by Mary Malloy
Lizzie blinked hard several times. That would explain why she had gone back to using the name Manning and had never tried to contact him. “What a cruel bit of business,” she mumbled. “To both of them.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to say something more, and finally asked, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
She shook her head.
“It means your family really does have a claim on Hengemont. Your great-grandfather, Edmund Hatton, was the older brother of my great-grandfather.”
She couldn’t help smiling at the irony of that. They sat in silence for a moment before Lizzie told him that she didn’t plan to tell her father of his relationship to the Hattons. He seemed surprised.
“Knowing that they were married doesn’t change it?”
“No, why should it? It shows that he had more honor than the rest of his family, but the outcome is no different,” she said. “Edmund Hatton was too weak to follow through when she needed him. Elizabeth Manning chose not to tell her son, and I think that her decision has to be honored. My dad is comfortable in his current identity.”
“Except that now there is potentially a fortune at stake.”
She made a comment that Richard had probably eliminated that factor, which he let pass without comment.
“You really didn’t know any of this when you came here?” he asked.
“I came here for what I thought might be an interesting job,” Lizzie answered. “And that’s all. I didn’t know any of the rest of the story until the day after I left Hengemont—though Helen tried to tell me.”
“Helen?”
“Mrs. Jeffries. I’m also related to her.” She smiled at the thought and explained the rest of the story to Edmund. “I don’t want to offend you,” she continued softly, “but I feel like I have been living in an anachronistic time warp for the last few weeks. And, not that I haven’t enjoyed it, but I’m not comfortable with the idea of where it all originated, or how it has been maintained all this time.”
She thought of the young Manning sisters.
“Your family faces no threat from mine,” she said finally. “My father will not be charging in to fight a duel with yours.”
Her romance with the British aristocracy was finally played out.
Her speech had, however, sounded more caustic than she intended, and she changed the subject by asking for more details about Richard’s financial problems. As Edmund explained about his brother’s hedge funds, margin trading, and bad investment choices, the enormity of what it meant for George and Edmund hit Lizzie for the first time. She pictured the Gainsborough painting of Francis and Eliza and their brother on the auction block at Sothebey’s.
“This must be a blow for you,” she said compassionately.
“I don’t care about any of it for myself,” he said. “You’re not the only one who thinks that the time of the landed gentry is over, you know. I’ve lived on my own income for years. But my dad, this will devastate him.”
“He doesn’t know yet?”
“No. But he’ll have to soon enough. Apparently the news is spreading around London and will be in the papers this week.”
She put her arm around him. There were going to be some very unpleasant times ahead for all of the Hattons.
“This business about the belladonna will have to be a secret between us for awhile,” she said, “and neither your father nor my husband can know of it.”
He groaned. “I didn’t think of Martin. Don’t you have to tell him?”
“If I tell him now, then I will probably never see you or your father or this house again. Martin will certainly want to see Richard in jail or worse.” She thought of their conversation of the night before. She had asked Martin if he would die for her, but not if he would kill for her, and yet she felt that he was very capable of violence if he thought she was threatened.
“But it will help him understand what happened to you.”
“He was always more willing to accept the alternative explanations for this episode than either you or I were,” she said. “He’s all right for now, and I’ll tell him all after we get home.”
She thought about this a bit more. “The truth is, Edmund, that despite your rational explanation—which satisfies me perfectly, by the way—despite that, I can’t help but feel that there are things we cannot explain, as Martin has said often enough.” The words came out sounding just as fuzzy as her logic felt.
Edmund leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips.
“Yes there are,” he said. “Many things.” He touched her face with his fingertips, then stood up and walked over to the Chilkat blanket.
Lizzie went to join him. He handed her the blanket and she fingered the long fringe. “Why did you come to get these things this morning?” she asked.
“Because I feared that once Richard knew we had discovered them he might come down and try to take them.”
“For what purpose?”
“I don’t know. To sell them, maybe. Or to give them to the British Museum to try to regain his credibility. He’s desperate and frightened and I don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“What do you plan to do with them?”
“First to discuss it with my father, and then return them to Alaska.” He picked up the box with Eltatsy’s remains and Lizzie carried the blanket as they left the church. They walked silently through the gate into the Hengemont garden, and up the slope to the terrace.
George saw them coming from his study, and joined them soon after in the library.
“Are you planning to find a place for those in the cabinet?” George asked with some surprise.
“You know better than that, Dad,” Edmund said.
The three of them sat and talked for almost an hour, about all the Hatton ancestors. Lizzie couldn’t help wondering why some family stories were hidden as shameful, like that of her great grandmother and her tragic lover, while others were celebrated and romanticized, like that of Elizabeth and John.
