"You're kidding," Richie Ryan said.
Amused by his young friend's disbelief, Duncan MacLeod shook his head. "I'm not kidding."
The teenager squinted at the two-hundred-year-old turkey sitting on the kitchen table in front of them. The shipment had come in only that morning from a dealer Duncan knew in Quebec. The fine detailing, subdued colors and high gloss made the piece well worth what he had paid for it, despite Richie's skepticism.
"Mac, I just don't see it - people eating soup out of a big ceramic turkey."
"Why not?" Duncan asked. "You've eaten hamburgers from a box labeled 'Happy Meal.'"
"Not for several years, and that was only under duress." Reminded no doubt of his voracious appetite, Richie started rummaging through the full shelves of the refrigerator. "You're just trying to fool me."
Duncan carefully replaced the item in its shipping box. Tessa would never allow it on display in the store. She had very firm ideas about decor and style, and antique poultry - no matter how valuable or collectible - did not fit in with their other antiques or objects d'art.
"You thought I was trying to fool you when I told you about grandmother clocks, too," Duncan reminded him.
"There's no such thing," Richie said, chewing on a cold wing of leftover chicken. "And that game you tried to get us to play last week? The goose game?"
"The Game of Goose. Very popular in the 1500s."
"Whatever. I'm not buying that, either."
Duncan folded his arms. "Who's the historical expert, you or me?"
"You," Richie acknowledged. "But you've also got a very dry sense of humor, Mac."
The phone rang and Richie grabbed it. For a foster kid with no lasting ties to any family or neighborhood, he certainly had enough friends who liked to call at all hours of the day and night. Duncan had already met some of them - teenagers with babies, with drug or legal problems, with less than reputable reputations. He worried that Richie hung out in rowdy crowd. But he trusted Richie's innate goodness and common sense, otherwise he wouldn't have invited him to move into the spare room.
"I'm going to get some pizza with Angie." Richie grabbed another piece of chicken on his way out. "See ya later."
"Call if you're going to be late for dinner," Duncan called after him, wincing at how parental that sounded. He wanted to be Richie's mentor and friend, not his father. He heard Richie's motorbike rev up and then fade into the quiet autumn. Mechanical conveyances, refrigerated food, even telephones - there was no end to the list of things Richie and his friends took for granted, even though many of those things still had the capacity to amaze Duncan.
The shop was closed, as it was every Monday. Duncan carried the turkey in its box to the workshop and took pictures of it for the insurance files. He traced the manufacturer's mark on paper and lightly ran his fingertips over the painted wings. He remembered a long ago dinner. As with many of his memories, the eidetic came most clearly to mind. Women with lead rouge on their cheeks, smiling with rotting teeth. Men with long curly wigs peering over the rims of their wine cups, playing games of power and money. Greek gods on the ceiling - Zeus and Apollo and other Olympians, all growing larger and fiercer as the evening progressed and he slumped in his hard chair. Course after course of food flowing from the kitchen - creamy soups, fresh pastries and breads, roasted fish, fowl stuffed with truffles, meat of every variety. A ceramic turkey on the table in front of him, peering at him with beady eyes of black paint.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember the occasion or the host. Had it been in Paris? Orleans? Lyon? Any of the ancient towns that made up the old route to the Champagne Fairs? He remembered hot summer air pouring through a vast row of open windows, and general talk of trade, politics, the damned English. Food had meant something in those days. Each meal represented one more day's triumph over plague, war and the specter of Death waiting impatiently in the shadows at the edge of the room. The rich hosted banquets, the poor made do with what they could, roadside inns offered a hot meal at the end of the day, but there'd been no supermarkets, no restaurants, no McDonald's at every crossroad, nothing of the round-the-clock bonanza that Richie's generation in the United States took for granted.
All the guests at that dinner were now dead save him. All the fine plates and silverware buried in dumps or in the unforgiving earth, with just a tiny percentage scattered to museums, antique shops or private collections. He wondered if the hall itself still existed, or if the manor had been burned in the Revolution, torn down for modern development, destroyed to make way for a highway. If he wandered down all the asphalt and dirt roads of France, would he be able to find it again? If it still existed, was it now someone's bed and breakfast or private home? He imagined small children sprawled on some hideous rug beneath the old murals, playing Nintendo while they munched on popcorn and junk food.
The ceramic turkey gazed up at him impassively.
"You've been superseded by Domino's Pizza and Twinkies," Duncan told it, naming Richie's two favorite food groups.
Melancholy from the memories, he left the antique on the bench and wandered back to the bedroom. Tessa had gone to take a nap after lunch. She had her period, and always suffered from bad cramps and general crankiness until the worst of it passed. He found her resting against a large pillow, her golden hair pinned on top of her head, a lurid romance novel propped against her chest.
"How are you feeling?" he asked.
"I want a large hot fudge sundae and a pair of scissors."
Duncan sat on the bed near her feet. "I can understand one of those, but not the other."
"This is an exceptionally bad book," she said. "The heroine is very stupid, and the plot makes no sense."
"And so it differs from all romance novels how? " Duncan asked politely, and received a pillow in the face for an answer.
"Forget I asked," he said, and sprawled on the bed. Impulsively he kissed Tessa's left shin. She'd put on a pair of his old sweatpants, and through the holes he caught flashes of her creamy skin. He kissed her knee, and eased her legs apart to plant another on the inside of her right thigh. She continued to read her book.
