by Mary Malloy
Helen woke her softly. “Lizzie, dear,” she said. “Lizzie, let us help you up to your room.”
She opened her eyes to see Helen’s worried look. Beyond her, Lizzie could see Henry standing at the door with a similar worried expression on his face.
The housekeeper stroked her hair and talked to her in the most gentle tones.
“What’s the matter?” Lizzie said, sitting up.
“You were making such sounds that we were afraid you were ill,” Helen said with concern.
Lizzie took Helen’s hand and rose unsteadily from the chair. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think that I am entirely well,” she said. “But I can’t spend the whole day sleeping.”
Henry took a few steps into the room and stopped, looking to his wife for a clue as to whether he was needed. Lizzie smiled at him and waved him off.
“Thanks, Henry,” she said, “but I’m not going to go back to bed quite yet.”
Helen tried to convince her otherwise, but Lizzie was adamant. She moved across the room back to the library table, leaning unsteadily on Helen. The room rocked back and forth with the same motion she had felt after getting off a ship from a sea voyage. Lizzie held on to the edge of the table and sat down hard in one of the chairs around it. She looked at the remains of her breakfast and felt slightly nauseous.
“I’m rather embarrassed about this, Helen,” she said, pushing the tray away from her. “But I seem to have a full-blown hangover from my over-indulgence last night.”
“You’ll feel better in bed.”
“If I go back to bed and sleep all day then I will revert to North American time,” Lizzie said emphatically. “It’s important that I try to get some work done today.”
Helen seemed for a moment like she might try to argue, but then assented. She instructed Lizzie to call her instantly if she needed anything, then took the tray and left Lizzie to her work.
The winter sun pierced the windows with streaks of bright light and Lizzie closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. The short nap had not been refreshing. The dream was, in fact, as vivid as any she could remember. It had been meticulously detailed and she was surprised at how much of that detail she could remember. Colors were vibrant, she had actually felt the motion of air against her face, the heat of the sun, the smell of dirt and sweat and horses. Why, she wondered, would she dream about a tournament? She knew nothing about arms and armor and yet, if pressed, she felt that she could describe pretty accurately what kind of equipment was used at this particular imaginary joust.
The previous night she had dreamed of Edmund, she was certain of that, and it had been overtly sexual. This afternoon she had called her lover John. She rolled it all over and over in her mind. The story that Edmund had told her had obviously influenced her more than she knew at the time. That story, in combination with the Rossetti painting, the book that Martin had given her, and the age and eminence of Hengemont must have all come together in this strange dream, she thought. But still, it was much more detailed, emotional, and somehow startling, than any she had ever had in the past. It was hard to shake.
The brightness of the sun was hurting her eyes and she moved to the other side of the table so that her back was to it. Now she could see the rays picking out details in the room, which jumped out at her. She closed her eyes again and ordered herself to concentrate. She looked again at the pages that had been cut from Francis Hatton’s journal and at the miniature of his sister Eliza.
“Concentrate,” she told herself, “concentrate. Think of the job.”
Without the bentwood box and the Chilkat blanket, the central artifacts on which she would logically focus an exhibit or book were missing. She sat back in her chair and stretched her legs out so that her feet could rest on the long supporting bar that ran under the table. She looked around the room.
The doors to the cabinet were open and she stared into it intently, trying to take it in as if she were seeing it for the first time. What would Francis Hatton have done with two sizable objects that he wanted to hide? Would he have destroyed them? Lizzie couldn’t imagine that. He clearly wanted to return them. Had he done so? There didn’t seem to be any evidence of that, but she needed to go over the documents related to subsequent voyages to the Pacific. Would he have put them somewhere else in the house? If so, Lizzie was probably out of luck because the house was huge and George had not invited her to go exploring. Somehow she couldn’t imagine that Francis Hatton would have just stuck them anywhere. He was so careful about the cabinet.
They weren’t in the glass-fronted cases; she could see everything in them from where she sat. The drawers were clearly too shallow for the box, though the folded blanket could have fit in one of them, but she had already been through all of them and hadn’t seen it. Between the upper cases and the lower drawers was the decorative carved border with the crest and the intriguing mottoes that had led her to discover the hidden panel in the journal’s box.
She put her feet flat on the floor again and pulled the box toward her. The carving on it was Chinese, while the carving on the cabinet was clearly not Chinese. Lizzie didn’t know very much about different styles of European cabinetry, but the carving on the cabinet seemed consistent with the decoration she could see around the rest of this wing of the house, mostly borders in carved wood or molded plaster.
The cabinet frieze had one panel on it, though, on which the carver seemed to have copied the design from the front of the Chinese box, though he had given it a distinctly European finish. Lizzie rose and went over to look more closely at it, bringing her magnifying lens with her. The carving was at waist level and she bent over with the magnifying glass to study it. There were the same leaves and flowers, family crest and alternative motto: “Numquam Dediscum.”
“On the box,” she said softly, running her hand over the carving, “the secret panel opened when I pressed right here.”
