The Wandering Heart

by Mary Malloy

  Lizzie was surprised when she woke again. For the first time since she had been at Hengemont, she felt hot in her room. The sheets were damp from perspiration and she wondered again if she might have a fever. She heard the chime of a clock from the hall and looked at her watch on the table to confirm the time; two in the morning. The valium did not seem to be working. Lizzie found the bottle of pills and read the label. It seemed like it was too early to take another one and she decided against it. She didn’t think she would be able to sleep, but it came quickly when she closed her eyes.

  She was again on the tower when she saw him. He was covered from head to toe with chain mail. Over it he wore the rust-colored tunic; the white crosses that covered it were picked up by the moonlight—the badge of the Crusader.

  “Don’t go,” she whispered.

  He raised her chin with his fingers and kissed her gently on the lips. He had kissed her before as they stood at this spot. Again the gentle kiss was followed by one more passionate. His lips were full and soft, but pressed hard against her own. His mouth was slightly open and as it moved over her own she felt his teeth against her lower lip, the movement of his tongue. She felt a warmth inside despite the coolness of the evening and the cold stone of the tower against which she was leaning. She pulled his body tight against her and felt the armor beneath his tunic.

  She wept.

  “Wife,” he said softly, “Love.”

  She moved her hand up to rest it against his cheek.

  “I’ll wait for you,” she said.

  He picked up his shield. She recoiled slightly at the sight of it. His helmet rested on the stone wall behind her. She turned to pick it up and give it to him. In the polished surface she caught a glimpse of herself, reflected back.

  Lizzie’s body jerked and she woke. The reflection had not been of her own face, but of the face of the woman on the tomb.

  She felt physically sick. Sitting up, she turned on the light and rubbed her eyes hard with the backs of her hands. She wondered what effect the drug was having.

  It had been so strange to see that face, impassive and staring, exactly as it looked in the triptych. At least this time she knew the source of the image. She looked again at the bottle of valium and decided to take another one. There was no reason why she should be having these vivid dreams and waking up if the drug would give her a good night’s sleep. She poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher Edmund had brought and took another of the pills.

  When she finally fell asleep again it was still fitful, filled with dreams that were less vivid, though no less disturbing, than those she had had earlier.

  She was moving through the house, looking for her lover, desperate to find him. She made her way up to the roof, but he wasn’t there. She felt rather than knew that he was dead and her despair was terrible. She cried out in anguish, tears came in a torrent.

  A cold mist came up from the sea and soaked through her dress. She was cold. Her bare feet were chilled by the icy stone. She thought of her lover lying cold and dead in a big stone tomb.

  She understood now why they had all died. Who could live with such despair? She climbed up onto the stone wall in front of her and looked down at the courtyard far below. The ground would race up to meet her and in a moment she would join him in the frozen grave. She would wrap her dead arms around his cold body and put her lips softly against his.

  Chapter 15

  Lizzie,” she heard softly, almost a whisper, “Lizzie, hold very still.”

  Edmund was behind her and slipped his arm around her waist. She touched his hand, which held her firmly, and turned slightly.

  “John?” she asked.

  With a swift motion Edmund pulled her off the wall and they fell to the stone deck of the roof. Lizzie struggled to wake up. Her nightgown was soaking wet and she was shivering. The white moon was almost directly overhead.

  “Where am I?” she mumbled.

  “You’re on the roof of the tower,” Edmund said. He spoke softly, stroking her face with a gentle motion, but still holding her firmly with his other arm.

  “The roof?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said gently.

  “What are we doing on the roof?”

  “I saw you from my window, and I was afraid you were going to jump.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lizzie shook now with cold, but was too confused to be frightened. Could she actually have jumped, she wondered? She mumbled the question to Edmund.

  He assured her she was safe, rocking her gently for several minutes. Her nightgown clung damply to every curve but she felt no embarrassment. Finally Edmund stood and helped her to her feet. She immediately felt nauseous and turned away from Edmund to vomit onto the stones of the roof.

  “Sorry,” she said, embarrassed. She wiped at her mouth with the hem of her nightgown.

  “Here,” he said taking off his robe and wrapping it around her, “wear this until we get inside.”

  They went through a thick door and down a steep set of stairs. Edmund’s arm was tight around her shoulders and Lizzie leaned hard against him, unable to support her own weight. When they got to the bottom of the stairs they passed through a door into the musicians’ gallery and from there found their way onto the landing of the big central staircase. Helen was hurrying toward them from the floor below.

  “Is everything all right, Dr. Hatton?” she asked with concern.

  “Everything’s just fine,” he answered, “but Dr. Manning isn’t feeling well.”

  “Can I help?”

  “No thank you,” he said, “I’m just going to bring her back to her room. You go back to bed.”

  “All right then,” she said, looking back at them as she turned to go.

