by Mary Malloy
“Well, actually I think the father of these two girls had a substantial amount of cash on hand, and I think that the father of the boys needed it to make his Crusade.”
“Aha!” she said. “Then this is not really a story of true love.”
“Oh, as I have always heard it, between Elizabeth and John it could not have been more powerful.”
“This story is fairly canonical in your family then?”
“In what way?”
“It gets told the same way generation after generation without elaboration?”
Edmund paused a moment. “I’m not sure about that,” he said, “but I believe the details have remained basically the same for many centuries.”
“Who told it to you?”
“My Aunt Bette, my father’s younger sister.”
“Okay,” Lizzie said. “Go on then, the two sisters married the two brothers.”
“Yes, Elizabeth married John, and her sister Margaret married Richard. There was feasting and a tournament with games of war, etc., and then John and his father set out to go to the Crusades.”
“This must have been terrible for the new bride Elizabeth.”
“Devastating! She thought that their marriage would keep him from going. She tried everything to make him stay, but John’s father was adamant, and now that he had all the money he needed to pay his troops and such, he was determined to leave the very day after the weddings.”
Lizzie stared into the embers of the fire as Edmund described how Elizabeth pleaded with her new husband, how he, still just a teenager, struggled with his father to stay with his new bride, but in the end was forced to tell her that he had to go.
“The house then consisted of just the central stone tower and some outlying walls,” Edmund continued, “and the two of them went up to the roof. There they wept together, then made love, and then he made a stupid promise that he would come back.”
“Why was it so stupid?”
“Because almost no one came back from the Crusades, including him, of course.” He paused for a moment and finished his brandy. “It turned out that Elizabeth had become pregnant from that one night of lovemaking. Richard and Margaret were also pretty fertile young people, and within a year there were two babies at Hengemont, a son for Elizabeth and a daughter for her sister. But Margaret died in childbirth.”
Lizzie listened with heightened concentration to the end.
“Richard thought that he and Elizabeth should now marry, but she insisted that she had to wait for John.”
“Was he still alive?”
“No.”
“Was there proof?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And how does her story end?”
“She killed herself.”
This was not what Lizzie had been expecting. Edmund’s romantic and somewhat jocular story had suddenly taken a turn that made her profoundly sad.
“She went up to the top of the tower and threw herself off,” he said softly. “Years later the son of Elizabeth and John married his cousin, the daughter of Richard and Margaret, and their son was my ancestor.”
“This is a very sad story Edmund.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I thought it was going to be a romance.”
“Romances are often sad.”
The last log of any size on the fire broke apart and fell onto the grate. Edmund put his glass on the table and began turning out the lights around the room. Lizzie wobbled a bit as she stood up.
“Do you need help getting to your room?” he asked.
“No, but thanks. Five glasses of wine is way over my limit though, and I’ll probably suffer for it tomorrow.” They walked together to the door of the library and up the staircase.
“Lizzie,” he said earnestly. “I really want to apologize for Richard. He is such an ass sometimes.”
“Why?” she asked. “Do you think he made Elizabeth kill herself?”
Edmund laughed softly. “No, you silly woman. Richard, my brother!”
Lizzie was startled for a moment and then burst into almost hysterical laughter. “See what a good storyteller you are,” she joked. “I forgot all about him.”
He put his arm around her as they reached the staircase. “Are you sure you don’t need help?”
She shook her head. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“If you are up early enough. I have rounds at the clinic and have to be back to Bristol by noon.”
“When am I going to get my long-promised tour?”
He slapped his head. “Oh damn,” he said apologetically, “You’re still waiting for me to see the house?”
She nodded, disappointed that he seemed to have forgotten.
“This weekend without fail,” he promised, lifting his hand up in a pledge.
He removed the steadying arm from her shoulders and they moved up the stairs, separating with a chaste kiss on the landing before he went up the opposite staircase, toward the older wing of the house.
She held tightly onto the railing as it wound its way around to form the balcony. It was a long drop to the floor beneath. Opposite her was the big painting of Francis Hatton and his siblings, and the three of them seemed to move a bit within the frame. Lizzie felt dizzy and nauseous, and chided herself for taking that last glass of wine as she moved unsteadily down the long hall and around the corner to her room.
That night she had a dream of falling in love with Edmund. There were vivid, swirling images. They were dancing, they were at a party surrounded by chattering guests, they were running up stone steps, hand in hand.
The stairs went round and round, turning a tight corkscrew around a center stone pillar. There were narrow windows above every dozen or so steps, sending a shaft of light that brightly illuminated their passage for a moment, which then grew dimmer and dimmer until the first hint of the next window could be seen, and then they were suddenly in another shaft of light. She began to pant a bit, but he encouraged her. “We’re almost there,” he said, squeezing her hand. Finally they burst through the door at the top. The bright light blinded her for a moment and then, as her eyes adjusted, the whole countryside swept away beneath her. She reached up to straighten her hair, it was caught up in loops of braids, one circling each ear. As the wind caught softly at her dress, she looked down and felt the deep green velvet.
