At the sight of the coffin Eleanor More’s face changed subtly. She turned to the interpreter.
“Why have you brought us to a house of mourning?” Her hand moved toward the raised platform.
The old man at the interpreter’s side spoke a few words.... And the interpreter translated in his sing-song voice.
“It is his son—who is dead. He has no other to do him honor,” he chanted slowly, as if the words were full of presage.
And Eleanor More’s eyes turned to the old man with a quiet look. But the stolid face gave no response.
With a courteous gesture and a low word to the interpreter, the old man moved toward the shrine across the room and, squatting before it, opened a drawer beneath the half-open doors and drew out an oblong box.
The three people standing by the red-and-black coffin waited quietly as he lifted it and turned to them.
“What is it?” asked Richard More.
He had a curious thrill—as if at the end of a long quest he put out his hand in the dark and touched a human hand like his own.
The old man crossed to them in silence, and laying the box on the platform by the coffin lifted the lid.... A faint scent of spices drifted out; it floated about them and enveloped them as he took out, one by one, the soft thin papers that filled the box, and revealed lying at the bottom something that glowed and shimmered a little.