Writ on Water (10 page)

“Here, girl.” He offered a hankie. It was made of lawn and embroidered with a large mp. “This one always makes me sad.”

“Thank you.” Chloe felt like an idiot and was glad that Rory Patrick wasn't around to see her crying. The memento mori didn't usually affect her, but the art and atmosphere of this cemetery was overwhelming and should have moved even a Philistine. They stood in companionable silence for a minute or two, enjoying their shared moment of sentimentality.

“Come along. Let's get to the good stuff.” MacGregor wiped a sleeve over his eyes, and when it was lowered he was smiling again.

Chloe tried not to gape as she followed him. The cemetery had already rendered up the finest collection of funerary monuments she had ever seen outside of Highgate in London and some of the more famous sepulchers of Rome. The Patrick dead—even the animals—had not been stinted; the death houses were world class. What could possibly qualify as “the good stuff”?

She had her answer soon enough. The last section, set off by a wall of cedars, was the gothic horrors that Rory had referred to. The term wasn't entirely correct, as they were mostly in a style of gothic revival, which was even more overwrought than the original had been.

There was a ten-foot-tall statue of Father Time draped in a shroud, exhorting them to “
cast a cold eye on Death.
” There was a tableau of the sea god, Triton, wrestling with a monster from the deep, an eight-by-eight slab that held a chess board with a white alabaster king checkmated by a black marble queen, and—strangest of all—a full-sized grand piano in speckled gray granite with keys picked out in ivory and obsidian. The lid was mercifully down tight.

Chloe cleared her throat. “What, no pyramids?”

MacGregor answered seriously, “I haven't chosen my own monument yet. Perhaps I should look into that. They must still know how to make pyramids in Egypt.”

So much for injecting some levity into the conversation.

“You wouldn't have it made here?”

“No. Haven't you been listening, girl?” he demanded. “No one knows about this place. Just Rory's boys who do the maintenance, Rory, my nephew and me. This place is like a desert rose, born to blush and bloom unseen. Why, even Roland hasn't been beyond the gate! No one but family is allowed in here. Used to be that we'd let in the priest, but Father Martin passed on thirteen years back, and my Nancy was the last devout one. Now we'll just cremate and have a Mass later at the church in town. The church still doesn't like cremation but . . .” MacGregor shrugged impatiently.

The church's views on cremation had obviously been considered and then dismissed.

“Then I'm honored to be here,” Chloe said seriously. “And I promise to do a good job.”

“I'm sure you will.” All of a sudden, MacGregor's expression turned crafty. “Anyway, we may not be breaking tradition all that much by letting you in.”

“No?” Chloe began a mental review of her ancestors, trying to recall if they had included any Patricks.

“Well, Rory's got to marry someday. It may be that you are the lucky girl. I've seen him watching you. There's some chemistry there. I think you would be a fine daughter-in-law.”

The notion of distant cousinship vanished in a blink. She and Rory had chemistry? Only the kind that happened in gas chambers. She wondered if her own father was as clueless about her likes and dislikes.

“Well . . . thank you, but that's highly unlikely to happen.” Chloe, who had passed beyond the ability to be verbally shocked by her host, said firmly: “Your son doesn't like me. And I don't think I like him.”

“That doesn't mean anything! Rory doesn't like anyone.”

“Well, it means something to me.” She looked at her watch and changed the subject. “It's after ten. What do you say to rounding up the boys and taking a look at the slave cemetery?”

“If you like, but there won't be much to see until the boys have hacked a path through the brambles. The Patricks quit keeping slaves in the late 1700s and things have gotten a mite overgrown in the last couple of centuries. I've seen parts, of course, but it's just a jumble of crosses and stones. Pathetic sort of place—sad, too. Not like here. Maybe I should plant some roses out there, try to cheer it up a bit.”

