The Wandering Heart

by Mary Malloy

  Lizzie sat in one of the side pews and stared at them, feeling a mixture of emotions. There was awe mixed with pride that she was the one who had reunited John and Elizabeth after so many centuries. There was also confusion about how, exactly, it had all happened. The last several weeks were something of a jumble.

  Martin went back to the White Horse to bring some blankets and pillows and when he returned, Lizzie lay down in the pew with her head in his lap and slept. She woke two hours later to his kiss.

  “Wake up, darling,” he whispered, “they have found something wonderful.”

  Lizzie wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and walked with Martin over to the tomb. The stone lid was now propped open with boards at the two corners furthest from the wall, and a heavy chain was suspended over each end. Lizzie blinked to adjust her eyes to the strange light. The work lights were very bright but the interior of the sarcophagus was deep in shadow and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. When she could finally make out the contents she gasped. Folded on top of a carved and painted Tlingit bentwood box was the Chilkat bear-crest robe.

  “My God,” she whispered, “Frank Hatton must have put them in here when he had the tomb opened for Eliza.”

  “Would you like to take them out?” George asked.

  “Of course,” Lizzie replied. She gently touched the woven robe, astonished to see how bright the colors were after two centuries. The fibers were still strong and she lifted it carefully and laid it on a nearby pew. She then reached back into the burial chest to test the weight of the box. It was light enough for her to lift out by herself and she removed it from the tomb and set it down next to the blanket.

  “My God,” she said again, sitting in the pew next to them and lightly touching the box. “What a day.”

  “What a week!” Martin laughed.

  “You haven’t even been here a month, and think of everything that’s happened,” George said, sitting down beside her. “You know, Lizzie,” he added thoughtfully, “it was really rather a nice gesture of Francis to put Eltatsy in the tomb.”

  “It was indeed.”

  They took a short break before continuing with the grim task that lay before them, and shared coffee and food with the work crew. Father Folan went across the street to fetch his colleague and the two clergymen made preparations for the burial service. When they were ready, Reverend Moore spoke briefly to George and he motioned to Edmund, Lizzie, and Martin to join him in the front pew. Helen and Henry Jeffries, Bob Moran, and the workmen from the village filed into the pews behind them.

  As promised, Father Folan chanted the Litany of the Dead in Latin, and Reverend Moore chanted the responses back. Lizzie couldn’t help thinking of the two passionate teenagers who now, centuries later, lay in the small boxes in front of the altar. She imagined that the chants sung at their wedding, in this same chapel, had sounded very much like those she was hearing now.

  When it was concluded, George and Edmund went forward and helped the priests move Elizabeth’s coffin to the tomb that had been built to hold it seven centuries earlier. The small crowd in the church gathered around them to help if needed. When the coffin was settled, George turned to Lizzie. “Where should we place the heart?”

  She stepped up to stand beside him and looked at the oak coffin, now resting securely in its stone chest. “I think you should push the lid back and lay it inside next to her,” she said.

  George nodded and began to return to the altar for the heart casket as Edmund and the priests pushed back the top of Elizabeth’s coffin.

  “Why don’t you let Lizzie do it?” Martin interrupted. “She’s part of the family too.”

  Edmund looked surprised. His father, embarrassed, stepped back a step and gestured toward the small golden box.

  “Of course,” he said turning to Lizzie. “Elizabeth, would you place it where you think she would want it.”

  Lizzie was furious with Martin for having announced to everyone in the church her relationship to the Hattons. She still hadn’t decided how far she wanted the knowledge to go and now her husband had robbed her of whatever control she had over it. Whatever calm had existed in the moment vanished and she felt herself shaking as she took the few steps to the altar. She looked around the church and felt all the weirdness of the situation, now made even more awkward by Martin’s declaration.

  Wordlessly she gathered up the small casket. As she walked with it to the tomb, she could feel the small hard lump that was the heart of John d’Hautain roll around inside the box. Had this thing held his passionate love? Would she have been satisfied with it had she gotten it all those years ago? Would any of those women who had asked for it for so long? She stumbled up the stairs to the tomb, blinking back tears.

  The bright work lights had been adjusted so that they shone directly into the interior and the sight was ghastly. Elizabeth’s corpse had a shriveled dead look that Lizzie hadn’t noticed in the earlier softer light of the winter afternoon. The face was tight, the lips drawn back to reveal small crooked teeth. The eyelids were open slightly but there were no eyes inside. Her hands, which had appeared clasped in prayer, did not in fact touch and now looked more like claws, grasping at the air between them, as if seeking, seeking still, the thing Lizzie held in her hand.

  She put the box into the tomb, resting it against the elbow of one rigid arm of the corpse. The gold glinted against the harsh light. Lizzie could not tear her eyes away. Was this moment worth all the suffering it had caused, she wondered? She had expected some feeling of serenity, of closure, some glow of recognition between these long-dead wretches, but they just lay there shriveled, and she felt nothing. Had Martin ruined the moment by making her so angry, she wondered?

