as though it had struck with the flat, and no stroke aimed at one of these has ever taken. It cuts the thing that is sentenced and not the thing that holds it, and the executioner's book records a cord being cut with a knife on all sixty-one days.
33 · The Ward of the Sluice Gate
A ward cast in lead upon an iron strap, 13 inches by 9 and 14 pounds, the face carrying in relief a gate between two posts with the water indicated below it by six wavy lines. Four holes are cast at the corners, and the four nails are present: hand-forged, 7 inches, square in the shank, of the same iron as the strap. On the back, raised in the casting and worn shallow by handling, a line of letters: SET TO THE WATER.
It is reported of the ward that a door beneath it will not open toward the water. The watch-house upon the sluice gate had its door under this ward for eleven years, and that door, which was hung to open outward upon the walk, was opened inward against its own hinges throughout that time, the frame having been cut away at the office's charge to allow it, and the bill for the cutting is lodged with the sale.
- of the office of the Waterbailiff, in the time of Wolter Slecht, and set over the watch-house door upon the gate
- 1620 · taken down at the repair of the gate, and not entered as returned
- thence the deceased
Condition: the lead sound and grey, one corner bruised where it has been prised; the iron strap cracked across the upper left nail hole and holding; the four nails clean, unbent and unrusted, which for iron out of that wall is not usual.
[in pencil] Set on the wrong side and the water is the thing kept out. Set on the right side and so is the man.
The Ward of the Sluice Gate
Wondrous item, rare
Setting the ward takes 1 hour and its own four nails, driven into the leaf or the frame of a door, gate, hatch, or shutter no more than 10 feet in any dimension. The face bearing the device is the warded side. Prising a nail unmakes the ward, and the nails can be drawn from the unwarded side only.
While the ward is set, the door cannot be opened, forced, unbarred, unhinged, lifted, or cut through from the warded side. A key turns and the door stays shut; magic that opens or unlocks fails; while the four nails hold, door and frame are immune to all damage, and the wall must come down instead. From the unwarded side the door opens exactly as it did before.
No water passes the doorway from the warded side while the ward is set, at any head of water, and the frame does not weep.
The ward does not know what a room is for. Set upon the inner face of a door, it holds that door shut against everything inside the room, and the office it came from did that twice and entered both nights in its book.
34 · Twelve Musket Balls, Cast from a Bell
Twelve balls of bell-metal, cast in a two-part mould at eleven to the pound, in a linen bag with a drawn cord. They were run from the crown of a bell that cracked in the founding and was never hung. Fired or slung, each ball is heard as one bell note. Provenance: Wibbe Hobbe, bell-founder of the Staple Quay, who cast them upon a wager and lost it; thence the deceased. Condition: eleven filed at the sprue and round; the twelfth left unfiled and out of round by a thirty-second part; the bag stained at the bottom.
Bell-Metal Balls
Ammunition, common (twelve balls)
These balls can be shot from a sling or from any arm that takes a ball of this size. When a ball strikes anything at all it rings: one clear bell note, heard a mile over open water and half a mile over land, through walls, wool, and shut shutters. A creature struck takes the weapon's damage as normal and must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or be deafened until the end of its next turn.
A ball is spent in the shot and is found afterwards flattened and dull, and it will not ring again. Eleven of the twelve ring. The twelfth was not finished.
35 · A Buckler of Whalebone
A round buckler of northern whalebone in three laminations, 13 inches across and 2 pounds 3 ounces, the boss and rim brass, the enarmes renewed in webbing. It is warm to the hand in cold rain, which is why it was kept, and in the water it cannot be pushed under. Provenance: Egbert Meerman, whaling master of the Bruinvisch, who had two made and gave one away to a boatsteerer whose name he did not recall; thence the deceased. Condition: good, one lamination lifting at the rim over 4 inches and wanting glue; the brass green in the hollows.
Whalebone Buckler
Armor (shield), common
You gain the benefit of a shield while you hold it. It weighs 2 pounds instead of 6, and it is strapped rather than gripped, so the hand behind it can hold a line, a lamp, or a rail — but not a weapon.
It floats and cannot be submerged. A creature holding it cannot sink below the surface of water and can keep a further 200 pounds afloat with it, sea gear counted in.
36 · The Purser's Strongbox of the Grieta Wend
A purser's box, oak bound with four iron straps, the corner plates iron, the hasp and lock brass, the lock of three levers with its key present at 5 inches. Within, a lift-out tray of six divisions and beneath the tray a well. The inside of the lid is lined with the vessel's lading of 1617, pasted down, and may be read entire, including the freight of pepper that was not landed.
The box will not be opened out of the water. Set upon a quay, a floor, or a cart, the key turns, the levers lift, and the lid stays down as though it were part of the box. Set aboard anything afloat, with the man who holds the key afloat with it, the lid rises to a finger.