Lizzie pressed and a portion of the border on the cabinet sprang open. She stood perfectly still for almost a minute, then turned around and looked behind her. The Jeffries were nowhere to be seen, and she was pretty certain that Richard was gone. There was a tall clock in the library and another beyond it in the hallway, and for the first time she heard their ticking as two distinct sounds, but otherwise it was perfectly still. She put her hand into the space behind the panel and pulled out the contents. She already knew that it wasn’t the artifacts she was seeking because the space wasn’t big enough. What she did find was a small flat case, a diary of some sort, and a key. Lizzie was excited by the last item. Was it possible that there was another panel hidden somewhere where she might find the carved box and the blanket? She brought them all over to the table.
The small diary was inscribed “Bette Hatton” on the title page and was filled with pages of writing in a tiny script. There were several loose papers tucked inside it, including a long letter on stationery from the Victoria and Albert Museum. As Lizzie stacked up the rest of the papers she found one on vellum that resembled the poem she had found, but this one was in French. There was another poem as well, of unknown age, and similar in theme to the ones she had already found. There was something disquieting about them, but Lizzie set them aside and turned to the small tooled-leather case that had also been behind the pane.
It was small enough that Lizzie could hold it in one hand. There were bronze hinges on each of the two outside edges, and a gold-colored clasp in the center, which she easily unfastened. As she opened it from the center, she found that she was looking at a medieval triptych—three miniature paintings set into side-by-side panels. She gasped at the beauty of it; the colors were unbelievably vibrant and the small size made each part of the thing seem jewel-like. Each of the paintings was only about five or six inches high but the detail was remarkable. The center painting at twice the width of those on either side was still only about five inches across, yet it was filled with people and action.
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nbsp; The panel on the left showed a romantic scene of two lovers, their hands clasped together, standing on some sort of crenellated tower. “Courtly love,” she thought. The middle panel was a celebration of some sort with knights and ladies. The right-hand panel was the lovers again, but not so happy this time. She had her hands at her face, obviously weeping; he held out a necklace to her with a red stone at the end of a long chain. It looked like a large ruby.
It was the story of Elizabeth and John, she realized, and the central panel showed a tournament. As she looked at the details her hands began to tremble violently. This was the tournament about which she had just dreamed. Lizzie dropped the thing on the table, as if it had suddenly shocked her.
She shook her head in disbelief, sat down, stood up, sat down again, and eventually picked up the triptych and carried it to the window to look more closely at the tiny paintings. There was no question. If she had described her dream to an artist, in all its vivid detail, it could not be more similar to the picture she now held in her hand. Lizzie felt the blood drain from her face. The tournament was the very one she had seen in her dream. Was the encounter of the lovers on the tower her encounter with her dream lover? For a moment she thought she would surely faint.
She sat down again and pressed her fingertips against her closed eyes and rubbed gently. There must be an explanation, she told herself. Absolutely unwilling to believe that she was experiencing some supernatural phenomenon, she wracked her brain, trying to think of when she might have encountered this picture, or something like it. Could it have been reproduced in one of the Hatton historical materials she had examined, maybe even without realizing it? She was disconcerted, if not actually scared. The coincidence that she would discover a painting of a scene immediately after dreaming about it was one she could hardly begin to fathom. Except that she was in this house, and this house held this story.
The acrid taste of bile rose into her mouth and Lizzie ran from the library. She very nearly vomited onto Robert Adam’s parquet floor as she ran to the bathroom tucked under the curved staircase, but she made it just in time. When there was nothing left in her stomach, she pulled the chain on the toilet to flush it, closed the lid, and turned to sit on it. She wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead with a piece of toilet paper and sat there for nearly ten minutes, until she finally felt composed enough to return to the library.
The solution to her dilemma was apparent. If she was to believe that she had subconsciously picked up facts and images and woven them together from her own knowledge and imagination, then she could deal with it best by identifying the sources.
She went back to the library and looked again at the triptych. On closer examination the tournament scene was not, in fact, identical to the one in her dream. She breathed slowly in and out. The knight looked the same, but then he looked the same in the Rossetti painting, and she had studied that painting this very morning. Maybe Rossetti had seen this triptych, she thought. And she, having seen the Rossetti, filled in the rest. She felt better. She commanded herself to be rational and accept this explanation. She turned to the letter typed on stationary of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
December 29, 1964
Miss Elizabeth Hatton
Grosvenor Square
London
Dear Miss Hatton,
I return, by courier, the triptych which you left for me to examine last week. It received a great deal of interest among my colleagues since unknown pieces of this early date and of such charm and artistry do not often walk in the door unexpectedly.
As you know from the work I did at Hengemont a dozen years ago, my own field of expertise is portraiture, and though you expressed a belief that this was an ancestral portrait ca. 1250, I must tell you that my colleagues and I have reached a different conclusion. Works of this sort, showing secular scenes, began to be popular in France and Flanders in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century; such a work would have been unheard of in England at the earlier date. The regular contact across the channel by Norman families in medieval times makes a French origin for this piece very likely.
Several clues help us establish a timeframe within the painting itself. The clothing is our best indication of the period when the artist flourished (as opposed to the date of the action depicted). In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for instance, most of the paintings which survive are biblical scenes, but the subjects wear medieval European clothing, which we can use to establish a date. If you look at the women in your triptych you will see that they wear high-waisted gowns with long, draped sleeves. Their elaborate headdresses are very distinctive. Similarly the short tunics of the men, with their padded and pleated bodices and full sleeves, indicate the reign of Henry IV.