  From the opposite direction George now approached them, tying a robe over his pajamas and shuffling to get his feet into sheepskin slippers.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “I found Lizzie on the roof,” his son answered. “I think she was having a bad reaction to a prescription I gave her.”

  “How did she get onto the roof?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  George pushed Lizzie’s hair back from her face and tried to get her attention. “Lizzie, dear,” he said several times.

  Lizzie finally rose to a level of consciousness that allowed her to acknowledge his address. “Hi George,” she whispered.

  George continued to look at her, taking in her wet nightgown under Edmund’s robe. For the first time Lizzie noticed that Edmund was wearing boxer shorts with an old tee shirt. The two of them were both barefoot.

  George looked puzzled. “Lizzie,” he pressed, “what happened?”

  “Dad, let me get her out of these wet clothes and then we can find out,” Edmund said as he moved toward Lizzie’s room. When they got there George stood outside the door while Edmund took Lizzie into her room, found her a pair of sweat pants and a shirt and helped her into them.

  “Isn’t this a little intimate?” she said as he pulled her shirt down over her head.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “I’m a doctor.”

  She snorted a laugh. She seemed to have no will to act or sense of reality. It was as if all this were just part of another dream. She heard George knocking at the door.

  “Edmund,” he whispered loudly.

  Edmund went to the door and opened it a crack. Lizzie fell back on the bed. She heard George tell Edmund not to let her go back to sleep, the two of them should come down and meet him in the library. Edmund tried to argue, but his father was adamant.

  “Get her dressed and get downstairs,” he said.

  Lizzie was finally regaining her faculties and rising to a state of wakefulness. She had a feeling she was in trouble. George wanted to speak to her. The triptych was sti
ll in the bedside table and it occurred to her that he might be mad she had taken it from the library. She grabbed it from the drawer of the table and went downstairs with Edmund.

  The seriousness of her situation was beginning to sink in as Lizzie reached the library with Edmund and saw George pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. She had actually been up on the roof of the house, seemingly ready to jump. She had never sleepwalked before she came to Hengemont, and all this had been done entirely without consciousness. She prepared herself for George’s anger and was surprised when he spoke very softly and kindly to her.

  “Lizzie, my dear,” he said. “Can you tell me now what happened?”

  He guided her into one of the armchairs by the fireplace. Lizzie noticed that Edmund was wearing his robe again and had put on a pair of her socks. She looked down at her feet; she was wearing a matching pair. She was beginning to feel quite warm.

  “Man oh man,” she sighed. “This is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me.”

  Edmund knelt beside her chair with his medical kit. He took her pulse, looked at her pupils with a small flashlight—which made her cringe in pain—and then began to tie a rubber tourniquet around her arm.

  “What are you giving me now?” she asked as she saw a syringe in his hand.

  “I’m not giving you anything, Lizzie,” he answered softly. “I’m taking a sample of your blood.” He finished and held a swab on the puncture, then put a small bandage over it.

  “You don’t ordinarily walk in your sleep?” Edmund asked.

  She shook her head and said emphatically, “I’ve never done it before I came to this house!”

  Helen appeared at the door, her expression filled with concern. George asked her to bring a pot of tea; she hesitated for a moment before leaving again.

  Edmund was ready to ask Lizzie another question, but George held his hand up to silence him. “This isn’t ordinary sleepwalking,” he said to his son. “She had to have a key to get onto the roof, and even I don’t know where it was.”

  Lizzie roused herself. “I think it must be the key I found in the cabinet.”

  “You found a key in the cabinet.”

  She nodded.

  “How did you know it went to the padlock on the roof?”

  “I didn’t,” she said slowly, trying to remember how she even got up to the roof door, let alone unlocked a padlock with a key. She could not recollect any of it. “I was thinking about the roof because of the story of Elizabeth and John.”

  Edmund began again to ask her a question, but again was silenced by his father.

  “How do you know about Elizabeth and John?” he asked.

  “Edmund told me. I found a little painting that showed their story,” she explained, handing the triptych to George, “and then I found a bunch of poems about them.”

  George looked at the triptych. “Where did you find this?”

  “In the cabinet,” Lizzie answered, “behind the panel.”

  “What panel?”

  Edmund helped Lizzie rise to her feet and she led the two men over to the cabinet. She pressed the carving and the door sprang open.

  “I discovered this a few days ago,” she said. “This series of writings on the same theme of a lost lover, a heartless man, written over a period of seven hundred years. And these are the authors,” she said, going to the table and opening one of her file folders. She spread out the photographs she had taken of the various portraits of women wearing the necklace, then put the triptych and the poems alongside them.

  “Do you see the necklace he is handing her in this painting from medieval times?” she asked them. “It’s the same one that all these women in your family are wearing over the next seven hundred years.”

