The funeral procession left High-Fen at the eighth hour of the following morning.
Forty farm wagons, their oak sideboards draped in clean white linen and filled with sweet upland hay, stretched for nearly a mile along the gravel turnpike. Upon each wagon rested three or four linen-shrouded biers, each pinned with its polished brass identification tag and adorned with sprigs of dried marsh lavender.
At the head of the column rode Sile Rook on a heavy plow-horse, his oak tall body-shield slung across his back. His leaded ash truncheon was held reversed beneath his left arm in the ancient military salute to the fallen.
Behind Sile walked Tomas Reed and Nessa Vale. Their boots kept time with the slow, rhythmic crunch of the iron wagon wheels upon the gravel. Tomas carried his ash staff, his bronze Master Tax clerk’s medallion glinting in the pale autumn sunshine.
Behind the wagons walked over eight hundred men, women, and children from five marsh parishes. They walked four abreast in unbroken, solemn order. There were no drums. There were no trumpets. From the center of the column, a chorus of elderly weavers began to sing the ancient Fenland Hymn of Homecoming. A low, minor-key melody that rose. Then he fell over the marsh like the whistling of the autumn wind through the reed-beds.
