by Mary Malloy
“I’m not sure I understand you,” Edmund interjected.
“This is not really clear to me,” Lizzie answered, struggling to put her barely developed concepts into words. “It’s just that I’m not sure that simply burying the heart in the tomb will break the cycle.”
George sighed. “What the hell are we supposed to do with it then?”
“I think we need to bury it with her.”
“Not in the Crusader’s tomb?”
“We can bury it there, but then I think we need to find her and put her there too.”
He seemed a bit perplexed. “Isn’t she there already?”
“No,” Lizzie said emphatically. “She’s in that little plot set aside for suicides.”
George looked at her with amazement. “All right then, Lizzie,” he said finally, a hint of exasperation in his voice, “you’re the doctor. I’ll just let you take care of the details.”
“This all sounds fine to me,” Edmund said softly. “But I think that we need to be careful about what stock we place in all this.” His turned to his father and continued gently. “I’m sorry Dad, but as far as Bette is concerned, I think you have to consider the possibility that this story with which she has been obsessed for so long is a manifestation of her mental problems and not the cause of them.”
Lizzie found herself caught up in the moment between father and son and consequently did not fully comprehend Edmund’s meaning. She looked at her husband. Martin had understood Edmund perfectly, and his face was such an open book that in his expression Lizzie first realized what she had missed from Edmund’s words.
“What do you mean?” George asked.
“I mean that Bette’s not haunted or possessed by this woman, Elizabeth d’Hautain,” Edmund answered. “She is mentally ill.”
George reached up to take off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Edmund continued. “Because this disease has manifested itself the same way so many times, we have allowed ourselves to accept, too easily I think, what is essentially the medieval explanation. In Bette’s case it is certainly schizophrenia, accelerated by her drug use. It probably was that or some other diagnosable mental illness in the other cases as well.” Edmund looked at Lizzie. “I don’t think it’s healthy to indulge in these fantastic suppositions. Bette’s recovery at this point is very unlikely.”
Lizzie suddenly felt embarrassed for having entered so fully into what Edmund had called the manifestation of the obsession. She wondered if he would feel any differently if he knew that she was also a descendent of Elizabeth d’Hautain, but felt pretty confident that he would not. Martin, she could see, was not convinced.
• • • • •
Because Elizabeth d’Hautain’s grave was seven hundred years old, it seemed logical to Lizzie to hire an archaeologist to exhume her corpse. It consequently took two days for the young man recommended by Tom Clark to obtain the necessary licenses and permissions, and to map and sample the area around the graves of the ten suicides to determine which was the oldest grave there. An acorn had fallen at some point near Elizabeth d’Hautain’s grave, and had subsequently grown into a very large oak tree.
“This could be something of a problem,” the archaeologist said to Lizzie. His name was Dennis Aiken and as he spoke to her he tied a string around one of the sticks now set at regular intervals throughout the area beyond the cemetery wall. Because the frost-bound ground was so hard, he and his team were using small power tools to break up the soil for removal.
“How so?” Lizzie called, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the noisy tools.
“Well, she could actually be under this tree,” he called back.
“Yikes,” Lizzie muttered.
“Yikes indeed,” Dennis echoed, stringing his thin cord from one stake to the next. “On the other hand, however,” he continued, “oak tannin is a very good preservative and it may have contributed to a better state of preservation than you might otherwise find in a grave this old.”
She pulled her coat around her. “If you find something, would you give me a holler?” she asked. “I’ll be in the church.” Out of the corner of her eye she could see Bob Moran standing at the edge of the graveyard, keeping an eye on things, but not participating. She waved to him and he waved back. Since the evening she had dinner with him and the Jeffries she had seen him only occasionally, and always from a distance as he went about his chores around the grounds.
Dennis assured her he would keep her informed of their progress, and Lizzie walked through the gate and up the path to the church. Inside she could hear voices; it was Father Folan and the local vicar, Reverend Moore, talking about the reinterment of John and Elizabeth d’Hautain.
She paused just inside the door and eavesdropped on their conversation. They were discussing the removal of Elizabeth d’Hautain’s corpse from unhallowed to hallowed ground, and church policy on the burial of suicides. They talked of depression and mental illness and cases they knew from their personal experience as pastors. It was clear that both men believed that their benevolent God looked upon those poor desperate souls with more mercy than did their respective churches.
“One way to solve this,” Reverend Moore said quietly, “is just to go out now and consecrate that part of the cemetery. I’ve thought of doing it for some time anyway.”
Father Folan touched his colleague on the arm. “In truth,” he admitted, “I already have.”
Lizzie walked quietly down the aisle and slipped into the pew behind the two priests. Both men nodded to her and Father Folan actually turned around to smile and reach a hand out in her direction. She had described to him the burial service she thought most appropriate for John and Elizabeth, and Edmund had explained it to the vicar; their talk now turned to the service.
