Page 135 of Dark Tides
“They should be seen, don’t you think? Works of such beauty should not be hidden?”
“I don’t kn—”
“They are stone coffins, coffins of pagans, not Christians. There is no reason that they should not be taken up, and shown to people who will love them, collectors. Connoisseurs. Cognoscenti!”
“But the bodies!” was all she could whisper.
“Of course there are bodies! These are coffins, they were each one carrying a body. But they are all so very old. It is not as if they were family! They were not Christians, they are not from a churchyard. And I make sure that we rebury them, reverently, respectfully.”
She did not have the voice to argue but she could still see, behind her closed eyelids, the tumbled heap of corpses, the rotting flesh.
“Just thrown in…” was all she could whisper.
“It takes time to arrange a proper burial,” he said. “Sometimes we have to keep the bodies for a little while. I am sorry that you had such a fright.”
She shook her head, her eyes fixed on her face. “What?”
“My dear,” he said gently. “Every profit comes at someone’s cost. We make a great deal of money by tomb raiding. Yes—for that is what it is. And the people who paid for their beautiful burials are robbed. But they know nothing of it. What harm is it?”
Again she shook her head.
“But—of course—you were spying. I had not invited you into that part of the warehouse. You were not invited there, no one but my stone masons go there. It is not the behavior of a good guest to—how do you say it? Intrude.”
“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I wanted…” She realized she had no excuse. “I wanted to look at the Nobildonna’s dower, her beautifulpieces, for packing tomorrow, and I went farther down the warehouse and then through the door.”
“Through the locked door? The one that is hidden behind a curtain?” he pointed out.
She felt simply in the wrong. “I was just working…”
“No you weren’t,” he said coldly, and she swallowed a little gasp on her new fear of him.
“Suppose you tell me the truth?” he suggested. “It is nearly morning, and my mother has told me you had your dinner and you went early to bed. I know you are lying with this talk of working for the Nobildonna; but I don’t know why, nor what you are really doing here?”
She trembled again, her mind frozen in this new shock. “I’m not lying.”
“Obviously you are.” There was ice beneath his pleasant tone. “You are lying to my face and spying on me. First of all: what is your real name?”
She shivered; she did not know what she should say.
“Better that you say.” His voice was silky.
“My name is Sarah,” she said in a very small voice. “Sarah Stoney.”
“And how do you know the Nobildonna?”
She looked towards the door, to the windows overlooking the canal. There was no escape from this interrogation. “I want to go to bed,” she said childishly.
“Not till you have answered my questions. Remember, you are in my house under a false name. I could denounce you for spying right now and I would be paid a fee for arresting you.”
“I’m just a milliner!” she protested.
“Now, that, I believe,” he agreed. “You truly loved the feathers.”
“I did. I really did.”
“So, are you the Nobildonna’s milliner?”
“Yes,” she said, grasping at the lie.
