Chapter 15: The Staff Plot

The staff plot lay behind the laundry, under a hill of nettles.

It was a strip of grass with a rusted fence around it, and the stones were small and plain.

Nobody had mowed it since the summer.

By noon on Sunday about a hundred wolves had come to watch.

I hadn't asked them to, and I hadn't stopped Kerensa from telling them.

She stood on the laundry steps with her phone held up, filming.

"For the council," she said when I looked at her. "For March. I want it on record that he did it with his own hands."

The Beta stood at the back with her arms folded.

The housekeeper had come out of the kitchen in her apron.

And at the edge of the pines, apart from everyone, Emmett leaned on a tree with his thumbs in his belt.

Lucan came across the lawn alone.

He wore work trousers and an old grey shirt, and he carried a spade and a pair of shears.

He didn't look at the crowd.

He went through the gate in the rusted fence and stopped at the third row, where the nettles were highest.

My mother's stone was under them.

I had known it would be.

I had visited every month, on foot, and cut the nettles back with kitchen scissors.

He began to cut.

He cut the nettles down at the root, and the stings must have burned his wrists, because I saw him wince.

He didn't stop.

He pulled the dead stalks out by the handful and threw them over the fence.

He worked the spade under the old turf and turned it over.

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