Chloe hadn't given the matter any thought, but MacGregor was correct about the family cemetery not being a sad place. It was a weird place, certainly, but not melancholic. Perhaps it was the company as much as the sculptures, astounding and absurd as they were, but Chloe felt both peaceful and safe. She wouldn't mind picnicking here, or even napping, which was not a feeling she had ever experienced in a cemetery before.

“
Cruel as the grave
,” the saying went. The thought of being dead certainly wasn't appealing, but when you had to go, it might bring a measure of comfort to know that your mortal remains would be among friends in this little slice-out-of-time Paradise.

MacGregor led the way back through the cedars. The world got lighter once there were only the ancient oaks overhead.

“Tisiphone!” Chloe exclaimed, pointing at a stone. “You've got to be kidding. Poor kid, to be saddled with a name like that.”

“At least it wasn't Alecto or Megaera,” MacGregor answered without stopping to look.

“Or Medusa.”

“
Chloe
isn't exactly plain homespun either. It would fit right in here,” MacGregor pointed out, in what was probably meant as a compliment. “Besides, I think Tisiphone is kind of pretty.”

He halted in front of a last mausoleum. The facade was a bookcase filled with hundreds of volumes of fictional work. The stone spines sported names like Dickens, Austen and Jules Verne. There was a bench placed to one side. The tomb belonged to Nancy Black Patrick. The recent date was suggestive.

“My wife,” MacGregor confirmed, as though knowing her thoughts. He sounded slightly wistful. “My Nancy was quite a reader. I wanted her to have her favorites nearby.”

“That's thoughtful.” Chloe realized that her comment was odd, but the entire morning had been odd, and her assaulted eyes and senses couldn't absorb anything more. Also, her host was looking a little wan. It was probably time to be leaving. “MacGregor, I don't want to sound like a slacker, but would you mind if we put off seeing the slave cemetery until later? I need to make some notes while this is fresh in my mind.”

“Fine, fine.” MacGregor peered at her. “You're looking a little peaked, girl. You really should have eaten some breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day, and you aren't running to fat yet.”

Chloe opened her mouth to retort and then thought better of it.

“You're right. I should have,” she agreed meekly. “And I will tomorrow. But perhaps Morag will take pity on me and let me have some lunch.”

“Morag hasn't got any pity. But Cook'll see you right. Oleander is one beautiful woman.”

Chloe said a silent prayer of thanks for the beautiful cook. She was suddenly ravenous.

We understand death for the first time
when he puts his hands on someone we love.
—Madame de Stael

Chloe took half of MacGregor's advice and ate a splendid lunch, but after a sumptuous meal that left her feeling a bit like the fattened goose destined for the Christmas table, she decided that a solitary stroll through the gardens would be in order. It seemed an especially wise thing to do, as MacGregor could be heard bellowing from the library. His curses hadn't been in wide use since Charles II had been on the throne, but they were still effective. As no one answered, she had to assume that it was either a cowering employee who had aroused his wrath, or he was on the telephone. Chloe didn't envy whoever was on the receiving end of such a tongue-lashing. Even from a distance, it raised gooseflesh on her arms. She happily fled the house.

Even having been through the mysterious
hedge before, it still took her a while of pacing up and down to find the gap where they had entered that morning. The break was hidden by some optical illusion caused by the overlapping vines. There simply was no marker that she could see that differentiated one bit of hedge from another. She was finally aided in her quest by the sound of men's curses—modern ones this time—and the clopping and the hacking of pruning shears and shovels. As she got closer to the voices, she noticed some slightly downtrodden grass only just recovered from a wheelbarrow's passage. That wouldn't last long, though, so she marked the gap with some fallen twigs before entering the maze.

The “boys” proved to be two brothers, Dave and Bob Munson, one of whom was a senior in high school and the other a college student. She hoped uneasily that Bob, the younger of the two towheads, was on some sort of work program and that MacGregor hadn't encouraged him to go AWOL for the day so that she could have immediate access to the cemetery. Then she remembered Rory had made the arrangements and dismissed her worry. Rory Patrick, the stiff stick, would never encourage carelessness or illegality among his employees. Also, for all she knew, maybe school had already let out for the summer.