“Why did you invite me here?” she finally asked George.
“Because I saw your book and recognized your name,” he said simply. “I didn’t know if you were actually a descendent of the earlier Elizabeth Manning. It was an impulsive move.”
“Were you trying to make amends?”
“In all honesty, I have to say no,” George said.
“Did you think she could save Aunt Bette?” Edmund asked.
George looked at him for a moment, then moved his eyes down to stare at his hands. “Not Bette,” he said slowly. “If she could save anyone, I thought it might be Lily.”
Lizzie wasn’t sure if Edmund looked angry or just surprised.
When George spoke again, he addressed Lizzie. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at the corner of his eye with his fingertips. “I didn’t think any of this through. I never acknowledged the danger to you, but I thought you might possibly be someone to stand between Lily and the curse.”
“Oh for God’s sake!” Edmund said finally. It was now clear that he was angry. “Enough about this damned curse! There is no curse. There is only a long history of people behaving stupidly and of parents failing in their obligation to keep their children safe and look out for their best interests.” He stood up and walked to the window and looked out. “Where was your father when Bette was suffering depression as a girl?” he asked George. “And that other Lizzie and Edmund—who gave his parents the right to separate them if they loved each other?” He came back to the table and looked his father in the eye. “Don’t lay any of this on Lily, Dad,” he said forcefully. “I will decide how and when she learns this particular part of the family story.”
“Of course,” his father said in a whisper. “Whatever you think is best.”
He looked completely defeated and Lizzie could see that Edmund was regretting that he had spoken so harshly t
o his father. She thought about the additional bad news coming his way and hurried to change the subject.
“George,” she said softly, “may I take the poems?”
“You are afraid I’ll destroy them, aren’t you?” he said, struggling to regain his composure.
“I don’t think you need to,” she said. “The story has as happy an ending as is possible.”
“What will you do with them?”
“I want to encase them in a plastic called mylar, which will preserve them, and seal them behind a new memorial in your family church, if you don’t mind.”
“It is your church, too,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re certainly welcome to put something in it.”
“You know that Martin is an artist?” she continued.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “He told me about the mural he’s going to do in Newcastle.”
“I’d like to ask him to design a memorial cenotaph.”
He quietly agreed to her request.
Lizzie considered telling him about Bette’s diary, but decided that it would be better to just put it with the poems and seal it away.
“Martin has told me that there is a new technology that will allow an engraver to transfer a design from paper to brass, and I’d like him to try to work out the details within the week.” She had already asked Martin to design the memorial, and she hoped to see it mounted in the church before she had to leave for Boston.
Edmund spoke for the first time in several minutes. “The memorial is a good idea,” he said. “I assume it will be to your great grandmother?”
Lizzie smiled at him. “No, to all those women who died too young. I admire what that woman from the Rossetti painting did. At that time I don’t think that the church or the family was ready for anything more elaborate, but I think it’s time now to give them a real memorial.”
Martin arrived in the middle of the conversation and after a brief exchange of greetings, joined them at the table. “What happens to these now?” he asked, gesturing at the box and the blanket.
Lizzie looked to George to see what he would say, and he was looking back at her as if for advice.
“Now that the heart has been returned to its intended resting place,” he said finally, “the corpse of Eltatsy must be returned as well.”
“Who is he?” Martin asked.
“He was a Tlingit Indian from the village of Hoonah on the Alaska coast,” Lizzie answered. “Francis Hatton, in his collecting zeal, inadvertently stole his corpse from a burial island and now it must go back.”
It was clear to her that the return of Eltatsy’s remains was just as important as the return of John d’Hautain’s heart, and though she had difficulty articulating her thoughts, she knew that each of the three men understood her perfectly.
Edmund asked Lizzie if she knew where it should go, and she told him that she had a good idea from Francis Hatton’s journal of the vicinity, if not the specific location, of the island. They should start by making a contact in the Tlingit community, she suggested. Martin volunteered to help with that task; he was active in an organization of Native American artists, and through it knew several Tlingit carvers. He would, he said, make some calls as soon as they got back to London that evening.
It was a good start to the next chapter of the story, Lizzie thought. With two corpses restored to their rightful tomb, only one now remained. Then both Eltatsy and Francis Hatton could rest in peace.
• • • • •
Lizzie spent the next few days in London consolidating her notes about Francis Hatton’s voyage, and trying to get ready for her upcoming class at St. Pat’s. She had originally planned to be home more than a week before the new term started, but she had changed her ticket in the hopes that she would be able to see the new memorial mounted in the Hatton church before she left England. Martin was working quickly on the design, and had met an artist in Newcastle who could convert his sketch onto a laser-engraved brass plaque.
