The Wandering Heart

by Mary Malloy

  “This is a dark hallway for picture viewing,” Helen said, pointing the way for Lizzie as she pulled the door to George’s room closed behind her, “but I think the picture that will interest you on this floor is fortunately near one of the lamps.”

  After double-checking to be sure that Lizzie was oriented on the floor plan and knew where she was going, Helen disappeared through a door in the paneling that Lizzie hadn’t even noticed. She looked down the long hallway. About halfway down were two recessed areas where windows allowed daylight in, but most of the way was lit by wall sconces that must have been made originally for candles and were, over the years, converted first to gas fixtures and then to electricity. Now they had little flame-shaped bulbs that flickered and gave a very inadequate light. A few narrow tables had been added over the years and a more modern lamp sat on each of them.

  Helen had indicated that there was an interesting portrait near the first of the tables on the right. Lizzie moved slowly, occasionally reaching out to touch the paneling, which looked satiny-smooth. The doors, all closed and surprisingly short, came at irregular intervals, each set into a carved casement with a gothic arch. There were some pictures hanging here and there but it was too dark to see them clearly.

  When she finally came to the table indicated by Mrs. Jeffries, Lizzie paused and looked more closely at a matching set of six small portraits. According to the catalogue, they were the “Six children of Sir Richard Hattin, 1520.” Five of them were boys, ranging in age from about ten to mid-twenties, and all of them had the Hatton coat of arms painted above their heads in the upper left corner of the painting. Over their shoulders in the right corner was a legend giving their name. The last painting Lizzie came to was the one she sought and fortunately it was nearest to the table. By moving the lampshade slightly, she was able to bring the painting clearly into view. It was quite small, only about the size of a book. The carved frame seemed massive on the small painting; Lizzie guessed that the frame had an area of wood that was at least equal to the square inches of canvas.

  It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust from the darkness of the hall to the pool of light that now flooded the painting. The subject looked young and very petite and was shown from the waist up, sitting in a dusky interior. The name “Elizabeth Hattin” and the date 1520 were written in a dark gold script, as if on the wall behind her. She wore a dark dress with an inset of embroidery below the square neckline. The bodice was quite flat, the sleeves puffed out with some additional material that was set beneath a slash in the fabric, and then retied with small gold cords. Her face was small and delicate, and appeared very pale against the darkness of the paneling behind her. Her auburn hair was parted in the middle and combed under a headpiece that rose to a gentle ridge above her forehead and had a short dark veil attached. The gold chain was around her neck, the ruby dangling from her long fingers as she held it up for the viewer. There was no artist’s signature and the catalogue identified it only as “Sixteenth Century English School.”

  Lizzie was glad she had a digital camera, because she knew it would be hard to get a good picture here. She tried to angle the lampshade and position herself so that the flash of the camera wouldn’t reflect off the paint of the portrait. After three attempts, the image in her viewer was clear enough to make her feel that she had at least documented the painting for her growing collection—though what the collection was for was not yet clear.

  She reached the halfway point of the hallway, where the architect had sacrificed the rooms that otherwise would have appeared on either side of the hall in order to bring some natural light into the gloomy atmosphere. A gabled window was on either side of the corridor and it was consequently a large, light, and airy space; even the ceiling was higher here. This was the feature that gave this wing of the house the unique silhouette Lizzie had noticed from her own room across the courtyard, with sections stepped back from the main wall of the house.

  She walked to the window on that side and looked across to find the windows of her own room, then crossed to the other side of the hall and looked out over the scattered fields toward the town of Hengeport and the sea. There was the small, square-towered Norman church that she had seen from the gate in the garden. This wing of the house blocked the view of it from both her room and the library, so she was glad to get such a good view of it from here. Gravestones circled it on all sides. Frank Hatton and his sister were probably buried there, and she was determined to get there before she left.

  She continued to the end of the hall and found the steep and rather narrow staircase that was indicated on the floor plan.

  On the ground floor she found that there was no central hallway, but rather a series of three large rooms, each the full width of the wing and consequently well lit with windows on opposite walls. At one time these must have been parlors or dining rooms, but Lizzie wasn’t sure how the various wings of the house had been used when they were built. The Hattons were clearly a large family in Tudor times, if the six children depicted upstairs were any indication. She passed from the first room into the second. They were sparsely furnished and there was a museum feeling to this part of the house. Identical paneling, flooring, and lighting fixtures were in each of the rooms, and each had a large fireplace and several gigantic paintings.

  In the second room Lizzie quickly identified the painting that Helen had sent her here to see. It was taller than life size and again was part of a set, described in the catalogue as three siblings. On one side of the young woman’s portrait was a painting of a handsome young man, on the other that of an adolescent boy. Lizzie stepped up close to the central painting to read the label: “Lady Elizabeth Hatton, 1601, by Robert Peake.” She then stepped back to the middle of the room to get the full effect. It was a very striking portrait.

