A horrifying sight met my eyes. My featherbed was on the floor. My father knelt beside it. He had his boots on, and his heavy cloak was on the floor beside him, so he must have gone back to his room. He had torn one of my coverlets into strips and was using them to tie the bundle he was making. His face was gray when he looked up at me. “She died,” he said. “I’m taking her outside to burn her.” He had not paused in his feverish bundle making. My featherbed was taking on the shape of an immense cocoon. There was a dead girl inside it. He looked away from me and added, “Strip to the skin, here. Then go to my room. You can find one of my shirts to sleep in. Leave your nightshirt here. I’m going to burn it with her.”
I stared at him. I set the ewer down, and the vinegar. The bundled mint fell from my shirt to the floor as I let it drop. Whatever medicine he had intended to make, it was too late now. She was dead. Dead like my mother. He pushed another strip of blanket under the bundle, brought up both ends, and snugged it tight in a knot. My voice came out very little. “I’m not going naked through the corridors. And you can’t do this all alone. Should I get Riddle to help you?”
“No.” He squatted back on his heels. “Bee. Come here.” I went to him. I thought he was going to hug me and tell me it would be all right. Instead he had me bend my neck, and he looked all through my shorn hair. Then he rose, crossed to my clothing chest, and opened it. He took out last year’s wool robe. “I’m sorry,” he said when he came back to me. “But I have to keep you safe.” He took the hem of my nightshirt and stripped it off me. Then he looked at me, all over, under my arms and at my bottom and between the toes of my feet. We were both very red in the face before he was finished. Then he gave me the wool robe and took my nightshirt to add to his bundle. “Pull on your boots and a winter cloak,” he told me. “You’ll have to help me. And no one can ever know what we do tonight. No one can know the message she brought. Or even that we found her again. If other people know, that child will be in greater danger. The boy she spoke about. Do you understand that?”
I nodded. In that moment I missed my mother more than I ever had before.
