The Cemetery of Saint Jude sat upon the highest gravel ridge in the province, a hundred feet above the highest flood mark of the Weeping Delta.
One hundred and forty single graves had been dug in five neat, military ranks by the volunteer ditchers of High-Fen. The earth was dry, sandy gravel mixed with fragrant loam, warm in the midday sun.
One by one, the linen shrouds were lifted from the wagons and lowered into the graves by clean hemp webbing. The families stood at the head of each plot, sprinkling handfuls of dried lavender and fresh peat soil across the white cloth.
At the center of the cemetery, village stonemasons had erected a twenty-foot memorial wall of dressed mountain granite, salvaged from the dry upper castle walls of the castle.
Into the face of the granite wall, set into deep chiseled sockets and secured with poured lead mortar, were the one hundred and forty original stamped brass service tags, arranged in their regimental order.
Above the brass tags, carved into the granite top door beam in three-inch letters, ran the simple, unbending epitaph chosen by the parish elders:
THE FOURTH FENLAND LEVY · THEY STAYED AT THEIR POST · AUTUMN 801
