The Word at Harrow Saddle

About this book

In the Low Reach, the dead speak once. Carried over Harrow Saddle to the burial ground at Cairnmouth, each corpse says a single sentence at the Lintel Stone, and only the bearer at the head-poles hears it. That sentence overrules any will, and a bearer caught lying is blinded with lime. Teodor Marr is the best bearer in the valley, drunk by noon and generous to strangers, and he has lied about the dead eleven times. When his mother dies in the last week of the ice harvest, he insists on carrying her himself. His sister wants the family ice-house, his brother needs money before the Calder men take his fingers, and his daughter, carrying the foot-poles, has started keeping a record. Three days of snow lie between Teodor and whatever his mother decided to say.