Velvet went to the Mound herself, because she had decided that the Chamberlain kept the door of the Hold, and the grey thing had passed through that door a dozen times since the Yield without once being announced.
She went in the morning, when the dew was still on the path and the wind had not yet got up off the marsh. She wore her grey walking dress, the one with the high collar that she used only for official errands, and she carried her basket of linen on her left arm because a woman who came to give an order ought to appear to be busy with something else. Her hair was up. Her face was powdered. She had spent a quarter of an hour in front of the glass in her room before she came out, and she had not once looked at the mirror’s own expression while she did it, because she knew what she would see there.
The Mound’s stone stood at the top of the rise, and on it sat the grave-tender, with her hands loose on her knees and her face turned toward the lower quay. The marsh-smoke was rising pale off the water behind it. Velvet stopped at the foot of the path, at the place where the turf began to slope upward, and set down her basket.
