Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [45]
Grace’s eyes locked with Prince Albert’s and she immediately sank into a curtsey. On rising, she blushed scarlet to see that he was nodding in acknowledgement and smiling. Not knowing what else to do, she curtseyed again, and while her knee was still bent, the traffic eased and the royal carriage moved off.
Her heart began beating very fast. Such a handsome and noble face! No wonder the queen was said to be besotted by him.
x
A few days later, Grace found herself putting on her mute’s black garb ready to attend the grand ceremonials of the minor aristocrat for whom she’d already done a considerable amount of work: the Honourable William Wilkins-Boyes-Haig.
The newly fashionable Kensal Green Cemetery, near Paddington, had been landscaped as carefully and beautifully as a park, with neat and elegant walkways along which, on summer Sundays, visitors would promenade to admire the fine statuary and visit their dead loved ones. Arriving with three other mutes by covered carriage ahead of the main funeral procession, Grace, alighting in the central drive, marvelled at the number of lavish private mausolea which had been erected, and the variety of sculpted objects. The corpse of the Honourable was not going into a mausoleum, however, but was to be interred in the catacombs beneath the great columned chapel, so the four mutes booked for the service were taken below by Mr Unwin and put into position at different points along the corridor to mark the passage of the coffin on its way to its final resting place. Grace was at the last position, beside the shelf on which the body would remain.
Waiting in the gloom, she tried not to become affected by her sombre surroundings, but this was difficult for, by the light of the tallow candles on the wall, all she could see were small square cells fronted with cobwebby iron grilles which contained coffins: coffins in pine, mahogany, elm, oak and rosewood, some with names on, some without, some studded with gold nails, some covered in velvet, some with long-dead wreaths of roses atop or bearing a single mouldering bloom. Several had a favourite possession of the dead person placed beside them: a toy, a vase, a mildewed cushion. So many dead, Grace thought in melancholy wonder, and realised, for perhaps the first time, that there were more dead people in the world than live ones.
She stood two hours in the almost darkness, unable to see another living soul and growing colder by the minute, until she felt that she might have turned into a marble statue herself. It was then that she heard, echoing along the stone corridors, a most strange and eerie sound: a mysterious soft whirring which sent shivers down her spine. She didn’t find out until later that the sound was in no way supernatural, but merely the soft drone of the coffin as it travelled by hydraulic power down from the chapel at street level into the depths of the catacombs.
There was a silence, then came a murmur of voices and the shuffle of feet, and in a few moments a black-clad cleric came round the corner, followed by eight men carrying the huge coffin of the Honourable. They were almost buckling under the weight of this, for, having a great sense of his own importance, the Honourable had left instructions that he should be buried in no less than four coffins. The innermost was of pine, then came one of lead, then oak, and the final was of best-quality mahogany. All these were fitted their own locks and keys, for he had also had a fear of his body being taken by bodysnatchers. The Unwins, of course, had been only too pleased to comply with his expensive wishes, and were hoping that others might follow suit. Perhaps, Mrs Unwin had already suggested to her husband, it might become a fashion among the gentry to