Third Day — Books, Maps & Correspondence
Papers are the cheapest goods in any room and the last to be forgotten. Plate is melted in an afternoon. A letter outlives the house that sold it, and the house that bought it, and the reason.
— Reinout Wendelmar, An Inventory of the Curious Holdings of This City, 1608, preface
The third day's sale is held in the Long Room and offers the library, the charts, the registers, the correspondence, and such manuscripts of art as were found among them. The presentation table is dressed with grey baize and nothing is set upon it that stands higher than a hand. The paper lots come up from the strongroom flat, on two barrows, under boards, and the porters take the stairs in step because the boards are long. The coal in the near grate is drawn to the far one and damped: the house does not keep a fire where it keeps paper. The room is cold by eleven and stays so. Buyers of books were told this in the bill and have come dressed for it. What the room smells of is size, oak-gall ink, wet wool, and the salt that comes through the whitewash of the lower storey in any weather that is not dry.
The light is the light the porters call good: fog on the lead glass, coming down grey and even, nothing shining. Paper reads best in it, and so does a made-up leaf. Sixty-one of the hundred and eighty seats were taken at the opening, which is fewer than the first day and more than the house looked for. On the third bench from the back, a dealer of the Wolfsgat with his own copy of this catalogue open on his knee and a red ink in a horn pot; he has had the run of the gallery all three days of view and he writes where he stands. At the left of the paying table, the agent of the Staple Bank, who attends the third day and no other. Behind him the clerk of the Court of Wards, with the embargo book and a strip of tape laid in it, four lots of this day standing under notice of claim. In the second row a woman with a leather folder tied twice about, who claims nine lots in this sale and hears four of them called today. Two buyers from a chapter house two days inland, lodged at the Sluice since the eleventh. A bookseller of the Staple Quay who buys by weight and says so. Nine paddles are held for absent bidders; the numbers are published and the names are not. The senior partner's chair stands at the rostrum where it stands, and his signature is on the day's sheet.
Paper is not passed. Each lot is set upon the table and turned by a porter with a bone folder, first leaf and last leaf, and the leaves between at the crier's word. Where a manuscript carries an operative passage, that passage lies under a strip of card cut to the measure of the page, and the card is not lifted at the table for any bidder. Buyers who require more are referred to the days of view, which are past.
Twelve of the twenty-five lots of this day are manuscripts of the working sort, and the house has set them at intervals, so that a buyer who has come for one will sit through the others. The twelve were billed separately in a sheet posted at the Weighhouse, at the chapter house, and at the door of the notary's office in the Kolkgracht. Documents of a common sort are offered in bundles, and the room is asked to bid on the bundle and not upon the leaf. The house looks for this day to be short in money and long in hours, and looks to be paid at the table: buyers of paper do not have to be asked twice, which is a virtue this house has learned to price.
Order of the Third Day
| Hour | Business |
|---|---|
| Ten o'clock | Lots 56 to 68 |
| The mid-day bell | Half an hour; the tables cleared and the porters relieved |
| One o'clock | Lots 69 to 80 |
| At candles | The reading of the withdrawn lots, with the ground of withdrawal |
The Twelve Manuscripts of Art, with the Attributions of the Earlier List
| Lot | Manuscript | As attributed |
|---|---|---|
| 57 | Attest | Coenraad Zeeger, notary of this city |
| 59 | Weigh the Unseen | a sworn weigher of the Weighhouse |
| 61 | Mark of Custody | Reinout Wendelmar, antiquary |
| 64 | The Crier's Voice | a crier of this house, deceased |
| 66 | Provenance | the late owner |
| 69 | Nightward Tally | a hand of this house |
| 70 | Reversion | Steven Immel, cartographer |
| 72 | Unwritten Hand | Maritgen Halma, copyist |
| 74 | Lien | the Staple Bank of Velhagen |
| 76 | The Drowned Hour | Aldric Sammen, harbour coroner |
| 78 | Seal Unbroken | none |
| 80 | The Last True Day | Gerbrand Wett, instrument maker |
Notice Concerning the Manuscripts of Art
Lots described as manuscripts are sold entire and in their wrappers, and are handled at the presentation table with a porter present. No ink is opened within three feet of them; no candle within six. Copying at the table is not permitted at any price, and the house will not undertake a copy on a buyer's behalf. A bidder who asks for the card to be lifted is answered in the same words as often as he asks, and upon the third asking is entered in the day-book as having asked.
The house does not undertake that a manuscript of art can be read, nor that it can be worked, nor that a manuscript which has been worked can be worked again, nor that the hand this catalogue calls the author's is the author's. Paper is sold as paper. What was got out of it by the late owner is not part of the lot and is not in the estate.
My lords and ladies, buyers all: the third day of the sale of the goods, books and papers of the late Meinhard Quist, of the fourteenth house on the Kolkgracht, by order of the Court of Wards. The candles are sealed and the notches are cut at ninety. Lots fifty-six to eighty. Lot fifty-six, upon the table.
56 · The Quist Day-Book, 1598–1611
A day-book of purchases, in folio, of two hundred and fourteen written leaves, the spine lettered in gilt 1598–1611, the entries continuing in the same hand and the same ink well beyond the lettering. The leaves are ruled by hand in five columns. Four are headed: the day; the thing; of whom; what paid. The fifth is ruled to the same width as the rest and is headed with a stroke and no word. In it stand numbers, from one to something above a hundred, entered against some purchases and not against others, and not in the order of the days.
The hand does not vary and the entries are short. On the leaf for Grassmonth 1611 two purchases stand together: an orrery, bought of L. Wett for nine hundred marks, paid at the Weighhouse (see lot 12); and, four lines below, a ring of the goldsmith's, made to the buyer's own name, fourteen marks (see lot 97). The last written entry is a cuirass bought out of a bankruptcy, 1631 (see lot 51).
