You are torn for a moment, Constance. The weight of the implicit demand is like a stone crushing your chest. In the old days, the blood-and-stone days, the days before the coming of the Arimathean, this would begin a blood feud. The relatives of those who lay here would take up arms to avenge them, would give up their own lives to slay Uther in their name. If you agree to this, you will destabilize the kingdom and plunge it into blood and ruin.

And you hate the thrill of excitement. The temptation. It flowers inside of you, pressing roots against that crushing stone. Say the words. Prove yourself a daughter of giants. Bring the dark days back in the name of the dead. Be a figure known from Cornwall to Lothian, deathless, dread. Be an ender of kings by command.

It is the presence of Robena that makes you flinch. Perhaps you could justify leading nebulous knights to their doom, but knowing that Robena would die to right this wrong makes you pause. Not without her leave, but you fear she would give it to you anyway. No. You will not make Robena join the unquiet dead. You will not set Britain alight in the name of the otherworld.

Not yet.

“You have been ill-done by,” you say, your mouth dry, but your shoulders squared. “It is not to be borne. Robena! Go and find their bones in the grass, picked clean and left scattered. Bury them under a Christian stone. I will see to their last meal.”

You will need sheep. More than one. An ox would be better, a white bull best, but you are no noble to have those at hand. Sheep you can afford. And you will need Robena to hold them steady. Your little knife will do the rest.

And perhaps on your way you can return this cat that rests on your chest like that pressing stone.