‘Idiot,’ said the butcher as Misha left the room. Then, turning to the mayor, said, ‘What about a drink?’

Georgeta was in the hall looking even paler than usual. ‘Misha,’ she said, ‘you are not, and you never have been, an idiot.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Alchemy of Music

That night the sky was clear and the stars rested on top of the mountain. An eerie hush gripped the village. The community was holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen now that the shepherd’s body had been found.

‘Is the wedding still going ahead?’ Vanda asked Georgeta when she arrived at the cabinet maker’s house.

‘I’m afraid it is,’ said Georgeta and told the women all she had overheard.

‘It’s as I thought. He was murdered,’ said Vanda. ‘By my father.’

The women were quiet.

‘My husband is a weak man,’ said Georgeta. ‘They are all weak men – except for your son. You would have been proud to hear him stand up to your father.’

She went to Edith who was sitting alone. ‘My husband had a letter from a merchant in town, enquiring after his son,’ she said, quietly. ‘The merchant had last heard from him when he wrote to say he was engaged to a girl from this village called Edith.’

Edith had long expected this day and now it was here. There was no light, there was no darkness, no definition. Grief had no edge to it. She was lost. Words were pebbles that skimmed the flat, tideless water of sorrow.

‘A merchant family,’ Georgeta was saying. ‘If the mayor had known he would have raised a search party.’

Edith closed her eyes. She had long known her love was dead. She had known instinctively, just as she knew she would never be the butcher’s wife.

It was while Flora and Maria were helping Edith to get dressed that evening that Edith remembered her grandmother’s coat. A coat of fables she called it. Edith had long kept it safe at the bottom of her hope box for she and her grandmother had embroidered it with her grandmother’s many stories. She spread it out on the bed.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Flora.

Edith put it on. The coat was heavy, the weight of it comforting. It was too large and trailed on the floor but she looked magical in it.

Vanda said, ‘If we had eyes to see the dead, I believe we’d see your grandmother here with us.’

Edith believed Demetrius was there too, even though she couldn’t hear him in her head, even though she couldn’t see him. She was confident that he stood beside her.