Sneak Peak: "Cortege" from My Father's Son by Penny Freeman
Although the morning was bright and
clear, a thousand candles burned in the rotunda to ease the darkness, the
windows shrouded as they were in crepe.
The various hearths encircling the space blazed, the first time in a
week the rotunda had not been purposely kept freezing cold. Across the vast floor, a full fifty gentlemen of intimate connection stood in ranks behind his father’s bier.
The ladies of the family all
congregated on the mezzanine upon long upholstered benches and his mother’s
best chairs. From where he stood, he saw
them perched upon their seats all clad in mourning and the proper bereaved
masks upon their faces, and thought of ravens in a rookery, howsoever silent
they may be.
He stood deep in the shadows of the
mezzanine, summoning up his courage to begin.
His courage was slow to respond.
Matlock stood on his left, Archer to the right of Sophia who gripped
Piper’s hand in her own. They stood
there, silent, tense, expectant, more than one hundred people utterly still and
waiting for Piper’s appearance.
Sophia laid her opposite hand on his
breast and looked up into his face. He
blinked, nudged ever so gently from his own private torment. “You can do this,” she whispered. “We can do this.”
Piper met her gaze and swallowed
hard. “We can do this,” he agreed. “With you, I can do this.”