  Lizzie had to wonder if the young woman was as beautiful as she was painted, or if Mr. Peake had given her a gift in the portrait, but she was stunning. She had reddish-brown hair pulled straight back from her face and fixed on top of her head in an elaborate sculpture of curls that incorporated a delicate gold net that looked a bit like a halo. Her elegant gown was thick with embroidery. Behind her head a stiff, lace-edged collar spread out like a fan. The neckline had a triangle cut out of it with its top point at her throat and the bottom edge just low enough to suggest cleavage, without actually showing any. The ruby of the necklace rested in that space, one of several gems that she wore in addition to several long strands of pearls, but it was unmistakable. Lizzie snapped a picture of it, then turned around and took in the whole of the room. There were several chairs with high, carved wooden backs and she went to sit in one of them.

  When she had been in the medieval hall a few nights before, she had felt the powerful feeling of history, but not so strongly the attraction of wealth. In this room she wondered what it would be like to live like the woman in Peake’s portrait. Helen clearly thought Lizzie was related to this family, and Lizzie couldn’t resist indulging in the fantasy, if only for the several minutes that she sat in this room. To be relieved of all financial burdens, to have all the unpleasant tasks of life taken care of by others, to wear such clothes. She stood and imagined herself in such a gown. It must have been terribly uncomfortable she thought. The stiff bodice bound her breasts tightly, the large skirts weighed a ton! She smiled to herself; perhaps it was not such a comfortable life after all.

  She proceeded on through the last room of the Tudor wing and into the older gothic wing that joined it at right angles, then took out the floor plan to see where she was. On the floor above, she had reached this spot from the Navy Gallery, which was above the library, but on this floor Francis Hatton’s cabinet had been built into the doorway that would originally have provided access from here to the Adam wing of the house, and consequently she could only proceed on to the big salon. She had formerly glimpsed this room from the other end when she first came into the house and had thought then that it resembled a hotel lobby
. This was the first time she had actually been in the room and it was much more subtle than she had acknowledged at first.

  This was part of the first addition made to the original castle, and though it had been extensively restored in the Victorian period, it still had several of the original gothic features. A huge stone fireplace was at the center of the longest wall; opposite it was a bank of windows, which must have been quite tiny when first built, but had been enlarged over time and now gave the room a spacious and airy feeling. The difference between this and the dark tight quarters of the Tudor part of the building was remarkable.

  There were three large tapestries in this room, and several paintings. Lizzie gravitated to the only portrait of a young woman, and again referred to the catalogue to see who the subject was.

  “This is becoming a bit familiar,” she said to herself as she read the entry in the catalogue: “Lady Elizabeth Hatton at Nineteen, painted in 1717 by Godfrey Kneller.” This young woman stood looking back at the viewer over her shoulder, her elaborate red and gold gown falling in pleats from an embroidered band that stretched between her small shoulders. She appeared to be wearing a wig, and the jewel and chain were woven into it, along with a strand of pearls and several ribbons; the point of the ruby just touched the top of her forehead. Lizzie took a picture of the painting and then proceeded into the central medieval hall.

  She shivered a bit when she thought of finding herself there the night before last. She took a deep breath and determined to study the tapestries in the hall and concentrate her efforts on looking at the swords, spears, and shields mounted high on the wall in decorative patterns, and at faded banners hung on angled poles from the musicians’ gallery. There were only a few minutes left before dinner to look into the big formal dining room across the hall from the salon, and then she hurried back to her room to change her clothes. As she went up the big staircase she looked again at the Gainsborough and Reynolds portraits. She took a picture of Eliza Hatton, then went to her room where she put the camera into the drawer of the bedside table. Tomorrow she would load all of the pictures into her computer and print out copies so that she could compare them.

  “And then what?” Lizzie asked herself. “What am I going to do with them?”

  When she returned to her room again after dinner she went once more to the windows. It had become her habit to stand here each evening before going to bed. Orion was high up in the sky, followed by the bright light of its companion star, Sirius. There were still lights on all over the house, several of them in windows high up on a third floor. “Those must belong to the Jeffries,” Lizzie thought. Across in the Tudor wing she could now identify George’s study, which had a lamp burning, and the center hall on the second floor, where there was also a light.

  Where did Edmund sleep when he was at Hengemont, she wondered?

  Chapter 12

  The next day Lizzie rose very early and dressed carefully. She was feeling somewhat agitated. She felt that she had had another disturbing dream, but could not remember any details. Edmund would be her companion today and she had been thinking about him a great deal, seeking his likeness in portraits of his ancestors.

  She managed to get to the library without Helen’s notice. When she turned on her computer, a response from Jackie was waiting.

  Showed those manuscripts you forwarded to your old mentor in the English Dept., Prof. Brandon. In the attachment you’ll find the notes we made about possible dates, etc. These are our top-of-the head reactions, but as I sensed a note of urgency underneath your jovial tone a quick response seemed desirable. Andy and I will continue to look at them though. This is a very strange and interesting collection. That French piece is rather garbled (and a really old style of French!). It seems to be some sort of ode to a dead lover, and anxiety over the whereabouts of his corpse. I’m going to stop over to the French department with it and get you a more exact translation.

