But Bowden said, "Harvest time is when Anora first tells you she chose Farold." You conveniently lost your blade at that time, which is an indication of how long you've been planning. ”

"No!" Selwyn cried. Will they misunderstand and distort everything?

Bowden handed the knife away, and it passed from one person to another again, detouring back to the table as everyone wanted to see it "Where were you last night?" Bowden asked.

Selwyn hesitated, knowing that the truth would hurt him. "Go home," he lied. "As my father tried to tell you."

The room reacted: an ethereal sigh rippled through the crowd.

Selwyn guessed for a moment before Bowdoin's announcement: "You've been discovered, kid." ”

He considered denying it in case Bowden was bluffing, or that there was only one witness, one who might be uncertain or unreliable. But he had miscalculated and proved to those present that he would lie, which was worse than any blow they had inflicted on him. Sensing the pain on his father's face, who had also been deceived by himself, he nodded. "Yes," he admitted. "Well, I'm out for the night. Very early. But I didn't go anywhere near the mill and didn't kill Farrod. "All of this is true." Did the people who saw me say I was near the mill? "If they have, they are lying, and although he can't prove it, it's better to know exactly where he stands.

Bowden raised his hand and didn't let anyone in the room answer. "I'll ask questions," he said. "Are you near the mill?"

"I'm not," Selwyn said. Anyway, he could see that Bowden was going to ask, so he said everything and tried to keep his voice steady: "We weren't close from the farm here today. ”

The ripples through the crowd were more pronounced this time, a whisper.

"Here?" Bowden glared at his daughter and asked, if it turned out to be true, he would talk to her later.

"I saw Anora at the market yesterday morning. She—" He hesitated, not wanting to trouble her; And, after all, the word is too strong. "She said that if I come—" he started again, hoping that it would have been easier if he had said something to them from a different direction. She gives the impression of... She seems to think that it might be a mistake for her to agree to marry Farrow. I think... If I could talk to her privately, she might break the engagement. ”

There was an uproar in the room.

"Oh, Selwyn," said Anora, her voice almost faster than a sigh, and the noisy speculation immediately ceased and people could hear it. "I never said that"

"No," Selwyn agreed. "But we talked, and you—" He remembered her sweet smile, the way she looked up at him, because—despite his small stature—she was small. Distraught, he tries to remember exactly what she said.

"I wanted to be kind," she said, her pale blue eyes radiating with sympathy. "You looked sad when I told you I was going to marry Farrod, and then he crushed you in Orrick's tavern, poured ale on you, and threw you in the middle of a heap..."

"Thank you for reminding me," Selwyn couldn't help but say. I almost forgot how bad it was.

"I've always liked you, and I don't want to hurt your feelings. But I never said I was coming last night. ”

"No," he admitted, "but I want to—" he looked away from her and at the floor. Apparently, he was wrong.

Bowden said to Anora, "Did you see him last night?" ”

"No," Anora replied.

Bowden turned to Selwyn.

"I threw pebbles at the blinds above the window," Selwyn told Bowdoin, "but I'm afraid to wake you or your wife." So I stopped. ”

"I must have fallen asleep," Anola said. "I haven't heard of it." She added, "But I believe in you. ”

Selwyn feared she was the only one doing so.

Bowden sighed exasperatedly. "We don't know when Farrow was killed that night," he reminded everyone, "whether Selwin stopped here first or not." Or afterward. All we know is that he was killed sometime between dinners - after which Linton left, and Derian went upstairs to bed - before Linton returned at dawn. ”

"Long enough for the body to start stiffening," Linton explained, self-righteous because he was the one who found out about it, "but didn't smell it." ”

"Well, in such heat, it's starting to smell now," someone in the room commented, loud.

Anora wailed outside with a wail, the only way to avoid the gaze that turned her head to catch her reaction. Her mother followed.

"Thank you very much, Orrick," Bowden said.

Orrick shrugged in embarrassment. He was undoubtedly angry because so many people had gathered at Bowdoin's house, and not at Orrick's tavern - where he could have sold food and drink to everyone.

And so it went on for a while, people commented and gave their opinions, but few believed what Selwyn said. Maybe it would have been different if he hadn't started lying, but he has no way of knowing and nothing he can do about it now.

By about three o'clock in the afternoon, the few who claimed to be uncertain—mainly Selwyn's peers and, unexpectedly, the blacksmith Holt—were overruled by the majority, who declared Selwyn indeed guilty. guilty because he had reason to hate Farrod, because it was his knife that did it, and because - although no one really saw him climb into Farrod's window - he appeared in the village at the right time. That's enough.

The law demanded that lives be paid for lives, but in people's memory, no one in the village was executed. It was argued that he should have been sent to the larger town of Santa Hilda, where there was a full magistrate who could oversee the execution of the sentence. However, it was pointed out that the magistrate might ask himself to conduct an investigation, which was considered pointless; He wanted to see the corpse.

That would be dangerous. The village of Penrith was too small to have its own priest and relied on the occasional wandering monk to bless weddings, babies and the dead. But leaving an unblessed corpse at nightfall – especially that of a murdered person – is asking for trouble. Regardless of what the church says, it is known that there are night elves who desire to make their empty bodies their own. Farrow needs to be buried as soon as possible.

That's how they came up with the idea of tackling two problems at once: "We're going up the mountain," Bowden announced in his best official voice, and Selwyn had always thought it sounded as if his lungs ached. "We will go to the grave, where we will seal the dead victim in the grave along with his living murderers - Farrow and Selwyn."