The great exceptions here are the knights and the most prominent woman in the central panel. My colleagues and I found your family’s oral history to be astonishingly accurate in this matter. The bride wears a costume which you will instantly see is not similar to that of her companions, and it does originate in the middle thirteenth century. Mr. Hastings, a curator in the arms and armour department here at the V&A, tells me that the armour is also consistent with that date, and with the Crusade of that time. The depiction here is, he says, clearly that of a “Joust à plaisance” or joust of peace. (Earlier tournaments had occasionally become so violent that young men were killed at home before having a chance to go off to be killed in the Crusades!)
I believe that your triptych is meant to be a depiction of specific people and events of the middle thirteenth century, but painted about 150-200 years later, probably a commission by someone in your family to capture those earlier incidents while the memory of them was still actively being recounted. The artist attempted accuracy with the central figures, but then had to depend on his own experience and knowledge to fill in the other details.
If you would like to see similar medieval secular works, I invite you to meet with me at the V&A where I would be happy to show you some of our own treasures of the period. The Devonshire Tapestry (ca. 1425-50) is particularly interesting. Other such scenes of garden parties, daily life, weddings, tournaments, and settings of courtly love, can be seen in a number of illustrated manuscripts in our collection and at the British Library.
I hope you enjoyed a most happy holiday season and I look forward to serving you again if the occasion arises.
Mr. C.H.F. Wells
Keeper of British Portraits
Victoria and Albert Museum
Lizzie took the triptych over to the light of the window again, and brought her magnifying lens to get a better look at the details. She wanted to see those clues mentioned by the author of the letter. Yes, she could see what he had mentioned about the clothing. In the left panel the young woman wore a dark green gown, belted just under her breasts with a red sash. A small ruff of golden fur lined the collar of the dress and the openings of the sleeves, which dropped from just below her shoulders almost to her knees. Her hair was gathered up over her ears in elaborate braids, over which she wore a white veil that had obviously been stiffened in some way around the face to give it a specific shape. Her lover wore a knee-length tunic that hung in multiple pleats from a square yoke. Around his waist was a leather belt, and he wore soft-looking boots that came up to his knees and then rolled over into large cuffs. His hair was short, his head uncovered. They wore similar, though not identical, clothing in the tiny painting on the right.
In the central panel were numerous people wearing similar clothing, though there were also young men with embarrassingly short tunics that did not even reach their hips. Most of the men wore tights and codpieces and pointed shoes. Some of the women wore veils hanging from unbelievably elaborate headgear. Lizzie tried to imagine what they were made from and could only conclude that they were padded fabric formed into rolls and buns that were worn on both sides of the head. Everywhere were long slashed sleeves, or cuffs that hung almost to the g
round. The overall effect was very festive.
The knights in the foreground wore full suits of chain mail, including hoods that fit over the head and around the face, and mittens that covered the hands. Over the chain mail was draped a belted rust-colored tunic covered with white crosses. Shields, swords, and lances were in abundance. In the stands, musicians held long horns.
Lizzie angled her magnifying lens to look closely at the two central figures. As the letter said, the young woman was dressed in a distinctively different manner as she stood in the stands staring straight ahead of her. She appeared to be wearing a blue dress with tight-fitting long sleeves; a row of fastenings was just visible from elbow to cuff. Over that she wore another looser dress of a silvery color, almost a shift. It had no sleeves, and in fact the arm holes were so large that they extended down to her hips, and the whole thing was fasted with a gold cord slung low around her waist. Instead of the elaborate headdress of the women around her, she wore a small embroidered cap with a long sheer veil hanging from the back of it. A matching piece of fabric circled her face, passing under her chin and then disappearing up under the cap, where it must have been fastened in some way that Lizzie couldn’t see.
Her lover also stood staring straight ahead, his armor matching that of his comrades in every way except that he carried a shield with a heraldic device and wore epaulets with the same figure on it. This was the crest that Lizzie had seen in the Rossetti painting and later dreamed about. At the top were two side-by-side red hearts. Below them, in the center of the shield, a row of up-and-down blocks represented the crenellated battlements at the top of a castle tower. Below that, a wavy blue line represented the ocean’s waves. It occurred to Lizzie as she stared at it that this was not the Hatton family crest, with its sword-pierced heart.
Lizzie looked at each part of the triptych through her magnifying glass until her eyes hurt. Then she set it upright on the table and stared at it some more, trying to get the essence of the whole picture. For a moment she glanced out the window, across the formal garden and the sloping hill, down across the old ruin of the castle wall to the water. Her eyes jerked back to the wall and Lizzie felt a shiver run from her lower back up her spine to her neck. In the scene of the tournament, could she discern bits of the Hengemont landscape? Before the other wings of the house were built, and while the walls around the castle yard were still standing, this tournament had probably happened right here, almost seven hundred and fifty years before. Lizzie saw that her bare arms were covered with goose bumps and she rubbed them lightly.