Writ on Water (16 page)

“That sounds like a challenge . . . I know!” Rory laughed and began humming under his breath.

Chloe joined in, singing softly and on key:

Cold blows the wind to my true love,
And gently drops the rain,
I never had but one sweetheart,
And in the greenwood she lies slain . . .

“ ‘The Unquiet Grave.'
You're really being morbid this morning,” she told him, as he shoved aside the covering vines from the old gate and thrust the key into the lock. “If we are going to quote the famous on death then my vote is for Keats's epitaph—
‘Here lies one whose name was writ on water.'
Your dad mentioned it the first day I was here. I always thought it so sad. Keats was only in his twenties when—”

“Damn.” Rory pulled out his ready handkerchief and scrubbed at his hands. He then bent down and rubbed the lock with the stained linen. “There's gunk all over this thing. Dad must have come visiting last night and slopped booze all over. Watch out for the ants down here. They're having quite a party with the leavings.”

Chloe looked down and saw that ants were indeed swarming over a large patch of dark soil. It reminded her of something . . . maybe a dream? She'd been having some real doozies lately. She didn't recall what she'd been dreaming about last night, but she'd woken up once, bathed in sweat and nearly certain the echoes of a scream and gunshots were reverberating in the damp air. But the noise, had it escaped her lips, must not have reached beyond her bedroom, because no one came pounding on the door to see what was wrong with her.

“I didn't know they liked whisky,” she said, frowning.

“It might be some sweet liqueur. Keep an eye out for more bottles. He was probably too drunk to care about littering.”

“Could he have really had anything else to drink?” she asked in alarm. “Seriously, Rory, you can die of alcohol poisoning. Maybe we should go back to the house.”

“Relax. He was coming around when I put him to bed. As I expected, Claude did something to enrage him. The sot will be fine in a few hours. He
always is.” Rory's posture was as eloquent regarding his mood as any words. Chloe stared a moment at the stiff back and decided to drop the subject in favor of continuing harmony.

“Okay—what are you doing?”

“Hang on a second,” Rory said, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a small bottle of foul-looking liquid. He turned and waved it at her. There was an evil glint in his eye.

Chloe inspected the yellow oil with misgiving.

“Why? What is that?”

“Insurance of the homemade variety. It's an extract of citronella . . . and a few other things.” Rory uncapped it and began smearing the stuff on the exposed portion of his chest.

She watched appreciatively as he ran quick hands over his torso and bare legs, but backed up a step as he advanced toward her and she caught a whiff of the pungent, ammoniac odor.

“No thanks,” she said. “That smells like an outhouse.”

“Hold still,” he ordered, reaching for her arm. “I'll do you since you need to keep your hands clean.”

“No, really. I have my own repellant—” But he didn't listen. So, rather than attempt an undignified escape that might damage her equipment, Chloe stood reasonably still while he ran efficient and impersonal hands over her legs, arms and the back of her neck. She pretended that she didn't enjoy it.

“I know it stinks,” he said sympathetically, kneeling at her feet for a last pass over her calves. “But it's better than battling ticks and chiggers.”

“Only marginally,” she muttered at the top of his head.

His face turned up, lit with one his rare, charming smiles.

“All done,” he said, rising to his feet and returning the nasty bottle to his shirt pocket. “You'll thank me for this.”

“Don't hold your breath.”

They found the chess set without trouble, and Rory proved a capable hand with setting up the reflectors. He had several questions about her digital camera. It was a Nikon F3 equipped with a Kodak 1.3 mega-pixel sensor. She had heard a rumor that they planned on marketing digital cameras to the home market soon, but couldn't imagine the average person bearing the expense when regular cameras were so much less expensive.

The monument was dusted over with golden pollen and assorted lichens, which made a colorful contrast to the rim of tiny stringed forget-menots that bordered it. The flowers grew weak and lanky in the deep shade, having only a few minutes of direct sun very early in the morning, but they still added a note of woodland charm.