"See? Here the hero gets amnesia for the second time! Get me those scissors so I can cut this book into little pieces."
Duncan didn't think giving her sharp objects was a wise idea. He broke off his amorous measures and put his head on her lap, instead. "I've never had amnesia. Not that I remember."
She didn't get the joke.
"Though it might be nice," he added, not joking.
Tessa's fingers moved absently through his long hair, parting the strands. "Why would you want to have amnesia?"
"To forget things," he said, closing his eyes. "People. Objects. Everything that's been lost."
"Has Richie been making you feel old again?"
"Richie does not make me feel old," he said, a little peevishly.
The book went down on the bed. Both of Tessa's hands stroked his hair, her fingers warm and strong against his scalp. "Maybe a hot fudge sundae would make you feel better, too," she said quietly.
He hated the quiet pity in her voice. She thought she understood loss. And she did, in a mortal way, having lost her parents just before she entered university, having given up all she knew and held dear to move to America with him. But she hadn't experienced the weight of centuries grinding down all an Immortal loved, knew or experienced. Buildings and monuments torn down for the sake of progress. Favorite lakes and rivers blocked, drained, rerouted, polluted. Mammoth forests reduced to kindling. Great men and women who'd influenced the world faded into obscurity. History was simplified to trivia questions in the newspaper, or taught incorrectly in universities, or trampled for entertainment's sake in movies or on television.
"Mac?" she asked, and he realized he'd been quiet for several minutes.
"I'm not trying to hold on to the past," he said, raising his head and looking at her directly. "I understand time won't ever stop moving forward. But sometimes I wish it wouldn't move so damned fast."
"It doesn't always have to move forward," she said. "We have memories. We have imaginations. Maybe sometimes we're meant to relive the past, to hold onto the best parts of it as hard as we can."
She looked very earnest as she said it. Young and earnest and mortal. His bitterness dissolved under the love shining from her clear blue eyes, and he forgot all about the past, the lost, the world that no longer existed.
"Is that something you read?" he asked lightly, gesturing toward the title of her discarded book - A Time To Remember.
"No, it's from Tessa Noel," she said, and kissed him soundly.
He took her in his arms and rolled her on his chest, and returned the kiss as thoroughly and passionately as he knew how. Tessa put the past to shame. Being with her in the present healed the holes in his heart and made him able to take each new day with purpose and hope. He thought, sometimes, that it would be easier to lose his head and die first than to bear the brunt of her death. He knew, from experience, that the universe was rarely so kind.
"Duncan," she said breathlessly, high spots of color in her cheeks.
"Tessa," he murmured.
"You know what I want?"
His hands framed her face. "Tell me."
"Hot fudge."
The encompassing appetite of Richie Ryan, however, had left the freezer devoid of the requisite ice cream. Before Duncan could think of hiding the scissors, Tessa headed for the workshop. "There should be some in the freezer case," she said. "I hid it under the tofu burgers so neither of you would go digging too deep."
She went out to the workshop while Duncan assembled cherries, whipped cream, chopped nuts, caramel sauce and hot fudge syrup. He pulled down the largest bowls they had and rinsed them under the faucet.
"Duncan, what is this?" Tessa asked from the workshop.
He joined her at the worktable. "An eighteenth-century ceramic soup server."
Tessa gingerly touched the delicately shaped claws. She lifted the neck and head to peer inside. The turkey could hold quite a bit of food. "It's in wonderful condition."
"Do you like it?"
"No," she said. "I think it's ugly."
Duncan didn't know whether to be annoyed or to agree with her. He settled for saying, "Well, I like it." He defensively put the head back on. "People around here just don't have a good appreciation for history."
Tessa pushed him against the bench and kissed him. "I have an excellent appreciation for history," she reminded him as she ran her hands across his chest. "Not only do I sell antiques, I'm hopelessly in love with a four-hundred-year old man."
"True," he said. "You really think it's ugly?"
"Hideous," she murmured. "But it has possibilities."
"For what?" he asked, though he should have known better.
By the time Richie returned home, an hour later, they were still sitting at the kitchen table licking their long spoons. "Mac, you told me that turkey was made to hold soup, not ice cream," the teenager said, guzzling from a can of soda.
Duncan patted the ceramic server. "It can hold whatever you want it to hold, Richie. Some of the best antiques are the ones that still can be used today."
Three weeks later, Duncan sold the piece to a man with an avid interest in French history. The Highlander delivered it personally to the buyer's estate, and spent an hour admiring the other objects in his collection - plates, portraits, furniture. Several framed pictures lined the entry hall, and Duncan found himself staring at one in particular while the man wrote out a personal check.
"This dining hall," he said. "The one with the murals on the ceiling, and all the windows - do you know where it is?"
"Yes, of course," the buyer said. "It's one of the private banquet halls at Versailles. Ever been there?"
"Once or twice," Duncan admitted.
"Thank you again, Mr. MacLeod. The piece is in excellent condition."
"And very clean, too," Duncan promised.
On his way to the car, Duncan felt much better. Versailles. Of course. The sumptuous palace of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Duncan had not met him, but he'd met the man's successors - drunk with power, plagued by laziness, they'd driven France toward no other conclusion but the Revolution. He still couldn't remember the dinner in question, but at least he knew the location still existed. And as long as people could visit it, as long as people could appreciate its glory and appalling excesses, part of the lost world remained alive.
He wondered if Tessa or Richie would ever like to see it.
He'd have to ask.
.