- made for the Grieta Wend, Sijtske Hooft owner, of the Kolkgracht
- carried by Joos Marbeck, her purser
- 1619 · seized from on board by Wolter Slecht, Waterbailiff, and sold under his licence at the Customs Quay
- thence the deceased
Condition: sound; the iron of the bottom strap pitted where the box has stood in bilge; the lock clean and lately oiled; the ward of the key filed by a hand that was not the locksmith's. Of the six divisions of the tray, five hold nothing. The sixth holds one customs stamp of 1619, cancelled with two strokes.
[in pencil] It opened once on dry land. Ask who was carrying it.
The Purser's Strongbox
Wondrous item, rare
Three levers, one key. The lid can be raised only while the creature holding the key is afloat: aboard a vessel, a raft, a plank, a hide of ice, anything that water is holding up. Standing in water with your feet on a bottom is not afloat, and neither is a boat aground. Ashore, the key turns and the lid does not.
While the lid is down the box cannot be forced, cut, burned, drilled, or unhinged (AC 19, 80 hit points, resistance to all damage), and no spell or sense reveals what is inside it, how heavy the contents are, or whether there are any. It weighs 74 pounds full or empty.
The well beneath the tray holds 1 cubic foot and 60 pounds. What is put into the well does not wet, does not mould, and does not take salt.
No instance of this box being opened on dry land is of record with this house, with the office of the Waterbailiff, or with the owner.
37 · A Sheaf of Letters of Marque, Three of Them Void
Nine letters of marque, 1612 to 1619, folio, in an oiled linen wrapper. Six are under the seal of the Chamber and are in order. Three are void: the first sealed with a matrix out of use since 1604; the second wanting the second signature, the space for it ruled and left; the third dated upon a day on which the Chamber did not sit, as the Chamber's own minute book shows. All three of the void letters are endorsed on the back with a voyage in the purser's hand, and one carries a customs stamp over the endorsement. Provenance: Sijtske Hooft, owner of the Grieta Wend; thence the deceased. Condition: the wrapper perished along both folds; the six good letters worn soft at the creases; the three void ones clean, having been carried in the same wrapper and never once shown.
These are offered as documents and not as authority. A letter of marque does not run with a sale and confers nothing whatever upon a buyer. The Waterbailiff has asked that this be printed here, and it is printed.
38 · The Executioner's Gloves
A pair of gloves of buff leather, 12 inches to the top of the cuff, the seams sewn with silk, the palms doubled with a second skin laid crosswise to the first. A small wheel is pricked inside the left cuff. It is reported of them that a man bound by the hands that wear them does not slip the binding. Provenance: Hendrick Cranck, executioner of this city; thence Trijn Lemmick, his daughter; thence the deceased. Condition: supple throughout; the right glove split at the base of the thumb and stitched with linen, not silk; both cuffs stained to a hand's breadth from the edge. The stain has been shown to Aefke Duym, apothecary of the Rope Street, who names it neat's-foot oil and vinegar and will say so at the table.
[in red ink] The palms are doubled crosswise, which is saddler's work and not glover's, and Cranck had it done in the Wolfsgat by a man I could name if she asked me. The linen at the right thumb is twenty years later than the silk and was sewn left-handed. Everything about the pair is what she says it is, which I note here because it is rare in this book. C.O.
The Executioner's Gloves
Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)
While you wear both gloves, a creature you have grappled cannot get free by slipping, twisting, or greasing. It can end the grapple only with a Strength (Athletics) check against your grapple DC, never with Dexterity (Acrobatics), and it has disadvantage on that check while both your hands are on it.
A rope, strap, or manacle that you tie or lock while wearing the gloves holds as though it had been fitted to the creature. A creature so bound cannot slip out at all; it must break the binding or succeed on a DC 18 Strength (Athletics) check. Another creature may cut or unlock the binding as usual.
The gloves do not come off wet, and they do not come off while a hand is closed on a creature. While you are attuned to them you cannot willingly let go of a creature you have taken hold of until it stops resisting, is unconscious, or is dead, or until another creature takes hold of it in your place. Ending your attunement takes them off; nothing else does.
The executioner's book gives the hours at which the gloves were put on and taken off upon sixty-one days. The second hour is always later than the office required.
39 · A Palisade Nail from the Wolfsgat Gallows
One nail, wrought, 9 inches and 6 ounces, drawn from the palisade of the gallows ground at the Wolfsgat when that fence was renewed. Provenance: Jelle Munck, gravedigger of St. Bavo's ground, who had the old timber for firewood and the ironwork for himself; thence the deceased, with the label. Condition: sound, bent some fifteen degrees and not straightened. The label is Munck's, in ink on a luggage card, and reads: Grauwe · Sleen · Bocht · —— · 1629. The fourth name has been struck through with the same pen and cannot be read at any light.
