At dawn, the church bell of High-Fen village didn’t ring for work. It tolled sixty times for the dead.
The townspeople gathered inside the ancient timber nave of the parish church. Two hundred men, women, and children in coarse wool smocks, their eyes red from weeping and sleepless vigil.
Tomas Reed stood at the chancel rail, flanked by Sile Rook and Hester Quill. On the altar cloth lay the twelve brass tags belonging to the men of High-Fen parish, with their original letters home.
Tomas unfolded the first letter.
“Clara Mallow. Elen Mallow,” Tomas called out, his voice ringing through the quiet timbers.
Two middle-aged women, their hands raw and cracked from a lifetime of washing river wool and cutting turf, stepped forward from the back pews, supported by their husbands. Their eyes were fixed on the polished brass tag that Tomas held in his hand.
“Your father, Corporal Kenneth Mallow, didn’t run,” Tomas announced to the congregation. “He fell at his post in the sealed chapel of Val-Mora, guarding the retreat of this province until his final breath. In his final hours, he wrote this letter to your mother, entrusting his love and his lawful wages to your care.”