The opportunistic clematis and honeysuckle hadn't engulfed the site yet, though they would certainly do so by the end of the season if no one cut them back.

Some tombs demanded awed whispers, but not this one. It was less a mausoleum than a macabre theme-park attraction. Only the fact that it had been hand-sculpted by a highly trained artisan elevated it beyond the army of plaster gnomes that flanked Riverview's drive. Chloe found that she was disappointed not to find any of Lewis Carroll's characters immortalized on the board. The whole cemetery was like a trip through the looking glass—indeed, so was all of Riverview.

She paused before shooting her first frame, again struck by a sensation of déjà vu, only this time it was identifiable. The tomb reminded her of an illustration in a book she had at home. It was a drawing of the exchange that Alice had shared with the White King when she complained about seeing nobody in the road. And the king had answered back that he wished he had such good eyesight:
“To be able to see nobody! And at such a distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do see real people, by this light.”

She shivered suddenly as the charmed feeling left her.
Able to see nobody by this light.
The words ricocheted inside her head, leaving her momentarily dizzied.

No, that was silly. She didn't believe in ghosts and goblins and things that went bump in the night. No rational person did. Except Granny Claire—and the soundness of her mental state was debatable.

Chloe began taking pictures. She worked carefully. Though the august Patrick dead were not
hanging around the gloomy cemetery giving verbal instructions—or even psychic ones—they still managed to make their presence felt, directing her through the living Patricks to do a thorough job. This was probably the pressure she felt at the back of her mind.

“That's a wrap on the front shot,” she said firmly. “I'm supposed to mark each grave with the GPS, but I'll do it later.” She didn't explain why she was putting this task off. Her thoughts and vague worries about what she was doing weren't advanced enough to be shared, but she was having some second thoughts about the advisability of adding this cemetery to any database.

“Okay. What next?” Rory asked.

They moved on to 103 as soon as they were done at 104. It was not located directly beside the chess set but rather at a forty-five degree angle to the north. Chloe had learned that there were certain consistent axial orientations in all the great funerary monuments of the world, organizing them into neat patterns by the external synchronization of outside forces—usually the sun, moon or celestial constellations. But no such consistency was at work in the Patricks' bone yard. There were spirals and lines and zigzags of path darting all over the sanctified acres.

“I'm learning your tastes. You'll like this one,” Rory said with a smile. “It's extremely whimsical.”

“Oh!” Chloe breathed happily, finally having found her
Alice
figure. One hundred and three
was actually an Etruscan goddess, but a young one. She was seated in an undignified huddle, her face appropriately sad under her
polos
crown, her skirt kited up at the knees in a childishly careless manner. A small plaque read:

Under this grave grazed on by sheep
Lies an angel fast asleep.

Beside the goddess was a stylized feline keeping guard that might have been a twin for the Lion of Amphipolis. She would have suspected that the lichen-covered beast was the original, but the fourth century statue had only been restored in 1937, and this grave was clearly marked nineteenth century.

Catriona Patrick.
She had died before the Civil War.

They worked quickly, as the air was beginning to thicken and had taken on an ozone smell that suggested that a lightning storm was coming. What light there was under the canopy had become liquid, surreal, and Chloe wanted to take advantage of its unusual visual effects.

Rory checked his watch but didn't complain when she pushed her way deeper into the honeysuckle to get to tomb 102. He seemed to be genuinely interested in the technical side of what she was doing, and impressed with her thoroughness. Chloe didn't explain that she was being unusually thorough for personal rather than professional reasons.

Again, Chloe was delighted with the view of the monument when some of the vines were pulled away. The next statue was a mere three feet tall, nearly buried in honeysuckle, but it was an exquisite thing, a sleeping Eros, wings folded, head resting on a tiny quiver filled with golden arrows.

Here lies Deirdre Patrick
An envious Venus struck her down

“I don't believe it,” she said in a hollow voice. “That's real gold, isn't it?”

Rory smiled wryly.