40 · Duym's Cabinet of Antidotes, Four Vials Remaining
A flat case of walnut with twelve beds in green wool, 10 inches by 7. Four vials remain, of thick green glass, each of about two drachms, stoppered with cork and sealed over with wax. The labels are the apothecary's own, written and then varnished: for the sting, for the salt fish, ——, for the white root. The third label is a second label, pasted over the first. Provenance: Aefke Duym, apothecary of the Rope Street, whose shop stands four doors from this hall and who has filled the case twice; thence the deceased. Condition: the case sound, three beds broken out at the corner; the wax of all four seals whole. The vials have not been opened since they were filled, and this house does not undertake to say what is in the third.
[in red ink] The upper label of the third is newer paper than the other three and is pasted with fish glue, which the apothecary does not use and never has. Hold it to a window: the word beneath is longer than the word on top by four letters and begins with the same one. The varnish over the other three is hers and is fifteen years old if it is a day. C.O.
Duym's Antidotes
Potion, common (four vials)
Three of the four vials answer their labels. Drinking one is an action: it ends the poisoned condition on you, and for the next hour you have advantage on saving throws against poison. The vial is spent, and they are not replaced.
The third vial is offered as it stands, sealed and whole, and is not warranted to be what its label says. The Sworn Weighers have weighed it against the other three and report it heavier by half a drachm, and decline to say anything further.
41 · The Notary's Seal-Ring of Coenraad Zeeger
A notary's ring, the hoop gold and worn thin at the back, the bezel a steel matrix let into a gold collet and cut in intaglio: a hand holding a pen above three letters, C A Z, the whole within a rope border of nineteen twists. The cutting is deep, the field is clean, and it takes a sharp impression in wax at a low heat.
It is reported of the ring that a paper sealed with it cannot be altered without the alteration showing in the wax. The notary sealed the testaments, codicils and instruments of this city for thirty-one years and was never once put to proof upon a seal of his.
- cut for Coenraad Zeeger, sworn notary of this city, who wrote the testament of the deceased
- thence the deceased, from the notary's executors, with the shagreen box and a stick of the notary's own wax, half burned
Condition: the hoop worn through to a thin edge at the back and once mended with a strip of gold of a lighter colour; the steel of the bezel bright and unrusted; a nick in the rope border at the fourth twist from the pen, which shows in every impression the ring has made since it was taken.
[in pencil] Three certificates, one ring. Only one impression matches the wax.
Zeeger's Seal-Ring
Wondrous item, rare
Sealing a document with the ring takes wax and an action. From that moment, if any part of that document is altered — a word erased, a figure changed, a date corrected, a leaf taken out or put in — the impression cracks across the rope border. No reheating, restriking, or repair closes it, and the crack can be seen with the eye by anyone who is shown it.
Press your thumb to any seal of wax and the ring answers: it goes warm in your hand if that seal was struck by this ring itself, and stays cold if it was struck by a copy, a cast, a second matrix, or a hand engraving of the same device, however fine. It does not tell you which of those it was, or who holds it.
It knows nothing of what a document says. A false paper sealed with this ring is a false paper that has not been altered since sealing, and it will be received as sound in every office of this city, which is the greater part of what the ring is worth.
A cracked seal of this ring has been made to look whole in this hall by three several means, in the presence of the clerk of the sale room. The crack was under all three.
42 · The Wett Bell, Small, Silver
A hand bell of silver, 6½ inches to the crown of the handle and 4½ at the mouth, 19 ounces by the Weighhouse stamp. The founder's mark of Wibbe Hobbe is inside the mouth with the date 1594. The handle is a turned baluster with a collar; the clapper is silver on a leather thong, renewed. Around the rim runs an engraved field half an inch deep, bordered above and below by a fillet.
The field has been cut, taken out, and begun again. In raking light the earlier cutting may be read entire: MACHTELD WETT, in a formal letter. Over it the field has been scraped and polished down, and a second cutting has been started in a different letter and carried three characters: Q V I. The engraver did not go on.
It is reported of the bell that it sounds of itself, once, at the hour of the death of the person named upon its rim, and that it cannot be muffled while it does so. The house prints the report and no instance of it.
- 1594 · cast by Wibbe Hobbe, bell-founder of the Staple Quay, for the house of Wett
- thence Klaas Vantoc, pledge-broker of this city
- thence the deceased
The vendor's account is not before us.
Condition: sound and in tune. The wall at the engraved field measures 0.031 inch against 0.048 inch elsewhere, taken twice. The thong is renewed; there is a scratch across the crown 2 inches long, lately made. Offered with its wool bag, which is old, and which is worn through at the mouth end only.
