“Didn’t you say this, Haggart: ‘My poor boy, I killed you because I had to kill you, and now I am going to take you to your mother, my dear boy’?”
“These are very sad words. Who told them to you, Mariet?” asks Haggart, surprised.
“I heard them. And didn’t you say further: ‘Mother, I have brought you your son, and put him down at your door—take your boy, mother’?”
Haggart maintains silence.
“I don’t know,” roars the abbot bitterly. “I don’t know; people don’t kill here, and we don’t know how it is done. Perhaps that is as it should be—to kill and then bring the murdered man to his mother’s threshold. What are you gaping at, you scarecrow?”
Khorre replies rudely:
“According to my opinion, he should have thrown him into the sea. Your Haggart is out of his mind; I have said it long ago.”
Suddenly old Desfoso shouts amid the loud approval of the others:
“Hold your tongue! We will send him to the city, but we will hang you like a cat ourselves, even if you did not kill him.”
“Silence, old man, silence!” the abbot stops him, while Khorre looks over their heads with silent contempt. “Haggart, I am asking you, why did you take Philipp’s life? He needed his life just as you need yours.”