  Lizzie opened the attached file and printed a copy. It was her scanned images of the manuscript poems, now organized chronologically and covered with notes from Jackie and from Andy Brandon, whose nearly illegible scrawl she had long ago learned to decipher. With the poems three to a page the text was too small to read easily, so she printed out a file with each poem on a separate page and laid them out in the order suggested by her colleagues, placing the manuscript poems over the scanned image on each page.

  On the one in French, Andy had scrawled “definitely the oldest, probably late thirteenth or early fourteenth century” and Jackie had added “I agree” and her initials. The other vellum document came next, with its date of 1382. The single line “Where is his heart?” was considered by both Andy and Jackie to be from the Tudor period, though they did not agree on a precise date and Lizzie could only conclude from their rambling commentary back and forth that it was from between 1500 and 1600, which she wrote quickly on the printout.

  On the piece of paper that had been used to hold the feathers from the Hawaiian helmet, Andy had written “ca. 1700,” and again Jackie wrote and initialed “I agree.” Eliza’s poem from 1780 was next in the order, followed by the two poems which Lizzie had found rather mediocre upon first reading, but on a second time through found both pain and passion in them. One was “early to mid nineteenth century” according to Jackie and Andy, the other had the date 1887 written by the author on the bottom of the page. As she picked up the more recent of the two to lay it on top of its printed image, Lizzie noticed a faded line on the reverse side in pencil. “Written on the occasion of the death of my beloved niece, Elizabeth—October 17, 1887.” Lizzie laid it gently down again.

  Across the last item seen by her friends in Boston, Jackie had written in her neat librarian’s hand: “The font used on this stationery was popular at the end of the nineteenth century.” Lizzie wondered if the author of this poem was the niece memorialized in the last poem, which lay next to it on the table.

  She hadn’t sent Jackie the typescript poem, but she placed it in the lineup as well. The text reminded her of the “Beat” poets of the fifties and sixties. “What is a man?” it started. “And what is a woman?” A series of other questions followed: “What is love?” “Is love real?” An interesting follow-up comparison between a man’s heart and his penis made the whole question of which organ he was missing all the more intriguing.

  Lizzie put her palms on the edge of the table and leaned over the bits of paper now arranged before her. She looked from one to the other and back again. There seemed to be one from every century from the thirteenth to the middle of the twentieth. They were all by women and they all seemed to be named Elizabeth Hatton, or something similar. It hit her suddenly that the portraits were also all of women with that name. She ran back to her room to get her camera, and quickly snapped a picture of the Rossetti painting while she was there.

  When she returned to the library her heart was beating fast and the hair on her arms was standing up. She slipped the disk from the camera into her computer and hit the print button. As the photographs began to roll out of her printer, she went again to the cabinet and took out the triptych. The letter said it was a “depiction of specific people and events of the middle thirteenth century, but painted about 150-200 years later.” She decided to put it first in the sequence she was building. She wasn’t sure whether the woman in it was the one who wrote the oldest poem or not, but she placed the two poems on vellum next to the triptych, the one in French first, the one in the old-style English next.

  There were two portraits of Elizabeths wearing the ruby necklace from the reign of the Tudors, dated 1520 and 1601. Either of these women could have written that enigmatic line “Where is his heart?” but Lizzie didn’t know which one. Jackie and Andy had left a span of dates that included them both.

  The poem from “ca. 1700” Lizzie paired up with the portrait hanging in the salon, which was painted by Kneller and dated 1717. Francis Hatton’s sister Eliza was easy to match be
tween poem and portrait.

  Helen stopped in at about seven-thirty, surprised to find Lizzie up and working so early.

  “Do you want breakfast or coffee?” she asked as she came into the room.

  Lizzie stood to block Helen’s view of the table. She knew that she might find the assemblage of photos and poems placed together on the table evidence that Lizzie had fallen prey to the “Hatton family curse,” and she simply did not want to engage in that conversation again.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Lizzie said, trying to sound casual, “but I’m good till lunch.” She waited for Helen to leave before she turned her attention back to the items on the table.

  The next painting in order was the Rossetti, the subject of which must also have been the author of the poem dedicated to the dead niece. If the information in the material that went along with the painting was correct, this Elizabeth Hatton was the only one of the group to live past her twenties, and her poem had been written when she was thirty-four. Instead of wearing the ruby in the painting, she was reaching for it as it was clutched in the hand of the vanishing knight. There was no picture of the young woman who had been memorialized by her aunt, but she must have been the owner of the engraved stationery.

  The last items referred to George’s sister who had undoubtedly composed the typewritten poem and must also have been the author of the diary.

  “I wonder what happened to her,” Lizzie thought. Helen had said that she had also died young.

  Lizzie had no idea what any of it meant, but it obviously meant something. Time passed quickly as she went over and over the links between the women, until she heard voices in the hall and Helen returned to tell her that Edmund and Lily had arrived and would soon be joining George for lunch. Lizzie glanced at her watch; it was eleven-thirty. She had spent more than four hours in frenzied activity and hadn’t once thought about Francis Hatton.