MacGregor fished a giant key out of his pocket and stuffed it into the ancient box lock. The antique mechanism opened without the expected grate of rusted iron, and the gates themselves swung back without a shriek. Obviously, the gate’s hinges were cared for, in spite of the plant life’s overgrown condition. The plants were probably just a clever camouflage, which would suggest to a stranger a high degree of neglect.
Roger pranced on ahead of his master, but MacGregor paused before entering the dark space beyond. He held his arm across the threshold like a bar while he studied Chloe.
“I want you to understand something, Chloe. I don’t let folks in here. Don’t hold tours for the historical society and such nonsense. I don’t have in photographers from the Smithsonian, though I’ve been asked a time or two. This is a private place for my family, and I want it to stay that way.”
Chloe didn’t understand why MacGregor should suddenly be nervous about showing her the cemetery, but she was willing to agree with anything he wanted. She would do whatever it took to get the job done without arousing her boss’s ire.
“Sure. I understand.”
MacGregor looked deep into her eyes. For the first time, the engaging twinkle was missing from his hazel gaze. Chloe was abruptly aware of a vein of granite running under his benevolent exterior. She shouldn’t have been surprised by the streak of hardness—all despots had them.
“I’m the keeper now. The guardian. These folks were my family. They were people once who were alive just like you and me. They laughed and loved, made war and babies. Some were heroes, some scoundrels. You ever hear that epitaph by Keats about ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water’? Well, that goes for all these dead folks. All that’s left of them now are these monuments and some crumbling old bones. I don’t want them to end up being robbed of what little they have left. Flesh is forgotten, consumed. Bones, too, eventually. But these monuments live on.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Chloe said gently, though her heart was pounding with some strange alarm. “I’m your insurance policy in case the unthinkable happens.”
MacGregor nodded. “But my best insurance is that no one knows it’s here. I want to keep it that way for as long as I can. Rory made me promise to talk to you about this.”
Rory. Of course he was responsible for this new show of nerves on MacGregor’s part. Obviously he didn’t trust her.
“You have my word,” she said gravely. “I won’t reveal anything I see without your permission.”
MacGregor nodded again and then turned and ducked under the low header that guarded the dark portal of the necropolis.
“Then come meet the family.”
The first monuments on the other side were a row of sepulchers carved in the Greek, Roman and Etruscan style, decorated with urns and life-sized muses in various languishing poses. The poor maidens of the arts wept lichen tears down their anguished faces, and had their stony hands shackled in living ropes of passionflowers. The themes were primarily Greek, but Chloe had seen enough funerary monuments to recognize the work of Italian stonemasons.
“Oh my sainted aunt!” she whispered, staring up into a pitted gray face that was forever frozen in a mask of profound grief.
“Foggini,” MacGregor confirmed with satisfaction. “He did Galileo’s sepulcher. There’s Picchi and Brancusi. And Granddad.” MacGregor pointed as he spoke.
“Granda—Oh, your grandfather.”
“Tamlane MacGregor Patrick. He was a little bit eccentric.” They stopped in front of a vaguely neo-gothic marble tomb fronted with pillars and roundels of male and female masks representing the heavens and the earth.
“This looks vaguely familiar.”
“It’s by that Frenchie, Rodin.”
“Auguste Rodin?” Chloe’s voice was feeble.
“Granddad wanted The Gates of Hell, but Grandma wouldn’t let him have it. She commissioned him to do this instead. The Gates of Heaven, she called it.”
“I think I’m going to faint.”
“I’m glad you know your art. You’ll do a better job.” MacGregor’s face was smug, and another clear reminder that pashas, while sometimes generous, were not entirely saintly and benevolent. “Come along. I want you to see the Saint-Gaudens. He’s just about the only American sculptor we have in here. I like him a lot, even if he isn’t Italian.”
Chloe liked him too. His brilliantly rendered marble angels looked happy.
They soon passed into a lower rent district where the lesser family and their pets were put to rest. There were Celtic crosses overgrown with ivy and vervain, surrounded by picket fences made of stone, or ironwork hedges drowning in clematis. Obviously, the boys hadn’t been in with the pruning shears for a few months. That would make taking clear photographs of the monuments difficult, and perhaps even dangerous if Rory was right about the snakes, but the cat seemed to enjoy chasing invisible mice through the grasping bushes, and the feral plants lent the place a certain gothic air.
Chloe didn’t stray off of the path in her bare legs, but she saw an array of arresting images that fired her imagination. There were the three-quarters eyes that were both the symbol of the Masons but also of the Holy Trinity. There were also lots of doves, suggesting that the inhabitants of those graves had either been Catholic or Jewish, and—sadly—the white lambs that marked the graves of children were abundant. There were a few anchors with broken chains that indicated some of the Patricks had been sailing men, and one out-of-place Muslim crescent.
“How large is the cemetery?” she asked finally, beginning to tire. A constant state of admiration was exhausting.
“Two acres. One hundred seven human graves and mausoleums. Ninety-three dogs. Eighty-one cats. Four horses—my great-grandfather buried his favorite team here. And one monkey.”
MacGregor walked her slowly past aisles of eighteenth-century hands; praying hands, clasping hands, pointing and blessing hands. There were Saint Michaels and Francises and a bevy of Virgins. The end of the first corridor was marked with a particularly grisly carving of the Sacred Heart leaping out of Jesus’s chest, confirming Chloe’s impression that the majority of the Patricks had been Catholic.
“ ‘For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,’ ” Chloe muttered, quoting Ephesians as she looked at a stone archangel who brandished an upraised sword.
“Is that the way you think of it?” MacGregor asked with a smile. “Then you will like this next part. Follow me and mind the clematis.” He swept aside a thicket of vine with a large hand that would have looked at home carrying a machete.
“Whither thou goest.”
The following section showed art typical to New England and among the Presbyterians of Scotland: grim reapers with scythes and winged skulls. This section also was marked with the sort of candid epitaphs that spoke plainly of the deceased’s faults and brought joy to the taphophiles of the world.
Calum Patrick 1741–1780
He was a terrible man,
Cruel to everyone except his wife,
His sons and his friends
Moira Patrick, beloved wife
1752–1774
Think on what a wife should be
For she was that and more
Andrew Patrick 1721–1770
He suffers no more
Edana Patrick 1740–1771
The angels took her home
Rachael Ryan Patrick 1723–1775
Ever tardy, even to the grave
Roderick Allen and James David Patrick 1725–1747
Hanged for seeking treasure that didn’t exist
Here lie the ones responsible for this
Beloved Kelton Patrick 1791–1862
This stone is placed by a mournful wife who will
gladly join him soon
Ridiculously, Chloe felt tears gathering in her eyes. She heard a noise and t
urned to find MacGregor sniffling dolefully.
“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
Chapter Three
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 wher
e 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.”
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