8. THE HIGH PRIESTESS
ARLENE BLESSING WAS the first to see it. As usual, she was up before dawn, and dressed in her warmest winter cloak, she set off for her morning stroll around the village. The snow was falling in gentle flurries. She walked her normal route, along the line of row houses, near the bakery, where, she could smell, they had already begun their day’s work. She walked past the inn, and down by the glassblower’s cottage—where that young girl had died.
At first she didn’t understand what it could be—a sculpture of some kind, but no, that couldn’t be right. The man was an artisan, and he worked with glass, but surely he would not spend the evening of the girl’s death creating a massive sculpture to display in his front yard. Arlene’s feet carried her forward, her curiosity forcing her to press on and gain a better look—but all the while her heart was twisting within her chest, urging her to turn around.
Slowly, she approached, snow crunching beneath her boots. Whatever it was, it was longer than it was tall, and made of crystal clear glass, peaked at the top into a harsh angle. It was up on a wooden stand, and there appeared to be something inside.
She stood at the edge of the glassblower’s property, unable to believe what she was seeing. A step closer, and there was no mistaking it.
It was a coffin. A glass coffin, intricately carved, and set out in the yard for all to see. Inside it was the girl, her black hair splayed out around her, her lips like rotting cherries set against a newly ashen complexion.
Her body had been swaddled in white mourning cloth, but it was possible to see that she was no longer a full person. Flowers of blood bloomed where her chest should have been, and there was a dip to the torso that intimated she’d been all but hollowed.
Arlene’s hand flew to her mouth.
And then the world seemed to spin, and a deafening cry rose up in Arlene’s ears, surrounding her, threatening to swallow her up, and she lost her balance, her feet faltering in the snow. It was only when she caught herself that she realized that the scream had been her own.
Fighting back tears, she turned and hurried out of the yard.
By the time Rowan awoke, the news was all over the village. The grieving glassblower had done the unthinkable. By then the hunt had been called off—there were more pressing matters at home—and everyone had seen her, laid out in the snow like a memento mori. It was beautiful work, some of the younger people whispered amongst themselves. The glassblower had produced a piece of art unlike anything the villagers had ever seen. Too bad, Billy Bribey had chuckled to Onsie Best, that he was only able to access that talent in the wake of a tragedy, and wasn’t it a pity there weren’t more upon him that he might build them a magnificent glass cathedral. Rowan had been standing behind the boys, her face pinched with sorrow, and she had slapped Billy Bribey’s hand so hard that red swelled forth.
Everyone agreed that something had to be done. Displaying the dead was a gross offense against the Goddess. Sacrilege like that would surely invite disaster. They needed to get the girl out of that casket. They needed to burn her corpse, and like the unfortunate soldiers, her ashes would be placed east of the village in the old cimetière where the ancients used to lay down their dead.
That morning, though, before anything could be done about the poor girl, when only a few villagers had gathered to see if what old Arlene Blessing said was true, the door had swung open, and the glassblower had emerged with a large shotgun in his hand. He didn’t look at the villagers; his eyes seemed to be propped open by the sheer force of insanity, voluble as tops all set to spin.
Upon seeing him, the villagers took cover, but it soon became clear he meant them no specific harm. He didn’t even seem to see them exactly. Rather, he walked over to his glass coffin and stroked it like one might a cherished pet.
“That all might see,” he babbled. “That all might see her beauty.”
Eyes wild, he threw the gun strap over his shoulder and began pacing, slowly encircling his creation, guarding it.
He had been walking thusly for hours now, refusing to leave his gruesome post for even a moment. He circled it like a lion gone mad, keeping the spoils for himself as he stalked around his freshly killed gazelle.
“Where is Lareina?” people were heard to say. “Surely she can reason with him.”
But no one had seen Lareina since the previous day.
Slowly throughout the day, the villagers gathered weaponry. “There’s naught to do but put him in the gaol,” Goi Tate said, and it was as if his proclamation made it so. They waited for the glassblower to show a moment of weakness before they would set on him. Their chance came finally when Goi Flint put down his shotgun to remove his heavy overcoat. Tom rushed him as soon as the man’s hand lost contact with the weapon, and when Tom threw Flint to the ground, Rowan grabbed the shotgun.
“Oh, holy Goddess,” Tom cried when he noticed the blood. His hands, which had a moment earlier been on the mad man’s torso, came away sticky and streaked with red. He jerked away, and several men who had come to help yanked at Goi Flint’s coat, opening it to reveal undershirts soaked through with the red.
“Are you hurt?” Goi Tate asked, but the glassblower shook his head, and with a great howl, he bent forward into the snow, crying out with what they were beginning to realize was grief. From his spasmodic crouch there on the ground, he pointed back to the house.
Rowan’s hand flew to her mouth as she came to understand.
“Lareina!” she screamed, and ran for the front door, only to slip in the snow and fall, smashing her lip on the front step. Ignoring the pain, she pulled herself up and opened the door.
Lareina Flint’s body lay not three feet from the entrance, her throat slit, her soulless eyes wide, her mouth contorted into what must have been one final scream. Behind her was a trail of blood, the path she must have traversed as she’d crawled to the door.
“She was here all along,” Rowan wept, blood from her lip mixing with tears, the acrid sting the only thing that kept her from fainting. “She was just behind the door this whole time while we were on the other side. Oh, great mother, what has become of us? What has become of us all?”
As the villagers dragged Seamus Flint through the snow to the gaol, the man keened like an animal. But when they opened the cell door and shoved him inside, he only bowed his head, smiling like a child.
Later that evening, Elsbet busied herself wiping down tables at the inn. “When are they saying the rites for Lareina?”
“Tonight,” Wilhelm said, his head bent over a fresh pint. “They’ll lay her up at Cairn Hill in the morning. Once that’s done and the girl’s unclean corpse has been turned to ash, we might all rest. Goddess knows we’re all eager for this to be over.”
“Just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?” Elsbet said, and her husband nodded in agreement. “And our Tom, how lost he seems today. I put it down to Jude, you know. Nothing but a bad influence, that one.”
“Elsbet,” Wilhelm sighed, for it pained him when she spoke of their boy as if he were a stranger.
“There’s wickedness in that one, Wilhelm. I tell you there is.” She paused, waiting for a reaction from her husband, but when she got none, she changed the subject. “Mark me, Wilhelm, an evil has come to our village. First those soldiers, and now that girl and her stepmother together like that.”
Her husband nodded and stared into his ale.