Dawn moved to the front parlour, where she would hear the carriage along the road. She couldn’t pace; her body wouldn’t tolerate the exertion. Instead, she wrung her hands over and over while ignoring the open book on her lap.
At last, the steady clop of horses’ hooves and the driver’s call of whoa came from the street. She glanced out the window but did not recognise the shape of the carriage in the dim light outside. Perhaps they lost a wheel, or something happened to one of the horses. That would explain the delay and the strange conveyance.
Her heart was already beating erratically when the violent knock came at the door. Dawn and the maid both rushed to the entranceway. A policeman stood on the top step, his helmet tucked under his arm and a light mist falling on the shoulders of his dark uniform.
He never even uttered a word. He didn’t have to, as his mere presence was sufficient premonition of terrible events. Dawn mouthed no and fainted. Her body dropped to the floor unaware of the chaos that erupted, for her mind had already fled the hideous news.
2
As Dawn stared straight ahead, she pondered how life never prepared you for tragedy. It gave no warning alarm like the whistle the train blew as it hurtled down the tracks. Disaster simply emerged from the mist of time and ploughed into you, destroying your world.
With each step she trod on the cobbled street, her mind swam to the surface of the laudanum daze that had kept her insensate for the previous week. Today, when her parents would be committed to the ground, she needed to grieve. She would not remain dry-eyed as the two people she loved the most in the entire world were laid to rest.
Dawn had refused to ride beside the funeral director, insisting instead on walking behind the large black carriage. She needed to prolong the moment, to follow her parents as they led the way. Inside the carriage, two polished wooden coffins lay side by side on a sea of midnight velvet. The glass sides exposed the deceased to the curious stares of bystanders as they made their slow way to the cemetery.
Large black plumes on the pitch-black horses’ heads nodded with each slow stride. They made her think of the aquilegia seeds she received on that fateful day. They too would have nodding black heads. Her mother hated the colour, yet Dawn’s final memory of Verity would be the bed of night that clothed her now.
Mr Stevens, a solicitor, walked at her side. Whenever he glanced her way, his face was lined with worry and he murmured soft words of support. He had been her father’s personal friend, and his office shared the same premises at Uxbridge’s Bookkeeping. On hearing of the tragedy, he had leapt into action to organise the funeral and handle her parents’ affairs.
Behind Dawn and Mr Stevens walked the household staff and the men who worked for Mr Uxbridge.
The thick black veil draped from Dawn’s perch hat reduced the world around her to a sombre twilight and shielded her from curious bystanders. Before affixing the hat to her hair, Dawn had added a single raven feather from their watcher.
Her dress was plain black cotton, with a high neck and no adornment. The skirts were heavy with the bustled fabric falling behind, and yet it wasn’t the anchor that slowed her steps. Rather, the fall of skirt in front made each step feel as though she were pushing against a wall. Or was it her reluctance to walk too close to the carriage that made her hesitate with each step?
While the conveyance contained all that remained of her parents, a carriage had also snatched away their lives. On their way home, a wheel had lodged in the railway line at a crossing. A train emerged from the fog and crashed into the carriage, killing her parents instantly.
And now Dawn followed another death carriage. The Whetstone streets were silent as they passed. The only sound the clop of hooves, the tread of feet, and the occasional cough or sniffle from the mourners behind. Conversation from pedestrians going about their lives lowered to a faint murmur and only rose in their wake.
Her world had collapsed and left her nothing to cling to. While never spoken of directly, it had always been acknowledged in their home that her parents would outlive Dawn. Her childhood had been so calamitous that doctors told her parents she would never reach eighteen, a milestone she had passed four years before. While the move to the town house and her quiet work in the garden had brought a dramatic improvement in her condition, no one believed she would ever marry or reach middle age.
Dawn had always hoped that her death would not inconvenience her parents too greatly. Ideally she had planned to lie down in a shady spot among the hostas and not get up again. Perhaps the watching raven would give a discreet caw to alert Mother to her passing. Now she was cast adrift, and her mind could not comprehend how to survive without her mother and father to act as her rudder through life.
The funeral procession trudged along the road and moved through the ornate, wrought-iron gates of the cemetery. More mourners fell in behind Dawn as they neared their destination, but she had no energy to thank them. The lodestone in her life was the two wooden coffins before her.
As they walked, they passed gravestones of granite and marble. Some inscriptions remained crisp, while others were dull or covered in lichen. Who would scrub her parents’ tombstones clean after she died? One tombstone had a griffin – half lion and half eagle – perched on a corner. As Dawn passed, the creature’s eyes rolled to follow her, and a tear-shaped pebble fell down its cheek.
Dawn squeezed the bridge of her nose to stave off the headache. Impossible. The ornament didn’t cry – it was her laudanum-laced mind conjuring up her mother’s tales and breathing life into them.
At a far corner of the cemetery, the sexton and his helper waited. The horses halted and stood silently while men drew the coffins forth and placed them on the waiting stands, where they hovered over two holes in the damp earth. Next to the gaping maws sat an untouched lot. Mr Uxbridge was a practical man. He had purchased three lots adjacent to one another; one each for him, his wife, and his sickly daughter. The three plots were to be enclosed by a small ornamental railing to segregate and protect the family in their eternal slumber.
Dawn found herself fascinated by the grass on the space next to her mother’s grave. She was supposed to be resting there already, waiting for the day her parents joined her. Events were never supposed to unfold this way. She hadn’t been raised to cope alone, and the enormity of her situation wrought a sob from her throat.
The reverend opened the book in his hands and cleared his throat. Once he had everyone’s attention, he read his sermon, and those assembled uttered the required words in response. People kept casting Dawn sidelong glances, and whispers circulated around her. Murmurs of so tragic followed by she won’t long outlive them reached her ears.
Mr Stevens stood on one side of Dawn and Aggie, their loyal housekeeper, on the other. The former maintained a stiff upper lip, and the latter sobbed into a handkerchief clenched between black-gloved fingers. Finally the last prayer was said for the recently departed, and the reverend closed his book with a faint thud.
The sexton lowered the coffins, first one and then the other, into the waiting earth. At a nod from him, Dawn stepped forward and bent down to scoop up a handful of dirt. She tossed half onto the lid of her father’s coffin, and as tears blurred her vision, she emptied her handful over her mother’s cold body. As she stood at the foot of her mother’s grave, Dawn plucked the raven’s feather from her hat and let it flutter down to the coffin. She prayed the watcher would guard her mother in death as he had in life.
What would she do without them?
How did one survive in the world without loving parents to insulate you and take care of the mundane, like paying grocer’s bills?