Claims in respect of this lot are entered by Barbara Wett, of this city, great-granddaughter of the person first named upon the rim, and by Ilsabet Vantoc, upon a folio of the pledge-book offered as lot 63. Both stand referred to the Court of Wards, whose clerk will attend the calling of this lot. The lot is offered without prejudice to either claim, and no question of title will be answered from the rostrum.
The Wett Bell
Wondrous item, rare
One name at a time may stand upon the rim. Cutting a new one requires that the old be taken out entire, a silversmith's work of a day, and the wall of the bell is thinner for every cutting it has had.
While a name stands legibly upon the rim, the bell rings once, of itself, at the hour that named person dies, wherever in the world they die and whatever lies between. It rings through wool, water, packing, a locked chest and a wall, and is heard by every creature within 300 feet of it. It gives no place and no cause.
Struck by hand while a name stands, the bell answers the state of that person: a clear note if they are living, a flat note with no ring in it if they are dead. It can be struck so once a day.
A name taken out is out, and reading the older cutting in raking light does not restore it. As this lot is offered, no name stands upon the rim. It has been struck at the pay table on that account, before witnesses, and it rang as any bell of nineteen ounces rings. Whether three characters are a name is a question this house does not undertake to answer.
43 · A Coat of Plates, the Lining Sewn with a Psalm
A coat of plates of the older fashion, twenty-six iron plates riveted between canvas and a lining of linen, 38 inches at the chest and 24 inches from the shoulder seam to the skirt, weighing 29 pounds 6 ounces. The lining carries a psalm entire, worked in white linen thread in thirty-one lines, the letters an eighth of an inch and the stitch so fine that the words must be held to a window to be read. The work is of the Beguinage of St. Bavo and is signed with no hand.
Provenance: Beatrix Boonk, mistress of the Beguinage of St. Bavo, who had the lining worked for a carter's son going out with the levy of 1618, and had the coat back from the levy without him; thence the deceased. Condition: two plates cracked across the rivet holes and one plate wanting at the left flank; the lining sound, clean, and not repaired. The thread of the last four lines is a whiter thread than the rest.
[in red ink] The plates are two hands. Sixteen are Rietvelt's work, which you may know from the scarf the punch leaves at the rivet, and ten are a cheaper iron let in later under a wider washer. The thread of the last four lines is bleached and the other twenty-seven are not, so the last four lines were worked after the coat came home and by somebody sitting down. Sew what you like into a lining; the flank is still open. C.O.
The Psalm Coat
Armor (breastplate), uncommon
You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened while you wear this coat.
Once per dawn, when you would drop to 0 hit points while wearing it, you drop to 1 hit point instead. The stitching of the lining parts where the blow fell, and the words that part cannot be read again.
Until the lining is worked afresh by a hand that can read the psalm — a day's work, and 5 marks at the Beguinage, which is what they ask — the coat is armour and nothing else.
44 · The Painted Shield
A heater shield, oak faced with gesso and linen, 22 inches by 17, the face bearing arms overpainted many times, the uppermost a chevron and three martlets. Twenty-two grounds may be counted at the chipped edge. The boss is iron, riveted through, and the strap-work behind is renewed in three places.
- Volkert Rietvelt, armourer of this city, by whom the face was renewed and the arms then borne laid upon the older grounds
- 1601 · Anselm Haak, merchant of this city, by purchase
- 1609 · thence the house of Wett, in exchange for a horse and a clock
- 1616 · thence Hendrick Cranck, at the Haak sale
- upon Cranck's death, by descent to Trijn Lemmick, his daughter
- thence the deceased
Condition: sound, the lowest grounds lifting at the boss. The vendor's account is not before us.
The Grounds, as Counted at the Chipped Edge
| Ground | Arms | Read from |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | a chevron and three martlets | not identified; no such coat is entered in the roll of this city |
| 21 | a fess between three roundels | not identified |
| 20 | a lion's head erased | not identified |
| 19 | a saltire between four billets | the arms borne by the house of Wett before 1590 |
| 18 | three fishes in pale | Anselm Haak, merchant of this city |
| 17 | a hammer and two nails | the armourer's own mark, laid when the face was renewed |
| 16 and below | not separable at the edge | the earlier list gives no account of them |
[in red ink] Nineteen grounds. I counted them in 1619 with a glass, at the boss and at the rim, and I wrote the count in the margin of my own list where it stands yet. Whoever has found three more has laid them. She sells a shield by the layer, like a man selling a wall, and does not ask why the wall is growing. C.O. (Lowmonth 1637)
[in pencil] Twenty-two, and a ground laid for the twenty-third. The ground is already dry.
