Summerweek
By Katherine Traylor
It is a bright day, and everyone is hopeful.
We’ve been outside for hours in the warmth of the sun, waiting for the Queen to pass by. We don’t mind: this kind of weather is made for waiting for processions. Jana has bought snacks—giant pastry puffs, and glass bottles full of pink cordial—and we share them as blithely as a family in a picture. The children are deliriously happy. The air is bright, and the crowd is calm. Everything is as it should be.
It has been about four hours, and the crowd has grown up like a murmuring forest, when the procession comes around the corner. It begins with a group of children, all dressed in frothing white and blue, bearing garlands of flowers almost as big as they are. They are all from noble families. My niece and nephe