- 1598 · begun by the late owner in his twenty-seventh year, the first entry a school-book bought of Dirck Feddes, schoolmaster, for two stivers
- 1631 · the last entry written
- 1636 · taken up with the library at the Kolkgracht under seal of the Court of Wards; thence this house
Condition: binding sound, corners rubbed, the first quire loose at the joint. A run of leaves has been excised close to the sewing, between the entry of Wintermonth 1621 and the entry of Lowmonth 1623. Nineteen stubs remain, cut and not torn, three of them bearing the ends of words.
Notice of claim has been given upon this lot by Ilsabet Vantoc under a holograph instrument of gift, the claimant asking that the lot be impounded and not sold, as being evidence in her cause. The Court has not so ordered. The house sells such right as the estate has, and no more.
[in pencil] the year 1622 is torn out, not missing. look at the stub.
57 · Attest, a Manuscript in One Quire
One quire, limp vellum, written in a notary's set hand with the abbreviations of the office throughout: a diagram of a seal in the lower margin of the third leaf, a table of inks on the fourth, and on the last leaf a schedule of the fees at which the writer would perform the same service by eye and hand alone. The final three leaves are in a second hand, smaller and quicker, and carry additions concerning erasure, the lifting of a seal, and the re-laying of it.
Provenance: attributed to Coenraad Zeeger, notary of this city, who drew the testaments of three of the families named in this catalogue, and in whose office the quire was found after his death; thence the deceased. Condition: the wrapper cockled, a candle-burn at the tail of the fifth leaf, the text entire; a wax stain, dark red, upon the third leaf, in which a partial impression may be read.
The lot is offered as a manuscript and not as an instrument of proof. This house does not certify any result got by the working of it, and no officer of this house will be called to speak to one.
Attest
Level 1 Divination
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a lens and a drop of sealing wax)
Duration: Instantaneous
You touch a document, seal, or inscription of no more than sixteen written pages and learn three things about it. First, whether the hand that wrote the body of it is the hand that signed and sealed it. Second, how many places in it were erased, added to, or written over after the sealing, and where those places lie, though not what stood there before. Third, the age of the ink and of the paper or vellum, each within five years.
The spell tells you nothing of whether what stands written is true, nothing of a cipher, and nothing of a tongue you cannot read. A document copied fair from a false original returns nothing to be found, however false it is, because there is nothing in it to find.
The spell tells a true impression from an impression made by a cast of the matrix that struck it (see lot 68). A seal made whole again by illusion (see lot 78) is reported as whole for as long as that illusion holds, and the parting beneath it is not shown.
The spell covers sixteen further pages for each spell slot level above 1, and may be cast at a range of 10 feet upon a document held open in your sight.
58 · A Bundle of Fair Copies in an Unknown Hand
Twenty-six leaves of this house's own foolscap, written on one side only, each bearing a fair copy of the description of a lot in the present sale, in a hand not identified by this house. There is no correction, no deletion, and no blot in the whole bundle. The wording agrees with the printed catalogue in twenty-two of the twenty-six, and in the remaining four differs only in the order of the measurements.
Upon the eighth leaf, below the copy and divided from it by a ruled line, stand three lines which are not in the printed text of this catalogue and are not the description of any lot offered in it. They are a condition report. They give the state of a seal, the state of the wax, and the fit of a door in its rebate.
Provenance: found in the Presentation Gallery of this house in the course of the cataloguing, 1636; consigned by this house. Condition: tape-stains at head and tail, the uppermost leaf browned along the fold, three leaves creased across the writing; the tape not this house's tape. The vendor's account is not before us.
[in red ink] This is Wenninck's hand. I had letters from him and I kept them. He copied for money and he copied what he was told. The paper is this house's own, the salt-mill watermark and the deckle at the long side, so they gave it him by the ream and now they call the hand unknown. C.O.
59 · Weigh the Unseen, a Manuscript
Twelve leaves, sewn with linen thread into a cover cut from a weigh-note of the Weighhouse, the printed rules of the note still legible on the inside of the cover together with its serial number, which is not cancelled. The text is in a clerk's hand, with tables of tare in the margins. Four leaves are of instances: a cask, a bale, a locked chest, a coffin. Each is worked, and the answer is set down beneath it in a second ink with the true weight beside it as afterwards found on the beam. In every instance but the coffin the two agree to the ounce. Under the coffin stands only that the beam and the working did not agree, and that the difference was eleven ounces.
Provenance: attributed to a sworn weigher of this city, so described in the earlier list; thence the deceased. The Weighhouse, applied to by this house on 9 Sprokkel, does not claim the manuscript and does not disclaim it, and the Master Weigher desires it entered that she was asked.
Condition: cover worn through at the spine, the thread renewed, the tables complete.
Weigh the Unseen
Level 2 Divination
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a weigher's brass check)
Duration: Instantaneous
You lay a hand upon a closed container of no more than 10 cubic feet — a chest, a cask, a case, a coffin, a wall-press — and learn its whole weight to within one ounce, the number of separate pieces within it, and the chief materials among them by their kind: metal, stone, glass, bone, wood, cloth, paper, liquid, living flesh, with the weight of each kind given apart.
You learn nothing of shape, colour, mark, or writing, and nothing of which piece is which. Powder, sand, and packing straw each return as one piece. Pieces resting one upon another and joined with pitch or solder are counted as one piece, which is how a dealer hides four things in the weight of three.
A living creature within the container is counted as flesh, and is counted as one.
Lead defeats the spell. A lining or a case of lead returns its weight honestly and returns no count at all, and the working cannot be pressed for one.
The container may be 10 cubic feet larger for each spell slot level above 2.
60 · The Ledger of the Watermen, Extract, 1584 and 1635
An extract from the register kept by the Watermen's Guild of persons taken from the water within the jurisdiction, sworn by the clerk of the guild, sealed with the guild seal and stamped at the corner with the harbour stamp. Two entries, copied word for word, being the two entries that stand upon the one page of the register. The extract was had of the guild at the office rate of 2 marks and is so entered in the day-book of this house.