The Painted Shield
Shield, rare (requires attunement)
The shield gives the usual benefit to your Armor Class. It has 3 charges and regains all of them at dawn. When you are hit by an attack, you can use your reaction to expend 1 charge and add 4 to your AC against that attack, which may turn the hit into a miss. You must be holding the shield, and you must see the blow come.
While you are attuned to it, you can name aloud, without a check, the arms of any of the twenty-two grounds by setting your hand flat on the face for a minute. You learn the arms and nothing else: no name, no house, no year.
The uppermost arms are always the arms of somebody who is not alive. A ground is laid for the next bearer before the next bearer is known, and it is laid whether the shield changes hands or not.
While you are attuned, no likeness of you is a true likeness. A drawing, a painting, a wax impression, or a magically produced image of your face shows instead the arms uppermost on the shield. Creatures that know you still know you by sight; officers who work from a likeness do not, and the offices of this city will not enter you in a register from one.
The grounds can be lifted. A restorer who lifts one uncovers the face beneath it, and the face is a face and not a coat of arms, and it is recognised.
45 · Three Reliquary Fingers, of One Hand
Three finger-bones in silver-gilt mounts with glass windows, the tallest 5½ inches to the finial, of one hand, so described in the earlier list. Two are of one hand: the joints answer and the staining matches. The third is longer by three-eighths of an inch, of a paler colour, and is a thumb. Provenance: Beatrix Boonk, mistress of the Beguinage of St. Bavo; thence Duifje Stoevel, lace-dealer of the Kolkgracht, who had the mounts re-gilt and the lace of the cushions renewed at her own charge; thence the deceased. Condition: sound; the glass of the second window cracked and held with a strip of parchment, upon which part of a date may be read.
46 · The Smuggler's Chalk of Douwe Grauwe
A stick of chalk, white, worn to 3 inches, in a brass case of the sort carried by tally-men, the case dented and the lid sprung. A mark made with it is seen by the hand that made it and by no other. Provenance: Douwe Grauwe, of the Wolfsgat, hanged 1629; thence taken up with his goods by the office of the Waterbailiff, Doede Ramsvelt, and sold at the customs quay under the ordinance, which sale gives good title, whatever may be said of the taking; thence the deceased. Condition: the stick sound and dry; the case as noted. The shed at the customs quay has been whitewashed twice since the seizure, and the officers of that place have been at the trouble of doing it.
The Smuggler's Chalk
Wondrous item, common
The stick will make about thirty marks before it is used up, each no larger than a hand's breadth. A mark you make is plainly visible to you and cannot be seen by any other creature, nor by any magic that reveals writing, nor through truesight. It shows through whitewash, tar, pitch, and paint.
You know the direction and the distance of the nearest of your own marks within 1 mile, whether or not you can see it. A mark lasts until the stick that made it is used up or destroyed, and then all its marks go at once.
The chalk knows nothing of what the marks mean. Grauwe's marks are on the doors of this city yet, and the stick is here on the table.
47 · The Silver Arm of St. Bavo's Ground
A reliquary arm, silver over an oak core, the hand raised, 22 inches to the fingertips and weighing 9 pounds 4 ounces, the forearm pierced with a window of rock crystal 4 inches by 2. Behind the window, a bone of a forearm, bound at both ends with red silk. The band above the elbow is chased with a vine and is stamped with the mark of the sworn weighers of the Weighhouse for silver of the better standard. The hand opens at the wrist upon a hinge and closes about a limb.
Upon the plinth, three seals: the Beguinage of St. Bavo; the Chamber of Ordinances; and, under a lead, a certificate in the hand of Jelle Munck, gravedigger of St. Bavo's ground, that the bone was lifted from the Old Ground in the presence of two witnesses, both named. A broken bone held in the clasp of the hand is found straight in the morning and knits.
- of the treasury of the Beguinage of St. Bavo, so entered in the house-book of that place
- 1627 · released by Beatrix Boonk, mistress of the Beguinage, against a charge of 1,100 marks upon the roof of the almshouse
- 1627 · thence the deceased
Condition: excellent. The silver bright and lately cleaned with soap and not with sand; one finger re-soldered at the second joint; the crystal unscratched. The red silk at the ends of the bone is modern and was renewed in this hall.
[in red ink] The silver is two hundred years younger than the bone. Two objects married by a dealer. The chased band is Velhagen work of the last century and the weigher's punch on it is the punch of the last century, which she has read as an old mark because it is worn; the bone is not from any hand of this city, and the cut at the head of it is not a cut this city's ground makes. Three seals and a certificate, and not one of them looks at the bone. C.O. (Wend. fo. 88)
The Silver Arm
Wondrous item, very rare
The arm has 4 charges and regains 1 charge at dawn.
As an action you can close the silver hand about a creature's limb and expend 1 charge. The creature regains 4d4 + 4 hit points, and any bone broken in that limb is set straight and knits whole in 8 hours instead of in weeks. A bone that has already healed crooked is broken and set again, which the creature feels.
