“Maybe …,” she went on. “Maybe it was Goi Flint who killed those men up there. Maybe he killed the girl as well. Seemed mad with guilt to me, he did. We should kill him ourselves. Hang him from the old beech tree and watch him die.”
Wilhelm shook his head. “Goi Flint was here in the tavern when the girl was killed, and what he did to his lovely wife was born out of madness and grief. We’re in no danger from him.”
Elsbet set a hand on her hip. “So seven people dead, and we’re not a village in danger?”
“I didn’t say that. We are very much a village in danger, just not at the hands of Goi Flint.”
Villagers started trickling in, and Elsbet began pouring ale. The men would have a big night ahead of them gathering wood for the pyre, and they would need their sustenance. Elsbet was having a word with Goi Tate about what she liked to call proper tavern behavior when the double doors burst open and the duke marched in. Quickly the villagers bowed to him, but he waved them off and strode to the center of the room. All eyes followed the great man, and the room fell silent as he cleared his throat.
“I hear there has been talk of burning the bodies,” he said, his voice booming.
“Just the girl,” said Goi Tate, who stood a little straighter against the foreign lord. “The woman is clean, but the girl’s corpse is tainted. Burning’s the only thing for it.”
The villagers nodded, but no one spoke.
“You’ll do no such thing,” said the duke, and a murmur rose among the crowd. “While I understand that these are your customs, I do not share them. I am from the royal city, where, as I’m sure you know, we worship the sea god. We do not burn our dead. Poisoning the air by emolliating rotting flesh is something that, I’m sorry, I simply cannot allow. You’ve already burned my soldiers, reduced them to nothing. I shall not stand by and watch you do the same again. I will not breathe the fetid air.”
Wilhelm Parstle felt obligated to speak. “Sir, if you’ll excuse me, but that is how we do things in the mountains. If the rites can’t be performed because the allotted time has passed, then the bodies are unclean. They must be burned, and their ashes laid at the old cimetière.”
The duke squinted. “That’s where my soldiers’ ashes rest?”
“Yes. It’s just outside the village, to the east,” Paer Jorgen said, his voice quiet but clear. “It’s where the ancients used to lay down their dead. They dug holes there and put them below ground. It’s not our way. It’s the old way, but we figure it’s better than naught. We did the best we could for your soldiers. We laid some river stones atop to bless them on their journey.”
The duke put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes as if to still the anger within him. “Of course that’s what you did.” He opened his eyes, fresh fire burning there. “And the result is that I have no bodies to bring back to those soldiers’ families. I cannot hand them a pile of ashes to push out to sea. They would call me a monster.”
“Please understand, sir,” said Paer Jorgen. “We meant no harm.”
“No.” The duke shook his head, and his voice grew quiet. “Of course you didn’t. But listen here, this will not happen again. If you can lay the ashes in the cimetière, then you can lay this girl’s body there too. You’ll do it at once.”
“But we can’t do that,” Draeden Faez nearly yelped.
The duke’s shoulders slumped, and seemingly exhausted, he asked, “And why not?”
The old man stumbled over his words. “The ground is unquiet there. We … we can’t put her there unburned.”
“But that’s where you put the ashes.”
“That’s different,” said Tate. “Ashes can’t very well rise, can they?”
The duke groaned. “Fine, then it seems your only other choice is to put her up at your Mouth of the Goddess.”
“That we could never do,” said Draeden Faez, solemnly shaking his head.
“And why not?” asked the duke, his face growing red with frustration.
“I don’t know how you do things with your sea burials,” continued the old man, “but up here, the dead are holy things. They are prepared and offered up to the Goddess. To give her something so unclean would be worse than sacrilege. With that ghoulish display, that coffin of glass, we’re already at risk. Mountain folk or sea, displaying a corpse goes against the laws of the dead. You have to admit that.”
“Of course.” The duke nodded. “We would never do such a thing. Like you say, we send our dead out to sea. It is clean and simple and does not leave room for all these complications.”
“So you see,” said Draeden Faez, “we can’t lay her at the Mouth of the Goddess.”
The duke sighed. “Very well. What about my way? What about a water burial? There’s a lake nearby, isn’t there?”
“Seelie Lake,” said Paer Jorgen. “But that’s fairy business.”
The duke couldn’t keep from laughing. “Surely you people can’t still believe in fairies.”
“Fairies or no,” said Tak Carlysle. “The lake is frozen now. Lot of good it would do to set her out there in a boat atop the ice.”
“Listen to me,” the duke said, clearly tired of arguing. “You will bury her at this cimetière you speak of. It may not be your Mouth of the Goddess, but it’s a burial ground at least. If it was good enough for your ancients, it’s good enough for you.”
“But—”
The duke raised his hand. “It’s not as if I’m asking you to bury her in the village square. I’m telling you to lay her in a burial ground. You will do this. If I find out anyone has other plans, if anyone strays from my command, the offense will be punishable by death. Do you understand?”
The room was quiet. Dark eyes watched him, and slowly the villagers nodded. Without another word, the duke turned back around and strode out through the heavy wooden doors.
For Lareina Flint, the rites were performed, her body put to rest up on Cairn Hill at the Mouth of the Goddess with as much pomp as the people of Nag’s End could muster. But things were different for Fiona Eira.
The cimetière was a dark place. Through the wood and to the east, where men did not often walk, it was an ancient place, surrounded by an archaic stone wall. It was commonly believed that the spirits of the old ones lingered there, polluting the air. The ground in the cimetière never froze. No one knew why. It wasn’t the kind of thing one wanted to spend much time contemplating. The soil there was thick and gray, an unchanging claylike substance that remained malleable despite the weather. No one but an elder was allowed to walk the grounds of the cimetière. It was said that to stay there too long could cause a man’s legs to wither, and his lungs to slowly fill up with blood.
A small group gathered, and Rowan was surprised to see the witches among them. They kept to themselves, though they did look her way once or twice. The day was not without incident. The corpse, already desecrated by its placement in that glass abomination, suffered further sullying when one of the pallbearers tripped, sending Fiona’s body tumbling to the ground. The calamity caused the shroud to unravel, and her body landed faceup in the dirt at Mama Lune’s feet. The villagers gasped, and some covered their eyes, but Rowan noticed a look of fierce intensity—almost horror—on Mama Lune’s face as she stared at the body. Rowan tried to follow the witch’s eyes to see what was causing her such distress, but by then the pallbearers had collected the body, and there was nothing to see. Rowan looked around her, and while people seemed rattled by the chaos of the tumbling body, no one appeared particularly distressed—no one except Mama Lune. She watched the Greenwitch whisper something in the Bluewitch’s ear, and then Rowan turned her attention back to the proceedings, her heart heavy as she saw the enshrouded body carried through the stone arch to the center of the burial ground. When she looked over to where the witches had been standing, she saw that they were gone.