Page 239 of The Ladies Least Likely
As the procession turned into the narrow street leading to the church and churchyard, Ren glanced behind to see the market square lit with diabolical brightness. People leaned from upstairs windows, throwing scarves and other items he couldn’t identify to the massing men below, and the volume of the noise was deafening. Ren drew closer to Harriette, hoping to provide some protection. He couldn’t fight like a regular man, but his body at least could be a shield.
The procession halted in the dark, narrow passage leading to the tall stone wall about the church. The vicar stood before the gate, draped in black, holding his prayer book. The mute stepped forward with his staff and knocked three times on the woodengate, another ancient superstition, the noise meant to direct the passing spirit where to go.
“Who comes?” the minister called. In the flicker of torchlight Ren saw him cast a nervous glance toward the square, only a street away. The glow of torchlight was evident above the buildings, as was the noise.
“I am Christiana Ulrich, Duchess of Löwenburg, daughter to Karl Augustus, Duke of Löwenburg and Prince of the Lesser Isles,” Harriette answered in a clear, steady voice that carried.
The vicar shifted, clutching his prayer book. “I do not know you. Who comes?” he asked again, raising his voice to be heard above the sudden rise of noise from the market. It sounded like carts were being overturned and windows broken. Ren wondered if the vicar was being made nervous by the mob and that was why he wasn’t letting them in.
“I am Christiana Ulrich, Duchess of Löwenburg,” Harriette said again.
Ren paused.Shewasn’t Christiana—that had to be her mother’s name, wasn’t it? The vicar cleared his throat and shifted. His eyes widened as a suddenwhooshof air blasted through the night and a great flame rose from the square, as if a torch had been cast into a barrel of oil.
“Who comes?” the poor vicar whimpered, his face white and terrified, and Ren understood. He was watching some orchestrated ritual, something he’d never seen before, but it seemed it was important to Harriette. Her voice was strong and firm as she answered.
“I am Christiana, a poor mortal and a sinner.”
“Come in,” the vicar croaked with relief, nearly falling into the gate as it opened behind him.
At the same time a roar of noise rounded the corner, pouring into the street behind them. The mob was in full spate. The men in the front charged any item in the street, smashing oroverturning it, and those behind dashed to doors and windows, caving them in. Screams erupted from houses, shouts of rage carried before, and smoke from the fire billowing above the market square burned Ren’s nose and eyes.
The bier and pall rocked as the pallbearers faltered, turning to gaze behind them in fear. The bier nearly tipped to the side as the men in the rear of the procession rushed forward. Ren stepped behind Harriette and grasped her shoulders as people jostled her, frantically pushing the pallbearers and their burden into the churchyard, with Harriette carried along in their midst.
“We have to go!” He bent his head to shout in Harriette’s ear. His cane in one hand, her in the other, he desperately hoped he wouldn’t fall.
“I’m not allowed in here!” The veil puffed out before her face as she shouted back.
Ren laughed aloud: Harriette, who had never to his knowledge given a fig for convention, was shocked to violate custom on this most solemn occasion.
“Besides, I have to make sure?—”
“The vicar will see to it.” Already the men of their procession had slammed the iron gate shut, clamping the teeth of the large padlock just before the tide of the mob reached them. Arms and hands reached through the iron bars, some shaking their fists.
“Back, ye ruffians!” Mr. Demant shouted, betraying in his anger a marked West Country accent beneath the gentlemanly speech he’d affected before. “This is a funeral, ye rotten curs!”
“To th’ prison!” Voices in the sprawling mob shouted above the melee, and other throats took up the cry. “Th’ prison! Free the pris’ners!”
The mob melted away, the cries, shouts, and sounds of accompanying damage moving along the high stone wall lining the churchyard as the men, and no doubt women, rushed along it to the prison on the east side of the church.
“Should we help them?” Harriette crouched within the curve of his arm as they huddled against the inside of the wall. With some doing she lifted the long black veil over her face and settled it to drape from the back of her head. Her face revealed, she watched the small group gathered about the open grave some distance away in the churchyard. Ren watched her.
“Help who?” he asked, keeping his voice low. “The vicar knows his business, the mob is about theirs, and the prisoners would no doubt welcome being broken out.”
Harriette lingered, her eyes on the group about the grave, and Ren did not have the heart to rush her. Around them he heard the mob at work, the commotion made more frightening by the dark and not knowing what all the crashing sounds entailed. They were curiously sheltered, hiding in the churchyard, but they couldn’t stay.
Across the churchyard the vicar mumbled a few quick words above the cut in the ground. Ren wondered if the Duchess of Löwenburg had her own grave or if she was obliged to share her final resting place with bones just below or other corpses brought in that week. He’d seen small village churchyards with dirt nearly piled to the tops of their walls, so much had been added over the centuries as generations of parishioners required sacred ground.
The vicar sprinkled a few drops of holy water above the hole. Men stood aside with torches as a few hands reached out and slid the coffin from the bier. With the touch of an unseen clasp, the bottom of the coffin hinged open and its contents dropped into the waiting earth. The coffin bottom was shut and returned to the bier, men set to work with shovels replacing the turned soil, and in a few moments the business was done. Mr. Demant dispensed their wages to the hired men, and they scattered. Ren wondered how many would put aside their black hats and cloaks and join the noisy crowd currently descending on the prison.
On the thought, an alarm bell went up, along with shouts of “Fire! Fire!” The vicar grabbed the skirts of his cassock and scampered to the rear door of the church, escaping inside.
“A reusable coffin,” Harriette remarked. “How thrifty of Mrs. Demant.”
“Rhette,” Ren urged her, “we must get out of here.”
“But where?”
He tugged her along the stone wall lining the churchyard. The square tower of the church reared above them, the tall windows with their pointed arches reflecting the light of burning fires, the spires of the roof thrusting up into the night. A small arched door in the east wall let them out into a narrow alley.