By expending 3 charges and holding the clasp for 1 minute, a limb severed within the last 24 hours is set back, if the limb is present. It knits in 8 hours and afterwards serves as it did.
The bone does the work. Taken out of the silver and held to the break in a cloth, it works exactly as well and to the same count of charges. The silver used empty does nothing at all, and the seals and the certificate upon the plinth speak only of the silver.
48 · A Gun-Founder's Mould, Cracked
The false mould for a chamber-piece of two pounds' ball, loam over iron staves, in two halves, 34 inches, the core wanting. Down the inner face of the left half runs a drying crack, and in the crack there are letters: five, or seven, according to the light. Three men of the foundry read it and read three different words. Provenance: Wibbe Hobbe, bell-founder of the Rope Street, in whose yard it stood aside against the wall for eleven years; thence the deceased. Condition: the loam dry and shedding at the edges, to be carried flat and not on end. Pieces cast in this mould before it was set aside carry the letters in relief within the bore, where they cannot be read until the piece bursts.
[in red ink] It is a drying crack and it started at the fourth stave, where the loam was laid too fat and shrank away from the iron. It is not writing and it is not a hand. It is, however, the same crack in the bell-mould that stood beside it in that yard, to the eighth of an inch in three places, and Hobbe would not be drawn on that, and I have measured both. C.O.
49 · The Ward Against Inventory
A plate of cast lead, 9 inches by 6 and a quarter of an inch thick, weighing 4 pounds 2 ounces, the face incised with the ruled columns of a tally in the old form of the Weighhouse: a column for the number, a column for the kind, a column for the weight. The strokes are cut in fives. The last column is left open and was never ruled off. Whatever lies beneath the plate is passed over when the place is counted.
- Reinout Wendelmar, antiquary of this city, who describes the plate in his Inventory of 1608 at folio 3, and does not enter it in the list of his own goods at the end of that book
- thence the deceased
- 13 Sprokkel 1637 · taken up from the strongroom of this house for the view, by order of the chief appraiser
Condition: sound. The lead soft and bruised at the upper left corner. The incised lines are clean and have never been scoured. The underside is bright over its whole surface, as lead is that has lain a long while flat upon a rough thing and has not been lifted.
[in pencil] This is why the count comes out. This, and the other reason.
The Ward Against Inventory
Wondrous item, rare
Objects that lie beneath the plate, and objects within the chest, crate, or drawer the plate is set upon, are left out of every count. A creature counting or listing the place omits them, arrives at a number that is short by their number, and finds nothing wanting; a written tally, inventory, manifest, or receipt made of that place omits them in the same way, whoever writes it and however carefully. No saving throw is offered, because nothing is done to the creature: the objects are not hidden, not silenced, and not made invisible.
A creature that already knows the object and is looking for that object finds it, picks it up, and uses it. It will not afterwards be able to write it into a list.
Magic that finds a thing by naming it, locate object among the rest, fails while the thing lies beneath the plate.
An object left beneath the plate for 30 days stops appearing in written records of ownership everywhere: bills of sale, pledge-books, wills, freight books, and the registers of the offices of this city. The entries are not struck through. They are simply not there when looked for, and the clerk who looks does not think it strange.
Lifting the plate does not bring the entries back. Title to such a thing has afterwards to be made again from the beginning, by oath and by witnesses, and in this city that costs more than most of the things it is worth doing for.
Where the plate has stood in a hall that is counted nightly, the count has come out low, and the difference has been carried in the book as an error of the weather.
50 · Two Manacles Without a Key
A pair of wrist-irons, wrought, the cuffs 2¾ inches inside and joined by three links, weighing 2 pounds 11 ounces the pair. There is no keyhole. The cuffs close by a spring within the boss, and no key is offered with them, nor is any key of record in the papers before us. They are opened by the saying aloud of the offence for which the wearer was taken up.
Provenance: Hendrick Cranck, executioner of this city, in whose inventory they stand as the irons that want no key; thence to the office of the Waterbailiff, and used at the Bailiff's Shed until an occasion upon which they could not be got off a man; thence sold at the customs quay in the time of Doede Ramsvelt; thence the deceased. Condition: the iron sound and the spring lively. The inside of the left cuff is worn bright and the right is not.
[in red ink] No smith of this city cut a ward for these, because there is nothing to cut: the boss is solid, filed up from the round, and the spring is let in from behind and peened over, which is an hour's work and cannot be undone in less than a day at a forge. Whoever tells you the key is lost will sell you the key next week. The left cuff is bright because a left hand pulls, and it pulls for a long time before it stops. C.O.