  Lizzie stared into the coffin until Edmund and George came up and pulled the oaken lid back into place. George motioned to the workmen to lower the heavy stone lid of the tomb, which was quickly done. When the work lights were turned off, the church was plunged into darkness. They had begun the grim business in daylight and now it was almost midnight. Reverend Moore found the switches to turn on the lights in the church, and the assembled company began to leave silently.

  George turned to Lizzie and indicated that he wanted to speak to her. She went to stand beside him and he leaned toward her.

  “From your husband’s comment, I guess you know about our relationship,” he said. His spoke softly; Lizzie couldn’t read any emotion in his tone.

  She nodded. When she raised her eyes to look at him, he was studying the memorials to his departed family members packed into the dark church. Their departed family members, Lizzie thought.

  He turned to meet her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. He seemed at a loss to find any other words and so repeated his apology again. “I’m sorry.”

  They moved out of the church to find Martin and Edmund. Lizzie’s husband gave her an impatient and searching look. Edmund was disguising his curiosity better as he looked from Lizzie to his father and back.

  George looked at his son. “Lizzie is the great grand-daughter of my great-uncle,” he said, so softly that his listeners had to lean forward to catch the words.

  Edmund looked at Lizzie with some confusion, then looked down, and then back at the church.

  “Which great-uncle?” he whispered to his father.

  “The one after whom you are named.”

  Edmund accepted the information silently. It had begun to snow, and he took his father by the arm and started to lead him back toward the house. George moved slowly, solemnly. For the first time since she met him, Lizzie thought he looked every bit his age.

  In contrast to the peace that had permeated the party that evening in Salisbury cathedral, now they all seemed exhausted, tired of the business, as if they were only now feeling the delayed grisly horror of the spectacle.

  Martin tried to take Lizzie’s hand but she pulled away. She was not happy with
her husband’s behavior in the church.

  “Why did you have to blurt out my relationship to the Hattons that way?” she whispered furiously. “I told you that I would handle it. I wanted to talk to George about it privately, and you made it into a public declaration.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer but turned and went back into the church. She was angry with Martin and she was angry with Edmund, who had made no comment to her, no gesture of understanding when he learned that they were related. He could barely meet her eye. And George. His mumbled apology was hardly worth the effort. Her thoughts went back to Edmund. After all the closeness they had shared, how could he just stand there, avoiding looking at her? Was he embarrassed about the relationship that had formed between them over the last few weeks? Or over the relationship that had existed between them all their lives, but which neither had known about until now? Or did he think she had known?

  Her first intention had been to go back one last time to the tomb of Elizabeth and John, but her footsteps veered right instead of left as she reached the altar. Moving to the last row of the wooden pews, she sank down into it. The church was completely silent. Lizzie could feel her heart beating. She leaned forward until her head touched the back of the pew in front of her, and then she cried hard.

  Men, she thought, were disappointing creatures. Not disappointing enough to die for, but disappointing nonetheless. She stopped her sobbing, sat up, blew her nose and looked around her. She was sitting right on top of the memorial stones. She pushed the bench she was on back with her feet so that she could look at them again. All those poor Elizabeths, she thought, nine of them, and one Edmund.

  One Edmund.

  She stood up and pushed the two pews further apart so that she could see that stone again and read it: “Edmund Hatton, 1864-1889.” It was her great-grandfather. He had committed suicide, just like all those miserable girls. Another sob caught in her throat. Had he killed himself for the loss of Elizabeth Manning, she wondered? Or grieving for his sister? Either way, he was a pathetic wimp. Twenty-five years old. He could have found his lover and child if he wanted to.

  Lizzie backed away from the pew and moved down one of the side aisles of the church. What had seemed so comforting to her just a few days earlier now seemed false, all these monuments to devoted sons, loving spouses, caring parents and valiant heroes. As far as she was concerned, it was all just for show. Where was all that caring and devotion when they lived?

  Martin hadn’t spoiled the moment. There was no moment. All this agonizing over hearts and corpses was meaningless.

  Her husband stood silently at the back of the church. Lizzie saw him as she neared the door and did not resist as he pulled her into his arms. She looked up and met his eyes. He was sorry for having disappointed her; it was all over his face.

  “Could you live without me?” she demanded.

  He turned and led her out of the church, pulling the door closed behind them. On the porch he slid his arm through hers. “That’s a strange question,” he said. “Are you worried about something?”

  Lizzie pulled on her gloves and wrapped her new scarf around her neck.

  “My great-grandfather, Edmund Hatton, killed himself for love,” she said.

  They worked their way through the tangle of graves, past the wall and the plot that lay just outside it, now with a fresh mound of earth where Elizabeth had lain. The snow was just beginning to cover it. Edmund, the lover of her great grandmother, he must be there too, Lizzie thought.

  “Too many thoughts of death, sweetheart,” Martin said finally. And then, after another long silence he added, “Would you want me to follow you if you died?”

  “Not at all,” she said, without hesitation. “But I’d want you to feel really really bad for a long, long time.”