“Believe it. Deirdre had a gold fetish, which her husband indulged to the very end.”

“Where is he?” she asked, looking about for the generous and eccentric husband who had provided genuine golden arrows for his wife's tomb, and then consulted her clipboard when no likely grave was found nearby.

“Gregory's over in the front section . . . with his first wife and their children.”

“Oh.”

“It wasn't his choice. His heirs made the arrangements. I'll point him out on the way back.” Rory sniffed the air and looked up at the tree canopy. It was a useless gesture. Nothing could be seen of the sky. “I think we better get started. It's going to rain soon. Hard.”

“Okay.” Chloe took him at his word and worked quickly to get her shots. She had Rory
hold a remote flash pointing at the glorious little arrows. She wouldn't put that shot in the official database, but she wanted one in which the beautiful eccentricity was featured. She was anxious to see the results in print. The peculiar light made the ancient stone appear to the eye like living flesh. Not human flesh exactly—it was too pale, too gray and waxy—but still it seemed organic rather than mineral. She prayed that the unique quirk of tone was preserved on film.

They packed up quickly after shooting Eros, as a damp wind began wending its way through the graveyard. It was strong enough to shake old leaves out of the trees and make the vines whisper eerily. It didn't surprise her when Rory started humming “Texas Flood.”

They walked out by a different path so that Chloe could see Gregory's tomb. She noted on the way that Roger had been obliging enough to drag his moplike tail over the door of the first tomb she had photographed and cleared out the old cobwebs. The cat continued to strop at the mausoleum threshold as they walked by, ignoring them in favor of rubbing his face on the old wood and the remains of dusty webs that littered the sill.

“I think I'm going to need to get inside forty-six to finish the job,” she said, pointing at the cat. “There are some statues inside the monument as well, aren't there?”

Rory hesitated.

“I doubt it. If there are, we'll have to get the keys
from MacGregor later. They're kept on a separate ring. We'll need to get a list, too, of where everything is. I used to play out here, but I haven't been inside the mausoleums in years and don't recall where everything is placed.”

“Is there much art inside the tombs?” she asked, suppressing a shiver. She couldn't imagine
playing
in the mausoleums, though to a child who did not understand what death was, they might just seem like a city of eccentric playhouses and forts.

“Only the larger ones, like this. It was modeled after the entrance to the hypogeum of the necropolis of Crocifisso di Tufo,” Rory said, demonstrating a greater acquaintance with the cemetery's history than she had supposed he had.

They paused to look at the pitched roof and the scene beneath of the slaughter of a Caledonian boar. On the side, there was another goddess atop a sea monster that looked for all the world like a carousel horse with a coiled serpent where its regular tail should be. The sea-goddess wasn't smiling and neither was her mount. All in all, it was not a warm and welcoming sort of tomb.

“I think I would have liked Dierdre better.”

“So did Gregory. Wife number one was something of a dragon. French. Temperamental.”

Chloe looked at the bronze plaque:

Madelaine Patrick (1822–1863)
We can say no more in truth
or we shall speak ill of the dead

“They all seemed to die so young,” she said softly.

“The women did. The men, unless they met with the wrong end of a gun or knife, usually lived long, hedonistic lives.”

“Oh, lucky you.”

“There are worse things,” he admitted, smiling. “We'd better go. We're about to have an ocean up-ended on our heads.”

As though to emphasize the point, there was a flicker of bright light to the south that penetrated even the leafy bower. It was followed a few seconds later by the bass rumble of thunder.

Chloe shifted her bags higher up on her shoulders and started quickly for the gate. She wanted to wash the stinky yellow oil off, but in a bathtub, not the great outdoors.

“Roger! Where are you?” Rory shouted with a note of vexation. “It'll serve him right if he gets stuck in here for the duration of the storm.”

But in contrast to his annoyed words, Rory headed back in the direction of tomb forty-six to retrieve the stubborn cat.

“I'll meet you back at the house,” Rory called over his shoulder. “If you leave now you may beat the rain.”