The first entry: 4 Winemonth 1584, at the third hour of the ebb, taken from the water at the Sluice Basin within the gate, a child, female, of nine years, named at the taking as Merrit Quist of the Kolkgracht; the body received by the family; certified, the harbour coroner then in office.
The second entry: 4 Winemonth 1635, at the third hour of the ebb, taken from the water at the Sluice Basin within the gate, a man of full age, not identified at the taking; the coat and the shoes entered apart; certified, Aldric Sammen, harbour coroner. In the margin against this second entry a name is written in a second ink and a second hand, being the letter M and the surname Quist, with no day and no mark of authority.
Provenance: the Watermen's Guild, by extract; thence the deceased. Condition: the seal whole, the leaves clean; one fold across the second leaf, and the margin of the second entry rubbed as by a thumb.
[in pencil] Two drownings, one page, fifty-one years. Same gate, same hour of the tide.
61 · Mark of Custody, a Manuscript
Six leaves in a wrapper of marbled paper, written in a small upright hand, being the hand of the inventory of 1608 and the same lead-grey ink. Two leaves of the working; four leaves of a use, being an argument that a dealer's stock ought to be marked at the shelf and not at the label, with the reasons set out under seven heads. The seventh head is that a label may be exchanged by a person who cannot read.
Provenance: attributed to Reinout Wendelmar, antiquary of this city, author of the inventory of 1608; thence the deceased, with a parcel of the writer's papers. Condition: good, the wrapper worn through at the spine fold. The sixth leaf is annotated in the margin by the late owner with a list of numbers in lead white, thirty-one in all, and no heading.
A mark made by this working cannot be seen by ordinary sight and cannot be washed off, planed off, or overpainted. This house is not able to say of any lot in this sale whether such a mark stands upon it, and does not undertake to enquire.
Mark of Custody
Level 1 Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a point of lead white, which the spell consumes)
Duration: 30 days
You set an invisible mark upon an object you touch that is Large or smaller and that is not worn or carried by an unwilling creature. For the duration you know, whenever you turn your mind to the object, whether it stands at rest or is in motion, and if in motion, the compass direction of its travel.
While you are within 1 mile of the object you know also the direction to it and the distance to the nearest ten feet, through wall, water, lead, and fog. You know the hour at which it passes out of the possession of one creature and into the possession of another. You learn the name of neither, and you do not know where the thing stands when it lies still and you are more than a mile from it, which is the condition of most goods for most of their lives.
Casting the spell again upon the same object renews the duration. The mark can be seen for what it is by a creature that casts detect magic upon the object, and shows then as a small figure in lead white, low down and turned inward, of the kind a dealer paints beneath a thing he means to know again.
You may mark one further object for each spell slot level above 1, each object touched in the same casting.
62 · The Wendelmar Inventory, 1608, Interleaved
The printed inventory of the cabinets, presses and collections of this city, taken in 1608 by Reinout Wendelmar for the Chamber, folio, in calf over boards, rebacked. This copy is interleaved throughout with blanks, and the blanks are written upon in a red-brown ink in one hand, which is neither the printer's nor the author's: some three thousand notes of prices asked, prices got, folio references, and the names of dealers, with a running index at the back in the same ink.
- 1608 · the author's own copy, so lettered on the fore-edge
- thence Casimir Ohl, then antiquary to this house, by whom it was interleaved and annotated
- thence, at a sale of a dealer's household goods in this city, the deceased
Condition: sound; the boards Pluym's work of 1621, the spine renewed and lettered. One leaf, at folio 41, is of a paper that is not the paper of the rest and is sewn in with a thread of another colour. It carries printed matter in the same type, and no annotation.
[in red ink] The boards are Pluym's, 1621, and the calf is off the same skin as this house's own ledgers of that year, which anyone may see by holding the two grains up together at the window. The index at the back is worth more than the book and the book is worth more than the figure they have set on it. Thirteen years I lent this volume to gentlemen who now bid against me with what they read in it. C.O.
63 · The Vantoc Pledge-Book, Folios 12–19
Eight folios, disbound, from the pledge register of a pawn house of this city which was dissolved and whose stock was sold by order. The folios are ruled in six columns: the day; the pledgor; the thing; the sum advanced; the term; and at the outer edge the redemption or the forfeit, with the clerk's initials. Three hands appear. The entries run from Bloommonth of one year to Lentmonth of the next without a break, four hundred and ten in all, and are legible throughout.
Four entries stand at a date later than the day upon which the house that kept the book ceased to keep it. They are in the third hand. They are written at the foot of folios 18 and 19, in a space that had been left, and each concerns a single object taken out of the strongroom of that house and not returned to it. The column for the sum advanced is not filled in.
- kept by Klaas Vantoc, pawnbroker, at the sign of the Three Balances in the Wolfsgat
- the business was carried on from 1623 by Focke Nijs, whose entries are in a fourth hand and are not in these folios
- thence, at a sale in this city, the deceased
Condition: the folios browned at the edges, the sewing holes torn through at the head, folio 19 lacking its outer corner. The vendor's account is not before us.
Notice of claim has been given upon this lot by Ilsabet Vantoc, daughter of the said pawnbroker, who states that the four entries above described are evidence of a theft out of her father's strongroom, and who claims eight further lots in this sale upon the same folios. The claim stands referred to the Court of Wards and the lot is offered without prejudice to it. The claimant has twice asked the reserve, which cannot be told her, and has been informed that the folios may be inspected at the table upon payment of the ordinary fee of one stiver.
[in red ink] These folios were never in the strongroom. They came to me from Nijs after the dissolution and I sold them honestly. The paper is Vantoc's own stock, laid, with the balances in the watermark, and I would know it in a dark room by the rattle of it. Let her ask her father where the rest of the book went, and let her ask this house why it prints eight folios and not twenty. C.O.
[in pencil] the house is selling her the proof. someone here wanted her to have it.
