stayed as long as she did,” I said. “I’ve never known her to turn out for a funeral before.”
“Look!” said Molly. “She left us a rainbow.”
And so she had—a great brilliantly coloured bridge, sweeping across the sky from one side of the grounds to the other.
“Our ways may seem hard to the outsider,” said the Matriarch, and everyone turned back to look at her again. “But they are necessary. For the protection of the living, as well as the dead. Be at peace, Jack Drood. Be at peace, the family.”
Everyone bowed their head, and then they all turned away. The crowd started to break up. The Matriarch came over to join me and Molly.
“I take it Eddie has explained to you about Drood DNA, Molly,” she said. “Even though he shouldn’t have? Of course he has . . . In the past, we have tried other ways of dealing with our dead. There was Iain, for example, who persuaded the Matriarch of his day that we should experiment with taxidermy. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Iain didn’t always wait for his subjects to be entirely dead before he started his work.”
“What happened to him?” said Molly.
“He was cremated,” said the Matriarch. “Alive. Along with all of his . . . creations.”
“Where did the Armourer’s coffin go?” said Molly.
“Back to Ethel,” I said. “All torcs, and all armour, return to her. Because she is the source of our strange matter, after all. The urn will disappear, after Maxwell and Victoria have finished with it.”
“You know,” said Molly, “this probably isn’t the right time to ask questions like this, but . . .”
“But you’re going to anyway,” I said. “Because propriety has never stopped you before. Go on; what is it?”
“Well,” said Molly, “it’s just . . . how does an invisible and immaterial presence like Ethel produce entirely material things, like the torc and the armour? I mean, where does all the strange matter actually come from?”
“Good question,” I said. “Basically, Ethel can do all the amazing things she does because she’s not from around here. Inasmuch as I, or anyone else in the family, is able to understand what she says on the subject . . . Ethel comes from a higher level of reality. You could say she’s realer than us. Realer than our world, or our reality. It’s not that Ethel won’t explain herself; it’s more that I don’t think any of us are equipped to understand her answers.”
“But . . . ,” said Molly.
“There’s always a but with you, isn’t there?” I said. “But what?”
“But if she’s so very godlike and far above Humanity, what is she doing here, hanging out with the likes of us?”
“Another very good question,” I said. “And one that would almost certainly keep me up at nights worrying, if I thought about it too much, which I try very hard not to do. I can’t help feeling that if we ever do discover the real reasons for Ethel being here, we’re really not going to like them.” I looked at the Matriarch. “Would you care to add anything?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” said the Matriarch. “The torcs and armour go back to Ethel. That’s all we know, and all we need to know. For our own good.”
“It’s a pity she couldn’t be here,” I said.
I am here! said Ethel’s voice from out of the air around us. In spirit, anyway.
“I thought you could only manifest in the Sanctity,” said the Matriarch.
Whatever gave you that idea? I’m flexible . . .
“The body has been cremated, and you have his armour,” said Molly. “So there’s nothing left of the Armourer now. You don’t even have a tombstone to visit, Eddie. Shouldn’t there be a memorial wall somewhere, with the names of the honoured dead on it? For those who have fallen in battle, fighting the good fight, protecting Humanity?”
“Too many Droods die,” said the Matriarch quite calmly. “The wall would soon be full, and the grounds would be overrun with tombstones. As a family, we’ve never been sentimental. We can’t afford to be. We always look forward. Not back.”
“How do you feel about that, Ethel?” said Molly. “Hell, how do you feel about death? Ethel?”
We waited, but there was no response.
“I think she’s gone,” I said. “A fine time to discover our other-dimensional benefactor has a sneaky side . . .”
“The Armourer will have his photo in the entrance hall,” said the Matriarch. “And yes, before you ask, Eddie, I have made it my business to