He pulled her toward him and she put her hand up to touch his face, his hair, his beard. He leaned down to kiss her for the first time. His lips were soft and warm, his tongue moved gently across her mouth. His hands explored her body and she reciprocated, stroking and pulling at odd male garments.
When they were naked, she lay upon the cold stones of the tower’s floor and he lay upon her. The sex was quick and hard and left her breathless. In the distance a bell chimed the hour three times. By the third bell, she could no longer feel his weight upon her. The sun faded and the stone began to feel colder until she was shivering.
Lizzie woke with a start. She had no idea where she was, but a clock was chiming just above her head and she was lying on something hard and cold. She felt around her and found the edges of two cut stones with a line of mortar between them.
Her eyes finally began to pick dim patches of light out of the darkness and she sat up. She was wearing her usual nightwear, one of Martin’s undershirts and a pair of panties. It took her several minutes to realize that she was in the great medieval hall of Hengemont’s Norman tower. She stood up, very unsteadily, and went to one of the chairs that stood along the wall. It had a velvet seat and as she sat on it she thought momentarily about the dream. She had been wearing a velvet dress.
Lizzie trembled violently from a combination of cold and fear. She had no idea how she had gotten to this part of the house. She had never experienced anything like this before and it was terrifying. When she was fully conscious, the enormity o
f her situation overwhelmed her. She moved quickly to return to her room, hoping that no one would see her along the way. She went from the medieval hall through the door into the Adam wing. She looked carefully in all directions and then moved quickly up the staircase. She wrestled to pull her shirt down to cover herself, but it was too short for real success, and she could not even cover her panties. All the residents of the all the paintings seemed to watch her disapprovingly as she slunk down the hall, stopping frequently to listen for any sounds. When she finally came to her own room she raced into the water closet and vomited.
Her warm bed was so welcome that she pulled the covers over her head; she was still shivering and now she also began to cry uncontrollably. She had no idea what had happened to her.
Chapter 10
Lizzie was exhausted when she woke. She felt like she had been running all night. The sun streamed through the window and when she looked at the clock on the bedside table she couldn’t believe it was ten-thirty. What must they think of her downstairs? She lay motionless for another ten minutes, covering her eyes with her arm.
Had she actually left her bed last night? Or was that part of an elaborate dream? At this moment she didn’t know for sure. She shivered as she remembered the moment she woke, half naked in the middle of the great medieval hall, and then worked hard to convince herself that it hadn’t actually happened.
When she sat up, her head throbbed so hard that tears rolled down her cheeks. “What is happening?” she thought, standing with some difficulty, and then holding on to the bed as she circled around it to the bathroom door. She took four aspirin and sat again on the bed. She had never had a reaction like this from alcohol. She rubbed her temples with her hands, squeezed her eyes tightly shut, and breathed slowly, in and out, in and out. When she opened her eyes she thought that she felt somewhat better. The aspirin must be starting to work.
On the wall opposite her, another woman was rising from her bed. Lizzie hadn’t taken the time to look closely at the Rossetti painting since it had appeared in her room. Now she rose slowly and walked over to it. Inside the frame a woman lay in a room not unlike the one in which Lizzie stood. Around her the sheets and bedspread were tousled as if she had tossed and turned all night—or had passionate sex, Lizzie thought.
The woman rested on one arm; the other reached out to a knight in armor who was vanishing as she woke; he reached back, a gold chain in his hand. The signature was “Rossetti, PRB.”
Lizzie knew Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This sort of subject matter was common for them. There were lots of knights and ladies in their paintings and poetry, many references to Arthurian legend, and a rather romantic view of death. There was a brass marker on the frame that Lizzie had to polish up with the hem of her shirt to read. It said “‘Elizabeth Wakes from the Dream’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1872.” She shivered at the coincidence.
Feeling well enough to go downstairs, Lizzie dressed, brushed her teeth, and went slowly down the hall to the staircase. She tried hard not to think about making the trip in the opposite direction in the middle of the night before, and averted her glance from the accusing portraits. Francis Hatton seemed happy enough in his picture, though, and Lizzie mentally blew him a kiss as she rounded the landing of the stairs.
There was no sign of anyone downstairs. The library was empty, though there was a pot of coffee as usual. She poured a cup and went to her place at the library table. There were two notes with her name on them, one from George and one from Edmund, each expressing regret at missing her before leaving the house. Edmund said that he had waited as long as he could for her, and hoped she was well.
As she sat down at her computer, Helen appeared.
“Are you feeling all right this morning?” she asked.
Lizzie put her elbows on the table and rested her cheek in her palm. “Oh Helen,” she said. “I had a terrible night.”
Helen pulled up the chair beside her and put her hand on Lizzie’s forehead. “Are you ill?” she asked with concern.