  “I promise you, I would,” he said.

  They paused as she pointed out the plots beneath the oak tree.

  “I wonder if his family preferred him dead to married to her.”

  “A century ago would you have loved me?” Martin asked softly.

  “Of course!” she proclaimed instantly. “How can you even ask that?”

  “Because Mexican men didn’t marry the daughters of Irish immigrants and find themselves welcomed with open arms into the family,” he said bluntly.

  Lizzie felt tears welling up in her eyes again. It was a thought she had never, ever, considered. Life with Martin was not always easy. He was so impulsive and unguarded in his responses that he often provoked her, and yet the fact that he was so candid meant that she almost always knew what he was thinking and feeling. Right now he was filled with concern and regret; concern about her response to his stupid and unthinking exclamation in the church, and regret that he had hurt her by his actions. In many ways he was unpredictable, and yet he would never, she knew, ever have abandoned her as that earlier Edmund Hatton had abandoned her great grandmother. She dabbed at her eyes with her gloved hand. Her husband wasn’t always easy to live with, but he was easy to love.

  “I think we would have been together in any age,” she said softly.

  Martin was thoughtful. “Of course we would have loved each other,” he said. “But if your family—or mine—had made it impossible to be together, would I have considered killing myself?” He paused for a moment before continuing. “I understand the impulse, as horrible as it is.”

  She slipped her arms inside his coat and hugged him. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she rubbed her face against his shirt to dry them.

  He held her tightly. “There are many worse things that men have died for, Lizzie.”

  They stood there for several minutes, snow falling softly around them. Lizzie was the first to move, and they turned and started their walk toward the White Horse.

  “What is worth dying for?” she asked him.

  “I thought about that a lot during the Vietnam days,” he answered. “Fortunately for me the draft ended just as my year was coming up, because I knew that I did not think that war was worth dying for,” he continued.

  She asked if any war was worth such a sacrifice.

  His answer was delivered softly, thoughtfully. “I think I would have gone with the American troops in World War II; I think I would have joined the Union against the Confederacy; I think I might have followed Pancho Villa or Zapata for Mexican Independence.” He stroked her hair. “The decision would have depended a lot on whether or not I had my Lizzie in my life.”

  She leaned against him.

  “I think young men are easier to sacrifice in wars because they don’t often yet have the ties of real love to hold them back,” Martin continued.

  “Jean d’Hautain left Elizabeth to fight in the Crusades.”

  “Well that’s one I definitely would have passed on,” Martin said with a quiet laugh. “He was on the wrong side in that conflict if you want my opinion.”

  Lizzie nodded. “He felt it was his duty.”

  “Duty is something of a strange concept to me,” he said. “I feel a strong sense of duty to you, to my parents, to my work, but I can’t imagine the circumstances that would convince me to feel a duty to follow some king for a cause like the Crusades.”

  “It was pretty much a massacre of people for no reason other than their religion,” Lizzie said softly.

  “The Unholy Wars.”

  “Like most wars, I guess.” She kicked at a clod of snow in the road. “There is something intensely romantic about war though,” she said. “The danger, the separation, I don’t know, there is something there that heightens the sensations and makes them all more intense. Fear is there, but passionate love, too.” She looked at her husband. “I guess the feeling that this encounter might be your last makes you invest everything you have in it.”

  “Is it worth risking death to feel that passion?”

  “No,” she said shaking her head.

 
“And that level of intensity is not how you want to live every moment,” Martin said, stopping and taking one of Lizzie’s gloved hands in both of his.

  “Are we too comfortable in our relationship?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” he said, squeezing her hand. “We are comfortable in our relationship because we trust and know one another. That is what creates intimacy.”

  “Is that better than passion?”

  “You can’t catch me, you know,” he said laughing. “I love you passionately, you know it.”

  “And we’re not boring or complacent after fifteen years?”

  “I don’t find you boring,” he answered. “Do you find me too comfortable?”

  Lizzie thought with a twinge of guilt about her attraction to Edmund Hatton, then turned and looked into Martin’s beautiful face. She knew every line, every hair, she loved his deep brown eyes, his intelligent good-humored expression, the look of love that she saw reflected back.

  “No, my darling,” she said, “In fact, I don’t know how I got so lucky.”

  He smiled. “Thank God,” he said, starting to walk again, “I was afraid I was going to have to go off and find a war somewhere to win you back!”

  “There is something very sexy about the thought of you strapping on a sword or a gun to go off and protect me.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” he said. “You have never needed me to protect you from anything.”

  Lizzie smiled. “You’re right. It’s not sexy in terms of our lives. I was thinking about that Medieval situation again.” She stopped. “That brings me back to my question, ‘Could you live without me?’”

  “No.”

  “Just like that? No?” she pressed.

  “Just like that.”

  “But you wouldn’t kill yourself?”

  “I don’t think so. There are some other reasons for going on, but my life would be forever diminished; something in me would die.”

  “Would you die for me?”