For six hours, the underground chapel became a careful, respectful courtroom of careful proof.
Hester Quill set up her portable registration table upon the flat top of the cedar altar. Beside her, Mirelle Voss arrived from the North Grave Ward. She carried her brass measuring tongs, three jars of clean linseed oil. A hundred and forty numbered linen bags.
One by one, Tomas walked to each skeleton.
Around the neck bones of each soldier, resting upon the rusted iron collars of their armor, hung a two-inch box-shaped brass tag strung on a cord of preserved rawhide.
Tomas knelt beside each man. He checked the rawhide cord, cut it with his bronze spatula. Then he lifted the brass tag into his palm. He wiped the fine archival dust from the metal with a soft cloth. He exposed the sharp, stamped numerals etched into the brass nineteen years before.
He read the stone carving aloud to Hester.
“Muster Number Four-Hundred-Twelve. Kenneth Mallow. Rank: Corporal. Village: High-Fen Parish. Beneficiary: Martha Mallow, Wife.”
Hester checked her copy of the ancient country military rolls. With a firm, decisive stroke of her split steel pen, she marked the entry.