“I drank too much wine, I think,” she said hesitantly. She wondered if she could be completely honest with Helen about what had happened to her and decided that she could not. She knew that Helen was harboring very odd suspicions about her family background, and she did not want to compound them by adding more fodder to a flame of mistaken identity.
Helen offered to make her a light meal, and Lizzie accepted. “I think that tea would be the thing this morning,” she said, eyeing the cup of coffee on the table in front of her.
Helen gave her arm an affectionate pat. “I’ll bring you a breakfast tray, Lizzie, and you must promise me to eat something.”
Lizzie turned her computer on and stared at the screen. What should she work on today? She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, thinking about the dream. In it she had willingly had passionate sex with Edmund Hatton.
“Hard at work, are we?” Richard’s voice brought her bolt upright in her chair. He came to the table, poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot, and sat in one of the chairs opposite her.
She met his arrogant stare. His eyes were intensely blue, with none of the grey shading that marked those of Edmund, George, and Lily. His face was impassive, never flinching or changing expression as he sipped coffee from his cup. Lizzie noticed that he didn’t hold his pinkie up, and wondered why she thought he would. Finally she could stand the silence no longer.
“Have I done something to offend you?” she asked bluntly.
“Why do you ask that?” he said with mock politeness.
Lizzie smiled at him, a smile that she hoped was menacing, like a tiger greeting a wildebeest. “I don’t know,” she said, “you just seem so disappointed to find me here.”
“My dear Dr. Manning,” he said, smiling back with the very look Lizzie had been trying to achieve. “Or may I call you Lizzie?” he continued. “Everyone else around here seems to. If I’m not mistaken, I think I even heard our Mrs. Jeffries refer to you in that informal American way.”
Lizzie tried her menacing smile again. “I guess I just have that effect on people.”
“I guess that’s it,” he said obsequiously.
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence which Lizzie was determined not to break.
“So,” Richard said finally, “how is your work going?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“What will you be working on today?”
Lizzie hardly knew how to respond. She sensed that he really was interested in knowing what was happening with her research, but didn’t trust her to inform him about it with any candor. If that was his notion, Lizzie thought, it wasn’t far off. She gave him a brief overview of the obvious material, not mentioning the new pages from the journal or the conversation of the day before, until Helen arrived again with her tea.
“Ah Mrs. Jeffries,” he said, watching from his chair as the housekeeper wrestled the heavy tray onto the table. “We were just talking about you.”
“I’ve brought Professor Manning some toast and tea. Would you like some?”
“No, as you know, I breakfasted at the normal time. But I would be happy to share Lizzie’s tea.”
Both women looked at him suspiciously, then shared a look between themselves.
“Let me pour,” Richard continued, “I love to play the mother.” He pulled the teapot and cups toward him. “Lizzie, what do you take in your tea?”
He made a show of being polite as Helen left the room and Lizzie organized her papers to begin work. When Richard had given her the cup of tea, she asked him if he really wanted a report on her research.
“No,” he said, still maintaining his rigid air of politeness. “I just didn’t want to leave again without feeling that we had an understanding between us.”
“And do we?”
“Not exactly, but at least you know I
’m speaking to you.”
Lizzie tried out her smile again. “Thank you, I am so much more comfortable now.”
With that he gave her a dramatic bow and left the room. Lizzie sat still and silent for several minutes. It was clear that Richard still didn’t like her, but at least he wasn’t going to continue to undermine her publicly. What his private plans were she couldn’t say.
She took her cup of tea to the window, where she looked out along the old line of the castle grounds as she drank. The glass panels of the tall French doors to the terrace were cold enough to fog up as she breathed on them, and when she leaned unsteadily against one of them, she shivered. She moved over to where the fire was burning low in the grate and sank into one of the comfortable chairs in front of it. She thought about the story that Edmund had told her the night before. In the flames she sought out the images of Elizabeth and John, their encounter on the tower. She drained her cup and set it on the small table. The tournament was starting.
She sat in a wooden stand erected for the day, surveying the crowd and waiting for him to appear. Her lover. She remembered the feel of him from the night before on the tower. The touch of his hand, the thrust of his hips. She blushed at the thought of what had happened.
From the elevated height of the stand she looked out across the castle yard, teeming with people, and over the far wall and tower. The land sloped down to the sea.
Finally she saw him. He was covered from head to toe with chain mail, over which was draped a belted cloth tunic; it was the color of rust and was covered with white crosses—the badge of the Crusader. He was in earnest conversation with his similarly clad father. Around them, armed men checked their shields, swords, and lances in preparation for the fight.
He looked up to her and smiled. Her heart melted. He wore a new heraldic device on his shield and leather epaulets. It was a castle tower; below it ran a wave of the sea, and on top of it were two hearts. He bowed his lance to her and she felt a surge of love. “John,” she said.