64 · The Crier's Voice, a Manuscript
Ten leaves, stitched and boarded in pasted paper, written in a round hand with the working set out in short lines in the manner of a part in a play, and the breathing marked. Bound in at the back, four sale-bills of this house of the years 1618 to 1621, folded and used as pastedowns, upon one of which the writer has ruled the notches of a candle against the lines of his own text.
Provenance: written for the use of the rostrum of this house by a crier then in its service, deceased; thence the deceased, by purchase from the writer's widow. An account rendered against this house in the matter of its making was not proved. Condition: good; the boards sprung, the first leaf thumbed to transparency at the lower corner.
The crier of this house has had the use of the manuscript through the three days of view, upon the usual entry in the day-book, and it is returned to the table this morning.
The Crier's Voice
Level 2 Enchantment
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self (60-foot radius)
Components: V, M (a printed bill or a written notice)
Duration: 10 minutes
For the duration, every creature within the radius that can hear at all hears every word you speak, plainly and at one strength, through crowd noise, rain on glass, machinery, wind, and any closed door within that distance. You need not raise your voice, and shouting gains you nothing.
When another creature within the radius speaks in order to be heard against you, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or its words are made out by nobody within the radius but you, until the start of its next turn. A creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns. A creature that is not contending with you — one answering a question, or bidding — is unaffected and is heard as usual.
The spell carries your words and does nothing for their content. It does not make you understood in a tongue the hearer lacks, it does not hold attention, and it has never yet made anyone believed.
The radius increases by 30 feet for each spell slot level above 2.
65 · Four Charts of the Sluice Basin, at Four Tides
Four charts of the Sluice Basin and its gate, drawn from soundings taken at high water, at the first hour of the ebb, at low water, and at the flood, and lettered accordingly at the foot in the hand of a Waterbailiff then in office. The soundings are in feet and quarters, in a close figure. The gate is drawn shut in all four. Provenance: Wolter Slecht, Waterbailiff; thence the deceased. Condition: the third sheet water-stained along the lower edge and laid down upon a backing; the others clean.
Upon the third sheet, at the mouth within the gate, a sill is drawn in and figured at 11 feet, hatched as rock. The guild soundings of 1631 and of 1636, which this house has seen, do not find it.
66 · Provenance, a Manuscript, Much Corrected
Three quires, twenty-six leaves, in a wrapper cut from a sale-bill and sewn with linen thread by the writer. The whole is in the hand of the late owner, and it is the only manuscript of art in this sale of which that can be said. It is corrected as a working paper is corrected: struck through, written over, cut about with a knife and patched, and in two places the patch is pinned to the leaf with a dressmaker's pin, the head of the pin being still bright.
The operative passage stands seven times. Six are struck through and all six are legible. They differ chiefly in the number of hands the working is to report: one in the first, five in the third, seven in the fourth, three in the passage that stands, and the passage that stands was written last. Against the fourth, in the margin: too many, and they do not all answer to a name.
The last leaf carries a table of three ruled rows, headed with a date and no name. The rows were filled in and are then scored through with the pen held so hard that the paper is cut in two places and the ink has gone through into the wrapper.
- written by the deceased, the earliest struck passage dated in his hand 1611
- 1636 · taken up with the library at the Kolkgracht; thence this house
Condition: fragile at the folds, the pins to be watched, the wrapper stained through from the last leaf as described.
[in pencil] He wrote it to find out who had held him. It answered.
Provenance
Level 3 Divination (ritual)
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a written label and a pin)
Duration: Instantaneous
You touch an object no larger than 10 feet in any dimension. You learn of the last three creatures that wanted to own it: the name each went by while it was theirs, the manner in which each came by it — purchase, gift, inheritance, pledge, seizure, theft, or not ascertained — and the place where it changed hands, named as the people there name it.
Only wanting is counted. A carrier, a porter, a servant sent to fetch, a thief hired by another, and an heir who sold within the month are none of the three. If fewer than three creatures have wanted the object, you learn how many there have been, and the rest of the answer is silence and not error.
A second casting upon the same object within 30 days tells you nothing you did not learn at the first. Upon an object that has stood in one collection and never left it, the working reports one hand three times, with three dates.
Cast upon a creature, the spell fails and the components are spent — unless that creature has been the subject of a bill of sale, a pledge, a seizure, or a lot number, in which case it does not fail.
You learn of one further creature that wanted the object, reaching further back, for each spell slot level above 3.
67 · A Birth-Register Leaf, Beguinage, 1575–1585
A leaf from a register of births attended by the sworn midwife of the Beguinage of St Bavo, ruled in three columns, twenty-two entries, the years running 1575 to 1585 with a gap of four years in the middle where the midwife was ill. The eleventh entry: Merrit, daughter of the house on the Kolkgracht, the fourteenth, at the second hour, both living. The entry immediately following is struck through with one line drawn against a rule. Beneath the stroke the surname is legible and the given name is not. The day is the same day.
Provenance: Ymke Baak, midwife; thence Beatrix Boonk, Mistress of the Beguinage; thence the deceased. Condition: the leaf cut at the gutter with a knife and not torn, and cut from the outside of the gathering, so that the leaf it was joined to is elsewhere. Two pin-holes at the head.
The Beguinage does not part with the leaves of its registers. How this leaf came out of its book is not stated in the earlier list.
68 · The Quist Seal Matrix
A seal matrix, steel, the face round and 1¾ inches across, cut in intaglio with the device used by the late owner upon every paper of his that this house has seen: a moth, the wings open and the antennae crossed, above a plain bar, and no legend. The stem is octagonal, 2⅜ inches, with a turned collar and a hole for a cord. With it a case of fruitwood lined with wash-leather, and a stick of green wax, used.
This is the original matrix. No second was cut, and this house has satisfied itself upon the point.