The Irons That Want No Key
Wondrous item, uncommon
As an action you can close the cuffs about the wrists of a creature that is willing, grappled, incapacitated, or restrained. A creature so bound cannot use its hands: it can take no action or Bonus Action requiring a free hand, it cannot cast a spell with a material component it must handle, and it has disadvantage on attack rolls and on ability checks that use the hands.
The cuffs cannot be picked, forced, filed, or struck off, nor opened by knock or by any magic that opens a lock, because there is no lock. They open, and fall, when a creature within earshot says aloud, correctly and in full, the offence for which the bound creature was taken up, or the debt for which it was arrested. The bound creature may say it itself. A wrong offence does nothing. So does an offence given in part, or in general terms, or in the words an officer would use in a warrant rather than the words of the thing that was done.
Nothing is provided for a creature bound without an offence. There are no words that open the irons upon such a creature, and the office that bound it must invent one and then say it, which two officers of this city have done.
Notice, Presentation Gallery
Arms are shown at the long table under the eye of a porter. Edged pieces are handed hilt first and are not to be drawn in the room; the corselets and the coats of plates may be taken up but not worn, the gallery being carpeted and the floor below it not.
Wards are shown flat and are not to be set, hung, laid upon a threshold, or carried across one. Lot 49 is to be lifted by two hands and returned to the same place on the table, and the porter will enter the hour it was lifted and the hour it came back.
Lot 50 is not to be tried upon the person. This is by order, and follows upon the view of the twelfth, and the house will not discuss the matter further in the gallery.
51 · The Cuirass of Jorrit Haak, Bankrupt
Breast and back of a light cuirass, munition work of good quality, the breast raised at the centre and polished to a glass, the edges fire-blued, weighing 17 pounds 8 ounces complete with straps and buckles. No maker's mark. Worn, the breast returns a face, and the face is not the wearer's.
- made for Anselm Haak, merchant of this city
- by descent to Jorrit Haak, his son, who wore it at the muster of 1629 and upon no other occasion of record
- 1631 · thence, upon the assignment of Haak's goods, by purchase at the table; the purchaser's name is not entered in the papers before us
- thence the deceased
Condition: excellent. The straps renewed in buff leather; the blueing at the edges original and unrubbed; the polish of the breast perfect and lately renewed.
[in red ink] The blueing is fire-blue and it is original, and it is the best thing about the piece. The polish on the breast is new and was laid on with rotten-stone by somebody who did not know to stop at the roping, so the roping is soft now and cannot be brought back. There is no mark because munition work carries no mark, which any armourer's boy would have told her for nothing. Twice polished since Haak wore it, and once since the plates were drawn. C.O.
The Bankrupt's Cuirass
Armor (breastplate), uncommon
While you wear the cuirass and the breast is kept polished, you know, on looking at a creature you can see, whether that creature owes you a debt that is written down anywhere, and you know the sum in marks and the instrument the debt stands in — bond, bill, pledge, freight note, or judgment. Looking into the polish of the breast instead shows you the face of the creature that owes you the largest such sum, wherever it is, and shows you nothing of where it is.
The armour reports nothing of debts that were never written down, nothing of what is owed to anybody else, and nothing at all of what you owe. Jorrit Haak wore it once.
The polish must be renewed with rotten-stone for an hour each dawn, or the breast returns the room like any other steel until the hour is put in.
52 · A Watchman's Rattle That Wakes Only the Guilty
A watchman's rattle of the town pattern, oak frame, ash tongue, iron pin and cog, 13 inches with the handle. Sounded at night in a street, it wakes some of the sleepers in that street and not the rest, and the ones it does not wake are not disturbed by it and do not report a noise. Provenance: Rutger Nack, clerk of the customs quay, who carried it in the night watch of his ward for eleven years and gave over the watch in 1634; thence the deceased. Condition: the tongue renewed twice, the second time in ash where the first was in oak; the frame split along the grain and bound with brass wire; the cog worn but taking. Said to have been carried on the night of the fire in the Wolfsgat, and to have been the reason the ropewalk was clear.
The Watchman's Rattle
Wondrous item, rare
The rattle has 3 charges and regains all of them at dawn. As an action you can sound it and expend 1 charge. Every creature within 300 feet that is asleep, and that has within the last year done a thing for which it fears being taken up by an officer of a city, wakes at once and knows that it woke to a rattle. Every other sleeper within that distance is not woken, hears nothing, and rests on undisturbed.
It does not wake a creature held asleep by a spell or other magic. It carries through shutters, doors, walls, water, and fog, and it does not carry to anybody it is not for.
You learn nothing of what any of them did. You learn who woke, and in a boarding-house that is a great deal.
The rattle has never failed to wake the person holding it.
