"Someone is leaving us soon," she said.
He did not need to ask who after all of this time, and he rarely concerned himself with the day-to-day activities of humanity. It did not always mean Death, however. Or even permanence. The precognitions and visions were something that happened regularly with his clairvoyant wife, especially since she had become more comfortable with her gift of prophecy. He only became involved at the last journey.
She sits on a chair in front of her easel in the field, underneath a large oak tree. There is a white cloth-covered table laid with small, delicate porcelain mezze plates and silver, and a light repast of fruit: red grapes, sliced pears and figs, a halved pomegranate; rustic bread and a round of soft ripened Brie; stuffed grape leaves; a bottle of Pinot Noir and two wine goblets. For dessert, sliced diamonds of baklava pastry sprinkled with ground pistachios and fairly dripping with rose water and honey; and they had enjoyed dining alfresco out in the gardens together.
He poured himself more of the wine, took a sip and then set the goblet back down. She sips her tea. He smiled, remembering that but before anything, at the grand obsidian halls of the palace they had delighted in a joyful reunion spent in their bedchamber, now that she has returned to him again. She'd taken his hand to aid her as she alighted from the royal barge, picking up the hem of her cloak and skirts slightly, and fell immediately into his arms. Prima primum, she'd whispered in his ear, and kissed him passionately. First things first.
Walking over to where she sits, painting, he stands behind her with his hands gently at her shoulders and observes her work. It is a familiar scene, with a small, arched stone bridge that crosses over a stream, done in her favourite medium, watercolour. The stream gently and slowly makes its descent into a cascade over a mossy crag, then runs swiftly, catching up with and joining a tributary of the larger river. The leaves are just beginning to turn. He can hear the gentle murmuring sound of flowing water, smell its freshness. She'd painted it several times before; in spring, then in summer, and now autumn.
This river, the River Styx, the murky liminal boundary between mortal souls and the Underworld and where his boatman has ferried her to him at the opposite bank once more, as he does at the end of every summer, is also the place where they had first sworn their oaths to each other, clasping each others' hands over the cold and dark waters, to remain together in eternity; and so made, ones that could never be broken.
"Where," he did inquire, softly.
"To America," she said, turning to look up at him, and he bent to kiss her.
As evening draws near, a three-quarter, waxing gibbous moon appears in the steel-blue twilight, startlingly bright, high in the space between the tall cypress trees. Grey clouds scudded by the wind obscured it for a time, but then it was visible again, shining brightly. The fires had been lit, and reflected in the halls of the palace.
And in the midnight garden, the late summer flowers glow white; the gardenia, and the night-flowering jasmine that twines around the iron gates near the columns of the portico at the obsidian palace, releasing their heady, honey-sweet perfumes; even the scented petals of the roses seem to glow white in the light of the moon.
9 November 1895
Miss Ives boarded the train in the East, having sailed by steamship aboard the RMS Etruria from Liverpool to New York Harbour and travelling First Class, and then continuing on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad to their destination of the high desert city of Santa Fe in the New Mexico Territory.
It had been a long journey, and was still wild country. She travelled with her father, Sir Malcolm Murray. Most of the sea journey for Sir Malcolm was spent retired to his stateroom; even after all this time and his many travels, he had never physically adjusted to long sea voyages. Miss Ives had a connecting suite of rooms. Leaving port, and once they were underway, the grand ocean liner's steamship whistle sounded mournful, she thought.
A twenty-year-old second lieutenant with the 4th (Queen's Own) Hussars by the name of Winston Churchill had also been aboard, with whom they had become acquainted at dinner one evening. Miss Ives and Sir Malcolm had stayed in New York City for a few days before resuming their travels. The young lieutenant continued on to Cuba and the War of Independence as a foreign correspondent.
Her father was to meet with a certain Mr. Jarod Talbot, a wealthy cattle rancher and antiquarian who coincidentally happened to be Ethan Chandler's father, unbeknownst to either Miss Ives or Sir Malcolm. She still thought of him, but only rarely these days. She kept busy assisting her father with his work.
Father and son did not have a good relationship, not at all; the son going so far as to change his surname, but it was also for professional reasons, and to evade his pursuers. His real name was Ethan Lawrence Talbot, but he had chosen to take his mother's surname, Chandler, as his stage name. He had joined up with the travelling Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as a sharpshooter. The father had sent his men to bring him back home, and the local sheriff wanted to question him also. Both sides, his father's gunmen and hired Pinkerton detectives, the sheriff and his deputy, and then the U.S. Marshals had followed, all tracking him to London where he was appearing with the roadshow, to bring him back to the States. He had successfully eluded them all for some time, and lucky for him it was his father's men who eventually dragged him back home, with his hair cut and in a cage, it was rumoured. Although Ethan himself might not tell it that way.
It was there, in Westminster, that she had met him for the second time, the 'wolf', at that time in the employ of her father and having come to see him at their stately home at 8 Grandage Place, jingling spurs and dusty boots tramping on the fancy carpet in the drawing room, alarming the household staff.
He had thought to remove his hat.