- 1611 · cut for the deceased, the cutter not named in the earlier list, and entered in his day-book at thirty-one marks (see lot 56)
- 1636 · taken into the custody of this house with the papers of the estate, and kept since in the drawer of the presentation table
Condition: the face sharp and the ground clean, the collar unmarked. A slight burr stands at the rim upon one side, taken down with a stone along part of its length and not along the rest. The wash-leather of the case is worn through where the face rests.
[in red ink] This is a cast, not the matrix. There is a burr at the rim where the mould parted, and the original had no burr; I sealed with it in 1618. C.O.
[in pencil] this is the cast. the matrix is in the drawer under the presentation table, and the wax on the cabinet is the cast's.
The Quist Seal Matrix
Wondrous item, rare
As an action you can seal a document with wax and this matrix. While that seal is whole, the document cannot be altered by any means short of breaking the seal: fresh ink laid upon it will not dry, a scraped word stands again by morning, and a leaf cut out is found back in its place with the cut closed. A spell of 4th level or lower that would alter, erase, forge, or restore the document fails, and the caster knows that it failed and why.
While you hold the matrix, or have held it and are within 1 mile of a seal made with it, you know whether that seal is whole or broken, and you know the hour at which it was broken. You do not know by whom.
An impression from this matrix cannot be counterfeited by hand, by punch, or by any engraver's work. The offices of this city receive it without enquiry, and have done so for twenty-six years.
A cast taken from the face in plaster or fine sand yields a working matrix. It carries every property above save one: whoever holds a cast cannot tell whether a seal made with it is whole or broken, and gets no hour and no warning. A cast is told from the original in the hand in one way only, and always in that way — where the mould parted, the rim carries a burr.
A seal set with a cast, over a seal that was broken, is whole for every purpose an office of this city recognises. It is not whole to attest (see lot 57).
69 · Nightward Tally, a Manuscript
A manuscript in one quire, eight leaves, ruled to the pattern of a night-book and written in a clerk's hand, close and upright, the counting-figures set in a second and blacker ink. No name is subscribed and no date. The text sets out the warding of a closed room, whereby the number of things standing in it is taken at the setting and every change in that number is afterwards reported to the person who set it, with the quarter of the room the change came from and no more.
Provenance: written in this city, by a hand of this house, so described in the earlier list; thence with the library papers. Condition: clean, the last leaf blank, the sewing new and of the house's own thread. The paper is the house's ledger stock, of the making bought in Grassmonth 1636.
Nightward Tally
Level 2 Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Self (50-foot cube)
Components: V, S, M (a tally stick and a piece of chalk)
Duration: 8 hours
When you cast the spell you learn the exact number of separate objects within the cube that weigh 1 pound or more. A closed container counts as one object, and its contents are not counted.
For the duration you know the instant that number changes, and from which quarter of the cube. You learn nothing of what was added, taken away, or divided, and nothing of who did it. If an object within the cube carries a mark of custody that you set, you also learn where in the cube it now stands.
The tally never reads low. Where the count cannot be resolved — a case within a case, a crate that is sealed, a thing that is two things — it returns the higher number, and it returns that same higher number at every casting made in that room at that hour.
The cube increases by 10 feet for each spell slot level above 2.
70 · Reversion, a Manuscript in Two Quires
A manuscript in two quires, the first of twelve leaves and the second of six, stitched together cold at four stations. The text of the first quire sets out the bringing of a small thing back to the condition it stood in upon a named day, within thirty days. The second quire is workings, tables of days, and, at its foot, a note in the author's hand: tried upon the six sheets of the atlas, at thirty days and at ten and at one, and the sheets are as they were.
Provenance: attributed to Steven Immel, sworn surveyor of the Staple Quay, deceased 1624, whose surveys are the ground of lot 77; thence, at the sale of his papers upon the Weighhouse steps, the deceased. Condition: good; the second quire foxed along the fore-edge; the stitching drawn at the head station.
[in red ink] The second quire is not the paper of the first. Both are of this city's mills, the first with the two-handled pot and the second with the crowned shield, and there are nine years between the two makings. The stitching was done cold and done cheap, by a man who bound a bill of lading in the morning and this in the afternoon. C.O.
Reversion
Level 4 Transmutation
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a sponge and a pinch of pumice, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Instantaneous
You touch one nonmagical object no larger than 1 foot on a side and weighing no more than 10 pounds, and name a number of days, up to 30. The object takes the condition it stood in that many days ago. A break closes, damp dries, ink returns to a washed page, a cut seal is whole again — whole in fact, not in seeming. Matter taken from the object since the named day comes back to it; matter added since falls away as dust.
The object's contents are not affected. A bottle mends and what was spilled stays spilled.
The spell restores an object and not a history. It returns nothing that was never part of the object, and it does not undo the work of a spell. A leaf from which a name has been effaced by magic is made new paper, and is still blank.
The number of days you may name increases by 30 for each spell slot level above 4.
71 · The Wett Family Letters, 1594–1612, Forty-One Letters
Forty-one letters, folded and sealed in the ordinary way, written between members of the family of Wett, of the Sluice Quay, between 1594 and 1612, together with the wrapper in which they were kept and a count upon the wrapper in Lubbert Wett's hand. The letters are of household matters, of the instrument trade, of a suit at law over a mill at the river's head, and of money lent within the family and not repaid. Thirty-eight are entire; three are torn at the seal, the paper coming away with the wax.
The Bundle, as Sorted for the Sale
| Letters | Years | Matter |
|---|---|---|
| 1–6 | 1594–1597 | a marriage settlement, and the carriage of furniture |
| 7–14 | 1598–1602 | the shop: wheel-cutting, apprentices, a debt to a brass-founder |
| 15–22 | 1603–1606 | the suit at law upon the mill |
| 23–31 | 1607–1610 | an illness in the house, and money lent |
| 32–40 | 1611–1612 | the sale of an instrument of horology, the purchaser not named |
| 41 | 1612 | household furniture, and a candlestick of seven branches |
- 1594–1612 · written and received within the family of Wett, of the Sluice Quay
- kept and bundled by Lubbert Wett, instrument-maker, with the tape and the count
- 1630 · thence the deceased, from a private hand, at a price not entered in the day-book
Condition: good, the paper strong and the ink black. Forty-one are counted upon the wrapper and forty-one are present. The tape is not the tape the count was written against; it is new grosgrain, and the old creases in the wrapper do not answer to it. The vendor's account is not before us.