53 · The Beguinage Alms-Box, Sealed
An alms-box, oak bound with three iron straps, the slot in the lid 3½ inches by half an inch, the hasp sealed with two leads on wire: the Beguinage of St. Bavo, and the Chamber of Ordinances. Weighed at the Weighhouse in the presence of the sworn weigher: 34 pounds gross. A box of these dimensions filled to the slot with copper of the common coin, the box itself being 11 pounds, weighs 22 pounds by the weighers' table. Shaken, coin sounds within, and sounds loose, as coin does in a box that is not full.
Provenance: Beatrix Boonk, mistress of the Beguinage of St. Bavo, by whose hand the seals were set; thence the deceased. Condition: sound; the leads entire and the wires unbroken; a rim of salt at the foot, from standing in this house. The house does not undertake what is within. The seals are those of the Beguinage and of the Chamber and are to be broken, if at all, by the buyer, at the buyer's charge, and not in the hall.
54 · A Drowned Man's Coat, Dried and Pressed
A man's coat of black broadcloth, lined in serge, the chest 36 inches, the sleeve 22 inches from the shoulder seam, ten buttons of horn, all present. The cloth is shrunk about both cuffs by long wetting and has been pressed dry. In the right cuff, ink to the depth of 2 inches, of the kind used in the copying of documents and not the kind used in accounts. Sewn inside the skirt, a pen-wipe of green baize, worn through in the middle. In the left pocket, a stub of red chalk, and a brass pen-case, empty, the cap wanting.
The collar is lined with a strip of linen bearing a laundry mark in marking ink, not transcribed.
Provenance: taken from the water at the Sluice Basin, 1635, and delivered to this house with certain effects, no order of any office being of record. The vendor's account is not before us. Condition: dried, pressed, the nap raised with a card, one small tear at the left elbow darned with a thread that matches. The collar is entire.
Offered as a curiosity of the trade, and offered with the tally-ticket that came upon it from the watermen, which bears a number and no name.
[in pencil] Say the name. There is a name in the collar and the collar was not cut.
55 · A Ward-Stone from the Sluice Basin Wall, Cut Out Entire
A dressed stone of the north wall of the Sluice Basin, cut out entire, 14 inches by 9 by 9, weighing 64 pounds. The outer face is incised with a line of letters in the old customs hand, worn to the depth of a nail, of which four may be read with certainty. The five other faces carry the mason's tooling of the wall and, at one end, the fresh saw-cut by which the stone was taken out. While the stone is whole and set in a wall, water does not cross that wall.
- the wall of the Sluice Basin, being of the city
- the stone cut out and carried away, the order for the cutting not produced
- thence the deceased
Notice of this lot has been given to the office of the Waterbailiff and to the Chamber of Ordinances in the form the ordinance requires. No claim has been entered within the time allowed. The lot is offered subject to any claim hereafter made, and the premium paid at the table is not returned upon such a claim.
Condition: entire, which is the whole of the matter. The stone is unchipped upon all six faces. It is not to be drilled, dressed, squared, lettered, or set in a mortar that must afterwards be cut away, and the buyer's mason is to be told so before he is paid and not after. Since the cutting, the north wall has stood under repair, and the cellars of two houses upon the Kolkgracht have been wet since Harvestmonth.
The Ward-Stone
Wondrous item, very rare
Setting the stone takes a mason 8 hours. It may be set in a wall, in a threshold, or in the coping of a curb, and on setting it you choose what it wards: one wall up to 60 feet long, one doorway, or the whole enclosure of a room up to 30 feet on a side.
While the stone is whole and in place, water and other liquids do not cross the line it wards of their own motion. A tide rises against the wall and stands. Rain runs to the line and turns. Seepage stops, a broken pipe empties on its own side, and a cellar under the level of the harbour stays dry and is entered dryshod.
Liquid carried in a vessel by a creature crosses freely, and so does a creature that is wet. The stone does not know which side is which: what is inside stays inside. A place warded with water already standing in it stays wet, and must be pumped.
Water that is turned aside is not stopped, but sent. While the stone wards a place, the ground within 300 feet of wherever it was last set takes the water it turned, and takes it at the tide. Cellars fill there, wells go brackish, and mortar lets go. Nothing announces the connection, and no office of this city has ever accepted one.
If the stone is chipped, drilled, cracked, or broken, the ward fails at that moment and does not return, whatever is done to the stone afterwards. Everything it has held out since it was set arrives in the same hour: a cellar warded through a season fills to the level of the water outside it in less than an hour, and the door opens inward.
End of the second day's sale. Payment is taken at the table before the room is cleared. Arms and wards bought this day are not carried out through the gallery but down the back stair and out at the Rope Street door, and no lot of this day is left standing in the hall overnight, by the terms of the bond given to the office of the Waterbailiff. The books, maps, and papers of the third day are shown in the gallery from eight, and the candles are sealed at ten.