“So, guys,” she called out. She didn't offer to relieve them of the loppers and gauntlets, which were covered in bits of thorny bramble and poison ivy. “How goes the war against the flora?”

“We're winnin' the battle,” Dave answered with a charming smile. Apparently his parents were reasonably well off and this job was just for pocket money, or else Rory paid dental benefits. “It's just slow going against these brambles. I'm gonna have to sharpen the blades again tonight.”

“I bet. Well, I'm going to go get my equipment and start on the . . .” Remembering that no one was supposed to know about—or likely even discuss—the family cemetery, she finished: “I'll be on the other side. Mind if I borrow these shears?”

“Help yourself, ma'am. Sure you don't want a machete? Some of these vines are fierce. And then there are those snakes.”

Chloe couldn't picture herself lopping off a snake's head. It was all she could do to kill the slugs that attacked her potted daffodils.

“No, thanks. We have a work policy at my company that says we don't use knives that are longer than the average human arm. I'll just keep an eye out for things that slither.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Ma'am?
Chloe shook her head as she walked away. Maybe it was time to update her wardrobe and consider a new hairstyle.

Lethargy warred with anticipation as Chloe went to fetch her camera bag, portable computer, battery packs, tripod, GPS—though she wasn't sure that she would use it—and MacGregor's hand-drawn map of the graveyard that showed
where all the tombstones were. When she finally staggered into the maze she looked like a beast of burden packing luggage into the Outback.

It was oppressively hot under the trees where no breeze stirred, but she was absolutely itching to start work. This wasn't simply a case of taking a few casual snaps for reference; this was making a visual history of great art. She didn't kid herself that there would ever be a book in this, but she wanted to do a good job anyway. The monuments deserved nothing less than museum lighting treatment. She would use the digital camera for reference shots that she could check immediately on the computer and archive in the database when the time came, but the permanent and personal inventory would be recorded with her favorite old thirty-five millimeter film and camera. She might also shoot some slide film; it still had better resolution than either than either the digital camera or the print film could offer when it came to enlargements.

Chloe shoved her way through the clematis wall and then paused at the head of the granite avenue. It would have made sense to start with the monuments closest to the gate that MacGregor had left open for her—after cautioning her that she needed to tell him when she was through so that he could lock up again—but they were covered over in vines that would require a few hours of shearing to clear sufficiently to record all sides of the buildings. So, rather than trying to be carto-graphically
methodical, she headed for her favorite part of the cemetery that wasn't hip deep in scratchy things and began there.

The shade was more dappled than solid outside the death house that belonged to Calvin and Edana Patrick. The square granite building was obscured only by a light fall of browned oak leaves on the shingled slate roof. The acidic leaves apparently kept down the moss and other vines that grew on some of the other monuments, for this house was relatively clean of parasitic plant life.

She found it surprising that so large a crypt had only two residents, but perhaps the couple had died before having any children. In the days of brisk epidemics, it was only too likely to have happened. Or they might have been brother and sister; the inscription didn't say. Personally, she didn't think that she would care to spend all eternity locked up with a sibling, but given the dates on the tomb, it was unlikely that poor Edana, being female—which in those days was considered another word for feeble-minded—was ever asked about the final arrangements.

Chloe consulted her map and saw that she was at tomb forty-six. She took her pencil and made a small check by it and then added the inscription above the door:
We all a Debt to Nature owe.
It wasn't likely that she would grow confused about which of these marvels she had already photographed, but she preferred to keep a running count of just how far along in a job she was in case
a client asked. The tomb inscription was for her benefit.

She decided that she would need four shots of this monument with the digital camera, showing the detail on every side, starting on the south face where the small windows were. The edge of the roof was an unusual crow-step design, and she liked the benign-looking angel of death who adorned the central plinth.