A claim in respect of this lot is entered by Ilsabet Vantoc, upon a folio of a pledge-book which does not answer to the description of this bundle, and stands referred to the Court of Wards. A caveat in respect of the same lot is entered by Barbara Wett, great-granddaughter of two of the writers, upon the ground that the letters are of her family and were not her family's to lose. The lot is offered without prejudice to either.
[in pencil] Forty-one letters. Forty-one moths. Forty-one names. Count what is missing, not what is here.
72 · Unwritten Hand, a Manuscript
A manuscript in one quire, six leaves, in a woman's hand, fluent and much abbreviated, being a copyist's working text. Three pages are exercises: the same sentence, a common form of receipt, written eleven times in eleven hands, with the manner of each hand noted in the margin — the slope, the pressure, the lifting of the pen at the turn. With the quire, loose, four further leaves of the like exercises in a later hand, the copyist not named.
Provenance: attributed to Maritgen Halma, copyist, of the Wolfsgat, who taught the trade in this city for thirty years; thence the deceased. Condition: the quire sound; the four loose leaves water-marked at one corner and once folded small.
Unwritten Hand
Level 1 Illusion
Casting Time: Action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (a pen that another person has written with)
Duration: 1 hour
Name the hand of one person whose writing you have studied for at least 10 minutes. For the duration, everything you write by hand appears to be written by that person: their letters, slope, spacing, and habits of spelling and of stopping.
Writing made while the spell lasts keeps the borrowed hand after the spell ends, permanently. A creature that examines such writing closely can tell it for an imitation with a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC, with Advantage if that creature knows the hand imitated well. Attest shows it for what it is with no check at all.
The spell governs the hand and nothing else. It supplies no seal, no paper of the right stock, no date, and no matter that the person would have written.
Notice, Presentation Gallery
The manuscripts of the third day are shown flat, upon the long table, and are turned by the house's man and not by the buyer. Candles are not carried to that table. Ink is not brought into the gallery at all.
The quires are not to be copied at the table. Upon request the house's man will read one line aloud from any leaf, and will read it twice, and no more; buyers who wish a fair copy may leave a note at the desk and are referred to the scale of charges. Gloves are at the end of the table and are counted in and out.
73 · The Printer's Proof of This Catalogue, First Pull
The first pull of the present catalogue, in twenty-three sheets, uncut and unfolded, with the printer's marks standing in the margins, the register wanting upon three sheets, and offsets of wet ink where the sheets were laid up. The corrections of the compiler are in the margins throughout, in a small hand, and are the corrections carried into the printed book.
In this pull, lot 101 stands as offered, with its description entire and an estimate, and with no note of withdrawal. After it, at the foot of the last sheet, stands an entry numbered 102: the figure set, a full point, and twenty-nine quadrats of blank where a title would be. Against it, in the compositor's hand, q. 102, copy wanting.
Provenance: Melis Wilsum, printer, of the Staple Quay, who prints this catalogue and offers the pull as a curiosity of his trade. Condition: sound; the sheets browned along the edges where they hung to dry; sheet fourteen with a thumb in the ink; no leaf wanting.
74 · Lien, a Manuscript, in a Bank's Binding
A manuscript in one quire, ten leaves, bound to the pattern of the Staple Bank of Velhagen in black calf over boards, the bank's device blind-stamped upon the upper cover, with a ribbon and a lead seal at the fore-edge, the seal sound and the impression rubbed away. Pasted inside the cover, a printed form of that bank, being a bill of charge with the sum left blank. The text sets out the laying of a charge upon a thing, so that the thing cannot be carried far from the place of the charge until the sum named is paid or the thing brought back to that place.
The binding is of the bank's present pattern, in use these forty years. The paper of the quire is older than the binding by its watermark, and by how much is not determined here.
Provenance: attributed to the Staple Bank of Velhagen, so described in the earlier list; thence the deceased. Condition: good; the ribbon renewed; the last leaf bearing a list of sums in a clerk's hand, forty of them marked quitted and the forty-first not.
[in pencil] The bank does not need the spell. The bank has the bill. See lot 98.
Lien
Level 5 Abjuration
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a lead seal and a written bill naming the sum, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Until dispelled
You name a sum of money and touch an object no larger than a cart and weighing no more than 500 pounds. The sum appears upon the object in figures a finger high and cannot be scraped, painted over, or washed off while the lien holds.
While a creature carries, drags, or hauls the object farther than 100 feet from the place where you laid the lien, that creature's Speed is halved and it has Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. If the object is taken more than 1 mile from that place, each creature moving it must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw at the end of every hour or set the object down and be unable to take it up again for 24 hours. Beasts and constructs are not exempt; a cart is not a way around the spell.
While the lien holds you know the direction of the object and roughly how far off it is, at any distance.
The lien ends when the named sum is paid in coin, in the presence of the object, to you or to a person named in the bill; when the object is brought back within 100 feet of where the lien was laid; or when the lien is dispelled. Part payment does nothing whatever. When the sum is paid the figures go out of the object, and a quittance stands in their place, in the hand of the person who took the money.
75 · A Packet of Nine Letters, Unopened
Nine letters, sealed and unopened, taken up at the fourteenth house upon the Kolkgracht at the sealing of the premises and held by this house since. All nine were put in after the twenty-second day of Slaughtmonth 1635. The superscriptions are transcribed below as they stand. Of the nine directions, three are in one hand, three in a second, and three in a third.