  She turned to Edmund. “These are the women who committed suicide, whose memorial stones you showed me in the church this afternoon.” She ran a hand through her damp hair. “I guess I must have somehow gotten caught up in this same weird obsession they had.”

  Helen arrived with tea and the three of them were silent as cups were poured and passed around. As Lizzie drank her tea she felt gradually stronger and more in control. She sat down again at the table and watched as the two men passed the poems and the photographs back and forth between them. She realized that Bette’s diary was still in her room, but decided against telling them about it. As much as she had felt like an intruder reading Bette’s private thoughts, she knew that Bette’s brother and nephew would feel it even more.

  George was incredulous as he looked at the material she had gathered. Edmund was less so after their discussion in the church.

  “I knew something,” George said hesitantly. “Though I never saw all this. . . .” He gestured across the papers, then folded his hands on the table in front of them. He cleared his throat and spoke again softly. “I have, however, seen the symptoms Lizzie exhibited tonight.”

  “Bette?” Lizzie asked softly.

  “Yes, Bette,” he answered. “My sister. I saw her often in this necklace,” he continued. “She was wearing it when we found her up on the roof more than thirty years ago. She had a total nervous breakdown and had to be institutionalized.”

  “Where is the necklace now?” Lizzie asked.

  “She still has it,” George answered. “Wears it to this day. Calls it her heart.” He picked up the triptych. “And this, I’ve never seen it before. I didn’t know such a thing existed.”

  “You didn’t know about that panel then?” Lizzie asked, nodding back toward the cabinet.

  He shook his head.

  “And then there were these vivid dreams. . . .” Lizzie stopped. They would think she was really a fool if she started in on the dreams.

  George’s tea cup rattled against its saucer as he went to place it on the table. “Dreams?” he said. His voice was choked. “You had dreams?”

  Had Lizzie not already been frightened by the experience, the look on George’s face would have sent her there. Neither of them could speak, or look at the other.

  Edmund suggested that they should all go back to bed and revisit the conversation in the morning. George stopped him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but Lizzie can’t stay here anymore.” He turned to her. “I’m sorry my dear,” he continued, “but I think you’re in danger staying in this house. Obviously there is something that happened to these women and it is happening to you.”

  “Wait a minute,” Edmund interrupted. “You’re not suggesting that this is some sort of contagious paranoia?”

  “Well look at the evidence,” his father said, nodding at the documents on the table. “It’s happened at least ten times before.”

  “Yes, but all of those women were related by blood,” he said. “As a doctor I’m willing to believe that there might be some inherited tendency toward mental illness, but not that just by reading these poems Lizzie would catch it.” He turned to Lizzie. “I think you’ve probably had some sort of reaction to the sedative.”

  Lizzie interrupted. “Whatever caused it, and it was probably my own impressionable imagination, I feel much better now.”

  “That may be so,” George said, “but I’m sorry that I no longer feel comfortable having you stay in this house.” He avoided Lizzie’s eye. “I guess the best thing to do would be to get you packed and back to Boston.”

  “Wait,” Lizzie said. “Don’t you want me to finish up the Francis Hatton project?”

  George shook his head. “I don’t think you realize the seriousness of this,” he said. “I think that you may be in some danger.”

  “Has there ever been anyone outside your family that suffered from this problem, whatever it is?”

  “No,” he said slowly, “but I am still concerned about your safety and well-being.”

  “I would like to finish the project, George,” she said after thinking for a
moment or two. “It’s interesting, it will help my career, and I can do a good job on it.” She looked up, trying to gauge his expression. “I can finish up the work here in the next few days, and then I’ll go on to London to do the rest of the research that needs to be done there.” She poured herself another cup of tea.

  “You can’t sleep in the house,” George said firmly. “Not under any circumstance.”

  “I can stay at the White Horse Inn,” she answered, just as firmly. “I can walk back and forth.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “Please,” she continued softly, “to go now without understanding fully what is happening to me would leave me very frustrated.”

  “But you would be alive,” he said.

  Edmund looked uncomfortable throughout the exchange between them, but now he said, “Let her stay, Father. I’ll work with her here at the house to make sure nothing happens.”

  George Hatton was thoughtful for a moment, and then nodded. “All right,” he said, “two days here and then go to London.” He began to leave the room, but turned one last time. “I hope you understand,” he said, “I’m only worried about your safety.”

  Lizzie nodded. “I know,” she said, “and I appreciate it.”

  When he was gone, she turned to Edmund. “And thank you, too,” she said.

  Edmund was still drinking a cup of tea. “Moving out is probably not a bad idea, given my father’s state of discomfort,” he said. “But I don’t see any need to look for supernatural reasons for your episode here. Sedatives can cause idiosyncratic reactions such as you experienced.” He said he felt a need to apologize for having prescribed it, but explained that he had never before had a patient react like this to valium.