The Irish part of Lizzie told her that Father Folan was likely to be superstitious as well as religious, and she had played up to that somewhat in explaining the situation of the lost heart. She doubted that Edmund had used the same tactic with Reverend Moore, expecting rather that, as the son of the Lord of the Manor, his request for action, no matter how sympathetically or politely delivered, would simply be accepted and carried out without question. In any case, Reverend Moore seemed prepared to allow the Catholic Litany of the Dead to be chanted in Latin as she had requested. She thought it was what John and Elizabeth would want.
“The Hattons want an ecumenical service, Michael,” the vicar was saying, “and that is what they shall have.”
Father Folan smiled at him. “Now Ian,” he said, “I don’t want you to think that I’m a showoff, but I think I’ll sing my part.”
The vicar returned a more shallow smile. “If you think that is necessary,” he said.
Father Folan clapped him heartily on the back. “Come now,” he said, “I expect you to sing the responses for me.”
“In Latin?”
“Of course, lad.” He smiled now at Lizzie, adding, “And you too, my dear.”
The three talked comfortably in the cold church for several more minutes before they were interrupted by a shout from outside.
“Dr. Manning,” one of Dennis Aiken’s assistants called, running up to the door. “We think we’ve found her.”
Lizzie felt a cold wind on her face as she, the vicar, and Father Folan stepped onto the stone porch of the church. She pulled her new muffler up to her nose and moved tentatively across a rough patch of ground to the stone wall that divided the old unconsecrated ground from that directly adjacent to the church. She could just see over it to the site where Dennis Aiken was excavating. He motioned to her to come through the gate and around.
“It hasn’t been easy with this frozen ground,” he said as she approached with the two priests. He tapped on a thick piece of wood with a long pole. “But as you can see, we’ve found a coffin that could very well be from the thirteenth century.”
Father Folan made the sign
of the cross, and Lizzie was tempted to do the same.
Dennis Aiken was standing on the edge of a growing hole, which his assistants were working to enlarge further. As the whole crew of six began to concentrate all their energy on it, the hole rapidly took on the appearance of a grave rather than an archaeological site. Dennis took continuous photographs of the process, pausing occasionally to log information onto a form on a clipboard, and it was not long before everything that remained in the ancient grave was clearly visible. At a signal to the working crew, all of the power tools suddenly ceased and in the silence that followed Lizzie thought she could hear her heart beating.
It was not a large coffin, though the oak boards from which it was made were several inches thick. As they cleared away the top board, Lizzie turned to look at the tree that towered above the grave. She had thought so much about Elizabeth d’Hautain as a living, breathing woman, feeling her emotions, almost thinking her thoughts through her strange dreams, that she suddenly questioned if she wanted to see her corpse. Would she be a skeleton? Would there be even that much left after all this time? Images of bodies in various states of decomposition raced through her mind. She shuddered, and pulled her coat closer around her. Father Folan came over to stand near her and she gave him a weak smile.
Dennis jumped into the hole to help with the last tug as the coffin came from its grave. As the lid was loosened, he instructed his men to lift it and set it aside. Lizzie heard him say, “My God, she’s beautiful.”
Father Folan left her side to look into the grave, and then came back and took Lizzie by the arm. “There’s nothing to fear here, my dear,” he said with his soft brogue. “She’s remarkably well preserved.”
Dennis was explaining to his crew about the miraculous properties of oak tannin and the bog that had preserved the corpse for more than half a millennium as Lizzie approached the hole with trepidation and looked in. There, lying against one side of her coffin, her hands folded in prayer and her eyes closed as if in sleep, was Elizabeth d’Hautain. Her skin and clothes were all the golden brown color of leather, her face was serene and beautiful. Under her wimple, Dennis pointed out a few strands of auburn hair.
“She’s so tiny,” Lizzie said. Looking into the open grave at the beautiful corpse of Elizabeth she felt only peace.
The two clergymen stood on either side of her. Each of them was saying a low prayer. When he had finished, Lizzie asked the Reverend Moore if it would be appropriate to ring the bell of the church to let the family know of the find, or if one of them should go up to the house.
“The bell’s a good idea,” he said, turning to go back into the church.
Dennis looked up from his position kneeling beside the coffin. “There’s extensive damage to the back of her skull,” he said, gently rolling the corpse.
“She fell or jumped off a tower,” Lizzie said.
“Ah, that explains it then. She would also have lost a lot of blood, making this tanning process more possible.” He came around the grave as his assistants pulled themselves up out of it. “You must be pleased,” he said to Lizzie, as he wiped his hands on a towel and took the clipboard from his awestruck employee.
“I don’t know what I expected,” Lizzie said. “I guess I thought you might find a few bones or something, but this. . . .” She gestured at the corpse, not knowing what to say.
“It is remarkable, isn’t it,” Dennis continued. “I’ve seen so-called ‘bog people’ before, prehistoric bodies perfectly preserved in the oxygen-free and pest-free environment of a peat bog. I can only assume this was a bog at some time. Of course I’ll have to take the remains back to my lab for some tests, and then I think there are some archaeologists at the British Museum who would be very interested in seeing it.”
Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t think that’s going to be possible,” she said. “The family is committed to burying her inside the church immediately. In fact,” she said, hearing the church bell begin a rhythmic clanging, “I expect we’ll see Sir George soon enough.”
Dennis tried hard to convince Lizzie that she should support his scientific curiosity and use her influence with George Hatton. At first she was sympathetic. This was, after all, an extraordinary find and Dennis Aiken had done a good job locating it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, as supportively as she could. “I think I know just how you feel, but there are other, private, issues here.”
Dennis pushed harder and Lizzie responded with greater firmness. They spent several minutes going back and forth. She could tell that he was reaching the limit of his patience, and she knew that she was certainly reaching the end of hers.
“Now wait,” Dennis said finally, a certain anger appearing in his voice for the first time, “this is a major archaeological find. We must share it with the public.”
In the distance, Lizzie could see George and Edmund Hatton approaching the gate from the house. She waved to them, then said to Dennis, “We might as well wait until Sir George gets here. It’s his decision in the end.”
“By God, it’s not his decision,” Dennis returned angrily. “This is a matter of national significance.”
“There is no mystery here,” Lizzie answered. “We hired you to excavate a specific grave, whose occupant was well known to us. We already knew how she died, and our purpose in exhuming her was to move her into the family church. You said yourself that this kind of preservation, while not common, is certainly not unknown. The scientific value here is secondary to the human needs.”
“It’s still an important find, and of national interest.”
“I know that you could enhance your professional reputation with this,” Lizzie said, losing her patience, “but it is a personal matter of family to these men.” She gestured toward the approaching George and Edmund as she finished. “You’re on private property, you’re being paid a good wage, this is their ancestor, don’t push it if Sir George doesn’t want it pushed.” She began to walk toward the Hattons.
Dennis Aiken followed. “Now wait,” he said, reaching for her arm, “why wouldn’t they want to follow up on this?”
Lizzie shrugged him off.
“You know,” he said, “I can always bring in the police, what with the suspicious nature of her death and all. I can make it uncomfortable for them.”
Lizzie stopped and turned to face him. “You’re going to bring in Scotland Yard to investigate a seven-hundred-year-old corpse found in a graveyard?” she said angrily. “That should certainly make a name for you.” She turned her back on him and continued on to meet the Hattons. “Don’t follow me,” she hissed. “I hired you and now I’m firing you. Get out.”
“I’ll speak to Sir George if I want,” he insisted.
“Then wait back at the church, you can speak to him there.” Lizzie now turned and gave him the look that she saved for her worst students; it had silenced coughers in theaters, it had brought auditoriums to complete stillness. Dennis Aiken backed away and went to the church.
“Oh brother,” Lizzie said under her breath. George and Edmund reached her and she explained the find as they walked to the graveside.
“Remarkable,” Edmund sighed, looking into the open coffin.
“The archaeologist says she was preserved by the boggy ground associated with this oak tree.”
They stood silently for several minutes and were eventually joined by Martin, who had heard the church bell ring from the White Horse.
As they turned from the grave and started toward the church the impatient Dennis Aiken cornered George. He avoided Lizzie’s dangerous look as he rapidly explained the importance of this archaeological find to the nation. George tried to wave him off, but he would not take the hint. Edmund gently took him aside and told him this was not the time, but he still would not be stopped. Walking backwards in front of George he pressed him to let him bring in some other archaeologists and to prepare the body to be t
ransported to London for further study.
Finally George stopped in his tracks. “Go away,” he said softly.
“What?”
“Go away,” he repeated with greater firmness, resuming his walk toward the church.
“I’m sorry Sir George, but I don’t think you understand,” Dennis replied. He began to say that he thought Lizzie had not advised him well.
George stopped again. “Are you deaf?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then get off my property.”
“I can’t in good conscience just abandon such an important find.”
George turned to his son, “Call the police,” he said. “Get this man, and all the rest of these people, off my property.”
“I’ll be back,” Dennis Aiken said, motioning to his crew to pack up their things.
“And I’ll have you arrested,” George said dismissively.
Lizzie was impressed. George had appeared to lose his natural confidence since her episode on the roof, but now he was clearly getting back to his old self.
The two clergymen came out of the church to meet them and George asked Reverend Moore to “get Bob Moran and some lads from the village to move the coffin to the church and fill up the hole again.”
The vicar nodded and went to recruit the help. Bob Moran had been hovering at the fringes of the crowd and hearing his name stepped forward.
“Let’s get this over with,” George continued, turning to Edmund. “There’s Bob. Tell him to get a crew together. Let’s open up the tomb and bury these people.”
It took several hours to assemble the necessary labor and equipment, and it was not an easy matter to raise the stone lid from the tomb chest. It was much more difficult than the exhumation of the heart a few days earlier at Salisbury Cathedral, where the stone had been relatively small and the crew experienced at the job. Bob Moran called in the local stone mason and he, in turn, called a rigger up from the port with heavier tackle and gear.
Edmund supervised the move of Elizabeth’s coffin into the church where it was laid in front of the altar. He put the heart casket on top of it.