The Nine, as Received
| No. | Superscription | Put in | Seal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | To Meinhard Quist, at the Kolkgracht, the fourteenth house | 24 Slaughtmonth 1635, this city | red wax, a merchant's mark |
| 2 | To Meinhard Quist, at the Kolkgracht | 29 Slaughtmonth 1635, this city | black wax, no device |
| 3 | To M. Quist, collector | 3 Wintermonth 1635, Staple Quay | red wax, a bird |
| 4 | To the owner of the house with the painted shutters | 11 Wintermonth 1635, this city | no seal, sewn shut with thread |
| 5 | To Meinhard Quist, esquire | 2 Lowmonth 1636, an inland stage not listed by the office of this city | green wax, a shield |
| 6 | To M. Q. | 19 Lowmonth 1636, this city | a wafer |
| 7 | To Meinhard Quist, at the fourteenth house | 8 Sprokkel 1636, this city | red wax, a cipher |
| 8 | To Meinhard Quist | 27 Lentmonth 1636, an inland stage as above | black wax; the impression is that of the matrix offered as lot 68 |
| 9 | No name; a line of figures, and the words the account of 4 Winemonth, unsettled | no mark of any office; found within the wrapper | grey wax, the impression illegible |
The letters are offered unopened. This house has not read them, has not held them to a light, and warrants nothing of their contents, their number of enclosures, or their worth. Condition: sound; the ninth creased across the middle, as a paper carried folded in a coat is creased.
76 · The Drowned Hour, a Manuscript, Water-Stained
A manuscript in one quire, seven leaves, water-stained through the whole, the ink run at two places and elsewhere legible, sewn with waxed thread of the sort used upon nets. The text sets out the questioning of a person who died in water, by way of the body, or by way of a thing that was upon the body when it went in. Three questions are allowed and the answers come in the voice of the water. Two leaves bear the damp stamp of the harbour office. In the margin of the last leaf, a count of questionings scored in tallies, nineteen of them.
Provenance: attributed to Aldric Sammen, harbour coroner, in whose office the like questioning is of record; thence the deceased. Condition: as described, and not to be improved. The quire will not lie flat and is shown in a tray.
[in red ink] Net-thread, and it was sewn wet, which is why the stations have drawn and the leaves stand proud. The stain is river and not sea; there is no salt in it, and I have had the third leaf on my tongue to be sure. This city lets a coroner keep his own book at his own house, and then buys it back at nine hundred marks from the estate of a dead collector. C.O.
The Drowned Hour
Level 4 Necromancy
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a vessel of water taken from the place of the death, which the spell consumes)
Duration: 10 minutes
You touch the corpse of a creature that died in water, or an object that was upon that creature's body when the body entered the water, and put up to three questions to it. It answers in words heard as though spoken under water; every creature present understands the answers, whatever language it speaks.
The subject answers out of what it knew in life and no further. It cannot lie, and it can be silent. It knows the hour and the place of its own death exactly, and it cannot withhold those two answers, whatever else it withholds. It knows nothing of what became of its body, and nothing of how long it has been dead.
No lapse of years prevents the casting, so long as the thing you touch went into the water with the body. A creature can be questioned by this spell once only, ever, by any caster; afterwards the water gives nothing.
While the spell lasts, water runs from the thing that answers, about a pint to each answer. It stands where it falls and does not dry for a day.
77 · The Corrected Atlas
An atlas in folio, 21 inches by 15, of thirty-six double charts and nineteen leaves of tables, drawn from the surveys of Steven Immel, engraved by Roelof Ostrem, and bound in 1621 by Abel Pluym, binder to this house, in calf over boards with the arms of the city upon the upper cover and two clasps, one of them wanting. The charts are of this city, of the road inland, of the river to its head, and of the country of the staple.
Six of the sheets have been scraped. In each, a town has been taken out of the impression and the roads and the water left as they were drawn, so that upon six sheets a road runs two days inland and stops at a scraped place, and a channel is sounded to a mole that is not there. The tables answer to the charts. In the index, at the same place in the column, the same entry is scraped, six times.
Consulted, the charts are found correct as to the present state of the ways and the waters, whatever the date of their engraving. The soundings of the Sluice Basin answer to the last survey of the Waterbailiff's office, which was taken eleven years after this binding was made, to the half-fathom.
- 1616–1618 · surveyed and drawn by Steven Immel, sworn surveyor of the Staple Quay
- 1619 · the plates cut by Roelof Ostrem, engraver, of the Rope Street
- 1621 · bound for Immel by Abel Pluym
- 1624 · thence, at Immel's death, to his creditors, and sold upon the Weighhouse steps
- 1626 · thence the deceased
Condition: sound, the binding rubbed at the corners and the head-cap gone. Six sheets scraped as described, in two of them through the paper and backed with a slip. The index entry has been written over once in pencil and rubbed out again; what stood there cannot be read, and the paper is thin where it was rubbed.
[in red ink] The effacements are the binder's, not a later hand. Pluym scraped for the wash and scraped too deep; he did the same to a herbal of Wendelmar's and charged for the mending, Wend. fo. 209. She has printed a city effaced and put thirteen hundred marks upon a hole in the paper. C.O.
[in pencil] Kannewerd. Say it out loud in the Long Room and watch which of them looks up.
The Corrected Atlas
Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement)
The atlas covers this city, its roads inland, and the country of the staple, some two hundred miles about. While you are attuned and have studied a chart for 10 minutes, you cannot become lost while following a way drawn upon that chart, and you have Advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks made within the country it covers.
The charts correct themselves. Left open overnight in a place the atlas covers, the sheet for that place takes in whatever has changed there — a channel silted, a road carried away, a wall thrown down, a house built — drawn in the engraver's line and in the engraver's ink. Nothing appears upon a sheet that is not on the ground.
Six sheets are wanting a city, and the atlas keeps them wanting. While you are attuned you cannot say, write, or set down the name of that city. You know that you know it; your mouth makes some other word; ink laid on paper for it dries blank. You can read the name when another has written it, and you cannot repeat it.
