Prologue- The Funeral

October 15, 2009

London, England

It was a dark, gray, gloomy London day—rain misting but not quite falling, no sun on the horizon. The cemetery ground that had softened slightly due to the recent rains was now dug up, ready to receive the body of another fallen hero. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 

This body belonged—or had once belonged—to a man who had managed to achieve quite a lot before his inevitable return to the dust from which he had emerged nearly a century before. Although he had little in the way of family or close friends left by the time he died, having outlived nearly all of them, his service was nonetheless well attended due to his reputation. University professor, writer of history, drinker of black tea, lover of crossword puzzles—that was how most of the people present knew and remembered him. By the time he died, he had become almost the perfect symbol of an England long gone. 

But perhaps his greatest achievement—though he himself might have disputed this—was noted in his obituary in one of the London papers, which several of the mourners clutched in their hands: “Group Captain Andrew Sheffield, RAF pilot, Second World War.” 

Before he was a university professor, scholar, and crossword enthusiast, he had been a fighter pilot, one of those who stood in the breach to defend his homeland from downfall seventy years earlier and lived to tell the tale. Many tales, in fact. In later years he would sometimes regale his students with stories about his flying days—usually after a few whiskeys—but he didn’t do so very often. Bragging was not his style, nor did he ever consider himself a hero. He had simply done his duty, as he’d seen it, and been lucky enough to make it out alive. Not all his friends and loved ones had been so fortunate.

Professor Sheffield had been a fixture around Oxford University for several decades before retiring fifteen years ago, and many of his former students had turned out in the rain today to send him off on his final journey. Most of them knew little about his personal life, however, and were taken aback by one line in the obituary in particular:

“He is predeceased by his father, Randall Sheffield, his mother, Jane Dalton Sheffield, his brother, Anthony Shef-field, and his wife, Vivienne Sheffield.”

“Wife?” many of the attendees asked in puzzlement, turning to one another. “I never met his wife, did you?”

“No, never. He never spoke of her either. Wonder how long ago she died?” For no one could ever remember any middle-aged woman in sensible English tweed joining Andrew at faculty receptions or Christmas parties. He had always been a bit of a recluse, his private life shrouded in secrecy. For all the accomplishments of his impressive long life noted in the obituary, the man himself had been an enigma to most of them. 

Most, but not all. There was one person present on that cold, gray day who knew the full story. 

Towards the back of the crowd of mourners was a young girl, probably in her late twenties, with blond hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in funereal black, and her bearing was solemn and restrained. She had tears in her eyes, but she did not let them fall. She was probably a former student or some distant relative—if asked, she would have claimed to be a grandniece. Yet she watched the casket being lowered into the ground with a strange intensity, and the heartbroken eyes of a young widow. 

Few people at the service noticed her presence, which seemed to be how she wanted it. Before the minister had finished intoning his remarks, she left the cemetery, walking quickly and not looking back. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” No need to stay longer once those words had been uttered.

Vivienne Sheffield had been through all this before.