There was a new grave on the island, a snug little furrow dug in the rich black earth and covered over with a flat slab of stone. Within lay a small body wrapped in linen and strewn with the flowers of early summer. Prayers had been said for the deceased, and more pleas would be added in the days to come. Gifts had been put in the grave alongside the body for, despite the priests of the new religion, we adhere to the old ways and send our dead on into the afterlife with the possessions they most treasured during their life on earth. I had come this morning with a fresh flower garland to arrange on the stone slab over the place where the wrapped head of the corpse lay. I had also brought the symbols of earth, air, fire and water, for I intended to summon the spirits of North, East, South and West to aid me in my prayers. As I set my feet on the timbers that seemed to float on the dark water, in my mind I went over what I was going to say and do.
I was concentrating so hard as I approached the stone slab over the grave that at first I did not appreciate that anything was wrong.
‘-and take to rest the soul of our beloved. .’ I was muttering aloud.
Then my eyes succeeded in getting the horror they were seeing through to my brain. I stopped in mid-sentence and let out a cry of fear and dismay.
Someone had moved the stone slab.
We had left it so that it neatly and completely covered the grave. Now it was askew; only slightly, but enough that there was a dark corner where you could see right down into the grave.
I was shivering, filled with unreasoning abhorrence at the thought of that recently-dead body lying there so close to me. With the stone slab out of alignment, I could have reached into the grave and touched the cold flesh. .
‘Stop it!’ I commanded myself, my voice loud with distress. ‘That is the body of someone you loved very dearly. It isn’t some fearful object, to make you shudder!’
The trembling slowly stopped. As panic receded a little, another frightful worry occurred to me: why had the slab been moved? Oh, oh, what had they done?
Without thinking what I was doing, I was on my knees, pushing the slab so that the gap increased. As soon as I could, I lowered my head and stared into the grave.
The linen-shrouded corpse was still there, and the precious belongings lay around it. The flowers had not been touched and had a little life left in them.
But there was a very vital alteration to the grave’s contents. We had left there one body, small and thin. Now there were two.
My Granny Cordeilla was dead.
We had all known it was going to happen but, as we always do with those we love, we prayed in our different ways for a miracle. Well, I don’t believe Granny prayed for any such thing; she seemed to know her time on this earth was coming to an end, and she approached death with a calm serenity and a slight sense of curiosity. ‘I’m tired, Lassair child,’ she said to me in one of her last moments of lucidity. ‘I’ve had a long, hard life and now I’m ready for a rest.’ She must have seem the unshed tears in my eyes, for all that I tried to turn away, for she took my hand in hers — her grasp, so weak where once it had been so strong, almost undid me — and whispered softly, ‘No weeping, child. You’ll miss me and you’ll be sad for a while, but there’s no tragedy in the death of an old woman. It’s the way of things.’
With that she lay back on her pillows and went to sleep. Over the next day and night her sleep deepened and we watched as she slipped away. Then we stood around her body, our hands joined, and we wept.
My father — her son — had seen the change in her before any of us, and this quite irked my aunt Edild, my father’s sister, because she’s meant to be the healer and my father is an eel fisher. It quite irked me too, I have to admit, because I am Edild’s apprentice and, like her, ought to have spotted the signs. In our defence, neither of us had seen Granny as often as my father, for Granny had lived with him, my mother and my siblings, whereas I live with Edild in her neat little house on the other side of the village. However, even if we’d observed Granny all day and every day, I’m not sure if we’d have picked up whatever subtle signals my father had seen; it’s probably a mother-son thing. Of Granny Cordeilla’s five children, he was her favourite, and that was probably why she’d chosen to live with him and his family instead of with Ordic, Alwyn, Edild or Alvela. As for my father, he is an undemonstrative man, but we all know his emotions run deep and true. He would have done anything for his mother, and his grief at her death was none the less for being hidden. My mother, sensible woman that she is, let him alone. She understands my father very well; better, probably, than Granny did, but it would be a brave person who said so in my father’s hearing. To have said it in Granny’s hearing would have been tantamount to suicide.
Anyway, whatever it was that my father saw, he’d kept it to himself. . or, more likely, Granny had sworn him to secrecy. Some time later — a few weeks, according to my father — Granny had a fall. Then she had another one. This time, when she came round from her swoon, or whatever it was, she did not know where she was. She recognized us, although she muddled up some of our names, but she seemed to be seeing things that were invisible to the rest of us. She urged my brother Haward to find a bale of straw to sit on and get a good place so that he could watch the travelling jugglers and tumblers. She kept telling my mother that they were listening to our conversations and we must be careful. Then she had another fall, banged her poor head and lay insensate on her cot for three days.
When she woke up she was herself again. She commanded my father to summon all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren — most of them were already there, hovering around my parents’ little house and not really knowing what to do with themselves — and called all of us to her bedside in turn, in order of age, so that she could speak privately to us. Well, I don’t suppose she had much to say to my niece and my nephew, since one is a toddler and the other a baby, but the rest of us were with her for some time. I’ve no idea what she said to everyone else, but when it was my turn, she made me sit down beside her cot and, her deep eyes fixed on my face so that I did not dare move a muscle, said quietly, ‘Lassair, child. Yes.’ She nodded and then paused, watching me closely. ‘When I was a girl I was sent to live with my uncle, Leir the Bard.’
I knew that already. Granny was a wonderful bard herself, always much in demand when we all sat round the fire in winter and there wasn’t much to do through the long hours of darkness, and she had told me many times that her great fund of legends, myths, stories and the all-important record of our family’s history and the doings of the ancestors were taught to her by her uncle Leir, after whom my youngest brother is named. ‘Yes, Granny, I-’
She held up her hand to silence me. ‘When he died, my uncle Leir summoned me to his deathbed. I was older than you, child, with a family of my own, for Leir was a long-lived man. He called me for one purpose, and it was not to say his fond farewells.’ There was a twinkle in Granny’s eyes as if somewhere deep inside she was laughing. ‘Can you think what it was?’
I believed I could, but I hesitated to say so because it would have sounded big-headed and I’d have felt a fool if I’d been wrong. ‘Er-’ I began.
With a flash of her old impatient self Granny said, ‘It’s no time for false modesty, child. I’m dying, and I’ve still got two of your brothers and Goda’s pair to see yet. Come on, say what you’re thinking.’
I took a breath to steady myself. ‘You want me to become a bard.’ There. I’d said it. I felt my face, neck and throat flush with the sudden rush of hot blood.
‘No, Lassair,’ Granny said softly.