A place you cannot name, you cannot find. Travel to the scraped place by the atlas's own roads and the roads are true and the place is not upon them. Parties so directed have come out on the far side in the time the distance requires. They can account for the days. They cannot account for the ground.
Ending your attunement returns the name to you within the hour. It does not return it to the paper.
78 · Seal Unbroken, a Manuscript, Unattributed
A manuscript in one quire, four leaves, in a small upright hand, without title-page, subscription, or date. The text sets out the making whole in appearance of a seal, band, lock, or fastening that has been broken. It is a short text and a clean one, with no workings and nothing struck through.
No attribution is offered. The paper is of this house's stock. Condition: clean; the quire has been folded once, small, across the middle, as a paper carried in a pocket is folded, and pressed flat again.
Seal Unbroken
Level 3 Illusion
Casting Time: Action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a thread of beeswax)
Duration: 8 hours
You touch a seal, band, cord, wrapper, lock, or fastening no larger than 1 foot across that has been broken, cut, drawn, or opened. For the duration it appears and feels whole: the wax carries its impression again with the fractures gone, the cut cord runs continuous, the shackle is closed, the lifted wafer lies down. The seeming holds to sight, to touch, and to weight, and a creature that lifts, turns, or presses the fastening finds it sound.
It holds nothing shut. A door whose seal is repaired this way opens exactly as freely as it did before, and while the spell lasts the false wax will take no fresh impression from any matrix.
A creature that examines the fastening closely can see it for a seeming with a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC. Attest shows it at once and without a check. When the spell ends, the break is as it was in every particular, and appears not to have been touched since it was made.
79 · A Sheaf of Three Death Certificates, All of One Man
Three certificates of death, of three dates, from two offices and one private hand, all in one name, being the name of the late owner of the collection now offered. They are transcribed below in the order of their dates, with the words of each as they stand. The sheath is the sheath of the Court of Wards and bears that court's file number and the mark of its clerk.
The Three Instruments, as They Stand
| Date | Instrument and office | Certified by | Words of the paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Winemonth 1635 | Harbour Certificate, entered in the Ledger of the Watermen | Aldric Sammen, harbour coroner | taken from the water at the Sluice Basin |
| 19 Slaughtmonth 1635 | House Certificate | Doctor Sibbeke Mund | a wasting of the lungs; at the house, Kolkgracht 14 |
| 2 Sprokkel 1636 | Chancery Certificate, Court of Wards | Clerk Wibrand Teel, brought in by Eustach Corvisser | as attested by two servants of the household; place not stated |
Condition: the first foxed and once folded in four; the second on parchment, sound, the doctor's seal entire; the third clean, and the newest paper of the three. Offered as paper. The sale of this lot is not evidence of title, opens no question of the succession and closes none, and the house makes no observation upon the instruments or upon their order.
[in pencil] One is bought, one is true, one is filed after the burial. Decide which is which before you bid.
Endorsement of the Court of Wards, upon the Sheath of Lot 79
Filed 2 Sprokkel 1636. The three instruments within are of record and are released for the purposes of the estate only. The court does not certify which of them governs. Buyers are referred to the commissioners, who sit upon Tuesdays.
Clerk's note: the second instrument was produced to this court in Wintermonth 1635 and the first was produced after it. W. T.
80 · The Last True Day, a Manuscript in a Locked Case
A manuscript in one quire and a half, fourteen leaves, 12 inches by 8, in the hand of Gerbrand Wett, instrument-maker, of the Sluice Quay, deceased 1596, the hand answering leaf for leaf to the shop-books of that maker. Seven diagrams in ink and wash. Of these the fifth is a dial of two circles, the outer graduated to the year and the inner to nothing that is named, and it is not the dial of any clock now known in this city.
The text sets out the finding of the true day of a person's death, past or to come, upon the naming of that person and the touching of a thing they have carried. It is written plainly, in the manner of a workshop instruction, with the number of the working set against each step. This house has not worked it and offers it as a manuscript.
The case is oak bound with iron, 15 inches by 10 by 3, lined with baize, with a lock of Wett's own making and one key. The key is held at the table and is delivered with the lot.
- written by Gerbrand Wett, instrument-maker, deceased 1596
- thence Lubbert Wett, his son, with the shop-books and the greater part of the tools
- 1611 · thence the deceased, in one bargain with lot 12, for 900 marks and an annuity of 30 marks upon the life of the seller
Condition: sound, the leaves strong, one gathering starting at the head. The case has been opened often: the lock is worn bright within, and the key is worn upon one face only. Upon the last leaf, beneath the working, four lines in the same hand, printed below as they stand. The vendor's account is not before us.
The Last True Day
Level 7 Divination
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (an instrument of horology worth at least 500 gp, which the spell does not consume, and a thing the named person has carried)
Duration: Instantaneous
Name a person, living or dead, by a name they answered to and by one true particular of them, and touch a thing that person has carried. You learn the day, the month, and the year of that person's true death, whether it is past or still to come.
The spell gives a day and nothing besides: never an hour, never a place, never a cause, never whether the day has been kept. Where the day it gives is not the day upon a certificate, a register, or a stone, the spell does not say so, and does not say which of them is wrong.
A person can be the subject of this spell once only, ever, by any caster. A second casting upon the same person gives no answer at all, and the caster who attempts it knows, without being told and without any check, that the answer has already been given, and to whom it was given.
At the moment of the answer the caster's own name is written once, legibly, in the caster's own hand, in a place the caster does not choose and is not shown. It is written upon something that keeps.
A day that is known may be paid in parts. He that knows his day is not held to spend it at once; he may spend a part and go on about his business, and the account stands open until the last part is paid.
Keep the instrument by you. Be not alone at the third.
End of the third day's sale. Payment is taken at the table before the room is cleared, and the library lots are wrapped at the table and not carried loose. The withdrawn lots are read from the rostrum before the candles are put out. The lots of the fourth day are shown in the gallery from eight, and the candles are sealed at ten.