In stark contrast to mid-July's bright heat, the cellar of the Greystone estate was cool and dark, and it was here, in one of the empty corner rooms, where dead Greystones lay in waiting for their final resting place. That concept itself was at ends with Jonathan, who had always felt that their souls had already gone off to Heaven and so all was left was their bodies, which needed to be kept someplace cool while the living caught up with funeral preparations. Since circumstance had quite often brought him to it, he spent much time in the corner cellar room, and thought about this quite a lot. So it had been, with his mother and his father, and his unborn child some months* ago, for a day or two while he had ordered a coffin to be made. Those three were undeniably good and pure souls who had gone to Heaven. He could even remember, barely, all those years ago, when he forced himself to look upon his grandfather's corpse, in the very same room, in the very same light. Jonathan remembered Duke Robert Greystone to be a strict and cold man, but perhaps that could be considered only as a personality defect, since his harshness seemed to come from his great want to only have the best for his son and family. Therefore he as well would have gone to Heaven.
That left Sistine.
As through most other times the dead are looked upon more favorably than they ever have been in their actual life, with virtues accentuated and vices played down, Jonathan didn't directly question himself as to whether or not his wife went to Heaven. He did, however, decide that regardless, she would need a little help.
For days after the worst night of his life, he knelt in wake against the table her body laid upon, rosary close to his lips as he moved his fingers and counted beads to his prayers so he wouldn't go completely mad. It seemed the only words of long and fluid sentences that he could speak at the moment. Otherwise he didn't say much of anything at all, really because he had no need or want to. When Matthias had finally returned home from Tarin the day before, he was somewhat cured of this condition. Speech became more natural, as did breathing and sleeping since he did take to settling down in his son's room for night. The night before that, some spirit decided to scream Sistine's last words into his ear, and it gave him such a scare that he knelt against his bed and prayed until morning. As the funeral preparations swirled around him, as in-law family members arrived from their respective homes all over Liston, as their accommodations needed to be readied and kept, as everything was abuzz midst the awkward silence of a family of either shock or mourning, it was of the most importance to him that her soul would be saved so she could rest in peace. So to keep his sanity and temperance in front of all these new visitors come to judge him, around and around the rosary he went, and yes, of course, naturally, it helped.