4

The party remained in seclusion for two days, during which prayers and incantations went on without pause. Everyone was asking who this unusual person might be.

Certain farmers in the neighborhood who had once been in the service of the bishop came to pay their respects.

“There has been a big commotion over at the prince's place,” one of them remarked by way of apology. “The General of the Right was seeing the prince's daughter, and then all of a sudden she died, of no sickness at all that anyone could see. We couldn't come yesterday evening when we heard Your Reverence was here. We had to help with the funeral.”

So that was it. Some demon had abducted the Eighth Prince's daugh-ter. It scarcely seemed to the bishop that he had been looking at a live human being. There was something sinister about the girl, as if she might at any moment dissolve into thin air.

“The fire last night hardly seemed big enough for a funeral.”

“No, it wasn't much to look at. They made it as small as they could.” The visitors had been asked to remain outside lest they communicate the defilement.

“But who might it be? The prince's daughter, you say—but the prin-cess the general was fond of has been dead for some years. He has another princess now, and he is not the sort to go out looking for new wives.”