The Garrison Mound stood above the Lamentine road where the ground rose out of the marsh in a long, bare shoulder of chalk and turf. It had been the Hold’s graveyard since the first winter, when the garrison had buried its dead in a row facing the road so the living could see them on the way to the gate. Now it held the garrison’s captains, the lodgers who had died of the winter fever, and the Hold’s oldest stones, which had no names cut on them at all.
Pell climbed it at dusk with a shawl over her head and a basket on her arm, because the basket gave her an excuse. Mare Lowe was at the top already. She was sitting on the low wall that ran round the largest grave with her knees drawn up under her skirt and her arms wrapped round them, and she did not raise her head when Pell’s boots came through the gorse.
“You’ll have brought bread,” Mare said.
“I’ve brought bread,” said Pell. “And a jar of goat’s butter that I’ll not be taking back down the hill, so you may eat it or give it to the crows.”
Mare did not smile. She had not smiled since the winter began. Her daughter Nell had died of the fever two seasons back, in a lodgers’ bed by the Lowgate hearth, with her hair still tied in the red cord Mare had sewn for her on the boat. Pell had fed the…