Tom Clark at the British Museum had strong opinions about the Chilkat blanket and the burial box being returned to an exposed island, and he and Lizzie had a long and heated discussion on the topic.
“Isn’t there any way to keep them from going back into the elements?” Tom had asked her. “They are such extraordinary works of art. If the Hattons aren’t willing to donate or sell them to us, can’t you arrange to get them into a local museum in Alaska?”
A month earlier Lizzie’s opinion on the matter would probably have coincided with the curator’s. But in the last week she had seen the physical remnants of two Hatton ancestors exhumed and reinterred, and she knew the remains of either would have been welcomed into Tom Clark’s museum. Dennis Aiken had wanted to add Elizabeth d’Hautain’s corpse to the collection because of the curious nature of her state of preservation. John d’Hautain’s heart was contained in a solid gold piece of thirteenth-century craftsmanship, which illustrated the melding styles of the Arab artisan and the European Crusader client. It was an immensely interesting and valuable work of art.
None of the people present at the reburial would have ever entertained a thought of sending the remains to a museum rather than sealing them in the tomb. There was an absolute understanding and acceptance of the right of those two human beings, even so long dead, to be buried in the manner, and in the place, they had chosen for themselves.
She explained this to Tom Clark and asked him what was different about the corpse of Eltatsy, or whoever was in the box. Did the long tradition of disregarding the last wishes of native peoples all around the globe make it more acceptable to treat their remains as legitimate examples of science, art, or commerce?
Tom had a very pragmatic answer. “I think that the interests of the living always outweigh the interests of the dead,” he said. “I think science and art and the understanding of culture have a value that is comparable to the spirituality or sentiment, or whatever it is, that makes people want to honor the bodies of dead people–even though they know that everything they treasured in the person is gone and that the corpse is just an empty shell that will eventually disintegrate.” He reminded her that she was the one who first brought up the idea that the Hatton ancestors would be as welcome in the museum collection as Eltatsy, then jokingly asked if that possibility was definitely closed.
Lizzie forced a smile. “Would you donate your body to a museum?” she asked.
“If it had some value for science, I would,” he insisted.
Lizzie reminded him that Eltatsy’s corpse had been stolen from his grave, that Francis Hatton had regretted it, and that if the remains were in an American museum, Federal Law would require their repatriation to the Tlingit.
It was clear that they were not going to resolve the issue except to agree to disagree, which they did. They then turned their attention to another matter, Richard Hatton’s financial disaster, which was now widely known in London. His losses were enormous; Lizzie could barely comprehend the figures she was hearing. And he had involved enough people of prominence in his investment schemes to bring down other fortunes besides that of his own family.
“It’s pretty unbelievable,” Tom Clark told her. “Several people I know have lost huge sums.”
“What possessed them to make such risky investments in the first place?”
“They didn’t seem so risky at the time. Most of it was high-tech stuff that seemed to hold unlimited potential.”
“Still, the amounts they were willing to speculate with—”
“The terrible thing here is that Richard Hatton’s firm allowed them to take on risks that were sometimes four times greater than the actual cash they had on hand. When things collapsed, money that had existed only on paper suddenly had to be backed by real property.”
“Well, Tom,” Lizzie said as she rose to go, “let that be a lesson to us not to get too greedy.”
“As l
ong as we stay in our current professions, I think we’re safe!” he said.
• • • • •
Martin also had opinions on Richard Hatton’s situation, which he was reading about daily in the Times.
“It’s too bad about your pal George,” he said to Lizzie from behind the newspaper as she dressed one morning. “He seems a good enough guy, and doesn’t really deserve to lose everything.”
Lizzie agreed.
“On the other hand,” Martin continued, “he’s always been rich and will probably do all right. The real tragedy here is the working people who are losing pensions.” He was stretched out on the bed with the newspaper spread around him and a pot of room-service coffee on a tray nearby. He kept up a running report on what the papers were saying about the Hatton family as Lizzie was preparing to leave.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I just have some errands around town before we go. Are you staying in today?”
“By no means,” he answered, sweeping the papers aside. “I have to call my friend in Newcastle about the cenotaph. It should be ready today.”
Lizzie had been hoping that it would be finished before they left England.
“Any chance we can get it down to Hengemont in the next few days?”
“Every chance, my love. I knew you’d want to see it installed before we go.”
She kissed him warmly. “When can I see it?”
“When everyone else does,” he answered. “It weighs a ton and the engraver will just load it on his truck and bring it straight to the church.”
Lizzie was excited, and said that she would call George Hatton to make the arrangements.
“When we see him, I guess I should return this,” Martin said, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and retrieving the paper he had taken from George’s document box. He handed it to Lizzie. “I meant to return it, but the time never seemed right.”